Charred Tears (#2, Heart of Fire) (4 page)

She glanced around expectantly and spotted the large bowl of ice cream on her dresser. With a grin, Skylar hopped up and crossed to it. She took one bite and almost choked, forcing it down.

“Oh, ugh!” she muttered. “House, you’re cool. But let’s take this completely off the list of future requests. No more pizza-flavored ice cream. Ever. Sorry for the confusion, but no.” She set it down and grimaced.

Skylar pulled on workout pants and left her room, hoping to catch Gavin before he went to bed for the day. The house was quiet, the door to his room closed.

Disappointed, she returned to her bedroom. The ice cream on the dresser was chocolate.

“Thanks. I need the chocolate,” she murmured and took it. She sat down on the bed and began going through the scrapbooks once more. Uncertain what she sought, she relaxed when she saw the smiles from the small family.

Gradually, the sense of cold despair from her dream left her, replaced by a longing but content feeling. She’d been a happy kid. It was all that mattered.

When she’d passed a few hours with the scrapbooks, she ordered the house to put them away and got dressed, once again roaming the island. It took one more pass around for her to admit how good of a job her father had done finding a place remote enough that not even planes flew overhead.

She spent an hour testing the house to see how responsive it was to her, and then parked on the couch, waiting for her father. With more questions than answers, she desperately wanted to give him the chance to enlighten her before ordering the house to take her away.

He rose just before sunset. With a glance at her, he made himself breakfast wordlessly and took his food outside to the beach.

Skylar rolled her eyes at his back and trailed, sensing her solitary father wasn’t accustomed to having someone else in his house.

“You can only fly around at night?” Skylar asked as she dropped beside him on the beach, watching the evening darken the sky.

“I can fly during day. But I don’t have my full powers. Flying is all I can do during day,” he replied. “And if I shift during daylight, I can’t shift back until nightfall, which makes it hard to hide.”

“You won’t fit in the magic house as a dragon,” she observed.

“No.” He glanced at her. “You figured out it’s magic.”

“By accident. Same way I did Chace’s.”

Gavin made what sounded like a growl low in his chest at Chace’s name. He set his unfinished breakfast aside.

“You really don’t like him,” she murmured, eyes on the first few stars that appeared above the horizon. “Because he traded me?”

“Because he’s not capable of caring for anyone but himself. Not the shifters he should be protecting. Not the protector who is supposed to watch out for him. If he didn’t sell you out to me, he’d have sold you out to someone else. Someone worse than me.”

Is someone like that possible?
She was afraid to ask who Gavin considered to be a bad person, when he’d gone to such lengths to outsmart Chace and kidnap her.

“Can I ask … why did he trade me to you?” she asked. “So he could become human?”

Gavin didn’t answer.

“I’ll just ask him later,” she told him. “Whether you tell me or he does, I’ll find out.”

“He’s dead.”

“No, I don’t think he is.”

Gavin’s blue eyes settled on her. He’d gone rigid again, his features tense.

“You wouldn’t be like this” she waved her hands at him “if he was dead. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not happy with him right now. But I think unless one of us is dead, I’m supposed to be with him. The way mom and you were together. Right?”

Gavin rose and started away, stopped, then began pacing.

Skylar watched him, sensing he was close to telling her something important, but not at all certain what her unpredictable dragon shifter father would say.

“While you were with the slayers, did you ever find any reason to believe your mother was alive?” he asked finally.

Skylar tilted her head to the side, not expecting the question. “I’d hoped you’d know.”

“I don’t.”

“Then why did you torch the slayers’ compound?” she demanded. “What if all the answers we need were right there?”

“They weren’t.”

“You don’t know that!” She rose. “Dad, there are hundreds of brainwashed slayers like me, probably the children of other shifters. All our personnel files were on the computers at the compound. I could’ve found some way to get into them, to help them, maybe even to find Mom. But you had to torch the place.”

“The people and place that took you away from me? I’d gladly torch it again! I don’t give a damn about the other slayers.”

“I’ve never seen anyone throw a temper tantrum like a dragon,” she said. “You are just as bad as Chace.”

