by Willa Hart
Shit, I said too much.
But Lazlo didn’t seem angry. Instead, a slow smile spread across his face.
“I knew it. I knew someone else was in the room with us. But…how? How do you do it?”
I made a how the hell should I know face and was about to say those very words when the door swung open again. Rufus strolled in, whistling and as chipper as I’d ever seen him. He stopped in his tracks when he saw all of us and gave a cute little wave.
“Um, hey.”
No one spoke. We were too shocked to utter a single syllable. Except Lazlo, who nodded placidly at Rufus. Of course, he hadn’t seen the man after Titus and his crew were done with him. He hadn’t seen the hamburger that had once been the man’s face. Naturally, Ryen was the first to speak, bluntly tackling the elephant in the room.
“Holy hell, Rufus! Don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re lookin’ good.”
Too good. Rufus had been beaten to a pulp, yet he stood before us the very next day looking as fresh as a daisy. He glanced down at himself and gave us a confused smile.
“Guess I’m a fast healer.”
Not even Ryen had a joke for that.
Max had taught me that dragons healed more quickly than humans, but they still suffered from injuries for days, if not weeks. Surely the ointment from the first aid kit hadn’t taken down the swelling in Rufus’s eyes. I hadn’t even applied any there. But I had touched them, just to make sure his eyeballs were okay. Every wound I’d touched on him had apparently healed overnight.
My gaze drifted down to his side, where the worst of his injuries lay. Without a word, he lifted his t-shirt to reveal a faint pink line, but no gash and no scabs. He didn’t even need a bandage. What the hell!
My eyes shifted from Rufus to Lazlo, locking onto his penetrating gaze. After the attack at Drakonis, I’d tended to his injuries. What injuries? my brain wondered. He moved like a healthy man who hadn’t been in a dragon battle the day before. The gash on his cheek that I’d thought would need stitches had almost vanished. His right forearm showed no sign of being scorched, as it had been the day before.
He was healed.
Chapter Fifteen
My spine tingled as Lazlo continued to stare at me. I stared right back. Everyone else simply looked bewildered.
“Impossible,” Ash and Hale breathed at the same time as they stared at Rufus’s healed flesh.
“This isn’t some shared delusion, is it?” Ryen asked, not even a twinkle of mirth in his eyes.
Kellum stepped up to Rufus. “Rufe, mind if I look at your, um…side?”
I was certain he’d wanted to say “wound,” but there wasn’t one anymore. Rufus nodded and lifted his shirt higher.
Kellum knelt down and brushed his fingertips against Rufus’s shiny new pink skin. The man twitched and chuckled, blushing beet red as he pulled his shirt back down.
“Sorry, I'm a little ticklish.”
“Did you do anything special last night, Rufus?” Ryen asked, all traces of his jokester self gone.
The big man shrugged and moseyed over to his desk, the one Kellum and Ryen had been using. “All I know is, I went to bed exhausted and in pain, and woke up fine. No complaints from me.”
Kellum fixed Lazlo with a questioning look. “How is this possible? You didn’t see it last night, but his wound was deep. Honestly, he’s lucky to be alive, much less completely healed.
Lazlo said nothing, just kept his gaze locked on me, as if he knew something I didn’t. Which, let’s get real, was pretty much everything.
My blood pressure skyrocketed as a fine mist of flop sweat covered my face. To say I was freaking out didn’t come close to describing how everything inside me, from my brain to my gut, was a jumbled, chaotic mess. Lazlo seemed to be waiting for me to make the connection. It didn’t seem possible, so my brain resisted but understanding leaked in like light under a door. He thought I could heal people, which…
Come on, that’s crazy!
“Coincidence,” I insisted, drawing the attention of the guys.
“What are you talking about, Favor?” Ash asked, taking a few steps closer.
“Nothing!” I barked, scurrying over to the coffee maker for a much-needed respite from Lazlo’s scrutiny.
