Damian reluctantly jogged down the hall the way Austin had gone, cursing every bad decision he’d ever made inside. His dragon didn’t even bother to emerge to yell at him about leaving her—he was apparently doing a good enough job of yelling at himself already.
He reached the van just as Zach and Austin were finished loading Julian on the floor. The Hunters were already bound and gagged and buckled into seats. The taller one’s eyes were wide with fear, whereas the shorter one appeared more calculating.
“I took the liberty of searching them after I disabled them and put their phones into faraday bags so Jamison can scan them later at his leisure,” Zach said, gesturing to the Hunters as he got into the driver’s seat. “Not much on them, except for a couple of vials of stunning venom and this thing they were found with.” Zach tossed a contraption over to Damian, who caught it. It had a compass-like dial and made a soft clicking sound as he pointed it at Zach.
“Is it dangerous?” he asked.
“Not sure. I assume it can’t be if they let these two yahoos walk around with it, but who can say?”
Damian watched the needle in the dial swing from pointing to Zach to very strongly pointing to him. He moved it from side to side, but apparently, after finding him, the apparatus thought that he was true north. “We’ll have Jamison look at it then,” he said, as he latched himself in across from the Hunters. Julian and Austin were on the floor, between their feet.
“Ready?” Zach asked.
“Let’s ride,” Austin said, rapping his knuckles on the metal floor beside Julian’s head.
Damian watched the Hunters with a steely expression as the van took off. He didn’t enjoy torturing people, but it was one of the many things he’d had a tutor for, back in the Realms—his father had considered it a necessary part of his education. Now, though, he had Mills, and usually, her magic could suss things out…but no one else needed to know that. He leaned forward and pulled the tall one’s gag free.
“How many deaths have you been responsible for?”
Sweat broke out on the tall one’s forehead. “What do you mean? Me? No…you…you’ve killed people too. How many people have you killed?”
Damian’s lips puckered into a cruel smile that promised darkness. “You first.”
The tall hunter swallowed dry. “Not…not that many.”
Damian leaned forward, putting his hands on his knees, ignoring the way Austin worked on Julian, pulling his hospital gown aside to feel for broken ribs. “What would you say if I told you I could scent their deaths on you? Every single shifter or distant relative of an Unearthly creature that you killed.”
The shorter one shifted, clearly trying to say, “He’s lying!” around his gag. Damian glanced his direction.
“Am I? Try me,” Damian said, undoing his gag as well.
“Fuck you,” the shorter one spat, the second he was able.
“So, they send you through the hospital, eh? And you seek out the weak and the vulnerable, and then you mark them to part out later? Is that how this scam works?” Damian asked, shaking the thing they’d brought with them lightly. “You disgust me,” Damian said, letting some of his dragon’s power growl through.
“Don’t change here, man!” Austin said, sounding panicked—before winking at him where neither Hunter could see.
“Does this thing tell you what you’re dealing with?” Damian gestured with the contraption. “Or just the relative strength of what’s in front of you?” he asked, holding it out so that they could see its dial point at him and hear the clicking sound it made. Now even the shorter one seemed worried.
And then they hit a bump, and something sloshed. “Whoa,” Austin said, this time entirely earnestly, as everyone in the back of the tour bus looked at Julian on the floor. His appearance was changing. He was beginning to swell up—pregnant almost—like he was going to give birth to a monster.
“Zach, get us to an open space! Floor it!” Damian shouted. Zach glanced back in the rearview and then did as he was told, lurching the SUV forward so quickly everyone inside shifted back.
“Upgrading ammo,” Austin announced, moving to sit beside Damian, and reach behind him into one of their gearboxes to pull out a different clip—and a silencer. “We don’t have to try to save his life anymore, do we?”
“I think we’re off the hook,” Damian grunted. Would another lurker emerge—or something worse?
The Hunters looked between themselves and then eyeballed what was happening to Julian on the ground, his stomach still stretching as his ribcage started to snap. “You’re not fooling me!” the shorter Hunter shouted. “You’re just trying to scare us!” he howled, as Julian’s limbs started flailing as though he were possessed.
