For the Heart of Dragons (20 page)

Letting out a sigh of relief, Noah turned towards the door in the corner of his kitchen. His feelings hadn’t been wrong. Someone had been there after all. Laurence. But it looked like he was long gone. “Could you help me with this, please?” He stopped next to the closed door.

Coming up next him, Kara reached out and opened the door. A set of steps led down into the darkness of his basement.

“You’ll need to head down first,” Noah explained. “There’s a door at the bottom of the steps, too.”

Kara gave him a surprised glance, then turned her attention to the dark stairs. “You’re going to let me in your basement?”

Noah opened his mouth, surprised that she would even ask, but their conversation from the living room hit him. Of course she would ask. He’d just told her he’d broken up with someone because he wouldn’t let them in his space. Noah cocked his head, amused. “You’re smart enough to know not to touch anything. She wasn’t.” Stepping back, he bowed his head, indicating she should lead. “After you, my lady.”

Giving him a wary look, she headed down the steps.

Noah held the upper door open until she was most of the way down. “I’m going to have to shut this,” he warned. “Just hold on to the banister. The door is right at the bottom of the steps, and seriously, don’t touch anything. Some of that stuff can explode if jostled wrong.”

Kara made some sort of distressed noise, but Noah ignored it and closed the door, dropping the stairs into total darkness. It was important to keep both doors shut tightly when he was working down here. Some of the spells he played with were dangerous, and he had gone to great lengths to keep them contained. But that only worked if the room stayed sealed. Carefully, he picked his way down the familiar path. He heard Kara rattle the handle on the lower door. “Just push it open, there’s a light on the other side,” he called down reassuringly.

“It
is
open,” she called back through the darkness.

Noah’s heart clenched. It shouldn’t be dark. His orchids were down here! “Shit.” He rushed down the last of the steps. “Just don’t touch anything,” he warned again as he brushed past Kara into the darkened room. This was not the first time the light over his plants had popped the breaker. Using the trickle of light from the back window and memory, he picked his way between tables and into the far corner where the switch box was.

Rearing up, Noah found the box and snagged the latch with his claw. Pride swelled in his chest. He was getting better with those things. It only took a second to find the thrown breaker, but Noah paused before fixing it. Fear clenched around his heart. The switch wasn’t blown. Someone had deliberately turned the lights out.

A male’s deep voice cut through the darkness. “Turn it on.”

Enraged that someone would violate his space, Noah slammed the switch into place. The bank of lights over his plants flickered to life, blinding him, but he turned around ready to hurt the person who had endangered his plants. He’d spent hundreds of hours getting those suckers to bloom, and he was going to take apart the person who dared hurt them.

“What’s the meaning of this?” Noah growled as he came around the end of the last table to face the voice. His heart dropped when he saw the intruder standing just inside the small alcove next to the door. The man was large, but it wasn’t the gun in his hand that made Noah’s heart race. It was the hand he had around Kara’s throat. A growl echoed up from Noah’s chest, pushed by his enraged dragon. The muscles in his back legs bunched as he coiled to attack.

“Stop right there!” the man yelled.

Noah’s attack froze when the man moved the gun to point at Kara.

“You make one move, and she’s dead.”

Rocking back into a more comfortable position, Noah held his place on the floor, ready for any opportunity.

“Shift!” the man yelled.

“I can’t!” Noah growled.

“He can’t!” Kara snapped at the same time.

The man looked from Noah to Kara. “All dragons can shift!” he insisted. “Tell him to shift!” The hand at Kara’s throat tightened as he pressed the gun to her temple harder.

“Shift!” The word gurgled out of Kara as she clung to the man’s hand, trying to loosen his hold.

“
I can’t!”
Noah yelled again. He felt the dragon’s energy swirling around him, but he knew it wouldn’t back down enough for him to change to human. Byrd was much too worked up with Kara in danger.

“
Just do it!
” Kara screamed at him.

The man’s attention bounced back and forth between them as they yelled.

