by C. I. Black
“So if Grey trusts us, she’ll trust us?” Okay, he could work with that.
“Anaea and Ryan think it goes beyond that,” Raven said. “Anaea threatened her to see what would happen and she’s pretty sure the two are inamorated.”
“That’s annoying.” Being inamorated made rational drakes irrational. That got drakes killed. And he had no idea if that negated everything else he thought he could work with.
Another flash of light and snap of pain. For the love of the Mother, stop trying to warn him of a threat and show him something useful.
“If it’s true and Ivy thinks we’re Grey’s coterie, she won’t do anything to endanger us.”
“That’s a big if.” He downed his drink in one swig and poured himself another half-glass.
“The other option is to dispose of her and risk having Tobias go after Grey.” Raven cocked an eyebrow.
“And with Tobias’s resources, as soon as he turns his attention to Grey, he’ll find our puzur.” Nero blew out a heavy breath, but it did little to ease the tension tightening his neck and shoulders. “Fine. You’ve got until Grey and Ivy get the coin piece from the museum to figure out how to deal with Tobias.”
Raven finished her drink and stood. “And what will you be doing?”
“Trying to figure out how to deal with Tobias as well.” Another snap of pain, this one stronger, seared through his head. It consumed his vision with white light, radiated down his neck, and filled his chest. For a second he was on fire, every nerve alight with agony, then his vision cleared.
Except he no longer stood in his office.
A freezing wind cut through his suit. He stood on a riverbank, in a deserted gravel parking lot for a warehouse. To his right, through the naked tree branches, towered a bridge with a tall sweeping metal arch, its light glimmering in the half-frozen water on the other side of a chain-link fence. That bowstring-like arch had to be the West End Bridge, which meant the water was the Ohio River.
A few feet away, a crumpled form groaned. The form’s aura strobed with great pulses of yellow light, both powerful and human. Any drake without the ability to tell the difference between a human mage’s aura and a drake’s wouldn’t see the strobing. All they’d see was a clear, radiant strength that shimmered tight to his body. They’d see a baby drake, barely a hatchling, and they’d see the potential for ferocious, dangerous magic.
The question was, had this human come into his power naturally, or was he a by-product of Zenobia’s coup? Nero had realized too late that some of the humans forced to body-share with Zenobia’s dragons, those who hadn’t developed earth magic fast enough, had been tossed — most likely insane — back into the human world. Except earth magic didn’t develop at a consistent rate and some of those humans were now coming into their magic.
And from the strength of this human’s aura, his magic was something powerful and dangerous.
His aura flared and he screamed, tipping on his side and curling into a ball. Agony tightened his face and made the muscles in his neck taut. He gasped for breath, his cheek pressed against a frozen puddle, and screamed again.
Diablo, Nero called, focusing his mental connection with all the members of the Asar Nergal to just Diablo.
What? Diablo growled.
What? the growl came again, an echo whispered across the mental connection.
Nero fought to concentrate past the pain in his head to create a clear connection. I’ve got a new one.
New one, the echo hissed. New one?
Nero ground his teeth. White lightning burst through him. His mental connection with Diablo wavered, the angry black drake’s essence flickering.
Gone, then back.
Gone, then a shadow of what it had been.
Gone, then—
Crack.
Sharp pain sliced across his cheek. He jerked forward. Something popped and another crack bit his cheek. Raven snapped into sight before him, her hand raised to hit him again, her eyes wide. The parking lot vanished, but the agony screaming through his head remained.
“I’m back.”
“You were convulsing again,” she said, her voice trembling. Her gaze dipped to his feet. He let his follow. His crystal glass lay in pieces on the floor in a puddle of expensive scotch.
A gust of wind whooshed behind him. “What the hell?” Diablo growled.
Nero straightened as best he could in the chair, his head throbbing. He couldn’t let Diablo see him like this. It was bad enough Raven had. Thank the Mother none of the kids had seen it.
“Sorry. We got cut off,” Nero said.
Diablo’s gaze dipped to the floor and his eyes narrowed. “Is that the good stuff?”
