Dragon Call (16 page)

“I’ll send you to the funeral with a written
excuse.” Cora shook out her coat and a book fell on the floor,
landing with its pages askew. She’d forgotten about the journal,
which had belonged to Helen Phillips, Cora and Diane’s
great-grandmother and the last lore keeper of the Lune tradition.
Almost everything Cora knew about dragons and Dragonkeepers came
from Helen’s stories. Almost everything. Helen never mentioned the
part about taking dragons as lovers, or even the part about
summoning them. She and Diane had been too young then. Some
preparation would’ve been nice, though;
anything
would have
been better than the accidental summons that, in a roundabout way,
dropped her in the ER for a three-hour wait.

“Do you think Ma keeps one of these?” Cora
asked, bending to pick up the book and smooth its pages back into
place.

“I think her version more closely resembles a
social calendar.”

Cora started to tell Diane to get it for her.
The clack of plastic on plastic when she shouldered her purse,
however, distracted her. Journals could wait; so could forgotten
conversations. She wanted to go home. Home-home, not Diane’s
apartment. Back to Connecticut with her professional relationships
and her tiny office with its perpetually frosted-over window, back
to her polite but busy neighbors and her small Cape Cod with its
ancient princess phone in the kitchen. Winter was a good time to be
in Connecticut, too; piles of fluffy snow afforded insulation that
Cora needed.

She needed filing time, time to close her
mental office and organize recent events into manageable systems of
reference. Time for reflection wouldn’t be amiss, either. In the
course of a few weeks, she’d gone from nightmare-afflicted
insomniac without a speck of paranormal talent to this—whatever
this
was. Dragon-summoning accidental witch with talent that
might not even be natural, might, instead, be little more than
instructions implanted in her brain by a vile weakling of a
man.

“Where’s Greg?” Cora asked. She shoved the
journal down into a deep pocket of her coat.

“I don’t know. In an examination room,
probably getting treated for injuries. When the paramedics wheeled
him by, he looked roughed up.”

“Any police?”

“Not yet. What’s he going to do, press
charges against spirits?”

“I guess not.” Justice happened differently
when it concerned the supernatural. Witches tended to police their
own, although Cora didn’t know what kind of policing took place, or
how. She’d never known anybody do something to warrant policing.
She wouldn’t stick around to find out. Hartford wasn’t the other
side of the world, but it was far enough away that she’d be
comfortable in her own skin while sorting out everything that had
happened. “Did you park in the garage?” she asked, buttoning her
coat.

“Yes. I’ll bring the car around front, if
you’re sure you don’t want to get checked out.” Diane fished her
keys from the recesses of her purse.

“I’m sure. Go on, I’ll take my name off the
list and meet you outside.”

Cora headed for the ER reception desk. She
got lost once and had to double back; as she rounded a corner, she
came face to face with Salim. The shock of seeing him made her
stumble. He reached out to steady her.

“You’re not in an exam room,” he said. He’d
had an opportunity to go home and shower; his face was clean and
his hair appeared damp. She looked for the pearly glow she thought
she’d seen earlier, but it had either been a figment of her
imagination, or it was hiding from the hospital fluorescents.

“Nothing wrong with me that a shower and some
sleep won’t fix.” She didn’t even try a smile. “I’m going home
tomorrow.”

“Looks like you’re on your way out now.”

“No, I mean my home. I’m cutting my visit
short.”

His jaw tightened. “Tomorrow.”

Cora shifted her gloves from one hand to the
other, tugging at the soft leather fingers. “I can’t stay here. I
need—”

“I need your help. You’re part of me now.” He
said it quietly. “I remembered where I saw you before. Why you look
familiar.”

“And
I
need to be home. I can’t do
anything for you. I couldn’t even do what I’ve already done. Not
before Greg told—did whatever he did.”

Salim’s eyes narrowed. “What did he do?”

“It doesn’t matter.” She couldn’t say it out
loud—didn’t know if her suspicions were even true. Even thinking
it, right now, made her nauseous. “I just know I can’t stay here. I
can’t help you.”

“I think you can.”

“I
don’t
. I need to go,” she said
before he could voice another objection. She edged around him.
“Diane’s waiting for me. I’m sorry.”

