Relic Hunters: BBW Dragon Shifter Paranormal Romance (The Complete Trilogy)

by Bianca James

  As she did, Bryce noticed a small worm of blood oozing from her scalp line. He used his thumb to wipe it clear. “You’re still bleeding. Are you in pain?”

  “I’m fine. Apparently I didn’t get shot enough to be anything but fine,” she responded sarcastically.

  “Trust me, if you’d been shot you’d know about it. This is just a scalp wound. They take a while to stop bleeding, but you’ll be fine so long as you don’t have a concussion from that flash-bang grenade.”

  “Which was thrown at us by . . .” she prompted.

  He stared into her captivating, warm brown eyes. There was something special about the girl. Maybe his dragon knew a thing or two, after all.

  Her hands came to rest on her curvy hips and she continued to glower at him. She didn’t like to be kept waiting.

  “The Circle.”

  “What?” She arched one eyebrow curiously.

  “That’s what they call themselves, The Circle.”

  “Sounds like a daytime television talk show.”

  “Trust me, these guys are anything but quaint and chatty. They were formed two thousand years ago and they have one purpose and one purpose only.”

  “Let me guess,” Saira interjected, “to find that coin, right?” She pointed to where she’d seen him hide the coin earlier.

  “Not quite. They want all thirty coins. They need the full set in order to invoke the power they wield when they are all together.”

  “Wait a minute, this sounds like one of those urban legends we used to read about as kids, you know, the one’s where Hitler goes looking for religious artifacts to change the course of the war and all that nonsense. The Spear of Destiny, The Ark of the Covenant and the Holy Grail. Are you saying these guys really believe that stuff?”

  “They’ve killed thousands of innocent people over the millennia in search of the Thirty Pieces of Silver of Judas Iscariot. Yeah, I’d pretty much say they believe it.”

  Saira waited for him to give her a gotcha smile.

  He didn’t.

  “You’re serious aren’t you?”

  “Never been more serious.”

  “So how do you fit into all this? What’s your angle?”

  “This coin,” he clutched the pouch beneath his suit, “is mine. It belonged to my ancestors and has been in our family for many generations. Well, until one of my ancestors was killed, but not before burying the coin with your so called Hoxne Hoard to keep it out of the hands of The Circle.”

  “I’ve read enough of the bible to know that Judas threw the thirty pieces of silver at the priests in the temple and then hung himself. So how could your family or anyone else get hold of the coins?”

  “The priests didn’t want their blood money back. It was tainted and cursed as soon as Judas betrayed Jesus and the Romans crucified him, so they used the coins to buy a plot of land behind the temple so it could be used to bury the unknown and the poor. The land was used to extract potters clay, so it had no agricultural value, which is how the priests were able to buy it as a burial site. That’s how we get the term Potters Field for paupers graves in more modern times.”

  “So who did they buy the land from with Iscariot’s silver?”

  “Good question, nobody knows and it probably doesn’t matter too much, anyway. What is known though is that misfortune and death befell those who took the money, including, it would seem, the seller of the first potter’s field. Legend has it that once it was realized that the coins had such power, they were divided up and dispersed among thirty different families and sent to the very corners of the world, such as it was known at that time, to ensure they never ended up together again.”

  “And your ancestors were one of the families in that story?”

  “Correct.” Bryce nodded, waiting for her to ask the next obvious question.

  “So, if the coins are cursed, what makes these Circle guys think it’s a good idea to bring them all together again? Surely it they believe the legend, they’ll all end up dead, won’t they?”

  “Fair point, but they have another significant Christian artifact which they believe gives them power and some level of control over the curse carried by the coins.”

  Saira waved her hand for him to continue. He stared at her uncomprehendingly.

  “And that other artifact would be . . .?”

  “Nobody knows. They don’t call them a secret society because they post their artifacts on Facebook, you know.”

