Celtic Dragons

by Dee Bridgnorth

  Grady wanted to wrap her up in his arms and whisper promises that he would never let her be in danger again, but he took a step back and nodded. “Okay. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. You’re just trying to help.” Moira walked over to the sliding glass door that led out to his balcony, staring out over the dark city. “I just need to process. Do you think we could order some food or something?”

  “Absolutely. What do you want? I can get you anything. Sushi? Chinese takeout? I can have someone swing by the steak place down the road. They have great sirloins with baked potato and macaroni sides. Or there’s this fish place down the road…and lobster rolls right next door. Anywhere you want.”

  She turned and looked at him over her shoulder, giving him another one of her slight smiles. “Grady…I’m not a complicated girl. Order a pizza or something.”

  “A pizza.” He scrubbed a hand along his strong jawline, nodding. “Right. I’m on it. What do you like on your pizza?”

  “Stuffed crust—and lots of meat.”

  He laughed, despite his nerves still being high. “Sure. Not an order I usually get from a girl. Stuffed crust pizza with a lot of meat.”

  “Do you have a lot of girls up here?”

  Grady winced, realizing that he’d brought that question on himself. “I have a reasonable number of girls up here, from time to time, yes.”

  She was still staring out the window. “Any of them live a second life as a dragon?”

  “No, that’s pretty much just you.”

  Moira turned away from the window, her gaze unreadable. “Well, that seems to make a pretty strong case against me then.”

  “Moira…”

  Holding up a hand, she shook her head. “No. Go. Settle in, get changed, order pizza. Give me a few minutes.”

  He didn’t want to, but he respected her request, backing off and disappearing into his bedroom. There, he placed a call to a local pizza place and gave them her order, offering a fifty-dollar tip if they got it to him in less than twenty minutes. Then he stripped off his clothes and stood in front of his bathroom mirror, staring at his reflection and trying to match it with the person who had just watched a supernatural battle play out. But he couldn’t reconcile the two people, and he gave up, stepping under the hot spray of the shower and closing his eyes as he let the water wash away the horrible feeling that was still settled over him.

  Grady got lost in the water, letting it block out what served as his new reality, and before he knew it, he heard the buzzer going off, signaling that someone wanted to come up. He must have been in the shower for more than fifteen minutes, and he hurried to turn off the water, wrap a towel around his waist, and make his way to the door to answer the call.

  When he got there though, Moira had already taken care of it, summoning the delivery girl up. She turned and saw him standing there, her eyes moving over him the way his had moved over her earlier that day—it seemed a lifetime ago. A glance down confirmed that his muscled chest, still glistening from the shower, was on full display, the towel he’d haphazardly wrapped around himself hanging low on his hips. Low enough to show her the V formed by the muscles there, pointing to exactly where her eyes were lingering.

  But then she was looking into his eyes again, smiling faintly as she gestured toward the door. “She’ll be here any minute. Do you want to…get dressed first?”

  “Uh, yeah,” he managed, though his throat was thick with the ever-present sizzle between them. “My wallet is there on the coffee table. Just pay her if she gets here before I’m done.”

  She nodded, her eyes moving over him again, and Grady had to hurry from the room if he wanted to avoid adding to the events of the day by picking her up and laying her down on the dining room table that was just to the right of the entryway. It was something to consider for later.

  In the meantime, he pulled on a pair of black lounge pants and a fitted white T-shirt, leaving his feet bare and his face unshaven, the five o’clock shadow taking over. When he walked back out to the living area, Moira was sitting at the table he had just considered taking her on, the pizza box in front of her, her legs hugged against her chest with one arm, and a half-eaten piece of pizza in her other hand.

  He stood there and looked at her for a long moment before she saw him. Everything else disappeared, and he could only think how sweet, vulnerable, and beautiful she looked. She was the most powerful woman he knew, and yet she looked downright snuggly sitting there in his apartment, her toes curled up as she used them to keep her feet on the edge of the chair.

  “Hi.” He didn’t know what else to say as he walked over and took a seat next to her, grabbing his own piece of cheesy, meaty pizza.

  “Hi,” she said back, watching him watch her as they both ate in silence for a moment. She was the first to take the leap. “Should we talk about it?”

  “Probably, yeah.”

  Moira nodded. “Probably. Yeah. Where do you want to start?”

  “I don’t even know,” he said, looking past her, out the window. “When that guy appeared…”

  “He’s a shifter,” Moira told him, seeming to instinctively know that he didn’t know how to finish the question that was in his head. “He was in the tunnel already, but in the form of a cockroach.”

  “That first cockroach…”

  Moira’s face shadowed. “Yeah. A shifter.”

  “A person.”

  “Yes.”

  Grady set his piece of pizza down, resting his head in his hands. “Are you seriously telling me that I crushed a person—an actual person—with the sole of my shoe?”

  “Grady…” she reached out and touched his arm gently. “You didn’t know. I didn’t know. I saw a cockroach on the footage last night, and I had absolutely no idea that it was a shifter. You had no way to know. He was in your space, walking around in the form of an insect that he knew most humans would instinctively kill on sight. He took the risk because he wanted to steal.”

