All the visuals coming in from Mills’s neck got blurry as she ran over to stop a man from hurting Andi. Damian saw a flash of the man he’d seen through the coffee shop window as Mills came up, and then Rax snatched Mills away, forcing her to look at him, his face appearing large in the mirrored reflection. “A little help here?” he mouthed directly to Mills’s choker.
The wink had been a hundred percent intentional, after all.
“Spheres,” Jamison said, tossing one to him as he got out of the tour bus. Damian felt the magic envelope him, reflecting whatever it was the people on the outside wanted to see, as their group walked straight into the club, following the trail they’d seen Mills go through unseen until they reached the door with the small black window. Jamison pulled a skin-like glove onto his metal hand and set it on the screen, palm down, and the door flew open, revealing the casino floor inside.
People were screaming as David was fighting Rax off while holding Andi against his chest, hostage-style. She was struggling against him—panicking—until she saw Damian.
“Damian!” Andi gasped his name.
“Let her go, or you die,” Damian growled, advancing on the man. Something smelled like blood here, and if it was Andi, there wasn’t a force on earth that would be able to hold him back. “Get the others out—quickly,” he snapped to his crew. Jamison had already run to collect Mills, and Zach and Austin funneled the other screaming patrons out the door.
David shoved Andi forward, and she fell, sprawling to her knees as he patted assorted pockets full of gear. Damian walked forward slowly, hoping to push him back without him doing anything else bad to Andi, but the man seemed to have abandoned her, more interested in drinking the vials from his pockets. Then Damian recognized the leather grain of the breastplate that he wore.
Dragon skin! his dragon alerted him, sending waves of revulsion and retaliation through him in turns.
“You’re a Hunter,” Damian said, his voice dropping ominously low. “Where the fuck did you get dragon skin from?” Andi crawled toward him, and it took all his strength to keep his gaze on the dangerous man in front of him and not kneel down to comfort her.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” the man threatened, panting in open glee. It seemed like he was changing now, although unevenly, like his body couldn’t decide what it wanted to become. Damian kept an eye on Andi and stepped aside, clearing his angle of attack.
He is not a dragon! He is wrong! his dragon howled.
The other man’s fingers extended until they ended in claws, and he leaped at Damian.
Damian caught him in mid-air and used his weight to throw him sideways, well away from Andi and saw Mills run up to her to drag her safely back.
The man stood up from the rubble of the table he’d landed on, looking at himself before speaking hoarsely to Damian. “I can defeat you. I can defeat anything.”
“I very much doubt that,” Damian said as the man grabbed a table leg and ran at him.
Damian grabbed the leg as the stranger brought it down and folded the energy through and up again, to punch the stranger in the stomach with it, but instead of having the soft-yield of a human’s guts, it was like he was pounding into another dragon’s belly—like the stranger’s abs were made of stone.
“What’ve you done?” Damian murmured, watching the scales from the stranger’s stomach expand, to crawl up and cover the man’s face. “How are you….” Damian began, shoving the other man who was slowly becoming draconic somehow back.
The man took a moment to marvel at himself. “This…this is what is supposed to be happening! I am full of it…I feel it…and I don’t fight it moving in me!”
Damian ran at him full speed, barreling him down. They writhed, wrestling each other on the floor—Damian’s dragon seething just under the surface, disgusted by the abomination that they fought against. “Try not to destroy everything!” Rax shouted from afar as they took another table out, sending chips and cards scattering.
Damian moved more quickly than the creature could, and pinned it. Everything that was cold inside him and his dragon agreed, trying to take control: Kill him! Kill the thing!
No! We need answers! How the fuck is this happening?
“Whatever the fuck you are. Stay. Down,” Damian growled.
“You,” the thing beneath him muttered. “Cannot,” it said, somehow lifting up. “Stop me!” it howled in triumph, arching up and knocking Damian back.
“But I can,” said someone else’s voice, much more quietly.
“Danny?” Andi felt a thrill of hope until she turned to see who’d spoken. Somehow, in the middle of all the chaos and monsters, a new creature had joined their ranks. He looked physically ill and half-broken—crouched over unnaturally, like the mottled hide that covered him was too small—but he had a voice just like her brother’s. “Danny, is that you?” She took a teetering step toward him.
