Anj smiled, a little misty eyed. “See? I didn’t understand it when I made the rings—shit, I wouldn’t have believed any of this at the time—but I always knew there was power in our friendship. It’s always been the three of us.” Her grip tightened. “But there’s more to magic than sparkles, Pipsqueak. We’re in trouble.” The sheen of tears darkened her hazel eyes, like oil on the bayou of her childhood home. “Black magic trouble.”
“And of course I want to help,” Piper said, pulling away from both her friends. “But we can’t just take the ichor. It’s what keeps them…the dragons alive.”
“All the more reason to take it.” Anj spat melodramatically to one side. “One monster’s blood can kill another monster.”
“They aren’t monsters,” Piper protested. Well, maybe Bale was… “And if they were, they wouldn’t meekly lie down and give up their essence just for a pretty-please.”
“No. That’s unicorns.” Anj waved her ringed hand impatiently. “But dragons are just as surely drawn to virgins as sacrifice.” Her mouth turned grim. “The only thing Ashcraft didn’t take from Esme.”
Piper tried not to gape. Esme was a virgin? When they’d lived together, Anj had crowed about her conquests, Piper had blushed about hers, and—now that she thought about it—Esme had always been coy and giggly. But…never?
“She was probably the only virgin in the Keep,” Piper muttered.
“That was the plan,” Anjali said. “If we put her out there, one of the dragons would come for her.” She looked at their willowy blond friend curled helplessly on the bed, and her mouth turned down another degree. “Who could resist?”
Piper stared at her friend. She’d always thought Anjali Herne was the supremely confident, almost arrogant, one of their trio. To find out Anj too had doubts made Piper wonder how much of her own insecurity was self-inflicted.
But she didn’t have time to diagnose her own limitations. “Anj, this is wrong. We can’t take the dragons’ ichor. We can’t use Ez as bait. I know Lars is an ash-hole—”
“You have no idea,” Anjali said.
“But whatever makes him think he can do this is just plain wrong. And we won’t let him win.’”
To her horror, Anjali’s sloe eyes quickened with tears. “Pipsqueak, you are too good for this world. I knew the sunstone was perfect for you; your spirit is fiery bright. But we can’t fight Ashcraft.” Her breath caught. “We can’t.”
Piper hadn’t seen her friend so beaten since she’d had to quit school to work at her uncle’s head shop. And now that it turned out magic was real, and somehow Anj was part of it, Piper had to wonder what else went on in that funky place with its even funkier smells. “What happened, Anj? What did Lars tell you to make you do this?”
Anjali’s jaw hardened. “It doesn’t matter. The dragons are evil and don’t belong here. Sacrificing one to get Esme away is just a bonus. And if the contaminated ichor kills Ashcraft, let’s get this party started.”
This wasn’t a bachelorette party anymore; it was a nightmare. Piper didn’t want to imagine what the hangover was going to be like. “Maybe we can’t fight Lars, but the dragons can. I know they would.”
Anj shook her head, her dreadlocks lashing with her agitation. “Why would they? They don’t care about humans. We’re just a source of blood and treasure to them.”
Piper bit her lips. Was that true? She couldn’t figure out what Rave saw in her. Besides the solarys power. “I’m pretty sure they’d care about a human sneaking around hoping to steal their ichor.” She tucked her hands under her thighs. “I could call one and ask.”
Anjali stiffened. “Call one? What, like you have a dragon on speed dial?”
“Not exactly.” Piper squirmed uncomfortably on the scratchy bedspread. “That’s how I found you. One of them told me you were here. And there are couple, maybe more, out there now.”
Springing like a jack-in-the-box to her feet, Anj raced the few steps to the door. Then she just stared at it. “Oh fuck. Like one deadbolt is going to keep them out.” She whirled to face Piper. “Are you insane? I took Ez away from the Keep because I thought you were going to get us in trouble with Ashcraft, trying to convince her to leave him. But you brought dragons down on our heads instead?”
“I didn’t bring them,” Piper corrected. “They found you and told me. They were helping me, and I think they’d help again if I told them what’s happening to Esme.” She wasn’t so sure what was happening with Anj, but one problem at a time.
Her friend paced, skirt kicking up with every step. “I can still make this work,” she mumbled. “If there’s a dragon already here…” She spun toward her oversized purse and rifled through it.
