It was a perfect evening in a perfect garden. The moon was rising and was full, its silver light almost as bright as sunlight in the garden. Aura led Thad to a sparkling fountain that was wide and deep. Stars were reflected in its surface and even better, there were no nymphs who claimed this water.
She would have her dragon all to herself.
Her blood was humming when she turned to face him. She removed her tunic, liking how he caught his breath at the sight of her nudity. She removed her sandals, feeling beautiful and provocative, simply as a result of the heat of his gaze. When she straightened, Thad has shed his strange clothing and was nude beside her. She flicked a glance over him and smiled.
He was everything she could hope a man—dragon shifter or not—could be.
“You undress quickly,” she teased. “Is that anticipation?”
“Training put to good use,” he replied. Aura didn’t understand his words and she guessed that it showed. “We have to undress quickly to hide our clothes when we shift shape.”
She reached to touch his injuries, dipping her free hand into the fountain and stroking away the blood. His wounds were already healing, a sign that dragon shifters were as vigorous as she would have expected them to be. “Can you shift back without them?”
“The story is no.” He grinned, that crazy crooked confident smile that made her heart gallop. “The reality is not something I want to explore.”
“Don’t tell me a dragon is afraid.”
“A wise dragon compensates for his weakness,” he said with a lift of one brow, offering his hand to her in silent invitation.
She put her hand in his and the light of the firestorm flared brilliant yellow between them. “And how will you compensate for that one?”
“By having a partner who can be trusted completely.” He kissed her fingertips, his gallant gesture prompting her smile. The heat in his eyes filled her with anticipation, and the touch of his lips on her fingers made her knees melt. He turned her hand and kissed her palm, folding her fingers over the burning imprint of his lips.
Aura sighed with delight. Thad spared her a mischievous glance, his hair falling over his eyes, then kissed the inside of her wrist. He trailed kisses up the inside of her arm, blazing a trail to her shoulder that dissolved every last shred of her inhibitions. Aura let her head tip back when he kissed her shoulder, her throat, her ear, then gasped as he bent to kiss her breasts.
She had never felt anything so good in her life.
She ran her hands over the muscled breadth of his shoulders, then up his neck, spearing her fingers into his hair. She laughed at the sight of the firestorm’s sparks in his dark wavy hair, like fireflies in a thicket at twilight. She ran her fingertip over the dark blue mark on his skin, the image of a dragon, and the firestorm’s light made it look touched with fire. He straightened and captured her lips beneath his own, claiming her with a kiss.
Thad swept Aura into his arms in one easy gesture. He carried her into the fountain, and Aura felt the water surround her as he sank into its depths. The fountain was deep enough that the water came to his shoulders, and the cascading spray fell all around them like a spring shower. The water, too, turned golden in the firestorm’s light, as golden as Hera’s apples and gleaming just as richly. She felt his hands slide over her beneath the surface and liked that his touch was both firm and gentle.
Thad pulled her astride him and Aura felt the size of his erection. As much as she wanted to feel his heat inside her, she twisted in his embrace. Thad broke his kiss and regarded her with concern, his expression making Aura feel playful. “You didn’t change your mind,” he whispered and she laughed, because it wasn’t possible.
Not now.
“No, but the firestorm won’t burn long this way,” she teased, and his grin flashed. Then she pushed him back so suddenly that he lost his balance. He disappeared beneath the surface and Aura pursued him, seeing how he was holding his breath. She ran her hands over the hard lines of his body with unrestrained delight. She had wanted to touch him before and had caressed him as a breeze, but now she wanted to feel him with her hands. She felt his calves, his thighs, his buttocks, then closed her hands around his erection.
Thad caught his breath and locked his arm around her waist. He lunged out of the water, carrying Aura with him, and caught a deep breath at the surface. “I can’t swim,” he confessed.
