Dragon Awakened (16 page)

“Yes, it did. The hunt, the kill, is an adrenaline rush.” Even now he wasn't softening the truth.

“Damn you!” She hit him again, hearing her fist
smack
against muscle.

“Control your rage, Ruby.” He didn't flinch or move back, nor did he give away any hint of the pain she was inflicting. Did he have any emotion or regret about what he'd done? Not by the passive expression on his face.

She laughed, tears salty where they gathered at the corners of her mouth. “Control my rage. Yeah, someone as cold and ruthless as you could say that to me.”

“Hit me if you want. But be in control.”

“Even now, being my teacher. How quaint, the man who killed my parents is the man who would teach me.
Awaken me
.” She spat out those last words because he'd awakened her in more ways than one. The anger took her like a wave, thrusting her up high and out of control. She threw herself at him, her words unintelligible as she pounded at him.
She
didn't even know what she was saying anymore. Finally, drained, tired and aching, she slid to the floor. She was that girl again, learning that her parents were dead, that she couldn't go back home.

He didn't try to comfort her, which both hurt and relieved her. She would have thrown off any show of solace. Or any apology, as if that would make a difference.

She used the couch to push herself to her feet when she finally got herself together. Her shirt gaped open, and she didn't even care. She avoided looking at him. “I want Mr. Smith dead.”

“We'll make him dead.”

“
I'll
make him dead.”

Ruby turned to leave, but Cyn grabbed her by the shoulders, pulling her to within an inch of him with his iron grip. All she could see was his chest, red where she'd pounded him, streaks where her nails had scratched.

“Ruby, look at me.” His dark eyes, the embers jagged, bore into hers. “You showed your strength when you didn't give away that a tulpa was standing next to your Mundane friend. Use that strength, that restraint, now. You need me. I know you hate that, but you need me if you want to make these people pay.”

“I don't need you,” she gritted out.

“Remember what Brom's visions showed.”

The book. She needed to see if anything new had materialized on the pages. He wouldn't let her go, proving that he was stronger than she could ever hope to be. “You lost control just now, Ruby. That's dangerous. I let you go off on me; your enemy will not. He will take advantage of your lack of focus and kill you. Master your emotions.”

He let her go. She stalked outside to the car, seeing him follow in the corner of her eye. She forced herself not to look at him, walking around to the passenger side but stopping short at the sight of the man hunched there, waiting for her.

Brom. With his demon parasite, if Cyn was right.

Out of instinct and fear, she backed away with a yelp. Brom reached for her, his eyes wide in desperation. The demon reached, too, with long spindly fingers.

She backed into a hard body.

“He wants to touch you, to show you,” Cyn said, his hands bracing her shoulders. “I've never heard of a parasite transferring to someone else, but I wouldn't let it grab on to you. It's there to keep Brom from speaking mostly.”

She shuddered at the sight of its “roots” sinking into Brom's throat. God, this was sick, crazy sick. “Can't we kill it?”

“No, because we'll kill Brom.”

Cyn grabbed her wrist and jerked it toward Brom's wavering fingers. She struggled, but it was too late. Brom's hand clamped over both hers and Cyn's hands. She jerked with the impact of the images that bombarded her mind: people collapsing, gasping for air, writhing in pain. Children crying as they clawed at their parents' sleeves. Jack, right there at the Yard, stumbling against the Harley. Leo falling to the passenger seat of his car, driving right into the side of a building. Glesenda and others dropping at the dojo. Oh, God, a whole class of kids staggering, falling to their knees as they called for their mommies. The vision panned out, showing people falling all over Miami.

She saw a flash of her and Cyn fighting together, and then the vision disappeared. Brom had backed away. The parasite's hand was nearly touching hers.

Cyn pulled Ruby closer, his arm going over her shoulders. “Brom, what can we do to help you? I don't know much about parasitic demons.”

Brom shook his head and made those horrible sounds she'd heard earlier. “J…J…”

“Justin? Is that what you're saying?” Ruby asked.

The parasite tightened its hold around Brom's throat, cutting off even those words. And then they both simply disappeared.

“What happened?” Ruby asked.

Cyn swiped his hands through the area where Brom had been standing. “The demon either cast an illusion of invisibility or took him somewhere else. I don't feel him so I'm thinking it's the latter.”

She kept staring at the place where Brom had been. “Those pictures, people dying.”

“That's the future,” Cyn said. “And we have to stop it.”

