Dragon Call (14 page)

Greg’s reminder that she had some control
over the situation did Cora good. She forced herself to calm down,
suppressed the urge to run away, and moved to sit on the edge of
the sofa. She rested her purse on her lap. Its weight was
comforting.

“You said you could help me learn,” she said
finally. “That you’d let me get to know your dragon.”

“I did. I will.”

“Then you have to tell me the truth. Why does
it want to leave you?”

“What?” Greg asked, startled.

“It talked to me. It said ‘release me.’”

Greg rubbed his eyes with his knuckles and
shook his head. “Because it wants
you
. There’s no other
answer besides that, Cora. It wants you. It
belongs
to you,
not to me. I’m a guardian. A caretaker. You’re its—I don’t know.
Owner, for lack of a better word.”

He knelt in front of her with his hands on
her knees, beneath the skirt she’d chosen after her shower. Her
skin blazed into a feverish heat where he touched, and she
recoiled. Greg held on.

“You can feel it,” he murmured, watching her
face. “The air itself changes when I touch you, when the dragon can
feel you.”

Even while her thighs flushed, while the heat
spread along her legs, toward her toes and between her thighs,
Greg’s features smoothed into peacefulness. He wasn’t the wild-eyed
man who’d opened the door moments ago. Cora held still for the sake
of keeping him this way.

Greg leaned over her thighs, buried his face
in her lap. His back rose and fell as he drew a deep breath and
exhaled an intimate heat. She touched his hair, tentatively, trying
to ignore the dragon’s essence as it wound around her legs and
rubbed itself through her hair, across her breasts. It was
unashamedly trying to arouse her, and even though she’d been
practically purring with contentment an hour and a half ago, her
body responded.

“You smell amazing,” Greg said against her
stomach. He slid his hands up beneath her skirt to cup her hips,
and before she knew it was coming, he pushed his thumbs beneath the
elastic of her panties. Cora jerked, brought her knees up, and
shoved herself backward.

“Greg—”

He dug his fingers into her flesh, bruising
her hipbones, and put his weight into pinning her against the back
of the couch. His face was twisted when he lifted his head, and his
eyes were frightening in their intensity. “It’s going to destroy me
if you don’t control it. Help me.”

“Let me go,” she said, fighting panic. She
didn’t want to incite him to violence, but she wanted to run as
fast and as far as she could. This wasn’t the same man she’d met
twenty-four hours ago. Cora didn’t consider herself an impeccable
judge of character, but she likewise didn’t consider herself an
idiot. Greg was safe then; he wasn’t anymore. She had to get
away.

“Take it from me and bind it again. It’s
easy—you just concentrate on desire. You just want it.”

Cora squirmed on the couch, trying to squeeze
from his grasp. He reminded her of Salim, who had told her all
she’d had to do was want the dragon bad enough, and it was hers.
She wished she had never wanted either of them at all, wondered
whether Greg would rape her or worse.

He pushed up from the floor, trying to
straddle her hips. Cora grabbed fistfuls of his hair and shoved his
face away. Crimson blossomed on his bottom lip, where she scratched
him with her wristwatch, and he let her go long enough to touch the
injured spot. She took advantage of his distraction to roll off the
couch and dart for the door, but stumbled over her handbag and fell
on the floor. She heard an awful sound and, for a moment, thought
she’d smashed her head on the corner of the end table. She didn’t
feel any pain, though, and she could still move, so she snatched
her bag and climbed to her feet. As soon as she was upright,
something lifted her and threw her into the air. When the ceiling
became the floor, panic set in.

Her arms and legs were caught in a hot vice.
The apartment reeled recklessly. One second she was looking at the
door from too close to the ceiling, and the next paintings and
furniture hung upside down. Greg’s sprawled body spun in her
vision, and her face was mashed against a rough, hot surface. A
scream choked in her throat. Greg had lost control of the dragon,
and she didn’t know how to control it herself.