As her muttering got louder and less sensible, Piper pushed slowly off the bed. She edged toward the door.
She still didn’t understand everything that was going on, but it was enough to know Ez was in trouble, and Anj too, and Lars and magic were at the root of it, and Rave and the dragons—dragons!—were the targets, and
she
was going to stop it and get her answers. In water purification, powerful UV light—like the purest, most concentrated sunlight—was used to kill off germs, and it was time to throw open the curtains on this mysterious place. Or, since they were in Vegas, it was time to put all the cards on the table.
When she clicked back the deadbolt, Anjali spun around. “What are you doing? Don’t go out there yet. I have to set the snare.”
“No.” Piper spun the doorknob and pulled, letting in the whiff of cold desert night. “No more secrets.”
Anj lunged for her, stiff-arming the door. It slammed shut. “Okay, okay. I’ll explain everything. But the snare will protect us. Just let me—”
The door blew open.
Not with a chilly breeze, but with the roar of a blast furnace.
Chapter 15
The dragon was too close under his skin, and Rave couldn’t hold back its hoarse cry and the heat of its anger when he knocked on—okay, smashed—the door of room seven.
He’d sensed Piper’s worry and her confusion. And worse of all, her doubt.
She needed him, wanted him, but hadn’t called out to him because she didn’t believe in him.
The dragon wouldn’t wait any longer.
He managed to keep it contained in the boundaries of his human shape, unleashing its fury only on the cheap plywood.
Piper had dodged back, but now she held out both hands, blocking him more effectively than the door. “No, Rave. Go back. It’s not safe. There’s a trap—”
Her red-headed troublemaking friend, Anjali, stepped out from behind her. There was something in her hand. A glass orb, black.
She threw the orb at him.
She was fast, but his reflexes were the dragon’s and he dodged.
Torch bulled through the doorway behind him, his stare locked intently. Not on the threat. On Anjali.
Rave shoved him, but his cousin’s tank-like build resisted the blow.
The orb struck Torch in the shoulder and shattered. Though the tinkling chime was a testament to the fragility of the thin-blown glass, the force contained within spun Torch a one-eighty, throwing him into the wall.
Rave had managed to push Torch almost out of the way; if the orb had struck him square in the chest…
Tendrils of oily black smoke sprang from the broken glass like tentacles from a rotting kraken. The stench was worse than that.
Torch coughed and swatted at the smoke, reaching through the haze toward Anjali. He bared his teeth in a vicious smile.
And the blackness sank into his skin.
His eyes widened, then rolled back in his head.
As he hit the floor, the crash was louder than the door going down.
Rave swung away from his cousin, but the tendrils that had missed Torch were questing outward, seeking prey.
And Piper was in the way.
He reached for her, dangerously close to the black smoke that had felled Torch, but she danced back.
“Get out, Rave,” she gasped. “It’s a dragon trap.”
A cold shock nearly extinguished the dragon in him.
She knew. She knew what he was.
Had she known what her friends were doing?
He flinched away from the still-expanding tentacle. It struck with an almost sentient ferocity. He whirled in the tight confines of the tiny room, but the tendril sliced past his neck.
His skin exploded with pain that radiated up into his jaw and down his arm. The muscles there seized, and he clamped his other hand over the area.
Those fingers went numb.
The tentacle coiled back, darting down his leg. Pain, numbness. He fell to one knee.
‘Rave!” Piper jolted around the end of the bed toward him, but her friend hauled her back.
“Don’t touch him,” Anjali hissed. “Not until the snare locks tight.”
Piper tried to wrench away. “Stop it. Anj, he’s here to help us!”
“He will help us. Well…his ichor will.”
Rave tried to retort, but his jaw was frozen shut. He tried to draw in a breath, to ignite the dragon, but inside, all was darkness and stone. His lungs heaved to pull air past his closed throat.
Shadows threatened at the edges of his vision.
Anjali pulled a phone from her bag. To dial she had to release Piper who ran to his side.
She dropped to her knees in front of him. “Rave. Rave, what can I do?” Her hands hovered near him. “I’m your solarys. Maybe I can—”
He managed to throw himself backward to avoid her touch. He couldn’t let the smoke get to her.
