by Bianca James
Something was buzzing or vibrating. Or both.
Bryce reached over to retrieve a cell phone from the bedside table.
“Where did that come from?”
“My passport contact gave it to me. It’s a pre-paid and can’t be traced back to me. He’s the only one with the number and he said he’d call as soon as he had the passports sorted.”
A look of disappointment laced with anger darkened her face as Bryce took the call.
Chapter 21
“I’ve found the girl. She’s alone. I have no idea where he is but it’s for certain he’s got the coin. How do you want me to proceed?”
It hadn’t take Blane long to run Saira’s description past a few of the hotels surrounding Café Surf. He got lucky and got a hit on the third one. Finally, he was getting the break he deserved.
He waited patiently for the disguised voice to respond. He wanted his superiors to make the call. That way, he couldn’t be blamed if things went bad. Not that he had any intention of allowing that to happen. Not this time. He was prepared and highly motivated this time.
Finally, the voice on the other end of the phone replied, “Take the girl. Use her as leverage to secure the coin. Then kill them both.”
Blane’s mouth smiled but his eyes were cold and harsh. Those were the exact words he wanted to hear.
He patted his pocket to ensure he hadn’t forgotten his most important piece of equipment, then left the car unlocked as he made his way to the rear of the hotel. Nobody, not even a bloody giant was going to stop him. He was ready for anything and he’d have the girl no matter what the cost. With the girl, the coin was as good as his.
Chapter 22
Passports in hand, Bryce made his way back to the hotel. He had wanted to take the Tube to meet his contact but the meeting place dictated by the forger meant it was more convenient to travel on foot. Of course he could have shifted into his dragon and flown there, but central London wasn’t really the place to be doing that. So Bryce ended up pounding the pavement with the thriving mass of humanity that seems to be on the streets day and night, regardless of the hour. Didn’t these people have jobs to do or homes to go to?
Of course, in between dodging the masses of people crowding every footpath, Bryce had time to reflect on the recent and all too memorable tryst with the gorgeous girl who turned out to not be so much of a nerdy geek after all. In fact, she was showing signs of being quite the little vixen. He wanted her. He wanted her badly and wished he could let his dragon free to fly him there right now.
The scent of her hair and shampoo was still fresh in his memory. Her touch. The primal sounds she made when he made her climax. And the way she touched him . . . he felt himself growing hard at the very thought of her soft smooth fingers wrapping around his —
There was the hotel. Finally, he’d fought the pedestrian traffic like a salmon going upstream long enough and now he’d reached his destination and both he and his dragon were going to claim Little Miss Goody-Two-Shoes in every way imaginable. And then some new ones, just for fun.
He’d never felt such desire to mate before. He reached their room at last. Bryce was so hard he thought he was going to burst out of his pants.
Fingers trembling in with pent up sexual frustration, Bryce fumbled the keycard and tried to insert it into the lock, but the door creaked open of its own accord. It wasn’t locked.
Rage blasted through him as he looked around the room and took in the empty bed, the sheets stained with blood spatter and the envelope on the pillow adorned with a black circle within which was drawn a cross. The Quartered Circle. The room where they had become intimate for the first time had become a tableau of violence — both actual and implied.
They’ve taken her. They’ve taken Saira.
Involuntarily he reached for the pouch around his neck. The coin emanated warmth, even though the special shielding of the material used to fashion the pouch. So much power in such a small coin. So much evil power.
He could never let it come to be possessed by The Circle. No matter the cost, it was his sworn duty not to let that happen. The consequences were unthinkable.
To be concluded in the final installment – Loved by the Dragon . . .
Loved by the Dragon
(Relic Hunters Book 3)
Chapter 1
A sickening lump of dread congealed in Bryce’s stomach. Not from fear, but from a morbid dread which also clutched at his chest. Dragon shifters didn’t feel fear, at least not the same way humans did.
