Flashfire

  A shadow touched his father’s face. “Don’t throw that old detail at me again.”

  “Detail? You betrayed her! You endangered her and left her undefended.” He lowered his voice, leaning close to his father. “You might as well have struck her dead with your own hand.”

  His father tilted his head to regard Lorenzo. “And what exactly are you doing differently with the delightful Cassie?”

  Lorenzo’s heart stopped cold.

  But he knew he was being manipulated. He would have none of such accusations. “Keep your romantic notions to yourself. There is no bond between Pyr and human that endures and I know it as well as you do. You proved it to me. This proves it to me. It’s all an illusion.”

  Even as he said the words, Lorenzo suddenly wished they were not true.

  His father watched him steadily, untroubled by his outburst. “You could love this one,” he said finally.

  Lorenzo chose not to argue that point. “But I will not. I keep my promises, too, and I won’t make one doomed to be broken.”

  With that, Lorenzo turned his back on his father and left the suite, his footsteps pounding even on the carpets. He was seething again, his blood thundering in his ears and his body itching for another fight. Whatever Pyr or Slayer crossed Lorenzo’s path on this night would sorely regret the choice.

  “Yet you defend her,” his father mused in old-speak. “Repeatedly and in dragon form. You assume your true shape and use your powers, after denying them for so long. I find all of this most telling. Will you really use the flashfire?”

  Lorenzo pivoted and glared back down the hall toward his father’s suite.

  And his father, curse him, chuckled with that smug confidence.

  Lorenzo inhaled sharply at the sound.

  But he didn’t turn back.

  He had to ensure Cassie’s safety. His father wasn’t going anywhere, but Cassie just might.

  Cassie sat down heavily, not entirely certain she had a choice. Her knees just gave out beneath her. Lorenzo had said he’d had more motivation to win because she was here.

  He’d called her his mate.

  The chemistry between them wasn’t the only thing making her heart leap and her thoughts spin. The man’s words were pretty potent, too.

  Cassie had never expected to have a dragon as her champion, much less one who could turn her inside out—and set her passion alight—so easily as Lorenzo.

  She also hadn’t thought she’d ever get into a long-term relationship, much less be involved with a man who challenged every expectation.

  Even that of his being a man all the time.

  Cassie had never expected that she’d be flung into a world of mythical creatures, like dragons, who fought each other with such force. And who knew what else they did?

  Cassie remembered the blood she’d seen and took a gulp of Prosecco. She knew Lorenzo would be back soon. She probably could leave, but she wasn’t in a hurry to be in the desert alone at night.

  Without a vehicle. Her Jeep was gone.

  Because there was a dragon out there who wanted to kill her.

  Balthasar. Wounded but not dead, and clearly pissed off.

  No, staying put and facing Lorenzo had far more appeal. He might yell or be evasive, but he’d never hurt her.

  Cassie drained the glass and knew she needed a distraction. She tugged out her BlackBerry and saw that she had a couple of messages. She ignored the one from the acquiring editor, but opened the one from Stacy.

  R U OK?

  Cassie smiled. Of course, it was the middle of the night and they were sharing a hotel room. It was nice to have someone be worried about her—and not fair to leave Stacy worrying. She chose to be positive and heavily edited her current reality.

  MORE THAN OK. HAVING FUN.

  She sent the reply before she had time to second-guess it. Stacy replied immediately with a smiley face.

  Cassie made to shove the device back into the pocket of her jeans, then had a thought. That dragon Balthasar was after her. A little insurance wouldn’t be remiss.

  She updated her location on foursquare, changing her settings so that only Stacy could see her data. She got another smiley face reply in acknowledgment of that.

  If something happened, Stacy would have a clue where to start.

  But what was going to happen? Cassie heard a door slam somewhere in the house and the solid tread of Lorenzo’s footsteps. She shivered in anticipation of seeing him again, in recollection of the way his eyes had blazed.

  But she shouldn’t forget he’d fought a dragon to defend her. That fact was unassailable, and it did make her feel all tingly.

  He’d looked amazing while he’d done it, too.

  She eyed the broken window glass on the floor and the black blood that was still smoking on the patio stones. It looked to be eating its way through them. She figured that things couldn’t get any more weird.

  Then she turned around to find the woman in the painting—the one who was supposed to be Lorenzo’s mother, Angelina—beckoning to her.

  As if she were alive, not the subject of a painting.

  Cassie blinked. She hadn’t had that much to drink.

  Angelina crooked her finger and smiled.

  Cassie figured she didn’t have a lot to lose. She stepped across the room and Angelina’s hand came right out of the painting. Cassie stared, then took Angelina’s hand.

  Which was warm and soft. Angelina’s grip was firm, which was a good thing because she tugged Cassie right into the painting alongside her.

  She’d been wrong: things could get more weird.

  They just had.

  Lorenzo was furious and agitated. Too many items were slipping from his control. He was vulnerable, as he had never been before. His secrets were exposed and time was of the essence. He couldn’t begin to imagine how he would guarantee Cassie’s silence, but he had to try. He took the stairs three at a time to get back to the room adjacent to the atrium.

