Dragon Fall: Masters of the Flame 3 (Mating Fever) (13 page)

His eyes gleamed savagely, as if the dragon had not gone far. She wanted to touch him, to see how much of that feverish heat lingered on his skin.

But Torch was dropping Anjali lightly to her feet, although he didn’t land. Instead he shot back up to circle.

Anjali handed Bale his clothes, keeping her gaze on Esme the whole time. “Torch doesn’t want to come down until we’re sure the ash-hole isn’t here, or any of his minions.”

“I knew there was a reason I favored capes,” Bale muttered as he dressed. “A dragon can wear a cape.”

“Like a snake wears trousers.” Anjali snickered under her breath.

When Bale glanced at her quizzically, Esme cleared her throat. “I’m remembering more.” She pointed out the buildings. “That was where he kept me overnight a couple times, but that’s his laboratory.”

“Creepy laboratories,” Anjali said. A tinny sound came from her phone and she lifted it to her ear. “Not yours, Pipsqueak. Your lab is friendly and not infested with tongues of frog or whatever.” She rolled her eyes to Esme in commiseration. “I’m going to hang up now and we’ll call you back if we find anything.”

They had to find
something
, Esme told herself. She had to prove herself useful in
some
way.

Torch landed on the lab roof and rumbled.

“He doesn’t sense anyone else around,” Anjali said.

Esme slanted a glance at her. “You can understand him when he’s…like this?”

“I can’t understand him ever.” Anjali smiled to herself, an expression of happiness Esme had never seen on her contrary friend. “But if there
was
someone, he’d be setting fire to them.”

She said it seriously, her smile gone, and Esme felt jolted. Bale had just been
flying
with her over a warlock’s castle, but he changed into a handsome man and thirty seconds later it was like she’d forgotten what he was.

A dragon lord, with the fires of his ichor reignited.

By her. At least for now.

What did that make her? His wife or his prisoner? He’d said he wouldn’t force her, but if he was dying and the Nox Incendi were at stake, would he be able to resist the demands of the reyex?

Oh hell, would she be able to resist him?

He touched her elbow. “Don’t be afraid,” he said. “Whatever happened to you here, it’s over. I’m right beside you.”

He thought she was worried about Ashcraft, but really
he
scared her. Though not as much as she scared herself.

Torch had dropped from the roof and was dressing with Anjali’s help. Or hindrance, maybe, since her hands lingered on him.

Esme averted her gaze, embarrassed by the prickling of heat in her belly. Torch was a sexy male in his own right, though he was built like an air force bomber compared to the sleek jet that was Bale.

She slanted a glance at the dragon lord beside her. If she’d chosen to become his true mate, she’d be able to touch him like that whenever she wanted…

But she’d wanted only an end to her virginity. He’d taken that along with some of her solarys power, not that she’d been using either for herself.

No wonder Lars hadn’t hesitated to use her when it was so painfully clear she had nothing better to do with her own body and mind. She’d been a tool, in several meanings of that word.

After she straightened his t-shirt, Anjali handed Torch a gun.

Esme recoiled. “Where did you get that?”

“Stole it from my ex-uncle.” Anjali scowled. “He was planning to shoot me with it so if it gets used in the commission of a crime, seems fair if he takes the blame.”

Her heart thudding somewhere in the vicinity of her stomach, Esme realized she was being hopelessly naïve
again
. Did she honestly think, after everything he’d done or been willing to do, that Lars would stop? No one else in her life would believe how he’d used her—magic mushroom engagement ring, indeed—and if anyone would stop him, it would be these people with her right now.

She fell into line behind Anjali who was behind Torch and the gun. Bale was a silent, steady presence at her back.

“He liked to talk,” she murmured. “When he had me here, he told me things. I don’t remember it all, but he liked making it clear how little I knew.”

Anjali glanced back at her. “I remember that about him. Not fondly.” She shook her head. “If only he’d used his money and connections and intelligence for something good.”

“He was using it all for his
own
good,” Esme said. Although at least he’d done more with his power and riches than she had.

How sad was that?

They entered the lab building. There wasn’t any security; apparently Lars had figured an illusion-disguised island in the middle of a dead lake surrounded by impenetrable walls was all he needed.

