Hidden Embers (17 page)

Looks were exchanged, but no one spoke, so Quinn, as Dylan’s second-in-command, stood and filled in the gaps. “We’ll take a ten-minute break. If you want to take advantage of Dylan’s offer, now’s the time to do it. If you decide to stay, however, remember what he said. You’re locked into this—whatever the outcome may be.”

Then he turned and retraced Dylan’s path out of the room, knowing, without looking, that Gabe was right behind him.

They were ten of the longest minutes of Quinn’s life. Judging from the looks on Dylan’s and Gabe’s faces, the other two men felt the same, though none of them said anything about the gauntlet the king had just thrown down. Instead, they spoke of mundane business matters, things that needed to be taken care of but that no one had had time to deal with in the wake of all the death and destruction.

Finally, though, the last minute ticked away, and they headed back into the War Room. Still, Dylan didn’t say anything, but Quinn could feel the tension radiating from him and could only imagine what his friend was feeling right now. Dylan had given his very soul to keep the Dragonstar clan alive through the last century, and it sucked that he was being doubted now, when he most needed his council’s trust.

Unable to do much but stand next to him and offer his unwavering support, Quinn did just that, laying a hand on the king’s shoulder and transferring every ounce of healing warmth he had inside him into Dylan.

Taking a deep breath, Quinn braced himself and looked out at the waiting sentries. The room was still full. None of them had left, though Callie and Caitlyn still looked doubtful. The others all seemed solid, however, which was as much as they could expect.

“All right, then. Thank you for your trust.” Dylan turned to Gabe and Quinn. “Gentlemen, please fill us in on what your research has shown in the last few months.”

Gabe went first, discussing each one of the breaks in the safeguards.

“As you know, each of the spells we’ve used to protect our territory carries a certain magical thumbprint that reflects back on its owner. Most of our newest safeguards were done by Travis, Paige, Jase and Shawn, though Dylan, Quinn and I are responsible for the most powerful, outer layers. Their stamp is all over the safeguards.

“But what we’ve found in the safeguards that have been broken recently—like the one a couple months ago when Liam was killed—is that they’ve been ripped apart from the inside. Which means someone had to be inside our safe zone to do it.”

He paused, but when no one said anything, he continued, “I haven’t had the chance to examine today’s break yet, but my suspicion is that we’re going to see the same thing—that the safeguards were torn apart from the inside. And if that’s the case, I’m going to want to compare it to the others, to see if the magical thumbprint is the same.”

Shawn spoke up then. “Shouldn’t you be able to trace the magic? I mean, each of our powers has a distinct signature. We know each other’s, so if it’s one of us, wouldn’t it stand to reason that you’d be able to tell?”

“That’s the weird thing. I should be able to tell, but the traces left have all been corrupted by Wyvernmoon magic. Their signature is very different from ours—darker and a lot messier—and it’s completely intertwined with whatever traces we have left.”

“But isn’t that to be expected in a case like this?” asked Logan. “Can’t you just separate them somehow? I know some of the old magic can—”

“Yes, but we’re not talking just about the Wyvernmoons’ magical thumbprints—we have those in abundance from each of the sites. We’ve managed to identify three Wyvernmoons who have come consistently through the breaks, with the others changing regularly.”

“Who are the three Wyvernmoons?” demanded Paige, the quietest of the sentries, but also one of the most cunning.

“Give me one second and I’ll get to that. I want to finish answering Logan’s question first.” Gabe turned back to the light-haired sentry. “The kind of signature I’m talking about is infused directly into the fabric of the safeguards and the magic used to tear them apart. It can only be left by the person who actually unraveled the spells, ripping them apart.”

“But how can that person be both Dragonstar and Wyvernmoon?” demanded Ty. “The two are pretty much mutually exclusive. Our DNA is different, the spells we use and the powers we wield are all different—”

“Not if the person has switched allegiances. Whoever it is can’t hide the fact that he or she was born Dragonstar. But now that his loyalties have shifted and he’s probably taken a blood oath, much like the one you take before entering my Council, he carries the stamp of Wyvern magic as well.”

