Mick"s dragon was gigantic, black and gleaming in what was left of the moonlight. His eyes were black and golden, pupils tinged with red. He brought his great scaly head down to my level, the heat of his dragon body engulfing me.
I was never sure what to do with Mick in this form. He was still my Mick, but his dragon was a precise and deadly killing machine, and dragons did not have a lot of mercy in them. I couldn"t communicate with him-I could talk, but he couldn"t answer in words. I couldn"t yet understand the snarls and roars dragons used, and the nuances of their body language was way beyond me.
However, when Mick closed his talons around me, he was gentleness itself. He lifted me without moving a hair on my head and cradled me against his warm chest, sheltering me from the night.
That was fine, but as soon as he launched himself from the ground, my stomach pretty much stayed behind, and I had to fight my screams. Think of the scariest, most stomach-churning ride at an amus.e.m.e.nt park, and then multiply that by about a hundred and fifty. That"s flying with a dragon.
Mick shot across the darkness, dragon wings pumping in the night. I huddled against his chest, clutching everything I was trying to carry, and tried not to think about the hundreds of feet of empty s.p.a.ce between me and the hard ground.
Happily, nothing happened to make him drop me. Mick held me competently, even keeping me warm, and we landed a few hours later in the desert behind my hotel, the railroad bed between us and the Crossroads.
When I say landed, I mean Mick dove for the ground with the force of a cannonball. At the last minute, he reversed, bringing his hind feet down, his great wings spreading like sails.
He touched down with a whump, but when he leaned to lower me, again it was with every tenderness.
I stood up, unkinking my stiff limbs and trying to catch my breath. Mick glided away into the darkness, shifted, and came walking back, my tall man replete with muscles and dragon tatts.
"You okay?" he asked when he reached me.
I handed him his clothes. "Dragon is not the most comfortable way to travel."
"Sorry." Mick sounded sorry. "But we needed to get here fast."
"I know. Any sign of a runaway Nightwalker as we flew?" Not that I thought there would have been.
"Didn"t see any," Mick said.
I started to walk toward the hotel, but Mick drew me back. One arm full of his clothes, he wrapped the other around me and kissed me on the mouth.
His healing magic entered me through the kiss. My legs stopped trembling, and my stomach settled down.
He released me, dressed, and we walked together back to the hotel.
Ca.s.sandra was locking the doors for the night, though she planned to stay, not knowing how long I"d be absent. Pamela was there with her.
"I don"t know where he went," Ca.s.sandra said before I asked. "Even Elena couldn"t stop him. Ansel wasn"t blood frenzied, just determined."
Mick and I went downstairs to Ansel"s room to hunt for any clue to where he"d gone, but we came up with one big nothing. Nothing specific, anyway.
Mick stood in the middle of the tidy chamber, his blue eyes taking in everything. "He"s gone to try to find Laura."
"I figured," I said. "The dragons thought Ansel had Laura, and I bet Ansel thinks the dragons have her. If he breaks into the dragon compound . . ."
"He hasn"t," Mick said. "I would have heard."
"You mean he hasn"t yet."
"Colby will tell me the minute he shows up. They know Ansel"s under my protection, and that if they kill him, they have to mess with me."
"Doesn"t mean they won"t kill him and take their chances," I said unhappily. "We need to find him."
"I"ll search. You need to rest and eat something."
"I had a sandwich before I went to Laura"s store."
Mick came to me. "And a fight with a bad-a.s.s mage, who knocked you out and nearly killed you." He looked down at me, the raw pain in his eyes erasing his habitual calm. Here was a man who felt deeply, with emotions I couldn"t begin to understand.
He smoothed my hair with a hand that shook a little. "He could have killed you, Janet. He didn"t have to leave you alive. And I wouldn"t have been there to stop it."
"I was still walking the storm," I said. "And he couldn"t have gotten past my Beneath magic in the end. He"s strong, but not my evil mother strong."
Mick exhaled, and at the end of it he pressed his lips to the top of my head. "You don"t get it, do you? It"s all I can do not to drag you out to my island and keep you there, safe from Nightwalkers, dragons, your G.o.ddess mother-from everyone who ever tried to hurt you. I want to so bad, it"s killing me not to."
"Is that your dragon instinct?" I asked. His eyes had gone black now, without a hint of blue, his hand resting against the side of my head, strength there but contained. "What would I do all day on your tropical island?"
