Mad Lizard Mambo (34 page)

She… preened against me. Rubbed the side of her jaw on my cheek and down my neck, her scales pricking at my skin, and I felt a bit of drool or something smear over my throat.

“Kai, don’t move,” Ryder advised.

“Like I haven’t noticed there’s a huge damned dragon giving me a hickey?” The egg pulsed against my chest, and I pushed it at the lizard. “Just take it. And please, by Buddha’s belly, don’t…
eat
… me.”

It felt odd begging a dragon for my life. I’d killed a few in my time. If anyone deserved to be slurped up like a slushie on a hot day, it was me. Karma had parked its fat ass on my shoulder and was laughing so hard, tears were coming out of its skin, but there I was, hoping the lizard would grab the egg and go.

Something hard pierced my skin, and I winced, gritting my teeth, and took what I thought was going to be my last breath, but after the first prick, the dragon withdrew, pulling back to tower over me. My neck was bleeding, a trickle at least, but I didn’t care. So long as it wasn’t a gush and my artery wasn’t spurting out my life, I didn’t care. Carefully placing the egg on the ground, I backed up, blindly feeling my way around the rocks until I was a good ten feet away and could risk letting go of the dank, reptilian scent in my lungs.

She was gone in a powerful rush of air and mass. Plucking the egg between her front claws, the black pearl slapped her wings out and thrust herself up toward the rocky ceiling. The coiled strength in her body carried her up, impossibly high, and it seemed like forever before she pumped her wings again. Then the black took her in and she slipped away into the far reaches of the mountain’s belly.

Ryder caught me before I landed on my face, and I sagged into him, exhausted and worn down past my marrow. Malone hovered at the edges of the room, Cari having shaken off his help then approached me with a limping walk.

“Crap, you’re too damaged to return for a full refund,” I teased. “Guess I’m going to have to keep you.”

“Yeah, screw you, Gracen,” she shot back, resting on a part of the fallen counter. “You’ve got something on your neck. Looks like you were attacked by a very hungry rabbit or maybe a sidhe lord without any common sense.”

“Don’t bring me into this,” Ryder replied with a chuckle.

He put his fingers under my chin, probably intending to push my head up so he could see my wound, but I shoved at his wrist.

“We’re back to this, then? You fighting me?”

“When have I stopped?”

He gently shoved at me again, and this time I let him look. His curious frown and sidhe murmur was troubling, especially since I couldn’t see what was going on.

“What is it? It’s stopped bleeding.”

“You’ve got a scale. Under your skin. Right under your jaw,” he said, poking at the spot.

I felt nothing but his finger stabbing into my neck. Hissing, I jerked away, but Ryder stroked my skin.

“You can’t feel the difference. It’s soft. And you’ve already healed over the spot.”

“Great, that’s just what I need,” I grumbled, rubbing at my neck. “She’s marked me.”

“Only fair,” Ryder countered. “You wear ink for your kills. You should carry her mark in exchange for your life. We’ll have a healer take it—”

“No thanks.” I shook my head. “I’m done with healers and flesh-shapers. If I want it out, I’m using a hot knife and a bottle of whiskey. Now how about if we get what we came for and get the hell out of here? I want to put some distance between me and this damned mountain before that dragon changes her mind about having second dinners.”

“YOU SURE
you want to do this?” I eyed the pile of rubble we’d dragged back with us to San Diego. From five stories up, the broken-up slab seemed like an insignificant and poorly designed garden decoration tossed into a corner of the elegant courtyard below. “There’s no going back with it. Do this, it’s lost, because I’m not going to go knocking on Tanic’s door to ask to borrow a cup of blood magic.”

Ryder’s conflicting emotions played out over his face with such intensity, I felt I was watching him go through an alleyway of half-priced hookers with his pockets holding only a few specks of lint. He crossed his arms over his chest, assuming what I’d come to think of as his bossy sidhe lord stance, and stared out at the city below.

We’d limped back to San Diego in a bruised, battered, and bloodied mess. Ryder’d talked me out of handcuffing Malone to a rail for the entire trip, but it’d been close. He spent about five minutes begging for absolution before going silent when I shoved a Glock’s muzzle up his nostril and threatened to pull the trigger. His aunt Sarah was waiting for us when we pulled up in front of the main entrance to Balboa Park, a staunch maternal presence I’d looked up to since before I got my own Stalker license.

