Dragon's Flame (17 page)

It felt as if her lungs had diminished in their capacity to hold oxygen. “As a child?”

“No. As an adult.”

He looked twenty-nine, early thirties at the most. “How old are you?”

“A hundred and fifty as measured in this realm.”

Falling for him had to be karmic payback for all the times she’d cut and run as soon as a guy started feeling something for her.

This was crash and burn territory. She’d get old and he’d keep being mouth-watering, panty-drenching gorgeous. Making the real question: Would the highs of being involved with him be worth the lows that were guaranteed to follow.

She’d have to get back to herself on that one.

Dredging up a smile, she found some humor. “Wonder if my friend Analia has some kind of second sight. Right after I got the call from Animal Control about Emerald, she picked up a little dragon statue and told me that if I wanted something scaly in my life, I should hook up with a dragon shapeshifter. Of course, I didn’t believe such a thing existed at the time.”

“Now you do.” Taine gave her a quick kiss. “You might want to rethink the name Emerald. Your pet is a
he
.”

“You can tell?” she teased. “One lizard knows another lizard? That kind of thing?”

“You’re lucky I’m a tolerant kind of dragon male.”

His mouth came down hard on hers though a moment later he growled at the pounding on the door.

It opened and Crew stuck his head into the bathroom.

Saffron’s face flamed. He couldn’t see much of her. But her legs wrapped around Taine’s waist left no doubt as to where Taine’s cock was.

“Maksim says:
Enough fucking around. Time to get your asses to the meeting room
.”

There was no choice but to put personal concerns aside. Glad for the change of clothes Taine retrieved from the sedan, and with her thoughts and emotions under control, Saffron joined the others at a round table in a meeting room.

Sitting to the right of Crew was another specimen of mouth-watering gorgeousness. He had reddish-brown hair, a short beard, and a piercing stare.

“This is Kellen,” Maksim said.

“Your dog,” she blurted, having apparently left her mouth filter in the shower.

Sensuous lips kicked up rather than turning sulky and pouty. Kellen said, “I’m actually my own hound.”

Maksim shot a questioning look at Taine, then indicated the small, rigid man at his right. “I’m not sure you’ve been officially introduced. This is Anders. He’s responsible for evidence and artifact collection and transport. “

 Anders wore the same censorious expression as he had the first time she’d seen him, when Taine had said,
The guy is a total gnome
.

She’d taken it figuratively then. She took it literally now.

“That charm should be turned over for safekeeping,” Anders said in a voice that straddled whiney and sanctimonious, which wasn’t an easy feat.

“You’ll get the charm in due course,” Maksim said.

Saffron opened her mouth to contradict him but Taine beat her to it. “We promised the sorcerer’s sister that it would be returned.”

“Then we’ll honor that promise.” Maksim looked at Saffron. “We’re running out of time to stop whatever Elon Moates has planned. What did you see? What happened when you were in the house?”

Her heart jumped its way into her throat and her skin instantly slicked with sweat. For a beat she was standing inside an inferno, protected from it by a thin bubble of magic.

Magic. She hadn’t had time to process the reality of what had happened in the sorcerer’s house before Taine had laid something harder to deal with on her.

Her heart fluttered. He was one-hundred-and-fifty and looked thirty-two at the most. She would grow old, would die in fewer years than he’d already lived.

Taine’s hand tightened on hers beneath the table, returning her to the moment. What had she seen? Nothing useful.

“He had an office. The shelves were lined with books. There were blueprint-like rolls, easily three or four dozen of them in a holder next to his desk. I should have gone for the less obvious—”

“No,” Kristof said. “Learning what kind of spells he’s working with or capable of casting trumps when it comes to knowledge. Did you see anything? A symbol of any kind?”

“Nothing. As soon as I touched one of the rolls, they all went up in flames.” She shuddered. “It was like lighting a half-dozen fuses. The fire spread in ways fire doesn’t spread and all at once the entire house was engulfed.”

“Booby-trapped,” Kristof said.

Maksim nodded. “Not all that surprising. And symbolic whether he intended it to be or not. The egg is a massive bomb in this world.”