He surveyed the scene, too stunned to move. He’d seen enough episodes of Dexter to know that the blood spatter pattern over the bed covers was from a violent encounter. And there was quite a lot of it, too. His hands balled to fists as rage erupted through him. Had she put up that much of a fight?
That’s my girl, he thought, but he hoped she hadn’t gotten herself killed trying to be a hero. That was supposed to be his job and where was he while all this was going down? Not with her, where he should have been. He cursed the paranoid passport forger and his stupid antics. Instead of a cloak and dagger meeting, Bryce should have insisted he brought the passports to them or at the very least, he should have taken Saira with him.
He could barely bring himself to say her name. Emotion clawed at the back of his throat, choking him each time he pictured her face or thought her name.
A sound caught his attention. A low rumble almost like a . . .
He looked at the cat carrier. Kitty was fast asleep, purring contentedly. Alright, a sound exactly like a purring cat.
“Typical cat. Eat. Sleep. Repeat. If only you could tell me what happened here. Wait . . . maybe —”
Bryce crossed the room in a single stride and opened the cat box, carefully removing kitty with shaking hands. He moved to the bed and sat on the edge with kitty in his lap as he rubbed the back of his neck. He seemed to like that, if the loudness of the purring was any indicator.
Closing his eyes, he tried to recreate the bond he’d shared with the cat when Saira removed the tracking chip, only this time, he wanted to fully connect with the animal, not just block its ability to sense pain. He’d never attempted anything like this before. Then again, he’d never cared about anyone so much before and he was desperate for answers. He couldn’t lose her.
Slowly, the purring subsided as kitty’s mind began to give itself up to the practiced art of dragon sorcery. It wasn’t a mind control parlor trick as he’d described it to Saira in the hope that she might accept such an explanation as being scientifically feasible. This was ancient dragon shifter magic in its most basic and simple form. It wasn’t something dragon shifters boasted about or even revealed unless they absolutely had to. Centuries of being hunted and persecuted as evil and corrupt abominations had ensured that dragon shifters kept a low profile and did their best to hide their magic.
It was difficult enough being a normal dragon shifter, but being a dragon shifter entrusted with one of the thirty pieces of silver was even more challenging and dangerous. Bryce had far more at risk than a dragon shifter who wasn’t one of the thirty Chosen Ones. That’s why the Chosen were forbidden to take a mate. The demise of Terryn and the loss of his coin for centuries was a case in point. He let his love for his mate blind him to his sworn duty. It cost his clan custody of the coin. It also cost Terryn and his mate their lives. The laws governing those selected to be among the Chosen had been in existence through the ages for good reason. Protection of the coins was everything. The cursed coins couldn’t be destroyed, so the only way to keep humankind safe was to keep them apart and out of the hands of those who sought to use the power of the curse for their own malevolent ends.
None of it made sense. Then again, looking at anything from the point of view of a cat was unlikely to make much sense, even under the most ideal circumstances. And this situation hardly qualified as that.
Fragmented images flashed through Bryce’s mind as he joined with the cat. Disjointed visions that made no sense and human voice
s that were nothing more than indecipherable sounds. Bryce could make out Saira plain enough. The cat had her imprinted in his mind, but the other person appearing in the jagged filmstrip that was the cat’s memory wasn’t clearly identifiable. One thing that did quickly become clear, though, was Saira taking a swing at her assailant and punching him square in the nose followed by images of blood spraying from the nose of the deserving victim.
With a gasp of relief, Bryce pieced together that the blood spatter didn’t belong to Saira. She’d bloodied her attacker. Good girl. A faint recognition of the attacker clawed at the edges of Bryce’s memory, trying unsuccessfully to sharpen its focus.