I disliked what Malone did to us, but I
hated
that Sarah hadn’t been able to look me in the eye.

“You could have shot him. The family was never in danger.
Ever
. Hell, Bennett took advantage of Robbie because he’s gullible and as dumb as a piece of straw, but that doesn’t excuse things,” she’d said in a crumbled, breaking voice.

My anger flared, more because Malone brought his aunt to
this
—a scraping, open raw fear in her words and eyes when she finally looked me in the face. “By all rights, no one would have blinked twice if you’d shot him dead right then and there, Gracen. And no one would have called it murder.”

“Yeah, I do a lot of things—not all of them good—but murdering children isn’t one of them,” I replied. “Next time he crosses me—”

“He crosses you again….” Sarah’s rage flared, and I smiled at the fire in her eyes. “Robbie so much as looks at you wrong and I’ll shoot the little bastard myself. You have my word on that, Kai.
My word
.”

With a kiss on her cheek and a murmur reassuring her I held her in the highest regard, I’d done everything I could. The rest of it would be up to Malone, but Sarah understood, giving me a curt nod and a bone-breaking squeeze before she dragged her stupid but alive nephew out of my sight.

I should have shot him. Crickets Malone.

It was pretty standing at the top of a growing sidhe tower, its ivory base cradled by a lush forest and knitted stone bridges, and watching the city light glisten around us. Sitting in the middle of reclaimed sidhe territory, the Southern Rise Court rose up on the edge of the upper level’s downtown, a young, living city reaching for the stars amid glistening steel skyscrapers.

Growing buildings from the ground was a complicated thing, or so Ryder’d informed me. The elements had to agree on shape and function before the earth responded to the architect’s spell, and sometimes the results were… odd, to say the least. The spire stretching up near the edge of the Court’s outer ring didn’t match the others, not quite. It was a creamy splay of delicate stone and wood, but there were odd differences, silvers and dark metals worked into the staircases and window frames, not to mention the curiously random fossilized ancient creatures dotting the walls. The tiny redheaded builder in charge of the High Lord’s dwelling confessed to being perplexed about the structure’s eccentricities until Ryder assured her the balcony-scalloped spread was definitely what the sidhe land intended to grow.

Because, he’d told her, the Court was getting itself ready for me.

And as much as I didn’t want to agree with him, the damned place made my blood sing nearly as much as he did as soon as I’d seen it. The structure wasn’t complete, not by any means, and there was still my obstinate reluctance to join anything, much less a sidhe Court, but the land apparently gave as many shits as I did and was growing me a place to live whether I wanted it or not.

Luckily for all involved, it was taking its sweet time doing it, and at the rate it was going, it would be forever and a day before it was finished enough for anyone—including me—to call it home.

Something else that pissed off the bristly, owl-eyed architect, because she wanted things done right and right now. I don’t know what Ryder said to her to move her along, but she’d skulked off to study the stone we’d brought with us, challenged with the puzzle of how to melt the counter and its runes back into the ground.

I turned around to lean my back against the mostly stable balcony rim. It was an odd thing, a half-moon jutting out from a long room facing the river. The balcony curved sharply up, lipping into a railing of sorts. The three-foot-tall lip was separating in places, leaving its thickened top ridge intact but creating an arabesque cutout through the stone. Slivers of rust-veined metal were beginning to push out of the stone, forming thin flashing along the holes’ edges. I’d worried the Court was pulling its resources from the under streets, weakening the supports, but the architect reassured me it wasn’t. The tower—the living stone—was reaching past the San Diego I knew and tapping into the ruins buried deep under the Park.

But as pretty as it was to stare at the evening sky through San Diego’s high-rises, Ryder’s shuffling was driving me insane. Poking his ribs, I finally said, “Talk to me, asshole. You’re just going to let your angry dwarf melt the stone back into the ground? We took some hard damage to get that stupid piece of rock, and now it’s going to be a what? A fountain? What was the point?”

“I didn’t know… this is hard for me to explain, Kai. Have patience with me.” He looked away, setting his jaw. We stood shoulder to shoulder, although he had a bit of height on me. It wasn’t enough to intimidate, not when I knew he didn’t have it in him to gut a fish unless the fish punched him in the face first.

