by C. I. Black
“Killing I can manage.” Jet flashed her teeth and strode from the nook.
Servius glanced at Ivy. “Once I have the coin and the medallion from the arena, all dragon souls can be saved, but right now, if Grey told his friends about me, those souls will have to be sacrificed.”
A shiver slid down Ivy’s spine. Even if she could figure out a way to escape and warn Diablo and Nero about Servius, it might be too late.
CHAPTER 35
Grey jerked awake. Agony snapped through his head then eased — although not nearly enough — to a throbbing pain. He forced his thoughts to think past it, to Ivy—
Ivy was in trouble. He needed to find her. Get up from wherever he was—
He blinked his vision clear and struggled to get his mind to work. It felt like he was thinking through water, with everything sluggish and strained.
Well, first order of business: find out where the hell he was.
He shifted his head, sending another burst through his skull and wave of darkness across his vision. When his sight cleared, he could see the few feet across a dimly lit room to an open doorway, with weak illumination spilling in from a hall. It looked like the hall in the hotel room in Vancouver.
He pulled his head to the other side. The painting that used to hang on the wall was gone, leaving a large square of paint a fraction darker than the rest of the wall, and the alarm clock on the nightstand was the one he’d seen the last time he’d woken in the Vancouver hotel. Now the time read 12:45. Given the lack of light spilling around the closed blinds, he had to assume it was night.
Definitely the hotel bedroom. Which meant he lay on the hotel’s bed, covered with its heavy comforter, and, given the slide of the fabric against his skin, he had to be—
He shoved the comforter back.
Naked. Someone had stripped him down to his briefs, and white gauze had been taped over the injuries he’d sustained during his fight with Jet and Bolo: the hole through his chest where Jet had impaled him, the gash in his shoulder, the slice across his ribs, and the nick in his thigh.
Except if he thought about the injuries, none of them hurt. Only his head.
He peeled back the gauze on his chest and revealed a puckered pink scar. For most drakes that was less than half an hour worth of healing, but for him, it had to have been hours since the fight at the back of the museum.
Ivy had been alone with Jet and Bolo for hours.
He wrenched out of the bed. The room twisted, and his knees gave out, dropping him to the floor. Darkness swarmed over his vision and pain sliced through his skull.
Mother, why did his head hurt?
He pressed his palms to his forehead, but they didn’t hit flesh. They hit… bandage?
What the hell happened?
He ground his teeth and fought to clear his vision. Anaea rushed into the doorway with Diablo close behind.
“Oh, my God,” she said.
He tried to stand, but the room kept tilting and he couldn’t catch his balance.
Anaea grabbed his arm and steadied him. “Tell me you recognize me.”
“What?” That didn’t make sense.
“You should still be in bed,” Diablo growled. “I’m hitting him with another dose.”
“Another what?” Why couldn’t he get his mind to work?
Anaea tugged him up to sit on the edge of the bed. “Who am I?” she asked, her words slow and over-enunciated.
“If we knock him out again, the chances of any brain damage will be less.” Diablo gated out of the doorway with a whoosh of wind.
“Brain damage? What the hell is going on?” Nothing was making any sense, and all he really knew was that Ivy wasn’t in the room and he had to find her.
Grey tried to pull his arm out of Anaea’s grip, but she held tight with a strength he hadn’t realized she had — or he was just that weak.
Except he couldn’t afford to be weak. He shifted to try again, and her clothes brushed against his skin, reminding him he was nearly naked beside his best friend’s inamorata.
“Do you know your name?” she asked.
A shiver swept through him. He had an inamorata, too, and he had to find her. “Where are my clothes?”
Diablo gated back into the room. “Drink this.”
“I’m not drinking anything until you tell me what the hell is going on and where’s Ivy?”
Diablo’s gaze jumped to Anaea and her grip on Grey’s arm tightened.
That wasn’t a good sign. “What?”
“Grey—” Her voice trembled.