  He looked up at her, recognizing, from a logical point of view, that everything she’d said was true. But somehow it didn’t make him feel any better. “I never would have…if I’d had any idea.”

  “Of course not,” she said, moving from her chair to sit in his lap.

  He wrapped his arms around her, and despite the sexual connection between them, there was nothing but comfort and companionship there as they held each other, his face pressed against her shoulder as she stroked his hair.

  “Listen,” she said after a minute of just holding him. “The real problem is that, no matter how true everything I just said is, Darren—the other guy—now has a blood grudge against us. He’s a shifter. He protects his own. I don’t know how many of his own he has, and that’s what we have to be afraid of now. At first, he might have just wanted your money. Now he wants our lives.”

  Grady looked up at her, his eyes haunted. “You almost died today fighting him, Moira. Because of me. I could have gotten you killed too. How could I have lived with that?”

  She shook her head. “I wasn’t as close to death as you might think.”

  “He was wrapped around you, suffocating you. Trying to split you in two!”

  “I was letting him,” she assured him, touching his cheek. “I was waiting until he was squeezing so tightly that when I shifted, he would be thrown off and vulnerable for a minute. Trust me. I had it under control the whole time.”

  Grady nudged her off his lap and stood up, needing to pace. “Well, I didn’t have it under control, Moira. There was nothing I could do to help you. I didn’t understand what was happening. I couldn’t have fought him off. I can’t even believe there was anything to fight off! A fucking basilisk was in my office building today, and I killed a cockroach who was actually a human.” He stopped pacing and turned to look at her, throwing up his hands. “Tell me what to make of that, because it’s not a problem I’ve ever encountered in the consulting business before. I don’t know how to spin this one, Moira. I don’t know how to talk my way ou
t of it.”

  “Because you can’t,” she said quietly, not walking toward him as she recognized that he was the one who now needed his space. “I’m sorry you’ve been exposed to all of this, Grady. I would never have wished it on you. You’re in shock. It’s normal.”

  “It’s not normal,” he said, all of the emotions he should have been feeling right after the event, when he had been numb, suddenly rushing in. “None of this is normal, Moira!”

  She didn’t respond to his shouted words, and he spun around, slamming his fist against the dining room wall. When the plaster gave way and a dent appeared, he felt gratified, needing to see that he did have the power to change or affect something. The worst part of this whole situation was how helpless he was, not knowing what they were up against or how to fight it.

  “Why were they there in the first place?” he asked, turning back to her. “Why were those two men in the form of cockroaches in my space?”

  “Because they were stealing from you.”

  “As cockroaches.”

  She nodded. “Yes. At least, that’s what I think. They had some way of getting through, into the drywall, and from there they crawled along the seam between the floor and the wall, all the way into the vault. There have to be spaces too small for us to notice where they could have slipped through.

  “No way,” Grady protested, shaking his head. “Let’s say they could get into the vault. As cockroaches. Let’s even say they could escape notice by scurrying up the shelves from angles the cameras didn’t pick up. Let’s even say that they could manage to lift the gold bars and whisper them away without it showing on camera. Even if we assume all of that, there’s no way they could get the gold bars out of the vault.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure,” Grady said, dragging a hand through his hair. “They’re ten-ounce bars. They’re small, but they’re not that small!”

  Moira lifted a shoulder, perching against the edge of the table. “I’m not sure, and I think we should check the vault out again, knowing that we’re looking for tiny cracks they could have used. Remember that, just like I keep a lot of my strength in my human form, they would be far stronger than the average cockroach. I know how ridiculous it sounds, Grady, but they could have been pushing the gold bars out one by one, through some kind of crack we’d never think twice about.”

  He stared at her in shock, slowly shaking his head back and forth. “I don’t even know what to say about that. I’m being robbed by roaches. How? Why? Who are these people?”

  “Shifters.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” he told her, his angst threatening to make him lose his temper. She was being very calm, but for some reason, his level of anxiety was increasing by the minute. “Maybe it makes sense to dragons, but not to me. Not to a normal person, Moira. It sounds insane. Okay? Just accept that. You sound insane.”

  “You need to be careful, Grady,” Moira said quietly. “You’re going to upset me.”

  “And then what?” he demanded. “Are you going to breathe fire at me?” He laughed, though there was no real amusement in the sound. “Are you going to pick me up in your talons and fly me around, this time hanging perilously from your feet instead of hanging onto your back?”

  The hurt that flashed over Moira’s face hit Grady deep in his gut, and his panic-driven outburst suddenly cut off, regret replacing his anger.

  “Moira, I didn’t mean…”

  “Don’t,” she said, walking over to where she had left her shoes and putting them back on without looking at him. “What I shared with you last night was the best part of my life. I’m proud of who I am, and it was an honor for me to share that with you. Now you’ve just thrown it in my face. Don’t try to explain that away.”

  Grady closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose with two fingers. “Please don’t go. I’m sorry. I’m just…it’s a lot, Moira.”