Caleb’s library.
Skylar suddenly recalled a second place where she might find out more: the treasure trove of information about slayers and shifters, allegedly collected over thousands of years in Caleb’s house north of Phoenix. Was the large library, too, another well-manufactured falsehood? Or was some part of it real?

“I operate under different rules.”

“Are all dragons like this?” She sighed. “Anyway, I want to go back to the slayers. I want to help the others and find Mom.”

“No.”

“No?” she echoed. “I’m not asking, Gavin.”

He glared at her. “I spent the past six years trying to find you. I’m not going to lose you the way I did your mother.”

“I get it. But I have my own life and make my own decisions. I’m not happy sitting here all safe and pretty while my friends are being brainwashed.”
And I want to find Chace, not just my mom.

“You won’t find him.”

Skylar eyed him, not about to ask if dragons were able to read minds. She was afraid he’d say yes.

“You’re not going anywhere, Skylar. This isn’t your –
our
fight. I followed through with my agreement with Chace about giving the other shifters a refuge. That’s as much as I care to do.”

“Was that why he traded me?” she asked curiously. “So you would protect the others?”

“Chace came to me and wanted to become human. He offered up everything that was his in exchange. I agreed. Later on, he realized what a stupid thing he’d done in granting someone else his magic. Without it, the other shifters would have nowhere where they’d be safe. He asked me for a new deal, one where I’d agree to protect them. In exchange, he hunted you down and brought you to me.”

Skylar listened, uncertain whose actions were more appalling: her father tricking Chace into giving up his magic or Chace for being stupid enough to trust Gavin.

I’m related to him, and I know not to trust him.

“I don’t know if that’s better or worse than what I thought,” she admitted. “He traded me to you because he wanted to protect the others, but only because he’d agreed to give up all his magic in the first place and couldn’t do it on his own. Though I doubt you told him up front what he was doing. You both sound like dicks in this scenario.”

“He traded you the first time around. He just didn’t know it.”

She considered him for a moment. “Because I was – am – the other half of his heart. Because he’s my dragon.”

“You’re safe. It’s all that matters.”

“You want me just to stay here for eternity and be happy about it?”

“Yes.”

“You know as much about me as Chace does,” she snapped.

“I don’t need to know you. I need to keep you safe,” Gavin growled. “You are all I have in this world, and I won’t lose you again, even if that means chaining you in your room so you can’t leave!” His eyes flashed fire, and muscles began to move beneath his skin, a sure sign he was angry enough to shift involuntarily.

Skylar began to think he’d lived five thousand years without anyone ever challenging him the way she did.

“There are days when I want to use the lassos on you both,” she said.

“Lassos?”

“Yeah. Like the one on my dresser.”

“How many are there?” he asked. Gavin’s fire seemed to be snuffed out instantly. He was staring at her hard. This cold anger was scarier than the hot fury.

 “Chill, dragon,” she murmured. “There are two lassos. You go fly around and cool off, and I’ll go inside and make tea. For me, because you’re being an asshole. You can make your own when you get back, and we’ll talk later.”

Gavin was still for a moment then shrugged his shoulders to try to loosen them. The fire remained in his eyes.

She didn’t wait for him to calm down but strode back to the house and went inside, angry with him but able to recognize a wall when she hit one. There really was no option. She had to help Mason, if not Dillon, along with the rest of the slayers. She didn’t know what to think about Chace or the deal he’d made with her father. They both got their hands dirty in that agreement.

“Why can’t you guys be less like dragons and stop to think before doing or saying something?” she muttered.

She turned to see Gavin flying into the sky, the powerful wings beating hard in the ocean wind. The dark blue scales lining his body reflected the last rays of sunlight, creating tiny rainbows around him. He was magnificent, beautiful and terrifying in the way of a mythical creature the size of a building.

Watching him fly calmed her, confused her. She’d spent the past few years believing dragons to be the enemy, only to discover her past and her future were intertwined with their kind.

