Dragon Bound er-1

by Thea Harrison

  Why the hell not. She pushed the trunk open wider so that she could wriggle through and spilled onto pavement with a painful thud. She stared up at the front end of a Dodge Ram pickup coming straight for her. The truck slammed to a halt inches away from her face. The car she had been in pulled away from the stop and turned left.

  “Hey!” a man yelled from the truck.

  Shut up, you stupid man, shut up.

  A truck door slammed.

  She sat as a middle-aged man appeared. He knelt beside her, his face filled with shock and outrage.

  “What the hell?” he said. “Oh sweet Jesus, lady, you’ve been kidnapped?”

  Ya think?

  Yards away, car brake lights showed. She yelled against her gag at the man.

  “Just hold on, honey. You’re gonna be all right now.” The man worked to get her gag loose.

  I slipped out at a stop, she said to Dragos. They noticed. They’re in a gray Lexus and they’re turning around. I’m seeing signs for . . . Highway 17 and . . . Averill Avenue or State Road 32. There’s a state park sign. I can’t see the name. It’s the same two guys, no witch.

  I know where you are, he said in satisfaction. Well-done.

  The man got the gag loose and pulled it over her head just as the Lexus pulled up. She screamed at the man, “Run!”

  The two Fae stepped out, looking pissed. They had guns.

  No, it’s not well-done. I made a bad mistake. Oh God, oh God, oh God.

  Dragos was trying to talk to her, but she couldn’t shut up, couldn’t run, couldn’t do anything but stare in horror as the man stood and turned around. One Fae lifted his gun and shot him.

  She sobbed, I think I just got somebody killed.

  Then the other Fae lifted his gun and shot her. She looked down at the pain in her chest. Another dart stuck in her T-shirt.

  Fade to black.

  The dragon roared in anguish as he hurtled north with every ounce of his strength and speed. He was followed by all his sentinels but one who had been left behind to deal with the witch.

  He was too far, too far, and now she was gone again.

  His enemies had taken his mate. His child.

  She had to be alive.

  Anything else was unacceptable.

  * * *

  A burning cold Power yanked her awake. She coughed and rolled to her side. Her gag was gone and so were her ankle and wrist restraints. Her arms and legs crawled with prickling pain as her circulation returned.

  She was lying on a floor. She touched the polished hardwood. Inside then.

  “There’s our thief,” said a cultured male voice overhead. “Time to rise and shine.”

  Inhuman. Fae. Didn’t she just know who that was. Too bad his head was still attached to his body. She had been hoping she would meet him the other way.

  “I’m asleep, then I’m awake. Then I’m asleep and now I’m awake again,” she croaked. “Make up your mind already.”

  The male laughed. “Well, you have not been boring, I’ll give you that, but haven’t you been one slippery bitch to get ahold of. And apparently for Cuelebre to hold on to.”

  Yes, well, let’s not talk about that. She looked at the sleek black boots near her head. They belonged to legs that went up farther than she could focus just yet. “Can I have some water?”

  “Sure, why not.”

  He threw cold water in her face. She was too depleted to react much other than gasp. “Alrighty,” she said after a moment. “Can I have some water to drink now, please, Your Highness?”

  He laughed again. “Not boring and not dumb. That’s so much better than your boyfriend, who both bored me and was dumb. To be honest, I don’t know what you saw in him.”

  “Ex. Ex-boyfriend,” she said. “I swear to God, I’m never going to live that down.”

  Finally it felt like her limbs would function. She pushed herself to a sitting position. She was in a very large room that had a medieval feel. There was a large stone fireplace and a nearby cluster of chairs, a long wooden table with benches, lit sconces that gave the scene a flickering illumination she found eerie, and a high-raftered ceiling.

  There were also Fae guards at long metal-hatched windows. The two who had snatched her were stationed at large double doors.

  Again she had no idea how long she had been unconscious, or where she was. She hoped the drugs hadn’t hurt the peanut. Her hand slipped to her abdomen. She gave herself a surreptitious scan. She sighed in relief as she located the tiny bright life inside her. There you are. Looks like it’s just you and me, peanut. For now, anyway.