We. She and Cyn.
No.
She pulled the book out of the car, set it on the hood, and opened it to the sketch that was supposed to symbolize her and Cyn. Mon had translated it to a dance. Like she would dance with Cyn.

She turned to him. “Mon knew what you'd done. That's why he hated you, isn't it?”

Cyn nodded. “Brom understood that I was only a weapon, and he was grateful that I saved you. Not so Moncrief. We didn't have the kind of history Brom and I had.”

“Of course Mon wouldn't want to turn me over to you when I was thirteen. You're the reason I was orphaned!”

She saw a fleeting shadow of regret. “He found that problematic, yes.”

“Problematic.” She laughed at the absurdity of Cyn's understatement. She couldn't bear to look at him another moment, turning the pages instead. But she couldn't not look at him. “You tell me to put aside my emotions, control them. That's easy for you to say. You don't have any.” The acidic words tingled on her tongue. “Do you?”

She wanted him to admit that he did.

“No.”

But she heard it, a sliver of rawness in the word. Grayson had picked up his feelings, though he hadn't said exactly what those feelings were. And she had seen Cyn's surrender. Even if he wouldn't admit it.

She wouldn't kill him.
As if you could
, her inner voice taunted. She would simply walk away from him, because the thought of that obviously caused him distress. Probably because it would compromise his role as her protector.

The thought empowered her. For about two seconds. She wasn't experienced enough to handle demons and tulpas and God knew what else would appear. She did need him, damn it. And it wasn't only her life at stake here. So she would focus, just as he said, until they killed Mr. Smith.

There, that's being logical and in control of my emotions.

No matter what, she would not let her anger or her heart soften to this cold killer. She turned back to the book. The word
Doom
had appeared since the last time they'd looked. “Mon called the three-headed monster in his fairy tales Black Doom. All those people dying, that really is doom.”

“And your destiny is to stop it.”

She walked back to the Yard, intent on finding out Darren's last name.

Cyn's footsteps were soft on the stairs below her. She had wanted her parents' killer. When she reached the top of the steps, she turned back to him.

“Thank you for not…for stopping when you did.”

A clear lance of pain crossed his expression. “I shouldn't have let it get that far between us. Another example of letting emotions overrule logic.”

“What emotions? You just said you feel nothing.”

His mouth tightened, revealing his lie.

“Tell me, Cyn, what emotions
do
you have as far as I'm concerned? Am I this obligation you carry because you made me an orphan? Because I'm a helpless newbie? Or were you just horny?”

“It was part Dragon. The rest…doesn't matter. Not anymore.”

She turned and went inside, pulling out the box of pictures Mon or Brom had managed to take from the house. She dropped to the floor and dumped them out to search through them faster. Seeing those pictures of happy times tore at her heart.

“Here they are.” Ruby held up a picture of the couple who had been so close to her family. Whose house she remembered spending so much time at. Darren was a plain-looking man, wearing thick glasses and a warm smile. His wife was nicely dressed and wore lots of jewelry. Other photos showed the couples in Halloween costumes and sharing a Christmas meal.

Ruby rubbed her finger over the photograph. “I wondered why they, of all people, didn't come to see me after the accident.” It had made her feel as though there was something wrong with her or that maybe people blamed her. Now she knew better, but to a grieving kid who'd lost everything, it made perfect sense.

She turned the picture over, finding their names marked through in black. “Sweeney.” The name came to her, dredged from memory. “I'm pretty sure it's Sweeney.”

“Good job,” he said, and she realized she was looking at him, sharing the triumph of remembering.

She got up and turned on her computer, staring at the screen as it booted up. Her Dragon, the traitor, pulled toward Cyn.

No. Not him,
she told it.

But it purred. Purred!

Well, hadn't Cyn said they were fueled by instinct and lust? That was for damned sure.

She clicked on several links, but they weren't the Darren she looked for. “There's not much on the Internet about him, other than a bunch of those find-a-person sites.”

The sound of cell phone keys beeping had her turning around. Cyn stared at the floor as he waited for someone to answer. “Hey, it's Cyn. I need you to look up a Deuce named Darren Sweeney. Find out everything you can about him.”

While he waited for the person on the other end to retrieve the information, his gaze drifted to the pictures. One was of Ruby as a child, hugging a dog. He shifted his entire body away, and then she heard someone talking. Cyn said, “Great. And when you get a chance, could you look up a defunct lab called SUNLAB? I need to know who owned it. Thanks.” He walked to the computer and gestured for her to move so he could sit down.

