by Lauren Smith
“How long does it last?” he asked.
“About forty-eight hours.”
“Could you make a permanent version of the drug?” He moved his flaming hand away from her face a little.
“I don’t know. It’s possible. I would have to research it more.”
Drakor stood and walked over to Luis and took the vials. “Bring one of your men here. I wish to test this.”
Luis licked his lips nervously. But then he opened the door and spoke to whoever was outside. The tall, hulking man came in, scowling as he closed the door.
Drakor studied the vial he held, pinching it between his thumb and forefinger. “Does it have to be injected?”
“Yes.”
He filled a syringe with contents from the vial and held it out to the Brazilian dragon.
The third dragon looked to Luis, who nodded. Then the shifter accepted the syringe and injected it into his arm. For several seconds nothing happened. The man stood there, staring at them. Then he laid a hand over his abdomen, muttered something in Portuguese to Luis, and then his eyes widened and he started to thrash. He fell to the floor, his body shaking from violent seizures, but eventually they stopped.
For a moment Charlotte thought the drug had killed him, but then he groaned and staggered to his feet.
“Ask him how he feels,” Drakor said.
Luis translated the man’s reply. “He says he feels empty somehow.”
“Tell him to change,” Drakor said. “Bend fire, do something with his dragon.”
The man frowned and for a moment looked constipated. He shook his head, then looked to his hand and frowned again, flexing the fingers like it might help. Nothing. He began to shake again and started repeating the same words over and over. His entire world was crashing down upon him, and it was making him panic.
“Hearing, sight, he says everything is diminished.” Luis let out a stream of furious Portuguese. He raised his hand, and it erupted into flames. Charlotte tried to shield her face, but the attack never landed.
“Silva! Stop!” Drakor growled. “We cannot kill her. Don’t you see what she’s done?” Drakor held the two remaining vials in his hand, his dark eyes glowing a swirling gold now.
“It’s witchcraft is what it is.”
“You’re right.” Drakor grabbed Luis’s arm and held him back. “The best possible kind. She didn’t just give us a weapon. She gave us a tool.” He turned a cold, terrifying smile upon her. “A fate worse than death.”
Charlotte shrank back in her chair.
“My people lost the Cold War, but we won’t lose this one, not with this. With this, I will even make the Barinovs my servants.” He walked over to her and shook the vials tauntingly. “You are proving far more useful than I anticipated.” He glanced at Luis, who was still fuming. “Your men may have her, but they cannot kill her. I need her for the formula.”
Luis grabbed Charlotte’s arm and dragged her from the chair. “What will you do?” he asked Drakor.
“If the Brotherhood and the Barinovs haven’t killed each other yet, they might learn the truth. So we change tactics. I’ll make a ransom call and send them on a merry chase far away from us. Buy us some time.” Drakor pulled out his phone and dialed as she was hauled away from Drakor.
“Grigori,” he said in the phone. “I believe we need to—”
“It’s a trap!” Charlotte screamed, praying that Rurik’s brother would hear. Luis cuffed her, the blow landing on her temple. Pain shot through her head. She stumbled, hitting the doorjamb hard enough to bruise her right shoulder. Luis pulled her into the hall where his men were standing, and he grinned as he shoved her to her knees. Whatever he said to them made them all laugh.
“Me first, menina.” He reached down and fisted a hand in her hair, using it to jerk her head up. Charlotte’s scalp burned with sharp agony. The sound of men laughing was a haunting, frightening cacophony all around her. Luis jerked her to her feet by the arm and hair. He shoved her into the nearest room, slamming the door shut behind him. Charlotte had a few precious seconds of freedom before he grabbed her again, but she was facing him now, so she kneed Luis hard in the groin. Even dragons felt it there.
“Puta!” he snarled. She balled her fist and swung a haymaker at him, but that only hurt her hand. Luis braced himself against the wall by the door, blocking her only way out.
