by Rose O'Brien
"Put your arms around me and hold on tight," she said excitedly.
"Wait a second, are we actually—”
Alex's arms shot around her as he felt Z's weight shift and the massive gossamer wings unfold behind him. He had just a second to think that they were much bigger than he thought they would be before Z gave a massive beat of his wings and undulated his powerful body launching himself into the air.
Alex’s stomach dropped as the dragon gave a few more beats of his wings, rising toward the cavern's ceiling, which was dotted with stalactites that threatened to impale them. They moved in a slow circle about the cavern before Z turned for the opening.
It’s way too small! Alex thought before Z folded his wings and shot through.
The Mustang was a quickly dwindling red speck in the darkness as they climbed fast, headed for the low ceiling of spring clouds above them. Water droplets collected on his skin as they passed through the clouds and Z leveled out.
Alex could see lights in the distance, peeking in patches through the clouds as they passed overhead. He could see the larger patch of lights just behind them that must be Round Rock. As Z banked softly to the left and turned north, he could make out the lights of Georgetown. Here and there, he could see the lonely green mercury vapor lights that some of the ranch houses kept on.
Soon they'd left it all behind, with only an occasional lonely set of headlights visible on a nearly deserted country road, speeding off in the darkness and completely unaware of the creature that glided silently through the night.
***
Alayna was taking too much pleasure in the feel of Alex's strong arms around her waist and the feel of his muscled chest against her back. The heat sinking into her from his body fought off the chill wind that whipped past them.
She'd flown with Z thousands of times over the years and it had never been quite as exhilarating as this. Then again, she'd never taken anyone along on a ride with her before. As underground dwellers, Ellie and Dumeril were suspicious of flying. Burdock was distrustful of dragons--along with almost everything else. Lu could transform into any number of birds or bats and didn't need a dragon to fly her around, thank you very much.
It felt like she couldn't draw enough air into her lungs. It might have been the altitude, but she didn't think so.
There was something about Alex that made her heart race when he was around, especially when he touched her. She’d never been a touchy person. Her parents were so busy with their duties when she was living at home, and then at the Academy she’d been kept largely separate from her siblings. She’d always suspected that her being a Whisperer had made her untouchable to the people around her, whether it was conscious or unconscious.
An odd thought occurred to her. Alex had touched her more in the past few days than almost anyone else in her life.
Her thoughts drifted back to what he’d said in the cave about his dream. She'd never had a spell fail like the memory wipe had with Alex. Sometimes mages ended up with impressions of memories as they sifted through them during a wipe. These had been more vivid than any she had experienced in the handful of memory wipes she'd had to do on sapien bystanders over the years. Instead of being like movie clips, Alex's memories had been a full sensory experience. She could smell the blood. She could feel what he had felt: the pulse-pounding adrenaline rush and nearly overwhelming fear, the determination to save his comrades, and sadness as a life slipped away under his hands.
But he'd ended up with some of her memories in exchange. They were in unexplored territory with Alex and his abilities as a lìthseach. Z's words had worried her. Open the well and it will fill.
Maybe Alex wasn't just magickal Teflon. Maybe he was more like a magick vacuum, or a black hole. Maybe he could draw it into himself.
If that was true, he was in even more danger than she’d thought.
She shook her head. She could worry about Alex and his mysterious abilities later. For now, she would enjoy the feel of the wind as it rushed around her. And she would enjoy the feel of Alex's body against hers.
But this was as close as they could ever get. A momentary flare of pain bloomed in her chest at the thought. When they found Blanca’s killer, he was going back to his nice, normal life. He’d made that clear enough. And she couldn’t have any real ties to this world. Not if she was going to do her duty when the time came. And she could see herself getting very attached to Alex.
Z suddenly stiffened beneath her, his head turning to his left and his neck extending straight out. He'd spotted prey. She was about to shout to him to forget it because they had a newbie on board, but she felt him begin a turn to the left. Once he was zeroed in, there was no stopping him.
"Hang on!" she shouted to Alex. His grip tightened around her. She had just a moment to revel in the feel before Z folded his wings in a dive. It was like the first drop at the top of a roller coaster times a thousand. Alayna wrapped the leather rigging around her forearms and gripped tight with her knees. She felt Alex inhale sharply behind her.
Alayna spotted the unsuspecting deer that Z had in his sights just a moment before he extended his claws.
Alex's face was near hers as he gripped her tightly, just over her shoulder. She expected him to scream as the world rushed up to meet them, but instead he let out a loud, "Yee-haw!"
I might have to keep him, she thought, a smile tugging at her lips.
The deer perked up at the last second because of Alex's shout and tried to make a break for it. The dragon changed direction with a slight shift in his wings and wrapped the deer in his front claws. With a quick bite to the back of the neck, the deer went slack.
Z climbed a bit, circled, and landed near a greenbelt of trees growing beside a creek that meandered through pasture land. Alayna and Alex bailed off. She poked the dragon in the neck.
"Next time, a little warning, kamikaze," she said, but there was no anger in her voice. If it was possible for a dragon to shrug, Z did before beginning to cook his prize with gouts of flame from his mouth.