“There’s a mage in a parking lot. The West End Bridge is in sight.”
“Which side of the river?” Diablo asked.
Nero had no idea. “I don’t want to make it too easy for you.”
“Yeah. Would hate to do that. You know I need to deliver clothes to Grey and the you’ll-take-care-of-her drake.”
Nero jerked to his feet and twisted his pain into what he hoped looked like rage. “And I will take care of it. You find this mage before you need to finish with Grey.”
“Or what?”
A rope of wind snapped past Nero and slammed Diablo face-first to the floor. “I’ve had just about enough,” Raven growled.
Diablo bared his teeth and wrenched against the wind, but Raven’s power surged and kept him locked in place.
“It’s been a difficult day. Stop behaving like a hatchling and start acting like a member of this coterie.” Her wind yanked him to his feet and shoved him against the already broken bookshelf near the window. “Please.”
The rage in his eyes softened. For a moment, it looked more like soul-rending agony than rage, then he blinked and, while the rage returned, it simmered behind a sense of tenuous control. “The West End Bridge?”
“Yes. Listen for the screaming.”
“Wonderful. A painful birth of earth magic usually means something dangerous,” Diablo said.
“And I don’t know if it’s one of Zenobia’s rejects or not.”
“Even better.” Diablo rolled his eyes. “The human might be insane.”
“So be careful.” Raven poured a half-glass of scotch into her empty glass and handed it to Nero. “I’m sure Ryan has a bag packed for Grey and Ivy by now. I’ll get it and meet you at the safe house.”
Nero downed the scotch in one quick gulp, letting the liquid burn down his throat. “I’ll work on getting you more information.”
“Don’t bother.” With a whoosh, Diablo vanished.
“He’s angry about Andy,” Raven said, pouring more scotch into the glass.
“He’s going to be the threat he’s worrying about if he’s not careful.” A reckless drake was a dead drake. But maybe that was what Diablo wanted. Maybe his connection with Andy had been of the soul kind. Before Hunter and Anaea, Nero wouldn’t have thought it possible for a dragon to be inamorated with a human, and now there were two of the dragon-human pairs living under his roof.
White light flashed across his sight but didn’t manifest into a vision. The newly birthed human mage in the parking lot screamed again, and the echo in Nero’s head screamed, too. A drake without control of his magic was also a dead drake.
CHAPTER 27
Diablo gated to the West End Bridge, the beast within him screaming to break something. Nero’s agony had slammed into him through the psychic connection the moment the doyen had reached out. It had stolen all thought, leaving only his beast’s instinct to fight anything, everything. Just fight.
Mother, he didn’t know how Nero did it, and from Nero’s behavior, Diablo was pretty sure the doyen didn’t know his pain sliced through the psychic connection. If Diablo had been thinking straight, he would have warned Nero. Most members of the Asar Nergal were loyal to Nero, but that didn’t mean some of them weren’t also opportunistic. A weakness like that could open the door to challenges, and whil
e Diablo didn’t doubt Nero could handle any upstart drake — he’d handled Diablo’s beast just fine — constant challenges would make the public coterie unstable and put the hidden one, the puzur, in danger.
This was a mess. Grey bringing that green drake into the middle of his kids, endangering them and his sister—
Now Nero had his dugga magic striking him with crippling pain. It was bad enough Regis was likely going crazy, but the word whispered through Court was that the Handmaiden had disappeared and so had King Constantine. Actually, word was that Regis had finally murdered his father, sending his soul into the universal ether and not bothering to have him reborn, since a reborn gold drake could be a contender to Regis’s throne.
A frozen wind gusted in his face, pulling him from his fury to pay attention to his surroundings.
Stupid, stupid drake. That’ll get you killed, too. And then who’d be around to protect Raven?
Except it had been Raven who’d slammed him to the floor with her wind magic and reminded him of who he was… or at least was trying to be.
