by Sam Crescent
Tall and lithely graceful, the singer was clearly elven and very beautiful. Overwhelmingly so. His mouth especially. Full-lipped and with a sensuous curve that almost made it seem like only he was in on a secret joke. He didn’t even try to blend in, though she doubted he could if he tried. His skin was pale on fine bones and his mop of hair the purple-red of wine.
Smiling at her, he winked.
The tune changed now. Became commanding. The humans all started to file from the cave. The Discman hesitated but fell into line, almost robotically obeying the song. Had the singer added more power to it?
She wiggled her finger to check she was still okay.
His hand gripped her arm before she could feign being one of the herd. “You can stop pretending. I know you’re unaffected.”
His voice was as seductive as his song.
Caught, Cammi met his gaze. “Who are you?”
“No one to be trifled with.” He watched the last of the stragglers disappear before dropping his dark gaze to meet hers. “We’re going to help each other tonight.”
“Are we?” She glared up at him. “I doubt very much that I’ll need your help.”
Cammi’s palms started to sweat as the demand to complete her task began to take over. She needed him gone. Now.
“I’ve followed you, little dove. I know you’ve got everything you think you require to break into the dragon’s vault. But you’re missing something. Something I have.”
She turned to face him. Her research had been nothing short of methodical. There was nothing she needed that she didn’t already possess.
“Nice try.”
“Maybe this will convince you that I want to help.” He held up an ornate silver blade etched with an intricate design.
Cammi shied away from it but he held her tight.
He murmured something before flicking the blade at her neck.
The noose dropped away.
Eyes wide, she ran her hand over skin that hadn’t been free from the irritation in far too long. “My … benefactor will not be pleased you’ve done that.”
He sneered. “Does it look like I care? Now I’ve helped you out. You can do the same for me.”
“And what’s that?” She didn’t have long before Lavinia would realize she was free.
“Promise me fifty percent of what we find and I’ll tell you what order to put the stones in.”
“I already know what order to do it in.” Cammi clenched her hands as she tried to stay calm. The hoard was inches away and it could all be hers now that Lavinia couldn’t exert her control. The things she could do with what she found in there… There might even be something to give her an advantage in the Cull. But first she needed to rid herself of this male. Could she incapacitate him? It was possible, but it was also apparent he had formidable powers of his own to be able to negate Lavinia’s just like that.
“Time’s ticking, dove. By my count, we only have a few seconds in the window left.”
“Your name, first.”
He sighed and said, “Salix,” then held out his hand. “Do we have a deal?”
Cammi stifled a laugh. As bad as her name was, at least she wasn’t named after a tree. She went to grasp his hand but stopped just a hair’s breath away. “If you tell me something I already know or try to cheat or mislead me in any way, I’ll leave you to the traps inside.”
“Very well.”
They pressed their palms together and a flash of light and heat sealed the deal.
“Now tell me the order.” Cammi practically vibrated with excitement as he pointed to the far wall.
“Lyngurium.”
She waited.
Salix sighed again. He pointed to the walls as he told her which stones needed to be placed in it. “Batrachite. Dragonite. Mermaid’s tears.”
It was in the reverse order of what she’d learned. Could she be wrong? What would he have to gain from lying? Unless he was trying to keep her away from the treasure?
Dark energy began to crackle around them.
“Lavinia is going to have a few words for you when she gets here. I suggest we get in there and get our prize before she arrives.”
He had a point. She just had to wait for the sun to lower to the precise point and make her decision…
Cammi drew the first stone out of the air the same instant the sun hit the gem she’d placed at the entrance. The refracted light pinpointed the exact locations for the keystones’ placement.
When she placed the yellow stone in the wall and went the other way from what Salix had told her, she could feel his alarm even before he started yelling.
Cammi darted around the space, slipping the deep-blue chip of mermaid’s tear that had nearly cost her an arm to retrieve into the slot and waited.
Nothing happened.
Livid, Salix’s face had darkened, revealing bloody veins just under the surface and the rest of his monstrous true form. “You fool! I told you what order they were to go in!”
She knew better. Didn’t she? After a decade of obsession, Cammi had to believe she did.
A crack of power rocked her back on her heels just as a rush of wind swept through the cave. It wrapped itself around her, whipping Salix back against the stone. A blaze of deep red appeared at the entrance but was quickly extinguished by the maelstrom that had formed around her.
Lavinia hurled something that looked like a thunderbolt at her, but when it should have lanced through Cammi, the wind repelled it, sending it back toward the sorceress.
As the air was sucked from her lungs and her skin was shredded by the whirling sand and rock, Cammi couldn’t help but think Salix had been smart to keep his distance. That maybe he had been right all along…
She was aware of screaming. Was that her voice pleading for it to stop? To make it go away?
With a crack of thunder and a flash of lightning, everything then went mercifully black.
Chapter Two
Aldric hated this day. Every year non-human idiots would arrive at the cave to join the human ones only with the idea that they could get into the dragon’s vault.
And every year they failed.
