Dragon Bound (18 page)

Massive shadows unfurled across the ground. He had opened his wings and mantled like an eagle.

Her body rediscovered how to move. She scrambled backward on hands and feet, scuttling like a crab.

He arched his long serpentine neck. He tilted down a horned triangular head that was the length of her body so that he could look at her with eyes that were great pools of molten lava. With a sound that sliced the air, he whipped his tail back and forth.

“
That’s
my long, scaly, reptilian tail. And it’s bigger than anyone else’s,” Dragos said in a voice that was deeper, larger, yet still recognizable as his. One huge eyelid dropped in an unmistakable wink.

She collapsed in hysterical laughter.

“Stay down,” the dragon told her. He lowered his head as he turned to the bluff, a sleek, sinuous behemoth. He bared his teeth in a vicious challenge.
“BRING IT ON, YOU SON OF A BITCH.”

One by one the Dark Fae riders rose into the air on their dragonfly steeds. They turned and flew away.

It was impossible to see, but she sensed the predator in him vibrating with the instinct to give chase. He held himself back, though, and she knew why. He wouldn’t leave her unprotected with the Goblin/Fae army so near.

She pushed up on one elbow to stare in the direction of their pursuers. The Goblins and Fae riders had turned away. They were in full retreat.

The sound of ripping soil had her looking back at the dragon. He was digging his talons into the ground as he snarled at their retreat.

“Dragos,” she said. He looked at her. She jerked her head toward the retreating army. “Go.”

He needed no further encouragement. He crouched and sprang into the air. A roar split the sky like a thunderclap. The Goblins began to scream as the killing began. She was ferociously, vindictively glad.

It was not so much a battle as it was extermination. After Dragos’s first spectacular dive and roll when he winged low over their heads and spouted fire, she couldn’t watch anymore. She turned onto her stomach, put her arms over her head and waited for it to be over.

The stink of Goblin was overcome with the smell of oily smoke. It was not long before silence fell over the plain. There was no one left to do a body count. None of their enemies made it off the plain alive.

S
he nestled her nose deeper in the tall, sweet-smelling grass. The sun was high in the sky. It was warm on her back and shoulders. A quiet rustling in the grass grew closer. A shadow fell over her. Something very light tickled her forearms that covered the back of her head. It whuffled in her hair.

She scratched an arm. “Did you kill the Fae horses?”

The whuffling stopped. Dragos said in a cautious voice, “Was I not supposed to?”

She shrugged. “It just wasn’t their fault.”

“If it helps any, I was hungry and ate one.” Another whuffle.

She couldn’t help but chuckle. “I guess that does help some.”

She rolled over. He had stretched out alongside her, his great body between her and the remains of the Goblin/Fae army. His wings, a dramatic sweep of bronze darkening to black at the tips, were folded back. His hide glinted in the sun. She lifted her head and looked in the direction of a few plumes of smoke. His triangular head came down in front of her, golden eyes keen. “You don’t need to look over there,” he said in a gentle voice.

She sat up and leaned against his snout. She laid her cheek against him. Close up, she could see a faint pattern like scales in his hide. She stroked the wide curve of one nostril. It seemed somewhat softer than the rest of him. He held very still, breathing light and shallow.

“What does that feel like?” she asked him.

“It feels good.” He sighed, a great gust of wind, and he seemed to relax. “Thank you for saving my life again, Pia Alessandra Giovanni.” He made the syllables of her human name sound musical.

“Back atcha, big guy,” she whispered.

After a few more moments he withdrew, giving her plenty of time to straighten. She looked up, way up at his long triangular head silhouetted against the afternoon sun. “You have,” he said, “two choices.”

“Choices are good.” She pushed to her feet, all of a sudden feeling tired and achy again. “Choices are better than orders.”

“You can ride,” he told her. “Or I can carry you.”

“Ride? Hot damn.” She shaded her eyes and eyed his enormous bulk. “That might be more excitement than I can deal with right now. I’m not seeing any seat belts up there.”

“You got it.” Giving her plenty of time to adjust, he wrapped the long claws of one foot around her with such precision he didn’t cause so much as a scratch or pinch. When he tilted his foot, she found she had quite a comfortable hollow in which to sit. He lifted her up so that he could look at her. “All right?”

“I’m feeling a little Fay Wray here, but otherwise it’s great,” she told him. “You know, if you weren’t a multibillionaire, you could make a good living as an elevator.”

He snorted a laugh. Then the world fell away as he leaped into the air. Anything else she might have said was lost in the beat of his huge wings, in her earsplitting shriek.