When had she become the responsible one? She was still so young, barely over two hundred years old, and yet she was the one with a steady head, able to sort through the mess of emotions flooding her from her empathic ability, when all he could do was try to block as much of his as possible.
Except even when she was tossing him across Nero’s office and looking fierce and in control, he had sensed her fear. Fear for him — more like heartbreak for him over his best friend’s death, which only made his beast furious — and fear for Nero.
The wind gusted again, carrying a ghostly hint of a scream and an emotional whisper of fear, heart-rending, desperate fear.
It seized tight in Diablo’s chest and his empathic power flared, connecting against his will to this human. More pain, more fear, more desperation.
It crushed him, stealing his breath in a way he’d never experienced before. Whatever this kid was experiencing, it was overwhelming.
He scanned the area, straining to hear another scream and figure out where the kid was. He had a fifty-fifty chance of having randomly picked the correct side of the river, but without another scream or burst of pain, he wouldn’t know if he’d guessed right. He’d arrived just off a walking path in the leafless bushes on the wrong side of a chain-link fence. To his left stood a construction trailer with the company’s logo painted on the side in dark red and blue, a dinged and dirt-covered backhoe, and a pile of dirt and cement dividers. Over his shoulder towered the West End Bridge, recognizable from its great sweeping steel arch.
Another flare of agony hit his empathy, followed by another scream. The kid wasn’t far away. This side of the river, down the path on the other side of the bridge. He gated to the fence’s other side and bolted toward the pain, his footsteps crunching in the ice and salt slicking the asphalt. A quick glance over his shoulder confirmed the path was clear even though it was only early evening. He drew up his gate magic — so powerful he didn’t need a power word, just a thought. A gate formed in front of him, catching his next step and tossing him out farther down the path without making him lose stride. Another check for witnesses and another gate mid-run.
He gated past the opening of the bridge, flashing from one shadow on the path to the next without missing a step. The scream came again, and the pain slammed into him. He lurched out of another gate, his knees buckled with the force of the agony, but caught his balance and slid across a frozen puddle into another gate that tossed him out near a flickering orange streetlight standing at the edge of the path and a parking lot.
Someone whimpered, and the pain enveloped him, now a giant wave he couldn’t keep back no matter how hard he tried. His beast surged in response, needing to fight against it, kill the danger, not knowing it wasn’t in danger. He gasped, trying to breathe past the pressure in his chest. A few feet away, a body writhed in the gravel, a brilliant yellow aura pulsing like a desperate heartbeat.
“Hey,” Diablo said, fighting to keep his beast back. He drew a few steps closer, but not within reach. An aura this bright and with this much pain meant that whatever magic the kid had developed, it was powerful from the get-go and most likely deadly. For those rare humans whose earth magic awakened, empaths curled into balls and sobbed or went catatonic, wind and water magic came on slowly like a wave or a building storm, while enhanced physical abilities like speed and strength didn’t get noticed until they accidentally ran into or broke something.
The kid whimpered and his chest heaved with rapid breaths. He shifted just enough to glare at Diablo with a brown eye lit by his aura, making it appear gold.
“Hey.” Diablo plastered on his calmest expression, but his body — and the beast — remained tense, and he still didn’t draw closer. Nero had said he didn’t know if this mage was natural or not. Another reason not to step too close. Natural human mages were less likely to go insane, especially if Raven got to them soon enough, but the unlucky bastards Zenobia had abducted — and forced to share their bodies with a dragon soul long enough for their earth magic to awaken — were almost all without a doubt insane. Very few human souls were strong enough to survive that kind of shock and stay intact.
The not-really-gold eye blinked, and the kid’s aura flickered, vanishing for a too-long heartbeat and dousing the parking lot into darkness. Even the streetlight behind Diablo went out, leaving only the pile of snow on the far side as the only pale spot around.
“I’m here to help,” Diablo said.
Or kill you if you’re a danger to my puzur.
He shoved that thought back.
The eye opened again, and his aura exploded into brilliant luminescence. Pain screamed through the empathic link and the kid gasped. “Help me?”
