Marked at Midnight--Mark of the Dragon, Book 1

by Claire Conrad

  I mean, come on. You can’t have fish and chips without malt vinegar.

  Everything was quiet as we sat and ate and chatted.

  “We can’t have dinner without at least one toast. Right? I toast to the extremely sexy man-meat you have chasing after you. I’ll take the leftovers,” Lucy said with a smile as she sipped her wine and giggled.

  I laughed nervously, coughing a couple of times to clear my throat before nodding and lifting my glass, a large smile still on my face. “I’ll drink to sexy men.” We both tipped the glasses back and drank before setting them back on the table. “But there won’t be any leftovers,” I said as I giggled and took another sip. I could feel a slight warmth as I finished off my glass of wine and welcomed the feeling.

  Lucy nodded and finished her glass as well. “Damn. I was holding out hope, but I don’t blame you.”

  We both stood and had the place cleaned up and closed down in no time. I hurried. I would admit it. Although I did ignore Lucy’s knowing grins the rest of the night. Were two men two much?

  I’m sure plenty of conservative ladies would roll over in their graves, but the thought of turning away either Zach or Iavo didn’t feel right. They were connected somehow. Not one man to love, but two halves of the same whole. I didn’t understand the feeling, but in my heart, I knew it was right.

  “See you tomorrow night. Have fun,” Lucy said as I walked her to her car. I nodded and walked farther out into the lot as she started her car and drove away. The pier was always quiet at this time of night. Except the occasional weekend when there were drunks out, I found it to be quite peaceful. Taking advantage of the tranquility, I took a walk along the pier and even stopped to look out at the beautiful dark water. I imagined what it must be like to just get on a boat and go. Not look back, not worry about everyday things, not worry about work the next day. Just go. Maybe one day I’d have that.

  But that day was not today.

  I was tired and I had just worked a very long shift. My feet were hurting, but that was kind of my fault because I’d forgotten my good shoes when I left for work. Tomorrow would be a better day. I knew it. And tomorrow, I’d get to see my brother. I was determined. I’d stalk him if I had to.

  Thinking about the next day also brought with it the hope that I would get to see the twins again. I liked being around them, even though they were just a little strange. It occurred to me that they couldn’t have been as close as they were without knowing they were kind of strange already. I wondered if it was completely normal—normal to them anyway—to share a woman the way they did.

  I’d never come across men like them before, but maybe that was the point. Strange as it was, I couldn’t stop thinking about them, and it was more than the crazy effect they had on my hormones. A lot more.

  I missed them.

  I wanted to be near them. They made me feel safe and beautiful and part of a real family. I felt like I belonged with them, and that was something I hadn’t felt since I’d been a kid struggling to take care of my little brother.

  Regardless, I couldn’t allow my libido to distract me. There were a lot of things in my life that I needed to sort before I tried to sort this one. The fact that I’d accidentally fallen for two men wasn’t lost on me. I just refused to read into it any more than I already had. I had a plan. I had to reconnect with my brother. Dating was pretty far down my priority list.

  Still… That didn’t mean I would turn down an opportunity to be with them again.

  The quiet lapping sound of water hitting the rocks normally made me feel dreamy and content. I could listen to the sound for hours. But tonight, the darkness seemed to press in on me, making it hard to breathe. It felt like the darkness had eyes. So I hastened my journey down the stairs to the large parking lot. Even then, the familiar safety of being on solid ground, of the pavement beneath my feet, did nothing to help. Instead, the moment I stepped foot on the blacktop, I a strange feeling came over me.

  No one’s here; it’s all in your head. No one’s here, it’s just quiet. No one’s following you; it’s all in your head.

  Over and over, I repeated the reassurance as I rushed through the large, open lot. I walked in and out of the shadows cast by the parking lot’s light poles as I made my way across the lot that had been full of cars all day long. There were a few scattered cars left, but not many. There weren’t many places for someone to hide at night. But I felt open. Exposed.