“That is simply not good,” Austin announced, switching the munitions in his gun out and screwing the silencer on.
Zach took a turn at speed and then another, and then they bounced over a curb and crossed rough terrain before he pulled on the brake and sent them rocking the other direction. “We’re here,” he announced.
“Where?” Damian demanded.
“Morcom Park. It was the closest open place I could think of.”
It was a good choice, well away from residential areas, with wide-open spaces for daytime picnics separated by loose groves of trees. Most importantly, it should be empty this late at night. “It’ll do. Tell Max to detour over here, will you?”
“On it,” Zach said, running around to open up the back of the van. Austin caught himself up on a crossbar and jumped out acrobatically, not letting any part of himself touch whatever the fuck was happening to Julian on the van’s floor. As his feet touched the grass outside, he whirled and retrained his gun on him.
Damian looked over at the Hunters again. “In about thirty seconds, I’m going to leave you in here alone with whatever is happening to him. You’ve got until then to convince me to save you. Go.”
The taller one looked at the shorter one, then Julian, then started talking. “We were just following orders. There’s this guy, down at the ports, his name’s Argento,” he started babbling. “He’s the one in charge of everything! He takes the people we mark, and then he cuts them up and parts them out!”
“Shut the fuck up! You’re gonna get us killed!” the short one wailed, thumping into his chair mate bodily.
“By whom? I’ll take my chances!” the taller one howled. “You’ve gotta help me!” he pleaded across to Damian. “I’ll tell you anything!”
“You know what?” Damian said, ignoring the hoarse sounds now coming from Julian below—like someone else was stuck inside his throat, breathing. “I believe you. Austin,” he said, and Austin tossed him the keys.
“What the fuck do you think that you’re doing?” the shorter one protested, as Damian undid the taller one’s shackles. “He’s going to know it was you who talked! You’ll never be safe!”
Damian didn’t give the taller one a chance to respond—he just picked him up and chucked him outside at the wolves’ feet, where Zach restrained him again.
Between the final two of them in the van, Julian’s body lost its fight and deflated as it liquefied. The residue that remained, spilling out across the bottom of the van, had a silver sheen in the van’s interior light.
“Something’s going to come through there,” Damian said, picking up his feet as he watched the pool beneath them grow, shiny as any mirror. “I’ll survive it,” he went on. “But I doubt you will.”
The shorter man thrashed against his shackles like a worm on a hook, and Damian realized that was exactly what he’d be—when whatever was coming through Julian’s mirror-like remains emerged.
“You’ve made your decision, then. Good luck,” Damian said, and pushed himself down the seat to jump outside.
“What’s going to happen to the van?” Zach whispered the second he’d landed.
“Fuck if I know,” Damian whispered back. “Why do you think I had you call Max?”
Zach snorted. The four of them waited outside the open van, twenty feet back, unable to look away, as something blue and awful sprang forth from the puddle to land on the restrained Hunter’s lap, who started screaming the instant it landed. It looked up at him reverently—like a trusting child—and then its mouth stretched wide, and it bit the horrified Hunter’s face off.
“Now?” Austin asked Damian.
“Now,” Damian said, and Austin emptied his clip of warded ammo into the monster, the silencer muffling the shots. It flailed about, fighting through the first shots until Austin crossed something vital, and it sagged, losing form and splashing liquidly out in all directions, like a popped balloon, totally coating the inside of the tour bus with a disgusting slime.
“There goes Jamison’s sample,” Zach said. A foul stench rolled out to them as the van’s soupy contents poured out of it, sizzling when they hit the park grass.
“What the fuck was that?” the remaining Hunter whispered.
“That was something from the Realms.” Damian’s jaw clenched. Whatever it was that’d been birthed from the silver, all three times, had been meant for him. He was going to have to fight through Rax’s defenses, find the other dragon’s portal mirror, and open it up with brute magic to see who the fuck at his old palace had access to the other side.
“The…Realms?” the Hunter asked, sounding clueless.
“Yeah, I know. Made-up place, right?” said a voice from the nearest group of trees. Then the wind changed, and Damian scented her—same as Zach did—and they both turned.