Filling in the gaps and trying his best to interpret what the cat had seen, Bryce pieced together a brief but violent encounter between Saira and her kidnapper. She must have answered a knock at the door, assuming it was Bryce. The kidnapper had forced his way into the room and struggled to overpower her as she smashed him in the face, turning the crisp white bed linen into a Jackson Pollock canvas. Eventually, though, she succumbed, most likely because of the chloroform he used to subdue her. The pungent smell of it still lingered in the air.
Still stroking the cat as he broke the spell, Bryce reached for the envelope. He already knew what was in it, so he didn’t even bother to read the enclosed note. As he held it in his hand, though, the memory of where he had seen Saira’s abductor came to the fore.
But it can’t be. How did he . . .
Chapter 2
With her mouth tasting like the bottom of a bird cage, a filthy bird cage at that and her hands and legs bound to a wooden chair, Saira regained consciousness and began to take stock of her surroundings. That process took all of about ten seconds because she could see nothing but grey, nondescript cinder block walls on three sides and assumed it would be much the same behind her with the exception of the doorway. There had to be a doorway behind her, right? They hadn’t entombed her like one of the Egyptian Pharaohs she’d studied, had they? Suddenly fear gripped her heart and squeezed the breath from her lungs. Was this how these relic hunter psychos punished those who helped their enemies?
They hadn’t blindfolded her or gagged her. From that, she surmised that they didn’t care if she saw them and if she screamed, nobody would hear her. Maybe they didn’t blindfold her because they had no intention of ever coming back. She wasn’t going to see anyone again. Ever.
To drive back the impending panic attack that she felt welling within her, Saira closed her eyes and focused on the events that brought her to this moment. The fog of the chloroform began to recede, allowing the memories to slowly creep back. The knock at the door. Answering it with a heart filled with anticipation and perhaps just a little lust. The attacker launching a full body rugby tackle at her and ending up on the bed with him trying to shove a pungent rag over her face.
The punch. She smiled. She remembered that. The satisfying connection of her fist with his nose and the gratifying shower of warm blood all over the place as he screamed like a little girl. His nose . . . she remembered now . . . it was already bandaged. It was the professor. He’d found her, drugged her and brought her to this featureless tomb. He was one of them.
Her eyes flew open with shock. She wondered how long he’d been a part of The Circle and trembled at the thought of their time together. To calm her racing heartbeat, she closed her eyes once more and tried to relax as she listened for sounds that might give her a clue where she was. If she could escape from the chair and then from the room, knowing that might make all the difference.
But she heard nothing of significance, although if she listened hard and really concentrated, she thought she could hear the very faint sound of music in the distance. She could barely make out what it was and although she didn’t want to believe it, she could have sworn she heard Billy Ray Cyrus singing Achy Breaky Heart.
Her last thought before the chloroform in her system reclaimed her — Fuck me, the last thing I’ll ever hear before I die is Billy Ray Cyrus . . . kill me now.
Chapter 3
Bryce shoved the envelope in his pocket as he scooped up kitty, ready to secure him in his cat carrier. He couldn’t just leave him there and he knew how much he meant to Saira, despite her reservations about naming him. She hadn’t said as much, but he’d read her thoughts and emotions while he was inside her head. She loved the cat but was afraid of being hurt if she got too attached to it. He kind of got that, but still, the poor thing couldn’t go through its life being called kitty, could it?
“Okay big fella, I hope you’re ready for this,” Bryce whispered to the cat as he pulled the door shut behind him and made his way to the fire escape.
Hoping the door wasn’t alarmed, Bryce shoved it open with his shoulder and breathed a sigh of relief when alarm bells didn’t sound. That was a lucky break, he hoped it was a sign of things to come as he pounded up the stairs, two at a time, toward the roof. He was going to need all the luck he could get if he was going to rescue Saira and keep the coin from the clutches of The Circle.
As soon as he reached the rooftop, Bryce took in a lungful of air and looked around at the cityscape. This was where he belonged. His dragon churned within him in agreement, having been confined for far too long. Looking around once more to ensure he wasn’t being watched, Bryce reached deep within himself and released the bonds that held his dragon at bay, giving it free rein to undergo the change from human to dragon form.
