“You’re feeding him?” Silver asked, genuinely surprised to learn that Ripper wasn’t letting Kirith fade away to a decrepit shadow.
“Of course. I want him alive for what I have planned,” Ripper chuckled. “I enjoyed torturing him some years ago, you see. Drove him quite mad, I think. I believe we’d all enjoy a repeat performance.”
“Last time…” Silver began, but he stopped himself. Last time, Ripper had killed the only people Kirith loved. A repeat performance could only mean one thing. The only person Kirith seemed to care about was Luna.
Whatever the Alpha had planned in the way of torture, it couldn’t end well for his sister.
“I’ll take him the food, no problem,” Silver said quickly, racing over to the bar to grab the small plate of ageing vegetables and stale bread for the inmate. He needed to get to Kirith. This was no longer a mission to free the Dragon.
It was a mission to kill his Alpha.
Kirith sat on the metal chair inside the large, dark vault, which was illuminated only by a solitary lamp that sat on the floor.
The vault’s door was solid steel, its walls hard stone. Ripper had locked him away in the hopes that his Dragon wouldn’t show himself. If he shifted, even between walls of solid rock, he might manage to bring the entire structure of the club down on top of them. Of course, Ripper didn’t know him very well if he thought his Dragon wouldn’t be willing to take out everyone in the place.
He was staring at the corners of the room, assessing the structure when the door began to creak open outwards.
Kirith sniffed the air, searching for the Alpha’s scent. But this was a new Wolf, one he hadn’t yet encountered.
A stream of light flowed in and seconds later, a tall, silver-haired man stood silhouetted before him, apparently hesitant to walk into the temporary lair of a Dragon. Smart Wolf. But his failure to enter meant that he didn’t shut the door.
So, he was either on the Dragon shifter’s side or not so smart after all.
“You’re a trusting bloke, aren’t you?” said Kirith.
“Not trusting in the least,” the young man said, stepping forward so that the prisoner could finally see his face. “I’ve never trusted you. Always been afraid of you, since I was a child.”
“With good reason,” snarled Kirith. “Perhaps it’s because you know that I can breathe fucking fire.”
“I’m well aware,” said the man. “I’m Silver,” he added. “Luna’s….”
Kirith cursed himself when his heart began to pound faster at the mention of her name. “Her brother. Yes, I can see it now. Your eyes are a giveaway.” He too had bright, inquisitive, intelligent eyes. Well, damn him for being here. It meant that the Dragon could no longer consider tearing the club down from the inside. There was no way he was risking Luna’s kin, even to get back at Ripper.
“I know what you did for my sister, even if you aren’t willing to take credit for it,” Silver said. “I know that you’ve saved her from harm more than once. I want to thank you for that.”
Kirith let out a grunt, unwilling to acknowledge his part in any of it. “Is she all right?” he asked.
“She’ll be fine,” Silver said. “I’m keeping her out of the flat for now, just in case. She wanted to come here, of course. She wanted to help you.”
For a split-second, Kirith’s lips curled into a smile. “Luna is brave to the point of foolishness,” he said.
“My sister is the bravest person I’ve ever met,” Silver replied. He began to walk through the vault, studying it as Kirith had done. “I used to call her Lunatic, because she did stupid things. Like she’d go off in the night to look at a certain Dragon shifter. I told her he was bad, but you know, it’s funny—she never believed me.”
Kirith stared at the stone wall in the hallway, unresponsive.
“Even for all the years when the world tried to convince her that you were a man capable of murdering his family, I don’t think she really ever believed that, either,” Silver added, stopping in front of Kirith. “For some insane reason, she thinks you’re wonderful.”
“Your sister is too good. Too generous.”
“My sister has a strong protective instinct. Because of it, she took a hard hit for you. She would have died for you last night, Kirith, and do you know what the mad bit is? She would have done so happily, knowing that it meant you could live another day.”
Finally, the Dragon shifter looked up, meeting Silver’s keen eyes. “What’s your point?”