“So you have spirit after all. But not for long.” Luis grinned and tackled her to the ground. Her head smacked the thin carpet concealing concrete, and black dots filled her vision. His hands closed around her throat. She tried to scream, tried to fight. She was not going to go down like this.
In that moment she swore she could hear Rurik’s voice. She closed her eyes, searching for that veil of snow that she’d seen inside him. The fire hidden within the snow seemed to beat like a heart, and his voice came from it.
Charlotte, let me see through your eyes.
Luis tightened his grip. She clung to life, clung to Rurik, remembering everything she’d felt the moment she’d first kissed him. And then it happened—she felt herself falling into him like a meteor. She was unable to stop falling, even when she got close enough to him.
The flames of his heart enveloped her and she gasped, her body jolting like a live wire. She replayed everything she’d seen after the collision.
Find me, Rurik.
Just as he could see her memories, she suddenly saw his. Her brothers interrogating him, challenging his love for her, and Rurik holding fast, his heart unchanged. Her chest clenched as though invisible fingers had squeezed tight around her heart.
My heart… His words were rough, emotion breaking through like waves on an angry shore.
I won’t go home with anyone but you. You are my home. She sent the message to him as clear as a bell. Seconds later, she blacked out.
18
The brave men did not kill dragons. The brave men rode them. - Game of Thrones
Rurik stared at the floor number digits, which kept changing in the elevator as he and Damien’s team rode it to the top floor, when suddenly his head seemed to clear of the fog that had separated him from Charlotte.
Flashes of what she was seeing came through the bond to him. Drakor’s face, the serum in his hand as he talked. Red-gold eyes burning into Charlotte’s. Another man standing close behind Drakor…one Rurik recognized with dread. Rurik felt her heart pounding and her terror spiking. He leaned against the side of the elevator, gasping as her strong emotions swamped him.
Charlotte, where are you?
“Uh…guys, the dragon’s face just turned green. I think he’s going to puke,” Jason said, cautiously inching away from Rurik. Meg and the other hunters stepped back.
Damien gripped Rurik by the shoulder. “What’s the matter?”
“I know… I know where she is!” Rurik’s head exploded with new images. An office building, a distant skyline… She was trying to show him where she was. Then he saw Charlotte being dragged across the floor, hands around her throat, someone choking her…
He replayed the rush of images in his head, particularly the vacant office building only ten miles from where he stood.
“She’s in an empty office building not far from here, but we don’t have time. Drakor’s friends are in town. The Silva family.”
“The Silvas?” Damien’s eyes narrowed. “They’ve been killing my people outside of Buenos Aires. I have no problem fighting those assholes.”
“Neither do I,” said Rurik. The Silvas had wiped out a family line that had been allied with the Barinovs for centuries just so they could expand their drug empire.
“How do you know Silva is there?” Jason asked.
Rurik knew the truth would upset Charlotte’s brothers, but he couldn’t sugarcoat it. “She’s being attacked by Luis Silva, the battle dragon of their family. We have to go. Now.”
“How will we get to them in time? Is your brother bringing a helicopter to the roof?”
Rurik grinned. “Not exactly.
”
Damien and Jason exchanged glances with the rest of their team.
“I’m going to regret this,” Damien muttered.
Jason patted him on his tactical vest. “Come on, bro. You’re the one looking to foster a spirit of cooperation.” The hunters followed Rurik out of the elevator and down a hallway. From there they climbed a flight of steps and came out onto the rooftop. Wind buffeted them, and Rurik stared across the Moscow skyline, searching for the building Charlotte was being held in.
The hunters stumbled back as the massive flat roof suddenly got crowded. Three great dragons landed just yards away from them. They ranged in color from blue, to white, to green, their clawed feet scraping against the concrete.
“Holy shit,” Meg gasped.
Rurik laughed. “The blue dragon is Grigori, the green dragon is Mikhail, and the white dragon is Piper, Mikhail’s wife. Tie your gear to their legs. Anything you can’t hold on to during flight.” He glanced at Meg, who stared in awe at the snow-white dragon that was Piper. She reached up to touch her, and Piper bumped her hand with her nose.