“Stella?” Zach said. “What’re you doing here?”
She stalked around their small group, eyes only for the human man. “Turns out there’s only so many exits from your neighborhood, Wind Racer. I figured if I staked one out long enough, you’d take me someplace interesting, and here we are.”
“Well, now that you’re not holding a child,” Austin said, popping a fresh clip in his gun.
“Hold,” Damian told him. Austin snarled at him but obeyed.
“I only want what’s mine.” She pointed at the Hunter. “After that, I’ll be gone.”
The Hunter struggled against Zach. “You can’t just give me to her!”
“You know her?” Zach asked him, shaking him roughly.
“She’s the crazy one,” the Hunter said. “They warned us about her!” He cowered back against Zach as Stella smiled.
“Unbelievable. I’ve killed probably forty Hunters—maybe fifty!—and they don’t warn you about me?” Austin complained bitterly.
“You’re just not as sexy as I am,” Stella said with a wolfish grin, then looked to Damian with a hand out. “Give him to me.”
“Why?”
“Because I’ll tell you everything he tells me. Only I’ll enjoy getting it out of him more.”
“She doesn’t have access to Forgetting Fire,” Zach whispered.
Damian’s eyes traced over her; it was easy to read her intent. “I’m pretty sure she wants him to remember.” He took the man from Zach and pushed him over at her. “Done.”
“Done?” Austin protested.
“Yeah. We’ve got a mess to clean up, and bigger fish to fry.”
Austin cursed a blue streak, but he holstered his gun.
“And you’ll make sure to tell us everything?” Zach asked her as she grabbed the Hunter’s bindings.
“I promise to take notes, even,” Stella said, crossing her heart with her free hand and a gleeful expression on her face.
“And you’ll be thorough?” Zach pressed her.
Her eyebrows rose, and she impishly smiled. “Of course. I know just how you like it.” She produced a rag from somewhere on her person and shoved it into the Hunter’s mouth, before picking him up and carrying him on her shoulder like he was a sack of potatoes.
“Earth to Zachariah,” Austin said, waving a hand in front of his brother’s face as he watched her go, and Damian watched Zach shake himself free of her spell.
“What?” he asked them both, as Austin groaned. Damian snorted and patted Zach’s coat down for his keys.
“I’m driving,” Damian announced, once he’d found them. “Dragon’s prerogative. You two can stay back there and clean,” he said and went for the tour bus’s driver side door.
After Max swept through, giving her a courteous nod, Andi’s spare room stayed open all night. She did not get a new admission. Her original patient stayed stable, and she was left with too much time to think.
What the fuck had happened to Julian? She wanted to believe Damian, but she didn’t know anyone else who could imitate a Mack Truck. Julian wasn’t a werewolf, surely, but if he was, wouldn’t it take a dragon to make him look like that? And who were those two weirdos after Julian, and why?
She bit her lips and thought too hard. It was no fair that every time something happened, she wound up with even more questions than answers. And then, there was Damian. Asking her if she really had to be safe. Looking at her with those golden eyes. Making her want things she knew she shouldn’t.
She threw herself into any busywork she could, did the most thorough charting she’d perhaps ever done, and volunteered to help her coworkers up and down the hall. She’d never been so happy to see the dawn and give her dayshift replacement report before, and when she was through, she badged out early and rushed outside.
Her uncle’s now-familiar car was idling in the roundabout, and the driver got out when he saw her and waved. She waved back and walked over, hopping into the back as he opened the door.
“Did you have a good shift?” he asked companionably as she buckled herself inside.
Andi thought of how she’d almost been attacked—again—how Damian had saved her—again—and how she still shouldn’t keep him, no matter what the hell he thought, and the things her body wanted to do to him—again. She sank back with a sigh and answered truthfully, “It was long.”
The second they reached her uncle’s, her uncle came out, faster to her door than the driver was. “Oh, Andrea! Are you all right? It’s so good to see you! I’ve been worried sick since your message!”
“I hope you got some sleep, Uncle,” she said, falling into his open arms for a hug. “I mean, it’d be nice if at least one of us did.”