Silver grimaced. “All her life, Luna has loved exactly one man. Despite the fact that I told her she was stupid to do so. Despite the fact that you burned your own house to the ground. But she’s never cared about anyone else, not really.”
Kirith inhaled audibly, his heart heated by the revelation. To think that she’d given him a gift as precious as her trust, her affection, when she’d given it to so few, was almost enough to make him want to rush into the hall and take out everyone he saw so that he could make his way back to her.
Almost.
“What do you want from me, Silver?” he asked.
“I want you to know,” he said. “I want you to know that even though my Pack has treated you abominably, she was never part of it. She didn’t send me here, by the way. I came of my own volition.” Silver looked over his shoulder, checking to see if anyone was coming. “By the way, she would have hated what I just did.”
Kirith sniffed the air. “You knocked out the shifter guarding me, didn’t you?”
Silver nodded.
“Your sister deserves better than me.” The Dragon shifter rose to his feet, still looking Silver in the eye. “You should leave here. Go back to her and tell her she deserves all good things in this life.”
“If that’s really how you feel, you should tell her yourself.” Silver gestured towards the door. “You’re a fucking Dragon. All-powerful and all that. So use your power.”
“Don’t tempt me,” Kirith snarled. “I know your Alpha is out there. I can smell his foulness. The only reason I don’t rip him limb from limb is your sister.”
“My sister hates him.”
“Ah, but she’s good. She’s no monster. Not like me.”
“My sister would want you free,” said Silver. “She would want you whole.”
Kirith shot him one final look before striding over to the door and looking out. One Pack member lay on the floor, but no others were anywhere to be seen. He could still smell the Alpha in the distance somewhere, no doubt being a ponce or committing some sort of financial fraud. He was perpetually corrupt, that one. Kirith had known it the moment he’d first laid eyes on him years earlier.
He walked quickly down the hall, aware that Luna’s brother was following. But his mind was jumbled, a tangle of confusion. He’d come to London for one reason: to find and kill Ripper. Things had been so clear a few days earlier. So simple. But now the clarity had turned into a murky stew of choices.
His emotions were raw, but instead of pure rage he found himself feeling something else. Something warm and wonderful. He tried to push it away, to bring the anger back as he stepped through Ripper’s office into the vast space of the Underground Club.
It turned out to be easier than he’d expected. When his emerald eyes settled on the Alpha of the Warkshire Pack, all thoughts of love disappeared.
Chapter 25
Ripper turned towards the Dragon shifter, who stood stock-still. A grim, horrifying statue far under the high arched ceiling of the Underground Club.
A second Wolf shifter stood next to the Alpha. Kirith had seen him before. He was the one who’d been in the woods the night that his family had died. The one Alpha called Rutger.
No doubt he was some sort of bodyguard. A coward like Ripper always had someone around to watch his back.
Good, thought Kirith. Stay close together, you two. This will make it so much easier to burn you both alive when the time comes.
“How do you want to do this?” he asked as he advanced slowl
y towards them, torturing his prey with each step just as Ripper had tortured him for so many years. “How do you want to die, Alpha?”
“I warned you, Dragon,” said Ripper. “If you come at me, others will pay for it. If not Luna, then someone else…”
“Luna is beyond your grasp,” Kirith said, combing a hand through his hair. “She’s safe. As for her brother, I will not let you lay a hand on him. You will die here, in this place you illegitimately claimed as your own.”
“There was nothing illegitimate. I purchased this club for my Pack, with our money,” Ripper said from behind the meagre shelter of the wooden bar. “For their own good. For their future.”
Kirith shook his head slowly, never taking his eyes away from Ripper’s. “You pretend you know how to look after your Wolves, but the truth is that you rob your Pack of a future with each day that passes. You steal from them, abuse them, lie to them. You are not worthy of a single one of your Wolves.” His eyes were glowing now, streaks of gold invading the vivid green that lived inside them. His Dragon’s rage was palpable on the air as the scent of charcoal moved in waves around him. “You, Ripper, are hateful.”
