Naked Dragon

by Annette Blair

  McKenna knelt beside Bastian and settled in the crook of his arm. She couldn’t get enough of looking at him. “You’re alive. I can’t believe I didn’t lose you.” His unexpected return to her, here in Ciarra’s cave, both of them from different planes and centuries, was a magick so incredible, she couldn’t fathom it. Call it serendipity, or just plain destiny, but the universe and all its elements had aligned to bring them together, him, lost to one world but more alive than ever in hers.

  McKenna found her true self in his arms, and she liked what she saw, thanks to him.

  She stroked his every feature and scar, memorizing him all over again.

  “You lived,” he said, cupping her face. “I can’t believe you lived. I’ve been waiting to die, because you died, and—Did you say something about a baby?”

  “Mmm.” Her smile grew. “We’re going to have one. And it’s your fault.”

  “I should hope so.”

  She took a swim in his violet eyes. “I love you.”

  “I have always loved you. Now I love you both. I will stand behind you always.”

  “Beside me, please, with my hand in yours?”

  “What? No more grunt?”

  “I love your alpha self, the man who turned into a proud dragon to protect me.”

  “Marry me,” he whispered, kissing the palm of her hand.

  She smiled. “How does a dragon marry?”

  “In tails?”

  Turn the page for a special look at

  Annette Blair’s next

  A Works Like Magick novel

  BEDEVILED ANGEL

  Coming soon from Berkley Sensation!

  Chance Godricson was supposed to live and Kenya Saint-Denis was supposed to die, but when rescue came, he gave her his place . . . and became her guardian angel. Now she’s agoraphobic. But to be worthy of the life given her, she’s become a surrogate—bearing children for those who would otherwise have none.

  Chance Godricson, guardian angel, is overly attached to Kenya. When he discovers that her life is about to fall apart, he’s ready to neglect the rest of his charges to care for her. The angel triumvirate of Everlasting is having none of it. Chance is knocked back to earth for Kenya’s sake, during which time he’s to make peace with his angelic role—or forfeit it—and suffer the consequences.

  ONE

  “How could you die at a time like this? ”

  Guardian Angel Fourth Class Chance Godricson rushed toward the new arrivals, his Technicolor dream robe flowing behind him. “Mountain climbing?” he shouted. “Really? With your responsibilities?”

  The newly deceased couple stepped back as Chance’s anger vibrated the rainbow sky dome of pre-everlasting.

  Minion angels in pastel robes materialized and propelled him away from the distressed couple, a firm hand on each of his wrists.

  Chance struggled against his wardens, until Isaiah, his mentor—an Albert Einstein double—appeared before him shaking his head, his bushy mustache making Chance want to scratch his own upper lip, though he resisted temptation as all angels should.

  Isaiah, with his uncanny ability to discern the emotions of others, sighed and scratched his fuzzy upper lip. That done, he firmed his spine and his expression. “You have no purpose in this sector. Even if you belonged here, those souls are not yours to protect, much less to chide.”

  Chance fisted his hands. “But Kenya Saint-Denis is my responsibility, and she’s carrying their child. In the remote location where they died, they won’t be found for weeks, months, if ever. What happens to an unprepared surrogate when no couple arrives to take the child she’s borne them? Kenya will be waiting, worrying.”

  Isaiah’s unibrow undulated like a fuzzy white caterpillar on the run. “You’ve already been warned. You spend too much time guarding that girl when others in your charge are also in need of your guardianship.”

  Chance’s thick feather wings snapped open and bristled of their own accord before he could draw them in. “Kenya’s needs are more in number and more urgent than the rest of my charges put together.”

  “Granted, the girl has fears . . . with good reason. Her fears have caused problems, however. Holy halo, her solutions have caused problems, but there is a limit to your role as her guardian. Her free will is her own. Not yours, and not to be toyed with. You cannot protect her from life, Chance.” Isaiah made a motion that dismissed his pastel-robed guards.

  The minions disappeared while Chance rubbed his wrists, from habit, not pain—pain did not exist here. When he looked up, Isaiah, too, had vanished.