“You’re not going to stop dreaming about us,”
he said behind her.

The automatic doors whooshed open when she
got near. Cora fled, hoping he didn’t have the power to turn a
pronouncement into a curse.

Read on for an excerpt from DRAGON DANCE…

A dragon remembers

“I’m asking you to keep them under
control.”

“You didn’t help me when I asked for it,” he
said. His toes curled around a lip of wood. “In fact, you turned
around and walked away.”

She envied him his shadows and suddenly
longed for something deep and dark in which to hide her abrupt,
unexpected shame at the reminder.

“You didn’t need me,” she said, for herself
more than for him. “Not that much. You knew what to do by
yourself.”

He leaned forward into the light. Flat, mad
eyes met her own. “Is that what you believe? That I knew what to
do?” He stalked close and drove her backward toward the stairs.
“Get out,” he commanded. “Figure out what to do on your own.”

The first time she saw Salim in Greg’s
apothecary, he’d looked like the most delicious, most dangerous
criminal ever dreamt up. Her muscles had gone a little mushy. He
wasn’t gorgeous anymore, and her muscles felt like gelatin for
entirely different reasons. Haggard lines scored either side of his
nose and furrowed his brow. The last time she saw him, his jaw was
smooth, clean shaven. Now, unkempt whiskers curled raggedly down
his throat. Beneath the coarse, matted beard, the tendons in his
neck flexed and released. He hadn’t brushed his hair in weeks, if
the wild knots tufting above his ears were any indication.

Salim mirrored his art, both radiating “wild”
vibes. A year ago, he had been a wholly different man than the one
driving her away toward the stairs. Could she have caused this
change in him?

“Salim, stop. I thought you knew.” She
stopped retreating. The delicate skin at her hairline, at the
corners of her eyes, tingled with the unexpected rush of adrenaline
flooding her bloodstream. She would run if he made a motion to
attack, but she decided to stand her ground until he did.

“Tell me,” he said, voice quiet and
dangerous, “precisely what you thought I knew.”

“I thought—”

“What?”

“That you knew what to do about Greg, and
about his dragon breaking free. You’re a dragonlord, aren’t you?
You know better than anybody how to cope with the dragon
spirits.”

“Do you have any idea what they would do to
be near you?” Salim whispered the words, so close that the feverish
heat he gave off warmed her own chilled skin.

“Kill each other,” she murmured. The first
time the dragons showed up, her mother had said they would tear one
another apart in a battle for dominance, for the prize of
possessing her.

Salim reached for her hair. She flinched.
Instead of backing down, he snatched a handful of her hair in his
fist and used it to anchor her in place. She couldn’t move,
couldn’t back away. He came so close his beard scraped her chin,
and his lips brushed her cheek. “He remembers you,” Salim said,
still whispering, as if trying to keep a secret from the dragons
around them. “He remembers the texture of your hair, and the heat
of your skin. He remembers exactly how much pressure it takes to
redden your lips with a kiss.

“The strength of your pulse while we were
inside you, the way your fingers curled as we held your wrists to
the bed. He remembers the way your body stretched to fit us both,
how fast your nipples responded and hardened, how you cried out and
how you lost your voice. He remembers every breath of it. And he
remembers it every fucking moment of his existence. Every moment of
mine.”

About the Author

E.R. Davis is the paranormal and urban
fantasy-loving alter ego of erotic romance author Emily Ryan-Davis.
While both E.R. and Emily have been writing for ages and publishing
since 2006, nobody is quite sure which of them came first. Emily
thinks she was first, hearkening back to her earliest memories of
reading lurid bodice ripper-style paperbacks, but E.R. thinks
she
was first because she can date her first love of
monstrous heroes to a pair of Incredible Hulk socks she owned as a
preschooler.

In the end, the debate is pointless. E.R. and
Emily are different sides of the same coin--changing diapers and
tickling toddler bellies in their awesome real world by day,
reading and writing about awesome fictional worlds at night.
Together, they have written…many books.

Naturally, E.R. caters to a small black
cat.

E.R. enjoys hearing from readers. If you like
her books and want to know about new projects, friend her on
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