You Slay Me (25 page)

"Really? Why do they hate water?"

"It's opposite them—water and air, earth and fire. One cancels the other. The dragon septs each claim an element," Jim called back to me.

"Fascinating. I can't believe I'm doing this," I grumbled as I turned a corner, glancing behind me as I did so. At the far end of the tunnel one of Fiat's men appeared, spotted me, and yelled something over his shoulders.

"What the heck?" I stopped as I turned around. The antechamber we were in held huge black wooden balls ... and I do mean huge. One of them was seated up against the opening of a tunnel, the ball almost completely filling it. Other balls of lessening sizes were chained to the walls, the smallest probably about four feet high, the biggest about sixteen.

"Come on, we don't have time to admire the sewer's balls," Jim snapped as it took off down another round passage.

"What are they?" I yelled, one hand clutching at the stitch in my side.

As I passed a narrow opening in the side of the tunnel, something jerked me sideways. "They clean the sewer of debris. If you want me to play tour guide, I can," Jim said as it spat out the hem of my dress it had used to pull me after it. "Or we can escape the blue dragons. Choice is yours."

"Escape," I said. We ran. And ran. And ran. It felt like we ran down miles and miles of sewer, passed open waterfalls of sewer water pouring into another channel, past numerous huge pieces of machinery used to keep the sewers clear, down narrow stone paths littered with dead leaves and empty plastic bottles that had been caught in the sewers screens.

We came to another juncture. Jim leaped over a metal railing intended to keep people out of a tunnel. I lurched (less gracefully) after the demon, almost falling with surprise as I landed on a narrow stone ledge. Unlike the other tunnels open to the public, this one had no grating over the water mat rushed through it at a tremendous rate. Behind me, a man yelled.

"Faster!" Jim cried as it raced across a wooden plank about four inches wide that had been set across the open channel.

"You're kidding me! I'm not crossing that!" I came to a screeching halt at the flimsy bridge, glancing behind me. Renaldo might be bulky, but I'll give it to him—he had a sprinter's speed.

"Merde!"
I yelled as I shuffled across it, my lower lip caught between my teeth in an effort to keep from screaming. Renaldo was almost upon me when I stepped off onto the other ledge. Jim was clawing at the plank even as I spun around to help it throw the bridge into the water. Renaldo screamed what sounded like an Italian obscenity as he lunged toward the plank.

He missed it by inches. I stood, panting, my back against the curved wall of the tunnel, staring across nine feet of open, torrential water to where Renaldo stood pacing back and forth, glaring at me. He wasn't even breathing hard, damn him!

"What's wrong, afraid you'll get wet?" I taunted him, feeling a little payback was in order.

Renaldo growled something and looked for all the world like he was going to try to vault over the open water, but each time he got near the edge, he'd back up again.

"Didn't your mother teach you anything?" Jim asked as he turned toward the far exit. "It's not smart to bait a dragon."

Renaldo kept pace with us as we ran down the tunnel, snarling and swearing threats at us when we dashed off into a side tunnel that he couldn't reach.

We ran down more tunnels, some open, some with grates, until I lost any and all sense of direction.

Not to mention ray breath.

"Jim, I have to stop," I gasped as we entered yet another junction that held machinery. Some sort of engine with big red gears sat atop what looked like a small railway handcar, behind which a sharp-sided black tender was attached. Both had metal wheels shaped to move along metal tracks.

"Can't stop unless you want them to get us," Jim said as it crawled underneath the coupling of the two cars. I sat on the coupling mechanism, swinging my exhausted legs over it, pausing for a moment to suck air into my lungs. "I don't care. They can have me. I just want to stop. My heart's going to burst."

"Just a little farther," Jim urged me as it scrambled over a railing marked with a red warning sign mat read:
danger! interdit au
PUBLFC. I didn't need to understand French to know what that meant.

Just as I opened my mouth, I heard two men calling to each other in the tunnel we had just come from. I slammed my mouth closed and hauled myself over the waist-high railing, stifling a scream of surprise as I fell about four feet. We were in a small well, evidently some sort of unused overflow valve if the red metal cap beneath our feet was anything to go by.