Noah’s pulse raced as he watched the gun drifting away from Kara’s head. Hope welled in his heart. If he could distract the man enough, he might be able to close the gap between them. He held a spell in his mind that he could unleash without words.

“
Do it!”
Kara yelled.

The man’s head snapped to her, then back to Noah.

As his attention turned, Kara gripped his hand tightly and kicked out. In an amazing feat of flexibility, she got her feet up against the corner of the alcove and shoved with all her might.

Fear raced through Noah’s system as he launched himself towards the pair.

The man stumbled to the side and rammed into a metal table filled with an elaborate array of chemistry equipment. The glass contraption rattled. A single tube slipped from its holder and shattered on the table.

Noah closed his eyes and raced towards them as the chemicals in the tube burst into a ball of blue flame. Time slowed as he counted the seconds left in Kara’s life. At three, he slammed into the unstable pair, knocking them to the ground. At four, the gun in the man’s hand went off, hitting Noah in the chest like a Mack truck, but the bullet skittered off his scales and ricocheted over his shoulder. At five, Noah popped the spell in his mind, sending a wave of energy out into his target. Unfortunately, the man’s hand was still on Kara’s throat. They were both racked with spasms as the energy coursed through them. At six, the glass array Noah had been using to brew up a very volatile potion exploded, peppering his outstretched wings with licks of white-hot flame and splintered glass. The concussion from the blast pressed him down over the pair on the floor and darkened the corners of his vision.

The screech of his fire alarm went off, pulling him back to consciousness. He struggled to get his limbs working again. Chunks of the flame-retardant ceiling he’d installed crashed down as it buckled under its own weight. The pressure from the blast had shattered the ceiling tiles beyond recognition, but they had done their job. The flames burning on the table and floor hadn’t caught on the beams of the ceiling.

A secondary siren screeched to life, driving Noah past his pain. He now had sixty seconds to get out of the room before his state-of-the-art fire-suppression system kicked in and flooded the room with an unhealthy dose of argon gas. It had been one of his many splurges that he’d made while setting up his lab. On the off chance there was an explosion that left him unable to get out, the argon gas would kill him, but it would smother out the flames before they reached something more dangerous. That, in itself, would save the lives of the poor sods sent to save him.

Shaking the shards of glass and fire from his wings, Noah staggered to his feet. He bumped Kara with his nose, but she didn’t move. Moving to her waist, he grabbed the back of her pants in his teeth and pulled her off their attacker. The hiss of the gas drove him faster as he backed up. Thankfully, Kara hadn’t let the door shut completely, and he was able to drag her into the stairwell and shut the lower door. The hissing noise stopped as the pressure from the argon gas forced the air seal around the door closed.

Noah struggled through the dark until he was next to her. “Kara,” he called, rubbing his nose against her.

She moaned in the dark.

“Come on.” He nudged her, forcing her to respond. “We have to get out of here.” There was good air in here, but the seal wasn’t designed to be perfect.

She moaned again.

Noah found her arm and managed to wiggle under her so she was mostly supported on his back.

After a moment of dead weight, she started to help by clutching on to him.

“Hold on,” he said as he started up the steps. Every step hurt. His chest hurt from the bullet. His shoulder screamed from where the blast had reinjured it. His wings and back burned from the sharp glass and caustic potion that had been sprayed across him. Focusing his mind, he ignored the pain and pulled on the energy of his dragon. Byrd was screaming at him to keep his mate from harm. He didn’t spare a thought to calm Byrd. He used that to force himself up the steps.

The door at the top of the steps was a bit more challenging, but he got it open. The sudden light of his kitchen blinded him, but he crawled his way out, dragging Kara with him. The audible cock of a gun stopped him, and he turned blurry eyes up to find four men standing in his kitchen, weapons drawn.

Byrd screamed at him to fight, to protect his mate, but there was nothing Noah could do. Kara was nearly unconscious, and he hurt beyond words. He struggled to flip Kara off him and lie down over her. At least that way, they couldn’t shoot her. Noah released his hold and let Byrd take over. If anything could save them, it was the savage fury of his dragon.