“Oh my gosh, she’s beautiful.”
Damien recovered from his shock quicker than the others and helped Rurik tie their equipment bags onto the beasts’ legs.
“We’ll have to ride them to the building where Charlotte is being held. Can your team handle that?” Rurik spoke so that only Damien could hear.
“My team can HALO jump from thirty-five thousand feet; they can handle this,” Damien answered without hesitation.
“Good.” Rurik went next to Grigori, who was pacing restlessly, the blue frill around his neck fanning out with frustration. Rurik understood his brother’s mood. Rurik couldn’t help his brothers in this fight, at least not in the way he was meant to.
“Meg, Tamara, and Kathryn, you ride on Piper. She is the white dragon. Damien and I will be on Grigori. Jason and Nicholas, you take Mikhail. There are spines on their backs that you can hold on to.” Rurik demonstrated as he mounted his brother, showing them a row of spines that extended outward, which they were able to grasp.
“Never considered making saddles?” Jason quipped.
“How often do you let people ride on your back, MacQueen?” Rurik retorted.
It had been more than a thousand years since he’d ridden on one of his brothers as a human. Back then he’d been a boy, not yet ready to change, scrambling over Grigori’s scaled back. He shoved the memory aside as his brother bent his head and crouched, letting him climb up. At full size, a dragon’s body was the length of two buses, and the tail was almost as long. Damien got up behind him, and the others followed suit.
“They’ll let us down on the roof. Expect trouble when we land. Once Drakor knows we’re there, he won’t care about human casualties.”
Damien nodded, his eyes hard as he clutched the flared spine between his hands. “Understood.”
Grigori stood up to his full height. “Hold tight!” Rurik warned before his brother leaped off the roof.
“Fuck!” Damien bellowed as Grigori dropped like a stone. Then his wings fanned out and they were jolted as they caught the air and rose up into the cold Russian sky. Rurik saw Damien clutching his brother’s spines for dear life.
Jason, on the other hand, could be heard whooping like a cowboy back on Mikhail.
Hold on, Charlotte. Stay alive. He pushed the thought toward her, praying she could hear him and that they would get there in time.
Charlotte woke with a gasp. Rurik’s voice still lingered inside her, a whisper, more in her heart than her head. Had she dreamed it? Her lungs burned and her throat was in agony. For a moment she didn’t remember where she was, until she saw Luis Silva crouched over her. His hands were no longer wrapped around her throat. Now they were balled into fists at his thighs.
The memories of what had happened before she’d passed out came roaring back. But he seemed to have lost interest in her, which was perhaps the only thing that had saved her life. Luis was staring at something over her head. Clutching her throat, she rolled over and looked out through the tall windows and saw three winged shapes headed straight for them. Their wings flapped in a strange but familiar way, something between a gliding bird and the pulsing frenzy of a bat.
Dragons.
Luis growled, eyes fixed on this imminent threat. Charlotte realized this would be her only chance. She scrambled to her feet and lunged at Luis. She didn’t have the strength to hurt him, but she had mass and physics on her side. She tackled him, driving him back into the recently installed window, dropping to the ground as he crashed into it. The glass shattered, and Luis fell out of sight. Charlotte knew better than to assume the fall would kill him, but at least it bought her some time. And time was what she needed right now.
She got up and managed to slip through the door to a supply closet just as the rest of the wall of windows exploded behind her. Luis came crashing back into the building in dragon form. Charlotte ducked behind a set of file cabinets that were partially covered with a white plastic tarp. She covered her mouth to try and silence her panting breaths. There was a roar in the distance, and the building quivered like a tree facing a mighty wind.
Oh God… How was she going to survive this?
Stay alive. Rurik’s voice broke through the fear that had rooted her in place.
I’m scared. Too scared to move, to breathe…
Images flashed across her mind. She saw their dance at the Catherine Palace, a moment when she’d felt safe in his arms. Her breathing slowed, and she could feel an inner calm move through her.