Oh, Mother. No. Grey jerked out of her grip and stood, fury fueling his strength and roaring hot through him. He’d failed her. He went down during a fight and now— “Where is she? Is she—?” He couldn’t say the word, couldn’t bring himself to ask if she was dead.
“We don’t know.” Anaea stood and reached to take his arm again, but he wrenched out of the way. “Just take the drink and we’ll talk about it.”
“No. Tell me where Ivy is or I swear to God I’ll— I’ll—”
“You’ll what?” Diablo growled.
The rage faltered, the edges sliced off with a spike of pain. He didn’t know what had happened or where Ivy was or anything. God, he couldn’t just go after her. He didn’t know where to go.
“I have to find her. I couldn’t protect her.” His throat tightened and the pain in his head flared again. The muscles in his legs trembled and he pressed a hand to the wall to steady himself. “Bolo was attacking her and Jet—” A shudder swept through him. Jet had rammed her sword through his chest—
Everything within him froze, and he glanced around the room, looking for his shirt and pants. “Where are my clothes?” He couldn’t help her naked. He needed clothes and weapons and information.
“You’re not getting your clothes back until we’ve determined there’s no brain damage,” Diablo said.
Grey glared at him. “Why would I have brain damage? Can a drake even get brain damage?”
“Someone shot you in the head. And no drake has kept his head long enough for anyone to know if you can get brain damage or not,” Anaea said.
His pulse leapt faster. Ivy’s scream. Her too-wide eyes. The bang. The pain. That was how Jet had taken him out. “Jet shot me in the head?”
“Someone did,” Anaea said.
“Did they get the coin piece? Was the coin piece in my pants pocket?” Maybe Ivy had it. But if he went down with both Jet and Bolo still alive…
He strained to keep breathing. Just breathe. Just breathe. She’s not dead. She can’t be dead. “Please. Tell me about Ivy.”
Diablo’s expression darkened. “Alive last time I saw.”
The rage and panic churned into dread. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Diablo raised the glass in his hand. “Are you going to drink this?”
“Something to knock me out again?”
Diablo glared at Anaea.
“I heard you the first time. No, I’m not letting you knock me out again. If you don’t know where Ivy is, then I need to find her.”
“Well, you can’t go off half-cocked,” Anaea said. “Nero’s been trying to get information on what happened so we can figure out how bad this is. I say we call him and figure this out.”
Except there wasn’t anything to figure out. He had to find Ivy. If Jet or Bolo had her—
A new thought jumped into his head. “How am I still alive?”
“If you don’t know how soul magic works, I’m pretty sure that means there’s brain damage,” Diablo said.
“I know how my soul magic works.” Grey rolled his eyes at him, spiking more pain through his head.
“You never know.” Diablo shrugged. “No drake knows if getting shot in the head is damage that a soul’s magic can heal.”
“I’m perfectly fine.” And even if he wasn’t, Ivy was the priority. “No. Both Jet and Bolo were still alive when I went down, and I doubt Bolo would have just run off without taking my head back to
Regis.”
“Bolo was dead when Ivy called.” Diablo’s frown deepened. “From the amount of blood on her, I’d say she decapitated him.”
“Jeez.” Anaea sagged onto the edge of the bed. “I know it’s a dragon thing, but that couldn’t have been easy if this was her first time.”
Anaea’s first decapitation had been in the arena, when everyone had still thought she was Hunter. In a way, she had been Hunter. They’d shared a body at that time, and she would have had him to help her through that. Right now, Ivy had no one, and even if she had killed another drake before, she might not remember. Sure, she was still a dragon, but she hadn’t had the feral dragon infancy from before the scourge or even the memories of a few decades to understand the truth about her dragon nature.
The memory of the locket, flying through the air and falling into the sewer, flashed across his mind’s eye. If he didn’t get her locket back, she wouldn’t remember anything.
God, would she remember him?
Funny, how just a few hours ago in the bathroom adjacent to this bedroom, he’d believed forgetting him had been her best option. Now it made his chest ache. He wanted her to remember everything, wanted her to wake every morning knowing how deeply he loved her.