“Yeah.” Although it would be easier if he just passed out. With this kind of pain, if they got into a taxi, the driver would likely demand they go to the hospital and not Raven’s warehouse on the outskirts of town. But gating with a newly awakened — and conscious — mage was more problematic. Experiencing that without understanding how the world really worked usually broke their minds completely.
Another blast swept through Diablo. The kid convulsed, his aura blazing. He screamed then gasped, three quick breaths, before another explosion roared through him. His knees pulled tighter to his chest, and he sobbed.
The pressure in Diablo’s chest tightened. His throat hurt, and he wasn’t going to admit that it was more than just the kid’s emotions affecting him. His beast howled at the pain and the fear and, Mother of All, how much Diablo wanted to help this kid. No one deserved this. Certainly not a human. Their lives were too short for so much torture.
“I’m going to get help,” he said.
He ran out of the kid’s sight then gated in behind him and punched him in the head, knocking him out. Please let that have been so fast he didn’t know what hit him.
The kid sagged, his too-tight muscles suddenly limp, and his aura softened. Diablo had known it was powerful but hadn’t realized how sharp it had been. The tightness in his chest eased — but not as much as he’d hoped, with the beast howling for the fight it hadn’t gotten.
With his enhanced strength, he drew the kid into his arms and realized he probably wasn’t a kid. While the young man could still be in his late teens, it was more likely he was in his twenties, although after living almost four hundred years it was sometimes difficult to actually determine a human’s age. It was unusual for a human mage to come into his power so long after puberty — adding more evidence to the idea that this human had body-shared with a dragon and was most likely crazy — but hey, Ryan’s magic hadn’t fully developed until his thirties, so it wasn’t impossible.
Diablo summoned a gate to the safe house and stepped through. Regardless of how old this kid— man was, with the power still radiating from his aura even while unconscious, this human had a challenging road ahead of him if was going to stay sane. But that was now a problem for Raven.
CHAPTER 28<
br />
Ivy stared out the window at the glittering lights of the Vancouver skyline and rubbed the collar of her robe across her jaw, savoring the feel of the soft fabric against her still-sensitive skin. After making love in the shower, they’d stripped in full, cleaned off, and made love again in the bed. Then they’d cuddled, the ever-present ache in her soul gone, and her heart filled with such warmth she was certain she was glowing.
She’d stayed there until Grey had drifted off. She’d wanted to stay there forever, never leave his embrace, but she wouldn’t be able to do that until she’d figured out how to escape from Regis and Tobias.
With a renewed heaviness in her heart, she’d slipped from the bed, careful not to wake Grey, wrapped herself in the robe, and explored the suite. She’d found a washer and dryer and tossed their underwear in to dry, but — save for collecting their phones, Grey’s wallet, and her passport — she didn’t bother cleaning up the rest of their clothes still scattered in the bathroom. Diablo was bringing them new outfits to help them blend in with the reception-goers at the museum in less than an hour, and, if she was being honest with herself, she really didn’t know what to do with the clothing once gathered.
Now she stood at the floor-to-ceiling window at the back of the living room, listening to the hum of the dryer and stroking the robe against her jaw, wishing it was Grey’s rough stubble instead, wishing they were back in the shower and nothing else mattered but him making her feel all those incredible things again.
A shudder swept through her, drawing a renewed ache between her thighs and making her crave him again. She pressed a finger against her locket, unable to stop herself. She’d promised she wouldn’t save his memory, but she’d never said she wouldn’t save hers. And Mother, what a memory! If she couldn’t figure out how to escape Regis and Tobias, she wanted to have their lovemaking seared into her locket forever.
Except everything within her cried to be free. More now, since she’d realized the truth about her and Grey. He hadn’t admitted it and she hadn’t been willing to ruin the mood and press for information, but they had purred. And just like she knew what a refrigerator was, she knew what purring meant. Her soul had picked him. A drake of a different color and element, from different coteries and an enemy of her coterie. She’d gotten the impression it was dangerous for him to return to Court and if she returned, she doubted Tobias would ever let her leave again.