Alex backed off quickly.
"He breathes fire too?"
Alayna nodded. There were two glands inside his neck, just at the back of his throat, she explained. When the two chemicals were mixed and exposed to air, they caught fire, a little like napalm.
"I could have used one of him in Afghanistan. Would have made moving through the mountains a lot easier, and a mobile flamethrower the size of a school bus would have come in handy.” Alex said. Then he stopped. "How is it that no one has noticed a dragon living just a few miles outside of a major U.S. city?"
Alayna laughed. "He keeps a low profile for someone that weighs a couple tons."
The dragon was nearly impossible to spot from the ground once he was in the air, an adaptation that had kept dragons shrouded in myth long enough for them to escape to a less crowded dimension. The dragon didn't go after anyone's livestock, which kept him from drawing the attention of the few locals in the area. He preferred wild game, like the deer that Z was currently reducing to charred bones, anyway and said that cows were fat and stupid and offered no sport.
"How many dragons are left?"
"Just him as far as I can tell," Alayna said. "There could be a few hiding in the high places of the world, the Himalayas, the Alps, the Rockies. And I've always suspected that a few of them had taken to the deep places of the ocean, but there have never been any conclusive sightings. No, Z is probably the last of his kind in this world, and I've done everything I can to protect him."
"So, what is he doing in Texas?"
"He came with me when I graduated from the Academy. I'm just lucky I wasn't assigned to some place like New York City; I would have had a hell of a time stashing him then," she said, laughing. "I never told anyone at the Academy about him, but I always suspected that they knew. I wonder sometimes if Z's bond with me didn't play a role in my assignment here."
"Anyway, we lucked out and found these caverns, and I was able to buy the land they sit under. There
are more deer and wild boar than a stunted dragon like Z can eat, and it's sparsely populated enough that he's never been spotted. A pretty sweet deal all around."
Alex looked stunned for a moment. “Stunted?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Most dragons are three or four times his size when they’re fully grown.”
“He’s an amazing animal.”
“Those whiskers around his face can sense electromagnetic fields and magickal energy,” she continued. “And legend has it dragons can open portals to other dimensions, like the elven races and the fey can. I believe it. All the dragons went somewhere, trying to escape the humans...and mages like me that were after their scales and bones to turn into armor and weapons."
Alex pointed to the handle of her whip that was sticking out of the top of her boot.
“Like that one?”
The weapon shimmered as she pulled it out of her boot and placed it in his hands.
"It's made of living dragon scales," she said. "That's the mistake that the mages made. They killed the dragons and were only left with dead scales. When a dragon dies, the magick leaves them, but the scales they shed naturally are still alive."
While the dead scales the mages had used for centuries were harder than diamonds, but flexible as plastic, they were static, difficult to forge and required extremely high heat and expensive, strong metals to connect to them.
Living scales, she explained, responded to magick. By combining her abilities to control the elements, Alayna could coax the scales into any shape she wanted, connect them to each other, bind them. And the living scales still reacted to magic. She could release the silver knife from the tail end of the rod and she could deploy a retractable whip that could extend dozens of feet.
Alayna took the rod from his hands and watched his face as she released the sinuous black length of the whip to coil on the ground. With a flick of her wrist it retracted instantly and silently.
Alex was smiling when he met her gaze. Those dark eyes of his made something flutter in her stomach.
“That is so cool,” he said, a note of awe in his voice.
While he wanted to return to his world when this case was over, he certainly liked learning about hers. Worried that he’d see her thoughts, she tore her gaze from his and slipped the whip back in her boot.
"I have no idea if the scales respond to me because I'm a Whisperer or because Z is my familiar," she said, trying to fill the silence. "I like to think sometimes that if the mages had taken the time to learn the dragon tongue and establish a relationship with them, that they might have been able to make weapons like this. Then, maybe there wouldn't be so few of either of us left."
Alex was silent for a moment, a frown causing a line to appear between his brows. She had the urge to touch it, caress it away, replace that frown with an entirely different expression.
“Maybe it’s better that mages didn’t have access to those kinds of weapons. You said the reason the magickal races keep a low profile is because you’re all outnumbered. Well, if the mages had allied with the dragons, and if you all had weapons like that, maybe it would be my kind that would be outnumbered.”
She opened her mouth to argue, but said instead, “Never thought about it like that.”
He was silent for a moment before continuing, “I’ve been to war. I’ve seen power corrupt people. And if powerful weapons are on hand, they’re eventually used to hurt somebody.”
With his words, a shadow had descended over his features, like a cloud blocking out the moonlight.
Alayna didn’t know what to say to that and the sound of Z crunching through the last of the deer bones saved her from having to answer.
"I wish to be gone from here, Little Sparrow," Z said, rising to all four feet. "The sky calls me."
"Saddle up!" Alayna said as she rose and headed toward her dragon.
***
As they neared the cave mouth, Alex felt his stomach drop through his knees as Z dove for the opening. He shot straight down and opened his wings like a parachute the instant he was through. They came to a jarring landing beside the underground lake, gravel and small stones flying into the air as Z slid to a stop.
