And the foundation got a piece of the action.
Maybe Teresa was even on commission. Eileen understood. “So, why me?”
“It’s a long shot, Eileen, but I was thinking of that guy in the nineteenth century who found Troy. . . .”
“Heinrich Schliemann. He used the Homeric poems as his reference.”
“Right. I thought maybe there’s something in old stories after all.” She shrugged and Eileen caught another glimpse of her old friend. “I figured if anybody knew about some big mythical beast that could have been real—”
“Instead of the ancient variant of an urban myth . . .”
“—it’d be you.”
“Thanks.” Eileen smiled, happier now that they’d had an honest exchange. “You’ve got nothing else, do you?”
“No.” Teresa exhaled. “But Rafferty Powell has undercut me for the last time.” Her eyes flashed. “I want to know why he wants these, and I don’t want to let him get them too cheap.”
She straightened, hiding her passion with disconcerting ease, then offered Eileen a pair of gloves. “Please don’t touch the artifacts with your bare hands. It will leave an oil residue on them, because they’re porous.”
Eileen wasn’t sure she’d be able to help, even if she wanted to. There were literally hundreds of old stories of heroes vanquishing mythical beasts. Griffins, sphinxes, dragons, basilisks, the phoenix, centaurs, unicorns—who was to say what any of them really were? Who was to say whether any of them had existed? The stories often insisted that the great beast was the only one of its kind.
Maybe they were right.
She couldn’t even imagine what kind of teeth they might have had, but she’d look. Eileen pulled on the gloves.
Teresa turned the box toward her; then her cell phone rang. She pulled it from the pocket of her jacket to look at the number.
“I have to take this,” she said tersely, then glared at Eileen. “I’m sure I don’t have to remind you that they’re numbered and cataloged. You won’t get out of here alive with a souvenir.”
Eileen was shocked by Teresa’s implication. So much for old times and camaraderie.
“I’m sure you don’t,” she replied coldly, and held Teresa’s gaze. Eileen was insulted and didn’t care if Teresa knew it. They stared at each other; then the cell phone rang again. Teresa pivoted as she answered the call. She left the room, her voice low. She left the door to the viewing room open but Eileen couldn’t hear Teresa’s words.
Eileen opened the box and was so shocked that she forgot about Teresa.
The teeth were huge. They each had three peaks, like the back teeth of a dog, but each was a good three inches across. The box was filled with trays, each tray divided into ten compartments, each compartment lined with blue velvet. There were ten trays, only one lacking an index number and tooth.
Ninety-nine teeth.
Whatever the beast had been, it had had a big mouth.
She picked one up and turned it in her gloved hands. Her first thought was that it couldn’t be real, but she could see the hollow on the bottom where it had been attached to the gum. There was even a dark speck, a mark that could have been dried blood.
This Rafferty Powell might just want them because they were odd. But then, Teresa knew him better and she was suspicious of his motives. Eileen put the first tooth back and picked up another. It was similar but not exactly the same. It hadn’t been cast from a mold. She suspected that it really was what it looked to be.
A tooth.
Ninety-nine teeth, to be precise. But from what?
Eileen got no further in her thinking before she heard the shot. It sounded as if it had come from upstairs.
“What the hell is going on?” Teresa marched toward the stairs, her cell phone already snapped shut.
Eileen reacted instinctively. She flicked off the desk lamp and shut the box, ready to run.
If there was somewhere to run.
She had no time to look for exits. The door immediately opened at the bottom of the stairs they’d descended. Two men in black stepped into the vault. They were tall and buff, sheathed in black from head to toe. Even their eyes were hidden behind sunglasses.
The first man through the door shot Teresa in the chest. She fell as Eileen choked on her gasp of terror.
Teresa didn’t move again. A cloud of red spread across the carpet even as the cell phone skipped across the room.
The first man stepped closer and shot Teresa again, right in the head, from very close range.
The second crushed the cell phone under his boot heel.
Then they stepped over Teresa’s body in unison, moving quickly. One was shaking open fabric bags, the other leading with his gun. They strode toward the vault.
Toward Eileen.
Eileen instinctively grabbed the box of teeth, ducked under the desk, and held her breath.
An escape plan would have been ideal, but she didn’t have one.
Magnus sat in the backseat of the armored Mercedes Benz, watching the display on a cell phone. The car was black, the interior was black, and Magnus was dressed entirely in black. His Slayer driver and bodyguard, Balthasar, was also dressed in black. The big sedan could have been a slice of night, idling on a side street in Holborn.
It was certainly filled with darkness. The only light came from the cell phone display, which provided images from a video feed in Jorge’s headset.
Magnus smiled with satisfaction as Jorge and Mallory killed the woman and destroyed her cell phone. They were into the Fonthill-Fergusson Foundation, and he could see that the vault was open.
They were getting lucky despite having made mistakes.
Jorge halted and surveyed the area, his old-speak drifting to Magnus’s ears. “There’s another human here.”
“Get the hoard,” Magnus commanded audibly. “You tripped an alarm in the foyer.” He checked his watch and muttered. “Morons.”
“Problems, sir?” Balthasar asked in old-speak.
