1303 The Dragonslayer (The 13th Floor) (5 page)

Three feet away from a cliff’s edge.

There had been no note on the map about that. He’d have to add it himself later.

Lois suddenly burst out of the tunnel and kept swimming forward. Her head popped up, and she gasped for air just as she started to go over the edge.

Xan dove and grabbed her left ankle. She shrieked as she realized she was about to go over a fifty foot underground waterfall and then screamed again as he yanked her back. Pulling her out of the water and away from the edge, he held her tight against his body.

She was a tall woman, but even then, her helmeted head only came up to his chin. Her hands clutched his wet shirt as she shook from head to toe. He was going to tell her she was all right, but he kept his mouth shut, afraid his voice might ruin this moment. Infuriating as Lois could be, he found he liked her in his arms.

His heart beat fast, and it had little to do with the exertion of the cave crawl. Warmth spread through him and chased away the chill. The roar of the waterfall dimmed as he focused on her breathing. Quick but calmed.

Her face was hidden from view, but it flashed across his mind’s eye. There was a dimple in her chin that sometimes appeared. He’d noticed that the other day. And she wore only a pair of simple silver earrings, but she had holes for two more on each lobe. She must’ve been wild in her youth. But it was her eyes that always drew him. Bright and keen. Never missing anything.

Feeling her quivering ease, Xan ran his hands down her back to rest just above her hips. She shivered again and put a few inches between them.

“I’m okay.” Lois nodded once and then said more loudly, “I’m okay. We’re here. Let’s do this.”

Releasing her, he immediately felt cold again. He motioned to a trail that led down amongst the rocks against the wall away from the waterfall. “We follow this down.” He turned so his headlamp could illuminate the path. “Be careful. It’s slippery.”

Lois followed him closely, sliding a few times, but catching herself. They reached the bottom of the huge cavern and stood in awe. The natural beauty itself was astounding. The narrow waterfall created a small pool and drained away through another crevice. Massive stalactites dripped down onto their sister stalagmites. Minerals sparkled when their lights hit them in rock of various colors.

There was also the dragon’s hoard. A mountain of steamer trunks, chests, and crates. Old cars in a line and washers in the next row. Great signs and sparkling chandeliers. Beautifully chiseled statues and paintings propped against them. All of it shiny with drips from the cave ceiling.

“Oh my God.” Lois stepped toward the cars. “These are antiques. Perfect condition. Other than some mold and such. Everything here … it’s worth a fortune.” She ran her fingers along the hood of one car as if to see it was real. “I expected, well, I don’t know. Treasure like gold and gems.”

“Dragons collect all sorts of things that catch their fancy.” Xan stood watching her, hands clasped in front of him.

“There’s probably millions, maybe billions of dollars, worth of stuff here. Why would you leave it?” Lois reached into the driver’s side window of one car and tested the feel of the seat and steering wheel.

Xan pressed his lips together, eyes narrowing at the hoard. “When dragons take something into their hoard, they mark it somehow. I’m not sure if it’s magic or something natural that happens with them, but the items are then cursed. Bad luck will befall whoever takes anything from them.”

Lois backed away from the car, wiping her hand on her leg as if she’d touched something dirty. “Bad luck. I’ve had my share of that already. No thank you.” She returned to his side and gazed at the huge pile. “It’s such a waste to leave it all here, though. Hey, the dragon’s dead. Maybe the curse is gone? Besides, curses. It’s all superstitious nonsense.”

“If you want to take something and test that theory, be my guest.” Xan gestured to the hoard.

Lois stared at it for another minute and then sighed. “I’m not afraid of some ridiculous curse. It would just be inconvenient to have to carry anything out. Especially since we’ll have to go through the water again. Do we really have to go through there again?”

“Yes, I’m sorry.” Xan resisted smirking. He did sympathize with her about going underwater through the tunnel again, but she could’ve found something to stuff into a pocket. It seemed she might not be too difficult to convince of the truth after all.