He was shorter than David and Damian both—and slighter—but the anger she was familiar with was written across his face.
“Danny, are you all right?” She ran for his side.
“Stay back!” he shouted at her so forcefully she stopped. He had too many teeth, and the hand he’d raised in her direction didn’t look like a hand anymore; it appeared like a leathery paw. “This isn’t safe!”
“Danny!” she protested, and then, the thing that had been David turned on him. “No!” she shouted, certain she was witnessing her brother’s demise.
But what happened instead was magnificent. The thing ran at Danny, and he just stopped it. Whole. David was slavering down on him, pushing hard, scale-covered muscles bunching, and Danny pushed back the same, a third of the size, but he didn’t even budge. He just turned toward David and pushed him back. “I told you to leave her alone!” he said, with a shove.
Damian moved to go back in, but Andi ran to his side. “Don’t hurt him!” she pleaded.
“I won’t,” Damian swore as his eyes tracked their fight. “But….”
“He’s my brother!” She caught his hand, squeezing it tight. “Please, Damian.” Damian looked at her, and then at where she held his hand, and squeezed it back with a pulse, before letting go.
The thing that David was now, fighting Danny, looked less human by the moment, and it lashed out dangerously. They were both snarling, ripping off shreds of scales and skin from one another. Each time Danny injured David, Andi gasped.
David bled red.
Danny did not.
His blood was as emerald green as Damian’s.
They twisted around the room, and Andi didn’t know what to do. Damian made to lunge in, but Rax’s hand on his arm held him back. “Wait and see, brother.”
“You’re no brother to me,” Damian said, shaking the other man’s hand away—but he didn’t run in, either. Andi looked up and saw him watching the fight the same as she was, with a similar mixture of awe and horror. And when she looked back at the two of them still wrestling, it seemed like David had won.
“No!” she shrieked as David’s arm swept around Danny’s neck and began to squeeze. Damian ran for the two of them, but she knew in her gut no matter how fast he was, he’d never get there in time. Then Danny reached behind himself, over his shoulder. His claw-tipped fingers found the meat of David’s unprotected eyes and slid deeply in.
Andi put a hand to her mouth and tried not to gag. She fell forward at the same time as David sagged lifelessly behind her brother. “Danny?” she whispered from the sidelines. Her brother turned toward her at last, as Damian put himself between them with a growl.
Even under the dim lights of the casino and at a distance, Andi could tell that Danny’s eyes were not his own.
“Danny, what happened to you?” she whispered, taking a stumbling step toward him.
“Too…close….” he grunted, looking wildly around. “Can’t…be here.” He ran for the back of the room to where Andi didn’t know, but the slot machines and bar enveloped him, and he was gone.
“Danny!” she called after him, as Damian put a restraining hand on her shoulder.
Whatever her brother was now—wherever he was going—she knew she couldn’t follow.
Was that creature one of us? Damian frowned after the man Andi’d called her brother. From the Realms?
I truly do not know, his dragon told him, just as mystified.
The temptation to run after the man—or dragon—was strong, but he couldn’t leave Andi or his crew behind, not when he didn’t trust Rax.
Instead, he released Andi and moved to inspect the vetiver scented man’s corpse. In death, the influence of the dragon skin talisman he wore released him, and Damian watched him change back into the man he’d seen through the coffee shop window one night prior. Damian stripped him of his dragon skin and saw the wet-slap markings it’d left behind on his human flesh where he’d tied it to himself. The skin was clearly freshly procured, still oozing green.
From whom…and where? Damian wondered as his dragon deeply breathed in the scent, trying to identify the owner, but there were too many conflicting scents to make sense of things right now.
“Could you have broken fewer items?” Rax said, picking a path through the rubble of his casino to join him.
Damian ignored the jab. “Did you know he was a Hunter?”
“Of course. I was paying him to leave me the fuck alone.” Rax shoved the body with a wing-tip shoe. “Extortionate bastard.”
“So, what the fuck else was he doing here tonight?” Damian inquired, giving Rax a sharp look.