“Please, be my guest.” Damn it, he should be contrite, not silently ordering her around. Why wasn't he trying to prove he wasn't coldhearted and ruthless? Or begging her forgiveness?

Would you forgive him?

Hell, no.

He went to one of the map sites and typed in an address. “Darren's a Deuce, which fits our profile. He's been married to Magda for thirty-two years, no children. And he's self-employed, lists his occupation as a physics research consultant.” Cyn was zooming in on a house with the satellite view. A separate building sat several yards behind the residence. “Maybe that's where he does his research.”

She twisted the fabric of her shirt. “It hurts my stomach to think that Darren could be behind this.”

He gave her a sympathetic look. “He's the one person we know about who was involved in your father's work. And who could reasonably replicate it. Before we approach him, we're going to do a little investigating. We wait for them to leave and then we find out what kind of physics research he's doing.”

“How are we going to do that when neither of us is a physicist?”

He got to his feet. “We take pictures, and we grab anything else we can get our hands on and bring them to someone who is.”

D
arren's house was no mansion on the water. Still, it was nice, so his consultant services obviously earned him decent money. As with most Crescents' homes, tall, thick hedges surrounded it.

Cyn had parked in a church lot with a view of the entrance. He'd verified their presence inside, so now it was a matter of waiting for them to leave. Which gave him too much time in this small space with Ruby.

That was the problem with getting emotionally involved. It made you do ill-advised things, like nearly making love with the woman whose parents you killed. He had been involved with women before, but he kept everything on the surface. Ruby had burrowed beneath his skin. Burrowed deeper than that, if he dared to contemplate.

He didn't.

She'd talked about giving him her heart. That's the part that killed him, that had broken through his haze. It was bad enough that he'd been about to take her body.

His Dragon responded to her pain. It tugged at him to reach for her, to say whatever he could to make it right. Nothing would make it right though. He'd committed the ultimate sin, taken everything from her. No matter that it was on someone else's orders, he had their blood on his hands. Then he'd let things get heated between them, a bigger sin in his mind.

Heated.
His Dragon snorted at the downplayed word.

Cyn had wanted her, every cell of her, even her soul. He'd drowned in his emotions the moment he buried his face in her neck. So he deserved the sting of her nail marks, the bruises from her beating.

Ruby settled into the seat, her arms crossed in front of her. In a monotone voice, she asked, “What's the plan?”

“I have to figure out where you play into this.”

“I'm not hiding here in the car.”

Cyn braced his hand on the side of her seat, only inches from her. “I would never expect you to hide, Ruby. But remember, as much as you might hate me—”

“I do hate you. There's no ‘might' about it.”

“As much as you hate me”—he shoved the words out, each one lodging in his throat—“I have your best interests at heart. Don't disobey my orders just to spite me. You getting killed
will
spite me. But is that worth it?”

She blew out a breath. “I'm not going to cut off my nose to spite my face, if that's what you're worried about. I might need you in this fight, but I don't
need
you. There's a difference.”

He focused on Darren's house again. “Understood. We're going in as soon as they leave. I don't want to approach him until I've had a look at what he's up to.” He settled back in his seat. “Rest, Ruby. It might be a while.”

She leaned her head back, pressing her fingers over her closed eyes. He took in the creamy skin of her neck, his hunger increasing. Not sexual hunger, which would be much easier to handle.

Damn.

He closed his eyes, too. When he woke, several hours had passed. Dew covered the windshield and hood of the car. The sky was gray, hinting at the coming dawn. He checked on Ruby to make sure she was still there, even though she couldn't have left the car without him knowing.

She was curled against the seat, deep asleep. He was sure it was only relief, but he felt an overwhelming desire to touch her, comfort her. Like the innocent girl he'd found in the dinghy, she reached places in him he didn't know existed. He had no idea how to comfort anyone. No one had comforted him when he'd lost his parents.

He sat watching her for almost an hour. Oh, he tried to look elsewhere, anywhere, but his gaze kept going back to her. Movement beyond her caught his attention. A car pulled out of Darren's driveway, two people inside. He wanted to follow, but he needed to get into the workshop more.

“Ruby.”

She woke with a start, her eyes heavy as she took in her surroundings. He could see the moment reality dawned when a hardened expression replaced her dazed confusion.

He reached for the glove box and removed a small leather kit. “They just left. Let's move.”