It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. Greg
had promised to teach her how to deal with this, not thrust her
into it without any protection at all. She didn’t even have the
protection of the circle this time. What she did have was absolute
certainty that this was the creature that had projected such
hostility and invaded her head. She felt it again, now; the dragon
sifted through her mind with terrifying ease. She braced herself
for something horrific, expecting to feel her mind ripped apart or
something equally gruesome. The pressure inside her skull
increased, and then it popped. Cora felt her bladder let go.

The dragon gave no sign of noticing.
You
already chose the other,
it said in her head.
You’ve left me
to
this.

Greg’s body jerked on the floor, as if
kicked. She felt the dragon’s anger; dismay and sorrow came with
it. Something clicked into place, and she abruptly realized that
the dragon’s fury and hatefulness had never been aimed at her. When
it had raged for release in her circle, it wanted release from
Greg’s custody and into her own, not absolute freedom.

Something fell and shattered. Greg moaned.
Abruptly, the dragon let her go, and she dropped, dizzy, onto
Greg’s bed. Pillows smothered her in her disorientation. She heard
glass shatter again somewhere nearby, and the noise of traffic in
the city became louder. It sounded like the apartment was being
torn apart brick by brick. She guessed Greg was fighting with the
dragon, somehow, but lost all curiosity in the affair when she
spotted the telephone on the nightstand by the bed.

Chapter Fourteen

Cora carefully slid onto the floor and pulled
the phone with her. A stack of cassette tapes slipped, got tangled
in the cord, and fell off the nightstand. Cora pushed them out of
the way. The carpet was grainy beneath her knees, and glass
glittered not far away. She tried to fit beneath the bed, but the
frame sat too low, and she had to settle for squeezing up against
the side beneath the overhanging comforter edge. While some sort of
battle raged in other parts of the apartment, Greg screaming a
madman’s curse and the dragon roaring, she willed her hands to stop
shaking enough to dial Diane’s cell phone.

Diane answered on the second ring. “Why
didn’t you tell me you’ve been talking to Greg?” she demanded.

“What? I told you an hour ago.” Cora heard
the ring of another phone in the background.

“Every night for hours for the last week.
Hold on.”

“Diane, stop. I don’t know what you’re
talking about. I need help… I need help,” she said again,
whispering. Diane didn’t answer; she’d put the phone down to answer
the other ringing line. The bedroom walls shuddered, the bed frame
trembled against her back, and the spilled pile of cassettes
bounced like little jumping beans. Cora groaned. She remembered
that atmospheric disturbance.

She watched the tapes vibrate, waiting for
Diane to come back to the phone. They were homemade cassettes with
hand-written labels. Cora squinted to make out the labels in the
dim bedroom, which was illuminated only by the living room light
angling through the door. She thought she saw her name.

“Salim wants to know where you called his
dragon,” Diane said, coming back to the phone. “What’s going
on?”

Greg’s building sounded like it was under
siege because it was. The last time she saw him, he was face down
on the floor, not moving. There was no way he would be all right in
the middle of a fight between the two rampaging dragons. She had to
do something, for his sake as well as for the safety of the
dragons. The prospect of leaving her hiding spot terrified her, but
the thought of a world without the being she’d seen while in
Salim’s arms made her sick to her stomach.

“I didn’t
call
it anywhere. It’s just
suddenly here. I guess Greg lost control—something happened. Maybe
the dragon’s too strong for him or something. I don’t know. But now
they’re
both
here, and I don’t know what to do with either
of them.”

“If this is going to start happening on a
regular basis, we have to find a how-to book on dragon ownership.
It can’t be much more challenging than dog ownership, right?”

“Very funny.” But she wasn’t at all amused. A
thin wall separated her from two very violent, very powerful, and
very loud beasts. One was in the process of building up an enraged
scream; it sounded like a train coming on, louder and louder until
she couldn’t hear herself think. Cora willed herself to lose 20
pounds so she could hide under the bed. Diane shouted something.
Cora couldn’t hear it over the peak of the dragon’s roar. She
thought her ears would fall off before the sonic wave broke, but
she had no such luck. They were still attached to her head, now
with an added ringing, when quiet fell over the apartment.

