Fury of Fire (5 page)

Not wasting a second, Bastian spun and brought his spiked tail down, thumping the rogue’s skull. A sickening crack went off like a bomb, shredding the air. Yeah, Dumb-ass was down for the count—a healthy helping of skull fracture with a side order of brain hemorrhaging.

All right. Two down, three to go, though, Shit-for-brains was on the move again, tossing enormous pine trees like pick-up sticks as he struggled to get up.

Rikar came in like a viper, hot on the tail of another Razorback. Red scales flashing in the low light, the enemy dragon was in full panic mode. Bastian didn’t blame him. He wouldn’t want Rikar on his ass, either.

Breathing out, his friend iced up the younger dragon’s wings, sending him into free fall. The rogue collided with the ground like a derailing freight train, ripping up the front lawn as he left a huge trench behind him. Bastian jumped back to avoid getting hit as he skidded by, jostling the beat-up Buick with his hind leg.

Movement flashed in his periphery. Blond hair and green scrubs came into focus seconds later. Bastian growled and shifted, shielding Myst as she made a mad dash toward the hatchback sitting undamaged beside an old tractor.

The cloaking spell gave way, dispersing like vapor into thin air.

Fantastic. Just what he needed: a renegade female who couldn’t follow orders.

Bastian killed the urge to pick her up and paddle her behind. Teaching her a lesson would have to wait. He didn’t have time now. Shit-for-brains was back on all four paws, his gaze narrowed and locked on Myst.

Myst took off as though she’d been shot from a cannon: the newborn a warm weight in her arms, the Lord’s Prayer on her lips. The baby hampered her, messing with her speed, but she refused to leave him behind. No matter what happened, she would protect the precious bundle she carried.

At all costs.

Caroline had died so he could live. And dragons or no dragons, the vow she’d made to her dying patient stood for something. Meant more to her than self-preservation.

That left one choice. Run and pray.

Air rasping in her chest, the words fell in a messy tumble. “Our Lord who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name…”

She mouthed the rest, knowing God would understand.

Head low, knees pumping, arms sheltering her angel, she kept her eyes on the prize. Her keys were in the center console of her car. All she needed to do was reach them. She visualized her escape…imagined sliding the key into the ignition and her smooth getaway. Time slowed down, the scene coming to her in distorted waves, like sound through water: the black smoke, the chill tinged with the scent of burning rubber, the slide of grass underneath her shoes.

Fifteen more feet. Now ten.
Please God, let me make it. Help me keep him safe.

“Fuck.” The growl came from behind her, a little off to one side.

Oh, no. No. No. No. Bastian had spotted her and locked on like a laser beam.

A sob caught in the back of her throat. She pushed herself harder, held the baby with one arm and pumped the other to help her run faster. Air sawed in and out of her chest. The relentless burn hurt like hell but she didn’t stop. No way would she make it easy for him. If he thought that she would turtle, roll up and die, then he was in for a nasty surprise.

He’d betrayed her. Had told her to trust him, but…

He wasn’t trustworthy. Bastian was one of
them
. A monster with claws and fangs, the stuff of nightmares.

Myst skidded around the end of her car. Both feet churning up gravel, she grabbed the back bumper and pulled, helping herself change direction as she zeroed in on the driver’s side door. Just another few feet and—

An ominous hiss snaked through the air, turning into an unnatural roar. Her hand clamped on the door handle. She looked up into yellow eyes with narrowed pupils. Brown with a single jagged horn in the center of its forehead, the dragon snarled at her and drew a lungful of air past razor-sharp teeth. Struck stupid, Myst froze and watched as a glowing orange ball gathered at the back of his throat.

Oh, God. Fire.

“Myst, run!” Bastian’s voice came through loud and clear, but Myst couldn’t move. She was locked into yellow eyes, her legs the consistency of Jell-O. “Shit! Rikar!”

A cold wind blew in. The autumn air went murky, a cloud of frost and mist on the verge of snow. The icy fog billowed over the hood of her car, settling around her like an Arctic blanket, but it was too late. She could already feel the heat and hear the hungry roar of the inferno as the fireball gathered speed. It was going to eat her alive, leave nothing but ash in its wake, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.