Except this one.
The clever little halfling managed it.
He watched her now in the mirror he held in his palm.
Secure in a bedroom, she slept. And had been that way for almost twelve hours. He might have gone a little overboard with the storm in the cave but he’d been caught by surprise.
Aldric put the scrying mirror back in his pocket and stretched. Watching her was both boring and fascinating. A strange mix. One that was quickly losing its novelty.
With morning about to dawn, he was done waiting for her to finally wake.
He strode through his apartment, taking a moment to look out at London spread like a canvas outside the floor-to-ceiling windows. Procuring a penthouse apartment in the Shard hadn’t been easy but, as he’d learned over the years, the right amount of money thrown at anything had a way of opening doors. He continued to the second level and the only other bedroom other than his own, waved his hand to dispel the locking ward, and then entered.
She was tiny and curled up near the edge of the bed as if she’d never had anything bigger than a sliver to sleep on.
That thought didn’t settle well with him as he studied her face. Even in sleep she looked serious. He found himself wondering vaguely if that scowl was ever-present. Even still, she was delicately beautiful. Pale as moonlight and fine-boned, there were old scars on the skin that was left exposed by the sheet. They decorated her flesh as did the many protective tattoos. Had she lived such a hard life?
Aldric bit back the anger that came with the thought someone might have inflicted the wounds that had left their marks on her willingly.
He’d find out soon enough.
He leaned in to let loose a quick bolt of energy a breath away from her cheek.
She lurched back, immediately on the alert. As he suspected, her silvery eyes were just as captivating
as the rest of her.
The eyes of a thief, he reminded himself.
“Who are you? Where am I?” She looked down at herself and clutched desperately at the low draping sheet but not soon enough to hide her pert breasts from his gaze. Color blazed her cheeks and lent their fire to her eyes. “Where are my clothes?”
“I’ll be asking the questions, if you don’t mind.”
There was a quick flare of feminine interest when they returned to him, but it was quickly, and expertly, extinguished. “I do mind!” She gripped the fabric keeping her body from his view tightly to her as she darted from the bed to the wall of windows on the far side of the room. She focused on the scene outside, pointing, keeping the attention off herself. “I’m in London? How did I get here? You had no right to kidnap me—”
Aldric pinched the bridge of his nose. Females. Hysterical, the whole lot of them. “Can we just stop with the theatrics? I know where you were and what you were trying to do.”
Her silvery gaze narrowed with suspicion. “And you took the treasure when I opened the vault and kept me too? As what? A prize, I suppose. Or did you think I would open up another for you?”
“I don’t need you to open my vault, you pompous little halfling. And a prize?” He raked his gaze up and down her small form, making sure it was nothing but scathing. “You have got to be kidding me.”
She stilled. With her back ramrod-straight and her face frozen as she stared at him. After a second, the shock turned to wide-eyed awe. “You’re a treasure dragon?”
That angered him even more. “No. Sorry to disappoint.”
Indignant, she stomped toward him. “But you said the vault was yours.”
“It is mine. The gold dragon it once belonged to gave it to me in favor of more high-tech options. Maximus thought it was outdated a millennia ago.”
“But…” The little halfling looked confused. Lost, almost.
“But what? Sad that the fortune you thought awaited you wasn’t there and hadn’t been since before you were born?” He loomed over her, enjoying the way she stumbled back before she dug her heels in once more.
“I wasn’t breaking in for me.”
Aldric arched an eyebrow as he studied her every facial movement. “Weren’t you?”
Emboldened, she straightened her shoulders. “I was being forced to.”
He kept his expression neutral. “Really.”
“I was! Lavinia, a sorceress of the East Isles, forced me to do it.”
“Are you sure you’re not lying to save your own skin?”
She nodded, more than likely aware the lies she’d already spoken could be used against her and didn’t want to add more to her crime.
“That’s interesting because I saw your friend remove the noose.” Or had he been her lover? Aldric found he didn’t like the idea.
“He wasn’t a friend.”
“Looked quite friendly to me. He was helping you, wasn’t he? Why would a non-friend give aid?”
His captive glared at him, murder burning clear in her eyes.
Aldric continued, the air in the room crackling with electricity. “Then the sorceress arrived looking rather annoyed just before I rescued you from their combined ire.”
Sullenly, she continued to glare at him without comment.
“Am I wrong in assuming you betrayed them both?”
“It’s hardly betrayal when you fight back against the ones who coerced you,” she fired back.
Aldric was impressed. At least a little. She had a spine. It was a little malleable, sure, but it was there. “As I see it, you tried to break into my vault and it was only through my great magnanimity that you are here alive and able to lie to me about your reasons for doing so.”
“She forced me to do it, he was trying to make a deal to get half of whatever is in there, and I thought all dragons were gone—”
“So, there would be no harm in a little larceny?”
“It would have been a victimless crime! Who would it hurt if I got a little something for myself for once? All my life I’ve been nothing but a retriever.” She snorted. “I would have been lucky to be treated as well as a dog!”