I didn't need to be warned to be quiet as we crouched down, making ourselves as flat as possible. Because of the machine cars standing in front of us, unless Fiat's men were right next to us peering down into the well, they wouldn't see us. I sat with my arms around Jim, my mouth pressed up against its heavy coat to muffle the sound of my gasping wheeze for air. A moment later the men entered the tunnel intersection, calling to Renaldo. I didn't risk standing up so I could peer out at them, but even though I didn't understand a word of what they were saying—the blue dragons seemed predominately Italian in origin—the angry tones of their voices left me in no doubt they were not happy campers. After a consultation lasting about a minute, they left, each taking a different tunnel out of the area.

"Think they'll come back?" I whispered into Jim's furry ear.

"Don't do that, it tickles," Jim complained, butting its head against me to rub its ear. I rubbed it, scratching behind the ears the way I knew it liked.

"We have to leave," I said softly, aware from the echoes of other tourists talking and calling to one another that sound in the nonwater tunnels traveled very well.

"No! I figured we'd stay here until they started calling you the' Phantom of the Sewers."

I socked Jim on the shoulder and hoisted myself out of the well with an audible grunt. "I'm too old for this. I want to go home. Let Drake have the Eye. Screw the world. I just want a hot bath and a nice comfy bed."

"Selfish, selfish, selfish," Jim said, jumping nimbly out of the well. "This way."

I turned around. "Oh, now you're an expert on the sewers? What makes you think you know the way out?"

Jim walked over to a corner and nodded toward a small blue sign that read
avenue bosquet.
A painted red arrow pointing up was nestled up against a line of metal grips set into the wall. "Oh. I suppose that leads to an exit?"

"That's the idea."

A couple of tourists wandered in as I was in the process of dragging Jim up the grips. It couldn't make it on its own, and after I summarily refused its request to carry it up, I ended up more or less giving it a piggyback ride as I dragged us up the vertical path. What the tourists thought, I can only imagine, but I sure hope the little girl with the camera sends me a copy of the picture she took just before I shoved the manhole cover aside and exhaustedly crawled onto the still sun-warmed pavement of Avenue Bosquet.

"Remind me," I said as I heaved my body out of the path of an oncoming car. I kicked the manhole cover back into place and collapsed on the ground between two parked cars, Jim sitting on the sidewalk watching me as I doubled over, gasping for air, completely mindless of the stares I was receiving from people walking by. "Remind me about this evening if I ever again get the bright idea to go visit a wyvern in his den."

"Do you think you're likely to be that stupid?" Jim asked, sotto voce.

I slumped back against the bumper of the car behind me, my eyes closed, too wiped out to move. "You never know, Jim. You just never know."

15

The unsettling realization that I had no idea how much of my thoughts Fiat had read before I erected mind barriers kept me on tenterhooks until the taxi I'd hailed dropped us off at Ophelia and Perdita's apartment. I wasn't sure if Fiat had been able to tell who was offering me shelter, but I hadn't thought he had—at least, I hoped he hadn't. And since no one was waiting for me outside the door or inside the apartment, I tucked the keys Ophelia had given me into my bag and slunk off to the tiled bathroom to wash off the stench of the sewers.

It was shortly after nine when I emerged from the bathroom in a plume of jasmine-scented steam, sore and scraped from crawling in the well, not to mention dragging a huge demon-in-a-Newfoundland-suit up the side of a wall. But at least I was clean.

I left Ophelia and Perdita a note explaining that I was too tired to make an appearance at G & T that night, and after taking Jim for his evening walkies in a nearby park, crawled into bed and slipped almost immediately into a deep, dreamless sleep.

At least it started out dreamless.

"I am
so
not doing this," I said as I walked into a pool of light. I had no idea where I was other than there was the faintest sense of a tall, arched ceiling above me and a long narrow space that resembled the inside of a Gothic cathedral, but I knew Drake was somewhere in the shadows. I spun around, suddenly aware that I wasn't in the cream-and-lace nightie he had dreamed me into for the last two dreams. This time I was wearing a very tight red-and-black flamenco dress, complete with ruffled sleeves, low-cut bodice exposing a fair portion of my bosom and all of my back, and a slinky, hip-hugging skirt that clung to my thighs before flaring out to open into black and red ruffles. It was a very sexy dress, much more daring and seductive than anything I'd ever worn.