“Okay. Dragon hoard. Call it what you will. It’s a pile of stuff. Anyone could’ve put it here.” Lois nodded, back to business.

“Even the cars?”

“I don’t know how big the other opening was before it was sealed. People are capable of all sorts of amazing feats of engineering. If someone wanted to stash some cars in here, they’d find a way.” Lois turned her attention to the rest of the cavern. “Now show me something better, big guy.”

“All right.” If anything remained of the dragon, it would be near the former entrance. His father had marked it on the map. “This way.”

They walked over a great flat spot and through a field of stalagmites. When they reached the other side, there were several formations broken and the rocks were blackened. Xan had heard about the battle from his father, but to see the ground on which it took place was new to him. His throat tightened as he remembered how his father spared no details as he recounted the fight. The old man’s pale blue eyes, like Xan’s, alit with the memory.

Lois walked forward, inspecting the scene and stopped as her headlamp illuminated a bent bleached tree. Xan turned his head in that direction. No, not a tree at all. The remainder of the dragon’s spine and a few ribs.

“These can’t be real.” She shook her head. “There’s no animal out there this big. You could fit a SUV within this ribcage.” Lois drew nearer, hand rising to touch it, but she held back.

“The dragon was about two or three hundred years old. Still fairly young in terms of its species. Just old enough to breed or it wouldn’t be able to breathe fire. It was reckless, stealing stuff like this, and that’s how my father found it. He slew the dragon as our ancestors did with armor and lance.” Xan smiled a little at that, imagining what a sight it must’ve been.

“And you don’t do that?” Lois raised her brows.

“No. I was trained to wield a lance as well as several other weapons, but these days, it’s more prudent to slay dragons from afar.” Though he always felt victorious when he killed one of them, an edge was missing to it. The rush for battle that burned in his blood. He’d fought dragonkin, but never a dragon. All his kills had been with a rifle.

“Dragonslayers.” Lois snorted. “Right out of fairy tales. Yeah, right.” She pointed to the bones. “Big as these bones are, they might not be real. Or they could be whale bones.” She grinned. “There are whales out there bigger than this.”

Xan sighed. Of course she’d find some way to say this wasn’t a dragon. He took a few minutes to search the immediate area for more bones, but there was nothing else. If the skull had been there, he might’ve been able to convince her more easily.

“There’s one more thing I can show you.” He turned and led the way to the left corner of the cave. A black pit yawned in front of them. He offered a hand to her. “Be careful at the edge here. It might not be that stable.”

Lois ignored the proffered hand. When she turned her light down into the pit, she sucked in a breath. “What … are those human?”

Xan added his light to hers. The massive grave glittered with bones. The dragon had quite the appetite. Though there was a likely a few centuries of remains in the pit.

“Hundreds of people. I’m trying to count the skulls, but there’s just too many.” Lois leaned over further and slipped. Xan caught her arm and steadied her, keeping a hold of her. She didn’t protest. “It’s like a scene from the Holocaust.”

“The Governor’s appetite is more controlled, but somewhere there’s a grave like this of young women. Virgins. He has very particular tastes.” Xan spoke quietly, but it sounded much louder than he intended. “He’s much older than this dragon was. Perhaps a thousand years old. He’s bigger and more powerful, and he wants to be president. He also knows I’m coming for him, which will make him near impossible to kill.”

“Have you ever thought of retrieving these bodies, returning them to their families? Giving them a proper burial.” Her voice was as soft as his, but it echoed through the pit.

“I wouldn’t know where to begin. And it was thirty-five years ago. Some of those skeletons are much older than that.” His grip loosened on her arm, but he kept his hand there. “It’s my duty to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”

“You mentioned before you had a list of the missing girls you claim the Governor took?” When he nodded, Lois glanced once more into the pit and then stepped away. “Let me have the list. I’ll find out more about these girls and see if I can find a pattern linking them to Whittaker. If the Governor is really responsible for the death of innocent girls, then I don’t care if he’s a dragon or not. You can kill him.”

