“Eva.”
“I’ll find it, even if I have to turn Iceland upside-down.” Her declaration surprised even her.
He closed his eyes. “Too dangerous.”
“You saved my life. It’s the least I can do.”
Balthazar opened his mouth, but a prolonged scream replaced whatever words he wanted to say.
“You need to go, Miss Haraldsdóttir,” Lancelot said. He grabbed his brother’s arm and led him to the cage.
“What are you doing?”
“Balthazar might leave the house during his fight. If he did, we don’t know what could happen.” He closed and locked the door.
“Has he always done this?”
“Ever since he lost his scale.” Lancelot’s shoulders drooped. “I don’t know how much longer he can last.” He held out his arm. “After you.”
Her mind worked furiously. Ti’s arrival was imminent, but so was Balthazar’s death, and she hadn’t exactly promised that she would stay in the house. “What does Balthazar’s dragon scale look like?” she asked innocently as Lancelot locked the door and placed the key on a hook above the frame.
“Dark blue. I suppose it’s similar in shape to a snake’s, and much larger of course. Why?”
She stared at both of them. “Because I’m going to look for it.”
***
Eva silently walked to the front door and pulled her sneakers on. She wanted to see for herself what Balthazar was going through. Even though he was locked in a cage, she knew better than to take chances—she didn’t know what to expect. She looked around the door but didn’t see a security alarm. She stifled a laugh—like Balthazar needed it.
She managed to open the door without a sound and walked quickly to the side of the house. She didn’t see anyone and turned the corner. She continued moving down the width of the large home, her hand staying in contact with the stone wall to keep her on course until, in the faint starlight, she saw several ground-level windows covered with slats of wood.
From the inside.
No one was around. Eva stepped close to the wall and kneeled at a window farthest from the front of the house. The glass was cold as she pressed her hands against it, and angled herself so that she looked through a small gap between the wooden boards.
The room was lit with a dull orange glow.
Balthazar squirmed on the floor. His skin was covered in burns and blisters, and as she continued to watch, the flesh split. He raised his head and screamed, his expression contorted with torture.
Flames licked from the open wounds, and he cursed in an unintelligible language. His fists pounded the floor, and Eva felt the vibrations shiver through the wall. She plastered her face against the glass and watched as he crawled in circles, as his fingers dug into the earth and left long deep furrows, and streaks of blood, in their wake.
Suddenly, fire covered his body, and she slapped a hand over her mouth to swallow the scream that came unbidden to her throat. But her analytical mind observed the scene. The fire didn’t spread or fall to the floor, and though it burned through his wounds, it didn’t spread across his body, as if he had control over it.
Balthazar screamed again, and fire exploded from between his lips, dancing through the air and scarring the wall in front of him before he collapsed, his body unmoving despite the flames that continued to lick his skin.
Oh God, please let him be okay. She made a fist and pounded on the window. “Balthazar! Wake up!”
“I wouldn’t do that.”
***
As soon as Balthazar heard the bolt slide into place on the other side, he screamed in pain and doubled over. His dragon soul roared in fury as it tried to transform, and Balthazar shivered. A thick sheen of sweat covered his skin and dampened his clothes. He fumbled out of his pants, but the heat was relentless.
His shoulder throbbed with excruciating pain, the shameful reminder of his missing scale. As his dragon heat threatened to consume him, Balthazar wrapped his arms around his chest and hugged himself tightly, while his legs kicked out as if against an unseen opponent.
This was a fight he had to win. If his dragon soul escaped the mental barrier he had erected, they would both die. If the dragon fire escaped, it would burn him to ash and leave his dragon a tormented soul without a being strong enough to contain it. It would wander the earth or enter the kingdom of its long dead brothers and sisters.
Balthazar refused to let that happen, but his dragon wouldn’t listen if he tried to reason with it. The dragon only knew that its time was near to emerge and would do everything in its power to reveal its true form.