"Whatever the h.e.l.l you wanted. I wouldn"t give a s.h.i.t. You"d be safe."
"I"d be bored. Your island is nice, but I can only drink so many Mai Tais on the beach. I"d start hankering to see my dad, my friends, the Dine lands . . ."
"And I wouldn"t care," he said, his voice on the edge of a growl. "I fight against my instincts every day. I want to keep you safe, but I also want you to be happy. I know I can"t have both. So I hold back." Mick put his other hand on the small of my back, grip firm, no holding back there. "I force myself to let you live in your world. I watch over you and work the wards on this hotel, but I know it"s not enough. Will never be enough. I can"t ever truly keep you safe out here, and I can"t explain to you how much I hate that." My mouth opened as I listened. His words were grating, the dragon in him looking out from his black eyes.
Mick had always been protective, but I"d had no idea he fought himself not to be as protective as he wanted to be. I knew that if he chose to sweep me up and keep me sequestered on his island, he could do it, and I"d have a hard time fighting him. He could have done it tonight.
"I"m not good at being confined," I said, my voice faint. "I never have been. I"d end up trying to kill you to get away."
"I know that. I also know I could stop you. I almost did before."
"That was different." I put my hands on his chest. His heart was beating rapidly, the skin beneath his shirt hot. "You had me in a place where I couldn"t fight back." In a cave full of scary petroglyphs that tried to feed off my boiling evil magic.
"I know," he said. "I manipulated you there, because I knew I"d have the advantage. I"d do the same thing again, this time to protect you. The only reason I don"t . . ." Mick stopped and drew a breath. "I don"t because . . . I love you."
His eyes switched to blue when he said it. My throat went tight. "I love you too, Mick."
"You still don"t understand. Dragons don"t love."
"What are you talking about? You love." Mick loved-fiercely.
"No, dragons obsess. We h.o.a.rd, and we defend what we h.o.a.rd. We mate to produce offspring, which we also possessively defend. All dragons know that another dragon"s one weak point is his lair."
"I thought it was the true name."
Mick shook his head. "No dragon will reveal his true name to another dragon, even accidentally. But the lair can be found, can be attacked. We"ll defend it to the death. Not because we love it, but because it"s ours."
"And now I"m yours."
"Yes." The dragon black returned to his eyes. "If what I felt for you was desire alone, it wouldn"t be so hard for me. I"d lock you away and be done with it. I"d own you, keep you- end of story. But for some reason, I"ve decided I want you to be happy. It hurts me when you aren"t happy." Mick let out a breath. "This . . . this need . . . is new." And strange to him. I thought about the times Mick watched me with a look I couldn"t decipher. He"d study me as though trying to figure me out, to understand why the h.e.l.l I did the things I did.
I hadn"t realized he was battling himself, torn between wanting to bury me in his comfortable prison and letting me walk around free and happy, but in severe and constant danger. He went through this dilemma every day.
I ran my hands up Mick"s chest again, brushing my thumbs over the hollow of his throat.
"When you start leaning toward sequestering me, let me know. I"ll help you fight it."
"No guarantees that you can."
He took my mouth in a long, slow kiss, one that said that if we weren"t trying to find Ansel and figure out the secret of this pot, he"d have me on Ansel"s mission-style bed in a heartbeat.
Instead he released me, his eyes changing to blue again.
I knew he was right that fighting him would be tricky. While Mick wasn"t affected by my storm magic, my Beneath magic was a little different. Dragon magic was the magic of this earth, magic forged in the inferno of volcanoes. Beneath magic came from the worlds that existed before this one, where G.o.ds held power, and humans were few. Beneath magic was different from earth magic-in some ways more powerful, and in some ways less.
Mick, though, was resourceful enough and strong enough to compensate against my Beneath magic. I"d never won a contest of magics against him, and I never wanted to have to.
We wouldn"t find Ansel by standing here talking about our bizarre relationship. After another bone-searing kiss, Mick led me back upstairs, where Ca.s.sandra was busily looking over the glued-together pot. While Mick ducked into my office, saying he needed to make a few phone calls-and probably to calm down from our little talk downstairs-I approached Ca.s.sandra and leaned my elbows on the counter.
"Do you know what that is?" I asked.
She shook her head, still studying the patterns. "I"ve never heard about anything like it, or anything about these designs. I could look it up, but . . ." She set down the pot. Pamela picked it up, turning it in her hands, but she didn"t look enlightened either.
