Flashfire

  The car.

  Cassie shuddered at the thought. The men glanced toward the car, then continued their rounds, as if accustomed to Lorenzo making unannounced visits.

  As long as she stayed in the car, no one would realize he wasn’t the driver.

  Cassie wondered whether the cloak of Lorenzo’s protectiveness extended farther than that. Could Balthasar tell who was in the car? Maybe not. She parked the car at one end of the space, choosing a shadowed zone that didn’t seem very busy. She killed the engine, watching the men work and patrol the perimeter.

  Cassie was as safe here as anywhere.

  For whatever that was worth.

  At least she wasn’t alone. If Balthasar attacked, surely Lorenzo’s employees would call the cops. She didn’t doubt that Balthasar could gobble her up before anyone could arrive to intervene, but this was probably as good as it got.

  And Cassie was exhausted. Now that the adrenaline had abandoned her, she was completely wiped. She might see a plan for her future more clearly in the morning. She supposed she should start taking better care of herself, to ensure the health of her unexpected arrival. Vitamins. Better insurance. She could repaint one of the bedrooms in her house, turn it into a nursery.

  Give her neighbors something to talk about.

  Cassie locked the doors and armed the alarm. She reclined the seat slightly and saw that Lorenzo’s leather jacket was on the passenger seat. She tugged it over herself like a blanket and stared at the stars through the sunroof. She could smell his scent on the jacket and, as much as she would have liked otherwise, it reassured her.

  As if he had her back.

  Even though she knew he didn’t.

  A baby.

  On her own.

  Crap. That wasn’t the way she’d thought her story would shape up. That was even worse than her mom’s story. She didn’t entirely blame Lorenzo—she’d been a pretty active participant in the process, herself. But she was disappointed in him now.

  She could have loved him, if the illusion had been the reality.

  But it wasn’t.

  She’d believed too easily.

  Maybe she wasn’t that different from Stacy after all.

  Cassie leaned her head back against the headrest and let herself cry, just a little, for what would never be.

  Lorenzo was surprised when Cassie turned into the park, even more surprised when she headed for the site of his spectacle. He told himself that he shouldn’t be surprised by Cassie anymore, but the truth was he suspected that would never change.

  He was surprised by how much he wanted to make a permanent connection with her.

  Why would she choose to visit this location? A cautious bit of him wondered if she was after some shots to sell, but that made no sense. She’d chosen not to photograph him and Balthasar. Cassie deserved more of his trust than that.

  Then why here?

  Lorenzo recalled suddenly the presence of JP. Why was that Slayer in town? And what had he wanted with Cassie? Lorenzo had been sloppy with regards to JP, and carelessness always irritated him. It didn’t matter that he’d been distracted by Cassie’s presence. Was that what the firestorm did? Ensure that Pyr screwed up? Why hadn’t he found out more? Was JP manipulating her, maybe into leading him into a trap?

  Lorenzo felt his temper flare and he scanned the site, seeking some trace of Slayer presence.

  Meanwhile, Cassie parked the car and killed the engine. Lorenzo scanned the grounds, but no one approached the vehicle. The shadows were empty and still. He patrolled the area with vigilance, but found nothing out of order. He kept to the darkness so that the security staff wouldn’t notice him and clung to the shadows, hoping Cassie wouldn’t see him either. He avoided the bright security lights, certain he was missing some key detail.

  And he heard Cassie begin to weep.

  It shattered something deep within him.

  He had made her cry.

  He felt like vermin.

  Lorenzo landed on a cliff above and behind Cassie, hiding himself in the rock formations ground out of the earth ages ago. He shifted back to human form and stood in the darkness, focused on his mate. He had his eyes closed and his fists clenched as he listened.

  Her tears halted sooner than he expected.

  He felt her breathing and her pulse slow.

  And he knew the very moment when she fell asleep.

  There were worse places she could have taken refuge than in his car. Lorenzo scanned the cliffs silhouetted against the night sky, once again seeking any sign of Pyr or Slayers. He found none.

  So far.

  He climbed to the top of the outcropping and laid on his belly on the rock. He had a perfect view of the entire site for his spectacle, as well as the car parked beneath him. He could see to the horizon in front of him and to either side.

  As much as he would have preferred to remain in human form, he knew he had to breathe dragonsmoke to defend Cassie, and he could do that fastest in dragon form.

  Once again, he was shifting for the sake of the firestorm. The security staff changed shifts and he took advantage of their distraction to shift shape.

  The glimmer of pale blue light might draw their attention otherwise.

  Then Lorenzo stretched out again, vigilant. He slowed his own breathing, let his eyes narrow, then began to breathe a web of dragonsmoke. He wove it around his car, around Cassie and his unborn son, around everything he had belatedly realized was important to him.

  Tomorrow, he and Erik would create a plan.

  Tonight, he had to ensure that there was a tomorrow.

  For both of them.

  When his dragonsmoke was thick and deep and tightly interwoven, Lorenzo took a deep breath and dismissed his pride. He closed his eyes, winced, then sent a message in old-speak to Erik.

  “I need your help.”

  Short and sweet. Lorenzo wasn’t going to beg.