The machine had been knocked around during the fight, but someone had set it back up. I jammed a pod in the holder and closed it, but nothing happened. No lights, no command to press a button so the magical elixir of life would dribble out, nada. I punched the buttons anyway, all of them — hard — but no joy.
“Dammit!” I seethed, trying to push out the more important thoughts in my head.
Someone sidled up next to me slowly, as if approaching a wild animal. I spun my head to glare at him, and it turned out to be Ryen. He reached around the back of the machine, flicked something, and suddenly the contraption lit up, ready for my command to brew the perfect cuppa.
“Just have to turn it on first,” he said quietly, a question I didn’t want to answer heavy on his face.
“Ms. Fiske,” Lazlo started, but I cut him off.
“Don’t be crazy, it’s only a coincidence. Your kind heals fast anyway, right?”
That’s what Max had told me, but even I knew they couldn’t heal that fast. And there was something else, something that niggled at the back of my brain. Gears clicked inside my head as I stared at him, recalling how, after she’d learned dragons existed, Zoe had pinched her arms hard enough she’d bruised herself. I’d rubbed them, for no reason I could remember. I’d only wanted to comfort her. The next day, her arms didn’t have a single mark on them. At the time, she’d insisted it had all been a bad dream, but I knew better.
“You’re telling me Rufus and I are the only ones?”
“Only ones what?” Hale asked, his head ping-ponging between me and his boss. We both ignored him.
I started to nod, not wanting to admit the truth, but that wouldn’t help anyone. After seeing Lazlo and Rufus, I couldn’t deny it any longer. The dragon keeper powers that had been slowly manifesting and growing in me included something I never expected. Max had never warned me.
Apparently I had developed the ability to heal with my touch.
They all waited for my answer, but I was having trouble finding words, so I shrugged weakly.
“Out with it,” Lazlo commanded for the second time, and for once I didn’t have the energy to rebel against him.
“Zoe,” I breathed, then explained what happened. “I’m sorry she found out about dragons the way she did, but the guys had nothing to do with it. If you need to punish someone, punish me.”
His brow wrinkled, then he shook his head. “I don’t care about that, Ms. Fiske. I would like to know if there have been any other instances.”
I dropped my head, thinking hard. “No. Well, maybe Archibald Thrush. Titus beat him up pretty good and I tended to him too. But I haven’t seen or heard from him since, so I have no way of knowing.”
“Knowing what?” Kellum asked. He looked cute when he was totally in the dark.
Lazlo nodded sagely, as if he hadn’t heard Kellum. “I heard from Archie not long after the incident. He didn’t say much, but I do recall him mentioning the climate in Wyoming had done wonders for his health. Said he was already out riding horses with his great-granddaughter. I didn’t think anything of it until now.”
“Can someone please fill us in on what’s going on here?” Kellum asked, his tone stern to hide his confusion and frustration. “What are you two talking about?”
Lazlo pulled himself to his full, impressive height and took a deep breath. Finally, there were more than just him and me in the room.
“Seems Ms. Fiske might have a very unique gift.”
They all stared at him, while I added four hundred and eighteen creamers to my coffee, in an attempt to keep my hands busy. Hell, I had a perfectly good Mexican mocha sitting on my desk, but I needed something to do.
“And that is…” Ryen prodded.
; “She can heal with her touch.”
He revealed his profound revelation at the same moment Rufus shouted out, “Hey, look at Eustace!”
Numbly and without much thought, we all turned to the big man, who sat cradling his little succulent in his big paws. The broad, joyful smile on his face could have lit up a thousand cities as he held out his hands for us to see. Eustace sat perkily in her little pot, the once-crushed edges perfectly puffed out and the crack that I’d figured would be fatal nowhere to be seen.
My heart raced in my chest so quickly I started breathing hard and fast. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me with this! A plant?”
I held my cup of coffee in trembling hands, unable to stop looking at the stupid little plant that had miraculously repaired itself overnight. Somewhere in my consciousness, I was aware that as my anxiety grew, the boys crept closer to me, surrounding me in a perfect circle. They moved in a natural rhythm, at exactly the same pace, positioning themselves at equal distances around me, reminding me of when they did the same thing during the battle at Enoch’s hideout. The strength and protective feelings pouring off them calmed my nerves. Until Lazlo spoke up.
