Emma (Dark Fire) (16 page)

^___________

Tyler’s morning didn’t go as smoothly as he’d hoped. The observation test was over and blown.

In a small clearing north of Capital City, Tyler impatiently listened to Professor Morgan explain what he did wrong and why. The critique was helpful, but he really didn’t want to hear it. He was more concerned with meeting Emma and convincing her to go flying with him.

Taking her on a picnic, near the Stone Warrior, was a weak excuse, but he really didn’t want anyone overhearing him.

A humorless smile touched his face. Yeah, he didn’t have a choice in confronting her. As Lily bluntly pointed out, his life teetered in the balance.

What seemed like an eternity later, Tyler shifted to dragon. He surged into the air, eager to return home.

He was nearly home when he heard Emma scream through the two-way. The terror within the sound came through loud and clear.

“Emma! What’s wrong? Where are you?”
he mentally shouted, impatiently waiting for her answer. She should be in her rooms. Why would she scream?

“I’m falling!”
she cried. The uncontrollable fear in her voice sent a needle sharp emotion racing through him.
“Water, there’s gushing water!”

“Water? Where?”
he demanded.

“I don’t know. I can’t see!”
She screamed and promptly choked as if she got a mouthful of water. Her words echoed as if she were in a dome.

“Drains? Oh no! I’m in some kind of drainage system!”
she screamed.

How could she be falling? And what water? It was only when she said drains that he connected everything together.

“Drains? Are you on the slide?”
he demanded.

His only answer was her frantic muttering and a cry of pain. Then silence. He turned toward the entertainment wing of Fortress.

Roaring, he dived toward the twisting paths within one of the flower gardens. Changing to wér, he dropped out of the sky, hitting the ground at a run. Darting past warning signs declaring the slide was closed until further notice, he rushed down several flights of stairs, entering the sub-terrain entertainment complex at a dead run.

The large water park was eerily empty. The only movement was water gushing out of dozens of tubes that dotted the cavern walls. Lush vegetation and sand surrounded the deep pools of warm water.

A sound, rising above the gushing water, touched his ears as Emma’s high-pitched shriek erupted across the cavern.

Jerking his eyes toward the sound, he searched for her among the tubes that dotted the wall along the far left corner of the underground cave. As he watched, she flew out of a large tube and splashed into the water.

He ran across the empty cavern, cursing the sandy floor as it slowed his momentum. At the edge of the pool, he plunged into the clear water, reaching her just as her head broke the surface. Coming up behind her, he wrapped his arms around her and began pulling her to the rim of the pool.

“She okay?” Zach called out, as he hurried toward them.

Water streamed from his friend’s hair, turning normally golden locks into a dark wet mess against the white of his shirt. The nilá silk clung to his chest. His matching pants and sleek boots didn’t look much better.

Zach was gryphon. At any other time, Tyler would have ribbed his clan brother over his appearance. No vainer race existed on all of Tuatha. Gryphon, or the golden ones, as they sometimes called themselves were beyond proud.

Tyler took the wet mess in with a glance, but all he could think about was getting Emma out of the water. She was too quiet.

He inhaled and immediately shuddered as the smell of her blood struck him. He changed to human. Slipping his arms under her legs and back, he cradled her against his chest and quickly climbed the steps of the deep pool. Blood dripped down his arm.

Hovering at the pool’s edge, his clan brother watched in silence.

Emma’s eyes fluttered shut and reopened. They appeared unfocused.

Behind Zach, Jenna raced toward them. She was still several yards away when she tensed and slid to a halt in the sand.

“Tyler, should I go for a healer?” Jenna asked, dancing from foot to foot waiting for an answer. “She’s still bleeding.”

Tyler shook his head, “I’m not sure how bad it is.” Sighing, he added, “Jen, I’m not growling at you. I know you’d never hurt her. You don’t need to stay way back there.”

Sitting Emma on the edge of the pool, he gently touched her cheek, trying to gain her attention. “What happened?”

She stared at him. Confusion clouded her eyes. Even after she blinked, and her back straightened, her eyes remained unfocused. Pulling away from his soft touch, she glared at him and shakily demanded, “Where am I? Who are you?”

 “I’m Tyler. You’re my...,” Tyler’s mouth snapped shut. Anxiety sharpened his next words. “You don’t remember me?”