  Chance found himself standing beside a precipice from which earth sat bared to his view, a brink, razor sharp in its implications, the earth’s pull and beauty both mesmerizing and frightening. From here, more than from anyplace else in heaven, the earthen plane loomed: visible, vulnerable, and open.

  Dangerously open.

  TWO

  Chance looked up to find Tavish, one of his trainees—a pupil who might someday outshine his teacher—standing before him.

  “Et tu, Tavish?” Chance asked as he watched Kenya in her living room, nothing but a huge flat TV for company, her belly big with child, flowers on her head, and scarves of every shade flowing around her while she ungracefully danced with the stars—alone—from the safety of her home.

  Agoraphobia: An abnormal fear of being in public places.

  Learning that her babe’s parents had died would not help her overcome her self-imposed isolation.

  “Are you here to warn me away from her, too?” Chance asked his friend.

  Tavish, a younger soul with an older body and a reasonably recent arrival, rocked on his heels. “Gabriel and Raphael are worried about you.”

  “And here I thought Isaiah sent you.”

  “No, Isaiah has washed his hands of you.”

  “Glad tidings. So what message do you bring from the high holy duo, precisely?”

  With the toe of his sparkling high-top Flyers, Tavish scratched a triangle in the pearlescent angel dust beneath their feet before he made eye contact. “Gabriel and Raphael believe that you reside too much in your heart, not here, but on the earthen plane . . . with Kenya.”

  “That’s not much of an accusation,” Chance said. “Kenya’s more angelic than I am.”

  “I will, unfortunately, grant you that, since you are more worldly than most, including the girl.”

  Chance straightened, relief washing over him. At least someone understood. “So you see my problem?”

  “I see it better than you, I believe. You are besotted. By a mortal.”

  “No . . . No,” Chance said. “No, I’m empathetic, like any guardian angel worth his wings.”

  Tavish smoothed his beard. “That’s the problem. To your neglected charges, you’re not worth your wings.”

  Chance kept the subject of their discourse—his unruly wings—from escaping and snapping in indignation. “That’s a harsh opinion.”

  “It’s not an opinion, but a judgment.”

  “A judgment?” Chance threw back his shoulders as understanding dawned. “Only the triumvirate can pass judgment.”

  Tavish held his tongue, though one Scot’s red brow rose on its own accord.

  Chance bristled and took his attention from Kenya to focus on Tavish. “You mean that Raphael and Gabriel called Michael—a bold move—and convened a Tribunal because of my behavior?”

  Chance’s distress dissolved in a blink, caught as he was, heart and soul, by observing and encouraging Kenya to sing to the unborn child. The babe she loved but would give away for the generous joy of making two people happy, three if you counted the babe in addition to its parents—who, it turned out, were too irresponsible to stay alive and raise it.

  “How long will Michael and the others observe me?” Chance asked.

  Tavish sighed. “Neither your mind nor your heart is here. You belong to earth and to her even now.”

  Chance dragged his gaze from Kenya and caught up with his friend’s words.
“I do not.”

  Tavish shook his head. “What is that song she sings?”

  “Toora, loora, loora. She’s half Irish and half Kenyan, but adopted by Irish parents, so she can toss the blarney with the best of them. I like that about her.”

  “You like a lot about her,” Tavish said. “Remember this: I am a better friend than you think.”

  “Fond of yourself are y—”

  Before Chance knew what Tavish was about, the Scot went shoulder to shoulder with him and shoved him off the precipice.

  The tear and burn of the feather torn from his wings accompanied Chance on his free fall, his scream lost in the whoosh of air filling his lungs.

  Keep reading for a special look at the next

  novel of the Lupi by Eileen Wilks

  BLOOD MAGIC

  Coming February 2010

  from Berkley Sensation!

  On a blistering noon at the tag-end of July, Balboa Park in San Diego offered plenty of green to sun-weary eyes. The paths in the Palm Canyon section were some of the park’s prettiest byways, though shade was scant now. With the sun directly overhead, it was reduced to furtive puddles at the feet of the palms’ arcing trunks.