“Not really, no,” he said, pulling back to look at her. “Come inside, let’s eat breakfast.”
He led her back through his personal petting zoo and into his dining room again—polar bear and all. “I had my chef make us something,” he said, gesturing to the table which was spread with an entire breakfast buffet’s worth of food and two coffee carafes. “Chamomile?” he asked, pushing one of them toward her.
“Yes…how did you—” Andi began to ask, as he tapped the side of his nose.
“I am a smart old man, is all. Too smart for my own good.” He sat across from her and placed his gold-threaded napkin into his lap, the same as she had. Andi took it all in—her uncle, his home, and his chef—all of it. Lap of luxury was not merely just a phrase. Her uncle had made it into an actual thing.
“So…the unsavory things that you couldn’t tell me about,” Andi began, waving her phone. “Did my mom know?”
Her uncle inhaled and then sighed deeply. “No. Maybe a little? I don’t know. I never asked her. And she never asked me. She knew better than to, I think.” He gazed down at the table as if its sheen could reflect his memories. “Your mother…she had a fierceness to her, mixed with a deep and abiding kindness. Same as you. You remind me of her every time I see you, Andrea.”
Andi put a hand up to her own face. Sometimes when she looked at old photos and then she squinted into the mirror, and the light was just right, she could see the resemblance there.
“When we came to America, we swore to each other that no matter what, we’d keep in touch and help one another when we could. We knew we were both starting fresh in a big, strange, new country. We knew it’d be hard, but we also knew we had each other, watching out.” Her uncle patted himself down until he found his pipe and lit it, and the familiar scent of tobacco swirled around the room. “In the beginning, the best way for me to help her was to be around a lot. But as my business became more exotic, the best way for me to help was to simply be away.”
Andi swallowed and nodded, listening.
“I have to say that I am glad she’s not here, Andrea. Because if she ever found out that I put you in danger….” he said, then shook his head and shuddered. “She definitely had a temper.”
“Like mother, like daughter,” Andi said.
“So true.” Uncle Lee chuckled. “But now that you’re here, and I’m here, I will do my best to keep you safe. It’s what she would’ve wanted.”
Andi nervously pleated her napkin in her lap. She hadn’t touched any of the food, nor drank her tea. “Safe from what, Uncle?”
“It is so much better that I don’t tell you, Andrea.” Andi knew what he was going to say next before he even said it. “I’m trying to protect you. I know what’s best.”
Andi started shaking her head and didn’t stop. How often had her mother told her that before? Like it was ever an answer to anything? She wound herself up to fight against it and found her uncle had already made himself an impassive wall. “Uncle,” she demanded. “We should call the police!”
“No. These matters do not concern you or them.”
“But, they do concern Danny!”
“And I am aware of that now, thanks to you.” Uncle Lee tapped his pipe just so, and the plug of tobacco that’d been in it popped out into the shallow glass bowl in front of him. He rustled in his pockets, finding his pouch, and refilled his pipe as he continued. “I love your brother, Andrea. He is like my own son. But the police are not prepared to help him. I will have my people do it. This kind of retaliation, however, will take at least a day to get in order. These are not the kind of plans I want to rush.” He tamped the new tobacco into his pipe with a practiced thumb.
Andi bit her lips. “But it’s already been three weeks, Uncle.”
“I know. But Danny’s a tough boy. He gets that from your mother, too. Another twelve hours won’t change anything.” He rose from the table as he relit his pipe. “If you won’t eat, then sleep. I’ve had a room prepared for you and sent someone out for clothes and toiletries. I’ve got men out doing recon, so try to relax, and we’ll regroup tonight. Whatever actions need doing will be best done by darkness anyhow. I’ll report back when we’re through.”
Andi pushed her plate away. Things were at least happening now—even if she wasn’t sure what they were, and all she felt was queasy. “Okay. Thank you, Uncle,” she said, only slightly abashed.
“You’re so very welcome, Andrea, and I am so very sorry,” he said, cupping a hand to his chest as she rose up. “Three doors down on the left,” he told her, pointing down the hall with his pipe.