Her eyes widened. “Rave. I didn’t know, I swear.”
Anjali yanked her to her feet. “C’mon. They’ll be here soon.”
Piper resisted. “Who? The dragons?”
“Ashcraft’s men. They’ll deal with Dorado.”
“Anj, no. You’re wrong. We can’t do this!”
“We have to. I have to.” The red-head’s eyes were wild with something like panic. “I already did.”
Piper wrenched free and stood over him. “I won’t let them steal his ichor.”
Anjali went to the far bed and pulled the blonde upright. Esme Montenegro looked more like a sack of boiled potatoes than the elegant heiress he’d seen on the security cams.
Although he supposed he shouldn’t talk.
Well, he couldn’t anyway.
Anjali dragged the stumbling Esme toward the door, stomping over the unmoving Torch. Was he dead? He’d taken most of the hit from the black orb.
Piper blocked his view of his cousin when she knelt beside him again.
With the wall at his back, he couldn’t move any farther away, and this time she put her hands on him.
She framed his face, straining his frozen muscles to lift his gaze to hers. “What do I do? How do I make the solarys thing work?”
With the shadows encroaching all around, she filled his vision. He couldn’t form any words, just a low, draconic rumble.
Her hands tightened on his cheeks. “If you have to take my blood, my treasure, my life, whatever, do it. If Anjali is doing this for Lars Ashcraft, they are both wrong, and you have to stop them.”
Though it took all the strength left in his numbed arm, he raised his hand to cover hers. Through the chill of his skin, her fingers felt like brands, burning him.
Just the way he liked it.
“Piper,” he whispered.
She gasped, and then she was being dragged away from him.
Two men in dark, unmarked clothing hauled her, kicking and shouting, toward the door. Another man—in Keep livery—was bending over Torch.
Rave recognized him from the security crew. What was his name? Antonio. A newer hire, but certainly vetted as all their employees were.
Torch was going to be livid.
If he lived.
Piper grabbed at the doorframe, but her fingers slipped off the splintered plywood, and she disappeared into the night. Her screams cut out abruptly.
Rave wrenched at the invisible bonds enchaining him.
Did one slip?
Had Piper’s touch loosened the black tendrils creeping in his muscles?
One of the men returned and stood beside Antonio. “Did you get it?”
Antonio brandished an iron knife, like the one Rave used to excise the ichor running through his veins. “Give me a minute. The bitch over-delivered and now we have to bleed two of them.”
The man slanted a nervous look at Rave. “One is fine. Let’s just get out of here.”
Antonio scoffed. “You think
he
will be understanding if we walk away without both? Yeah, I’ll let him know that’s what you decided and we’ll see how that goes for you.”
“Fine.” The man stomped across the little room toward Rave. “I’ll get this one then.”
He pulled a skinning knife from his boot.
Maybe it was because Torch had taken the worst of the hit, or maybe it was Piper’s touch, but before the knife cleared the leather, Rave lunged upright.
His leg was still weak and nearly buckled under his weight. But that just made his attack more unpredictable, and when the man swung at him with the wicked blade, Rave was already coming down on him like a fucking mountain slide.
His slashing hand broke the man’s arm, sending the knife spinning across the room. The man’s stunned shriek ended with Rave’s hand around his throat.
He lifted Ashcraft’s flunky off his boots and flung him at Antonio, knocking the security man off Torch.
Both humans went down in a tangle of flailing limbs.
But Rave’s numb knee failed him and he stumbled into the bed. With a burst of frustration, he tried to shove himself upright. Despite the roar trapped in his chest, whatever energy had possessed him guttered out, and he sprawled across the corner, the bedspread slipping under his weight.
Antonio struggled upright, dislodging the other man.
At the sight of his prey escaping, Rave summoned up another surge of fury.
The two humans must have seen their death in his eyes. They scrambled for the doorway.
Antonio’s knife was still wedged in Torch’s neck.
The dull meteorite iron was one of the few substances that could damage Nox Incendi dragonhide, but it was a little overkill for their human shapes. Ignoring the agonizing prickle of nerves and muscles coming back to life, Rave dragged himself across the floor to his cousin.
Torch’s eyes were open, and the dragon’s vertical slit pupils glared at Rave above the bone hilt.
“This is going to sting,” Rave warned him.