“But shouldn’t that make it easier to catch him, then?” asked Shawn. “We should be able to smell the Wyvernmoons on him.”

“I thought the same thing,” Dylan agreed. “But so far, we haven’t been able to find any trace of them—at least not one that didn’t come from Brock and his group being here.”

“Brock?” Travis, who Quinn believed was the smartest sentry by far, leapt on the name. “Wasn’t he one of Silus’s guys?”

“He was,” acknowledged Dylan grimly. His stance screamed aggression, and Quinn knew he was remembering how the last Wyvernmoon leader had died at his mate’s hands—after putting her through hell first. “And now that we’ve eliminated Silus and his son the Wyvernmoons are pretty much in a civil war as different factions fight to fill the power vacuum left by their deaths.”

“But that’s good for us,” Paige said. “If they kill each other off…”

“Oh yeah, that would be great,” agreed Gabe. “The only problem is what they’re using to jockey for position—which, it seems, is mainly us. Each group is trying to prove its leader is stronger than the others by getting in here and killing some of us.”

“Which is where the traitor comes in,” Dylan continued through the horrified silence. “We’re pretty sure that he or she is working directly with Brock, which is why he’s had so much more luck infiltrating the safeguards than the others have.

“That doesn’t mean there haven’t been attempts by others. You all know there have been because you’ve seen them, even fought in some of them, but no one else is having near the success Brock is. And we never see him coming, like we do the others. He’s always in before we even have a clue that he’s around. And today’s incident is looking like it follows the same pattern.”

The room was silent as the sentries absorbed what Gabe and Dylan were telling them. After a minute or so, Riley turned to Quinn and asked, “What else? Dylan said you had things to say, too.”

“To begin with,” Quinn answered, “you know from our discussion a few months ago that one of the main methods of virus transmission is actual injection with the disease. They tried it on a couple of us three months ago, and they’ve tried it a number of times since.”

“You mean when they break in?”

“Yes, and even when they aren’t here.”

“What does that mean?” demanded Caitlyn, who had moved closer to the inner circle. Her mother had died of the virus a few months before.

“What I’m finding is that while not every victim has been injected with the disease—meaning there is another way of contracting it that we haven’t found yet—most of the recent victims have been.”

“But there’s only been three or four Wyvernmoon attacks in the last couple of months,” Jase objected. “Lately, people are dying almost every day.”

“Oh, shit,” said Shawn incredulously. “Are you telling me this traitor is actually injecting his own clan mates with that goddamned disease?”

Quinn nodded. “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

The sentries went wild and Quinn knew exactly how they felt. The act of physically fighting was one thing—they could understand it, they could see it, and they knew they had a better than fifty-fifty shot at winning in battle. But biological warfare was something else entirely—it was something none of them were equipped to fight. Even worse, they’d all seen what it was like to die from this virus. The idea that one of their own was doing it was anathema to them, not to mention absolutely enraging.

“Michael?” Ty choked out, from his spot on the cot. He had pushed himself into a sitting position and his eyes were colder than Quinn had ever seen them.

“Yes, Phoebe found that Michael was injected. Which meant that someone got close enough to jam a needle in him without either him getting upset about it or reporting it. Which means he either didn’t know it happened, or he trusted, implicitly, whoever injected him.”

“Shit, fuck, goddamn motherfucker. Are you shitting me?” Riley was out of his seat and rocketing to the front of the room. “Are you fucking telling me that one of us—one of the
Dragonstars
—killed Michael?”

“And Marta,” intoned Gabe, his face carefully blank as he said his wife’s name. “And God only knows how many others. My daughter wasn’t injected, at least not that we can find, which means that there’s still another method of transmission that we haven’t found. But overall, a lot of dragons have been given the virus that way. That’s what Dylan’s been trying to tell you. Things are much worse than we ever suspected.”

“Well, then, the only question is, what the fuck are we going to do about it?” demanded Logan. “I’m done sitting around and waiting to die of this fucking thing.”