  Not yet anyway.

  It was four in the morning when JP awakened in Stacy’s hotel room, feeling both satisfied and proud. He didn’t much mind humans, especially the women, especially after one had sated him as well as this one.

  Stacy had been everything he’d hoped she would be.

  He was certain that he had surpassed her expectations. That powder Chen had given him had been ferocious stuff, all right. He hadn’t been able to stop thinking about sex since he’d gotten the first whiff of it in Hawai’i, and when he’d loosed it at Cassie and Lorenzo, his mind had lodged completely in the gutter. He knew he wouldn’t be able to do anything until he had Stacy a good six or seven times.

  And Chen’s plan could wait a day.

  The old Slayer had probably anticipated that JP would be distracted by the powder and factored its effects into his plans.

  JP was feeling too good to worry about it.

  He had watched Stacy sleep and thought about taking her an eighth time. The powder seemed to shimmer in his blood, as enticing and distracting as the firestorm he’d never had. He couldn’t get enough.

  He wanted more.

  Stacy was snoring slightly when JP finally summoned the will to deny his desire and leave. He had to think about Chen’s scheme. He had to claim Lorenzo before his spectacle. There was no point in lingering here—it was clear that Cassie wasn’t going to return to the room before morning.

  She was probably with Lorenzo, stamping out the last sparks of the firestorm.

  JP was in too good of a mood to resent anyone getting any of what he’d had. There was lots of time to put the final step of his plan into action. JP couldn’t deny the doomed Pyr one last night of great sex.

  Chen would never know the difference.

  There was a woman in the elevator when its doors opened, an Asian woman in high heels and a tight dress. JP assumed
she was a hooker, having finished with her client of the hour. She stood in the back corner and avoided his gaze, as if slightly nervous.

  Maybe this hotel routinely tossed hookers out.

  He turned his back on the woman, not wanting to start a conversation, and hit the button for the lobby. The doors closed and the elevator began its smooth descent.

  He had a moment to catch a whiff of the woman’s perfume and realize it was quite arousing before she moved. She leapt forward and slammed her hand against the stop button.

  The elevator lurched to a halt.

  “What the hell are you doing?” JP demanded. She turned on him with a snarl, the irises of her eyes changing to vertical slits.

  His mind stalled. She was Pyr? She was Slayer? Why hadn’t he been able to smell her nature? And how could a woman even be a dragon shifter? This was no Wyvern, the only female dragon shifter in the Pyr.

  She jumped him when he gaped, hauling a piece of metal out of her sparkly purse. She slammed him into the wall of the elevator with astonishing strength, bashing his head against the hard wall. JP went down, dizzy from the impact, and her talons locked around his neck.

  How could such a tiny woman be so strong?

  Even if she was a dragon shifter.

  She turned and bared her teeth, breathing a stream of fire at the piece of metal she held. JP couldn’t make sense of what he was seeing. Her fingers became talons, her mouth was a dragon mouth. She was hovering between forms, flickering between dragon and woman.

  Old man.

  Young man.

  Then he guessed the truth. His attacker was Chen.

  And JP was in deep trouble.

  “Where is the offering I sent you to collect?” Chen hissed in old-speak, his words searing JP’s brain.

  “Tomorrow,” JP replied, struggling in desperation. “I’ll spring the trap tomorrow.”

  “Wrong answer,” Chen said. “I want him now.”

  “But, but . . .” JP tried to save himself, even knowing it was too late. He lunged to his feet, but Chen decked him. He fell against the back corner, the Slayer landing on top of him with such force that the breath was driven out of his lungs. Chen ripped JP’s collar downward, either with a long red nail or a golden talon, JP couldn’t be sure.

  Then JP screamed in agony as Chen’s red-hot brand was pressed against his neck.

  “Now you’re mine,” Chen murmured, his words echoing in JP’s mind as everything around him faded away. “Now you’ll never defy me again.”

  JP had a vague sense of the elevator beginning to descend again, of the doors opening to the quiet hush of the lobby in the middle of the night. He heard those heels as Chen stepped smartly over him and marched across the tile floor.

  And he knew that his life had changed forever.

  Salvatore was trespassing.

  He knew it, and he knew the price for his transgression could be high.

  If he were caught.

  Salvatore didn’t intend to be caught.

  The potential reward, as his Angelina would have said, was worth every measure of the risk.

  He trespassed for his son’s future.

  In Salvatore’s dreams, his mind slid into dark recesses he had glimpsed long before. He had found this portal a long time ago and realized soon that it gave entry to the misty realm of the Wyvern. Somehow he’d stumbled upon it in his dreams. Maybe it was undefended, since the current Wyvern was just a child. Maybe it was accessible to him because he himself was close to death. Salvatore didn’t know, and he had no intention of asking questions.

  He didn’t want anyone to realize the treasure he’d found. He eased closer to those hollows, knowing full well where they led. He’d entered them only once before, then retreated when he realized his location.

