Fury of Fire

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

Text copyright ©2011 Coreene Callahan
All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

Published by Montlake Romance
P.O. Box 400818
Las Vegas, NV 89140

ISBN: 978-1-61218-272-8

For my fearless front man, Alain.
This one’s for you, babe.

The flash of strobe lights struck with the force of a hammer. Bastian squinted against the glare and scanned the dance floor, taking in the exposed skin and barely there skirts writhing to the rhythm of hard-core techno. His practiced eye picked up all kinds of trace, the faint glow of female energy swirling in dark corners. He downed another shot of Blue Label.

The whiskey went down smooth. His mood headed in the other direction.

“Anything?” Rikar slid into the booth across from him.

“Did you expect there to be?” He glanced at his friend, registering the shimmer in Rikar’s pale eyes. The iridescent glow meant one thing. His friend had fed, taken his ease in an obscure corner of the club with a willing human female. No surprise there. Dragonkind appealed to women, and his first in command never wanted for company.

Rikar palmed his microbrew and took a pull from the bottle. “Pick one and be done with it, for fuck’s sake.”

If only it were that simple. In the quiet of their lair, his decision—and the rationale behind it—had made perfect sense. Now, surrounded by thumping bass and the swell of perfumed female flesh, Bastian wondered what had possessed him. It wasn’t that he didn’t want a woman. Hell, he enjoyed them as much or more than his brothers-in-arms did, but the thought of taking one to mate made his blood run cold. “I still have time.”

His friend threw him an amused look. “You’ve less than a week.”

“Lay off, Rikar.”

“Hey, it’s your crazy-ass plan, not mine.”

Yeah, crazy. That pretty much summed it up. But it didn’t matter. His hands were tied. The war had gone on for so long that Bastian had lost count of the casualties. Centuries of fallen comrades, of hunting and being hunted. It would never stop. A clean victory was an impossibility for either side now. With only a handful of warrior dragons left, little choice remained but to replenish their numbers…and that meant breeding the next generation.

The idea sat like a stone in his stomach. He wanted a mate like another hole in his head, but he must lead by example: be the first to commit, to have a son, to lose his female in childbirth.

Bastian swirled the ice in his glass. Christ. He didn’t even know what she looked like and yet, he mourned her. Already felt sorry for the life he would take. It wasn’t murder. Not really. He would never willingly hurt a woman, but that didn’t change what he must do. To save his kind he must breed, and females never survived birthing Dragonkind.

“You take too much on yourself, B. Dragonkind is healthy enough.” Glacial eyes flicked over the scene before returning to him. Bastian read the censure in his friend’s gaze as well as the truth. Rikar knew, just as he did, there was no other way. “You should feed. It’ll improve your mood.”

No doubt, but the suggestion left a bad taste in Bastian’s mouth. He only indulged when forced by hunger and desperate need. Foolish, maybe, but despite his nature he disliked taking what didn’t belong to him. Women deserved better than to be used and have their memories wiped. Besides, the low-level energy in the club wasn’t enough. One of the oldest of his kind, he required a female capable of drawing pure power from the Meridian to feed him.

The electrostatic current nurtured Dragonkind, an all-male race born of human females. Without the energy exchange, his kind would starve to death. And the only way to draw from the source was to get close to a female. So close that bodies clashed and skin met skin. Not that any ever complained. Begged for the pleasure he gave? Always. Never once in all his years had one objected. Even now, the women closest to him watched, waiting for the slightest encouragement.

Normally, he took what they offered, but not tonight.

Tonight was about leadership. About showing the warriors under his command that sacrifices needed to be made for the greater good of the race.

Bastian scanned the club again. Dancers were getting animated, pairing off in twos and threes, female skirts rising, male hands roaming whatever real estate they could reach. Tipping his head back, he swallowed the last of his Blue Label and found the waitress in the crowd. A redhead, pretty enough, but too Goth for him. He liked his females fresh-faced, without the layers of makeup the women in clubs always favored.

He issued a mental command anyway.