I finished Ca.s.sandra"s thought. "But if you ask about it on your Wiccan network, you"ll alert other mages to its existence."
"Exactly. Witches and mages are always looking for something with which to enhance power. From what you"ve told me, a lot of people seem to want it. I"d be careful who finds out about it."
"Have you heard of Pericles McKinnon?" I asked.
"Yes." Ca.s.sandra looked at me so sharply that Pamela set down the pot and stepped closer to her. "He"s cunning and mean," Ca.s.sandra went on. "And powerful. Why?"
"Like Emmett Smith powerful?"
"Not as strong as Emmett, but close. Pericles makes it no secret that he"d love to push Emmett out of power."
I nodded. "He said as much to me."
"Why don"t we just let Emmett have at him, then?" Pamela asked. "Pesky mage problem solved."
"The enemy of my enemy?" I mused. Pamela had met Emmett too, and her wolf had wanted to chomp on him. I"d love to have let her. "If Emmett kills Pericles for us, then we"d have to worry about Emmett trying to get his hands on this pot. The last thing we need is an all-powerful mage going for more power."
"I"ll try to see what I can find out without alerting anyone," Ca.s.sandra said. I knew she could, since she was one of the most resourceful and efficient people I"d ever met. "Laura must have known more about it than she let on, even to Ansel."
"Which is why we need to find her."
Mick came out from my office, which was still dark. He hadn"t bothered turning on the light in there. "I"ve asked people around town, but no one"s seen Ansel. But I"m going to scour the ground for him. Eat something, Janet."
"Not here," Pamela said. "Elena"s closed the kitchen. And locked it. I want a snack, but I guess I"ll have to go hunt a rabbit."
"Not if you"re sleeping with me, you"re not," Ca.s.sandra said briskly. "That"s why the G.o.ddess invented all-night diners. Both of you go. Eat."
Which was how Pamela and I ended up at the diner in Magellan. Pamela actually going somewhere with me said a lot for her hunger. We rode our separate motorcycles but walked into the diner more or less together and sat at the counter next to each other.
I had to admit that Mick had been smart to prescribe dinner. Lifting a hot, juicy burger with all the fixings to my mouth made me realize how hungry I was. Fighting all-powerful mages, arguing with Drake and my grandmother, worrying about Gabrielle searching for a magical artifact, and flying back from Santa Fe in a dragon talon gave me a hearty appet.i.te.
A guy in a jeans jacket with a chunky silver wristband slid onto the empty stool next to me.
He took up a lot of s.p.a.ce and shoved his big elbow into me when he opened his menu.
I looked over to tell him to be careful, then half my burger splatted back to my plate, bathing me in droplets of ketchup.
The guy was Indian, with a long black braid, a wide, handsome face, soul-searching brown eyes, and a white-toothed grin.
"Hey, Janet," Coyote said.
Chapter Sixteen.
"Holy f.u.c.king s.h.i.t!"
My voice carried. Conversation dipped, and every head in the place turned to me. Parents glowered in disapproval, and I think a baby started to cry.
Then everyone gave one another looks that said, It"s just Janet, and returned to eating.
Coyote sat there smiling at me. As though Bear hadn"t stabbed him with a stone knife made by the G.o.ds, as though I hadn"t watched him die in the desert and disappear into swirling dust.
He looked whole and unhurt, his black b.u.t.ton-down shirt unwrinkled, his hair neat in its braid.
The cowboy hat he liked to wear rested on the empty stool beside him.
He was there, solidly, but I recalled another night I"d sworn he"d been sitting next to me at this very counter, only to learn he"d been riding in Naomi Kee"s pickup at the exact same moment. No one in the diner had seen him but me.
I swung to Pamela, but she"d left her seat and was making her way to the ladies room, so I waved down the waitress who wandered along the counter, coffeepot in hand.
"Jolene," I said. "Someone is sitting here beside me, right?" I pointed.
Jolene stopped, smiled, and filled the cup Coyote pushed toward her. "Hi, Coyote. Been a while."
"You do see him, then?" I asked.
Jolene gave me an odd look as she refilled my cup, but she, like everyone else in Magellan, was pretty convinced I was crazy. "Yes. I see Coyote, the storyteller. He comes here a lot. Are you feeling all right?"
"Fine." I picked up my coffee cup and dumped half the burning liquid down my throat.