I take it all back,
she shouted at him telepathically. She had no breath left from shrieking to try to speak out loud.
Forget about producing Valium, or elevator and hairdresser careers. You could be the world’s only living roller coaster. Hey, I bet Six Flags would pay you a fortune.

I see the lunatic inhabiting your body is alive and well
, he replied.

He banked and shifted direction as he sensed a passageway back to the human realm. She managed to suck in more breath to shriek again.
I’m being serious now—I don’t think I can deal with this!

Tough
, he told her.
I’m not taking the chance of anything else going wrong. This is a nonstop flight to New York. Thank you for flying Cuelebre Airlines.

“You’re not funny!” she screamed out loud. Dragon laughter filled her head.

She huddled in his unbreakable grip, hands over her eyes. She discovered it wasn’t a smooth, seamless flight but one that had a rhythm from the beat of his wings. She also thought she would be freezing. She was in for another surprise as he kept a velvet blanket of Power wrapped around her. It protected her from the cold altitude and the wind.

She could sense the upswell of magic that marked a passageway back to the human dimension as they approached. She peeked through her fingers. Following a directional sense she didn’t share, he stretched his wings and they glided until they skimmed along just a hundred feet above a small canyon.

Are you able to open your eyes yet?
he asked.

She told him,
I’m looking.

A lot of passageways to Other lands are like this one. They’re couched in some kind of break in the physical landscape,
he told her.
If we flew just ten or fifteen feet higher, we wouldn’t be in the passageway.

Then we would stay in the Other land?
she asked, as she became interested in spite of herself.

Correct. From the air, it’s like following a specific airstream. The passageway the Goblin brought us through was somewhat unusual,
he explained.
There was a break in the land but it was an old one worn down by time. It was barely visible even to my eyes.

Somewhere along the way the sun changed and became paler. The canyon shrank until it was a mere ravine tangled with underbrush. The quality of air changed as well. They had crossed over.

Can you tell where we are?
she asked. She had forgotten her fear in the fascination of watching the land scroll by underneath.

North of where we were before. I’m more familiar with the landscape along the coast. I’ll know more when we hit the Atlantic
. He gave the equivalent of a mental shrug.
I’m more interested in finding out when we are and how much time has passed while we were in the Other land.

She had forgotten about that. She watched the landscape change as Dragos winged east. After about a half an hour or so, the blue line of the ocean appeared ahead of them. He wheeled to fly north alongside the land’s edge, climbing in altitude until the air felt thin to her. The cities and towns they flew over looked like a child’s toys.

There,
he said. She looked up to see him nod to their left.
That’s Virginia Beach. We’ve got a good couple hours’ flight ahead of us.

Oh, right.
She drooped at the thought. And here I am without my magazines or paperback novel, and no money for an in-flight movie.

They fell silent. After a while, watching the coastline pass by between her dangling feet became so commonplace it was boring. She inspected the cut on her palm, which had sealed sometime during Dragos’s healing.

The scab already looked a week old. She picked at it without much interest, then turned her attention to the long, curved, black talons that surrounded her. She rubbed one, then tapped at it with a fingernail. It gleamed like obsidian and was no doubt harder than diamonds.

After that there was nothing left to do but kick her feet and obsess over the debacle that her life had become.

After everything, now she was headed back to New York in the grasp of the very creature she had been running away from. With whom, by the way, she had also had fantastic, mind-blowing sex.

That was a head bender all on its own, without considering all the many other disasters that had occurred. She peered up at Dragos and looked away again fast.

The memories of what they had done together were so intense she lost her breath every time she thought of them. Yet they seemed surreal at the same time, almost like they had happened to someone else. And she couldn’t quite connect the man who had been her lover with this splendid exotic creature who carried her with such care as he flew.

She propped her elbows on a talon and buried her face in her hands. Images from the last few days flashed across her inner eye. The confrontation with the Elves. Dragos getting shot. The car crash. The Goblin stronghold, the beating. The beautiful dream of her mother. The standoff on the plain.

She didn’t know what to make of all of it. She wanted that dark room to hide in until she figured everything out. Like in maybe ten years or so.

And it was really not good that she had come to the Fae King’s attention for sure this time. Front and center. He couldn’t know everything that had happened between her and Dragos. But they had escaped together. Now the Fae King had to have some questions about whether she had anything significant to do with Dragos’s transformation, questions he would want to have answered along with all the questions he might have had from before.