“I’m not sure. I can’t seem to get my thoughts straight,” she fretted, rubbing her forehead. “My head feels like it’s going to explode. I keep seeing a black dragon. I know, I know, there’s no such thing as dragons. He just seems so real.”

He reached for her head, intent on seeing how badly she was hurt.

She slapped at his hand, pushing him away. “Back off. I don’t care how cute you are, you don’t have the right to touch without asking,” she muttered.

“I think Jenna’s right. We need to get her to a healer,” Zach said, kneeling beside Tyler’s crouched position in front of Emma.

“I don’t need a doctor,” Emma grumbled, feeling the back of her head, she hissed. “Ouch.”

“You must’ve hit your head going down the slide,” Zach said with a grimace.

Her pale skin blanched even whiter as she looked at her bloody fingers. “I’m bleeding,” she said in a dazed voice.

Tyler turned to his friend, demanding, “And just why did she go down the slide to begin with?”

“Long story,” Jenna said. Her clothes made a wet-squishing sound as she sat beside Emma. “Will you let me see how bad you’re hurt?”

Emma looked at her through narrowed eyes. Tilting her head toward Tyler, she asked, “I heard him say something about you not hurting me. Why would he say that?”

Jenna sighed. “I get a little tense around blood. It’s no big deal. Come on let’s get you fixed-up before we get into that discussion. I have a feeling you aren’t going to like some of the answers.”

Emma hesitated, and Tyler noticed she was unconsciously leaning toward him. “Please, Em, we just want to make sure you’re okay.”

“All right,” she sighed huffily, tilting her head forward so the other girl could see the back of her head.

Tyler moved from his kneeling position, and sat next to her. Bloody hair greeted his eyes. He gently touched the back of her head. Fear hit him, crushing him in a painful grip.
Hurt!
His dragon bellowed furiously as blood poured from the gash. A deep rumble began in the middle of his chest.

Emma tensed, pulling her head up. Her dilated eyes jerked around the cavern. “Geez, what was that?” she demanded.

Clenching his teeth, he tried swallowing the building growl. Fighting his dragon’s anger wasn’t easy. He shuddered as fury boiled within him. His every instinct screamed at him to kill and destroy.

As much to calm his dragon as Emma, he curled his hand around her bare arm, caressing her skin to skin. He nearly lost it right then and there. Her arm was feverishly warm to the touch.

“It’s nothing,” Jenna soothed Emma, pushing her head down toward her knees. “Now let me see.”

“It didn’t sound like nothing,” Emma muttered, allowing her head to be tilted downward. Tyler’s large hands wrapped around her head, keeping her from moving it as his clan sister inspected the damage.

“Sometimes the waterfalls make weird noises.” Jenna looked up at Tyler and made a licking motion with her tongue. “You or me?” she silently mouthed.

“Didn’t sound like a waterfall,” Emma grumbled.

The veins in Jenna’s eyes shimmered slight pink, but didn’t turn red. A good indication she had her blood thirst firmly under control. As an adolescent chimera, her thirst for blood was a constant battle.

Tyler frowned at the gash. He knew Jenna was right. One of them needed to stop the bleeding. He preferred to do it himself, but Jenna’s saliva had even more healing agents within it than a dragon’s did. He trusted his clan sister, but he also hated asking for this type of help. She accepted the vampire half of her nature, but she didn’t like it when people noticed.

He sighed, not missing a beat as she waited for his answer. He nodded to her, giving her the go ahead to lick the wound closed. “Emma, I’m going to pour a bit of water down the back of your head.”

“Oh, okay. Is it that bad?”

He didn’t answer her. He couldn’t, not when his tongue was stuck to the roof of his mouth in growing shock. His shock turned to pure disbelief as the freely bleeding injury slowed to a trickle in a matter of heartbeats.

Jenna’s startled eyes met his.

Cupping his hands, he poured water over the wound. Clearing up the area didn’t change the outcome. The skin was knitting shut, healing before his eyes. He shuddered as fear skittered up his back. Something was seriously wrong. Mortals didn’t heal that quickly, not ever.

“Huh, well at least she...” Zach grunted as Tyler smacked a fist into his shoulder.

