Immortal Coil (26 page)

She pressed against her thoughts. He was there, she could feel him, but something wasn’t right. He’d never seemed so removed from her before. For lack of a better term, he seemed unconscious.

She leapt into the next passage.
A small, empty chamber.
No other exit. Shit.

“There she is.”

Double shit.

She spun to face her assailants. There were five of them, all cloaked. How the hell could they see with their hoods pulled so low? She gave her head a quick shake. That didn’t matter. Should she give up or fight? Well, she knew what Hunter would do. It didn’t matter what they wanted. Hunter’s last instructions had been to run and until he woke up, or came back from wherever he was, she was going to stick to that.

The first man rushed at her. She side-stepped his attack and let him careen into the back wall. He punched at her head. She ducked.

The energy still rippling over her flared, but did nothing. She reached for it. The man in front of her swung again. She staggered back, unable to call fire or anything else.
If she could just get someplace safe.

A meaty hand clamped around her arm. She twisted in his grip, spinning away, and stumbled against the side wall.

Fire flared over her hands, scorching the rock. A burst of light blinded her, pulling energy from within her that she didn’t know she had. It latched onto the thought of escaping and sucked her in, just like Jade’s gate had when she’d traveled into the
Dragon Court
.

She was falling... falling... suspended in a brilliant, white nothing that was warm and embracing, unlike the black void from the gate before. Her skin tingled and the hair on her arms stood up. The nothing plugged her ears and poured down her throat. She was drowning, fully submerged in this viscous light.

She hit the ground, scraping hands and knees, and scrambled to her feet. The men weren’t behind her and she no longer stood in the chamber but on a snow-covered country road. Before her lay the grove she and Mark used to visit while in college. They used to pack a picnic lunch and travel here, to the outskirts of
Newgate
. A small stream meandered through what Mark described as interesting foliage. She’d bring her books and he’d take his sketch pad and they’d while away the hours together. But that was then and this was now. And now things were much different.
She shivered in the crisp air and hugged the quickly cooling metal robe closer.
Hunter?

Nothing.

Come on, Hunter. Please.
She hadn’t expected his lack of response to unnerve her this much.
Wake up.
She needed him to explain what had happened.

But he didn’t answer.

She needed to do something. That’s what Hunter would say. She couldn’t just stand here and wait for those men to find her. When he woke they could deal with the situation. Until then, she was on her own.

At least one thing good had come out of this. She was in
Newgate
. With no money, no winter clothes, and nothing but the stupid medallion that everyone wanted, her options were thin. But there was one person in town
who
she could turn to. Mark.

She slipped the medallion over her neck and hung it inside the cloak, hoping against hope he’d help her after one year of her not returning his phone calls and two years of him not returning hers.

* * *

Grey gated as close to the rebirthing chamber as the Handmaiden’s wards would allow and bolted down the hall. Something was horribly wrong. Moments ago Court had trembled as if struck by an earthquake, which was impossible since it was separate from the physical world. Nothing had ever shaken Court like that before and the only dragon powerful enough to have caused it was the Handmaiden. And Hunter was with her this very moment.

Grey careened through the arch and skidded to a halt. Crumpled, smoldering forms littered the chamber. The altar and floor in front of it were scorched and the corpses about to receive
reborn
dragon souls were charred skeletons.

His gaze raced over every detail, searching for any sign of Hunter or the Handmaiden, but everything was black, covered in debris.

One of the smoking piles near the altar shifted and moaned. Someone was still alive. Whoever it was moved again, sending up a cloud of ash. A hint of silver scales caught the light and Grey’s heart leapt into his throat. It was the Handmaiden.

He rushed to her side as she pushed back her hood. Soot smeared across her forehead and chin and a thick red line marred the pale skin on her throat. Grey’s throat ached in sympathy.

“What happened?” He helped her sit up.

“Politics.”
Her tone made that one word sound like a curse.

“But you’re the Handmaiden.” Grey couldn’t wrap his mind around that. If anything happened to her all dragons were lost.

“They weren’t after me.”

“Is Hunter—?” He glanced at the closest corpse. Please don’t let it be him.

“I gave him time to escape.” She clutched Grey’s shoulder and used it to stand. “I do have a soft spot for him. But he’ll need help soon.”

“Have you seen something?” With the implication that she was leaving for an extended time and this latest comment, it seemed certain she’d looked into the future. He itched to do something.
Something for Hunter or the Handmaiden.
Right now.
An assault on the Handmaiden in the rebirthing chamber required an aggressive response. Something so strong that no one would think of attempting an attack again.

The Handmaiden flicked a finger and the soot slid off her cloak. “I haven’t seen anything.”

“But—”

“Grey.” She cupped his face in suddenly pristine hands. “Things are changing. Like Hunter, you will need to adapt. And this time I can’t help you with it.”

“You what?”
He hadn’t heard that right. He couldn’t have heard that right.

Magic billowed around her and she straightened.
Behind her, without support of a wall or archway, stood a gate.
It
shimmered
white, the signature of only her gates. All other dragons created black ones.

“You are stronger than you think. Don’t forget that.”

He snorted. Forgetting wasn’t one of his problems.

She offered a gentle smile and stepped into the white nothing. With a whoosh the gate disappeared, taking the Handmaiden wherever it was she was going. Now he had no idea what to do.

* * *

Anaea
glanced over her shoulder down the apartment building’s empty beige hall.