“Diane?” she whispered.

“What the hell was that?”

“You heard it?”

“It sounded like a tornado. Remember that
year Dad lived in Alabama and a tornado came through while we were
there?”

“Hiding under the beds.” The steel edge of
the box spring frame dug into her shoulder. Cora tried to shift but
only made it worse. “Yeah, I remember.”

“You should hide under the bed.”

“Way ahead of you.”

“What does Greg keep under there?”

Cora blew an exasperated breath. “How should
I know? I’m not cleaning, I’m hiding.”

“Well, look around. Maybe you’ll find a
clue.”

“This isn’t an episode of
Scooby Doo
,”
she said. Remembering the tapes, she lifted the edge of the
comforter and slapped her hand down over the nearest cassette. She
slid it close, flipping it over and squinting to see the whole
label. It was dated back to a week earlier. Just her name and a
date.

“Stop thinking like a helpless girl and—”

“You’re the one who told me to hide under the
bed!”

“Look for something that’ll tell you how to
control it. People like Greg keep notes about that sort of thing.
Look for a dusty old book.”

“Are you seriously telling me to dig around
under Greg’s bed for a grimoire?”

“You’re rolling your eyes at me, aren’t
you?”

Cora rolled her eyes. “No. I’m just
clarifying.”

“Phone’s ringing again. Hang on.”

“Who is it? Diane, wait!” Too late. Cora
heard the click of the cell phone landing on a table. She was left
with wood grain swirls to keep her company. The dragons were
silent. Cora put her head down on the carpet, which smelled like
floral vacuum powder, and peered beneath the edge of the comforter.
She couldn’t see the doorway to the living room, but the remaining
cassette tapes were no longer vibrating. The calm before the storm,
she guessed, and reached out to gather the rest of the cassettes
close. She turned them so she could read the dated labels. There
were seven total, some of them with multiple days written on
them.

Despite her flippant response to Diane’s
suggestion she look for clues, Cora started to suspect she’d been
caught in the middle of a big puzzle. Some kind of game. Salim had
asked who had told her how to call the dragons. Greg who had stated
up front that he could teach her how to deal with her ability and
had flattered the strength of her ability?

Diane came back to the phone. “That was
Ma.”

Cora ignored her. “What did you mean about me
talking to Greg? Earlier.” she asked, not entirely sure she wanted
to hear the answer.

“What? Oh. The call records on your cell.
Most of the recent calls were to Greg.”

“Tell me dates.”

“Right now?”

“No, not right now. Don’t worry about it. Did
you tell Salim where I am?”

“You shouldn’t add him to your problems. What
you
should
do is climb out a window or something. You
are
working on an escape plan, aren’t you?”

Cora ignored that. “Tell Salim if he calls
again. No—try to reach him. I need him to help. He needs to take
Greg’s dragon.”

Diane was silent as death, but she didn’t
voice the objection Cora knew was on her lips. She only said, “I’ll
have him to you as soon as possible.”

“
Da’ar Es Saleem
,” Cora said beneath
her breath, hanging up the phone. As she said it, the building
shook. A large picture frame fell off the wall, bounced on the bed,
then onto the floor. She winced. Her hiding place wasn’t that safe
anyway, she told herself, so no point staying there. She snatched
up the tapes, every single one. She had no idea what information
had been recorded on the cassettes, but she was going to find out.
Holding them against her chest, she crawled awkwardly toward the
door.
Da’ar Es Saleem
. The protector, Salim had said. It
made sense that the protector would find her when she was in
danger; she and it—he—were connected now. She silently thanked
Salim for telling her the dragon’s name.

Everything she knew about magic said that
names were power. She could get one dragon’s attention by name, but
she didn’t have that advantage with Greg’s dragon. He’d never
shared that information with her. To her knowledge. For somebody
who wanted to relinquish power so desperately, he had been
remarkably unforthcoming with information that would help her
protect him. When this was over, she would have to get some
information out of Greg, no more hedging about what he knew and
what he could teach. If she was alive when it was over, anyway, and
if he was alive.