Shadows moved across the floor and crawled up the wall as the afternoon faded into darkness. His dragon soul had finally quieted, and Balthazar managed to sit up and lean against the cage. Its thick metal bars divided his view of the room beyond into small squares. He hated the cage, but it had become a necessity when Thorsson had opened the basement door too soon and almost got himself killed.
He stretched to relieve his cramped muscles and wrapped himself in the thick wool blanket he found folded in the corner of his prison. He had no idea how long the battle would take, but recently his dragon soul fought with more ferocity than usual. It scared him that it could only be a matter of time before the inevitable happened, and he would die alone, his dragon soul homeless.
However, as he sat shivering, waiting for his dragon to renew the fight, Balthazar had time to think. Mr. Fuentes worked for Ti, and Ti would be on his way here when he hadn’t heard from the strange shifter, or he was already in the city, waiting for his opportunity.
Balthazar didn’t want his hope to die. He had spent years scouring every inch of the peninsula with his brother’s help after his fight with Ti, with no luck. And years had turned into decades since his dreadful loss. Layers of dirt, rock, mud and salt had built up over the Peninsula. It would take an enormous amount of work to dig through and sift through the debris. And all with no guarantee of finding the piece of him that would make his body whole.
Balthazar clenched his teeth as another bolt of searing pain flashed through him. He gripped the bars with knuckle-white fists as his body convulsed around his dragon’s justified anger. Heat raged through his veins and his skin flushed red as his blood boiled beneath his skin. Sweat poured off his head and stung his eyes, but he refused to let go to wipe it away. The dragon fought and clawed against Balthazar’s mental barrier and demanded release.
This episode of transformation felt worse than normal, and he hung on as his dragon roared and spouted another intense bout of almost unbearable heat. The skin on his arms turned brown, then blackened as searing flames tried to fight their way through. He screamed in agony as the relentless fire cracked his skin open in several places. There was no blood, but a dull orange glow seeped through his body and brightened the room.
Balthazar struggled with the mental barrier, and his heart raced. His dragon soul had created a slight crack in the wall. He fought against Bal as he tried to mend the tear. “You have to stop!” he shouted. “We will die if you continue this madness!”
In his mind, he watched the dragon approach him until he felt the familiar melding of their minds. He shivered as his dragon settled, like molten lava over rock. It was logic versus instinct, reasoning versus uncontrollable anger. “You have denied me for too long,” Bal said in his deep, raspy voice. “You will contain me no longer. Before the Equinox has passed, I will emerge.”
Despite their similar conversations of past decades, Balthazar felt his heart sink in despair. His dragon soul was determined. “I beg you,” he whispered. “Please don’t do this. There may yet be an opportunity…”
“You have promised many times to find our scale, and you have not done so. I would rather die than to live another one hundred years of this half-life.”
“No, wait…” But Balthazar didn’t finish as another scream tore out of his throat. Bal pounded his mental barrier and cracked it in several places. If Balthazar didn’t get both
of them under control, Thorsson would find a dead body in the morning, and Ti would return to claim the hoard as rightfully his. He refused to allow that to happen.
Balthazar fixated his consciousness on the barrier and mentally hammered it back into place. Each time Balthazar repaired a crack, Bal found a way to smash through another part.
The next collision was so bad that Balthazar was thrown to the back of the cage. He grabbed his head as he felt a portion of his mental barrier slip. “You have to stop!” he shouted, shaking his head. He gasped for air and watched in horror as his chest and stomach turned black. His dragon charred his flesh, and the smell of burnt hair and skin, along with the unbearable agony of seared nerves, was too much. Balthazar felt his body slowly slump to the floor and he laid there, eyes open, hoping the end would come quickly.
***
Balthazar heard the door bolt being pulled back, but he didn’t care. Footsteps descended to the basement floor and stopped. He couldn’t see who it was—the person remained hidden in the darkness, but he could smell her. The pleasant scent of her skin rose above even the smell of burnt skin and hair. Eva. “Go away,” he whispered.