The Alpha choked out a nervous laugh. “Oh, I’m hateful, am I? I suppose you’re the sodding Easter bunny? Is that it? Come to give me pats and cuddle me? Or have you come out here in the hopes of melting flesh from bone?” Kirith watched as Ripper quietly nodded to Rutger, who moved out from behind the bar, circling around the space to come up behind him.
“If you think your thick-skulled sidekick can take on a Kindred, you’re even more of a fool than I’d thought,” Kirith said.
“I suppose I’m a fool, then,” Ripper snarled. “Take him out, Rutger. Make it quick.”
But his bodyguard moved too late. The sound of crunching bones echoed through the space and a quick flash of light shot through the darkness. Then the Dragon stood at the centre of the club, charcoal grey, grim as death, flashing massive teeth.
Onyx spikes rose up from his spine, his wings drawing out menacingly from his sides. They were thin, translucent and dark, like leather that had been stretched out over centuries, tarnished by the ravages of time.
Ripper cowered in the face of the beast, his false confidence diminished as soon as he seemed to realize what he was up against. But after a moment he slipped out from behind the bar, and then he too altered. Seconds later his large Wolf stalked into the space.
So, he and the other one were really going to try and fight a Dragon, were they?
So be it.
The two Wolves lunged at Kirith, Ripper living up to his name by going for the Dragon’s throat just as Rutger leapt on top of his back. Kirith flailed this way and that, throwing Ripper aside with one hard swing of his long, charcoal-coloured neck. The Alpha smashed into a round wooden table, splintering its oak top. For a moment he seemed dazed, but he quickly pulled himself to his feet, shaking his head as though he couldn’t see straight.
The other Wolf was still on his back, so Kirith tried to swing his head around enough to pull him off with his jaws. But just as he did so a deep, menacing growl met his ears. Suddenly a second Wolf was springing along his spine, leaping towards the first. Fantastic. The whole sodding infantry was out in force, and apparently they thought it would be fun to go for a ride.
With his massive wings, he tried to brush the creatures off his scales. But it took only a moment to realize that the second Wolf wasn’t there to attack him; instead, he was tearing at the one called Rutger, sinking teeth into his flesh.
Silver, thought Kirith. Damn it, you’re going to get yourself killed.
Turning enough to distinguish between the two, Kirith swept his tail over his back, knocking Rutger to the floor. Silver’s déor leapt on top of him, driving his teeth into his neck. Rutger whimpered in pain as his Pack mate forced him to submit, but Silver didn’t let go. Kirith knew that he would hold him there until the Dragon was safe from harm.
Ripper, who had recovered sufficiently to move again, seemed to forget about the Dragon. He sprinted directly towards Silver, a look of pure fury in his light eyes. The young Wolf had betrayed him, and that was enough to deserve an immediate death sentence.
Kirith spun around to face him, snapping his massive jaws at the Alpha, and grabbed him by the torso. For a moment he considered clamping down. He could have torn the fucker in two with his teeth; could have ended this here and now. But instead, he whipped his head around, throwing him across the length of the Underground Club.
With a horrid shrieking sound, Ripper hit the ground, sliding on his side for twenty yards or so before he came up at the feet of another man.
“Enough!” the man called out, looking down at the Wolf who lay on the ground, panting hard, blood streaming from the puncture wounds at his sides.
Figures emerged from the shadows around the man, advancing slowly, their eyes fixed on the Dragon shifter rather than on the Wolf Alpha. They had no fear of such a creature. No reason to pay him any attention whatsoever.
They were the Kindred of the Dragon Guild.
Lumen, Minach, Aegis, and a few shifters that Kirith had not yet met advanced at once, one of whom looked just like Minach. A few powerful-looking women stood among their ranks, though from their scent, Kirith could tell that some of them were human.
Ripper rose shakily to his feet, the hair on his shoulder standing on end as he swung his head drunkenly between Kirith and the others, as if he was trying to work out how things had gone so very wrong.