  Like I had a target on my back and a sniper was waiting to pull the trigger. Which was paranoid. And stupid. I was a big fat nobody. No one had ever cared where I was or what I was doing. As far as I knew—other than my run-in with the super-sexy twins –nothing had changed.

  My eyes darted left to right, looking for something, anything that would make me so uneasy. But still, I saw nothing. I finally tried to relax. “Stupid, overactive imagination.”

  Just as reached my run-down car, I felt a tingle on the back of my neck. A small jolt of electricity rocketed up my spine and goose bumps prickled across my skin—as if my body was trying to warn me.

  Too late.

  I turned just in time to see a blur of green. The world around me spun then as I went airborne, going higher and higher into the sky. I screamed and twisted, fighting whatever had ahold of me, but to no avail. No one was listening. I couldn’t see anything; everything was whipping around me, and I couldn’t focus. Nothing made any sense, and I still had no idea how I became airborne.

  Zach

  * * *

  Looking over my shoulder several times, I checked to make sure no one saw as I jumped and landed with a quick thud on Iavo’s golden amber scales. We’d been hunting for hours, the Riven’s scent leading us in circles.

  He was toying with us. Intelligent. Still in control. Unlike the last few Riven we’d hunted. They had been lost to the killing madness. Reckless and easy to track down.

  This one was different. I knew Iavo felt it as well. He’d pushed both of us to the brink of collapse, refusing to stop, to give up the hunt.

  With only a few powerful movements, Iavo pushed off and his wings propelled us forward into the dark night sky, straight up, flying high into the cover of the thick clouds.

  He’s killed again. I taste blood in the wind.

  As he banked to the right, I held on with my strong leg muscles. As a rider, it was easy to get stronger and stronger. I learned to use my entire body—especially my legs and core—to balance and hold on to the back of a speeding dragon. Battles were even more intense, but we’d learned early to work together. Sitting on his back was natural to me now, and to him? I was another weapon, a means for him to attack from his back and not just his mouth, tail and claws.

  We landed in the dark on the bluffs along the side of the lake. There were no lights here, but a small group of shops was close. Iavo was right; I could hear a scream coming from just over the hill. I jumped from Iavo’s back and rushed up and over the horizon as he took to the air above me, ready for battle.

  As I cleared the rise, I saw the dragon. Larger than Iavo, he was a dark, magnificent green and for a moment I was paralyzed at the idea of killing something so beautiful.

  The screaming of the woman trapped under his claws snapped me out of it and I ran toward the dragon, knowing I would be too late to save her.

  We knew he was going to leave a trail of bodies behind him, but I didn’t expect to get a ringside seat to one of his kills.

  I cleared the long, grassy knoll in under a minute. Chills ran through me as I heard the woman calling out for help. The Riven raised his long snout into the air and roared a challenge to Iavo. The green monster seemed to feed on her fear, as if the tiny, squirming human he tortured entranced him.

  I wasn’t fooled and knew Iavo would not take the bait either. The dragon wasn’t toying with the woman; he was toying with us.

  As if the beast could read my thoughts, he turned his head so that his huge eye looked right at me as he dug his long claw deeper into her thigh and started to
drag her across the park with him.

  Unable to attack outright for fear of injuring the woman, Iavo landed a few feet away from the other dragon and the two beasts circled one another like wrestlers on the matt. Instead of attacking Iavo, as I expected, the Riven narrowed his large, amber eyes and lifted the woman in his claws up to his mouth, gripping her tightly in his teeth.

  Her screaming silenced as the green dragon’s large jaws closed over the small body. Iavo and I stopped in our tracks. We were too late. We couldn’t save her. I could feel through the bond Iavo and I shared just how pissed off that had made my dragon. He took the human’s death as a failure. And Iavo never failed his queen. Never.

  Stay back! Iavo shouted in my mind as he lunged at the beast. Now that his hostage was dead, there was nothing stopping my dragon from striking at the Riven’s heart.