Skin stretched, bones and joints cracked as the body of the mighty beast morphed from the impossibly small human body that harbored it. Within seconds, from the enormous shiny, scaly body of the dragon the tail and neck uncoiled at either end. The tail whipped the deadly barbs at its tip through the air like an overgrown but very excited puppy. As the neck unfurled its eyes, bulging atop the spiny head, opened revealing the primal elongated irises which glowed eerily red in the moonlight.
With a hearty roar of unambiguous pleasure, the beast puffed its chest and spread its black, leathery wings to their full extent. The result was a wingspan about as large as a private jet but far more spectacular. Bryce’s dragon had been restrained far too long and now it was time for it to be let off the leash and fly. After all, that’s what dragons were born to do.
Locking two of its razor sharp claws through the handle of the cat carrier, the fearsome creature flapped its wings effortlessly taking it aloft without a sound other than a gentle rush of breeze. It had been centuries since such magnificent winged beast had flown over the city, giving rise to legends of dragons and the knights who fought them. But now was not the time to be dwelling on ancient history. Bryce was on a mission and needed to remain focused if he was to succeed. The dragon set course, stretched its long neck for improved aerodynamics as it beat its massive wings with powerful strokes, sending it soaring effortlessly higher and higher seeking the cover of the clouds. Bryce hoped he wasn’t too late.
Chapter 4
Diving from the cloud cover at full speed like a fighter-bomber commencing an attack run, Bryce’s dragon sought landmarks to make the final approach to the manor house they both called home, in the historic and highly desirable Hampstead Grove. The London Zoo, an easy to spot landmark, came into view and from there the dragon could follow the ribbon of headlights on the A502 all the way to the manor house.
Landing with the cat carrier proved to be somewhat precarious, as the dragon’s huge wings had to keep it aloft in a hover maneuver while the carrier was released, freeing the clawed feet to grip the lawn outside the manor as the dragon completed its landing.
As soon as its wings retracted, the dragon immediately began to shift into human form once more and there stood Bryce, brushing his silky black hair into place with his hand as he picked up the carrier and marched purposefully toward the imposing residence. There was something quite surreal about a behemoth of a dragon landing in the courtyard of a house that looked like something out of a Downton Abbey episode, but there was no one there to witness it. Bryce lived alone and for goo
d reason. The staff that ran the manor lived off site and were never permitted on the property after hours.
His long legs carried him quickly across the lawn toward what were once horse and carriage stables in days past. Now, though, they held a different kind of horsepower. Pressing his palm onto the biometric reader, Bryce entered a code into the adjacent keypad which resulted in the tall, heavy doors grinding open on a steel track, like those of an aircraft hangar.
The lights came on automatically, illuminating the cavernous garage and displaying a row of cars either side of the long, rectangular space. Each car was parked at a forty five degree angle, its grille pointed to the center runway of the garage. Every super car made in the past thirty years was represented in the collection. Each row of cars was so long that the rearmost car couldn’t even be seen, much less identified. It was a collection that would make Jay Leno drool with envy.
Bugatti Veyron, McLaren 675LT, Lamborghini in both Gallardo and Huracan variants, after all, too many Lamborghini’s was barely enough as far as Bryce was concerned, all occupied the front rows of Bryce’s grid. Further back, an Aston Martin Vanquish, Ferrari 488GTB and an Audi R8 V10 rounded off a superb collection. The remaining cars comprised a variety of examples from the stables of Porsche, Mercedes and Maserati. There was even a left hand drive Chevrolet Corvette Z06 from the other side of the pond. It was a mouthwatering collection that would earn the respect and admiration of even the wealthiest of the oil Sheiks and one almost impossible to put a value on, given that some of the cars were so rare and highly collectible, but right now, none of that was of any interest to Bryce.