  The Fae King squatted beside her. He handed her a goblet. She took a cautious sip. Cold, crisp, clear water. She sucked the contents down.

  Then she looked up at Keith’s murderer. A few weeks ago she had not known there were so many people in the world to hate. Urien. The witch Adela. The two Dark Fae males at the door who had shot an innocent human without so much as a blink of an eye. Her revenge to-do list kept getting longer and longer.

  The few Fae she had met had looks that ran from those who had a puckish quality, like Tricks, to those who had a strange stern beauty, like Urien. It was too bad he was such a monster. With his lean supple build, high cheekbones, white skin and raven black hair, he should have been one of nature’s miracles.

  “This is one of my country retreats,” he told her, having noticed her curiosity. “No full Court in attendance, just me and my men. And now you, of course.” He gestured to the goblet. “More?”

  “Yes, thank you.” She handed it to him and pushed to her feet as he refilled it from a silver pitcher sitting on the table. She drank that goblet down as well.

  “Have as much as you like. The sedative can leave one with quite a thirst, or so I’m told,” said Urien. “I suspected you’d wake up thirsty since you had two doses back-to-back. Which rather surprised my men, since one dose should have been sufficient for the trip.”

  “I’ve always had a high metabolism,” she said. She filled the goblet one last time and drained it. The hydration made all the difference in the world. Things stopped spinning at the edge of her vision and she felt stronger. “Local anesthesia at the dentist? Forget about it. It doesn’t take until they pump enough in me to numb an elephant.”

  “I see.” The Fae King strolled to one of the high-backed chairs near the fireplace and sat. He gestured to the chair opposite him with a smile. “Please join me. We have a lot to talk about, you and I.”

  The worst thing you could do with a predator was show your fear and run. She suspected dealing with the Fae King would be a similar experience. She took the chair he indicated, leaned back and crossed her legs.

  Urien regarded her across steepled fingers; then he reached for the glass of wine on the table by his chair and took a sip. “What a surprise and a mystery you’ve been, Ms. Giovanni.”

  “It wasn’t intentional,” she said. “Well, maybe the mystery part was, but that was supposed to go unsolved.”

  He gave her a grin that didn’t reach his cold black eyes. “I knew I liked you the moment I got that penny. Now that made me chuckle.” His eyes sharpened. “There is something about you. . . .”

  All these stupid old people. Had every last one of them met, heard of, gossiped about, or smelled her mom in the distance? Way to be inconspicuous. Thanks a lot, Mom.

  She pinched her nose and sighed, “Yeah, I look like Greta Garbo. I get that a lot.”

  “Really, and this Greta Garbo is who?”

  She looked at him over her hand. “An old movie star.”

  “I do not follow such newfangled human pastimes.” He dismissed the subject with a flick of his fingers. “This pissant nobody kept annoying my men, so when I heard about his preposterous claims about his girlfriend, I thought, Let’s throw a kind of finding charm out there and see what happens. You know, just to try out a prototype of a little something I’ve been cooking up in my spare time. Imagine my surprise when everything he claimed came true. Then imagine m
y surprise when he wouldn’t say a word about you.” He leaned forward. “Not after he was gelded, not after he was eviscerated, not after he was blinded. I didn’t think the boy had that kind of loyalty in him. I thought he would give you up in the first ten minutes.”

  She covered her mouth, fighting hard to show no emotion. After a moment, she had enough control to say, “He couldn’t tell you anything. I made him take a binding oath.”

  Urien snapped his fingers. “That explains it. One mystery solved. So tell me what the dragon’s hoard looked like. Was it as magnificent as legend says?” His expression had turned avaricious.

  “To be honest, I was too scared to look around.” She closed her eyes, remembering the terror. How long ago that seemed. “For all I knew he was going to show up at any minute. I got in, found a coin jar by the entrance, took the penny and ran. I could have grabbed something else, but I was so damn mad at Keith I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of handing over something of real value. And I hoped that if I took only the penny, just maybe Cuelebre might not kill me if he ever caught up with me.”