“You’ll help me?” He blinked. Though he’d hoped that seeing what was here would change her mind, Xan wasn’t prepared for this change in attitude. It raised his hopes, but he reminded himself this was Lois. She might still resist. “There’ll be no direct evidence linking the Governor to the girls.”

“That’s a lot of dead people. If we can’t help them, there are some missing girls we can help.” Lois straightened her helmet and began walking back to the far side of the cavern. “I may not know a lot about fairy tales, but I know about serial killers. There’s always a pattern whether they realize it or not. I took a criminology course in college. There’re clues. There’s always something, and I’ll find it.”

Xan walked behind her, smiling at her determination.

“Besides, if I can prove Whittaker is a serial killer, imagine the story!”

Ah, there was the Lois King he expected.

CHAPTER 7

Lois sat in the center of his couch with the laptop on her thighs. A pair of take-out boxes balanced on the back of the couch. Papers were spread out around her. Huff hopped and rolled on them, seeming to like either the feel or the noise.

Xan stood by the kitchen island with his hands twitching. It was chaos. He’d cleaned the kitchen and his rifle twice. It’d been two days since they’d returned from the cave, and she’d been absorbed in her task since then. Even with Harriet’s screaming the previous night and the assurance it was just the senile old lady from down the hall, Lois had worked through with little sleep.

“I still can’t find the connection. There has to be something.” She tapped on the mouse pad. “All girls between the ages of seventeen and twenty. All from affluent families. Which is suspicious, but the dates are spaced out and from different states. Too many missing people for the authorities to link them otherwise. They disappeared at different times of the day and at different places. A few of them public places.”

Lois gnawed her lower lip and tucked a lock of dark hair behind her ear. Her brows furrowed with intense concentration. Vulnerable may be a beautiful look for her, but this was Lois in her true glory. A gorgeous tower of focus amongst the mess that surrounded her.

A door banged from out in the hall, and a few second later, a second door slammed. It was early in the morning for most people to be about, especially those on his floor.

Xan was moving to the door as he heard papers rustling behind him.

“Noisy neighbors you’ve got. How do you handle it? Is it that old woman again?” Lois peered at him over imaginary glasses.

“I don’t think so. I’m going to check. I’ll be right back.” Xan was out the door before she could ask any more questions. His neighbors had their own secrets and he would respectfully leave those mysteries to them.

Closing his own door behind him, he glanced left and right. No one was in the corridor. The exit door to the stairwell rattled as if with a wind coming up the stairs. He could feel the chill from where he stood in the center of the hallway.

Xan walked down the hall and pushed open the door. The cold hit him hard, but the sight of Harriet on the floor of the landing sent a hot wave of anger through him. Rushing down to crouch by her side, he picked up her hand to check her pulse.

She was alive, but drained. The bite on her neck told him exactly who did this to her. He had never liked that vampire. Foul creature. Xan’s jaw hardened. He scooped Harriet up, and she murmured something.

Shouldering open the stairwell door, he paused. He couldn’t take Harriet back to his apartment. Lois would ask too many questions. The reporter wasn’t fully convinced about the existence of dragons, never mind vampires.

Instead, Xan pounded on the door of 1301. The second Marc opened it, Xan pushed his way inside and laid Harriet on the couch. She was limp and cool to the touch. Blood trickled down from her wound into her long hair.

Behind him, Marc growled. “Where did you find her? Who did this to her?”

“In the stairwell.” Xan folded his arms with fisted hands. He had plenty of weapons in his apartment to take out the vampire. How the bastard gained access to the 13th floor was beyond reason. “It was that vamp. I knew he was bad news.”

“Damn him.” Marc snarled. A heat radiated off him as the cold did Harriet. He squatted down beside Harriet, taking her hand in his. “Harri, you okay? How badly did he hurt you?”