Dragon Storm (8 page)

“That’s our mate, Dar. She is something to behold, isn’t she?”

They both heard her surprisingly musical growl just before she looked up. Her tail twitched as she looked directly at the trees to which the dragons were clinging. She knew they were there.

Caught, the dragons drifted to earth in the clearing, shifting when they touched ground. Josie shifted too.

“You followed me?”

“We were concerned for your safety,” Darius began as Connor cringed.

“She will not take that well, brother,”
he sent silently.

“Why not? Most women would be flattered by an offer of protection.”

“Have you not noticed our mate is independent to a fault?”

“I’ve run in these woods for years and never had a problem.” She looked annoyed, as Connor had predicted. “But you two. What were you thinking? You could have been seen. Do you know what would happen if someone with a camera caught you on film or tape? These woods would be filled with news crews and UFO hunters before the day was through.”

“What is a camera?” Darius asked.

“Oh Lord.” Josie made a face and held one hand to her forehead as if she were in pain. Clearly, she was not pleased with them. “Look, it’s dangerous for you to be seen. Let’s go back to the cabin, and I’ll show you what a camera is.”

She shifted and was off like a shot. The twins did the same, following her path as quickly as they could.

The twins were amazed by her photos, her camera and all the other entertainment equipment she showed them over the next hour. They loved the television, as she’d expected. They all watched the news report together, and she had a heck of a time explaining all kinds of things they weren’t familiar with including the satellite dish that allowed her to get television way out here in the sticks. Wherever the twins were from, it was very different from here.

“You said dragon shifters were rare in your world. Just how rare?” Connor asked.

“So rare, they are only legend,” she admitted. “There are ancient tales about dragons, but nothing more. Snowcats are rare. Dragons are nonexistent. I shudder to think what would happen if somebody actually saw you in dragon form. You’d be hunted. Stalked. You wouldn’t be safe.”

Both twins seemed to think hard on her words. Neither looked happy.

“Then how are we to stay here? It would be difficult to fly if dragons are never seen in your skies.” Connor turned to his twin, dismay on his face mixing with determination to find some kind of solution.

“We could only fly at night.”

“With no moon.”

“In unpopulated areas.”

“It will be difficult, but not impossible.”

Her head whirled at the rapid fire sharing of thoughts. As twins they were probably used to finishing each other’s sentences. She’d have to get accustomed to the way they worked together. As a rule, she was much slower to process things and habitually methodical. She always thought things through every permutation before voicing her ideas. In fact, she’d been musing quite a bit about the twin dragons and their fate here.

“The more I think about your situation, the more I believe we need to go to Tibet to see my grandfather. He might be able to help us.”

“Tibet?” Connor looked at her hopefully. “Is it within flying distance? We could go tonight. There is no moon.”

“Flying distance, yes. But not for a dragon. It will take a few hours to get there by airplane and before we can get you out of the country, I’ll have to pull some strings to get papers for you. Or something. I’ve never tried to smuggle non-citizens across borders before. I’ll have to call for help.”

“Who would you call?” Darius looked suspicious.

“There are other clans of cat shifters in the area. As I said, snowcats are rare and revered by most of the other big cats. If I ask the leader—we call him the Alpha
¾
for help, most likely he’ll help, though I’ve never revealed myself or my clan affiliation to them. I’ve preferred to be a loner. Being snowcat causes problems sometimes. The younger and smaller felines tend to hang on your every word when they realize what you are, and that’s too much responsibility for little old me.” She shrugged. She’d never voiced her thoughts on the subject aloud before, but the twins seemed to understand. “And I’m only half snowcat. I wasn’t raised fully immersed in the Tibetan culture. I’m not as wise as most of the others. Or half as mysterious.”

Darius put an arm around her shoulders. “You are perfect to us, love. Never doubt yourself.”

She hugged him back, a little embarrassed at having revealed her secret doubts about herself, but glad to have his understanding.

“Let me make a few calls. We’ll probably have to go meet the clan Alpha so he can check us out.”