  “Which is a great segue into our next mystery,” said Urien. He cocked his head, studying her like she was a bug under a microscope. “Why hasn’t Cuelebre killed you yet?”

  She laced her hands in front of her stomach. Hold on, peanut. If anyone has truthsense, he does. Here comes some tricky tap dancing.

  “You’d have to ask him,” she said. She widened her eyes. “Because I’ve got to tell you, it has surprised the heck out of me.”

  His eyes were narrowed, unblinking. She felt his cold Power drift across her skin and struggled not to shudder. “How did you escape the Goblins?”

  She shook her head. “Again, you’d have to ask him. I was locked in my cell when he came for me. Taking the penny didn’t help a bit. He was in a hell of a rage when he caught me, and you have to know he’s not the forgiving type. He was determined to be the one to pass judgment on me, nobody else.” Then something occurred to her. “You know, I never thought of this before, but he also wouldn’t have wanted me to get away alive because I know where his lair is.”

  The Fae King’s eyebrows lifted. “Very true.”

  “Not that it matters anymore,” she added.

  “What do you mean?”

  She shrugged. “One of my guards said Cuelebre decided to move his hoard. I suppose now that the location has been compromised . . . ?” She let her voice trail away.

  He shrugged as well. “I guess that’s to be expected. Too bad. He’s kept so much from me. I would have liked to have stolen more from him. Maybe I’ll have you take something from the new location.” He waved a long white hand. “But that’s a conversation for another time. What I want to know is how you did it.”

  His Power enfolded her and squeezed tighter, an invisible boa constrictor coiling around her body. Goose bumps rose along her skin. She bit her lip to keep her teeth from chattering. Her mind raced, working to find and eradicate any loopholes in her story before she said them.

  “You know how marmosets are little, weird and quick?” she asked.

  “Marmosets,” he said.

  “Didn’t Keith or someone tell you by now that I’m a half-breed Wyr?”

  “Someone did mention it, yes,” he replied slowly.

  “Well, I’m weird and quick. And I have a gift for getting through locks.” She raised her fingers and wiggled them. Infer, imply, don’t state. Careful now. “That’s how I was planning on getting away . . . today? Earlier, anyway. My guards don’t know I can do that. I was going to trick them into looking the other way, then slip out of the locked area where they’ve been keeping me.”

  He gave her a charming smile and the chilling compression eased somewhat. “Impressive. So, my dear, you have not only humiliated Cuelebre by stealing from his hoard, but you have the ability to escape from his Tower too. I knew you would be worth tracking down.”

  How lucky for us, peanut.

  “This leads me to our last little mystery,” Urien said. “What happened between you and Cuelebre on that plain? You two seemed quite the team. Something happened, some kind of Power surge, and he was able to shift. We had been assured he wouldn’t be able to quite so soon.”

  A chill trickle of sweat slid between her breasts. He had in so many words just confirmed an Elven accomplice. She closed her eyes and rubbed at her temples. She was beginning to feel depleted and her hands trembled.

  “Did you know that the Goblins beat me quite badly?” Her voice shook too. “They were trying to get a rise out of Cuelebre, which didn’t fucking happen, of course, because he watched the whole thing with this stone-cold look on his face.”

  Huh, didn’t know she was still upset about that, which was mighty irrational of her, wasn’t it? It wasn’t as if Dragos had had any choice. That game face of his might have saved her life.

  The Fae King sipped wine and watched her.

  “Well, we faced a whole damn plain of those stinking Goblins. I would have done anything to get away. In New York I at least had some hope of survival if I could find a chance to escape. There was this white place on his shoulder where the Elves had shot him with their magic crap.” She gestured on herself. “It was right about here. So I made a last-ditch gamble. I convinced him to let me lance the wound. And apparently you were there—you must have been on the bluff? As you said, you felt his Power surge.” She let the horror of the memory show in her eyes. “He killed everything on the plain except me.”