Chace’s betrayal hurt in a way that made her think she’d never be able to trust him again and yet, she sensed she was supposed to help him the way her mother helped her father.

Maybe this way is better.
She knew now not to trust him, not to fall for the dragon she was safeguarding. Maybe now, she was able to focus on her duty and not on the spark between them.

Skylar shook her head. She’d never be able to face Chace again without wanting to melt into his arms. But if he was the man her father portrayed him to be, he’d just hurt her, if she gave him her heart.

“First things first,” she said aloud to distract her thoughts. “Warn Mason and help the others.”
I’ll figure out what to do about Chace later.

Skylar returned to her room and changed out of the shorts and tank she wore on the island into clothing she could fight in. Her gaze went to the old, folded letter on top of her dresser. It was the final note written by her mother, Ginger, to Gavin. Seeing it softened Skylar’s anger towards her father, made her remember there was a man beneath the scales who had lost someone he loved.

Gavin was hurting. What he said and did were to protect the only thing that mattered to him.

“Sorry, Dad,” she said, picking up the note. She tucked it in her pocket. “But I can’t stand by and let others like me get hurt.” With a deep breath, she pulled on boots and stood. “Okay, magic house. Take me home.”

Chapter Five

Chace clawed his way up the last few feet of the almost sheer cliff. He’d given up trying to see straight. There was nothing but the cool, grey rock in front of his eyes. His body was numb, his head pounding from exertion far beyond what Gunner said he should be putting his battered body through.

But he needed answers. Even if Freyja claimed his magic wasn’t at the top of the mountain, something was there, and right now, he needed everything he could get.

The air was cooler the farther up he’d gone and much thinner, giving him a new kind of headache. This one was in his temples and made his stomach unstable. He needed a nap for his head and some pizza to settle his belly.

He almost groaned at the thought, his mouth watering. He hadn’t had his favorite food in too long.
If I survive this damn mountain, I’m going to eat four pizzas.

The cold, almost useless fingers on one hand slipped out of their hold, and he grimaced, digging into the rocky face as he slid down a foot. His hands were slippery from the bloodied fingertips he was no longer able to feel. Forcing himself to focus, he concentrated on one handhold at a time and lifting his body with nothing more than sheer will forcing his broken body onward.

Right now, he felt like letting go of the pain riddling his weakened body and simply … falling.

The thought was accompanied by a flash of Skylar’s face in his mind, and he knew he had to keep going. Whenever he thought of her, he smelled her scent, the combination of a woman’s musk and peach shampoo. It filled his senses, quelling his doubt and fear and anger, helping him concentrate, the way her touch did in person.

One hand found the top of the cliff he was scaling, and he shoved his toes into a new foothold, and then launched upward. Chace caught himself and breathed out hard, hauling his body over the edge. He lay still, shaking and weak. Cold, fresh mountain air chilled his skin while the heat of exertion and what remained of his fever kept him warm. The clear blue sky above reminded him of Skylar’s eyes, and he rolled onto his belly.

He couldn’t stop thinking of her. It was driving him crazy.

Chace rested long enough that he started to doze. He wasn’t used to his body feeling so … useless. He shook, and his thoughts were woolly.

He pushed himself up to sit and look around. With Gunner’s help, he’d climbed to the highest peak he was able to find in the Oregon mountains and sat overlooking a shallow, rocky saddle between two peaks. The brisk wind made his eyes water, and he wiped his bloodied fingers off then sipped from the Camelback strapped to his back.

“Dragons are better at climbing cliffs than panthers,” Gunner grunted and hauled himself over the same ledge Chace had just conquered. “But give me a tree and I’m all up in that shit.”

“Do you ever think it’s weird that we are what we are?” Chace asked, scanning the area for some sign of what he was supposed to find.

“No. I knew what I was growing up. My mom was a shifter and so were my aunts. I guess I never had any reason to question it.”

“I keep wondering why they couldn’t just tell me that I was a shifter to start out with,” Chace grumbled. “I would’ve done so many things differently if I didn’t think I could be cured of my curse.”

“A thousand years is a long time not to be comfortable with who you are.”