His directions led her to a small bedroom that had the same décor as the rest of his place. There was a duck mounted on a small dresser and what looked like a housecat, but was, upon closer inspection, an arctic fox mid-leap. She found a bed with two bags: one full of clothing in her size—pajamas, jeans, and shirt—and the other held travel-sized toothbrush and toothpaste. She supposed the smaller sizes of things were good—he wasn’t expecting her to move in.
Because whatever was going to happen would go down tonight. She’d finally know what’d happened to Danny. She just prayed he was okay.
She went into the attached bathroom and brushed her teeth in front of the wooden door of a closed medicine cabinet. Yet another bathroom with no mirrors. She opened it and found ibuprofen but nothing stronger—definitely no Ambien like she was used to. She trudged back to the bed one of her uncle’s people had made for her and lay down, holding her phone up over her head, texting quickly to Sammy. She hated lying to Sammy, but it seemed safer, all things considered.
Not coming home today! Work is crazy. They’re offering tons of overtime for anyone who can stay late and come in early tonight. I’m pushing through for a few hours, then going to crash at a friend’s nearby and come back tonight. Double time!
And then, after a moment’s more thought, she texted Damian one word: Well?
She turned sideways and put her phone on the pillow beside her, as it beeped. A quick glance at the screen showed a text back from Sammy.
Make that money, honey! and an emoji blowing kisses back at her.
Her battery was at half-mast, and her uncle’s thoughtful employee hadn’t brought her a charger. What was worse? Being worried she missed calls while she was supposed to be asleep? Or not having any juice later?
Andi stared at her screen. For the first time in three weeks, she had a lead on what had happened to her brother and a plan. Well, Uncle Lee had a plan. But it was better than nothing—and better than waking up without any charge at all. She went ahead and turned her phone off and willed herself to sleep.
Damian sat at the head of the table in their conference room, looking around at his crew, having just proposed a plan.
“Let me get this straight…tonight we’re taking Rax on?” Jamison asked. “After how many years of ignoring him?”
“We’re not taking him on so much as liberating a mirror from him,” Damian said. “If he hands it over, fine. If not, then we need to convince him.”
A slow, happy smile pulled across Austin’s face. “With guns?”
“With whatever it takes. The man’s a dragon,” Max warned him.
“Are you going to have to go full-scales for this?” Zach asked Damian with a frown.
“I’m hoping we can dodge that. But I need to know why the Realms is interested in me again, after twenty years. And I need to teach Rax a lesson in meddling.”
“If you say so, boss,” Zach said with trepidation.
“If it makes you feel any better, I share your concerns, and we won’t go in guns blazing, but we will have guns.” Damian pushed back from the table in thought. About twenty men had come out when Rax had been in danger the prior night—he supposed that that was the bulk of Rax’s “army,” and most of them had been human. Was Rax counting on the dragon inside to save him? Or did he have more men and better armaments inside?
“May I suggest something a little more covert?” Mills asked the table, speaking up for the first time.
“I’m listening,” Damian said.
“No one knows who I am. Or what I look like. I don’t look like I’m going to wreck the place. If you let me in, I can do some recon.”
Jamison looked horrified. “I absolutely cannot lose you.”
“I don’t think you’re going to,” Mills said, honestly not able to promise him her safety. “I wouldn’t offer if I didn’t think that I could do it.”
“I have faith in you; you can do anything, but—” Jamison began.
“But I’m my own person,” Mills finished for him and looked to Damian. “There is no reason for anyone to suspect a thing.”
“Only that you’ve never gone to his den of iniquity before,” Damian said, considering.
“And, you don’t know a thing about gambling,” Jamison clarified.
Mills shrugged lightly. “I can learn. And besides, who’s a better mark than someone who can’t lie?”
“And what if he asks you if you know me?”
“Then I will say, ‘Damian Blackwood is a friend who trusts me,’” she answered simply. “And he will either be intrigued enough it will distract him, or he’ll try violence against me and regret it.” She lifted her chin and challenged each of the men in turn. “Just because I can’t lift a bus like all of you doesn’t mean I’m helpless, gentlemen.”