They walked casually down the street and then disappeared from view once they headed down the driveway. He led the way around the back to the windowless workshop. The door was solid metal with multiple dead bolts. No sign of an alarm system or magick. He went around to the back and found another secured door. After checking to make sure no one could see them, he picked the lock and pushed the door open. He stripped, ready to Catalyze if necessary before stepping inside a lab. They found tables with papers and a whiteboard covered in calculations he had no hope of interpreting.

Ruby took it all in with an odd expression. “I used to see these kinds of calcs in Dad's home office. This is a chart that tracks solar storms. The peaks seem to correspond with this other chart, though I can't figure out what it represents. Wait. I recognize this.” She held up a metallic object about a foot long. “My father had something like this at his lab.” She held it out toward him. “Feel it.”

His fingers brushed hers as he touched the cylindrical piece. It pulsed with an energy he thought was
Deus Vis
. “This could be it.”

“So whatever my father was doing, Darren has re-created it.”

“And it took me
years
,” a bitter voice said from the doorway. “After he went crazy and destroyed everything.”

They both spun to find Darren and Magda. The aura that had obviously kept Cyn from sensing them fell away. Cyn held the device down and out of sight.

“Because he knew it was going to hurt people,” Ruby said, her voice amazingly even. “And you had him killed for it.”

Cyn came up beside Ruby, ready to step in front of her if necessary.
Good girl, Ruby. Stay calm.

But she kept talking, emotion now leaking into her voice when she said, “You used your connections to have us all killed. We were your friends. You used to babysit me.”

“My connections.” Darren's smile seemed almost wistful before it disappeared. “Your father should have thought of that before he ran off with years of research. Research to which I contributed. He was clearly planning to profit—”

“That's the story you told everyone else,” Ruby cut in. “I know the truth.”

“You're right. That was the for-public-consumption version. The truth was your father had finally figured out how to accomplish his lifelong goal, and he wasn't about to heed Brom's warning to destroy it. He took everything and went on the run. I couldn't let him endanger people by continuing his project.”

Cyn's eyes narrowed. “That's what you told your connection at the Guard, that Justin was dangerous.”

Darren merely said, “He couldn't be allowed to harm others.”

“Why didn't you simply have him arrested? Why kill all of us?” Ruby asked.

“Not knowing how much your mother knew, or how much you had overheard, made it necessary to eliminate everyone. It was nothing personal.”

“And you couldn't leave witnesses who would contradict the accident story,” Cyn added.

“Nothing personal?” Ruby turned to Magda. “You were our friends. I was your surrogate daughter.”

Magda's shoulders stiffened. “Friends? No, we socialized because Darren wanted to feel that he and Justin were a team, equally responsible for the project's progress. Spending time with your family was excruciating. Justin spoiled your mother rotten. If Leah so much as whispered some wish, he made it happen. Even getting her pregnant the first month they tried. And don't think that she didn't rub it in my face that her husband got all the glory and money from SUNLAB's financial backer. And yes, you were a substitute for the daughter I couldn't have, but after a while it became too painful to spend time with you. I didn't want you dead, but it was not my decision to make.” Her hard eyes flicked to Cyn. “You know that you're allied with the man who killed your parents, don't you?”

Ruby flinched. “He's better than the person who ordered their deaths.”

Cyn was glad Ruby hadn't found out like this. It was too late for Magda to drive a wedge between them.

Ruby faced Darren. “What you're doing is threatening the safety of every Crescent, including children.”

“And you base this on Brom's warning? Do you really believe that crazy old man?”

Cyn crossed his arms over his chest. “Obviously you do. You set a parasite demon on him to keep him quiet.” The pieces began to fit together. “You were expecting Brom to return when you started fracturing the
Deus Vis
again, probably put a scry orb on his house. It followed Brom when he went to Moncrief and told him about his prophecy and Ruby's part in it. That's why you're so determined to kill her.”

Ruby turned to Cyn, her eyes wide. Then she turned back to Darren. “You had Mon killed because he knew too much.”

Darren's face was rigid. “And you made it easy by showing up. If only you'd died easy.”

That's when Ruby's control finally snapped. She Catalyzed, but Magda was faster, pouncing before Ruby could tear at Darren's throat. Cyn tossed the device beneath the table and let his Dragon loose. He meant to block Magda, but Darren hit him with a ball of energy that washed over him like an electrical shock.

Ruby took the hit from the Citrine Dragon, whose mouth had closed over Ruby's neck. They both hit the floor.