  Only to find that room empty.

  Where had Cassie gone?

  Lorenzo checked the courtyard, but there was no sign that Cassie had ventured over the broken glass to explore it. He couldn’t detect her scent there, and there was no escape from the courtyard other than the open sky.

  One thing this woman could not do was fly.

  Although it was possible that Balthasar had returned for her. Lorenzo checked again, his heart pounding in trepidation. No, he was certain she hadn’t stepped into the courtyard—there was no trace of her scent there. And Balthasar’s scent was fading.

  What if Cassie had left the house by more conventional exits? He strode through the quiet house, checking the alarms on every door. Nothing. There had been no exits or entries since his own return. The housekeeper and her husband were secure in their suite, sleeping.

  Thank goodness for soundproofing and beguiling.

  At the back door, he detected a trace of Cassie’s scent, mingled with his father’s. The alarm indicated that it had been turned off several hours before, for an interval of five minutes.

  Salvatore had let her in this way, then.

  Lorenzo opened the door and peered into the night, seeing only the smoking wreckage of the Jeep far off to one side. He narrowed his eyes but discerned no signs of life other than the usual activity of the desert at night.

  He shut the door and leaned back against it, thinking. Cassie hadn’t left the house, but she had disappeared all the same. He returned to the room adjacent to the courtyard where he had seen her last. Her clothes were gone but her scent trail did not leave this room.

  Was she hiding? Hoping he’d track her down? He prowled the perimeter, then surveyed the room again. There was nowhere to hide within it.

  That was when he realized that the massive
painting had changed.

  His mother no longer stood to one side, holding back the curtain and smiling at the viewer. She was gone, and the curtain hung slack.

  Lorenzo blinked. It was impossible. Paintings didn’t change. This one had never changed before. Why now? Was this another legacy of darkfire and its power to turn assumptions upside down?

  Lorenzo didn’t know.

  He did know that the painting was different.

  He eased closer to the massive work, not trusting his own eyes. He scanned it, seeking what other details had changed. It took him only a moment to spot Angelina, now in the middle of the painting. She stood before a man with a pointed beard, and gestured to the woman at her side.

  Who wore jeans and red cowboy boots.

  Cassie.

  Lorenzo rubbed his chin. He watched the trio intently, but the figures didn’t move at all. He studied the rest of the painting, confirming that its surface didn’t appear to have changed. Just the imagery was different. When next he looked at the trio, Angelina was smiling at Cassie, her fingertips brushing Cassie’s stomach.

  Cassie appeared to be shocked.

  Lorenzo had a very bad feeling about that. He could make a good guess as to what his mother had just told her. His ability to control all the variables in his life seemed to be disappearing fast.

  Thanks to unexpected interference from his parents.

  One of whom was dead.

  Both of whom meant well, but both of whom were wrong.

  If he was going to regain control, Lorenzo needed a plan. He poured himself a glass of Prosecco, sat on the couch, and thought furiously as he waited.

  For whatever would happen next.

  If nothing else, Cassie was keeping him on his toes.

  In fact, when it came to variables, Lorenzo had a feeling Cassie Redmond wasn’t one who could be easily controlled anyway.

  And in a strange way, Lorenzo had to admit that he was stimulated by his firestorm. It had been a long time since he’d been surprised by anything—or anyone. He never would have anticipated that he would find it so intriguing to be involved with someone who challenged his assumptions, like Cassie. He just wished the firestorm hadn’t happened now, right when so much hung in the balance. He wished he did have a future to promise her.

  Was it possible that Cassie was different from Caterina?

  Was it possible that his father was right?

  Two days ago, Lorenzo would have insisted that was impossible. Now he felt the lingering glow of the firestorm, watched the painting, and wondered.

  The room depicted in the painting was as lush as it appeared. Cassie wasn’t sure how she had become part of it, but she was. She could smell roasted meat, as well as the salt tang of the sea drifting through the open windows. Curtains fluttered and women laughed. Lilting music came from one corner of the room.

  If she had stepped into the painting, did that mean she was in 1586?

  If this was a dream or a hallucination, it was a pretty vivid one.

  She turned to find Angelina smiling at her. Angelina said something to her, something she didn’t understand, something she assumed was in Italian. Cassie figured her incomprehension showed, because Angelina shook her head.

  She grasped Cassie’s hand and tugged her toward a tall, slender man who sat at a table, watching the crowd and stroking his beard. He looked Cassie up and down and shook his head, clearly disinterested in her charms. Cassie would have protested, but Angelina did it for her, explaining something rapidly and with gusto. Her voice was lovely, and melodious, which maybe explained why the man stared at her in wonder.

  He smiled when Angelina was done, then looked Cassie in the eye. “So, you are the choice for Angelina’s son,” he said, his British accent strong. “Do you not think he is rather young?”

  Salvatore had said that Lorenzo had been born in 1585. If she was in 1586, he’d been an infant still. That sounded so crazy, even within her own thoughts, that she didn’t say it out loud.

  Angelina, meanwhile, was explaining something to the man, something that required a lot of gesticulation.