She approached slowly and finally halted a few feet away. Balthazar saw a pair of dark brown feet, with toenails painted red. Balthazar found the strength to crawl to the back of the cage. He didn’t want her to see him like this. Thankfully, his dragon remained quiet, and he could guess as to why. “Leave me alone.”
“Balthazar.” Her voice washed over him, a cool relief, and he inhaled her scent until it filled him.
He risked a glance over his shoulder, and his heart thundered in his chest—she stood beside the cage. “Eva,” he rasped, and coughed to clear his throat. “You shouldn’t be here. It’s dangerous.”
She grasped the bars. “You thought I would just stay in my room and ignore the fact that you were down here, alone and in pain? I couldn’t get into the basement, so I went outside and found the boarded windows.” Her hands shook, but otherwise Eva remained calm. “I saw you. I saw what happened to you.”
Balthazar cringed. He remembered the excruciating pain, his unrestrained screams, the fire licking across his naked flesh. He sat up, drawing his knees to his chest, and watched as Eva’s expression changed to fear. He looked down and swallowed the disgust that rose in his throat. His body was covered in first-degree burns. His shoulder had taken the brunt of his injuries, as usual—the deep gash still oozed blood. He knew the wounds would heal quickly, but to a human, it would be nauseating.
“Please leave, Eva,” he said quietly. When she didn’t answer, he sighed. “Eva, it’s all right.”
“No, it’s not.” Tears shined in her brown eyes. “I saw you. I saw your pain. It’s not all right.”
“The burns will go away. See?” He pointed at a large one on his arm, already healed and fading, the skin pink with new flesh. “Dragons heal quickly. There’s nothing to worry about.”
Tears spilled down her face. He choked as remorse flooded him, and he reached for her hands, but didn’t grab them. “Hey, I promise, I’m all right.”
She squeezed her eyes tightly and fought back a sob.
But she didn’t run away. She wasn’t hysterical. Upset and frightened, she remained beside him, and Balthazar inhaled sharply as an unfamiliar emotion washed over him. Gratitude. He wanted so badly to hold her close and comfort her.
She sat down so she faced him. Her presence calmed him, soothed his nerves, while his dragon remained suspiciously quiet. “I want to help you.”
He laughed at that, the action hurting his throat. “I’m sorry, but there’s nothing anyone can do for me.”
“Except find your scale.”
He raised his head.
“I’m going to find it.” Her voice held conviction. She scooted closer. “It’s possible that the dig by Lysuhóll Volcano may have turned up something. Let me go to the museum and see if it’s there.”
Balthazar shook his head, the effort shooting needles of pain through his neck. “Not safe.”
“This isn’t good for you.” She smacked the cage with her hand. “You shouldn’t be locked up like some animal.”
“I have no choice.”
“Yes, you do.”
He looked at her face, filled with determination. “You have me, and my archeological expertise. You also get the stubbornness that comes with it. I’ll do whatever it takes to find your scale and make you better.”
For one crazy moment, Balthazar wanted to believe her. He wanted to believe that everything would be as it should be, and he would reclaim his birthright.
“In the meantime, I think we can let you out.”
She was stubborn, he granted her that. “And why in Odin’s name do you think that?”
Eva reached for the padlock on the cage. “You haven’t had an episode since I got here.”
He looked down at himself. It was true—his flesh continued to heal, there were no new wounds, and his shoulder throbbed with pain, but not unbearable. The fire within had subsided considerably, and as for Bal, he remained silent. Eva’s presence had quieted his dragon spirit. Even with the Equinox almost upon them, Bal wouldn’t fight with her nearby. “So it would seem.”
She hesitated. “Is it okay to open the cage?”
Balthazar waited for several minutes before finally nodding, and he watched Eva as she produced a key and fitted it into the lock. “How did you find the key?” he asked suspiciously.
