Dragos sat at his desk. He tapped his steepled fingers against his mouth as he watched Cuelebre Enterprises get bitch-slapped on national television.
Two beautiful people were on the screen. One was a human female reporter. The other was the Dark Fae King.
For the first time in many decades, Dragos looked on the face of his enemy. Urien had typical Dark Fae coloring and features, with overlarge gray eyes, high cheekbones, white skin and black hair that fell to his shoulders. His hair was pulled back, revealing elegant, long pointed ears.
“. . . of course, scrapping the project is quite a financial blow to the people of this community and to the state of Illinois,” said Urien, with a charming, regretful smile. “And not only for potential jobs that have been lost. We lost a valuable source of clean and economical power that would have been produced by a new electric-generating nuclear power plant, and we have Cuelebre Enterprises to thank for that. As you know, the nation faces the challenge of reducing our carbon emissions. The only way we can achieve lower emissions is by developing energy efficiencies and clean technologies, such as wind and solar power. Nuclear energy has got to be part of that mix. . . .”
Dragos punched the mute. He looked at Tiago and his miserable assistant.
Tiago said, “Urien looks good for a dead man.”
“Too good,” Dragos growled.
“I can’t believe what a fucking hypocrite he is,” Kristoff said bitterly. “He’s talking about clean energy and lower emissions when he’s still blowing up mountaintops and he has one of the most polluting companies on the planet. You know our DOE contact, Peter Hines, rejected the RYVN grant application like we asked. He got fired today. And Urien’s media blitz hit earlier this afternoon. Stocks are down in six of our companies.”
“The ones headquartered in Illinois,” said Dragos.
“Yup.”
“Oh, buck up, Kris,” Tiago said, impatient. “Did you think Urien would take losing his pet project lying down? Of course he was going to strike back. At least you’ve got the satisfaction of knowing you really pissed him off. Usually he has nothing to do with human media.”
Kris chewed a nail. “I know what’s going to happen next. RYVN is going to reapply for that grant with Hines’s replacement. After this, public sentiment will be on their side.”
“They’ll get that grant over my dead body,” Dragos snapped. “I said do what it takes to tear the RYVN partnership apart and I meant it.” He surged to his feet and slapped his hands on the desk. Tiago was silent and Kris looked at his feet while Dragos battled his rage. After a moment he continued, with a semblance of calm, “Get ahold of Hines, offer him a job. He’s a bureaucrat—he must be able to do something we like.”
Kris said, “Maybe he can join our Washington lobbyist team.”
“Go.” Kris fled. Dragos turned his hot gaze onto Tiago. “And for God’s sake, will you go find that slippery mother-fucker so I can tear him to shreds?”
“Working on it,” said Tiago. “He can run from me but he cannot hide forever. We’ll get him, Dragos.”
He glared as his sentinel strode out. Locating Urien wasn’t happening fast enough. He snarled down at his desk and made himself lift up his hands and get a grip on his temper. I’ve got to stop tearing the furniture up. There’s too goddamn much to do. No time for another repair and remodel.
His thoughts shifted to Pia. He glanced out the window and frowned at the early-evening light. He left the office and jogged the stairs up to a silent penthouse. He strode through the rooms. They echoed with emptiness.
He didn’t like it. His frown turned into a scowl. But what else had he expected? Did he think Pia would be here waiting for him whenever he decided to look this way—like an employee or a servant? Fuck.
Rune, he said telepathically.
Rune replied, They’re still at lunch.
Still at lunch? Dragos reversed direction and headed toward the elevator. Minutes later he entered Manhattan Cat and made his way across the restaurant to the executive room.
Rune and Graydon stood on either side of the closed door. Graydon bounced on his feet. Rune leaned against the wall with arms and ankles crossed. Dragos put his hands on his hips and looked at them.
Rune said, “Tofu stir-fry lunch at one thirty. Four bottles of wine. Waiter took in a tray of chocolate desserts and a bottle of cognac about forty-five minutes ago. Last time the door opened, they were singing ‘I Will Survive.’ ”
“What’s that?” Dragos said.