I gave him a second then poked him again, and Ryder gave a sniffing huff liberally laced with sidhe lord arrogance. Nudging him again to remind him I cared very little about his supercilious manners, I said, “Try using your words. Use little ones if you have to. Very little ones, because I’m not that bright.”

“You’re very….” He pulled himself up and caught my smirk. “It is hard to get used to you teasing me.”

“I said I’d give you a try. And hell, I can be an asshole. If you’re willing to work with that, the least I can do is extend you the same courtesy.” I shrugged. “’Sides, technically you can still yank my chain. There’s always that to look forward to. All I’m doing is asking if you’re sure about this. Your healer said she could extract something from whatever that is on the stone. She just needs time to do it. Morrígan knows, if there’s one thing the elfin have, it’s time. Or are you scared you’re going to end up making more monsters like me?”

Ryder’s head jerked around so quickly I was afraid it was going to snap off and bounce down the side of the building. Eyes narrowed, the smugness left his expression, replaced by a simmering affront. “Do not ever call yourself a monster, Kai. Not in my presence. Not ever again.”

“If the horns fit, Your Lordship,” I shot back, widening my smirk. “Look, it’s not complicated. You guys need babies. Those pieces of stone can help you make babies. Just don’t use blood magic and dragon eggs to do it and you’ll be fine.”

“What was done to you… to make you….” He trailed off. “Please know, I would not trade your existence for the world—for any world—”

“But I am literally your worst fricking nightmare,” I finished his unspoken thought. Ryder was troubled, in his marrow troubled, and while I hated to be the one to scrape him open, sometimes that was the only way a festering wound would heal. “The sidhe aren’t willing to accept children carried by a human surrogate—”

“Shortsighted and close-minded idiots,” Ryder groused.

“You wanted to be grand poo-bah. That means you’ve got to compromise. Unless you want to end up like your grandmother, Sebac,” I reminded him, and he wrinkled his nose at me in disgust. “Well, that compromise means that spell. That stupid old, creaky mess of runes and ingredients my father fucked around with to make me. Why did he do it? No idea. Maybe just because he could, but
why
doesn’t matter. The fact is, a flesh-shaper—a healer—did it, and that means it’s a viable alternative for your Court.

“Just… don’t use a dragon egg. Because I’ve got to tell you….” I rubbed at the hematite triangle glistening on my skin below my jaw. “It kind of creeps me out to know Tanic made me out of a flying lizard and leftover elfin juice.”

“It actually explains a lot about your… temperament,” Ryder teased, then sobered. “Our people believe we were born from dragons, or at least share many of the same ancestors. Perhaps Tanic was verifying the truth of that myth.”

“Like I’ve said before, I’m not going to waltz on over to his house to ask him.” I knew what he was fighting. I could almost hear his gut arguing with the doctrine he’d been raised on. Hardest thing in the world was to go against the dogma fed to you since before you could walk, and Ryder was choking on some of the biggest conflicts he’d ever come across in his life. “What are you worried about? Other than maybe turning your entire race into… me.”

Ryder was quiet for so long, I was beginning to worry he’d fallen asleep, but eventually he sighed and leaned his elbows on the balcony railing. I settled in next to him, and he shifted over, pressing against my side. Somewhere in the forest, a panda roared, or at least I hoped it was a panda, because I was still a bit too tender and bruised to go fighting off another dragon.

Ryder’s warm whisper carried on the brisk night breeze. “If my Court was made up of elfin exactly like you, I would consider myself blessed.”

“I’m going to remind you of that when the twins are old enough to walk and bite,” I countered.

“You deflect and dodge because you, Kai Gracen, are afraid of your emotions, of being connected to people, but I know that prickly nature of yours hides a very large heart,” Ryder said. “You care for a human man most would sooner turn their backs on, but you did everything within your power to ensure Dempsey’s health. That gargoyle you call a cat is a menace, and even though you’ve given a piece of your heart to a woman, you stepped away so she could find happiness and you flirt with my cousin, hopefully to irritate me but I know you find her attractive where many don’t. You worry for everyone, even for me. As much as you complain about me and grumble about life, you care about this world and its people, Kai Gracen. So how can you respect me when I am about to bury everything you are because what made you is an assault on my beliefs?”