“But I can,” she said with a smile. She dipped below the surface and cupped her hands around him, then replaced them with her lips. She felt him moan as much as she heard it. As a nymph linked to the element of air, she was at ease in the water as a naiad. She breathed a stream of tiny bubbles, which frothed against Thad’s skin even as she took his strength in her mouth. She closed her eyes against the brilliant glow of the firestorm and bent her attention to giving him pleasure. She felt his hands close around her head. She heard him catch his breath. When she wrapped her arms around him, she felt the pounding of his heart against her palm. The firestorm glowed with greater intensity, even as she gave him all the pleasure she could give.
She sensed that he was on the cusp of release when Thad seized her by the waist and drew her to the surface. He kissed her deeply and possessively, then lifted her to sit on the lip that surrounded the central pillar. He parted her thighs and kissed the insides of her knees, his playful glance making her blood simmer as much as his artful kisses. When his mouth closed over her, Aura leaned back and moaned from the depths of her being. The water was cascading all around her, the golden glow of the firestorm lit the night and her dragon was determined to make her roar.
Three times Aura found her pleasure that night, each peak higher than the last, before Thad lifted her out of the water, spread her on the lush grasses of Hera’s garden and claimed her, body and soul, forever.
* * *
Chicago—June 1, 2012
Erik, leader of the Pyr, sat vigil.
He had been watching Drake sleep for three days and three nights. The other warrior had been utterly still in his slumber. Only a Pyr could detect the slight motion of Drake’s chest as he breathed, and Erik had leaned close several times, just to be sure. Drake didn’t move or roll around, just remained supine with his hands folded on his chest.
Three days and three nights.
Erik had to wonder if Drake would sleep for months. Forever? He leaned back in his chair and let his own breathing slow. Erik had been sure that Drake would have stories to tell him. He wanted to know what had happened to the other Dragon’s Tooth warriors.
He wanted to ask if Drake knew why Erik’s mind was afire.
Where had they been? Where had they gone? What had befallen them?
The darkfire crystal no longer held a spark. It was dead and empty, the crystal too faceted to even make a good scrying stone. Erik had stored it in his hoard, but he wasn’t certain it had value anymore.
He let his eyes narrow to slits and listened to Drake’s slow breathing. Eileen was maintaining the normal rhythm of their lives, sleeping at night and rising with the alarm clock. She looked in on him and reminded him to eat, even as she hurried to work and took Zoë to daycare. Erik waited with Drake, wanting to be the first one to hear of his experiences.
Wanting to ensure that Drake didn’t slip away without telling him more.
As he sat in the darkened room, Erik did as he always did. He reviewed the locations of the Pyr. He felt a connection with each of his fellow dragon shape shifters, which was how he had inherited the task of leader. He was always aware of them, but when he sat in the dark, the links felt more tangible. There could have been a fine copper wire stretched between him and every individual Pyr who drew breath. Or maybe they were lines made of fire, for they shone in the darkness of his mind like long, thin conduits of flame. At the terminus of each was a larger flame, one that burned in a color or a way that reminded him of the Pyr in question.
There was Quinn, the Smith of the Pyr, charged with the power to heal their dragon scales. Sapphire and s
teel in his own dragon form, Quinn was staring into the glowing coals on the hearth, in his house outside Traverse City. He was listening, even while his partner Sara and sons Garrett and Ewen slept, and he was turning his challenge coin in one hand as if he sensed danger approaching.
There was Donovan, the Warrior of the Pyr, restless in the middle of the night at his home in Minneapolis St-Paul. Lapis lazuli and gold in his dragon form, Donovan was always learning new fighting skills. On this night, though, he was listening, standing still in his garage by his Ducati while his partner Alex slept. His sons Nick and Darcy slept while their father began to pace.
There was Delaney, Donovan’s younger brother, standing at the front window of the house he shared with Ginger in Ohio. Erik heard Delaney’s awareness that the dairy cows they raised were serene in the barn, and his surprise at that. Delaney was copper and emerald in his dragon form and more wiry than his older brother. He inhaled deeply of the night air, as if expecting to catch a whiff of something in the wind, and listened to the world outside the house while Ginger and their sons Liam and Sean slept.