  “You realize,” Saira added after a moment of reflection, “that this would make one hell of a movie. But as a scientific paper for the Journal of Archaeology, I don’t think it would see the light of day. There’s not a single fact to back any of it up.”

  “Exactly. And that’s the way The Circle want it. The fewer people who believe it, the better for them. They’ve been ruthless over the centuries in destroying evidence and killing those who might expose them. And now that includes us.”

  Bryce turned and resumed his trek through the tunnel.

  “Are you trying to get all the coins, too?” Saira asked as she gained pace to catch up with him.

  “No. I’m a thief, like I told you, but I only steal treasures that have been stolen from my family in the past. My kind doesn’t steal. We might win loot through conquest or in exchange for services rendered, but we never, ever steal what’s not rightfully ours.”

  “My kind? We? What does that even mean?”

  Bryce realized that he’d overstepped the mark and said too much. He felt his dragon stir within, urging him to share his secret, but he knew he mustn’t. They would both be in grave danger if she knew his secret and knowing of the Circle and the coins already placed her in harm’s way.

  “Another long story and trust me, we don’t have time for that one.” Ever.

  Bryce stopped and turned to face Saira. Her eyes widened in fear and her jaw dropped. Bryce didn’t understand until he followed her gaze down to his chest, down to the three unmistakable laser beams that converged into a single and very precise dot — directly over his heart.

  When he looked back up at Saira, fear gripped him. Three tactical laser sights also converged on the back of Saira’s head. The message was clear and unmistakable.

  Chapter 14

  “What is it?” Saira asked when she saw the color drain from Bryce’s face.

  “Don’t move,” he directed firmly but softly. “I need you to trust me and do exactly as I say,” he whispered. His eyes were locked on to Saira’s. “Keep looking at me. No matter what happens . . . just keep looking at me.”

  “What? Nothing’s going to happ —”

  Suddenly, she forgot what she was about to say and before she knew it, Bryce had dropped the glow stick to the ground and stood on it, plunging them into darkness, save for the piercing laser sight trained on Bryce’s torso. He was glad she hadn’t realized that multiple laser sights were trained on her head, ready to take her out with no more than a light squeeze of a trigger. If his plan was to work, she had to be totally cooperative and focus on him alone.

  Even the unique cognitive abilities of a dragon shifter can only go so far. Making someone forget something they’ve seen is a difficult task for the most experienced dragon and it also posed unacceptable risks to the subject. That’s why Bryce had no choice but to mask what Saira was about to see so that it never imprinted on her brain. He couldn’t afford to reveal his secret to her and he couldn’t let anything happen to her. He was in an unenviable position.

  Bryce knew what he was looking at. It was no ordinary laser targeting beam that lit up his chest. As a technology buff, Bryce knew something about Precision Guided Firearms or PGF’s as the military called them, but this was his first close up encounter with such a system and unfortunately, he was on the receiving end of the it. Even under less than ideal conditions, there was absolutely no possibility of either weapon missing their intended target, in this case his heart and Saira’s head.

  What he was facing was the most advanced integratio
n of sniper rifle and electronic tactical scope package ever to be produced. The targeting system could account for range, temperature, air pressure, spin drift and even the Coriolis Effect as the earth rotates around on its axis. It left nothing to chance and could even be fired with deadly accuracy while the weapon was in motion. The computerized system would take all variables into account. It was pinpoint accurate, foolproof and lethal.

  “Only the yanks would invent something that can turn any lazy son-of-a-bitch into a world class sniper,” Bryce muttered out loud. He knew that some systems could integrate with smartphone apps and he had no doubt that someone in a safer, more comfortable location than a soggy, putrid Tube tunnel was watching events unfold.

  Well, I bet you weren’t expecting this you mother—

  Saira would later swear that she saw Bryce’s eyes glow eerily with a peculiar shade of green, like iridescent emeralds. Even though she knew that wasn’t scientifically possible, her mind felt like it accepted what she saw without question. She remembered starring into those glowing orbs as a voice in her head kept commanding her to not look away. And that’s all she remembered.