The tango music seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere as Drake sauntered out into the circle of light, clad almost completely in black. The light source above us shown down on his black satin shirt, turning it to liquid ebony as it rippled across his chest and arms. He stopped and held out his hand for me. Without thinking, I did a twirl toward him, clasping his hand and continuing to turn until I was flush against him, our hands locked together in the small of my back, the bloodred sash at his waist matching my dress exactly.

"I don't tango," I said, breathless as I always was in his presence.

"Now you do." His voice, deep and rich and filled with all sorts of erotic unspoken promises, stroked down my spine with a touch that left me shivering . .. but whether it was with fear or arousal, I was unwilling to admit.

I twirled away, Drake following me, our bodies coming together in a sensual dance that had no choreography other than the need to be near each another. The tango music demanded, we danced; his body asked, mine answered, my legs moving in and out and around his, my foot sliding slowly up his calf in a caress that almost did me in. We moved together, sweeping a sultry, sensual line down the pool of light, my skirt caressing his legs as we danced without words, without even touching, just a breath apart and yet bound tighter by our mutual passion than mere contact alone could promise. I swung around him to the left, he spun to the right, our bodies meeting again, moving off in another direction as the pulse of the music drove us harder. My eyes never left his guttering green gaze as his hands slid around my waist, holding me suspended in a moment so filled with tangled emotions that I couldn't speak; then it passed and we swayed into another sweeping pass through the pool of light, our hearts beating an identical rhythm.

"Why did you leave me?" Drake asked as he bent me backwards over his arm, his face shadowed. "Why did you run from me?"

I slid down his thigh, swung my leg through his, and did an amazing little turn that rubbed most of my back against his. He caught my arm, spinning me until my vision blurred, slowing me to stop with my back pressed against his chest, his fingers digging into my hips as he directed us in another pass through the light. "You know the answer to that, Drake. I don't have to defend my actions to you."

His breath was hot on my neck. Oddly enough, during the whole of our dance, I hadn't felt even a wisp of his fire, but suddenly it consumed me, raging through me until I realized that what I felt wasn't his desire, but his anger. I spun to face him, rubbing my breasts against his satin chest as we danced a line of intricate footwork that would have, had it been real, probably left me with at least one broken ankle.

"I don't understand you. I've tried, but it's impossible. I don't know what you want from me."

He spun me outward. I twirled back to him, wrapping his arm around my waist as I turned. "Would the safety of the mortal world be too much to ask?"

His fire raged through me, setting my soul ablaze. I embraced it, opening my arms to let the fire flow back to him.

"I don't know what you're talking about, Aisling, but whatever game you're playing is a dangerous one. Who is protecting you?"

I smiled as I did a provocative step around his body, the fingers of one hand trailing just above the slash of red at his waist as I circled him. "I don't have to tell you anything. We may have some strange metaphysical tie, and we might have had indulged ourselves in the last dream, but that doesn't mean we are meant to be together, nor do I have to listen to anything you say."

"You will answer my question," Drake growled, the deep sound thrumming in my blood for a moment before merging with the fire within me, growing hotter until it burned with a white flame.

I laughed and arched my back when his body got all bossy with mine in time to the music. "This may be your dream, but it doesn't mean I will do anything I don't want to do."

"We have mated. You want me even now."

"That doesn't mean we're going to do anything."

Outrage stiffened him against me. "Are you refusing me?"

I did a slow shimmy that left us both breathless. "Not refusing outright, just delaying. In fact, I need to be going back to sleep. I have a big day ahead of me tomorrow, one that involves making sure that you pay for the crimes you've committed, so you might want to get some rest, too. I have a feeling you're going to need it."

"Is that a threat?" His eyes were filled with so much emotion, they almost glowed green.