And none of that could happen if he didn’t find her. He tried to glare at Diablo, but that only made his head hurt more.
“You need to stop that,” Diablo said. “Anaea’s empathy can’t take all that pain.”
“It’s not as bad as before,” she said.
“No, you’re right.” Grey drew in a steadying breath, but it did little to ease anything, pain or fear. Ivy. Find Ivy. The words roared around and around in his head and in his soul. Or revenge her death. “You said Ivy was alive.”
“Servius took her. He gated her out while in the gatelock’s radius. Don’t ask me how the hell he managed that.” Diablo pulled his phone from his pocket. “I’m calling Nero. You can tell us what happened and we can figure out what we’re going to do.”
That would just take up too much time. Time he didn’t want to waste while Ivy could still be alive and in danger. Please, she had to still be alive.
His pulse pounded, radiating more pain through his skull, as he glanced at the clock. 12:55. He’d already lost ten minutes. He couldn’t afford to lose any more time with this argument. There were only two reason for Servius to have been at the museum: he was checking up on Bolo or he was Jet’s employer. Given that Servius had never been a member of Regis’s entourage, Grey was willing to bet he was involved with getting the rebirth coin. “Tell me it’s only been six hours since the museum.”
Anaea nodded. “Yes, but—”
“Good.” That meant Servius would be in one of two places, and once Grey got his hands on Servius, he’d find Ivy… or kill the drake who’d murdered her. He hissed his power word and summoned a gate against the bedroom wall.
“What the hell are you doing?” Diablo growled.
“Finishing what I started.” The vortex formed faster than he expected, fueled by the panic and rage racing through him. He leapt into the gate, but Diablo grabbed his arm at the last minute and they lurched through together.
CHAPTER 36
Grey’s gate tossed him into Hunter and Anaea’s dark living room, with Diablo close at his heels. The black drake’s foot had barely hit the floor before he opened another gate with his rapid free gating ability, vanished, and materialized a split-second later in front of Grey.
“Get out of my way.” Grey moved to shove Diablo aside.
The black drake sidestepped the shove, stepping close, and pressed a palm against Grey’s chest, stopping him. “You can’t go after him naked.”
“That’s why I’m raiding Hunter’s closet.” Grey seized the front of Diablo’s shirt and tossed him onto the floor. “I’m not an idiot.” He wrenched away and strode through the open-concept kitchen and living room. The cold air — since Anaea wasn’t staying at her northern residence and had the furnace turned down — drew goose bumps and made him shiver, while his head still pounded, but none of that mattered. Only Ivy. Always Ivy.
“You can’t face this… whatever this is without help.” Diablo flashed to his side, seized his arm, and shoved him against the hall wall. “Jet’s almost taken you out twice now—”
“That’s because I wasn’t trying to kill her and wasn’t properly armed.” Grey snapped an uppercut into Diablo’s jaw, stunned the drake, and pushed him out of the way.
Diablo hissed and bared his teeth. “She has camouflage magic.”
“If she’s been somewhere where I’ve been before, that’s not a problem.” Grey marched into the spare bedroom. Hunter’s new body was narrower in the shoulders and waist than Grey, but his old body had been a pretty decent match in size. Grey had been sneaking boxes of Hunter’s hoard from his old suite at Court — before that had become too dangerous — and there’d been at least one box of ancient carvings wrapped in some of Hunter’s old clothes that Grey had snuck out.
“How do you even know where she is?” Diablo tapped his temple. “You’re not thinking this through. This has to be brain damage. It can’t just be an inamorated thing.”
Grey opened a box. Not the carvings. “If Servius was there because of Bolo, I’d be dead. Which means Servius is the one after the coin. The coin pieces can only be joined with a spell in the Handmaiden’s secret residence. Since no one is supposed to know he’s at the residence or where it is, I’m assuming he’s at the residence right now, waiting for the spell to finish and hoping I won’t show up again. Knowing what I know about the Handmaiden and the spell, it can’t be stopped and started again once it’s been activated.”