Her kohl-lined eyes blinked once before she spun on spiked heels and headed for the bar. He cleared a path, tapping into the collective psyche, warning the crowd out of her way. They parted like the Red Sea, opening a wide swath as she approached the stainless steel counter and high-backed stools. In under a minute, she returned, fingers curled around the neck of a bottle, hips swaying in a low-slung micromini.

Crystal clinked as she set a matched pair of VIP tumblers in front of them. “Want me to pour?”

Her voice was little more than a sensual purr, a hum of invitation a human male would never have heard over the throb of bass pounding through the club. But Bastian was only half-human. Like all of his kind, his senses were keen, alive with the hunt, eager for the chase. He considered her a moment. She had adequate energy, better than most. It wasn’t enough to truly feed him, but enough to take the edge off his appetite. The beginnings of hunger gnawed at the pit of his stomach.

“I’m on break in five.” She leaned toward him, flashing cleavage as she placed the bottle of whiskey on the tabletop. “Meet me out back?”

Wild heat and sexual inexperience rolled in her scent. The fragrance was one of youth, beautiful in its own way, but she didn’t appeal to him. He’d lived too long to be interested in the unproven. “Another time.”

Rouged lips pursed into a pout. “You sure?”

“I’m good,” he said, releasing a soothing spell to soften his rejection. “Leave the bottle and go.”

With a sigh, she retreated, turning her attention to customers at the next table.

“Can’t do it, can you?”

Bastian’s eyes narrowed on his friend. “The Meridian won’t realign—”

“For another five days. Yeah, I know, but a female with the kind of energy you need isn’t going to be a pushover. She won’t fall into bed with you…not like these ones.” Rikar tipped the mouth of his bottle toward the dance floor, pointing to the women. “You’re going to need every second you can get to seduce her.”

Fuck. Like he needed the reminder.

Bastian grabbed his friend Johnnie Walker by the neck, wishing it was Rikar’s instead. He needed some air, had to get out of the heat and the noise and the smell of the club before he exploded. “I’m going rooftop.”

“Suit yourself.”

He always did.

Without a backward glance, JW in hand, Bastian headed for the red glow of the exit sign to the right of the bar. His long leather trench fanned out behind him, an unnecessary addition to his already unusual size. The human males recognized him for the predator he was and shied away, giving him a wide berth. Just as well. He was in the mood for a fight and, given his proclivities, a little encouragement in the wrong direction would send his fists flying.

Halfway to his destination, a shimmer of sensation ghosted over the back of his neck. His stride slowed to a stop as he looked over his shoulder. Rikar was already on his feet, moving toward him, microbrew left wobbling on the tabletop.

“
Bastian.
” The voice whispered through his mind, through the mental link he shared with all the warriors who fought by his side—the cosmic equivalent of a cell phone for his kind.

He completed the link, his gaze trained on Rikar’s.
“Sloan, what’s up?”

“
Shit loads
.” Even through mind-speak, he heard the fast click of computer keys. Sloan, their resident cyber cop, was never far from the system. Some nights, Bastian suspected he slept in front of the bank of monitors. “
Haul your ass outta there. The female’s out of pocket and in trouble
.”

“
Shit. Lay it out
.”

“
A nine-one-one call. The ambulance is rolling…headed for Route Eighteen.
”

“
ETA?
” He set the whiskey on a table as he passed.

“
Thirty minutes
.”

“
We’re on it
.”

Bastian was out the back door and up the first flight of stairs before the last word left his mouth. He took the treads three at a time, cold resolve settling like ice in his veins. The steel door blew off its hinges an instant before he strode over the threshold and onto the rooftop.

Gravel crunching beneath his metal-tipped boots, he took a deep breath. Crisp autumn air and the scent of newly turned leaves registered an instant before he leapt skyward. Shifting without thought, he transformed; skin turning to blue-black scales, hands and feet to claws, wings extended in full flight. Cloaked by magic, hidden from human eyes, he banked east, soaring over skyscrapers and Seattle suburbs until civilization turned to forest.

Slashing through wispy clouds and cool mountain air, he settled into a fast glide over Route 18. The blacktop rolled between hills and around S-curves, winding its way through ancient white pines and Western red cedar. Red lights flashed in the distance. Twin beamed headlights ate through the gloom, reaching forward only to be swallowed up from behind as the ambulance sped ahead.