She glared at him. “Just once I wanted something for myself. Perhaps an advantage in the Cull. I saw the chance, and I would have been an idiot not to take it.”
“You are aware that dragon’s hoards are notoriously dangerous to break into.”
Her chin tipped up. “I had that in hand.”
“Did you?” He let his gaze flick around the room pointedly.
She jabbed her finger in his chest but quickly retracted her hand at the zap of sensation that jolted through them both. Clearing her throat, she glared at him. “I got in, didn’t I?”
“You got through my first ward.” Aldric let amusement curl his lips upward. This verbal sparring was almost … fun?
“I got in,” she reiterated. “Which means the prize is mine.”
“Sorry to disappoint, but there’s nothing in there worth taking, and certainly nothing that will assist you in a Cull, unless you want trinkets I’d collected over the years. My good armor, perhaps, worn during the Battle of Agincourt … good times…”
She gaped at him. “There’s nothing in there?”
“Not nothing. I just said. My armor and other antiquities that would no doubt interest a museum or perhaps a private collector. But not gold and gems as I assume you’d imagined.”
“You’re telling me I just spent a chunk of my life, been threatened on pain of death to get into a vault, and there was nothing in it?” Laughter bubbled out of her. “Nothing…” She dissolved into a fit of giggles that weakened her to the point of nearly toppling into him.
“Attempted robbery is no laughing matter, halfling.”
Wiping away her tears, she sniffled. “Don’t call me that. My name is Cammi.”
Warrior. A suitable name for the fiery slip of a woman. He carefully stepped back, putting space between them but not before his gaze was drawn to the gooseflesh on her arms and the beaded tips of her breasts. Unfortunately, the delicate scent of her lingered, tantalizing his sense of smell. “I don’t care what your name is.”
She shrugged. “I got nothing, so no harm, no foul. Now, if you’ll give me back my things, I’ll be on my way.”
The thought of her leaving and him returning to his dull routine didn’t appeal. “You owe me a debt.”
“I owe you nothing. You took me from the cave without my permission or knowledge. I asked you for nothing.”
He stepped closer. “Didn’t you?”
Cammi pulled herself up to her full height and managed a look of haughty indignation even undressed as she was. “I did not.”
“You don’t recall pleading? Begging anyone, anything, to make it stop?”
Her expressive eyes widened. “You heard that?”
“Of course, I did.”
Fierce color brightened her cheeks. “But it was your trap! It’s like if Dr. Strange created a giant vortex that was going to swallow the earth but then turned around and said, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll save you!’ and then turned it off and expected everyone to call him a hero.”
“You can tell this Dr. Strange that it’s been tried and has never worked.” Perplexed, he shook his head. “And it’s hardly the same thing. I’m not asking you to call me a hero. I’m calling you what you are. A thief. You tried to break into my vault, and despite my good judgment, I rescued you from not only my traps but the people you betrayed. You. Owe. Me. If not for one, then for the other.”
Her jaw dropped before she snapped it shut and she glared at him. “What are you?”
“What does it matter?” Clearly, if he wasn’t a treasure-hoarding dragon he wasn’t anything.
“Because it does.”
“What I am is irrelevant. It doesn’t change anything you’ve done.” Aldric swung around and strode back out, slamming the door behind him.
****
Cammi stared at the door, her lungs fighting f
or breath as if she’d been trapped under the surface of the ocean and had finally broken through.
What the hell just happened? One second, she’d been breaking into a vault filled with untold riches that would change her life forever without having to give any of it up to Lavinia or that other elf, then the next, she was in an opulent apartment overlooking London arguing with the most infuriating male she’d ever encountered.
Not to mention one of the most attractive.
Big, broad, darkly handsome, well-dressed, obviously intelligent. He looked like he could have just come home from a board meeting and had discarded his jacket and tie, unbuttoned the top couple buttons at his neck and rolled up his sleeves. The sight of his sculpted forearms and tanned skin at his throat made the blood throb in her veins. Even the scar on his cheek held an enigmatic appeal. And his eyes. Startlingly blue, it was as though they held the electric charge of what she felt whenever he looked at or touched her.
She snapped herself out of it. Not that it mattered. What was she thinking? He was still holding her captive and that was unacceptable.
What was he? A warlock? A demon? His finicky demeanor and uppity attitude would fit either. He could easily be a goblin with his covetous nature, but he was as far away as you could get from being short, green, and big-eared.
But just as much of an ass.
Cammi bit her lip, trying to get herself to concentrate. It didn’t matter what he looked like, she needed to know what he was if she was to get away from him.
A slow turn around the room told her nothing. It was clearly a guestroom, if only a step above a prison cell. It was luxurious, to say the least, but stark-white linens and plain concrete walls didn’t exactly make the ambiance welcoming.
She took a moment to look at the window. It made up one entire wall and let her see London from a point of view she’d never seen before.
What must it be like to be, quite literally, above everything?
Closing her eyes, she sighed. Not that she’d ever know. She had to get away and back to her life.