“He always wanted more,” she said. “Nothing he had was enough. And he feared death would take it all away.”

Anjali nodded. “That’s why he wanted the dragon ichor.”

“He never learned there are worse things than death?” Bale huffed quietly. “We can teach him that.”

Esme shivered, not so much at his words as the memories that guttered in her brain like the creepy missing frames of a horror movie specter creeping up on her. “He talked about how much easier it would be to control people if he could just promise them eternal life. He said that when I managed to get out from under the influence of the drugs and crawled out of the room where he kept me.”

Bale put his hand on her nape under the braid he’d given her and rubbed the tensed knot at the base of her skull.

She tilted her head into the silent comfort. “Is it wrong to want to shoot him myself?”

“After what he did to you, I’m sorry we chose vigilance over vengeance.”

She sighed. “No. You did the right thing. You have too much at stake.”

“Next time, you can choose his fate.”

She twisted her head to stare at him. “What do you mean next time?”

Bale regarded her steadily. “He won’t stop. He’s had a taste of real power, and as you noted already, that won’t be enough.”

Torch returned to their little group. “Nobody here. Just like the dragon told me. Joel will text me if he sees anybody else in the area, but I’d rather not get caught in the evil warlock’s castle after dark. Just sayin’.”

“I’m with you,” Esme said. “Let me show you the things he told me about.”

They gathered up everything they could find of his makings for the black oil dragon traps including a few vials of the rare cactus flower that counteracted the symptoms of stone blight.

“Piper will be psyched to have these,” Torch said.

Anjali lifted a stack of hide-bound tomes. “Alchemical notebooks. Not the ash-hole’s, much older than that. Rave will want to read them.”

Bale unearthed a plain black journal, its leather corners still pristine. “A blackmail list,” he said after flipping through it. He glanced at Anjali. “You and your uncle are in here.” He flipped another page before his gaze lifted to Esme.

Her pulse stuttered. “Let me see.”

He handed over the journal, and she fought against the stiffness of her neck to look down.

In Lars’ handwriting, which she recognized from the few notes he’d left her during their brief, bogus engagement, she read a very short recap of assets and downsides. It was the sort of memo any businessman would make to himself about a company he might want to acquire. Or an enemy to destroy.

Except it was about her.

Passive and pretty
caught her eye first.
Grandmother is a cunt
was in the opposing column. Oh, if only he knew. But maybe if Grand-mère had been more of a cunt, he would’ve decided she was too much trouble by association and found some other unwitting victim.

He’d kept a running tally of what he was dosing her with and when. It was a long list with some unfamiliar words. He’d scheduled her more lucid periods for when she’d be out in public, and he’d eased back on the hallucinogens when he’d thought she’d ODed one night. How sweet of him. He’d been studying the effects in preparation for orchestrating their wedding.

But it was the last line that made her stop. It said only
Too bad
.

“What?” The word tore at her throat.

Anjali looked over her shoulder. “Some of those are mashups of traditional voudoun medicines and juju potions. I know them from my uncle’s shop.” She paused when she got to the end. “
Too bad
? The fuck does that mean?”

“Nothing good.” Esme’s lips felt stiff, frozen. Maybe he’d suspected she wouldn’t survive the sacrifice, lost in his attempt to trap and kill a dragon. Maybe he regretted his course of actions. Though whether that regret was aimed at kidnapping and drugging or maybe having to marry her was unclear.

“Ash-hole,” Anjali muttered. “Fuck him.”

“At least I never did that.”

Her friend nudged her shoulder. “Hey now, so I made a mistake. We all make mistakes.”

Esme flushed. “I didn’t mean—”

“Oh, I know. I was just teasing. Who’d fuck him when they had
that
?” She nudged Esme again, turning her so they were both watching the dragon-shifter males load up their plunder.

“That is good booty,” Esme admitted.

Her friend smirked. “Right?”

Both males straightened, as if suddenly aware of the predatory interest focused on them.

Anjali hustled over to put the black book in their pile. “Be interesting to see who else Ashcraft was targeting. Might give us some new allies. Since I take it we don’t care that he knows we were here.”