Darren sent another orb at Cyn that threw him against a cabinet. He pushed through the pain, shaking from the effort. The waves obliterated his view of Ruby, as though he were underwater. All he could see were blurry figures.

“Stinger, Ruby,” he managed to say. He hoped she remembered his lesson on what powers the different Dragons possessed.

Magda's tail lifted up to lance Ruby, who dodged out of the way. Ruby lunged, and Magda howled in pain, blood oozing from beneath some of her scales.

Still reeling from the two orbs, Cyn didn't have the wherewithal to move out of the way as a different orb came his way. It enveloped him, like one of those bubbles from a kid's plastic bottle. It didn't break when he tried to puncture it. He jerked his talons back from the sticky shell.

He inhaled but found he couldn't draw enough Breath to generate his smoke. Darren approached him, hands out as he kept the bubble going. “And you have been a real pain in our ass, too. Ruby would have been taken care of long ago if it weren't for you. What is it about this girl that weakens you, powerful and ruthless Vega? Women aren't worth that kind of sacrifice. All they do is nag and demand and harass, and nothing you ever do is good enough. But you're going to die for one of the insatiable bitches.”

Magda lifted her head at words spoken with a bitterness as powerful as his damned orb. Ruby took advantage, scraping her talons across her opponent's vulnerable eyes. Magda screamed, trying to brush away the blood that dripped into her eyes.

Fueled by anger, Cyn drew enough strength to inhale and shoot out a stream of black smoke. It penetrated the bubble and looped around Darren's neck. The bubble broke as Darren's concentration did. He then created some kind of magick to disintegrate the rope of smoke. It loosened as Cyn lunged at him. Darren lurched to the side, and Cyn's fangs ended up only grazing Darren's side. Still, blood gushed through the tear in his shirt. Darren put his hand there and lifted red-smeared fingers, shock on his face. Maybe it was deeper than Cyn thought.

The bastard threw another orb, knocking Cyn against the wall. Magda's tail whipped back and forth as she blindly aimed for Ruby. Ruby blew out a stream of fire that singed the scales down Magda's side. She screamed and lurched. Her tail hit Ruby, jolting her with poison.

Cyn tried to get to her as she fell with a gasp, but Darren surrounded him with another bubble. Remembering when he'd been caught in one of these before, Cyn got the bubble rolling toward Darren. The bubble collided with him, sucking Darren in, too. Cyn pinned Darren down, then turned to Ruby.

She was struggling to stand as Magda jabbed her tail wildly into the air. Magda kept wiping away the blood, but she couldn't keep her eyes open for more than a second. “I'll find you,” she growled. “Even if I can't see you, I will find you.” She moved closer to Ruby, who was beginning to convulse from the poison. It was attacking her nervous system. The more hits Ruby sustained, the less control she would have.

Darren shoved his hand against Cyn's chest, sending a current like those shock paddles. He fell back but had enough mind to kick Darren as he did so. The man's head hit the corner of a table, and he slumped to the floor. The bubble disappeared.

Ruby was on her feet, wobbling as she evaded the tail with the pointed black stinger. If Magda sank the tip into Ruby's heart, it would all be over. Every time she moved, Magda followed. The sound of Ruby's tail sliding over the floor was giving her opponent the audio clues she needed to track her.

“Pick up your tail,” Cyn hissed, drawing Magda toward him and away from Ruby.

Ruby pulled up her tail, narrowed her beautiful, fiery eyes at Magda, and whacked her with it. The Citrine Dragon fell to the floor but bounded to her feet.

Another bubble orb flew past Cyn, missing him but enveloping Ruby. Darren's voice was strained but loud: “I'll hold her 'til you get there.”

Ruby struggled against the confines of the bubble as Magda limped over. Her tail twitched like a cat's, readying for its fatal task. Cyn knocked her back with a wall of smoke, and he heard her choking and gasping. The room filled with it as he let it expand. Ruby was protected in the bubble, but her expression held fear as she watched.

“It's just me,” he told her as he used his senses to track the Deuce. The scent of Darren's blood filled the air, inciting his Dragon to bloodlust.

Go for it.

Cyn could make out Darren's outline. The man was trying to wave the smoke away, but it was thick. Cyn took Darren by the throat. His scream was cut short as blood spurted from his neck. His hands fell slack, and his dead body hit the floor. Cyn cleared the air in one long Breath. Magda was feeling along the floor, only a few feet from Ruby, who was now free of the bubble. Magda squinted through her blood, seeing her dead husband and then Cyn.