  The green dragon lowered his head and met Iavo’s charge head on. Giant maws clashed, a mixed eruption of fire and ice blasting into the sky above them as they battled to destroy one another.

  Gold and green, the two beasts battered and clawed at each other. Iavo took a hit to his back from the green dragon’s tail but scored with a swipe of his claws across our enemy’s chest.

  Payback, asshole.

  “Stop playing around and kill him.” I pulled the revolver I carried from the inside of my jacket and waited. The .357 was a last line of defense. I couldn’t easily hide anything larger when we were out in public. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t do much more than slow down the green dragon or piss him off. But it had saved my ass before, given Iavo the few seconds he needed to recover from a hit.

  Besides, I felt like an old-fashioned cowboy when I pulled the long, steel barrel out into the moonlight. Which was my own personal secret, and one I never shared with my dragon.

  I know about your little silver weapon, cowboy. You forget you have no secrets from me.

  “Just hurry up. I want—” I stopped midsentence, unwilling to give the green dragon any information that might hurt us…or her. But the truth was that I was as hungry for our woman as my dragon had ever been. She was in my blood now. All I could think about. And I wanted to get this job done and get back to her. Strip her naked. Make her come over and over on my tongue as Iavo fucked her from behind.

  I know what you want. Iavo sent me an image of our mate sprawled between us in the bed, her head thrown back, her skin glistening with pleasure.

  Yes. That was exactly what I wanted.

  The Riven grunted loudly, flapped his large wings and took to the sky. Iavo bunched his legs to give chase but froze with a roar.

  Pain lanced through me. Not physical and not my own.

  Iavo’s. I knew that dragons could communicate with one another on some kind of common mental path, but I wasn’t able to hear all of them. Only Iavo, through the bond we shared.

  “What happened?” I yelled at Iavo as the green dragon flew just out of striking distance and landed, as if watching a show.

  Brittany. He found Brittany. I can smell her blood.

  I expected Iavo to attack. The Riven to run.

  But the evil bastard didn’t run.

  He laughed.

  Chapter 7

  Brittany

  * * *

  Everything spun again as if I had just been thrown into the air. I landed with a loud thud on the concrete, my head hitting so hard I saw stars. I rolled several times before coming to an agonizing stop. Excruciating pain radiated through my body and head, but the worse of it radiated from my leg.

  I tried to move, to examine my leg, hoping for the best but not expecting it at that point.

  The scream that left my throat was not voluntary and I knew the large bone in my thigh was broken. Fighting not to pass out, I screamed into the darkness. “You asshole!” I had no idea who…or what…I was screaming at, but I knew he could hear me. I somehow knew.

  I laid down and tried to catch my breath, but it came in short, uneven spasms. I had to get out of the open, find cover. Call 9-1-1. Something. I was not going to just lay down and die. That wasn’t me.

  Just breathe!

  My head pounded, and my vision was blurry. Reaching up with trembling hands, I winced when I touched the back of my skull. The swelling was significant, the size of a golf ball and growing as I laid there and tried to remain as small and quiet as possible.

  Rolling onto my stomach, I used my arms to drag myself toward the nearest vehicle. It was a black pickup with jacked up wheels, but it was cover.

  Gritting my teeth against the pain I pulled myself forward on my elbows. The new position seemed to help my vision clear and I stopped moving as the figure of a man came closer.

  Relief flooded me until I looked up and saw his face. He was the creepy, hand sniffer from earlier. The one who couldn’t talk. He’d only pointed at everything he’d wanted. The one whose eyes had made me feel like a mouse caught in a trap.

  He reached for me, his rough hands poking at the back of my head with no gentleness or mercy. When he pulled his fingers back, fresh blood dripped from the tips. With a grin that nearly made me vomit, he lifted the blood to his mouth and licked them clean.

  “Who are you? What do you want?” I asked.

  He placed his finger over his lips to silence me and shook his head in warning for me to be quiet. The creep factor was off the charts now, and I realized I was probably going to die. He was the serial killer the police had been tracking. He had to be. He totally fit the serial killer profile. White male. In his thirties? Sociopath. He’d probably started torturing animals when he was in pre-school.

