A huge, powerful hand slammed the door shut. “Stop.”
She spun around, pressed her back to the door, and stared at the titan before her, and then her jaw hung open in shock. She knew him. Well, she didn’t know him, but she’d seen him before, earlier, in the Two Fork’s garage.
She began to hyperventilate.
“Breathe,” he rasped, placing his hand gently against her throat.
Her eyes bulged like balloons. “Please,” she whimpered. “Oh God, oh God…please.” She hated herself for her weakness—she knew better than to show fear to a predator—yet the tears fell freely, despite her best intentions. “Oh, please, don’t hurt me.”
The man—no, the male—took a cautious step backward, his piercing sapphire eyes glowing golden in the centers, and slowly nodded his head. “You are safe now. Just breathe.” He lowered his hand from her throat, and curiously, the air was flowing more freely through her windpipe.
Jordan swallowed, almost convulsively, as she eyed him warily from head to toe. His dark, chestnut-brown hair was drenched with blood; his lips were still curled back in a snarl; and his canines were far too long for comfort, two razor-sharp points descending well beyond his taut, angry lips. He looked like death on two feet, the grim reaper in pants—pajama bottoms, to be exact. She blinked rapidly and stared at his clothes: He was wearing a white Haines T-shirt that stuck to his powerful frame—molded to every muscle, bulge, and sculpted mass like a second skin—and a pair of black silk pajamas…over hard, steel-toed boots.
What the hell?
He looked down at his attire, presumably following her gaze, and jacked up one shoulder in a shrug. “Yeah…it’s…it’s been a long night.”
Jordan shook her head in disbelief and absently raised a hand to her own mouth to point at her teeth. “Your…your…teeth.”
He shut his eyes, and his fangs slowly retracted.
She recoiled, wishing she could step right through the door, out into the hall, and into the next, neighboring country. “What are you?” she whispered, warily.
He didn’t hesitate. “I already told you.”
She furrowed her brow. What? He’d already told her? And then it all came back: I am Zanaikeyros Saphyrius, but my brothers call me Zane. I am the son of a dragon, consecrated to the lair of Sapphire, born to the sacred pantheon; and you are my dragyra, my fated. Mine. And I am doing this because I must. And you must.
She wet her lips and tried to focus. “Zane,” she whispered.
“Yes,” he grumbled.
“You’re a…dragon.” Her voice sounded hoarse.
“No,” he corrected her, that deep, otherworldly legato evoking a fearful quiver. “The son of a dragon, a member of the Dragyr race…I am a dragyri.”
She nodded, feeling all at once light-headed. “Right. And I’m…you think I’m a…dra-gyr-a, like…a daughter of a dragon?” Her tone betrayed her distress.
He chuckled then, the sound emerging from deep in his throat, as if any part of this was funny. Crazy? Yes? Psychotic, delusional, and positively terrifying? Absolutely. But funny? Not so much. “You are not a dragon,” he drawled, way too slowly, reaching up to stroke her jaw with his thumb. “You are human enough.” And then he withdrew his hand and locked his sapphire gaze with hers. “What you are…is mine.”
Jordan wet her lips again. At this point, it was a nervous tic. She opened her mouth to reply, then thought better of it and closed it. What in the world could she say to that? This man, if he was a man, was clearly insane. Yes, he had set her attacker on fire—that sounded like something a dragon—a son of a dragon—might do. And yes, he seemed to have claws and fangs and supernatural powers, but…but…
The walls were shifting position.
“Jordan?” His deep, melodic cadenced strummed against her thoughts, much like a pair of satin knuckles rapping on a door. Hello? Is anyone home?
“Can I go now?” she asked, feeling like it was the only truly relevant question.
“No, angel.” He shook his head.
“Why not?” She thought it sounded stupid; but really, they were a bit beyond that.
“The police will be here soon. I need to clean the apartment, deal with the humans, and you—you need to be made to understand.”
It wasn’t exactly a threat.