She peered around the edge of the cabinets. Luis was nowhere to be seen, but shouts in Portuguese could be heard from other rooms. Seconds later, deafening crashes shook the building so hard the floor tilted beneath her feet before settling back. Her stomach lurched, and she tried not to throw up. For a moment she felt like she was on the world’s largest Jenga stack, and someone had just removed a key support brick.
Howls and screams echoed all around her, interrupted by bursts of gunfire. She used the wall for support as she crept to the nearest door and chanced a look out a window. In the sky, dragons were clawing at each other, teeth snapping, jaws closing around scaled flesh. It was unlike anything she’d ever seen in her life. A medieval battle of monsters.
The bark of gunfire made her dive to the ground as shouts echoed from above. She waited, counting the seconds of silence before she dared to move again. The rooms were empty as she slid past each door, but she was afraid she’d run into Luis or Drakor at any moment. They would be looking for her.
She soon found the corner office she’d been in earlier. The two remaining vials of serum lay forgotten on the floor. She had to make sure Drakor didn’t manage to escape with them. Charlotte rushed toward the vials and grabbed them, only to be yanked back by her hair.
“There you are!” Drakor snarled. “I’m afraid I don’t like Luis’s chances out there. But with you, I won’t need him. Come.” She tried to resist, but it was no use. Already his hands were taking on a clawlike shape. He pulled her toward the window, and she imagined herself being carried off to God-knows-where.
“Back away from my mate,” Rurik bellowed as he appeared in the doorway. He was bleeding and bruised, but at that moment he was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen.
“Rurik!” She cried out his name, and he met her gaze with a smile of hope before he focused back on the threat before him.
“You can’t harm me,” Drakor said, claw at her throat. “She dies, you die.” Drakor and Rurik danced in a slow circle around each other.
“Charlotte, it’s okay,” Rurik said. “Your brothers are here on the roof, and we will get you to safety.”
“I think not.” Drakor’s nostrils flared a moment. “Your scent…” He closed his eyes briefly, inhaling again. “It’s…human. Only human. Interesting.”
Rurik didn’t acknowledge the awful truth, but Charlotte knew what Drakor would puzzle out. If Rurik was mortal, he could be
easily killed, and he’d still have Charlotte for her drug.
Panic shot through her like a bolt of lightning, and everything around her seemed to slow down. Drakor began to turn, his face alight with malice as he finally realized that he had the upper hand.
Have to stop him…but how?
She didn’t stop to think her plan through. There was only one way to even the odds. Vial in hand, she rammed her palm into Drakor’s mouth, mid-taunt. The glass shattered over his teeth and cut into her hand, which she held over his mouth, keeping as much of the serum inside as she could. Drakor struggled, gripping her hand and pulling it away. He gagged and spat, a mixture of blood, spit, and serum spilling on the ground.
He howled, backhanding his claw at her chest, even as it began to revert to human form. She screamed, staggering over the edge of the building. She grabbed Drakor’s hand, desperate to pull herself back up.
Instead, he fell over the ledge with her.
Wind whipped across them in a roar of sound. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t catch her breath as she went weightless in the air. Drakor’s gaze went wide with terror, seeing the ground rising to meet them, yet unable to do anything about it.
But Charlotte wasn’t afraid. Not really. She wasn’t resigned to death, it was just that she knew. She knew somehow what she would see as she looked back up into the sky. She knew it before it even happened.
A great black dragon appeared, falling from the building and diving after them, its golden eyes locked onto hers. As it reached her, its giant claws cradled her seconds before they reached the pavement, pulling her back toward the sky…but it wasn’t enough.
Rurik covered her with his wings and twisted his body so he was beneath her before they crashed into the street, and everything went dark.
19
Like a fruit suffused with its own mystery and sweetness, she was filled with her vast death, which was so new she could not understand that it had happened. —Rainer Maria Rilke