“What the hell are you all doing?”
The boys stopped moving, blinking up at Lazlo as if he’d woken them from a trance. They glanced at each other, but no one had an explanation. Not one we could put words to, anyway.
“Uh…” half of us said in unison.
Lazlo waved it away, stepping closer to us, his eyes trained on me. The guys didn’t budge.
“What else can you do?”
“Nothing,” I answered quickly. “I’m a normal human girl.”
“Not true,” Danic said, inching closer to me with pride written all over his face. “Remember, that day in Shirley’s kitchen? You knew the twins were almost there.”
I shook my head to tell him that had simply been a clever deduction, but Ryen jumped in.
“And she can tell when you’re lying, which I gotta admit can be pretty freaking annoying.”
“Hey!” I gave him a mock glare, which didn’t faze him one iota.
“And last week she beat the hell out of some asshole who roofied her friend at a club,” Ash added.
Shit, I’d almost forgotten about that. Not the fact Zoe had been attacked, but that I’d served the perp some humble pie in the way of a massive ass-kicking. And then threatened his life in the hospital. It had been effective, but not something I ever would have imagined doing. Was that who I was now?
“Are we forgetting she seems to be able reach out and broadcast messages into our minds?” Hale asked, reminding us all of when I’d inadvertently called for them while we were interrogating Enoch Trinkas in Ventura County.
Kellum jumped on the bandwagon. “Honestly, I think that talent might be growing stronger. The other day, Favor and I held a totally telepathic conversation when we were miles apart. Of course, that was after we—”
Lazlo held up a hand to stop him from continuing. We all got the picture, and if not, all they had to do was look at my scorching hot face. Lazlo’s shrewd eyes bore into my very soul, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to lie to him.
“All this time, we assumed you were Maximus’s dragon keeper,” he said slowly. “Considering all I’ve heard, that doesn’t seem to be the case. Do you know who your dragon is?”
At first, I thought it had been Kellum, but since the relationship between dragons and their keepers is never sexual, I was obviously wrong. Then Danic and I shared our magical night together, which took him out of the running, leaving Ryen and the twins as options. Not that I’d admit it out loud, especially in front of Lazlo, but I was as attracted to them as I was Kellum and Danic. Which left me exactly nowhere in trying to figure out who my dragon might be.
“Not yet.”
He stepped closer to me, but my boys refused to move aside. He stood inches away from Hale and Ryen, who blocked him from advancing farther. They didn’t seem to exist to him, though.
“Why not?” he pressed.
I shrugged, trying to deflect his interest in this particularly sensitive subject. “Max told me to spend time with his nephews, hoping one of them might be my dragon. But so far…I just don’t know.”
Part of me wanted to blurt it out, that I was falling in love with all five of them. Each one in his own special way filled a deep need in my heart, but I simply couldn’t find the words to explain how whole and happy I felt when they surrounded me like they were doing at that moment. It would sound insane, or worse yet, perverted.
“Hmmm,” Lazlo mused. “We can assume it’s not Kellum, since keepers never share a romantic connection with their dragons.”
My skin flushed and I peeked up at him from behind my eyelashes. “And Danic.”
I winced, waiting for him to blow up, but he only raised a curious eyebrow. I felt no judgment coming off him, which frankly surprised the hell out of me.
“Interesting,” he said, as if he was trying to figure me out.
Join the club, bud.
Enough with the third degree. I had some questions of my own.
“Let me ask you, can dragons heal other dragons like…that?” I couldn’t quite bring myself to admit I actually held that power. “Max never mentioned anything about it. But apparently he’s taken a fairly lackadaisical approach to my training.”
Lazlo narrowed his gaze at me slightly, then turned away and perched on Ash and Hale’s desk again. The boys relaxed around me and drifted away as he spoke.
