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.
If so, she couldn’t really blame him for his conclusions.
Even if she did want a chance to explain.
Through the camera viewfinder, she had a good look at him. It gave her a bit of emotional distance, as if the large opalescent dragon were an illusion and not part of her current reality.
Her dragon was large, larger even than the other dragon, and powerfully muscled. His scales were the color of opals, all mysterious shadings of gold and blues and mauves. Gorgeous. Each scale was tipped with gold, like a piece of jewelry, and his talons were gold. His belly could have been covered with golden chain mail, the scales there overlapping one another in beautiful rhythm.
Was he Mr. Conscience? Her dragon moved with the same deliberation as the man in Montmorency’s house, as if holding huge power in check. His eyes had the same shimmer of gold around the pupils, although the dragon’s pupils were vertical slits.
What clinched his identity was that the black and white ring, the swirled one that Mr. Conscience had worn on his finger, was on her dragon’s talon. It
was
him. His talon was massive compared to his finger, and Melissa wondered how that had worked. Did the ring stretch? It looked solid, like glass, but there was no mistaking that its diameter had changed.
A lot.
Then Melissa wondered what else he had in common between the two forms. His dragon form was generously endowed, and once she’d looked, she couldn’t
not
look. He was impressive, all muscled strength. She couldn’t decide whether he was better looking as a man or a dragon.
The driver of the Mercedes, the one who was now bleeding black from his wounds, was a seriously flashy dragon. His scales reminded Melissa of an agate chess set she’d bought in Mexico for her brother. There was a swirled pattern on the scales, just like agate, and they were the color of gold and russet, even with a few veins of dark green. His eyes were so dark as to be black, and he seemed more inclined to breathe fire at his opponent. He was slimmer and moved faster, more impulsively. She had a sense he might be younger, like a kid just coming into his chops.
Melissa got a shot of the flames erupting from his mouth, brilliant against the overcast night sky. She checked it on the camera’s display and knew it was a keeper.
The pair locked claws again, and Melissa heard a rumble. It sounded like thunder, very close at hand, but there were no storm clouds overhead. She’d heard it at the house, too, and had assumed it was thunder. It couldn’t be.
Meanwhile, the dragons tumbled end over end, making her dizzy with their combat. A drop of the black blood landed on her sleeve. It burned right through the cloth, leaving a smoking hole. Melissa shook her sleeve, trying to ensure it didn’t burn her skin. Fat snowflakes fell against it and sizzled. The hit just increased her sense of being in a war zone and her disassociation from her circumstances.