Rax’s eyebrows rose high on his forehead. “Remember our last conversation? I told you I wouldn’t ever give you any information—ever again—without a price.”
“The fuck we’re playing that game, Rax,” Damian said, advancing. “I owe you nothing.”
Rax meaningfully coughed and took a dramatic look around. Damian’s eyes followed him and found Rax’s men and their machine guns, mixed with his crew, against the walls. Everyone was armed, and everyone had been waiting to see the outcome of the earlier fight—but if they started anything now, it’d be bloody chaos—and he and Andi were right out in the center of it.
“What’s your price?” Andi asked. Damian looked to her and could see her pride flash across her face—hot and wild—her dark eyes brimming with tears.
“Andi, no,” Damian warned.
“Your price. Name it,” she said, stepping forward.
Rax appraised her, the corners of his mouth folding up into a wicked smile. “My darling, no matter how lovely your dress is, you can’t afford me.”
Damian prepared to swoop her away and leave, but as he turned to grab her, it was as if someone was pouring her a spine made of steel. He watched her stand straighter and savagely wipe her tears away with the back of one hand, before raising her chin to focus on Rax. “You were never going to help me, were you?” she accused him and looked around the room, unperturbed by the armed men surrounding them. “You don’t give a shit about my brother or Julian or anyone else who works for you. You just thought that maybe you could leverage me against him,” she said, glancing meaningfully at Damian, before staring Rax down again. “You just wanted to play a game.”
“Is that so?” Rax’s glittering eyes watched her, and Damian’s hands clenched of their own accord at seeing another dragon look at her like that.
“Of course, it is,” Andi scoffed. “You have to play games with people for true entertainment because all the ones you have here are rigged.”
What is she getting at? his dragon wondered quietly.
Damian kept his eyes on her. I can’t claim to know.
“Am I supposed to take some great offense to that and act rashly on it?” Rax’s brow lifted in bemusement.
“That depends,” Andi said.
“On?” Rax asked archly.
“On whether you want me to think that you’re a coward or not.”
At that, Rax laughed outright. “And why on earth should I care what you think?”
“You probably shouldn’t. But, all of your men are watching you taunt a girl half your size. Plus, Damian’s crew—and Damian,” she said with a simple shrug.
Rax glanced at him, and Damian saw something in him seethe. He braced himself to finally meet Rax’s dragon, as the other man returned his attention to Andi and steepled his fingers. “Please, do go on, this is the most ‘entertainment’ I’ve had all week.”
“I want you to play me a real game. You said you admired skill. I can show you some.”
His eyes narrowed mercenarily. “Can you now?”
She whirled and looked around at what was still standing, and Damian saw her spot a pool table in a protected alcove in the back. “Pool. If I win, you tell me everything for free.”
Rax considered her terms for a moment and then loomed. “And what happens if I win, little girl?” he asked. Damian felt his dragon lurch inside him, ready to tear Rax’s tongue out for being so familiar, as the other dragon chuckled and went on. “You still have nothing of value to trade me.”
Andi inhaled, but Damian knew that there was nothing she possessed that could entice Rax into playing. He stepped forward. “A slightly used but nicely maintained Pagani,” he said, swinging out the Pagani’s distinctive USB key in front of Rax.
Andi twisted to look at him, jaw dropped. “Damian, I’m not—”
“It’s okay, princess,” he told her quietly, his eyes flickering to Rax, and then back at her again. “I trust you.”
She turned to look at Rax again, who looked at her and Damian, eyes narrowing. “Ahh. I see how things are,” he said slowly. “You sure you want to let her do this?”
“She’s not mine,” said Damian, looking at Andi. “She belongs to herself.”
Rax laughed delightedly and clapped his hands. “Done! I’ll rack.”
She was out of practice, and it’d been a long time since she’d played anyone for money—much less a two-million-dollar car—but if the only way this asshole was going to give her information about her brother was to win this game, then fuck him, she was going to win it.
Andi whirled her hair up into a practical bun and stepped over to the rack of cue sticks, pulling three of them out, weighing them in her hand, wishing she had the one in the case from under her bed.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d assume you knew what you’re doing,” Rax said, standing confidently beside the table.