“We’ll meet with whoever you wish, if it will help,” Connor assured her.

Chapter Four

They dined that night on venison that had been stored in Josie’s freezer. One of the twins held it for a few minutes to thaw it out. It was amazing how closely their dragon power was linked to them, even in human form. Josie had never seen anything like it.

Sure, she had keener eyesight and sharper hearing and sense of smell than normal humans. The snowcat side of her nature seemed to be more separate than either of the twins’ dragon sides. Josie had the sharper senses while in human form, the twins could actually call heat and flame.
That
was something more magical than Josie had ever seen, even during her time in Tibet.

Her grandfather’s people had nothing on these dragon men. They
were
the dragon, and the dragon was them. It seemed a more intimate twining of soul and identity than she was used to in her own experience. Her snowcat resided in her and when the snowcat came out, she resided in it—separate and distinct.

The dragon twins didn’t seem to understand that differentiation. It was alien to them. Which made it fascinating to her.

Connor and Darius were surprisingly good in the kitchen, once they were shown how the appliances worked. Josie lived simply, conserving fuel and battery power. She had to rely on solar energy for her electricity. On cloudy days, she didn’t always get a full charge on her batteries, so she had learned to be frugal. As a result, she didn’t have a whole lot of appliances that required juice—either electric or gas.

She used the electricity mainly for lighting and entertainment, but she did have a few small electric appliances like her toaster and microwave. The stove was gas, and she had unpowered backups for almost every necessity. Hurricane lamps with full reservoirs of lamp oil stood ready should she need them, along with cords of wood for the fireplace. She could cook over it too, in a pinch, as the twins had tried to do, but she left that for true emergencies. So far, she’d never had to try it.

Leaving the kitchen with dinner preparations well underway, Josie placed a call she never thought to make. She’d had the man’s number for over a year, just in case, but hadn’t planned to call. Tonight, it seemed, would be a first.

She called the Alpha of the local cougar clan.

Getting through to him was easier than she’d expected. Cougars, being native to North America, affiliated themselves more with the
were
population than the exotic cat shifters. They kept themselves somewhat apart from the
were
wolves and other
were
creatures, straddling the line between the cat shifters and the
weres
in a delicate dance of dominance.

The leader of the small group of cougars in the area was located a few hours from Portland. They had a house and property on one side of the Columbia River Gorge and it was there, they agreed, that Darius, Connor and she would meet the Alpha the next day. She’d had to out herself in order to gain an audience with the man. She’d resisted alerting any shifters to her presence in the area for as long as she’d been here.

This Alpha knew she wasn’t cougar. She didn’t have an affiliation among the North American clans she could claim. In order to establish herself, she’d had to tell him exactly what she was. Subterfuge was not welcome by most Alphas. He had accepted her claims with guarded interest and seemed willing to meet to discuss her problems further. Unspoken was the knowledge that if she proved she was who she said she was, her life here would never be the same. The cougars would talk. She may have just given up her privacy for the twins’ sake, but what was done was done.

Josie disconnected the call with mixed feelings. She knew she needed help if she was going to get the twins to her grandfather, but she wasn’t sure of this Alpha. She’d never met the man, though he had a good reputation. She hoped she could trust him.

She also hoped he and his clan members would be able to handle having a snowcat among them. Once other shifters found out what she was, they tended to get weird around her. Snowcats had a reputation for being closer to the spirits and more magical than most other shifters. It was something her grandfather and his followers did their best to encourage and maintain. As far as Josie was concerned, the reverence in which snowcats were held was only partially earned.

It was true that her shift was more magical than others, but Josie didn’t particularly think that made her any closer to heaven, or enlightenment, or whatever you wanted to call it, than any other being. Just because she had a little more magic than most was no reason to idolize her. When other shifters started acting weird around her, Josie felt uncomfortable in the extreme.