  A tall man walked one of those paths alone, dressed head-to-toe in black.

  His hair was dark, his skin lightly tanned. His eyes were hidden by expensive sunglasses. From a distance he looked like a clump of shadow visiting its more dappled cousins along the bone-colored path.

  Rule Turner touched his sunglasses lightly. They didn’t need adjusting. He just liked the tactile reminder. They’d been a gift, a surprise present from Lily when the two of them returned from North Carolina with his son yesterday. She’d even found a smaller, identical pair for Toby, which the boy wore constantly. So Rule touched the shades and thought of Toby, and of Lily, and why he was here.

  Two men rounded a curve in the path, heading toward Rule. Neither wore sunglasses. The older one looked like a blacksmith or some primordial earth deity—bearded and burly and as if he might burst out of his slacks and shirt at any moment. His beard and hair were rusty brown shot with gray; his eyes were the color of roasted nuts. Tanned skin creased around craggy features in a way that suggested smiles came easily and often.

  He wasn’t smiling now.

  The other man looked younger and more dangerous . . . which was true in a sense. Benedict could kill faster and more surely than anyone Rule knew. He shared his companion’s muscular build, but fitted over an additional five inches of height. His features reflected his mother’s heritage, the cheekbones flat and high, the mouth wide, and his black hair was long enough to club back in a short tail.

  No smile lines around those dark eyes. He moved with the economy of an athlete or martial artist, which he was; he wore athletic shoes with jeans and an oversize, untucked khaki shirt.

  The shirt did nothing for his build or the bronze of his skin, but Benedict wouldn’t have thought of that. Clothes, like most things, were tactical tools to him. The shirt was appropriate for the setting and hid whatever weapons he’d deemed appropriate. Knives, certainly. Probably a handgun.

  Neither of them looked like Rule. Nor did they much resemble each other. A stranger wouldn’t have guessed the three of them were a father and his two living sons.

  The older man stopped some fifteen feet away. Benedict dropped back a few feet, guarding his rear. Rule continued walking until he was only three feet away, then stopped, too. Waiting.

  “Do you not kneel?” Rule’s father demanded.

  “I’m waiting to see who greets me.”

  Now there was a smile. A small one, but it reached the nut-brown eyes. “Your Rho.”

  Immediately Rule dropped to one knee, bending his head to bare his nape. He felt his father’s fingers brush his nape, and in Rule’s gut the portion of mantle that belonged to his birth clan—to Nokolai—leaped in response.

  The other mantle—the complete one—remained quiet. Leidolf didn’t answer to Nokolai.

  “Rise.”

  Rule did. And still he waited. Isen Turner might be wolf in his other form, but his son thought of him as more like a fox—canny, tricky, highly maneuverable. Isen could trip Machiavelli on his assumptions, so Rule did his best not to possess any.

  For once, Isen was blunt. “Why did you assume the Leidolf mantle?”

  Rule had already told him how it happened, though over the phone. For some months he’d carried the heir’s portion of the Leidolf clan’s mantle, due to trickery of the man who had been Leidolf’s Rho. Then Lily had been possessed by the wraith of one who, in life, had been Leidolf. Rule had needed the authority of the full mantle to command the wraith and save Lily. He’d taken it, killing the former Rho—and becoming leader of his clan’s enemies.

  But if anyone understood the difference between a chronology of events and a revelation of motive, it was Isen Turner. Rule kept his answer brief. “To save Lily.”

  “Was that the only reason?”

  “No.”

  Isen hmphed. “Taught you too well, haven’t I? Very well. You don’t speak of your other reasons. Is that because they are Leidolf business?”

  “In part. Mostly, however, I am bound by a promise I gave.”

  Isen’s bushy eyebrows climbed in surprise that might have been real. “A promise! Obviously I can’t ask what you promised, but who . . . that is my affair, as your Rho. Who did you promise?”