  “Obviously it’s too much,” she said, and when Grady opened his eyes, all he saw was a brief glimpse of her back as she walked out his door, letting it close behind her.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Moira

  Moira had plenty of time to look around Ronan’s office as she waited for his reaction to everything that she had just told him. She noted, somehow for the first time, that the curtains that framed the large window overlooking a busy Boston street were denim—a questionable choice in her opinion. The walls of the office were dark wood paneling, already lending an older, masculine look to the room. It suited Ronan in many ways, given that he had always been an old soul, destined to be the leader of the next generation and saddled with responsibility since his first transition when he was a child.

  Still, in Moira’s opinion, the place could use a bit of brightening, and she thought that, perhaps when things were less intense, she would offer to redo the room for him.

  That was if they weren’t attacked by a potentially lethal group of shifters out for blood.

  “We’ve always known that there are other shifters out there,” Ronan said, breaking the silence that had fallen between them after her long, convoluted story. “I suppose that shouldn’t be a surprise. What is a surprise is how you and Eamon have both reacted to them.”

  Moira nodded. “I think that the connection between our supernatural powers makes that reaction stronger. This man—Darren—could shift into anything though. Cockroach, bat, basilisk—presumably the options are unlimited. Obviously that makes him very different from us as well.”

  “He’s a true shifter,” Ronan said, leaning back in his chair, his fingers steepled beneath his chin. “A shifter can transition into any living thing—although their powers are limited by energy. Each shift depletes that energy. We are shifters…differently. We shift, but into one alternate form that we possess because of a direct connection to that form. We are like experts while they are jacks of all trades.”

  “That sounds about right,” Moira agreed, leaning forward in her chair. “But whatever they are, I have no doubt that what happened yesterday elevated the situation. Before, for whatever reason, Darren and whoever is with him were targeting Grady’s money supply. Now they’ll be after him—personally. And me, of course. Us, by association.” Moira looked up at her friend and leader, true remorse in her eyes. “I’m sorry about this, Ronan. I know it’s the last thing we need right now, given everything that you’re working with Kean on—the changes that might be happening to the way we mate. The threat of dying out. I’m afraid we’re at war with these shifters now.”

  Ronan sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose, trying to alleviate the stress headache he no doubt had. “You don’t have to apologize, Moira. You could hardly have known what was going on in that tunnel, and it’s our job to investigate. Unfortunately, that investigation has landed us in hot water. So now we need to be smart. Is there anything—anything—you can think of that might give us a hint about where we might find these shifters?”

  “It was all very fast,” Moira told him, biting her lip as she thought back. “One minute we were at another dead end in the investigation, and then cockroaches were turning into humans and I was locked in battle with a supernatural quick-change act. I assume that, when he disappeared, he just shifted into something too small for us to see. He was still there. That’s why we got out of there as quickly as possible.”

  “That’s another part of all this,” Ronan said, turning to stare out of his window, his lips pursed. “The ‘we’ part. Grady Princeton has been privy to all of this. You actually flew with him two nights ago. Moira…”

  “I know.” She cut him off before he could go any further. “It was a mistake. From his reaction last night, after everything, it’s obvious that he’s not ready to be part of any kind of supernatural world. It was poor judgment on my part, and I take full responsibility. I won’t be having any personal connection with him any longer.”

  Ronan brought his gaze back to hers, and to her surprise, his lips actually quirked upward in a hin
t of a smile. “You have this way of jumping the gun, Moira. I wasn’t going to chastise you.”

  “Well, you should.”

  “I suppose I could, if you want,” he offered, sitting up in his chair and resting his elbows against his desk. “Moira, you have been terrible. I’m incredibly disappointed in you.”

  Moira rolled her eyes at him, pinning him with a skeptical look. “If you’re going to be the leader of the next generation, you have to get better at lecturing.”

  “My heart isn’t in the lecture,” Ronan said, standing up and rounding his desk, sitting on the edge of it. “What I was going to say, before you interrupted me, is that you, my dear, dear friend, are not the kind of person to share well with others.”

  “Do what?” Moira asked, tilting her head. “What are you talking about?”

  “I mean…you don’t let people close,” Ronan told her. “You keep them at arm’s length, even though you cover that reserved nature with this carefree spirit that makes people think you’re laidback and go with the flow. And you are that in many ways—don’t get me wrong. But when it comes to people, particularly men, you put up a hard and fast wall that they never get past.”

  Moira shifted uncomfortably in her seat, the conversation having taken a very surprising turn. “First of all, I’m not sure what this has to do with anything. Secondly…sure, I keep men at a distance. But that’s because I know I’m going to be assigned a mate someday, so what’s the point in getting involved with anyone now? Better to enjoy briefly and move on, right? We all do that. It’s the way our lives work.”

  “You more so than others,” Ronan pointed out. “Remember Siobhan’s lover?”

  “And look how that ended,” Moira said darkly, hating the memory of how crushed her friend and pseudo-sister had been at the end of that relationship.

  Ronan nodded. “Maybe a bad example, ultimately, but the point stands. At least, the point I’m trying to make, which you seem determined to miss, stands. The point is…you didn’t keep Grady at a distance.”