“Care? Nah,” Torch said. “He’ll know for sure since I plan to piss in his bed before we leave.”

Esme listened to them with half an ear as she drifted across the room to a cabinet they hadn’t gone through yet. She fingered the lock.

It was the only place they’d looked that had another layer of security.

The chill of the steel seemed to sink into her fingers, spreading upward.

“What is it?” Bale stood at her elbow.

“There’s something in here,” she said. “I can’t remember…”

He brushed her hand aside gently and gripped the lock. With a backward wrench, he ripped the door off the cabinet. The steel shrieked at the invasion.

The sound was nothing compared to the cry in her head.

Chapter 13

Figurines. For a moment, Bale just blinked at the oddly lifelike little figurines propped in tidy rows on the cabinet’s shallow shelves. Seemed strange for a grown man to keep dolls.

Esme made an inarticulate noise of horror just as his tracking gaze fell on the willow blond figurine in the middle, a bit taller than his spread hand.

It was Esme.

She swayed, and he grabbed for her when he thought she might fall.

But she was only shrinking away.

“What did you—” Anjali stepped around the torn cabinet door he’d dropped to the ground. “Oh shit. That’s a lot of fetishes.”

Bale swiveled his head to stare at her. “You’re kidding.”

She shook her head. “We had voodoo doll kits at Papi Herne’s House of Hazy Daze. You just added paint in the eye color of the person you were trying to influence, got some of their hair and a piece of their clothing, and—”

“He did that to me,” Esme said in a strangled voice. Her face was blanched whiter than the salt outside.

Bale gripped her arm. “Stop it. It’s just a toy.”

But Anjali shook her head. “The kits were bullshit, but don’t discount the power of sympathetic magic. Two elements, if similar enough and linked together, will resonate no matter how much distance is between them.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Bale snapped.

“It’s how true mates work,” Anjali shot back. “Why do you think the Nox Incendi dragonkin recognize their solarys at first sight? It’s quantum entanglement.”

Torch held up his hand. “Don’t get her started on this. We’ll be here all night. In an evil warlock’s castle, which I said was a bad idea already and is now worse because there are spooky clown dolls.”

Anjali peered closer. “That one’s not a clown. I think that’s a state senator.” She whistled an off-key note under her breath. “I don’t think we were giving the ash-hole enough credit.”

Bale pulled Esme away from the cabinet. “Whatever he was doing with your fetish, he failed.”

“No, he didn’t,” she whispered. “Because he didn’t make me that. It’s what I already was.” She yanked away from him and swept past the counter where the glass beakers and vials reflected her angry stomp.

He didn’t realize what she was planning until she grabbed the miniature version of herself from the shelf and brandished the utility lighter she’d snatched from the bench.

“Esme, no.” He strode after her.

Anjali jumped toward her with a similar warning.

But his bold princess pulled the trigger on her tiny flame thrower.

And cried out as her own hair blackened and singed.

The stench of burning hair almost gagged him. He grabbed her braid in one hand, extinguishing the smoldering ends, at the same time Anjali knocked the lighter away from her.

Torch’s eyes were wide and sparking with his wary dragon, searching for an attacker. But the only threat was Esme’s own ghosts.

Bale dragged her back against his chest, crushing the scorched, brittle braid between them. Free of the knot he’d made at the bottom of the plait, the pale strands fell forward to curtain her face as she bent forward over his restraining forearm.

“That’s all I am,” she said in a broken voice. “A pretty, dead-eyed doll on a shelf.”

He leaned forward too, curling around her to shield her from…herself. “That’s not true,” he said. “He couldn’t control you. You escaped him.”

“I didn’t escape. He made me into a lure for a dragon lord, and there I go.” She twisted out of Bale’s arms, and in his disbelief, he let her go. She wheeled to face him. “The strings were cut, and
I still did the dance
. What does that make me? Worse than a doll. Nothing. Nothing at all. A ghost living out my last days.”

“You’re not a ghost,” he grated. “You think I wouldn’t have noticed that when I had you in my bed?”

“Of course you wouldn’t have,” she snapped back. “You were a shadow too. No wonder you thought I could be your solarys. We’re entangled, but it’s not real.”