He hadn’t said: You need to die; you need to be made to submit…or obey; or turned into a charcoal briquette. But just the same, it was the last straw: Of course, he needed to clean the apartment, deal with the police, and probably take a shower, considering all the blood and gore. And she needed to…understand…something way beyond her purview.
She nodded. “May I get a glass of water?” Again, another really stupid question, but honestly, at this point, there was a deep, thickening fog surrounding her brain—everything was drifting into the ether, becoming less and less real, more and more hollow. The apartment, his voice, everything that had happened was simply…drifting away…disappearing behind an irrational fog of cerebral self-protection.
Why not ask for a glass of water?
He rotated a powerful shoulder, angling it slightly to the side as if offering her a safe, unobstructed lane from which to make her exit, and she took two hesitant steps toward the kitchen, ducking around his body.
And that’s when she hit the floor.
Jordan Anderson had never passed out before—not once in her twenty-seven years of life—but apparently, there was a first time for everything.
Chapter Eight
Zanaikeyros caught Jordan just before she hit the carpet, grimacing at his horrible—and wonderful—luck. Horrible, because what a way to reacquaint himself with his dragyra, while executing her attacker. And wonderful, because dragon lords protect them all, if he had been just five minutes later, the human excrement would have raped Zane’s woman; and Zane would have been utterly incapable of restraining his beast, the inner spark, the primordial furnace linked to Lord Saphyrius that burned like molten sapphire. He may very well have scorched every living thing within a ten-mile radius, and wouldn’t have that just made the news: Crazed serial killer tosses woman over his shoulder and terrorizes the Skyline Mosaic subdivision, leaving a trail of gorged and bloodied bodies in his wake.
Not to mention, the dragon lords would have shown no mercy had the deviant human killed her, had Zane failed to protect his fated.
They would not have let Zane off the hook.
Now, hefting her up in his arms, he made his way to the light beige sofa, where he gently laid her down, healed her head wound with a cooling exhale of blue fire, and placed her head on a soft, square pillow. He was just about to check her vitals, assess her pulse, and measure her breath when he heard a brisk knock on the door.
“Police! Open up!”
Oh, great.
Just great.
Could this get any better?
This was exactly what Zane needed—not—a bunch of humans interfering in the middle of this mess, especially when there was an incinerated body in the back bedroom—missing a head, no less—and an unconscious woman on the couch. “Hold on,” he barked in an angry, no-nonsense tone, and then he hightailed it to the door, placed his palm on the panel, and tried to read the impressions of the humans on the other side.
There were two distinct sets of heartbeats pulsing through the panel, which meant two officers on the other side of the door, and by the acrid smell of fear, mixed with the pungent aroma of anger, he could tell they were hyped up on adrenaline. More than likely, their guns were already drawn.
Perfect.
Just perfect.
The human on Zane’s left whispered something to his partner on the right, but he more or less mouthed the words with very little air escaping his lungs. Zane couldn’t make out the sounds. No matter. He was probably telling the deputy to be ready for anything.
Anything, indeed.
Including a dragyri?
Probably not.
Zane snatched the handle to the door and yanked it ope
n so quickly it caught the officers off guard. The men backpedaled where they stood, pointed their weapons forward, and started to squeeze their respective triggers. And that’s when Zane took control.
The guns went flying first, a simple feat of telekinesis, and then Zane reached out, snatched the first officer by the collar with his left hand, the second with his right, and dragged them both into the apartment, slamming the door behind them with his mind.
Oh hell.
The guns.
He switched into lightning-fast mode, moving faster than a human eye could trace, reopened the door, flew through the threshold to retrieve the weapons, and quickly reentered the apartment, all in the space of two heartbeats. He started to tuck both .45 caliber weapons into the waist of his jeans, realized he was wearing pajamas with a flimsy elastic band, and tossed both firearms into the corner, instead, after first removing the clips.
The humans were still in shock.
“W…w…what the hell!” A tall red-headed officer stuttered, spinning around in a dazed, wobbly circle while searching the floor for his gun.