Byrd growled and snapped at the four men as they got close, but they tackled him, knocking him off Kara. His claws raked across the face of one of the men as his jaws snapped at another. “
Mine!”
he screeched, trying to get free so he could protect his fallen mate. He drew in a breath, stoking the fires deep in his chest, but one of the men slammed his head into the ground, clamping his mouth shut. Smoke rolled out of his nose, but there was no way to release the flames he had heated. They burned in his chest, forcing him to cool them off.

“Do it!” one of the men yelled.

Thrashing, Byrd fought as someone near his tail scraped something hard against the scales on his hip, separating them slightly. The sharp end of a needle slipped between two of the scales and deep into his flesh. His roar of anger was smothered by the man holding his mouth shut. The serum burned as it entered. Red filled his vision, and he kicked hard, flipping the man on his hip away. Another good thrashing tossed one of the men from his side. The rest released him and retreated to a safe distance. Byrd roared at them, but whatever they had injected him with was already working. Unable to stoke his flames to kill his attackers, he staggered over to Kara’s limp form and dropped himself on her again. Breathing hard, he spread his wings over her in a vain attempt to protect her. His vision swam as he clutched onto Kara. Thoughts of Raven’s death filled his mind, and he keened out his anguish as another of his was lost to these monsters. He glared at the waiting men as his limbs went heavy and numb.

A bare trickle of Noah’s consciousness brushed against Byrd’s mind. “
They will pay for this
.”

Byrd blinked one last time before the drug stole the last of his strength. “
With their lives
.”

10

“We can’t kill him,” a male voice called out of the darkness Noah’s mind swam in. “The boss wants the dragon.”

“But that shit killed Spencer!” another enraged voice responded. “He needs to die!”

“I know,” the first voice answered, coaxing the second to see reason, “and he will, but this is what we’ve been working for. We can’t kill him yet. The maks need him alive.”

Noah bristled at the slur against mages. The term ‘maks’ was only ever used in the most derogatory way. It was a word he’d often heard from his father growing up. A soft growl echoed up from his chest.

The conversation on the other side of the room fell silent.

“He’s awake,” the second voice said.

“He can’t be awake,” the first answered. “It’s only been a couple of hours.”

“But he growled.”

“He’s a dragon,” the first grumbled. “They do that. Besides, that drug will keep him from flaming up for the next day or so.”

“I fucking hate dragons. They stink!” The man’s last words were muffled as if he were covering his face.

The first man laughed. “And here you’re working for a man who wants to be one.”

“No!” the second one snapped. “I signed on to this project so I could kill the bloody bastards. Fucking blight on society.”

Noah forced his breathing to remain even. He felt around and found Byrd’s energy hadn’t woken up yet. It was a good thing, because his dragon would have been enraged by the man’s words.

“You’ll get your chance soon enough,” the first voice answered again. “When the maks have figured out how to get the dragons out, you can kill as many as you want.”

“But what about the shits that want those dragons?”

“We’ll worry about that when the time comes.” The way the first voice said that clenched Noah’s heart.

“Damn he stinks.” The scrape of a chair on a bare floor punctuated the man’s words. Heavy footsteps echoed across the room as the man got closer. “When the fuck can we get rid of this shit?”

Something hard banged into something metal near Noah’s side. He jerked in response as the vibration traveled through the floor.

“He moved!” the man next to him yelled.

“No he didn’t,” the other voice said. There was another scraping sound and more footsteps.

Noah forced himself to relax. The startling noise had woken Byrd, but the dragon wasn’t fully focused yet. “
Be still
,” Noah warned his other half. This brought Byrd into full focus.

Something hard jabbed into Noah’s side and pushed at him.

Byrd started to react, but Noah clamped him down. “
Be still,”
he warned again.

“He’s still out,” the second voice said. The lighter footsteps moved away.

Noah could feel the presence of the first man standing over him, but he remained relaxed. Keeping Byrd from jumping up and trying to tear out the guy’s throat took most of his concentration. “
Be still,”
he pleaded again. “
We need a plan before we attack.”

Byrd didn’t like it, but he stopped fighting with Noah.