Smoke and Mirrors (27 page)

Afraid. Angry.

CHAPTER THIRTY

Wings swept outward, twin blue-tinted sails that eclipsed the sun. A flock of pigeons took flight, scattering from the great predator that had disturbed their roosting on the ledge of the cornice. A sound made in that plated chest made the very ground tremble, small stones rattling against pavement and the alarms of cars far below in the street rising in shrieking counterpoint to the beast’s rumbling.

Kimberly stumbled back out of her chair, one hand reaching behind her to grab for something—anything—to keep herself steady. An involuntary squeak was startled out of her as the enormous wedge-shaped head thrust against her chest, falling just short of crushing her against the wall of the roof access behind her.

Her hands flew out, grabbing a handful of the surprisingly smooth, pebbly skin around his upper lip and one of the wide, ivory plates that ran from the underside of his jaw, all along his belly, and down to a point midway along his tail, to yank him off her. His skin was hotter and much softer than she would have guessed, but she hardly noticed around her need for air.

The overwhelming scent of ash and char mixing with the potent musk of his scent choked her, making it even harder to catch her breath than the pressure of his scaly nose pinning her in place. Nostrils flaring, he withdrew just a fraction, giving her just enough space that she could gasp in a few breaths.

Her hair fluttered, tendrils tickling against the monster’s nostrils as it inhaled her scent. Blue, jewel-toned scales along his ribs rose and fell with each deep breath he took, the sound like fat raindrops pattering on a tin roof.

Dragonfear washed over her in a wave, making her body shake with tremors and knees turn to jelly. She couldn’t help but notice that a single one of those curved, ivory talons splayed only a few feet away was long and sharp enough to impale a person. Never mind the pearlescent fangs filling that massive maw. Had he opened his jaws, she could have stepped inside that cavernous mouth without ducking her head.

Struggling would get her nowhere. Except maybe eaten. Telling herself that didn’t make it any easier to relax, easing up her white-knuckled grip on him and her useless attempts to push him away.

As soon as she stopped squirming, the creature drew back, arching a sinuous neck to regard her with one eye the size of a dinner plate. That single, bright eye glowed with tiny pinpoints of blue-white light, like it contained a universe of stars. If she hadn’t been so startled by everything that had happened in the last few moments, she might have noticed he had pinned her to keep her from backing right over the edge of the roof in her haste to get away from him.

She thought she was prepared to face the monster out of legend, knowing it wasn’t out to hurt her, that it had saved her from the wyvern, but nothing could have prepared her for the sheer size, the feral grace, or the realization that sent her heart plummeting.

The dragon was him.

It was such an obvious, stupid observation to make that the truth of it didn’t want to sink in right away. He had been lying to her by omission all along. He knew what she had needed, knew how important it was to her, and had acted like he was leading her to what she needed. Hell, he had even let her rush around, worrying about what the dragon would think of her, fussing with her clothes and hair like a fool.

Had he meant to keep her from her goal all this time? Had he been leading her by the nose so he could secretly laugh at her foolish attempts to do the impossible?

Had he just been pretending to care about her?

Her mind skittered around that thought. Whatever game he had been playing, it was over now.

He sidled back, arching his back like a cat as he stretched his wings out again before giving a couple lazy flaps that whipped her hair into a frenzy of tangles. She slowly sank down against the wall until she was seated on the ground, turning up her ashen face to stare at the living mountain of silver and sapphire before her.

It wasn’t fair that something so deadly and deceitful should be so beautiful.

With a toss of his head, sending a ripple down his scales from his throat all the way down to the tip of his barbed tail, he began to shrink in upon himself. Kimberly couldn’t bring herself to move as he shrank back into his human form. The shift back was much faster than the change into the beast he was.

In a few ground-eating strides, he was at her side, his blue eyes aglow with the same haunting blue and silver sparks as his scales. His abs and chest muscles were still rippling with reaction, and his jeans moved more like flesh than fabric as he resettled in his human form and halted before her. The tattoos ranging over his body were all flickering with blue sparks of power, dancing over his skin as they eased his transition back into the body he used to walk among mortal men.

He ran his fingers through the dark hair on his head, brushing out the crackles of blue-tinted lightning still arcing between the messy spikes. As he reached for her, she flinched back. He hesitated at her reaction, hand falling just short of touching her.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner,” he muttered.

If she wasn’t already so shocked and ill with his duplicity, she might have found the touch of color high on his cheeks endearing. It wasn’t every day one saw a dragon blush.

He stayed where he was, crouching on the balls of his feet with one hand outstretched, wanting desperately to close the gap that had formed between them but not quite daring. She had never looked at him like that before, with that mix of hurt and fear and betrayal. Even the way she’d screamed and regarded him with raw terror out in the pine barrens hadn’t cut him so deeply as the way she stared at him now.

“I couldn’t tell you,” he said, trying to fill the awkward silence, to make her understand. “I needed to be sure… If you still want me”—Please, he thought, please say you’ll have me.—“I’m yours.”

She didn’t answer him. Her lips parted like she was about to speak, but not a sound emerged.

“Please, Kimberly. Say something.”

“You lied to me,” she said, in such a small voice that he couldn’t help but feel all of two inches tall. If he could have fixed this situation with his magic, destroyed it with flame, torn apart that hurt with his claws, he would have done so in an instant. As it was, he had no idea how to repair what he had broken between them.

“I’m sorry. I know you must have questions—”

It was like a dam broke, releasing a flood of shaky prattle and nervous energy. She rolled to her feet and paced back and forth, her hands rubbing her arms, muscles jerking and twitching as the words tumbled forth. He couldn’t be sure she even realized what was coming out of her mouth.