  “Angelina has some advice for you,” the man said. It was clear to Cassie that he found the situation quite strange as well. She realized that he was staring at her boots. They were pretty remarkable boots in the twenty-first century, but she supposed they were even more so in the sixteenth.

  “She says you have felt the firestorm.”

  JP had mentioned that word, although he had dismissed it as dragon lore. If it were true, though, and she had had a firestorm with Lorenzo, that would explain the sparks in the theater.

  There were, after all, more things that were proving to be true than Cassie had ever expected.

  Angelina said something low and fast, and the man smiled. “She says it makes sense that Lorenzo did not tell you the details, that he, of course, will resemble his father in many ways.”

  Angelina gave Cassie a hard look and she nodded, knowing that the other woman was referring to Lorenzo’s dragon powers—and his resulting desire for privacy.

  “The firestorm is a mark of a man like Lorenzo meeting his destined mate,” the man explained, translating as Angelina spoke. “When sparks fly between lovers.”

  The sparks had gone away after she and Lorenzo had made love the first time. Cassie had a funny feeling about that.

  Meanwhile, translator-man smiled and ran a fingertip down Angelina’s arm, his expression so ardent that Cassie understood he was smitten with Angelina.

  Angelina smiled, but her expression was tight.

  So, the feeling wasn’t reciprocated.

  But then, wasn’t Angelina supposed to have been a courtesan?

  Cassie glanced around the room but couldn’t see any sign of Lorenzo’s father, even in younger form. “Salvatore?” she asked, and Angelina caught her breath. Cassie saw tears glistening before Angelina shook her head and began to talk to her chosen translator again.

  “You cannot escape the power of a destined love,” he said, his gaze locked upon Angelina’s face. “You cannot evade the fact that you are destined to bear your lover’s son, a child who will carry his father’s mark.”

  Cassie recalled that Lorenzo had used the word “mate,” too. Could she really be pregnant? After just that one time? The very idea made her queasy.

  “When the firestorm is sated, the child takes life. One spark feeds another.”

  Cassie touched her stomach, knowing her expression was questioning.

  Angelina smiled. She placed her hand over Cassie’s and pressed it lightly against her stomach. Then she made a cradling motion with her hands.

  “Already?” Cassie asked, and the man translated.

  Angelina smiled with confidence and said something.

  “The child takes root when the sparks of the firestorm fade,” the man said, translating so she could understand.

  “But wait a minute,” Cassie protested. “I’m not going to have a baby, not now. . . .”

  Angelina shook a finger at her in warning. She tugged Cassie away from the man, who watched them go with some confusion. Angelina gestured to him, rolled her eyes, then spoke rapidly to a servant. Cassie heard the word “porto.”

  A moment later, that servant carried a carafe of red liquid to the man who had spoken to Cassie. He explained the situation, and the man rose to his feet to bow in appreciation of the gift.

  It was a really big decanter of port. Cassie looked to Angelina to find her smiling. She folded her hands together, miming sleep, then pretended to awaken in confusion.

  Cassie laughed. She would bet that this guy wouldn’t remember anything of their conversation the next day.

  Angelina laughed and kissed her cheek with obvious affection. “Pyr,” she murmured, placing a hand over her heart. Her e
xpression turned rapturous, and Cassie felt herself blush.

  She nodded agreement, which clearly pleased Angelina.

  Angelina tugged her toward a smaller room off to the side, one filled with books and ledgers. She reached up to one shelf, where a small leather-bound book rested alone. She opened it quickly, almost furtively, and removed a slip of parchment. There was something written on it. It looked like a verse.

  Angelina put the parchment in Cassie’s hand, then placed her other hand on top of it so that the parchment was completely hidden. She said Lorenzo’s name several times, squeezed Cassie’s hands together, and Cassie understood that she was to take this sheet. She looked at it and realized it was written in a language she couldn’t read. She gestured to the man who had translated, but Angelina shook her head.

  “Lorenzo. Lorenzo!”

  Lorenzo would translate it for her.

  Maybe because he’d knocked her up and owed her one.

  No. That couldn’t be true. Not after one time.

  Even though everything else that couldn’t be true was turning out to be so.

  Cassie nodded agreement. She was enfolded in a tight embrace then, one that was all softness and perfume. Angelina’s touch caught at Cassie’s heart, made her remember her own mom’s affectionate nature, and had her tears rising.

  Angelina had tears in her eyes, too, when she pulled back. She kissed Cassie’s cheeks, then framed Cassie’s face in her hands. She smiled at her, blinking back her tears. Cassie sensed that there were a thousand things Lorenzo’s mother would have liked to have told her, but more than the language barrier stood between them.

  A clock chimed.

  Angelina’s eyes widened. She kissed Cassie again, whispered something to her in a husky voice, then gave her a resolute push.

  Exactly the kind of push Cassie’s own mom had given her once or twice.

  Chapter 11

  Cassie stumbled as she fell back into the room in Lorenzo’s house. He was standing there, two sparkling glasses of Prosecco in his hand, watching avidly. As if he were waiting for her. Did people walk into his artwork all the time? He stepped forward to catch her elbow and steady her, his touch making her pulse leap.