“John, behind you!” the second officer warned, reaching toward a small black clip on his waist, attached to a thick leather holster, to unlock a canister of pepper spray—or was he reaching for the stun gun?
Again, it didn’t matter.
Zane cleared his throat and shook his head, commanding both officers’ attention. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” he said to the hesitant blond, whose hand hovered—and hesitated—above the holster.
The blond blinked two times and measured Zane from head to toe, his gaze lingering on the liberal sprays of blood soaking the once-white T-shirt. His jaw tightened, and his fist twitched, almost as if he were priming a pump, and he took a measured step backward. His hand shifted from the backup weapon to the narrow, hand-sized radio as he slowly depressed a button. He intended to call for help—hell, to bring half the force as backup.
Zane pierced his mind in an instant, retrieving his thoughts with ease, as well as his name. “I wouldn’t do that, either, Ryan. Why don’t you just relax.”
Ryan’s thumb fell away from the button even as his jaw dropped open. “Look,” he said, surveying the apartment with a wary, hurried glance—he caught a glimpse of Jordan, still unconscious on the couch, and his entire body tensed. “One way or another, this…this…this jig is up. Whatever you had planned, it’s not going down.” He cast a sideways glance at Jordan and slowly shook his head. “Dispatch will send backup in a matter of minutes if we don’t call in, and there is no way we’re letting this…scene…continue. So my advice to you—”
Zane waved a dismissive hand, cutting him off in midsentence. He narrowed his gold-and-sapphire gaze into two vertical slits, much like a cat’s, and locked on to Ryan’s pupils. “So here’s what you’re gonna do.” He leveled a quick, passing glance at the other officer, as well—at John—just to bring him into the fold. “You’re gonna pick up that radio, real nice and steady, and you’re gonna call in, in a relaxed, natural voice—tell them it’s all clear, there was nothing unusual going on, and then you’re both going to leave this apartment.” He dropped his voice nearly an octave. “You saw nothing. You remember nothing. The call was uneventful, and no one is to follow up. Are we clear?”
Ryan’s nose wrinkled in confusion, and he ran his tongue over his top front teeth, as if he were trying to get a bad taste out of his mouth—then he nodded slowly in acquiescence. “Uh, uh, yeah.” His voice sounded uncertain.
“Are we clear?” Zane repeated, making sure the compulsion would hold.
Ryan nodded more enthusiastically this time. “Yeah, sure, we’re clear.”
John was a little less certain, possibly because Zane had only held his gaze for an instant. “Wh…what about the lady on the couch. Is she okay?” the unsteady officer asked.
Zane swept his gaze over Jordan. Oh, hell, she was probably anything but okay, at least with the situation, and he was going to have to mend some fairly damaged fences in order to make things right, but that wasn’t what the redhead was asking. “She’s perfect,” Zane replied, searing his gaze into John’s. “Right as rain and taking a nap.”
John angled his body toward the couch and took a second, hard look at Jordan as if judging for himself.
Not good enough.
“Right. As. Rain,” Zane repeated, this time clipping his words.
The officer spun back around and shivered, the compulsion rattling his befuddled brain. “Yeah, yeah,” he muttered quickly, shuffling toward the door. “Everything seems to be in order here—sorry we bothered you.”
“Not a problem,” Zane said. And then he splayed his fingers, pointing two of them toward the clips; rotated his wrist until his palm was facing up; and crooked those same two fingers inward, drawing the ammo into his hands. He repeated the motion with both guns, in turn. “Your weapons,” he said congenially, shoving the magazines back into the firearms.
The officers looked momentarily confused, but the enthrallment was deeply set. They each retrieved their weapons, Ryan smoothed his shirt, and they mindlessly made their way to the door.
“Wait.” A feeble female voice.
Oh, hell, not now.
Zane did not want to do anything else to Jordan against her will. Hell’s bells, he had already traumatized the wits out of the woman, and he needed her compliance within the next ten days, technically nine, since it was after midnight—dragyras could not be forced to kneel before the dragon lords at the sacred Temple of Seven.