“Seriously? All this time and you didn’t say anything. You knew—you knew—but you didn’t tell me. The professor must have known. That’s why she sent me to you, isn’t it? Why didn’t she tell me? Why didn’t you tell me? You told all those people what I was looking for. A dragon. A real dragon. Wait, you’re a dragon and your name is Cormac?”

He weathered the ranting and borderline hysteria, flinching at the accusations, but he didn’t hesitate to answer her question, silly as it might have been. “Yes.”

“Are you really a dragon? Or just a person who can turn into one? Cormac the dragon. Doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, does it?” Kimberly was babbling. She knew it, but couldn’t get her runaway mouth under control. Though her voice did become very small again as she stuttered out her last question. “You’re not really a mage, are you?”

“No, I am not a mage. I am just a dragon who happens to have picked up the skills necessary to blend with humanity. And my name used to be Kormákr until it came to my attention that I needed to go by a more modern moniker.” At her blank look, he wryly added, “I was going to go with Drake St. George but I thought that might be a little too obvious.”

It was clear his response didn’t make her feel any better. Hugging herself, she stared up at the sky, not really seeing it.

“You think I’m stupid, don’t you?” she asked. “Were you laughing at me the whole time I was searching for you? Or someone like you?”

He paused, taken aback. While he didn’t expect her to take it well, those whispered words stung him with an unfamiliar pang of guilt.

He had thought it must have been some kind of cruel joke at first, some twisted form of mockery devised by Eleanor or someone else at The Circle designed to make a fool of him. Certainly not Kimberly. By the time he had realized how much he wanted to help her—how much he wanted her, and maybe more than that, wanted her to want him—there was no easy way to explain himself.

She took his silence as answer enough. Turning away, she only made it a couple of steps toward the door before his hand fell heavily on her shoulder.

“I didn’t know you when you first walked into my shop.”

“Oh,” she said, “So making fun of me and pretending to help me was okay? Since you didn’t know me?”

“You were treading dangerous ground. I thought I might play along with the joke and keep you out of trouble.”

He had thought honesty might be the best policy, but judging by the way her lips thinned and the building moisture in her eyes he spotted before she jerked out of his grasp, he had managed to say just the wrong thing.

“So that’s all this was to you? All I am? A joke?”

“Yes. No. No, it’s not like that. Maybe at first, but not now. Please, Kimberly—”

The glare she leveled on him shut him up. Too late, it occurred to him how thoughtless he had been. He hadn’t been on the receiving end of a look like that from anyone he cared about in centuries, and it pained him to see how much his own mistakes had hurt her. The vicious beast who had stared down armies come to destroy him flinched at her frosty tones.

“The joke is over. I don’t ever want to see you again. Stay away from me.”

All he could do was stand there, hand outstretched to empty air as the door slammed shut behind her.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Blinded by tears, Kimberly barely noticed where she was going as she rushed out of the Wild Hunt and onto the street. She was aware of the tremors in the ley lines as a great, winged form sprang from the rooftop above, following her as she dashed headlong into the heart of the city.

Cormac paced her like that, following from a safe distance high overhead. He made no effort to disguise his presence. People around her cried out, screaming and shouting and running for cover as a great, raptorial shadow swept over them.

It didn’t take long before she was panting with exhaustion, the adrenaline rush sapping what little energy she’d managed to restore. Chest heaving, she slowed down, a hand pressed to her side as she trudged on, ignoring the chaos around her.

She’d been running the wrong way. Pointedly keeping her gaze focused on the ground, she circled the block like she’d meant to all along, heading home. All she wanted was to disappear under the covers of her bed and never, ever come out again.

She’d been a fool. She couldn’t believe how idiotic, how utterly insignificant and deluded he must have thought she was, to consider even for a moment that she was worthy of a dragon. No wonder he treated her quest like a joke. That was all she was.

It was no longer surprising that he’d teased and flirted with her but hadn’t returned her tentative advances. With just a few touches in the right place and a couple of stolen kisses, he’d turned her mind into mush, blinding her to the games he’d been playing. He must have thought her attraction to him was just another part of the farce. Just another way to make the parody he was turning her into have a bigger payoff for him to laugh at later.

Every hope she’d had shattered like glass, fading like her dreams of a better life.

Arms wrapped tightly around her ribs, head bowed, she couldn’t find it in herself to care that he was following her. Whatever he wanted now, it couldn’t be any worse than the laughingstock he’d already made of her.

Even Professor Reed had been in on it. All she could think was that her teacher either had planned for her to fail from the start, or hadn’t expected Cormac to be such a monster in character as well as body. She didn’t want to believe that the professor had set out from the beginning to humiliate her, but there was no way she could ignore how she’d had a hand in Cormac’s plan to make her look like the most asinine, half-witted of simpletons to the entire Other community in the city, if not the whole Tri-State Area.

Kimberly couldn’t stomach the idea of facing her teacher or classmates again. Not as such a failure.

Maybe she would be better off moving to another state. Or another country.

If only she could afford it.

Visions of working for Don for the next two or more years as she struggled her way through community college sent a pang of horror shivering up her spine. There was nothing else she could do. Even if by some miracle she graduated from Blackhollow, no one would want to work with her now.

No, now she wasn’t just going to be an outcast to other magi. She’d be a gods-be-damned pariah. Not to mention the butt of a round of deeper, more painful mockery than anything she’d ever suffered as just that “broke, half-blood illusionist who lived with a human.” Any respect she might have garnered from her peers was gone, washed away by one stupid mistake and putting her trust in the wrong people.