Despite her promise, she turtled, curling herself around the newborn. The broken “Sorry” she whispered to him wasn’t enough, but somehow needed to be. She’d tried so hard to save him, and now they were both going to die.

Painfully. Horribly. Without a lick of—

A wall of ice exploded around her, rising in a U-shaped barrier in front of her car. Thick and unbelievably tall, the barricade shuddered as the fireball hit with a boom, throwing her backward. Steam blew sky-high, raining ice chips in a spectacular fountain of cold water. The hiss and crackle clawed at the ice, digging to reach her.

Distorted by melting glacier, she watched Bastian take off. A streak of midnight blue, he tackled the fire-breathing dragon. Two shadows rolled end over end, almost indistinguishable from one another in the moonlight. Dark blue landed on top, claws embedded in brown scales.

His green eyes flashed, reaching her through the darkness. “Myst, get out of here!”

She followed the command without question: no hesitation, no “oh, my God” ringing inside her head. She was blank, rung out, too scared to do anything but listen.

Frost scraped the skin off her palm as she yanked the car door open. Not feeling the pain, she grabbed her keys, jammed the correct one home, and threw her car into gear. Without looking back—without hearing the roars and rip of claws—she put the gas pedal to the floor and, pulling a Mario Andretti, sped down the driveway, the back end of her car leading the way.

The pine trees at the edge of the forest were on fire, throwing billows of smoke into the night sky. Bastian raised his head and stepped off Shit-for-brains’s chest. Torn wide open, the enemy’s throat was a twisted tangle of flesh, carotid artery exposed and gushing red-black blood. The rogue wouldn’t live much longer. Like all of Dragonkind, he would check out in a pile of ash the second his heart stopped beating.

It was now or never.

Ignoring the injury, Bastian angled his horned head, getting up close and personal to make eye contact. “Where is Ivar hiding?”

Leader of the Razorbacks, Ivar was as ruthless as he was cunning. A treacherous opponent. One Bastian wanted to kill so badly the taste sat like rotten meat on the back of his tongue. Nothing washed the brutal tang away: not food nor drink nor sex. The thirst to spill Ivar’s blood tainted everything he did.

Slippery as an eel, Ivar evaded death like a suicidal maniac avoided life. After a century of fighting, Bastian still hadn’t managed to destroy him, to cut the head off the rogue organization. It didn’t help that Ivar orchestrated from the sidelines. This time, though, was different. The asshole was doing more than playing armchair quarterback. He’d deliberately gone underground. Not a good sign. The enemy leader was up to something…with potentially catastrophic consequences.

“Fuck…you…Bastard,” the Razorback gasped, pain in his slitted yellow gaze.

“Clever.” Bastian wanted to roll his eyes at the play on his name. He pressed down on the dying Razorback’s broken leg instead, using pain as incentive to make him talk. “Where is he?”

“Pretty…female, you got…there.” Coughing up more blood, he wheezed, “Do you…think…Ivar will enjoy…fucking her?”

“Wrong answer,” Bastian said, the threat to Myst making his voice almost melodic. Anyone who knew him well knew the soft tone was a dangerous one. When he got angry, he got quiet. And when he got quiet, things died.

With a snarl, he took hold of the Razorback’s skull and twisted. Bones snapped. Between one heartbeat and the next, Shit-for-brains ashed, burnt scales and dragon blood turning to dust.

“Effective, if less than smart,” Rikar murmured, landing behind him. His friend stumbled a little on impact, hopping to keep his weight off his front leg. “He might have told us something.”

“Unlikely.” Bastian eyed the gash on his friend’s right forepaw. The wound ran in a diagonal, up his leg, oozing blood on white scales. “You all right?”

“Peachy.”

“Body count?”

Rikar’s gaze flickered before straying to the wall of ice still standing in the front yard. Bastian knew what he was thinking. If not for the barrier, Myst would be among the dead.

A tight knot tied itself in the center of Bastian’s chest. “Rikar, man, thank—”

“Forget it,” his friend said, shutting down his appreciation. The brush-off didn’t bother Bastian. He knew his first in command well. Rikar wasn’t comfortable with recognition…of any kind.

“Let’s have it, then.”