  She never saw Bryce shift into his enormous leathery, scaly dragon form right in front of her. Nor did she feel the thick hide of his wings close around her, shielding her from the enemy guns pointed at her. Most pleasing of all, from Bryce’s point of view, however, was that she never saw the torrent of white hot gas seep from the dragon’s jaws before shooting a jet of fiery, molten liquid flame down the entire length of the tunnel, vaporizing the gunmen and their weapons in a bright flash. They didn’t even have time to scream and the hellfire he unleashed upon them rendered their laser guided sniper systems totally useless. They weren’t programmed to account for dragon fire as a variable in their complex algorithms, so the gunmen didn’t even get a shot off before they were hit.

  No, Bryce thought, nobody should have to see a sight like that and live with it for the rest of their life. After all, one of the sworn duties of any dragon is to protect the innocent and this girl was certainly that. And to both Bryce and his dragon, she was becoming so much more. Smart as a whip, fiercely independent, curvy and sassy. She was quite a package.

  And quite a handful, he thought to himself.

  Chapter 15

  Finally they reached another disused London Underground station, but a padlocked door at the station exit sealed them in, leaving them trapped once again. Even in the faint glow of their fading light source, it was easy to imagine how the station might have looked in Victorian times. Indeed, it looked more or less like a modern Tube station, which it could have been but for an old, tattered poster on the wall directing people “Where to go” during a World War II air raid. There were even signs directing the wounded to first aid stations that would have been set up during the Blitz and another advising they had entered the Metropolitan Borough of Holborn. After walking miles through the black soot in the steel encased rail tunnels, the ivory ceramic tiles of the station were a comforting and welcoming sign and the atmosphere far less claustrophobic.

  “This place is like a time capsule,” Saira commented as she put kitty down on the platform in case he needed a potty break.

  Bryce looked around. “I’d forgotten they used the old underground system as air raid shelters. I remember seeing something about that on the History Channel.”

  “So, MacGyver, what have you got in your bag of tricks to get us through that door and out into fresh air?”

  Bryce’s dragon could have melted the padlock and steel chain in seconds, but that wasn’t going to happen, not without risk to Saira. There was only so much mind manipulation a human could bear in a short space of time without the risk of permanent brain damage. He had nothing to offer. Instead, he simply shrugged.

  Scooping up kitty and handing him to Bryce, Saira strode up to the door. Without pause, she pulled a 9mm Heckler and Koch VP9 from her waistband at the small of her back, racked the slide like a pro and fired point blank at the aging padlock.

  The blast was deafening in the echo of the cavern like platform, but that was par for the course as far as their day had gone so far. Kitty leapt out of Bryce’s arms and bolted into the darkness. Saira kicked the padlock and chain across the smooth concrete floor toward Bryce with a look of satisfaction impressed on her face.

  “Or we could just do that,” she said offhandedly.

  “Where did you get that?” Bryce asked with a hint of alarm in his tone. She could easily bring the weapon to bear on him in an effort to hand him over to the local constabulary. No, this wouldn’t do at all.

  “Professor Blane dropped it when you cold-cocked him. He’s a lefty, in case you didn’t notice and I’m not, but this baby,” she looked at the gun with admiration and approval, “is ambidextrous, with duplicate controls either side so I figured . . . why not. I grabbed it when I got kitty.”

  Saira looked around for kitty.

  “Where is she?”

  “How the hell do I know? Neither of us was expecting you to go all Lara Croft on us and start blasting away in a giant echo chamber.”

  Saira rolled her eyes. Men. They can’t be trusted to manage the simplest task, like holding a cat.

  “Hold this and try not to lose it this time. Think you can manage that?”

  Reluctantly, Bryce took the weapon from her holding it awkwardly by the barrel. He’d always hated guns. Nearly all dragons shifters did.