Graydon grinned. “It’s a seventies hit by Gloria Gaynor. I think they were singing it as a kind of ‘female bonding over bad ex-boyfriends’ type of thing.”
His head jerked up. He had one of the most startling and unwelcome thoughts of the last century.
Am I a boyfriend?
He growled and jerked the door open.
Pia and Tricks were on their hands and knees on the floor, snickering in fits and snorts. The tables and chairs were shoved against the wall. Pia was folding a white table cloth that was covered with black writing.
“Give me a minute,” Pia was saying. “I swear I just saw it. If you fold the flowchart just right—look, the names match up. All of those people slept together too.”
Tricks giggled. “How did you notice? That’s like something out of National Treasure or The Da Vinci Code. We need to get some weird antique glasses with special lenses and maybe we’ll see something else. Wait. Here we go.” She let out a long, loud burp.
Pia counted through the burp. “. . . two ten thousand, three ten thousand, four—oop, you win.” She stared at the little faerie in awe. “Where did you put all that air?”
“It’s a gift,” Tricks said.
Dragos’s bad mood burst like a soap bubble, and he grinned. Pia’s blonde ponytail had loosened and slid over one ear. Tricks had kicked off her sandals and rolled her designer silk pants to the knees. She looked like a refugee from Pucci’s on Fifth Avenue. He leaned against the door and waited to see which one would notice him first.
Pia did. She sat back on her heels as surprise and delight lit up her face. “Hi.”
Surprise and delight, a gift-wrapped present all for him. He smiled at her. “You’re drunk on your ass.”
In inebriated slow motion, Tricks noticed him and the two gryphons at his back. She shrieked and spread her arms over the tablecloth. “Nobody can see this!”
Rune slid around Dragos, his head angled in curiosity. “Why, what is it, state secrets?”
“Pretty much!” Tricks started to wad up the cloth. Rune grabbed a corner and tugged. She threw herself on top of it. “NOOO.”
Dragos ignored them. He squatted in front of Pia and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear with a gentle hand. Her pale skin was flushed, and her sparkling eyes couldn’t quite focus. “You’re going to be sick as a dog in the morning.”
“We just thought . . .” she said. The sentence trailed off. She stared at him in astonishment. “You are the handsomest man I’ve ever seen. I would tell you that if I were sober too.” Then she gave him a sloppy grin as she shook her head. Her ponytail slid farther. “No, I wouldn’t. I’d be too self-conscious.”
His fury and frustration from earlier slid into the past as if it had never existed, an alchemical transmutation brought on by this tipsy enchantress. Laughing out loud, he slid his hands under her elbows and lifted her with care to her feet. “What else are you drunk enough to tell me?”
She leaned forward and staggered, as she confided in a whisper, “You’re the sexiest guy I’ve ever seen too. You know, your long, scaly, reptilian tail really is bigger than anybody else’s. Not that I’ve been with very many guys. Or was comparison shopping or anything.” She hiccuped and watched him worriedly as he guffawed. “Have I just gone over a conversational cliff?”
“Pretty much,” he said. He put an arm around her and guided her around Rune and Tricks as they wrestled over the tablecloth. “That’s okay, lover. I’m here to catch you. So, how many gu
ys have you been with?”
She held up two fingers and looked at them with one eye closed. “One of them doesn’t count anymore, ’cause he’s dead.” She poked herself in the cheek with both fingers. “I can’t feel my face. How was your day?”
“Fine,” he said. He captured her hand, folded down one finger and pressed a kiss against her remaining index finger as he led her out of the restaurant. “It was good.”
The next afternoon Pia changed into workout clothes along with her new shoes. She wound her hair up and bound it in a tight queue at the nape of her neck.
Her memory of the night before was fuzzy. She remembered talking and flirting, feeling brilliant and beautiful and witty, while Dragos teased her, his dark face creased with laughter. She remembered falling into bed, shrieking and kicking at him as he tickled her unmercifully. She remembered falling asleep, wrapped around him, his hands fisted in the waterfall of her hair.
