Dark Embers (5 page)

He walked by the medical school quadrangle without really looking at what was there. Yet the closer he came to the building he was looking for—Kresge—the more anxious his dragon became. He tried to calm it down, to soothe it, but the bustling city was twisting its tail into quite a knot.

Maybe it knew something he didn’t.

The thought made him pause on the building steps, his hand on the door.

Was he really going to do this?

Was he really ready to open himself and, more important, his people up to the kind of scrutiny this would demand?

He—and the rulers before him—had spent more than two millennia trying to keep the clan’s existence hidden. And now here he was, about to blow all that secrecy to hell and back.

About to turn them all into circus freaks.

Is it worth it?
he asked himself a little wildly, doubt pushing in on him from every direction.
Is it worth risking everything?
Gabe didn’t think so, and neither did Shawn and Liam and Quinn. In fact, all twelve of his sentries were against this, and had told him so to his face.

But a sentry wasn’t king, and at the end of the day, they weren’t responsible for the survival of an entire people. He was.

Lucky, lucky him.

A picture of Marta the way he’d last seen her rose in front of him. Pale and paralyzed, covered with more blood than he’d imagined a human body could contain. She’d struggled for breath as her body slowly and completely shut down, despite the fact that the clan’s healers were all around her. They’d looked as baffled and helpless as he’d felt.

Was it worth it? Damn right, it was. Yanking the door open viciously, he strode inside with determined steps. Marta wasn’t the first of his clan to die of this strange disease, and if he didn’t do something quickly, she wouldn’t be the last.

He couldn’t let that happen. Couldn’t stand by for one second more and watch while one of his clan members died a torturous, inexplicable death.

He would do whatever it took to get answers—do even more to get the solution. The cure. He’d spent almost two weeks researching, calling in favors from all over the world as he sought the answers to his questions. And everything he’d read, everyone he’d spoken to, had pointed him
here
. Had told him in no uncertain terms that his best shot of getting answers about a disease that attacked the immune system lay right here in this building.

So here he had come, prepared to do whatever it took to secure help. Knowing even as he’d made the trip that whatever happened—whatever came from his visit here today—it was on him. Good or bad, he would have to find a way to live with it.

Dylan took the steps three at a time, bounding up four flights of stairs before he found the group of labs he was looking for. It was quiet here, no students roaming the halls as they had on the first floor. No noise at all save for the steady hum of the fluorescent lights and the air-purifying system.

He started down the hall, his eyes on the door at the end of the passageway. Room 513. Inside that room lay the last hope he had for his people’s salvation. Even after losing his mate to the damn disease, Gabe was convinced that Dylan was simply hastening their damnation, but Dylan didn’t believe that. He couldn’t believe it, not if he wanted to stay sane.

But with each step he took down the hallway, his dragon grew more agitated. More violent. As it raged, its claws raked his skin from the inside and its fire threatened to burn him alive.

He tried to ignore it, but doing so was nearly impossible. He could feel his temperature rising, feel his control over the beast weakening with each second that passed. It didn’t like being confined, hated being in man-made structures for any longer than necessary. Even so, it had never reacted like this before, desperate and determined and oh, so dangerous.

Once again he asked himself if he was doing the right thing, even as he reminded himself that what he was doing was the
only
thing.

Stopping right before he got to the door, he struggled to get his animal side under control. If he went into the lab like this, Dr. Quillum would be more likely to call the police than she would be to help him, and he couldn’t afford that.

Couldn’t afford to alienate her.

Couldn’t afford any delay in getting her back to New Mexico.

And yet the dragon didn’t want to be controlled. It was past reason, past understanding—all it knew was
out.

The need to shift was nearly overwhelming, but Dylan ignored it as he pulled himself inward. He focused on soothing the great beast that lived inside of him, but for the first time since he’d gained control of the animal and his ability to shift in his early twenties, it refused to obey him. Refused to calm down. Instead it snapped and snarled, slamming against his insides in its desperation to escape.

For one brief, horrifying moment, he felt the change try to take him—felt his fingers curve and sharpen into talons, felt his back burn where his wings started to push through the layers of muscle and skin.

Goddamn it, no. Not here, not now.

Sweat broke out on his forehead as he shoved the change back down. His entire body shook with the effort to stay in control, especially when a part of him wanted nothing more than to give himself over to the pleasure and the pain—and the power—of the change.

Head lowered, he braced his hands against the wall and fought for the upper hand. Murmured incantations, invoked magic to help him maintain control. The words that fell from his lips were ancient and familiar, though it had been four hundred years since he’d had to use them. Four hundred years since he’d had to struggle like this with his beast. Usually, the two parts of him—human and dragon—coexisted peacefully.

He didn’t understand why that had suddenly changed.

Another image flashed in front of his eyes, this one of his friend Duncan before he’d succumbed to the same mysterious disease that had taken Marta. He’d died, trapped halfway between dragon and man, his body and his powers completely paralyzed.

That couldn’t be happening to him, Dylan assured himself, even as panic started to churn in his gut. He wasn’t dying of that fucking disease. Not now; not yet. He couldn’t be.

There was no one else to take his place—despite all the years he’d spent trying to change that. His people needed him.

The thought of his responsibilities calmed the dragon like nothing else could, and his human side was finally able to dominate. The dragon didn’t retreat completely—he could still feel it there, wary, watching, waiting for him to slip up—but at least it was manageable.

