“My book!” Magnus’s fury was clear. “The bitch has taken my book! Find her!”
This last utterance was broadcast in old-speak, a command from Magnus to his minions, whoever they were and wherever they might be. Rafferty felt a stab of fear for the woman’s safety.
The thief’s safety.
The thief whose crime he had enabled by fighting Magnus. She had probably entered the house with the intent of stealing from Magnus, and he had facilitated her crime by keeping Magnus busy while she got away.
And now, Magnus and his Slayers would hunt her.
Rafferty bounded into the sky. He quickly soared high and turned slowly over the neighborhood.
It was easy to spot the woman’s car—an older model moving too quickly out of the quiet neighborhood. It was the only car on the roads in the area, and the driver was in a hurry. It also emanated the scent of that perfume. Rafferty followed it, scanning the roads for a big black sedan.
Magnus’s Benz had to be somewhere, coming closer. In a trio of heartbeats, he spied the car.
Rafferty had been right. He raced toward the woman’s car, hoping he could reach her before Balthasar did.
Dragons!
Who would have believed it?
Melissa wasn’t sure she did believe it. Maybe she had imagined the dragons she thought she had seen. She certainly hadn’t seen the men shift shape, even though it was the logical conclusion. Where else could the dragons have come from? And where could Mr. Conscience and Montmorency have disappeared, as quickly as that?
Melissa didn’t know. She reviewed the facts as she drove. She hadn’t imagined the fire, because she could smell the smoke on her coat. And she wasn’t imagining the blue leather-bound book on the seat beside her. She touched it again with her fingertips. It was real and she had it in her possession.
Daphne had been right about that. She hoped Daphne had also been right about the book’s contents.
Melissa wasn’t imagining the gun that she’d dropped on the floor in front of the passenger seat, either. It gleamed in the darkness there, looking evil. She hated guns. Why on earth had she taken the gun? And what was she going to do with it now? It was probably stolen or linked to some other crime.
She wished she’d taken her camera into Montmorency’s house. She would have had evidence then, evidence she could review later, as to what she had actually seen.
Dragons? Probably not.
But what if there were? That would be a story!
Melissa was driving erratically, her palms damp and her hands shaking on the wheel. So much for being a smooth intruder, getting in and getting out without a hair of bother. James Bond she was not.
She was okay with that. She never needed to break the rules again.
Because she had the book. When she got home and had a good look at it, she’d figure out how best to proceed. She hoped that Daphne hadn’t been lying about its contents and that it really did include the evidence needed to condemn Montmorency.
She hoped she hadn’t taken a stupid chance for nothing.
Melissa checked the rearview mirror again, not in the slightest bit reassured that no one was following her. It was hard to believe she could have gotten away with this.
Of course, if she had, it had been because of Mr. Conscience. She recalled his dark eyes, the understanding in his expression, and felt something a little different from terror. When was the last time a man had looked at her, really looked at her, like that? Why couldn’t she have met him under other circumstances?
Maybe when she would have made a better impression.
She certainly couldn’t complain that she felt isolated from life anymore. She wouldn’t be able to tell her brother when they next talked that she still felt insulated from the world, wrapped up in quilt batting and unable to feel anything real. Her heart was pounding, and her breath was still coming in anxious gasps. Running to the car had made her aware of her muscles and the power of her body in a forgotten way. It felt good to push her body, to do something, to take a chance.
As if she’d awakened from a long sleep.
Melissa hoped a lack of practice had not led her to take a stupid chance instead of a calculated risk.
She’d know when she read the book.
There was still no one behind her. Melissa forced herself to relax her grip on the wheel, schooled herself to take a long slow breath, and lifted her foot slightly off the gas pedal. The car slowed just as she saw the lights of a busier thoroughfare ahead. She found herself reassured by the prospect of the presence of other normal people.
People who presumably hadn’t broken the law.
Why had Mr. Conscience followed her into the house? Didn’t that make him complicit? Or had he been hidden in the house all along?
Was he friends with Montmorency?
No. Friends wouldn’t have fought like that. He must have followed her into the house. Why? What had been his plan?
Not that she was going to have the chance to ask him.
Melissa reached over, grabbed the book, and put it in the pocket of her winter coat. No point in losing it now. Then she opened the glove box, keeping her gaze fixed on the road, and felt around for her digital camera. When she had it in her other coat pocket, she felt more composed.
Ready for anything.
With luck, the evening would proceed without any more excitement.
Dragons. Right. What had she seen? Even the morphine hadn’t given her that kind of delusion. Feeling guilty was one thing; losing touch with reality was quite another.
Get a grip. That was what the cameraman, Bill, had said to all the new arrivals who lost their nerve. Panic didn’t fix anything, after all, and adrenaline was best used sparingly. She could see Bill, lighting a cigarette with that nonchalant attitude, rolling his eyes, and advising the new kid on the team—the freaked-out one—to get a grip.
Usually while bombs were detonating close by.
Melissa smiled.
She had just wiggled her shoulders, easing the tension away, when a sedan rocketed out of a side street and T-boned her car.