“They’ve got three minutes, max.” Magnus watched them enter the vault and seize the buckets of silver pennies. “The teeth!” he shouted at the cell phone, and swore. “Get the teeth!”
Jorge had an armload of jewelry pieces, making his predictable choice instead of the one he’d been instructed to make. Mallory was shoveling coins into a cloth bag. Magnus narrowed his eyes as Jorge scanned the vault, but he didn’t see the box.
“The bitch must have taken it out of the vault,” he told Jorge. “It hasn’t left the building. It has to be there somewhere.”
Jorge left the vault, moving with lightning speed. He checked the first viewing room and Magnus knew Jorge’s vision was sharper than the display that came through the cell phone. Jorge kicked over the desk and chair in the room, pulled at the bookcases, and revealed that they were false fronts.
Jorge turned toward the other darkened room. “She’s here,” he hissed in old-speak as soon as he crossed the threshold.
It made sense. Another human was examining the teeth. That must have been why the meeting had been scheduled, why the dead bitch had even been in the building. Magnus loved when the pieces of the puzzle came together.
Now all parts would be destroyed simultaneously.
Jorge moved into the viewing room with his gun pulled, targeting the desk that Magnus could just see. Jorge kicked it aside and the woman gasped. She was crouched on the floor, the box Magnus remembered so well right in front of her knees. Her eyes were wide with fear and her face was pale.
More important, she held his wooden chest.
She’d die for that.
Magnus heard Jorge chuckle, saw him aim the gun; then there was a crash. Mallory shouted a warning, Jorge turned to look, the woman scurried, and Magnus swore at the video feed.
Even bigger trouble had arrived before the police.
An onyx and pewter dragon raged through the vault, breathing dragonfire as he targeted Mallory. Mallory shifted shape, becoming a garnet and gold dragon. Jorge
must have changed shape as well, because the video feed fell to the carpet. Magnus heard the battle begin. He willed the woman to pick up the video feed so he could track her, but he saw her boots as she ran past it.
He also saw that she carried the box.
Magnus heard the police sirens and cursed in seven languages.
The heist was falling apart. Magnus crushed the cell phone in his hand in frustration, then flung the pieces out the window into the night. “Go around the block. Now.”
The big black sedan roared into action, separating itself from the shadows. Balthasar liked nothing better than to drive and he was good at it—Magnus would give him that.
“We’re picking them up?” he asked.
“Don’t be stupid. They can live with the consequences of their own screwup. I need to take the woman’s scent. Go to the front entrance. I don’t care who sees us.”
“Yes, sir.”
Magnus opened the power window with one fingertip as they drove. He sniffed, but caught only city and sewer, nameless human multitudes and their various stenches.
And Pyr. He inhaled again.
One Pyr.
And not just any Pyr. It was Erik Sorensson, leader of the Pyr. Magnus’s mood turned even grimmer. The display hadn’t been that good, but Erik was onyx and pewter.
Which meant that Magnus wasn’t the only one who knew the location of the Dragon’s Teeth, after all.
Eileen thought she was a goner when the thug who had shot Teresa came into the viewing room.
She knew she was a goner when he kicked the desk aside and aimed his gun straight at her forehead. She refused to cower, just stared straight back at him.
She might not be able to stop him from shooting her, but she’d be damned if she would cringe.
Much less beg.
She saw his finger tighten and her heart leapt to her throat. He’d kill her as readily as he’d killed Teresa.
Then, against all expectation, Eileen got a second chance. There was a roar and a crash. Flames erupted in the main room. Her assailant glanced over his shoulder and Eileen seized the moment.
She ran.
As far as she knew, there was no such thing as a third chance.
Eileen hip-checked her attacker, then drove her shoulder into him. His shot went wild, hitting the ceiling. He swore in another language, and there was a flash of gold at her side.
Eileen didn’t look.
She figured he’d shoot her in the back, but she ran anyway. She carried the box of teeth, because she’d been clutching it and didn’t think she could let it go if she wanted to. She bolted into the main viewing room, where a massive black dragon was spewing fire and smoke.
Every rational thought left Eileen’s brain at the sight.
He was enormous, large enough that his leathery black wings touched the high ceiling of the vault. He was dark and dangerous, his scales glittering and his eyes glowing. Fire spewed from his mouth and his claws were huge and sharp. His tail was a coil of power across the floor.
Eileen’s breath hitched in her chest. She wasn’t going to think about jumping from the frying pan into the fire. Maybe she’d collected one too many fantastic stories in her time. Maybe she was having delusions.
This dragon, though, looked real.
The fire was definitely real.
The dragon snatched at the other thief. That man changed into a red and gold dragon in the dragon’s grasp, right before Eileen’s eyes. She blinked but he remained a dragon. He snarled and twined around the black one with fury.
His scales sparkled red, like a treasure hoard revealed to the sun. His chest even looked to be embellished with pearls. But these dragons weren’t ornamental—they were all muscle and sinew.
And antagonism. The pair of dragons locked claws and breathed fire at each other, their tails knotting together as their claws tore. The fire they breathed, meanwhile, ignited the carpets and the spines of the sawed-down books. The room, which had been as cold as a mausoleum, became sizzling hot.