Niall Talbot, the Dreamwalker of the Pyr, was changing a diaper, his keen sense of smell so affronted by the odor that Erik smiled. Niall and Rox had twin boys, Kyle and Nolan. Erik was aware that Rox was beside Niall, changing the other boy’s diaper, and that Niall was also listening for a sound that had not yet come.
He was not alone in his sense of foreboding.
Erik found that reassuring.
He followed a brilliant and sturdy line of fire to his old friend Rafferty, secure within the line of dragonsmoke that defended his townhouse in London. Rafferty was gold and opal in his dragon form and was humming softly, reinforcing the dragonsmoke even though it was already deep and thick. It was early morning there, and the Pyr abandoned his creation of dragonsmoke when his partner Melissa embraced him. Erik turned his attention away on purpose, not wanting to intrude, but noted that Rafferty also was preparing for a sensed threat.
Stretching beyond Rafferty’s thread of gold was the glittering line that led Erik to Lorenzo, stage magician and chameleon of the Pyr. Lorenzo was staring out of his home at the waters of the Grand Canal in Venice, looking so intently into the water that it seemed he expected something or someone to suddenly appear. Erik felt Lorenzo jump when his partner Cassie spoke to him, a remarkable thing given how observant Lorenzo was.
On a shoal west of the Hawai’ian islands, Brandon scanned the horizon, as if expecting a storm. He stayed close beside his pregnant partner, Liz, and Erik felt the younger Pyr’s readiness to leap into a fight. Brandon’s father, Brandt, even farther away in Australia stood on a beach and listened to the sound of the wind with care.
Erik spared only the barest glance at Thorolf, because he was so disappointed in that Pyr and his choices. Given his lineage, Thorolf should have been not just a large dragon with fearsome appetites but a force for change and good in the world. Instead, he fought, drank and seduced women. Erik knew he shouldn’t be surprised that Thorolf alone was oblivious to any threat, engaged in a bout of lovemaking with some woman in Bangkok. Erik didn’t want to know if that Pyr was also drunk so he turned his attention away quickly.
In California, Sloane, the Apothecary of the Pyr, was stirring some concoction as it cooled. He stood in bare feet in his kitchen, the glass doors slid back and the evening breeze sweeping through his house, which perched on a hilltop, his attention distracted from his task by something he sensed drawing nearer.
They all—with the exception of Thorolf—sensed the same portent that Erik felt. He wondered if their minds were aflame like his, too. Because that was the sum of the Pyr remaining. Their numbers had dwindled over the centuries. Though Erik had hopes for the next generation of dragon shifters, they wouldn’t come into their powers until puberty. In a sense, they were slumbering like Drake. He was used to an array of glimmering lines of gold in his mind, enough that he could count them readily, enough that he could feel comforted that he wasn’t alone, enough to cast a glow in the darkness of his dreams.
The problem was that lately, there had been a fireball in his mind. He could see and follow the same lines that he knew well, but hovering on the edge of his vision was a brilliant halo of light. Erik could make no sense of it.
But it drew steadily closer. It had first lit when Drake took the darkfire crystal from Lorenzo, and it had become almost blinding in its intensity when Drake appeared at his door three days before. It was clear to Erik that his fellow Pyr sensed a change as well, though none of them knew what it might be. There were others of their kind, Slayers who had turned to the shadows, but the Slayers who survived had drunk the Dragon’s Blood Elixir. That extinguished them completely from Erik’s network of lights and made their doings mysterious. It wasn’t the first time he’d worried about Chen and his doings.
The light was brighter on this night, and it seemed to Erik that a thousand points of light converged on him. He shook his head and sighed, frowning at Drake. He didn’t know whether to dread or celebrate the fact that one of these days, the source of this new light would become clear.
There would be a partial eclipse in three days. Would there be a firestorm sparked by the eclipse? If so, whose? Sloane? Thorolf?
And what did this sense of foreboding mean?