“That’s why we’re having this meeting,” answered Dylan. “So sit down and start talking, because we’re not leaving here until we have not only a plan but a set course of action that involves more than blowing the Wyvernmoons sky high.”

“Hey, I think that’s a damn good course of action,” insisted Jase.

“Believe me, so do I,” Dylan said. “But not until we find out which Dragonstar sold out to them. I’m not putting up with a traitor in this clan one second longer.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

A
thrill of uneasiness worked its way through her. Damn, that had been close. Brock and the others had barely gotten away, and she knew he was going to be furious with her. But how could he blame her when he’d been the one who hadn’t been able to take Ty down on the first shot? If he’d done that, then none of this would have happened. Ty never would have gotten a call for help out, and Brock never would have lost four of his team.

It was his fault all the way, but somehow she knew he wasn’t going to see it like that.

The uneasiness became out-and-out anxiety as she paced the narrow confines of her apartment. She hated the place—would much rather be out at the caves, but she was afraid her duplicity would be written on her face. The last thing she needed was for someone to make the connection between her and Brock. Especially considering how careless she’d been lately. She’d almost been caught today. No one had questioned what she was doing there at the time of the attack, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t once things calmed down. Dylan hadn’t maintained control all these years by being stupid.

But how could she have known that Brock couldn’t live up to his promises? How could she have known that for all his bragging and assurances, he and his group of eight sentries were no match for three Dragonstars. It didn’t bode well for their plans, and if something went wrong…if something went wrong, she was going to have to stay here and blend back into the community. She’d rather not do that in a jail cell.

She snorted. Who was she kidding? Dragons didn’t believe in jail. Either you were loyal to the clan or you were dead. She shivered, thinking of the way one of Brock’s soldiers had laid Ty wide-open. She hadn’t expected it to be like that, had figured it would be cleaner, more honorable. Although why she’d thought that when Brock had proven himself, time and again, to be anything but honorable, she didn’t know.

Then again, it took someone wily and unprincipled to run the Wyvernmoon clan. Anyone else would be bulldozed over in a matter of weeks, maybe even days. No, the Wyvernmoons weren’t known for their honor.

And if a direct attack on Dylan’s sentries wasn’t going to work—and she had a feeling Brock wasn’t stupid enough to try again after the debacle with Ty—then that meant they were going to have to stick to the viral attacks. Which meant her job was going to be a million times harder.

The phone she kept on her left hip at all times vibrated, and she pulled it out quickly, checked the caller ID. It was the call she’d been waiting for. Clicking the phone on, she listened to Brock’s instructions and then hung up without saying anything but “Yes, sir.”

She’d been right. He wanted DNA samples from all the sentries, and it was up to her to provide them. Lucky, lucky her.

Crossing to the small bathroom, she rummaged in the drawer until she came up with her roommate’s brush. One down, twelve to go.

It was going to be a very long night.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

A
fter eight of the longest hours of his life, the meeting finally broke up and Quinn headed back to the lab. His dragon was itchy and out of sorts, and to be honest, so was he. No one understood more than he the necessity of what they had spent all afternoon doing, but at the same time he was desperate to see Jasmine. To talk to her without Phoebe and a bunch of other people watching them. To find out why she’d left him that morning.

Had he been too rough with her that last time they’d made love? Not rough enough? Or had his neediness in the middle of the night totally freaked her out? He could understand if it had. It had certainly freaked him out, as he’d never let anyone else see his problems. The fact that he’d done it with her hadn’t made sense, at least not until he’d understood that she was his mate.

And though a large part of him wanted nothing more than to grab her and take her to bed, there was another part that just wanted to talk to her, to get to know this woman who had so captivated him that his dragon had mated with her—signed, sealed, delivered—in less than twelve hours.

As long as he was being honest with himself, he had to admit that he also just wanted to make sure that she was still there, in the lab. She’d seemed to take everything that had happened earlier that day in stride—Ty’s injury, Quinn’s healing ability, even the fact that they were dragon shifters—but if the previous night had taught him nothing else, it was that with Jasmine, looks could be very deceiving.