 
Please, oh please, let Mark be home. She rapped on the door again.
Still no answer.
It was late afternoon. He had to be inside. God help her if he’d actually changed his routine since they’d last talked. He had to be home and she was too exhausted for any other option.

She’d spent all day trudging the cold, snowy back roads to get into town where she managed to flag down a woman willing to drive her to this side of
Newgate
even though
Anaea
was sure she looked crazy. All the while, she searched in her mind for any indication that Hunter was conscious. She was hungry and tired, still very much alone, and mostly freezing, although to her surprise she didn’t seem to have frostbite on her bare feet.

But then she did have the spirit of a dragon in her—a spirit who was going to wake up any minute now. Please. She was shocked to discover just how alone she felt, after all this time with him inside her head. It felt so… wrong. She hadn’t thought her life could get more confusing, and yet, she hadn’t felt more alive in years. The last time she’d really felt like herself had been here in this hall. That was before the cancer. She had been recently married and had come to see Mark to commission a painting with her newly wedded wealth as a way of an apology for how things had turned out between them. But he’d refused and they had fought.

Less than a year later, ten months into her marriage, she’d realized she was a trophy wife. And as soon as she’d become sick she was no longer a prize. She had called Mark, realizing how foolish she’d been picking John over him. But he never returned her calls. It was unlikely Mark had forgiven her for marrying John. But he was all she had at the moment and she was tired enough to accept pity if it got her a change of clothes—although not as tired as she’d have expected with the cancer.

The door to the stairwell at the far end of the hall opened. Her stomach clenched. She looked for a place to hide, but there wasn’t anywhere to go.

Metal jingled against metal and she whirled around, ready to make a stand.

Mark dropped his keys.

Her heart skipped a beat. Thank God.

“
Anaea
?”
He didn’t move, didn’t smile,
just
stared at her.

Not the reaction she was hoping for. She hugged herself, the metal scales hissing with the movement. “Hi.”

His eyes narrowed. After a moment, he broke eye contact and picked up his keys. “Still married to that prick?”

“Unfortunately.”
Since her lawyers seemed to work at a snail’s pace. Please just let her in. All she needed was a moment to catch her breath and figure out what was wrong with Hunter.

“So what are you doing here?” He pushed past her and shoved his key into his lock.

“Well, I...” She didn’t know what to say. That she’d been possessed by a dragon spirit and someone was trying to kill her?
Perhaps something more believable.
She was dying and her husband didn’t care; he was already working on his next trophy wife. “I just need...” Shit. What could she say? “Don’t be a dick.”

A slight smile pulled at his lips. “Get in here. You look like crap. And what the hell are you wearing?” He opened the door and ushered her in.

His apartment was as she remembered. A battered orange sofa faced an old computer monitor hooked up to a VCR and the rest of the room was filled with canvases of various sizes in various stages of completion. A rickety bookshelf sat beside the monitor, the bottom filled with cop movies, the top littered with painting supplies.

“Pardon the mess,” he said.

“What mess?”

He flashed
her a
full smile and pushed a pile of
National Geographic
from the sofa.

“So I love the new haircut.”

She ran a hand over her stubble. She hadn’t told him about the cancer.
Hadn’t been given a chance.

“I’ve been changing it up since college.”

“Bet John never saw your pink phase.” Mark crossed his arms.

“John doesn’t have a say on how I cut my hair.”

“Really?”

“Really.”
She met his gaze, daring him to keep up the line of conversation. She might need his help, but there wasn’t any point arguing over old discussions.

He shifted from one foot to the other. “So why are you here?”

“I wanted to see you.”

“Uh huh.
And you decided to wear a Halloween costume to do it?”

“Fine.”
She sighed and dropped onto the sofa. “I needed a place to hang out for a while.”

“Better answer.”

“Gee, thank you.”

* * *

A few hours later,
Anaea
was warm and clothed and fed and alone in Mark’s bed.
And still uncomfortable.
She’d thought going to Mark would be the right thing to do but she wasn’t so sure any more, despite the fact that he’d been her only option. Hunter still hadn’t made an appearance, and the thought made her pizza dinner churn in her gut.

The meal with Mark had been rife with uncomfortable silences and talking about their college days only made her
feel
more out of place. The freedom and confidence to love from those days were definitely past her.
Were past them.
She’d made her choice, albeit a bad one. But she’d made it.

And with her situation now, with cancer and being hunted by dragons, she was even further from those days and those possibilities. But Mark knew nothing about that. There wasn’t any way she could explain it—at least the dragon bit. As for the cancer… well, it wouldn’t be fair to have him suffering along with her for her remaining few months. It was best just to leave it with the only thing he really knew, which was that she’d picked John over him. Anything else would just complicate an already complicated situation.

She hugged the sheets to her chest. They smelled like Mark, fresh and soapy, mixed with a hint of turpentine and oil paint. It was obvious from the way he looked at her—the way he still looked at her—and the things he hadn’t said that he still loved her.
While she wasn’t sure if she had ever truly loved him.

Maybe she had. She thought she had. He was clever and talented.
Definitely attractive with gorgeous curly black hair, fine features, and long-fingered artist’s hands.
But John had swept her off her feet, whirling her thoughts and emotions in a rosy frenzy until Mark was a distant memory. If she could forget him so easily it meant she didn’t really love him. Didn’t it?