  He’d known where he was because he’d had a glimpse of the future. He’d seen Drake—the leader of the Dragon’s Teeth Warriors and a mysterious Pyr in his own right—holding the darkfire crystal that was secured in Lorenzo’s hoard, wielding it and commanding it. Salvatore had understood that he’d seen this because it was his task to give the stone to Drake.

  Maybe the current Wyvern had allowed him to enter her realm so he could do her will. Salvatore didn’t know, but he respected the power of this place. The point of access was a secret to hold in reserve.

  Until now.

  Salvatore let his breathing slow and his pulse weaken, hoping against hope that he could once again find his way. He had need of the Wyvern’s wisdom and vision. She was, after all, the prophetess of the Pyr, the one who saw into the realms of dreams and possibilities. He slipped into those dark crevasses, felt his way by instinct, and passed through a glimmer of quicksilver.

  He recognized the realm of the Wyvern as soon as he entered it. It could be nothing else, a parallel world radiant in possibilities, in glimpses of past, present, and future, a glorious visual feast of shadows and might-have-beens. In this realm, they lingered, possibilities all.

  Salvatore made himself as small as possible and tiptoed deeper into forbidden territory. He could have been surrounded by stardust. By snow. By the glittering, infinite light of the moon. He felt large and clumsy and that his presence was ridiculously obvious.

  Perhaps she did know that he was in this place. Perhaps he’d found it because he’d been invited.

  Either way, Salvatore dared not tarry. He dared not be caught.

  He was in search of a memory.

  Salvatore worked on instinct, assuming this was the way the Wyvern herself utilized this realm. He spied a veil of gossamer, one that rippled in a wind he could not feel. It seemed to snare his gaze and beckon to him. On impulse, he stretched for it, seized it, closed his eyes when it would have enfolded him. It was the memory he sought. He willed it to be a dream and felt something change in the hand of it.

  Salvatore flung it through space and time, filling his mind with the intended recipient, hoping his aim was true.

  Then he ran for refuge, abandoning the marvels of this realm before he was made to pay for his intrusion.

  He could only hope with all his heart that he had succeeded in his quest.

  Locked in Lorenzo’s car and wrapped in his leather jacket, Cassie dreamed.

  She dreamed more vividly than she had ever dreamed before. She was used to dreaming in color, but this dream was astonishingly clear and lucid. She felt like she was living it.

  Or remembering it.

  Even though she knew it wasn’t her memory.

  She might have been in the painting again, but this time, the room around her was empty. It felt more tangible, maybe because of that.

  She could feel the floor beneath her feet and smell the salt tang in the air. She could feel the damp wind that made the curtains drift. She could smell the food that had been eaten and the wine that had been spilled. She could smell the candles that had been snuffed.

  She heard the calls of the men echoing from below and went to the window. On the pier not thirty feet below the window, half a dozen men joked as they staggered into their respective gondolas. The water was as dark as ink, barely rippling, and the windows facing the scene were dark. High overhead, the silvery moon was no more than the barest crescent. It rode high in a dark sky lit with a thousand stars.

  When the men pushed away, shouting farewells to each other, Cassie heard a woman’s voice.

  Singing a lullaby.

  Cassie moved through the abandoned house, following the sweet sound of the woman’s song. She entered a bedroom, one occupied by a large curtained bed and illuminated by the flames in the fireplace. The shutters were closed against the night, making the chamber appear to be an intimate refuge. The entire room looked to be gilded with the fire’s light, nothing appearing more precious than the woman who rocked a baby in her arms.

&nbsp
; Angelina.

  Her hair was unbound and she wore only her sheer pale shift. The makeup that had tinted her features was gone, and her bare feet were held out to the warmth of the fire. Her bed was turned down, but she was alone with her son.

  Lorenzo.

  He couldn’t have been a year old. Handsome even as a baby, he already had that dark wavy hair and that smile. He clutched at a tendril of her loose hair, locking his little fist around it as she sang to him.

  Cassie hovered in the shadows, uncertain whether she could be discerned or not. They were so peaceful together, so joyous in each other’s company, that she didn’t want to interrupt. She could have stood there for hours, just watching.

  Thinking. She felt the power of Angelina’s love, so fierce and so passionate. Would she feel the same way about any children she had?

  Would their son be such a healthy and handsome child? Cassie had to admit that she didn’t mind the idea of having a baby—she’d just never thought to raise a child alone.

  Angelina cooed to her son and sang to him, so obviously enchanted with him that Cassie had to smile. She did not doubt that his mom had adored him, and whether she had planned for his conception or not, she delighted in his presence.

  Would the experience be similar for Cassie?

  The tranquillity of the scene was suddenly shattered by a pounding. Angelina started and looked to the window. The pounding continued, as if someone demanded entry.

  But it was the middle of the night.

  This could not be good.

  Angelina got to her feet, Lorenzo held close against her chest. She must have suspected trouble because she barely opened the shutter to peer at the canal below. She slammed it shut quickly, but not before Cassie glimpsed brilliant orange light.

  A maid had knocked at the door, her expression terrified. Angelina gave her terse instructions, her eyes flashing, and the girl raced away. Angelina shouted at the girl, probably to hurry. Cassie heard men shouting in anger from the wharf below, and two words became clear in the cacophony.