A firm fix on their target, he mind-spoke to Rikar. “
Get in front. Slow them to a stop.
”

Rikar came out of the cloud cover on a slow roll, rising like a wreath of mist in the darkness. Almost pure white, his friend was a rarity among their kind; a frost dragon that not only preferred the brutal cold of his arctic home, but could also command the weather at will. “
I’ll ice ’em up. You got the driver
?”

“
Yeah. Go, ice cube.
”

“
Fuck off, fire breath
.”

With a grin, Bastian banked left, sailing in over the treetops. The long glide put him even with the ambulance’s back end as Rikar dipped low. Directly above the speeding vehicle now, emergency lights clashed with white scales, bathing his first in command in bursts of red flash. Rikar inhaled hard and exhaled smooth. Twin tendrils rose from his nostrils as frost rolled out in front of him and hit the blacktop, leaving a wide track of thick ice on the asphalt. The humans inside the vehicle cursed as they lost visibility. The ambulance swerved and the driver over-corrected into a fifty-mile-an-hour, three-hundred-and-sixty-degree spin.

Another full revolution. More yelling from inside the ambulance cockpit.

Bastian landed on the shoulder of the road. Claws spread, gravel flying, he slid sideways into the middle of the highway. His razor-sharp talons bit into the tarmac. Friction burned the pads of his paws as he raised his horned head and waited for the out-of-control ambulance to reach him. The hood swung around, headlights painting the trees in amber-white glow. He saw horror flash across the EMTs’ faces—put there by the wild spin or the sight him, he didn’t know. A second before the grill smashed into him, he grabbed the front end and stopped it mid-slide.

Metal groaned and the back tires bounced, giving the human males another jolt.

“Show-off,” Rikar said, tone filled with disgust as he touched down on the passenger side.

He raised a brow. “Jealous?”

“Christ.” With an exaggerated eye roll, his friend shifted to human form.

Bastian tucked his wings and, unable to resist, snarled at the idiots gawking at his dragon form in open-mouthed astonishment. Both had probably wet their pants and still, they sat there, glued to the seats. He snorted. So much for the critically acclaimed intelligence of human males.

Self-preservation finally kicked in, and the men screamed, scrambling to unclip their seatbelts. Following Rikar’s example, Bastian shifted, conjuring his clothes as he stepped around the curved front of the bumper. As his shitkickers settled on his feet, he drew even with the driver’s side window. Brown eyes the size of shot glasses met his own an instant before he yanked the door open. Burying his hand in the EMT’s shirtfront, Bastian dragged him out and held him high, boots dangling a good foot off the ground. Incoherent with fear, the male babbled, chin trembling, knees knocking, arms hanging limp at his sides.

Bastian took pity and, delving deep into the man’s mind, seized control, calming him while he wiped his memory clean. As the paramedic quieted, Bastian studied his clothes, picking out the details he needed to replicate when they reached the house and the female who called it home. Arriving in leather wasn’t a good idea. He wanted her moving and cooperative, not terrified.

Finishing his inspection, Bastian set the man down and told him to start walking. A gas station sat no more than a mile away. The EMTs would make it that far, though they would have no recollection of how they’d lost their ride. With one last look at the two men ambling down the shoulder of the road, he turned to the ambulance. Rikar was already sitting inside, playing with the knobs on the radio.

The sound of static filled the air, and his friend threw him a worried look. The crackle told him all he needed to know. The equipment was reacting to the electrical charge in the air. More Dragonkind were headed their way, none of them friendlies.

Hopping into the cab, Bastian slammed the door behind him, wishing he didn’t need the ambulance. Flying would be better—faster—than driving. But carrying a pregnant female in his talons wasn’t a good idea. He might squeeze too hard, hurt her or the baby.

With a curse, he threw the vehicle into gear and stomped on the gas pedal. The engine roared and the back tires spun, burning through ice to grip asphalt, rocketing them down the deserted highway.

He must reach the female first. Before the enemy tore her apart and stole the precious life she carried.