He took a deep breath, whispered an incantation for good luck. Then thrust the door open and stepped inside. Too late, he realized his mistake as the dragon came roaring back to life.

CHAPTER THREE

T
he loud bang stopped Phoebe’s heart for the second time in as many weeks. One second passed, then two, before it picked up a disjointed rhythm again. In the meantime, she pulled her mind away from the DNA mutation Harvard’s very own supercomputer had spit out two days before—and that she was still struggling to connect to her research—and reminded herself again that she needed to do something about the damn door before she died of a heart attack.

But her first glance at the door—and the tall, dark intruder standing there—had her inching toward the phone and wondering just how long it would take the campus police to respond. Usually, she wasn’t one to judge a book by its cover, but this guy had trouble written all over him.

To begin with, he was huge—six-foot-six at least, and that was without the heavy motorcycle boots he was currently wearing. Dressed entirely in black—from the tight T-shirt that stretched across his heavily muscled chest to the leather jacket, worn jeans and kick-ass boots—he looked like every nightmare about the grim reaper she’d ever had as a child.

He might be better-looking than the reaper—with his too-pretty face, high cheekbones and lush, full lips, he looked more like a fallen angel than he did a stone-cold killer—but that was only if you forgot to look at his eyes.

Dark as midnight, black as sin, they burned like hell itself. And at that moment, all that fire was focused totally and completely on
her.

Just one more foot
, she told herself as she covered another inch. But what was she going to do when she reached the phone? Pick it up and dial security, all the time hoping he wouldn’t notice? Yeah, right. Those eyes saw everything, from the slow progress she and her rolling stool were making toward her desk to the small iodine stain on the pocket of her lab coat. She could see—actually see—him cataloging it all.

Deciding it was best to be as direct as possible, she forced herself to ask, “Can I help you?” Her voice sounded rusty, thin, nothing like it normally did. She cleared her throat and tried again. “This is a private lab. If you’re looking for the classrooms, they’re two buildings over.”

“I’m looking for you, Dr. Quillum.”

So not the words she wanted to hear at that exact moment. Finally—finally—her hand closed around the phone, but she didn’t lift it to her ear. She still hadn’t figured out how to call for help without alerting him to what she was doing. Or even worse, pissing him off.

“Okay. Just let me make a quick phone call and then—”

“You don’t need to be afraid.” His voice was pure, bittersweet chocolate—deep and dark with just a hint of a bite.

Her spine stiffened, even as she noted that he hadn’t promised not to hurt her. She didn’t know if she found his honesty refreshing or even more fearsome than his looks. “What makes you think I’m afraid of you?” Her fingers tightened on the receiver.

“I can smell it.”

Holy shit, he was as crazy as he was dangerous.

“Oooookay.” Phoebe worked to keep her voice as low and even as his. Forced herself to stand—or in this case, sit—her ground, when every instinct she had screamed for her to flee. Racking her brain, she tried to use the only weapon she’d ever needed to figure out what the hell was going on.

“You have me at a disadvantage,” she murmured.

“Only one?” he asked with a small twist of his lips. He advanced a few steps and her hand trembled, despite her best intentions.

The air between them all but crackled with electricity.

Get away
, screamed a primal part of her brain that she hadn’t known existed before that very moment.
Run, fight, scream—do whatever you have to. But get away from him now!

She quickly picked up the phone, dialed the emergency extension. “This is Dr. Quillum in Building 3, Room 513. I need immediate assistance—”

“That’s not necessary.” He reached over and gently but inexorably extracted the phone from her grip.

She watched as he hung up the receiver, found herself bristling despite her best efforts to keep her temper in check. “Just who do you think you are?”

“I know exactly who I am,” came the enigmatic answer.

She found herself craning her neck backward as she tried to make eye contact. But the second her eyes met his fire-and-brimstone ones, she knew she’d made a mistake. Up close, he was even more frightening.

More awe-inspiring.

And a hell of a lot more overwhelming.

She started to back up, but refused to lose ground to him. Showing fear would only make things worse.

Her breathing hitched as he got closer, her heart skipping one beat, then another and another. Suddenly, she wasn’t sure that fear was the only thing she was feeling.

The woman in her was intrigued, wanted to explore that random thought, while the practical scientist in her simply wanted to run. As he leaned over her—big and scary and too sexy for his own good—she took a deep breath to prepare for the worst.

It was the wrong thing to do.

His scent crept into her nose, spread through her lungs, then moved outward until it wrapped itself around every nerve ending she had. He didn’t smell dangerous, she rationalized, as if such a thing were even possible. Didn’t smell like he wanted to cause her harm.

She took another trembling breath, absorbed a little bit more of him. No, he didn’t smell half as frightening as he looked. In fact, he smelled like . . . home. Like the desert at night. Like sand and heat and sweet, open spaces.

Like everything she’d run from at eighteen and spent the past fifteen years trying to get back.

The instincts she’d done her best to ignore for most of her life had her stomach unknotting just a little. Had her muscles relaxing even as her mind told her to stay alert.

That, more than anything else, sent Phoebe into freak-out mode, had her taking a big step back and glancing almost frantically at the door. How long did it take the campus police to get here, anyway?

“I’m not going to hurt you.”

Yeah, right. She’d heard that before—and still had the scars to prove it. “What do you want?”

“Just to talk.” He held up his hands in a gesture that was meant to be reassuring. But as each one was the size of her last Thanksgiving turkey, she found the movement anything but. Especially with him towering over her, radiating enough heat to light up a small city.