She had been alone in the bed when a hangover had finally hammered her into consciousnesses late the next morning. She had rolled away from the windows with a moan to discover a vial resting on his pillow. It tinkled with magic. A note was tied to the neck. It said, Drink me.
That potion had saved her life. She hoped someone had been kind enough to get one for Tricks as well. Even with the potion’s help, it had been some time before she could face putting anything else into her stomach. Now after a light lunch, which she had eaten with caution, she, Rune and Graydon were finally going to the gym as originally planned.
She opened the door. The two gryphons in the hall broke off their conversation. Their expressions were entirely too bland. She frowned. “Did I do or say something yesterday that I should apologize for?”
“Not you, cupcake,” said Graydon. “But apparently a lot of other people in the Tower have. Rune thinks we should rename it Melrose Place. I think Peyton Place has a more classic feel to it, don’t you?”
“Oh no,” she said. “You got the tablecloth away from Tricks.”
Rune grinned. “Not before the little shit bit me.”
They took the stairs. Perhaps twenty people were in the gym. Some worked on equipment and others sparred with each other in the two large workout areas. One area had hard-used but well-kept hardwood floors and the other area was covered with tumbling mats.
Rune commandeered the space covered with tumbling mats while Graydon went into the locker room and changed. Then Rune went to change too. As he came back out he beckoned her and Graydon to the center of the mat. Both men wore tight tanks and black cotton pants. They seemed bigger than ever as she stood between them, totaling five hundred pounds of solid Wyr muscle.
Those that Rune had displaced loitered at the edge of the area, watching. Pia took deep breaths, trying to dispel the jitters that had taken over her stomach, all too aware of the curious, not entirely friendly stares directed their way. She balanced on the balls of her feet, shook out her arms and legs and stretched her neck.
Rune said, “Okay, we’re going to run through a few basic self-defense techniques. Pia, the main takeaway is we’re the bodyguards and we know best. You’ve got to do what we tell you, when we tell you to do it. If I tell you to duck, you damn well better duck. If Gray tells you to drop to the ground, you plant your face. The toughest thing is that an attack will most likely happen without warning so following orders without hesitation or argument is absolutely essential.”
“In other words,” Graydon said, “if we tell you to duck, don’t stick your head up and look around and say, ‘Huh?’ That’s what your instinct may tell you to do, but if you’re saying ‘huh,’ it probably means you’re getting your head shot off.”
“Right,” she said, looking from one to the other. “No ‘huhs.’ ”
Rune said, “Gray, get behind Pia. You’re going to be her attacker. Pia, Gray is going to come up behind you and grab you like he’s going to drag you off. I want you to pay attention to how he gets hold of you and the position of your bodies. We’re going to work on ways you can break out of his hold, okay?”
“Okay,” she said.
Graydon moved behind her. For such a big man he was silent on his feet. She focused on the floor in front of her and continued to breathe deep as she sank into her training.
Stay firm but flexible, rooted but yielding.
She reached behind with her awareness and—there he was. She got a lock on him, stronger than she ever had on anyone before. She could hear him breathe, feel his weight shift with his intent. Her hearing, eyesight, her sense of everything in her surroundings was . . . more than it had ever been before.
He came up on her, inhumanly fast.
Flow like water.
She slid sideways, bending at the waist, and felt his hand graze along her arm. A twist, and she balanced on one foot, felt him extend, and that was her leverage.
Graydon landed on his back in an impact that shook the floor. Silence filled the gym as exercise machines slowed and stopped. Both gryphons stared at her.
Graydon swore, letting his head drop to the mat. “The hell’d you do? That weren’t no Turbo Dance move.”
Rune put his hands on his hips and started to laugh. “She smacked you down, is what she did.”
“I’m sorry, did I do that wrong?” she said, growing anxious as they continued to stare at her. “I didn’t follow orders, did I? Was I supposed to let him grab me?”
“No. No, I think you did that just fine,” said Rune. He offered a hand to Graydon and hoisted the other gryphon to his feet.