If they couldn’t handle her—a mere snowcat—how in the world would the locals deal with two dragons in their midst? Now
there
was some serious magic. Josie had felt it tingle through the air as her men shifted and ever since, she had noticed it around them. They were never entirely free of it. The magic buzzed around them in a low-level hum. It was a comforting sort of hum she hadn’t noticed until she’d felt it escalate into a symphony as they shifted form.

It was actually kind of beautiful. And very, very magical.

If snowcats were revered, these two dragons ought to be deified.

Firming her resolve, she turned toward the kitchen. The smell of sizzling meat and vegetables tantalized her nose and made her stomach growl as she walked into the small room. The kitchen table was set as if for a state dinner, except of course for her paltry stoneware dishes and mismatched utensils. The men apparently had good manners and knew how to set a table. Maybe their world wasn’t so backward after all.

The roast sat in the center of the table, just waiting to be carved. Heaping plates of mashed potatoes, green beans and other vegetables she’d had in her freezer sat around the main platter. Her mouth watered.

“This looks delicious.” She tried to keep the surprise out of her voice but saw the smirking grins on the twins’ faces. They knew darn well that she’d expected far less when they insisted on cooking dinner for her.

“Allow me.” Darius pulled her chair out for her. Connor moved to carve the roast while Darius brought each of the side dishes to her, spooning servings onto her plate at her direction.

Connor served the roast in thick, savory slices while Darius took his seat. Solicitous didn’t even begin to describe the way they treated her. Unctuous might be closer, but it didn’t quite capture the very real concern for her comfort that she saw in their eyes.

After she was served, the men took huge portions for themselves. Josie had been surprised by the sheer amount of food they’d prepared, thinking perhaps they’d overdone it. Now she began to understand just how much these two men could eat.

“This is really delicious,” Josie complemented them both as she sampled everything. They really were good cooks. “Where’d you learn to cook like this?”

“We don’t often get the chance to prepare meals indoors,” Connor began.

“When we’re on patrol, we often shift and cook outside rather than eat game raw in our dragon forms.” Darius finished his twin’s thought. “Our brothers laugh at us sometimes, but I think they all prefer cooked meat.”

“Though they’ll never let on.” Connor picked up the thread again, grinning at his brother and then at her. “They enjoy teasing us too much.”

“How many brothers do you have?”

“Eight,” Connor answered. “Roland is the eldest, then Nico, Hugh, the other twins Collin and Trey, Trent, us, Jon, then the baby, Wil.”

“Although, since his adventure on Gryphon Isle, Wil is closer to our age now.”

Josie didn’t understand how that could be, and the look on her face must’ve telegraphed her puzzlement.

“Wil was kidnapped by servants of the wizard Gryffid and taken to him on Gryphon Isle. Gryffid did something to change the way time flows on the island and Wil spent five years there, learning from Gryffid and training with the fair folk warriors before our people got to him and brought him back. Only a week passed for us while Wil aged five years.”

“It was quite a shock. He’d been captured a gawky teen and came back a man grown.” Connor raised his glass and took a long swallow of water. “At first we didn’t believe it was him.”

“I can see why. That’s…amazing.” Josie was more than a little alarmed at the idea of such magic. Things like that just didn’t happen. For that matter, a girl didn’t have dinner with two
dragons
every day either. She felt hysteria loom near the surface again, but tamped it down.

She’d seen magic. Hell, she
was
magic. She knew its flavor and understood as much as she could about it, having lived with it her whole life. This was something else altogether. What they were talking about in such a matter-of-fact way, was impossible in her world. The stuff of legend only. And there it should remain, as far as she was concerned.

“I fear we are distressing you again,” Connor said in a tight voice. “Please forgive us. It is hard to know what topics will cause you discomfort.”

“No, it’s okay. Really. I’m just a little… I guess overwhelmed would be a good word. The kind of magic you’re talking about doesn’t exist here. Not to my knowledge at least.” She firmed her resolve and her backbone. “Which is all the more reason to get you two to my grandfather. If anyone will know about this kind of stuff, it’s him.”