Melissa’s car was slammed hard to the left, skidding across the pavement. There was a crash of metal on metal, the tinkle of breaking glass, the squeal of her tires sliding crosswise over the pavement, all before she could make sense of it.
Melissa’s head snapped hard to one side as her car hit the curb. Her left front tire leapt over the concrete, and the car lurched to a halt, its tires sinking into the muck of the boulevard. She exhaled shakily, incredulous at her misfortune.
What crappy timing.
What kind of rotten luck set her up for an accident right now?
Then she got mad. She knew all about rotten luck—this was about bad choices. What kind of loser wouldn’t stop at a stop sign? Was the other driver drunk? Melissa glanced over the damage as she got ready to give the driver a piece of her mind.
And get his insurance information. She wasn’t going to pay for this.
A large black sedan was slammed into the right side of her car, its hood having pushed in the doors and broken both windows of Melissa’s car. Melissa ground her teeth. Her right mirror was gone, too. It was going to be miserable to get her car fixed, given its age and the rarity of parts, and the hassle was the last thing she needed. On the other hand, she wasn’t going to be buying a new car anytime soon.
What an idiot!
She realized suddenly that the big sedan hadn’t had its lights on. That was why she hadn’t seen it. The car was dark and the windows were tinted, and it had come out of the darkness. She couldn’t see the driver even now.
Why hadn’t the driver had his headlights on?
He or she certainly wasn’t getting out of the car to apologize.
Melissa had a moment to hope he or she wasn’t hurt, and to reach for the door handle to get out and check, before she saw the silver Mercedes hood ornament. It was gleaming right where her passenger door window should have been.
The anger slipped
out of her, only to be replaced by a very bad feeling. She’d been hit by a big black Mercedes. Montmorency owned just such a car.
It hadn’t been an accident.
Her theory was proved when the driver of the Mercedes put his car abruptly into reverse. The tires squealed as the vehicle sped back into the street, then halted abruptly enough to rock on its shocks. It was about twenty feet away, its front fender rumpled, its lights still extinguished. The street was empty.
To Melissa’s left was a gully, a darkened valley of a park that fell away from this side of the road.
She had a sudden intuitive understanding of what the other driver was going to do, and it terrified her.
Melissa hit the gas, slamming the pedal into the floor. She flooded the engine with that quick move, and her car choked once before it stalled. She couldn’t start it again. The engine of the Mercedes revved loudly as she tried.
Shit!
Melissa reached for the door handle in the same instant that her door was ripped open from the outside.
“Hurry!” Mr. Conscience said. She gaped at him, astounded to find him right by her side again. How had he gotten all this way so fast? Where was his car?
He didn’t seem inclined to chat. He grabbed her hand and hauled her out of the car. His hand was warm, and he moved with decisive power. Melissa could like that in a man, along with a conscience. She stumbled after him, her heels sinking in the soft winter lawn, even as she heard the Mercedes’s engine roar.
She looked to see the car racing toward her own once more.
“You can’t outrun him,” she managed to say; then Mr. Conscience did that shimmering thing.
Melissa closed her eyes against the pale blue light that surrounded him, then felt a claw holding her hand.
Not a dragon claw. It couldn’t be.
That would have been impossible.
But it sure felt like one. Melissa might have recoiled, but she didn’t have a chance. She felt herself scooped from the ground as the dragon caught her up and took flight. She kept her eyes closed, even as she felt the wind on her face and heard the sound of leathery wings.
Maybe she had seen what she thought she had seen.
Now was the time to be sure.
She would have looked, but the crash from below drew her attention instead.
Melissa glanced down to see the big sedan perched on the boulevard, all four tires over the curb. Her car was rolling down into the gully, in slow motion. It came to a halt on its roof, looking crumpled and wrong.
An instant later her car exploded, sending a plume of fire and smoke into the sky. The driver of the Mercedes got out of the vehicle, looked up at them, then leapt into the sky in pursuit.
Melissa knew she shouldn’t have been surprised to see him turn into a dragon, as well. He did it quickly, a man one minute and a dragon the next, but there could be no mistaking what he’d done. There had been a bit of that shimmery blue, too. This dragon looked as if he could have been carved of agate, his scales all in shades of gold and russet with a bit of green. He looked both jeweled and fierce.
She guessed that his plan wasn’t to make friends when her dragon accelerated, soaring toward the clouds with purpose. The dragon who held her—was it really Mr. Conscience?—had scales that looked more like opals edged in gold.
It could have been exciting, if she hadn’t been pretty sure these dragons fought for keeps.
She could die.
But then, she’d spit in the eye of Death before.
The fact was that Melissa couldn’t do much in her current situation, at least not to help herself get out of trouble. The outcome was out of her hands. She was hundreds of feet up—if the dragon dropped her, she’d be a goner. Her best bet was to hang on and not distract him—and hope he landed somewhere solid soon.
In the interim, Melissa did what came naturally—she tugged her camera out of her pocket and documented what was happening around her.
Even though it was a dragon fight.
Rafferty couldn’t believe he had gotten himself into such a mess. It was his nature to think twice and act once, and his inclination to always be on the side of good. Yet, here he was, protecting a human thief.