“Ancient lore does hint at similar things happening, but those are only legends. Of course, it’s impossible to know what’s true and what’s been distorted over time.”
Curious murmurs rippled through the room. Every eye turned to me, which only made me want to melt into the floorboards. My overly-creamered coffee would leave a puddle, but it was a small price to pay to have them all stop gawking at me.
“To more clearly answer your question, Ms. Fiske,” Lazlo continued, “I’ve never met or heard of a real-life dragon — or keeper, for that matter — who could heal with their touch.”
Well, that was a relief. Or was it?
In the fog of my worry, shining like the big yellow eye that still made appearances in my nightmares, sparked an idea. A small voice, the one from my dreams, warned me it might be dangerous, but when the idea hit me, I must have lit up like a Christmas tree.
“What is it?” Lazlo asked brusquely, catching on to my excitement.
“I want to try something.” I swallowed hard at what I was about to suggest. “Recently, I’ve been able to locate certain dragons, ones I’ve met or made some kind of connection with. So far it’s been totally by accident. I’ve never actually tried, it just sort of comes to me. Well, I tried to connect with Max, but that hasn’t worked out very well.”
They waited patiently for me to explain.
“I’d like to try locating Titus.”
Danic opened his mouth to object, but Lazlo held up his hand to silence him. To my shock, it worked.
“The night Titus murdered my parents, we shared what can only be called a moment. I still see it in my dreams, feel it as it felt that night. Of course, I’ve seen him twice since then, but we didn’t share a connection like we did that night. I wonder if it’s enough to track him down.”
Danic couldn’t hold back any longer. “Favor, are you sure you want to try that? He’s a fucking killer.”
“Yeah, I’m not sure about this,” Kellum said, moving closer to me again. “We have no idea how this connection might affect you. Titus is dangerous, I think we can all agree on that. Is it really worth the risk?”
My teeth clenched and I leveled a determined stare on him. “He killed my parents. He killed Enoch. He tried to kill all of us. So, yeah. I’mma risk it.”
Chapter Sixteen
A certainty I’d yet to feel about my growing keeper powers filled me to the brim. I almost felt as if I were floating in that certainty, as if it were buoying me up. No doubt
remained this would work, but that didn’t mean it didn’t scare the living hell out of me. Tracking down the lunatic who killed my parents? Yeah, nerve-wracking didn’t come close to describing it.
But then my boys moved in around me, their apprehension thick in the air between us. Still, each one moved with a surprising confidence, and I had a feeling I knew why. We were doing this together, as a unit, no matter how scary it might be. Somehow it made the whole thing seem less weird.
They reformed their circle around me, but this time they grasped each other’s hands without a single word. As if they’d done it a thousand times and no longer needed to be told what to do. The moment the last two linked hands, the air shifted around us, like when my phone’s camera lens snapped into sharp focus. Everything felt more clear and all my anxiety evaporated like a puff of steam.
“Ready?” Kellum asked softly, giving me a gentle smile of encouragement.
“Nope,” I answered honestly.
But if not now, when?
I let my eyes fall closed and drew air into my lungs, breathing in my boys and the office and the universe. My mind focused on Titus’s ugly yellow eyes and the feelings they roused in me. Fear spiked in my chest. Images and emotions and sensations mingled, one with the next, faster than I could track.
Warm wind blowing through my hair. The sharp piney scent of Oregon. A spectacular sunset reluctantly merging into darkness. A shadow overhead. That yellow eye I thought was a friend. Green, leathery lips pulling back in a hideous grin. Needle-sharp teeth. The stench of brimstone.
I focused on the scent, sniffing this way, then that way, until I found the trail. It led first to San Bernardino, to the apartment building of Enoch’s human lady friend, Crystal. I could vividly recall the fight, the way Ryen sprinted over to rescue Crystal without a second thought for his own safety, the strength in his punch as he fought off Titus, how Titus’s eyes flashed from brown to yellow, the sharp smell of blood spattering the broken concrete of the sidewalk.