Kirith changed back into his human form, watching as a few of the Guild’s men pulled Ripper and his sidekick off towards the vaults. With his heart beating faster than he would have confessed, his eyes hunted the shadows for Luna’s form.
But she never emerged.
It’s for the best, he thought. This way I don’t have to say good-bye.
He stood waiting while Lumen approached, a look of concern on his face.
“Amara got a message from the Wolf Silver,” he said. “But we’d like you to tell us what this is all about.”
Kirith nodded in the direction of the Alpha, who was disappearing around the corner as Aegis and Minach dragged his disoriented Wolf down the narrow hallway.
“That man is guilty of a number of crimes, including ordering the slaying of those closest to me,” Kirith declared. “He’s unfit for this city, for this place. Unfit to lead a Pack.”
Silver padded towards them on his Wolf’s paws before shifting. “Whatever he says, I’ll corroborate,” he announced. “I know about all of it.”
“Very well,” Lumen said, eyeing Kirith. “I’m not entirely happy with the fact that it appears you came to London on a mission of revenge.”
“I understand,” Kirith replied, his chin held high as he awaited his punishment.
Lumen let out a sigh as a brown-haired woman pulled up to his right and took him by the arm. She was human, and Kirith recognized her scent from the underwater flat.
“I’m Neko,” she said, “and regardless of what my mate says, I’m grateful for what you’ve done. I’ve spent my whole adult life ridding London of monsters. I’m glad to know that someone will do it in our absence.”
Kirith nodded solemnly.
“We’ll give the Alpha a trial, of course,” said Lumen. “But for now, he’ll be imprisoned under the Heath, as will any of his accomplices.” He turned to Silver. “You and your sister will be free, of course. What you’ve done for us is valuable beyond measure.”
“Thank you,” said Silver. “Though I don’t quite know where we’ll go.”
“Things will work out,” said Amara, stepping out from the shadows. “For you and your sister.” Her eyes went to Kirith. “For all of you.”
“For what it’s worth, Silver, you and Luna are very welcome here in London. I should very much like for you both to join our Guild. You may be Wolf shifters, but you’ve proven worthy.”
“Thank you,” said Silver, “but I think I’d like to find a new Pack. My parents
always wanted me to be an Alpha, and I suspect that’s my destiny. As for Luna…” he glanced at Kirith, “her destiny is hers to choose.”
“As for you,” said Lumen, turning back to Kirith, “what are your plans?”
Kirith looked Lumen in the eye. “Sod my plans. I want the Wolf Alpha dealt with properly,” he said. “You know what he’s done. He doesn’t deserve simple imprisonment.”
“I know, and I’m sorry,” said Lumen. “But we don’t employ mob justice here. If we execute a Wolf shifter in front of his Pack members, we turn London into a centre of shifter anarchy.”
Kirith backed off. “Of course, you’re right,” he said. He looked at the others. “Just do me a favour and promise me he will be punished as severely as shifter law allows, if you convict him.”
“Of course.”
“My work here is done, then.” With that, he turned and walked away. “If you need me to testify, you can find me by the Scottish border.”
“Wait!” called Silver, catching him up quickly as the others conversed among themselves. “You’re not leaving, surely.”
“Give my regards to your sister,” Kirith grunted. “Tell her thank you from me.”
“No. You know perfectly well that you should tell her yourself.”
“No time for that. I’m leaving town for good,” the big man said, marching towards the nearest door.
“You can’t be serious,” Silver said. “You can’t leave without at least saying good-bye to her. What she did for you—”
Kirith stopped and turned to face the young man, clenching his jaw to fight back the torrent of emotions that wanted to break through an invisible dam inside him. “What she did was the kindest thing anyone has ever done for me. I won’t soon forget it,” he replied. “But please explain to her that I can’t see her again.”
She might not understand it, but he was doing this for her. For Luna.
Saving her from inevitable pain.
Dragon's Bane (Dragon Guild Chronicles Book 5) Page 14