Way to stay under the radar and avoid scrutiny, dingbat. If he
might
have known something and been interested in her before, he sure as hell did now. She had no doubt she’d just shot right up to the Fae King’s Ten Most Wanted list. For all she knew they would be posting pictures of her in post offices and police stations and faxing them to the FBI.

She could always have plastic surgery and run away to live off the grid in a remote Mexican village. If she could collect the stuff from her three remaining caches and get out of town again. That wouldn’t stop magical detection, though. Dragos had already warned her he would find her if she tried to run.

What did that make her? She didn’t know. Was she his prisoner when they got back to New York? Was he serious about considering her his property now or had that been a joke? He had a strange sense of humor sometimes, so it was hard to tell.

Just tell me what I want to know and I’ll let you go. Ha. She rolled her eyes. She couldn’t believe she fell for that one.

She did believe he had forgiven her for the theft. She supposed that was a miracle all on its own, since not that long ago she had been convinced he was going to tear her to pieces. And she had promised him she wouldn’t try to escape. She had meant it at the time.

She wondered if she was going to keep that promise. Life had turned so unpredictable she wasn’t willing to bet on anyone or anything at this point, least of all herself.

All she knew for sure was that she still faced a dangerous and uncertain future.

And that she was . . . lonely again. Worse than ever before.

ELEVEN

S
he fell into a cramped, fitful doze, propping her head on one arm as she leaned against a curved claw. Come to think of it, it was quite a bit like trying to nap in an airplane seat. The change in their altitude woke her up. She straightened with a wince and looked around. New York lay spread out all around her. The panoramic splash of lights in the deepening dusk stabbed at her eyes. She winced and rubbed her face in an attempt to wake up.

Dragos banked and wheeled in a great circle. They were headed for one of the tallest skyscrapers. She groaned as her stomach lurched. Then they dropped onto the launchpad on the roof of Cuelebre Tower.

She looked around, dazed, and tried to stand without staggering when Dragos set her on her feet. The roof was a huge expanse of space, more than adequate for handling someone of Dragos’s size with room for the takeoffs and landings of other creatures at the same time.

A group of people stood waiting by a set of double doors. In front of them a tawny-haired man stood with feet planted apart and arms crossed. A feral-looking beautiful woman stood beside him, hands on her hips. A Native American–looking man stood a little apart from the others in a black sleeveless leather vest and black jeans, with black hair cut short with shaved whirls of pattern throughout it and tattooed, muscular arms.

Every last one of them bristled with weapons. They all stood six feet tall or over. None of them looked like someone she would be comfortable running into in a back alley.

The air behind her shimmered with Power. She looked over her shoulder as Dragos changed, every ounce of the dragon’s force and energy compacted into the tall, muscular shape of the man. By some trick of the magic in the change, he still wore his battered grimy jeans and boots and nothing else. She looked from his bare chest up into that blade-cut face and raptor’s eyes and lost her breath all over again.

He took her by the arm and strode with her to the group waiting by the doors. Her face heated as curious, unfriendly eyes assessed her.

“’Bout time you showed up,” said the tawny-haired man. He jerked his chin toward the Native American. “I sent to South America for Tiago and some of the cavalry. You all right?”

“I’m fine,” said Dragos. Two of the men held the doors open. Dragos ignored the open elevator doors and took the stairs. She had no choice but to trot along by his side. The others followed. “Conference in ten minutes. Is the room ready?”

What room? Her room? Pia looked at him sidelong as they hit the landing for the penthouse floor.

“All set,” said the tawny man just behind her. Most of the rest had broken away from them to go to the conference room.

They swept down a large hallway, turned and went down another. The halls had luxurious marbled floors. Original works of art hung placed on recession-lit walls. She craned her neck. Wait—was that a painting by Chagall?

Dragos stopped in front of a blond wood door. He pushed it open and walked her inside. The tawny male and two others stayed in the hall by the door.

Pia looked around. She got a blurred impression of a room that was larger than a small house. Her filthy sneakers sank into plush white carpet. A freestanding fireplace and sunken living area with pale leather couches and armchairs was at one end. A black wrought-iron framed bed the size of a boat was at the other end, piled with pillows and quilts. An immense plasma flat-screen hung on one wall, and a wet bar was tucked into an alcove. Another wall was nothing but floor-to-ceiling plate-glass windows with French doors. Open doors led off to walk-in closets and a bathroom.

He turned her around to face him and tilted up her chin. She looked up at him, round-eyed and wary. “I know how tired you are,” he said in a quiet voice. “I want you to stay here, take a hot bath and rest. Everything you should need is here, clothes, drinks, and I’m going to have a hot meal sent up for you. All right?”