Saffron rubbed a damp palm against her jeans. “But it can be sent back, right?”

“We’d have to get it to ground zero,” Gaige said. “And there’d have to be enough time to create a portal. That’s not a simple magical working.”

“Containment might be the more viable option,” Maksim said, turning his attention to Crew and Gaige. “What’d you learn from Elon Moates’s father?”

Crew sighed. “Nothing useful. He absolutely believes that Elon doesn’t intend to burn San Diego to the ground. I’m not sure he’s convinced his son has the juice to pull an unhatched phoenix into this realm, but he was convincing when he said that if what we say is true, then Elon would use the power its birth will generate to fuel some other spell.”

Maksim drummed his fingers against the table. “Kristof, chances of success when it comes to containment?”

“Depends on how much time we have and how good the containment spell he’ll have in place is. If we had twenty-four hours to layer a spell over his, then deal with the aftereffects of his magical working, I’d say we could keep San Diego from turning into ash and rubble. The odds of success go down drastically the closer we get to the egg hatching. And that assumes he’s got decent shielding in place.”

“Considering the fire at Cleveland National Forest,” Gaige said, “I don’t think we can assume he’s got the situation fully under control. It might already be a given that some part of this city is going to burn.”

Kristof gave a slight nod. Crew said, “It’s also entirely possible that the end result of his spell could be equally devastating to the city.”

Maksim’s expression became more grim. “True. There are realms touching this one where portals are being prevented from opening with good reason. We may not have any choice but to allow the spell working to happen then handle the consequences.”

“There’s a third option for dealing with the egg if we can find it before it hatches, a combination of the other two,” Kristof said.

 Maksim’s gaze slid from Kristof to Saffron, then back to Kristof. “It might come to that if there isn’t time to get the egg back to ground zero.”

Saffron chilled. “Come to what?”

“No,” Taine said, his hand tightening on hers and his voice hard-edged with the promise of violence.

“Come to what?” Saffron repeated.

Chapter 13

Kristof turned toward Saffron and met her eyes. “Those of us with sorcerer’s blood can become portals for sentient magic.”

“Like a soldier falling onto a live grenade,” she said, shivering, remembering Juan Ramirez, one of the men in her father’s unit. He’d done that, sacrificed himself for others on his second Middle East deployment.

Kristof nodded. “It can be like throwing yourself onto a live grenade. Or it can be something simpler, like drawing blood with a knife that belongs in a different realm and wants to return home.”

Saffron was pretty sure that with the phoenix egg, it wouldn’t be that easy. She balled her free hand beneath the table rather than reach up and grasp the charm that would probably allow her to get close to the egg. “Is being a portal for sentient magic survivable?”

Kristof’s eyes said probably not in this case. His mouth, said, “Every situation is different. You don’t know until you know.”

But the real question was: Would she have the courage to do what needed to be done if the time came?

She wanted to believe the answer was yes. But then everyone wanted to believe that they would act heroically. And in the moment of their testing, plenty of people discovered that they lacked courage, that they couldn’t sacrifice themselves, that in their moment of truth they froze or fled instead of fought.

I’ll do what it takes to save lives and keep this city from burning
.

But would she?

Would she really?

Yes. I will.

“Give me the charm,” Taine growled, as if sensing her resolve to die if that was required of her.

She met his eyes. “The charm isn’t attached to you. Nothing has changed since the sorcerer’s house.”

“Everything has changed.”

Because now she knew he was a dragon?

She didn’t see it that way. Whether they were able to retrieve the egg and get it back to ground zero or she was able to get close enough to become a human portal, this wasn’t going to be a
they lived happily ever after situation
, not for her and Taine. Not that she’d expected a fairytale ending or allowed herself to believe she wanted one.

Fairytale endings and happy-ever-afters were for her twin and Analia. They’d been talking about their dream weddings since high school!

Hard on that thought came the memory of Shanna pretending to stick her fingers down her throat and saying that after coming into his power, her brother had used his ability to channel magic to gain adoration, to become homecoming king all through high school.