  Rule had considered what to say on this score already. He’d hew to the words of his promise, but give his father some meat to chew on. Cullen wouldn’t mind. “I can’t in honor give you the name, but he’s Nokolai, and you already possess the information he gave me, if not the conclusions he drew from that information.”

  “Do I, now?” The bushy eyebrows drew down, but in thought, not anger.

  One of the tactics Rule had learned from his father was when to shift the subject. “Benedict is angry with me.”

  Isen brushed that aside. “That’s a matter between brothers, not clan business. How can you be both Rho to Leidolf and Lu Nuncio to Nokolai?”

  With great difficulty. “If we speak of status, I’d suggest some default settings. When I’m at Nokolai Clanhome, I’m your Lu Nuncio. When I’m away from it, I’m Leidolf Rho.”

  “You assume you will remain my Lu Nuncio?”

  For the first time Rule smiled—small and wry, perhaps, but a genuine smile. “I assume only that your decision will not be based on anger or affection, but on what you think best for Nokolai. You asked how I could be both. That’s what I answered.”

  “True, true—though that’s a tiny dab of an answer, compared to the size of the problem. Do you see any advantage to Nokolai in having my heir be Rho to another clan?”

  “Certainly. Leidolf won’t be trying to kill you anymore.”

  Isen chuckled. “A refreshing change, yes, and one I’ll appreciate. But I think that with you as Rho, Leidolf will stop its assassination attempts whether you remain my heir or not. What else?”

  Rule stepped out on shaky ground then, but he stepped surely. Hesitation, doubt—both were reasonable, but revealing them was seldom useful. “No lupus has held two mantles in over three thousand years. Our oldest enemy has been stirring. Times are changing. I believe this is our Lady’s will. That it’s part of her plan to defeat the one we do not name.”

  This time Isen’s surprise was unmistakably real. Both eyebrows shot up—then descended in a scowl. “You think you’re privy to the Lady’s plans now?”

  “I’m guessing, of course. If the Lady has spoken to any of the Rhejes, they haven’t told us. But it’s a guess based on my gut, on . . .” Rule hesitated, then did his best to put words to what didn’t fit into words. “The mantles I carry are pleased by the situation. They . . . help. They make it easy for me to separate my roles.”

  “Hmm.” For a long moment Isen didn’t say anything. Then he asked, “And can you carry both full mantles? If I dropped dead right now, could you assume Nokolai’s compl
ete mantle?”

  “If I thought I couldn’t, I’d ask you to remove the Nokolai portion from me immediately. I will not risk the clan.”

  “A good answer, but a simple ‘yes’ would have been even better.”

  “A simple ‘yes’ would mean I was confusing fact with opinion.”

  “Your opinion.”

  “Yes. It’s based on unique experience, however. Assuming the full Leidolf mantle was . . .” He paused to fit words around what he meant as best as possible. “Simple. Not easy, no, but much simpler than when I was first forced to carry portions of two mantles. There’s . . . room now. They’re both already here. I’ve no reason to think assuming the full Nokolai mantle would be beyond me.”

  Isen nodded slowly. “Very well. I trust your judgment. I’ll make no definite decision yet, but for the time being you will remain my Lu Nuncio. We will use the protocol you suggested, but the parameters must be different. On this side of the country, you are my Lu Nuncio. On Leidolf’s side, you are their Rho.”

  “No.”

  This time only one eyebrow shot up. “No?”

  “If you and I meet on the street and I submit to you, the other clans won’t see your Lu Nuncio submitting. They’ll see Leidolf’s Rho submitting. I can’t agree to that.”

  “Who am I speaking to now—my Lu Nuncio, or Leidolf’s Rho?”

  “Both. The other clans are uneasy about what they see as Nokolai’s growing power. We don’t want to feed that.”

  A grin broke out on Isen’s face, folding up the creases in the way they were meant to go. “You’re good,” he said happily. “You’re damned good. I’ve done well with you. Yes, I agree, with some stipulations to be worked out—but that discussion will take place between the Leidolf Rho and the Nokolai Rho.” His eyes twinkled. “You can put me in touch with him later. Right now I want to embrace my son.”