In some ways this present landscape was more alien than the Other land had been. The tangled mess inside of her got even more snarled. She was half afraid of him again, but at the same time she didn’t want him to leave. She bit her lips, clenched her fists to keep from reaching out to him or appearing too high-maintenance. She gave him a jerky nod.

He put a hand at the back of her neck, a heavy, warm weight, his face tightening. He said, as if she had argued, “I’ve been talking with Rune as we approached the city. We’ve been gone a week. I’ve got to brief them on what happened.”

“There must be a million things you’ve got to do,” she said. She pulled out of his hold, crossed her arms around her middle and stepped away from him. “I can’t imagine.”

He stood with his hand suspended in midair, frowning at her. She caught a glimpse of the hallway where the tawny male who must be Rune stood, along with two other great hulking males. All three were staring at Dragos as if they didn’t recognize him.

He turned on his heel and strode out. He said, “Bayne, Con, stay here. Get her anything she wants.”

“Right,” said one of the men. He exchanged a glance with the other man. “Anything she wants.”

Dragos disappeared with Rune, leaving her alone in the great gorgeous barn of a room with two men at the door.

Armed guards. Guess she had one question answered. She was a prisoner.

One of them took hold of the door handle and nodded to her, his weather-beaten face expressionless. “We’ll knock when your meal comes,” he told her. “Do you need anything right now?”

“No, thank you,” she said from a dry throat. “I’m fine.”

Her guard shut the door and left her alone.

She turned in a circle, taking everything in. The empty room was draped in shadows that deepened with the onset of dusk. The strange penthouse luxury seemed colder and hollower without the vitality of Dragos’s presence. She rubbed her arms and shivered.

She slipped off her disgusting sneakers and put them on the tiled floor just inside a bathroom that was bigger than the whole of her apartment. Then she padded over to the alcove that hid the wet bar.

Though small, it was stocked with a wide assortment of liquor, all top of the line, of course. She paused, distracted by the collection. She had always wanted to try a glass of Johnnie Walker Blue. There was a coffee machine on the counter and a sink. Underneath the counter was a half-sized refrigerator. She checked the contents. Bottles of Evian water and Perrier, beer and lager, various juices, white wine and champagne.

She took out two bottles of water. She gulped down the Evian. Then with her thirst somewhat assuaged, she opened the Perrier and drank that more slowly.

The fireplace was a real one, not gas. It was immaculate and laid with a neat stack of wood, ready to start. A box of long matches sat by a TV remote on the coffee table in front of two of the couches. She gave in to temptation and lit the fire. The yellow flicker of the flames helped to dispel some of the room’s chill emptiness.

Next she crept into a walk-in closet and dressing room. One side was filled with male clothes. The other side was filled with her clothes.

From her apartment.

She pushed through the hangers and opened up the dresser drawers. Her underwear, socks, T-shirts and shorts, all immaculate, all pressed and folded.

She held up a small neat bundle that was a pair of white panties. Some stranger had washed her underwear—and ironed it?

The same was true for the clothes on the hangers. Her shoes were no longer in a pile but polished and stored in order. Her small cedar jewelry chest was on one of the dressers. She opened it and grew teary at the sight of her mother’s antique necklace. She stroked the necklace, then shut the chest with care and leaned against the dresser.

This was both creepy and . . . thoughtful. Finding familiar things was comforting at the same time as it scared her half to death.

When had he given the order to collect her things? Had it been at the beach house when he called Rune? He had said he had told Rune to get a vegetarian cook. When had he decided to move her things into his room?

She grabbed a T-shirt, sports bra and panties and a pair of flannel boxer shorts. She went into the bathroom. She could spend a week having a vacation just in the bathroom alone. There was a bathtub the size of a small pool with steps and bench seats, and there were unopened bottles of Chanelscented bubble bath. Her toiletries and makeup were laid out on the marble counter by the sink. New bottles of the shampoo and conditioner brand she liked were in the shower stall.

Someone had apparently thought of everything, every last freaking thing, except for asking her opinion about any of it. What a gilded cage.

Even though Dragos had urged her to take a hot bath, she felt too vulnerable and unsettled to relax. Just as she had at the beach house, she locked the bathroom door before she stripped.

The shower was several feet in size with a bench seat and multiple heads. After she figured out how to turn it on, she stood under the multiple streams of water with her eyes closed until the warmth soaked away all the strength in her legs. She sat on the bench as she lathered and conditioned her hair and scrubbed at her body until it felt like she had taken a layer of skin off. After rinsing, she wrapped her hair in a towel and dried and dressed. Rational or not she felt better as soon as she had clean clothes on.