Alayna quickly gathered her duffel, the lantern and other supplies, threw Z one last PB&J that she'd hidden, and kissed the dragon goodbye on his scaly snout.
Alex was hooking up the ascenders when Z padded over to him.
"I am pleased to know you, Alex," the dragon said. "Remember, if you open the well, it will fill."
Alex didn't particularly want to think about what the dragon had said about his lìthseach-ness, but he nodded to let him know he heard.
The dragon moved off down a stone passageway set in a wall that Alex had not seen before.
Using the ascenders, they made good time to the cave mouth. It was a little after 2 a.m. when they made it back to the Mustang and Alayna pointed the headlights toward Austin and let all four hundred fifty horses under the hood run.
Chapter 9
Alayna felt like she was carrying twenty-pound weights on her shoulders as she dragged herself into the office the next morning. While everyone else was already there, they were all looking as rough as she felt. They’d all been putting in more than a few extra hours on this case.
Ellie was nursing a cup of coffee that was nearly as big as she was. She had stopped bothering to throw her glamour when Alex was in the warehouse, and her overlarge eyes looked bloodshot.
Lu was yawning in a way reminiscent of a big cat, her lips pulling back to expose canines that were just a shade too long by most standards. Sometimes she forgot to pull them all the way back in when she shifted back to her default human form. Alayna made eye contact and tapped her own canine to subtly let her know. Lu sat up and touched a tooth with the pad of her thumb, nodded and smiled at Alayna to show that she had fixed it.
Burdock was quietly tapping away on a laptop and occasionally making small hmm noises to himself. She wasn’t sure if he’d left the office at all. Since he wore the same self-imposed uniform of black fatigue pants and tight black T-shirt everyday, it was hard to tell.
Her eyes landed on Alex. He was wearing an old set of desert camo fatigue pants and tan T-shirt that showed off the thick muscles in his arms. His black hair was tousled, like he hadn’t bothered to comb it, and stubble was coming in along his jaw, like he’d skipped shaving that morning. A little of that FBI polish had rubbed off, and he looked absolutely delectable. Her hands itched to feel that stubble rasping under her fingertips.
She’d kept him out late the night before visiting Z, but he made tired look amazing. She, on the other hand, was looking decidedly the worse for wear. After she’d dropped Alex at his condo earlier in the morning, she’d been unable to sleep. She wasn’t sure if it was that exhilarating flight or her increasing sexual frustration that had her tossing and turning. After abandoning any hope of sleep, she’d spent several hours poring over the case files, but hadn’t gotten very far.
She knew she looked a bit of a mess, her long, blonde hair piled in a knot on top of her head, stray curls spilling out to touch her shoulders. The dark circles had been just a little darker when she’d looked in the mirror this morning, but there was nothing she could do about that.
Crossing to her desk, Alayna dumped an armful of file folders on the already cluttered surface. She tossed the keys to the Mustang on the desk and they disappeared into the snowstorm of paperwork.
Across the room, Alex casually poured himself a cup of coffee from the communal pot by the wall, already blending with her team.
“Be careful with that stuff,” she told him, nodding at his coffee cup. “Ellie’s brew can peel paint.”
“Just the way I like it,” Ellie chimed in. “Strong enough to keep the badgers away from the den.”
She had to stifle a laugh when Alex took a sip and almost choked. The coffee was dark, strong, and thick, and Alayna could smell Ellie’s proprietary blend of spices in it, which may or may not have included a s
hot of chili powder.
“I like it strong,” he said, his voice sounding like he’d just taken a shot of whiskey.
Alayna pulled two sheets of paper from one of the file folders. They were ragged at the top where she'd torn them out of her sketch pad.
"I'm not the greatest sketch artist in the world, but are these close to what we saw in Llorona's vision?"
"Pretty close," Alex said, taking the papers from Alayna. "May I?"
She nodded and he sat down at his desk, pulling out a pencil. He changed the jaw on one sketch and adjusted the nose a little. On the other, he changed the spacing of the eyes just a hair and made the lips a little thinner.
"That look right?"
She cocked her head to one side and examined the sketches.
"Yeah. That looks closer. How did you do that?"
"I'm a man of many talents," he said, a smile turning up one corner of his mouth. "And I've always had a knack with faces."
She flashed him a smile without thinking and met his eyes. That twisty, fluttery feeling in her stomach started up again and spread to her chest, sending tingles all the way to her shoulders. Why could one look from him could do that? Part of her wanted it to stop, but part of her wanted to see if he could make her tingle anywhere else. She shook that thought away, afraid he'd see it in her eyes, but he'd already turned to hand Ellie the sketches.
"Scan those and see if they turn up any hits in your database," Alayna told her. “Facial recognition on a sketch is a long shot, but I’ll try anything.”
"This could take awhile, Commander.”
Alayna needed something to get her blood flowing, or she was going to fall over. Hell, it looked like they all did.
"We should probably hit the gym," she said to Alex. "If that search comes back with any hits, we might be hitting the streets tonight. I need to know you can hold your own."
She signaled to Dumeril, Lu, and Burdock, and they all headed downstairs to the training area, which was covered in exercise mats and weapons racks.