“Why?” she asked him, full of sarcastically fake innocence. “I’m only picking the one that matches my outfit the best,” she said, blinking her eyes at him like a newborn kitten, wishing she had her fake glasses on.
Rax’s jaw clenched, perhaps beginning to have the vaguest suspicion that he was being played, and he glanced at Damian, but Damian didn’t see.
Because he was watching her. With the same quiet attention he always had, that when she realized it made her feel like she was going to spontaneously combust. He didn’t even look nervous, despite the fact that he’d fronted his car. He was just intently interested in everything about her, and he was waiting to see what she did next.
Andi tore her gaze away and fought down a flush. She couldn’t afford to be distracted now. This wasn’t about him or his car or his money. This was for Danny. Playing pool for it—for Danny—made sense. She screwed the chalk on the end of the cue, dusted her fingertips with the chalk on the wall, and faced the felt.
An entire childhood’s worth of memories swelled up in her as she broke the rack. The white cue ball hit the grouped balls hard, and they cracked as they sailed away—and the solid green six flew into the corner pocket.
“Solids it is,” Andi said, staring down the felt contemplatively, holding the cue stick beside herself like an Amazon’s spear. She focused on lining up her next shot, to pick the one that’d give her the shot after that, and the shot after that one. If you were truly playing pool, it was like playing chess, only with the addition of physical dexterity and a small amount of luck.
She’d never gambled with this much money before, but she knew all about playing with her pride on the line.
“Yellow one, side pocket,” she said.
“You realize you only have to announce the eight-ball?” Rax asked the second she made her shot. A cheap trick, trying to distract her. She faced him with a smile; she didn’t have to watch the ball to know it was going in.
“I hustled in the Ngo family basement for years before we ever went on the road. You think there’s a trick out there my brother didn’t try on me?” She rolled her eyes at him and turned back to the table. “Orange five, left side pocket. Besides, is it so bad if I want to flex a little?” she asked, stalking around the table to line up her next shot as the five teetered and then fell in.
“It’s tacky,” Rax complained, frowning.
She laughed. “Would you still say that if you were going to get your ass kicked in pool in front of everyone you know by a guy?” She leaned over the table, then paused, looking up at him. “No, what’s tacky is trying to charge someone who needs help. Oh, wait, no, that actually just makes you an asshole. Maroon seven, corner,” she said, pointing with the cue before sending it reeling in.
“You still have four balls to go,” Rax said, sounding threatening.
“Not for long. Red three, side,” she said, finishing the last of her easy shots. She surveyed the table, licked her lips, and heard Rax’s satisfied grunt that assumed she was in trouble now. She took a moment away from her calculations to glance at Damian, who was watching her wide-eyed with a mixture of pride and admiration on his face. She got the impression he wasn’t worried in the least about his car. Neither was she, now that she thought about it.
First off, because he could definitely afford another.
But secondly, because she wasn’t playing this for him.
All her childhood, she and her brother had played each other for months in the summer when it was too hot to go outside and months in the winter when the cold was just as bad. Always waiting for their dad to come back to play them and be proud of them, sharpening their skills against each other like knives.
As angry as Danny made her, as much as she hated that she felt responsible for him now, as scary as whatever it was that she’d seen him become, he was still her only brother. Her only living family. And he was the only one who remembered, like she did, what it was like to feel like that, hoping that the next time the basement door opened it’d let in a rush of cigarette smoke and stale beer and the gruff voice of a man who’d say, “Give me that,” before taking the pool cue and pretending he was Jackie Chan with it, fighting a shadow, then kicking both their asses no matter how many times they’d practiced in the interim.
She needed not to be the only one who remembered.
Even if he wasn’t himself anymore.
“Blue two, side,” she said, lining the double bank shot up. The white ball careened against one wall, then the other, then sailed past the striped nine to sink the blue two in. The cue ball stopped just where she’d planned, at a place where she could pop it out and off the far side hard to knock the navy four in. “My four, corner,” she announced, lacing the stick through her fingers again. The cue ball hit the far felted wall with a solid smack and came rolling back to hit the navy four at speed, sending it plummeting into the corner she’d called.
“And now the eight ball. Side. Get ready to talk, asshole,” she announced and took her shot.