  I couldn’t run. Couldn’t fight. Not physically. So I did the only thing I could. I glared. “Fuck you.”

  He didn’t react, which was a relief and terrifying all at the same time. He was like a robot, completely lacking in a normal human response.

  Shock was setting in. I was cold. Too cold. My entire body began to shake uncontrollably.

  He noticed. Smiled. Ran the back of his fingers along my cheek in a bizarre caress.

  “What do you want from me?”

  In silence, he stood and stepped back, holding my gaze as if commanding me to watch. I couldn’t look away, refused to turn my back on the threat, but what I saw made me think I must have hit my head a lot harder than I thought.

  His body began to twitch and he dropped to all fours, his eyes glowing so brightly they lit up the dark pavement surrounding us. The air changed, sparked with electricity or…I didn’t know what. I’d never felt anything like it.

  Or had I? The tingling along my skin, the pressure building in the air, it was like something was about to happen.

  And then, it did.

  Staring at him, studying him as I tried to absorb the truth of the madness, I saw him transform. Right before my eyes, this handsome, tall, blond-haired, green-eyed man transformed from a human being into the impossible. He’d changed into a large, green, and iridescent dragon the size of a small aircraft. Maybe a bull elephant with wings? He was huge.

  His scales sparkled like emeralds in sunlight. His claws were a dark, earthy brown as long as my arm. Sharp. Long. His eyes glowed yellow, as if lit from within. And his teeth looked like something I’d only ever seen in the museums that displayed extinct dinosaur bones.

  T-Rex had nothing on this thing.

  He was scary as hell.

  And so beautiful he nearly took my breath away. The very sight of him seemed impossible, but there he was. My eyes darted upward as he pulled back into the air and breathed large shards of ice onto the ground surrounding me, creating a lake of ice out of the pavement as he closed me in. I rolled under the truck but got caught in the forearm by a jagged shard of ice. The extreme cold burned as it pierced through my skin like a needle.

  I didn’t want to give the bastard any more satisfaction, but I screamed. The ice made my arm feel like it was being cut in two as I held the wound to my chest to stop the bleeding.

  My head was bleeding. I had a gaping wound from a s
even-inch piece of ice that had stabbed into my damned arm. Why was he coming after me?

  Or maybe he had been following me for quite some time… I remembered the feeling that had come over me the other day in the park. Had he been watching me then?

  Was I being hunted by a dragon?

  My laugh was filled with hysteria and pain even though I found nothing about the situation funny or amusing. I suppose it was a defense mechanism over the absolute mind-blowing situation I found myself in. Noises surrounding me pulled me from my cluttered and broken thoughts. I turned my head, looking in all directions as I tried to see what was happening. Where the monster was.

  I had to be hallucinating, didn’t I? Had someone at the bar slipped something into one of my drinks? Was I tripping?

  Maybe. But the ice was real, making the normally cool air icy cold as it swirled around me under the truck. I should have been freezing, but I felt warm. Numb. Blood pooled under me as it soaked into my clothing. My eyes stung as tears tried to form but I didn’t have the energy to blink or fight them off, so they rolled down my temples, freezing in the hair above my ears.

  I was dying. Alone. And the dragon—or whatever he was—was gone. Silence surrounded me as I reached for the cell phone still, by some miracle, in my pocket. I fumbled to unlock the screen, to call someone, anyone, for help.

  Chapter 8

  Zach

  * * *

  Iavo ignored the Riven and I followed his lead as he bent a shoulder, indicating I should climb up at once. The moment I was settled, Iavo leaped into the air, flying at top speed back the way we had come. Back to the restaurant on the pier where we’d checked in on her a few hours ago.

  I still had no idea what the Riven had said to him, but Iavo’s entire being focused on finding Brittany. His emotions were in total lockdown. Ice cold. After the initial burst of agony from him, I felt nothing. Emptiness.