His gaze still on the fire-blackened hole in his wall, Rikar’s magic rose as he drew the glacial cold back into himself. Like steam in dry air, the ice wall dissolved, leaving nothing but a U-shaped impression in the dirt. “Four dead. One flew the coop.”

Shit. He’d hoped to avoid that. The retreating Razorback would run straight to Ivar and give his report. The first thing on that list would be Myst. Bastian clenched his teeth, grinding upper fangs against lower. He’d just put a huge bull’s eye on her back. Not that it was the end of the world. She would, after all, be coming with him to Black Diamond. His lair was now her home.

“You need my help going after her?”

Bastian shook his head. He would track her alone. She’d feed him from the Meridian. Like DNA, the unique energy imprint she left in her wake was all her own, and now he would be able to find her anywhere. “Go home. Get stitched up.”

With a murmur, Rikar unfolded his wings and leapt skyward. Bastian followed, pinpoint stars above his head as he watched his friend bank north toward their lair. He went east, drawn to Myst like a thirsty man to water. He needed to get her back. She was his responsibility…his female now. The sooner he retrieved her, the safer she would be.

Driving a car while holding a screaming baby was harder than juggling live hand grenades. Somehow, Myst managed. But her arms ached, one from cradling the newborn, the other from her white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel. The hatchback’s headlights ate at the night-slick blacktop, but didn’t reach far enough into the gloom. Still, she drove on, gas pedal to the floor, kamikaze speed breaking every law in the book.

She was one giant moving violation. And holy crap. Where were the police when she needed them? Certainly not anywhere near Route 18. The useless jack-offs.

Swallowing another sob, Myst forced herself to breathe. Unconscious from lack of oxygen was the last place she needed to end up. A close second? Wrapped around a hundred-year-old white pine. There were, of course, no guarantees, but she was pretty sure the tree would win in a game of Chicken.

And speaking of chicken, she was so cooked.

Bastian wouldn’t let her go…not now. Not after seeing what she’d seen. Myst knew it with a certainty that terrified her.

She was going to have to run and hide. Create her own kind of witness protection program and disappear. Tania was going to freak out.

Not that she would tell her best friend. No way. Not a chance. The less Tania knew, the safer her friend would be. But, man. She didn’t want to just disappear without an explanation. Knowing Tania, she would jump to all kinds of insane assumptions—like the truth wasn’t crazy enough—and blame Caroline’s jerk boyfriend for murdering and burying her under that pitiful shed in the backyard.

Myst could just see her: hard hat on, backhoes up and running, bulldozers razing the area while Tania directed the search for her body.

And God…there was something seriously wrong with her. She found the mental snapshot almost funny. In a sick, polluted kind of way.

“Okay, darling. It’s all right. We’re okay.” Eyes glued to the road, she rocked the baby with a gentle but steady rhythm. “Please stop crying, angel. Please stop. It’s going to be okay.”

She kept her voice low, soothing, praying he responded to her tone. The soft cadence was the exact opposite of what she was feeling. If forced to slap a name on it, she would call it chaos squared. The height of panic coupled with full-on desperation. And the screaming wasn’t helping.

“Please, angel…I need you to settle down. Please, baby.” The begging came with tears. Myst sang through them, each note of the lullaby strained, the words hiccupping on each breath. Small face red with anger, he paused. She shifted him a little, patted his bottom, started the chorus of “Rock-a-bye Baby” over again. The new motion moved his wail from ear piercing to pitiful whimper. “There’s my good boy. You’re all right. We’re fine.”

He seemed to accept that—thank God. She couldn’t have handled much more of his crying without pulling over. And on the side of the road wasn’t the place she wanted to be. Not right now. Not when she was so close to Sal’s. Five more minutes and she’d be around the bend and on the straightaway.

The restaurant sat at the end of that stretch. Much like mushrooms in the middle of a forest, nothing could kill it. Although Sal was long dead, the place was third-generation. A greasy spoon with deep roots; a hanger-on that clung to the little patch of dirt beside the narrow, two-lane highway. Cops liked it there, stopping for coffee and artery-clogging takeout while on patrol. Though what needed patrolling out here, Myst didn’t know. At least, she hadn’t known. Until tonight.