  Silence filled the room. She searched Urien’s face, which was smooth and expressionless. You think he bought it, peanut? Can’t tell. Maybe, maybe not. Don’t ever play poker with this creep.

  But wasn’t what happened even more outlandish? It had all happened to her and even she had trouble believing it.

  She felt the same disorientation she always did after she and Dragos had separated for a while. She told herself fiercely, he is coming after me. He said he was. We’re mates, maybe. Probably. Or now, according to Graydon, I’m his hoard. Which makes no sense. Anyway I’m pregnant with his son. He may not love us, but that’s got to matter to him. Right?

  “I see,” said the Fae King at last. He finished his wine and set the glass aside. “Well, you have been through quite an adventure these last several days, haven’t you?”

  “Look,” she said. She felt so hollow it hurt, and the edges of the room were too far away. “Am I a guest or a prisoner? Are you going to torture me for some strange reason I don’t understand—because just in case you’re not, I want you to know I haven’t eaten since yesterday and I’m not doing so well right now.”

  The Fae King made a moue and tsked. “Cuelebre didn’t take care of you at all, did he? My dear, why in the world would I have any reason to torture you?”

  “I don’t know.” She threw up her hands and let them fall into her lap. “It’s been a hell of a day for a couple of weeks now,” she said. There was no reason to hide the exasperated exhaustion in her voice so she didn’t try. “And I don’t understand half the things that have happened to me, not least of all why you would have your goons drug me instead of walking up to me in the street and introducing themselves.”

  “That,” said the Fae King, “is a very good point. Let’s just say we were unsure how you would react and we were unwilling to let you slip away again. Since, from all reports, you were surprisingly protective of the Wyrm when talking with the Elves in South Carolina.”

  She froze. She hadn’t seen that one coming. What could he have been told? How should she respond?

  She said through numb lips, “If that confrontation had escalated any further, two Elder demesnes could be at war right now. If that happened, a lot of people would have gotten killed. Sure, I stole from him, but I’m not a murderer. If you had a report of that confrontation, then you know I was going to see him to the Elven border and take off, but then we had some Goblins in trucks smash into us. And somehow that event leads back to you, doesn’t it.”

&n
bsp; He gave her a heavy-lidded smile. “Well, you see, one of these days I’m going to finally succeed in killing Cuelebre. You just got in the way. Unfortunate, but all of that is in the past now.” He waved a hand. “I think we should consider you more as a conscripted employee, rather than a guest or prisoner. I can see a lot of uses for you. So many people have so many things I want.”

  “I didn’t know this was a job interview, or I would have put on a suit,” she said, fury making her reckless. Whoa, throttle back there, filly. He’s not torturing. Remember, that’s a good thing.

  He threw back his head and laughed. “I do like you, Pia. This is very simple: you will do as you’re told. If you do you will have, comparatively speaking, a very comfortable life. If you don’t? Oh, I don’t recommend that one. I really don’t.” He stood. “Conversation’s over. Piran, Elulas, see her to her room and make sure she stays put. Remember to pat her down for anything she could use to pick a lock. Oh, and find her something to eat. Poor thing has purple circles under her eyes. She looks like she’s ready to pass out.”

  Her kidnappers approached. Her own personal Thing One and Thing Two. She stood and went with them. What else was there to do?

  They let her use the bathroom on the ground floor. She was relieved to find that the house wasn’t too medieval. At least it had running water and a flushing toilet. Then they took her up a flight of stairs and down a long hallway to a bare room with nothing in it but a narrow bed and two folded blankets and a barred window.

  Then Thing One gave her an infuriatingly thorough search while Thing Two watched. The Fae felt along the seams of her clothes, ran his hands up the insides of her legs and squeezed her crotch, probed between and underneath her breasts and made her take off her shoes so he could inspect them.

  She gritted her teeth and suffered through it. She was able to hold on to her rage only because it was obvious from the Fae’s flat, bored expression that the search had no sexual undertones. There was no way she could have sneaked a thin, flat lock pick in with her if she’d tried.