Damian nodded. “All right.”
“What?” Jamison protested. “Mills…no.”
“It’s not your choice, Jamison,” she said, pressing one of her hands against his metal hand lightly before turning to Damian. “When would you like me to go out?”
“The earlier, the better,” Damian told her. “Rax probably closes instead of opens. I want you out of there before he gets up.”
The skinless hound chased Andi down endless corridors again, and this time when she woke up, it looked like something was about to jump at her….
“Oh, God,” she gasped until she found her bearings. She was at her uncle’s. She was safe here. The thing jumping was just Uncle Lee’s stupid stuffed fox. She rose up in bed and reached for her phone.
It seemed to take an eon to turn on, but when it was done, she’d only missed one text and no calls.
Damian? She hopped into her messages, not sure if she should hope, but no, it was a number her phone hadn’t seen before.
I’m a friend of Julian’s. I heard you were looking for someone. I can help for a price.
Andi blinked at the screen and then looked at the time. It was just seven p.m. Not late enough to go out after David—aka Argento—yet. But she was willing to bet that Julian had a big mouth and that he’d talked. She got up and got dressed and tried to find her uncle.
He wasn’t in any of the rooms she checked, and eventually, she found herself inside his kitchen, where his chef was working.
“Hello?” Andi asked, knocking at the open door so as not to startle them.
The person in front of the stovetop whirled, a butcher knife at the ready, and Andi found herself looking at the tall blonde woman who’d come to collect her personally for dinner last weekend. “Elsa?”
“The same,” the woman said, frowning. She returned to whatever she was cutting with the knife.
“Where’s my uncle?”
“Out,” she said curtly.
Andi sidled around the room. “Have you been his chef this whole time?”
The Nordic-looking woman reached into the cabinet above her and grabbed a bowl, ladling something for Andi from a murky pot. “Yes,” she said. “Eat up.”
It smelled good, but Andi was too nervous to eat. “I’m good.”
“You need your strength,” she pressed, and Andi was more determined than ever not to eat any.
“My uncle…where is he?”
Elsa rolled her eyes. “Haven’t you learned by now? The less you know, the better.”
It did seem everyone else thought that, yes. But she knew in her gut that wasn’t true. Andi looked at her phone, where she’d gotten that mysterious text. “I’m going back to bed. Wake me up when it’s time to go.”
Elsa grunted at Andi as she walked back down the hall the way she’d come, texting: Yes. Where?
All of Damian’s crew was geared up and in the SUV three blocks from the corner where the Lynx was. Mills was alone outside, walking up.
Damian looked at his phone, where he still hadn’t responded to the text from Andi. He wasn’t sure what to tell her—that Julian had died, taking along one of the Hunters, and that the other Hunter was now being “interrogated” in a crazy werewolf’s lair?
It wasn’t the kind of thing you could text to someone. Or even explain to their face. Like so much else in his world, it was just inexplicable. So, maybe all of Andi’s instincts about staying away from him were right.
But, if so, why did all of him yearn for her so badly? Why did their distance favor her and torture him?
She is your mate, his dragon reminded him.
He didn’t know if his dragon was right anymore. He wanted it to be, but after everything he’d put her through, and all the bullshit that traveled around him any time he was near, maybe it was better if that part of him died. If he could cut it out and throw it away from himself, to protect her.
She is your meant-to-be and always-is, his dragon went on as if calling their connection something else would make it harder for him to find and then remove it.
That is not helpful in the least right now, he told it.
It doesn’t matter what you want. His dragon twisted around inside of him, causing him physical pain before it settled back in place. Regardless of your desires, she is your destiny.
“Damian, ready?” Mills asked him from where she waited outside the Lynx and back a block.
“Yes,” he said, putting his phone away, focusing entirely on the mission. He held a piece of metal on his lap like a tablet screen.
“I’ve hacked all of their cameras. I’ll be keeping my eyes on you,” Jamison told her.
“I know you will,” Mills told him. “I’m going dark,” she announced, then took her earpiece offline.