She smiled. “I can be very charming.”
“What exactly does that mean?”
“I gave Thorsson an ultimatum.”
An image of Eva bossing around the blond giant came to mind. It hurt to laugh.
Eva took the lock off and backed away. It was good that she continued to remain cautious.
Balthazar waited for several more minutes to see if Bal would attack him again. He didn’t, but his dragon spirit did something unexpected. His tight coil of anger stretched and relaxed throughout his body. The dragon heat remained, but now it smoldered quietly. It felt content.
And Balthazar knew Eva’s presence affected it. She affected him as well. He hadn’t felt passion in ages, worried that he could die at any moment. But Eva had cracked the wall he had built to keep people out, and his dragon knew it. Knew it, and accepted her, despite her being human.
He opened the cage door. Eva sat close to the staircase, a good idea, in case she needed to get away fast. “How are you feeling?”
“Better.”
She nodded at him. “Your injuries are healing.”
He looked down. The cracks that once oozed blood and dragon flame were now closed with a healthy pink tinge. He carefully checked his mental barrier, and to his astonishment, discovered that it was whole. Bal hadn’t tried to crack it open again after Eva’s appearance.
Balthazar looked at her. She sat quietly, watching him with interest. She wasn’t frightened at all, though tears stained her cheeks. Thorsson would have grabbed his artillery and body armor before even attempting to come down here. She had done so with nothing but her confidence.
He climbed out and stood beside the cage. He was covered in sweat, and his body ached, but he wasn’t in pain, and he raked his hair back with one hand.
Eva remained sitting, but her expression had changed. He caught her glance as it traveled down his naked body, and Balthazar fought to remain serious. “It feels like the episode has passed, thanks to you. Does everything look okay from where you’re sitting?”
He caught her by surprise. Her eyes widened for just a moment before she made a show of rising to her feet. “Everything looks—” She paused and licked her upper lip. “Good. Very good.”
Balthazar picked up the slight change in her scent, and he responded by approaching until he stood bare inches from her. The hint of musk made his nostrils flare, and he ached to caress her skin. “Do you mean that?”
He noticed the slight hesitation before Eva raised her hand and stroked his arm. “I should say
that I’m glad you’re healed, but…other thoughts come to mind.”
Her fingers triggered a surge of blood through his body, and his cock twitched in response. “Such as?”
She took a deep breath, then stepped away.
His dragon growled a complaint, and Balthazar wasn’t happy, either. “What is it?”
Eva laughed, but an element of caution swirled within it. “I just came on to you, a guy who looked like a human torch only moments ago.” She shook her head. “I must be losing it.”
“Or maybe you like the danger. Is that a bad thing?” Balthazar closed the space between them again.
“You’re a shifter, and if that’s not hard enough to take in, you’re a dragon. You’re dangerous.”
“Only to my enemies.” He lifted her chin with a finger. “Never to you.”
He felt her tremble, but she didn’t back away this time. Balthazar kissed her gently. His flesh tingled as his lips moved slowly over hers, and his dragon spirit growled impatiently. But he didn’t want to scare her. Her tears touched his lips, and he raised his head to find her crying quietly.
His breath caught in his throat. He pulled her to his chest and wrapped his arms around her. “Shh, elska,” he whispered. She made no sound, but her body shook with her crying.
They remained that way for a few minutes before she lifted her head and wiped away the tears. “I thought dragons told the truth,” she accused.
He wondered where that came from. “We do. I haven’t lied to you.”
“You couldn’t tell me about this?” She backed away and swept her arm across his body.
“It’s a little much to take in.” Eva’s sudden change in mood threw him off balance. “And you didn’t specifically ask what happens to me. I told you Bal and I fight for dominance. You didn’t need to know the particulars.”
“Consider yourself lucky that you’re not well, or I’d knock some sense into you.”
Flight of Dragons Page 14