And lusting for her all the while. That perfume wound into his nostrils, stirring a desire that had slumbered deep for centuries. Rafferty was distracted all over again, keenly aware of the press of her breasts against his chest, of the softness of her hair against his scales, just when he needed to focus. He could have done without Balthasar hot on his tail, undoubtedly at Magnus’s command.
She’d get them both killed.
Did she get away with her crimes because she was so beautiful? Rafferty didn’t believe he was the first to be enchanted by her beauty.
That realization didn’t temper his response. Not one bit.
This woman was dangerous in oh so many ways.
He was exhausted. He didn’t know when he’d last slept well. He was injured—it wasn’t a huge cut on his forearm, but it needed tending.
Worse, he was rattled in a way that was utterly uncharacteristic of him. Rafferty had other things to do, priorities to resolve, blood duels to finish… Yet he was saving a human he wasn’t entirely sure was as much of a treasure as many other humans—at least not in the truth of her heart. In so doing, he was unable to help all the others who were tormented by the earth’s current violence.
He felt disheveled, as far from his usual composed self as possible, and not in the least bit in charge of his choices. That was an unfamiliar and unwelcome sense.
Yet he defended her still.
What spell did this woman weave around him?
Rafferty shot skyward, trying to break through the cloud cover before he and Balthasar began to fight. The last thing he needed was to attract human attention. He could do without the legwork of persuading countless humans that they hadn’t seen dragons in the sky overhead.
The eclipse was just two hours away. Already he could sense its impending shadow—maybe that was why he felt edgy. He was always the calm Pyr, the bedrock of the group led by Erik—not the impulsive one who got himself into awkward situations. That was usually Thorolf’s territory.
No doubt about it—this woman, with her eyes and her perfume, was affecting him, and not in a good way.
Rafferty was within a talon’s breadth of the clouds when Balthasar slashed at his tail. The Slayer breathed dragonfire, the flames licking at Rafferty’s scales. They weren’t through the clouds yet, but Rafferty had to defend himself. He hoped the falling snow would obscure them. He passed the woman to his back claw, using his body to disguise his move from Balthasar.
Then he suddenly pivoted in the air, raged at Balthasar, and locked claws in the traditional fighting pose. The pair breathed fire at each other, tumbling end over end as they struggled for ascendancy. Something flashed, and Rafferty assumed it was lightning. The weather had been so strange of late, after all. Balthasar bared his teeth and raged flames at Rafferty.
The woman, to Rafferty’s surprise, didn’t make a sound, not even as he thumped and slashed at Balthasar. Theirs was a quick and vicious fight.
Wasn’t she afraid?
Maybe she had passed out. That would be consistent with the Pyr conviction that humans couldn’t accommodate their truth very easily.
“Tired of running already?” Balthasar taunted in oldspeak. “Or am I just faster than you?”
“Maybe I just chose the place of battle.” Rafferty slugged Balthasar with his tail, sending the Slayer spinning through the falling snow. Balthasar swooped and turned abruptly, turning on Rafferty with talons bared again.
He snorted. “Hardly! The Pyr are cowards.”
Rafferty laughed at that ridiculous notion. “It’s not fear, but a protectiveness of humans that brought me this high in the sky.”
“A misguided plan,” Balthasar retorted. “Or maybe just an excuse, to explain your cowardice.”
“I’ll show you cowardice,” Rafferty roared, and
the battle turned more violent. He slashed at Balthasar, holding fast to one claw to keep the Slayer close. His talons dug into the Slayer’s chest, and Balthasar cried out in pain. Black Slayer blood gushed from the wound, dripping like black rain, as Balthasar tore free. Rafferty lunged after him, pursuing his advantage.
When he saw the second flash, he spared a glance to the clouds. There was no lightning. He heard an electronic whir from close proximity, then saw a third flash.
The woman was taking pictures of them! Rafferty was so astounded by her choice that Balthasar nearly ripped his wing off.
Then he was furious that this thief, this temptress, should attempt to compromise the privacy of the Pyr. For what purpose? It couldn’t be a good one. Rafferty would ensure she never had the chance to profit from this sight.
But first, he had to defeat Balthasar.
Rafferty didn’t miss the irony that so doing would ensure the woman’s safety.
The shots were great.
Melissa focused on the challenge of taking good photographs while hurtling through the sky. It was better than thinking about being in the middle of a dragon battle.
She’d played this mind trick before, in Iraq, when the crew had been embedded and besieged. Bill had taught her then to focus on the story, on the documentation, instead of worrying about her own survival. The idea was to focus on what you could control and not worry about the rest. It wasn’t always easy. As distraction techniques went, having something to do worked pretty well.
Even when the fire breathed by the dragons singed the hem of Melissa’s coat. She slapped out the flames, pretending it was perfectly reasonable for that to happen when she was taking pictures. As Bill had said, there’d be time for nightmares later. The immediate goal was always survival.
Fortunately, the dragon that Melissa knew best seemed determined to defend her. She wasn’t going to think about why, much less what he might want in return. After all, Mr. Conscience had made his disapproval of her clear with one look, and she was pretty sure this dragon was Mr. Conscience.