“What?” Emma questioned, squirming under his careful hold.

“Not bad,” Tyler blurted, trying to think of anything to say. Her rapid healing had stunned him, leaving him with a loss of words. “After I poured a bit of water on it, it doesn’t look that bad. You know how small head wounds bleed really badly.”

“Yeah, okay. My scalp feels funny, kind of warm and tingly,” she said, her words muffled against her clothing.

In less time than it took to fly from one end of the castle to the other, her injury had stopped bleeding and sealed closed. Shaken, he poured several handfuls of water over her head, trying to get the blood out of her hair.

“Here, this would be easier,” she said. Leaning sideways, she dipped her head in the pool, swishing her bloody hair through the water.

She sat up and gingerly felt the back of her head.

“Thanks, Jenna,” Tyler said warmly. Gently hugging his shy clan sister with one arm, he smothered a grin as Emma glared at him.

^___________

Emma didn’t have a clue as to what was going on. One minute they were fussing over her head, the next minute the gorgeous hunk was hugging the petite blonde.

She didn’t know either of them so she didn’t have any idea where her surge of jealousy came from, but the emotion was hard and sharp. She felt a wave of complete possessiveness toward the hunky jock. The feeling didn’t make a lick of sense. Dangerous bad boys were not her thing.

She turned away from him and came face-to-face with a golden haired beauty. Only this one was male and so beautiful it made her eyes hurt. Was everyone in the wacked-out place gorgeous or beautiful? Jeez, it was enough to give her a complex.

She shivered. Glancing up, she realized why she was so cold. Not only was she soaking wet, she was in a huge cave.

The place looked like an underground amusement park with obviously fake blue trees scattered around pools of crystal-clear water. The ceiling had hundreds of stalactites hanging down. She frowned. They looked like stalactites, until she noticed they were glowing.

The whole place was really neat, weird but neat. None of it helped her figure out what was going on. The longer she looked around, the better her blurry vision grew, getting crisper as she glanced from the vaulted roof to the pools. Her head stopped pounding, giving her relief from the screaming headache. She remembered falling and hitting her head. Yeah, she remembered that with a grimace.

“I fell out of that tunnel.” Waving toward the gushing water, she turned to Tyler for an answer. “I’m fully dressed and drenched. What happened?”

He started to answer, but scowled when she shivered. “Let’s get you dry. With the slides officially closed, they turned off the heat.” He quickly held up a pacifying hand. “It won’t help, if you get sick.”

Sighing, she agreed.

Refusing to let him carry her, they walked across the sand of an indoor beach. Emma shook her head in wonder at the vast area.

Tyler guided her through an arched tunnel that exited in a smaller cave. The sand stopped, revealing a polished stone floor. Mirrors lined the right side of the room, and a dozen doors covered the far wall.

She tried, but couldn’t stifle her giggle. She hated it when she giggled. “A bathroom? In a cave?”

Tyler grinned at her. She stopped and just stared at the adorable dimple. The image made her hesitate. She remembered his smile. A single look from him and she turned into mush. When she looked at him, a warm glow bloomed through her, an unusual feeling to be sure.

What she really couldn’t figure out, was why in the world she kept thinking crazy thoughts about a dragon. She rubbed her chest, knowing the black beast was actually minor compared to the sick feeling building inside her.

Not simply sick, she hurt! The minute Tyler removed his arm from her shoulder her entire upper body felt like it was going to smash inward. She rubbed her chest, trying to stop the constant ache.

“Emma, are you okay?” Tyler asked. Concern laced his voice. Reaching for her, he stopped just before touching her, letting his hand drop to his side.

She shrugged, and admitted with a worried frown, “I keep seeing flashes of things that aren’t normal. Maybe, I should see a doctor.” She continued rubbing her aching chest. “And my chest hurts. It sounds dumb, but I feel like it’s been cut open, everything ripped out and stitched back together. I feel hollow inside.”

For a split-second, Tyler just stared at her. Then to her utter dismay, he smiled. The face-splitting smile softened his features, turning the bad boy into irresistible, and stunning her speechless.

Nervously, she rubbed her hands together. The empty ache abruptly disappeared. A surge of excitement and joy raced through her soul; a joy so pure and sweet that she gasped in response as it swept through her.