  As she marched into the darkness to find kitty she turned to Bryce, “And I didn’t blast away as you put it, I fired one well-placed round into the padlock, so maybe it’s you who needs to harden up.”

  Okay, so maybe she doesn’t mean to hand me over to the cops. That’s a good thing, right? He thought, his eyes following her and watching her hips sway alluringly as she was swallowed up by the darkness.

  Chapter 16

  Once through the maintenance tunnel, the only obstacle to the hustle and bustle of the comparatively new Holborn Underground station was a fire door that relied on the words Emergency Exit as its sole form of security. At last, things were starting to go their way. As Bryce pushed the door open, bright florescent lighting doused them, causing them both to shield their eyes from the glare.

  “At least we get fresh air and some actual light,” Saira commented as their eyes began to adjust.

  Both of them breathed deeply, taking in a good dose of stale air laden with the scent of sweaty bodies and other odors they’d both rather not think too much about.

  “Okay, fresh might have been pushing it a bit.”

  People milled around them, many of them heading home for the night, not paying any attention to the two dusty, grimy strangers standing in the doorway. In fact, it was only because the commuters rushed to make their connecting trains that three individuals stood out from the crowd. Neither rushing nor seeming to have any apparent destination. Like Meerkats in an ocean of purposefully moving humanity, three men wearing long overcoats looked in all directions in search of something specific. Or someone.

  Turning his back toward the three pursuers, Bryce gripped Saira firmly by the shoulders and pulled her close, leaning into her at the same time before crushing his lips over her mouth. After the initial shock at his flagrant plundering wore off, Saira thumped his solid, muscular chest as she pulled her lips from his.

  “What the hell . . . what do you think you’re doing?” Her shout was loud enough to rise above the cacophony of the busy Tube station, attracting the attention of a few passersby. Not an ideal scenario given Bryce’s attempt to avoid detection.

  “Bryce. My name is Bryce.”

  “What the fu—”

  Again he pulled her closer, keeping her out of the line of sight from the others as he brought his lips to her ear.

  “I can’t be kissing you if we haven’t even been properly introduced, can I? That wouldn’t be very ‘gentleman like’, now would it?” He whispered into her ear. His warm breath on the nape of her neck, causing her to shudder ever so
slightly, but enough for him to feel her respond to his close proximity.

  She pushed him again. Less harshly this time.

  “That still doesn’t give you the right to kiss me. I’m not in the habit of kissing criminals,” she scoffed.

  Actually, Saira wasn’t in the habit of kissing anyone lately. Tall, curvy, nerdy girls who spent too much time in the research library and way too much time working alone in a lab didn’t exactly get hit on a lot. More to the point, they never got hit on by trim, taught, intelligent and drop dead gorgeous guys who looked like they’d just stepped out of a spy movie.

  “Look over my shoulder at the three heads searching the crowds. Any guesses as to who they’re looking for? We need to look like we’re having a nice little snog until they move on their way. They’ve probably got all the nearby stations covered, so they don’t know we are here for sure.”

  His hips were pressed firmly against hers, her curves fitted into his athletic figure like they were made to measure. Just the thought of his manhood rubbing against her mound made her weak at the knees. This wasn’t like before when she didn’t know where the feelings were coming from. This was different. She knew exactly where the heat below her belly was coming from and why.

  As he pulled away from her slightly, she felt a sense of loss. She regretted ending their first kiss so abruptly. The desire to feel his warm, moist lips over her mouth overcame her and she fisted the hair at the back of his head and pulled him to her as she kissed him hungrily with open lips, her tongue probing him passionately.

  “Steady on,” he whispered into her mouth. “No need to go that far.”

  Suddenly a wave of sheer embarrassment stuck her like a physical blow. He didn’t want to kiss her. He had no desire to be kissed by her, passionately or otherwise. She was a fool. He only wanted to hide from the men scanning the crowds for them, nothing more. It was purely a practical kiss.