The next box had the carvings. He pulled out the top piece, protected in a black T-shirt, and carefully unwrapped it. Hunter would understand Grey borrowing his things, but he’d be heartbroken if he lost another piece of his hoard. It had been hard enough for the red drake to abandon it all when he’d fled Court.
“Okay, so you know where Servius is going to be.” Diablo leaned against the doorframe and crossed his arms. “That still doesn’t deal with Jet or the fact that she’s probably waiting for you.”
“Her magic isn’t perfect. There are telltale signs.” He pulled the T-shirt on. It strained against his broad chest and muscular biceps but thankfully didn’t impede his range of motion. “If I have a moment to concentrate, I can use my magic to determine what’s different and pick her out.”
“Nero is not going to like this.”
“I don’t care what Nero likes. I have to find Ivy. And yes, it’s all an inamorated thing.”
“Sounds more like an insanity than love,” Diablo hissed.
“Yeah, well, fuck you. And fuck Nero if he doesn’t understand.” Grey shifted the next two carvings aside and pulled out the one wrapped in a pair of Hunter’s jeans. “I know you can’t help because of Nero—”
“Oh, I didn’t say I wasn’t going to help.”
Grey’s thoughts stuttered. “You can’t endanger your puzur.” If Grey had figured anything out about Diablo in the last couple of weeks, the tough-guy routine wasn’t a routine and the kids in the puzur were everything to him. Grey didn’t doubt Diablo had hidden more than one body that no one would ever find in order to protect his family.
“And I can’t fucking let you do this by yourself. You’re going to get yourself killed and then I’ll never hear the end of it from Anaea.” Diablo flashed his teeth, the expression cocky, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “And she’s powerful. I really do not want to piss her off.”
“I can’t let you do this.”
“I’m not sure you have a choice.” Diablo grabbed Grey’s forearm, stopping him before he pulled the jeans on. “But know if the fight goes to Court, I’m not sure I’ll be able to help without endangering everything. Right now if Servius and Jet tell Regis they saw us fighting together, Nero can probably convince the prince those two are crazy, but if we’re seen together in Court—”
“Then let’s finish this before it goes there.” Grey pulled on the jeans and turned to the closet where Hunter hid his arsenal.
“We still need to be smart about this. Let’s bring Nero in, get a plan.” Diablo snorted. “Maybe get an arsenal.”
“I’m not waiting on Nero. I’m not waiting on anything any more.” As smart as waiting was, there just wasn’t time. If Servius was watching the Handmaiden’s magic join the coin pieces, he wouldn’t be at her residence for long. “It’s been almost six hours. The spell to join the coin pieces is nearing completion, then Servius is most likely going to Court to get the medallion from the arena. If you’re going to help, it’s now or never.” Going to Court would be a disaster. He’d do it, but his chances of getting out again were slim once Regis and the Court guards were added to the mess with Servius and Jet. Better to stop it all before it got there. Better to get to Ivy as soon as possible. Now.
“There’s always time for a good plan.”
“I know,” Grey growled. Logic said plan. Everything else howled get to her now… or avenge her.
Now. Now.
He felt the memory of her in the shower, the water sluicing over her naked skin, her body wrapped tight and hot around him, her head tipped back as pleasure roared through her, her aura crackling against his.
Diablo jerked back, surprise flashing across his expression for a second, then it darkened back to a wary danger. “In the shower? I thought that was a water drake thing.”
Everything within Grey froze. “You saw that?”
“Oh, yeah,” Diablo said. “If you were trying to shock me, you should have tried something else.”
“You saw that?”
“Yeah, and I really didn’t need to.” Diablo frowned. “You didn’t do that on purpose?”
“I didn’t know I could.” Before today, he hadn’t shared a memory with anyone, and he’d thought he’d only been able to share with Ivy because of her earth magic and her soul’s condition.
“Another reason to hate being inamorated,” Diablo said. “It fucks up your earth magic.”
Both Capri and Ryan had mentioned something about their magic changing when they’d met, how their powers had become — and still were — difficult to control.