Erik debated the merit of awakening Drake immediately, but the older warrior seemed worn thin. He sat back in his chair, impatient but determined to give Drake the time he needed.
For the moment.
* * *
The pilgrim paused in his journey to cough.
He didn’t have much choice, really. The urge came from deep inside him, and he feared that once he began to cough, he wouldn’t be able to stop. Each spasm was longer than the last, more exhausting, more painful, and seemed more likely to be his last.
He coughed. He choked. He felt his chest clench and his body shake. He saw blood in his spittle, more than the last time, and was profoundly grateful when his coughing stopped.
He was also exhausted. His knees were trembling and he felt too close to the end.
Unfortunately, his journey wasn’t complete. He looked up the ascending road to the pass that he believed led to the fabled Garden of the Hesperides. He’d hoped to reach that place before he died. He’d hoped to throw himself at the mercy of Hera, and maybe, just maybe, to be given a bite from one of her golden apples. That fruit was said to have the power to heal anything, and he had pursued every other cure, without success.
Now he feared he would die before he reached the garden at all.
He sighed, more weary than should be possible, and noticed a tree at one side of the road. This path was mostly barren of vegetation. He’d thought it a feat of the goddess herself, in order to increase the impression of the garden’s lush greenery by contrast. If so, he doubted he’d ever see that contrast.
He stumbled to the tree and almost collapsed beneath it, leaning back against its sturdy trunk. The sun hadn’t risen yet, but the air beneath the tree was still cooler and fresher, almost rejuvenating in itself. He looked up and smiled at the way the leaves blew, stirred by a breeze he could not feel. He could see the stars through the tree’s boughs and he felt safe, as if sheltered from harm.
He shook his head at his own whimsy and reached into his pack for his skin of water. There was nowhere safe in all the world, he’d learned that the hard way, and a tree’s branches were no refuge. He supposed his illness had progressed to the point that he was losing his wits.
He tried to be accepting of that and failed.
He opened the skin with a savage gesture, resenting that he should be the one to fall so ill, that his body should fail him when he was still comparatively young, and that was when he saw her.
A woman was hunkered down and watching him, not ten steps away. She wore a dark cloak of roughly woven cloth, one that she’d pulled over her head so that he’d mistaken her for a rock in the shadows. Her eyes shone from within the darkness of her hood thou
gh, her gaze so bright that he shivered.
On impulse, he offered the skin of water. “Thirsty?” he asked. “It is yours, if you want it.” He gestured to himself. “There are those who want nothing from a sick man like myself, and I wouldn’t blame you if you chose to die of thirst instead.”
To his surprise, she scuttled forward, moving more like an insect than a woman. She paused an arm’s length from him, considering him warily, then snatched the skin away. She drank of it so gratefully that he felt sympathy for her.
“It was hot yesterday,” he said. “Did you drink all the water you’d brought?”
She nodded, then halted to offer the skin back to him.
He smiled, knowing she must still be parched. “Drink some more. It won’t help me as much as it will help you.”
Again she studied him, little discernible of her features except those glinting eyes. She drank again, gratefully and greedily, and the pilgrim was glad that something good had come of his journey.
“You’re going to the garden,” she said, when the skin was nearly empty. She offered it to him again and he drained it.
Then he nodded. “Well, I was, but I won’t make it there now.”
“Why not?”
“Because I am sick, so sick that no one can help me.” He shrugged. “I had an idea that Hera herself might show mercy upon me, if I asked her politely.”
The old woman cackled. “Can you ask nicely enough?”
He grinned. “I could try.” She gave him such a skeptical look that the pilgrim had to consider himself, so gaunt that his bones showed, running sores on his flesh and his hair almost gone. His teeth had fallen out months before and his nails had turned black. The idea of him courting the favor of a great goddess, even as he looked as he did, made him laugh at the absurdity of it all.
That launched another coughing spasm, one that left him shaking beneath the tree long moments later. The blood in his spittle was bright red. He could taste it and knew there was more of it than ever before.