They either submitted of their own free will, or they died that night in their sleep.
And it was up to the female’s dragyri to set that ball in motion, make sure the consecration happened.
“Jordan,” he said in an alluring, placid voice. “Baby, these men were just leaving.” He didn’t put a full compulsion into his voice or his eyes. Rather, he surrounded his words in a mild cloud of confusion, coated them in fog, so to speak, so they would sort of drift around her, neither sticking or landing, but just causing an obstruction. Her mind would be cluttered and confused.
It would buy him a few extra seconds.
“Out, now!” he barked at the officers, staring fixedly at the door in warning.
The men shuffled quickly, like obedient sheep, even as Zane held his breath. When, at last, the door slammed shut behind them, he let out a long, exasperated sigh.
Jordan was sitting up now; her knees were pressed to her chest; her arms were wrapped around her shins, and she was crying like a baby.
Trembling.
Keening.
Damn near whimpering…
Zane ran his heavy hand through his unkempt hair, tucking several errant wisps away from his face, out of his eyes, and slowly made his way toward the couch.
“Angel of mine,” he whispered softly. “Please, don’t cry.”
Chapter Nine
Axe and Levi Saphyrius bounded up the side of the hill, taking the natural-stone steps two at a time on their way to the Sapphire Lair. It was one o’clock in the morning; both dragyri males were eager to take a shower and get to bed. And the sonorous, ambient echo of the sixty-foot waterfall flowing out of the nearby rugged cliffs and flanking the back of the lair called to their nocturnal impulse: Time to get some sleep.
Levi stopped at the dual heavy wooden doors bordered in rough, native stones of sapphire and white, and reached up to retrieve a missive affixed to an iron bracket.
Axe came to a halt behind him. “What’s that?”
Levi shrugged his muscular shoulders. “Looks like it contains an official seal.”
Axe peeked over his lair-mate’s shoulder, caught a glimpse of the red wax-dragon melted on the fold of the page, and curled his lips into a scowl. “The temple?” It wasn’t that he had anything against the gods—or receiving a missive from the seven—but Caleb’s recent punishment was still on everyone’s mind; so the idea of the sacred temple, and anything that came from within it, wasn’t exactly a
welcome sight. They could all do without the reminder. “So?” he pressed, waiting as Levi broke the seal and silently read the missive.
Levi grunted, his sapphire-and-black eyes scanning the page. “So, it looks like the message is for Zane.”
Axe frowned. “What now? I mean, he did Lord Ethyron’s bidding, right? So everything should be copasetic.”
Levi nodded distractedly. “Yeah, yeah. Nothing to do with that. It’s a summons. The lords want to see all of the Genesis, the firstborn sons, at the temple on Sunday, by twilight.”
At this, Axe harrumphed. “Hmm. Does it say what for?”
Levi tucked the missive in his front hip pocket and leaned against the door, staring off into the distance, toward the waterfall. “Nope. But whatever it is…bad timing for Zane.”
“No doubt,” Axe said, copping a lean of his own against an adjacent stone pillar that supported the roof of the porch. “Wonder what this is all about.”
It wasn’t very often that the Genesis got together, mostly because the males identified more strongly with their lair-mates. Just the same, they had a special bond—and in a way, a special purpose—that set them apart from the rest: From the beginning of time, as far back as the Dragyr could remember, the dragon lords had always been—they had always existed.
They simply were.
Seven omniscient gods with the powers of creation, life and death, and immortality entwined in their natures. But their existence had been lonely, without a greater purpose.
According to legend, they had created the Dragons Domain and the Temple of Seven. They had hung the sun and the moon, created the seven sacred stones and the seven consecrated lairs; but that hadn’t been enough. They had needed more. They had wanted sons and daughters.
After centuries of trying to procreate with human women, learning how to modify and mask their dragon forms in order to mate with another species, they had almost given up: Their seed rarely planted successfully; the few pregnancies that resulted usually failed; and the handful of infants who were actually born died shortly after birth.
They simply could not procreate with human women.