When she walked out of the bathroom, she found that a serving cart/portable dining table and a chair had been set near the windows. There was a heavy white linen tablecloth and simple but elegant tableware and dishes with silver covers. A small bottle of white wine chilled in an ice bucket. Consumed with hunger, she uncovered all the dishes.

She found a delicate lemon asparagus risotto sprinkled with slivered almonds, a salad with mixed greens, sliced pears and dried cranberries, fresh baked bread with individual packets of soy margarine and blueberry crumble for dessert. She fell on the food and devoured every last delicious bite.

After getting clean, comfortable and filling her stomach, she had no room for alarm or offense. She couldn’t even keep her eyes open. She managed to brush her teeth before she crawled between the sheets of the massive bed. As prisons went, this one would be mighty hard to beat. She yawned, gave up trying to think and fell asleep.

On the next floor down, Dragos strode into the conference room, followed by Rune. Located a short, convenient distance down the hall from his offices, it was a large executive boardroom, with black leather seats, an expansive polished oak table and state-of-the-art teleconferencing equipment.

All his sentinels were present with the exception of the two gryphons Bayne and Constantine, who stood guard at Pia’s door. Rune took a seat by the fourth gryphon, Graydon, and tilted his chair back. Tiago leaned against the far wall, a dark brooding presence. Aryal sprawled and tapped her fingers on the table. She never quite managed a motionless state unless she was hunting prey. The gargoyle Grym angled his chair so he could watch Aryal.

Tricks, the faerie known as Thistle Periwinkle, Cuelebre’s head of PR, sat with her arms and legs crossed at the other end of the table. Her lavender cloud of hair, sporting a four-hundred-dollar haircut, was disheveled. She jiggled one tiny foot and chain-smoked.

Dragos, like Tiago, didn’t take a seat. Instead he went to lean back against the oak counter at the head of the room. He kicked one foot over the other and folded his arms, tucked his chin in and brooded at the floor.

He didn’t like how he felt. He didn’t like it one fucking bit. He felt jittery and restless at leaving Pia alone. The feeling increased with every step he took away from her and with every minute that trickled by. She had looked very lost and alone standing in the middle of that big empty room.

He didn’t like how she had looked at him either, like he was an unpredictable puzzle she couldn’t decipher. Or a bomb that might go off in her face. She had looked at him with uncertainty, distrust. With something very close to fear again.

She had pulled away from him.

It was unacceptable. But before he could go and take care of whatever was brewing in her head, he had to do this first.

He lifted his gaze and looked around the occupants in the room. They were all watching him and waiting.

“Hey, Tricks,” he said to the chain-smoking faerie. “Your uncle Urien says hi.”

Tricks started swearing, her urchinlike features contorted. She stabbed a half-smoked cigarette out in the ashtray. “What did the bastard do this time?”

Rune said, “Everybody knows what happened up to the point when you called from South Carolina. We’ve been dealing with the Elven fallout. They’ve invoked a trade and business embargo with anything to do with Cuelebre Enterprises, along with all other known Wyr businesses. They also swore they escorted you and the woman to the Elven border. They’re insisting on knowing what happened to her.”

“You mean, aside from housing the criminal in a penthouse suite and hiring a private chef for her? Yeah, we’re talking cruel and unusual punishment,” Aryal whispered to Grym, but Dragos’s sharp hearing caught it anyway. He chose to ignore it for now.

“They did escort us to the border. That’s true as far as it goes,” he said. He told them the rest, omitting what happened in private between him and Pia, and glossing over anything to do with her secrets. Pia was his mystery. No one else’s. He intended to solve her all by himself.

The mood in the room turned ugly as he described the confrontation on the Other land plain.

When he finished, Tiago stirred. In his thunderbird form, he was as big as any of the gryphons. “So, it’s war. About damn time,” he said. Dark satisfaction gleamed from obsidian eyes.

Dragos nodded. “It’s war. We don’t stop now until Urien is dead.” He looked at Tricks. “That means you get to be the Dark Fae Queen at last.”

“Oh God no,” the faerie groaned. “I fucking hate the Dark Fae Court.”

“Well, suck it up, Tricks. You’ve run from this long enough. And this time Urien’s pushed me too far.”

Over two hundred years ago, humankind time, Urien had taken the Dark Fae crown in a bloody coup. Urien had slaughtered his brother, the King, the King’s wife and anyone else who had any direct claim to the throne, except he managed to miss one small person, their eldest daughter, Tricks.