Graydon glared at her. “Okay. I was sleepwalking through that. My bad. You said you had classes, and we should have listened. But we’re gonna do that again, cupcake, and you’re not gonna get me by surprise this time.”
She nodded. “Okay.”
They assumed their former positions, and she balanced on the balls of her feet again, head tilted as she focused on the floor. This time, intrigued with her heightened senses, she locked on both Graydon and Rune. Their Power and physical energy made their positions easy to hold in her mind.
Graydon moved to the attack, his lethal body honed by countless centuries of combat. She flowed and slid away from him. This time he shifted with her, snaking one powerful arm out to wrap around her waist.
But she wasn’t there. She moved, counter to his point, sensing the force of energy he put into his arm and how he threw his body forward, and that was her leverage. The floor thundered as he hit the mat.
He pounded the mat with his fist. “Fuck me!”
Rune shouted in laughter.
Graydon flipped to his feet. It was a startling show of strength, agility and speed for such a large man, and she flinched back. He snarled at Rune, “Laugh it up, asshole. It’s your turn to try.”
“Quit being such a crybaby,” said Rune. He shifted around to Pia, the predator in him roused and full of smiling menace. “You good to go?”
Mainlining adrenaline, she lifted her shoulder in a quick, jerky shrug. “Give me what you got, slick.”
He lunged, using both cunning and speed, and she could tell he was really giving it to her, no holding back. She fell back in a graceful curve as he reached her, and the power in his momentum was her leverage. She hit the mat, and as she went backward she used her feet and one hand to propel him over her head. For one brief moment he was airborne. Then he slammed into the mat even as she completed her somersault and came up light on her feet.
Rune coughed hard, his expression frozen. Somebody whistled and shouted. Distracted, she looked toward the noise. Their audience was clapping.
“That was goddamn balletic!” Graydon roared. He pounded her on the shoulder and knocked her sideways. She grunted and stumbled, and he grabbed her. “Oh shit, cupcake, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. Did I hurt you?”
He looked so concerned as he steadied her she didn’t have the heart to complain. She rubbed the spot where he had hit her, and he pushed her hand away to rotate her arm and probe her shoulder muscles with careful finge
rs.
“I’m fine,” she told him. “It’s good.”
Rune rolled to his feet. “Go get Bayne and Con,” he told one of their watchers, who took off running. He walked over to her, eyes narrowed. “What all have you studied?”
“Wing Chun, jujitsu, some weaponry,” she said. “Basic stuff, sword and knife work. I can load and shoot a gun or crossbow. I’m not so good with a longbow.”
He studied her like she was a Rubik’s Cube he hadn’t quite figured out. “Dragos said you weren’t a fighter.”
“I’m not.” Graydon refused to be shooed away. She gave up trying to push him away and let him massage her shoulder muscles. “Not like you guys are. I wouldn’t choose a fight if I can avoid it, I don’t have a killer instinct and I don’t like the weaponry stuff.”
“Could you kill if you had to?”
“If I had no other choice,” she answered without hesitation. “I think I could do it to survive. But otherwise, all of my focus and training is on getting away.”
“Excellent. We can work with that. Which of the disciplines you’ve worked with do you like the best?”
She considered. “I’d have to say the Wing Chun. I like the principles of efficiency, practicality and economy of movement, and sensing the energy in your opponent’s movements. It’s elegant. I had a teacher once who told me the best kind of fighter was like haiku, very spare and simple, and the fight very short. Wing Chun seems to have something of that philosophy.”
He nodded. “What would you say is your strength?”
“That’s got to be speed. Let’s face it, if you guys were really out for blood and got your hands on me, I’d be toast.”
“Very good. And your weakness?”
She bent her head, rubbed at the back of her neck and confessed, “Following orders. I haven’t done any of this before. I’ll try my best, but if one of you yells duck, I could end up being that idiot that sticks up her head and says, ‘Huh?’ ”
“Well, that might not matter if you were slow enough to pin down,” said Graydon. “We’ve got to yell duck ’cause you might get all startled and hop out from underneath us if we try to tackle you, even if it’s for your own good.”