That was the only use of spells Shanna knew about. And after the meeting with Genevieve, it seemed likely that Elon had been using someone else’s stored magic.

Why anyone would want to be homecoming queen or king, that was still beyond Saffron. But why a sorcerer would want a constant source of power…

Her heart careened about in her chest, knocking wildly against her ribs.

Wild guess? Pure conjecture?

Beneath the table, Taine’s hand tightened on hers. “What?”

“Do love charms work?”

His nostrils flared and his eyes narrowed. He carried her hand to the front of his jeans. “You don’t need a love charm.”

Crew snorted and Gaige mumbled, “This is the stuff of nightmares.”

Saffron rolled her eyes. “I’m thinking about Elon. Based on what Genevieve said, it seems likely that he never actually came into power of his own. But remember what Shanna told us he did when suddenly, he had the ability to work magic?”

“He made himself homecoming king.”

Taine’s answer might as well have been a surge of electricity around the table, jolting everyone to attention in their seats. Maksim said, “Even the phoenix wouldn’t generate enough magic to make it possible to rule in this realm. Humans are too contentious. But the energy that’ll be freed when the phoenix emerges
could
fuel a spell powerful enough to ensnare the ruler of a realm kingdom in a love spell.”

“There’d have to be a marriage,” Gaige said. “For all his incompetence in keeping the egg’s flaring from setting fires, he’s not a killer. So whoever his target is, there won’t already be a consort in place.”

“Agreed,” Maksim said. “It’ll be marriage, and not to a hag. Kellen, go to the astrologist. When we’ve narrowed the possible kingdoms, he can tell us when and where those realms will touch this one. The rest of us will search the realm directories.”

Kristof stood. “I’ll check the tomes I have in my personal library.”

“Maybe Nelson Arrington had the same idea,” Saffron said. “Maybe Elon stole both his magic and his plan to rule another realm.”

Kristof’s brows drew together. He glanced at Taine. “You texted that name to me. Was I supposed to be investigating?”

“Crew was going to—”

“I passed the name off to Anders,” Crew said. “Kristof was already gone.”

Anders stood. “By all accounts, he was an ordinary human. There might be fresher information on what’s going on in the various realms in the evidence vaults.”

“Let’s get to work,” Maksim said, and they all left the meeting room.

* * * *

Sweat trickled down the back of Elon’s neck. The tightness in his chest made it feel as if he’d run four miles without stopping.

He resisted the urge to look over his shoulder at the egg. That would increase the tightness and further dampen his shirt. Already the wet spots beneath his arms were the equivalent of what his uniform shirt would look like after a day of patrolling the park.

He was still sickened by the damage he’d caused to a place that had always been his refuge. In the beginning he fled to the national forest to escape his father’s disappointment, but it had become his place of power—no magic required.

If he hadn’t come from sorcerer stock, being a ranger would have been enough for him. But he
had
come from sorcerer stock.

I’ll make it up to the forest. I’ll make it better than it was before.

The ache in his chest persisted. His cellphone rang and ache turned into further constriction.

He put the pen down, flexed his hand before answering, “What’s happened?”

His minion—and that label brought a smile—said, “Your house has been destroyed.”

Elon closed his eyes. He’d known it might happen but he’d hoped it wouldn’t. “Were any of the IRE agents killed?”

“No. Your sister had a charm. She gave it to Taine’s mate and it allowed her to enter the house. Saffron triggered your defensive spells but survived the fire without injury.”

It was a waste. A loss. A sacrifice. He’d made sure there was nothing anyone could see that would lead them here, and fire eliminated the possibility of creating a tracking spell by using hair or a personal item.

Still. The loss of his things hurt. He’d thought he’d have more time, time to hide his things in a storage unit, if he’d dared risk it. But then he’d succeeded in pulling the egg into this realm and discovered the error in the calculations.

Rubbing the place above his heart, he said, “It’s almost done.”

“They’ve guessed your objective. Maksim has a man stationed at the astrologist’s house. Right now there are six of us, seven if you include the human woman, with orders to search for information that will help determine which realm you’ve targeted.”