It was transformed into an inferno, smoke and flames on every side. The fire alarm began to drone.
Time to leave.
The black dragon smashed the red one into the far wall, making the whole building jump with the force of impact. The red dragon bled and spewed fire, but kept fighting. Eileen moved stealthily, coming closer to the fighting dragons. She hoped she could sneak past them without being noticed.
It was a long shot, by any accounting.
The black dragon ripped at the chest of the red dragon, his talons tearing long wounds in the red dragon’s chest. The red dragon screamed in rage and pain. Black blood flowed onto the burning carpet, hissing on impact. Smoke rose from the stain and Eileen saw that the dark blood had burned right through the carpet to leave smoking holes in the concrete subfloor.
The black dragon flung the red one against the wall again and breathed fire at him. Eileen narrowed her eyes against the brilliance of the flames and crept along the opposite wall.
When the red dragon didn’t move, the black dragon pivoted to survey the room. His gaze locked on Eileen.
Her mouth went dry in terror. He exhaled smoke as he studied her and something about his intensity reminded her of someone.
The man in her dream?
No. That was crazy.
Even if the dragon’s eyes were the same vivid green.
She felt warm but it was a different kind of heat than that sparked by the burning room. Desire was awakening deep within Eileen, and at a very inconvenient time. She thought of the old story that had lured her this far, then dismissed the idea.
The dragon took a step closer, setting the floor to vibrating. Eileen eased along the wall toward the exit, not turning back even though she was terrified. The smoke was getting thicker. His eyes flashed as he suddenly raised a talon and leapt toward her. Eileen yelped and jumped backward. He roared with fury.
A yellow claw abruptly closed around her waist.
Eileen screamed when she looked down at the massive talons, each gleaming nail as long as she was wide. Was it the other thief? She’d made a mistake in forgetting about him; that was for sure. She kicked and struck at her captor without success. The dragon tightened his grip on her and lifted her from the floor.
Chuckling.
Would he eat her, like a boa constrictor?
Or just crush her? There were things that Eileen didn’t want to find out, and his intentions made the list.
Eileen raised the wooden chest with both hands and slammed it into her captor’s knuckles. His grip loosened for just one beat but it was enough.
She squirmed free, jumped, and ran toward the stairs.
Toward the black dragon.
Eileen took her chances and kept running.
To her astonishment, the black dragon swept her past him with one leathery wing, then stepped into the space behind her. Did he intend to defend her, or save her for his own lunch? Eileen didn’t much care about the details. She tucked the box under one arm and dove into the stairwell.
She heard the crash and roar of the dragons fighting behind her. She smelled the smoke and heard the crackle of flames, as well as the insistent ringing of the fire alarm. She heard one dragon get slammed into the wall and felt the building shudder to its foundation. The plaster on the ceiling was starting to fall in chunks. Each blow and bellow made her run faster.
She took the stairs three at a time, her leather satchel bumping against her hip, the wooden chest digging into her waist on the other side, her breath coming in anxious spurts. She skidded into the lobby, shouting at the guard for help, then froze.
The security guard wasn’t going to help. He was sprawled across the floor in a pool of his own blood.
His sunglasses were smashed on the opposite wall, beneath a red spray of blood.
They’d blown his brains out.
Just like Teresa.
Eileen tried to not hyperventilate.
She had to get out. Immediately. She raced for t
he street exit, ignoring the blood, stepping around the security guard’s body.
She hoped she could get out without a key card. Eileen kicked open the first security door, glad that it opened.
Her relief was short-lived. A large dark sedan was idling at the curb. It had tinted windows and an aura of invincibility.
Everything about that car said organized crime to Eileen. It must be the getaway car. Eileen slid to a graceless halt, only one locked glass security door between her and what her instincts told her was big trouble.
There had to be another way out of the building. There had to be a fire exit. She spun and snatched the inner security door before it closed. She nearly screamed when a man stepped out of the stairwell on the far side of the foyer.
It was the man from her dream. He was still dressed in black from head to toe, still intense, but his hair was mussed.
It was an action-man look that worked for Eileen in a big way.
He gave her that stare, the one that made her feel hot and bothered and gorgeous; then his eyes flashed.
Where had he come from?
“But how . . . who . . . when . . .” she stammered, unable to make sense of what was happening. It wasn’t like her to be inarticulate, but she couldn’t form a coherent sentence to save her life.
She hoped the price wouldn’t be quite so high.
“This way, Eileen,” he said crisply. He had a wonderful voice, deep and strong, and his British accent didn’t hurt. With three words, he melted her bones and her reservations.
He spared a glance down the stairs, then offered his hand to her. Imperiously. Police sirens wailed in the distance, drawing closer.
His eyes flashed with impatience. “Hurry!”
For once in her life, Eileen did what she was told.
Erik’s mate was holding up well, considering the circumstances. He doubted that happy situation would last. He avoided touching her when she came to the stairwell, simply ushering her past him.
The last thing he needed was the complication of having to explain the firestorm to her.
Its power was debilitating enough.