Hollywood Dragon: BBW Dragon Shifter Paranormal Romance (14 page)

Chapter Fourteen

JP circled high above the rising cloud, focusing on the mental plane as he gathered clues about the enemy.

This was definitely a dragon. Worse, this was one of the rarest types of dragon: a cockatrice, the dragon form of the basilisk—an enormous crested lizard that had telepathic power and killed with its eyes. The cockatrice was its bat-winged cousin, a dragon of especial malevolence, not only shooting a thin stream of poisonous fire that would eat through most anything, but like the basilisks, the cockatrices could hear actual thoughts, and killed at a glance. You did not meet the eyes of a cockatrice in dragon form or you would turn to stone.

There was another significant difference: the cockatrice in dragon form ate precious metals in order to make the poison fire. This one, if allowed to, would rip up the entire countryside to find the gold and consume it. Then move on, leaving the earth devastated.

JP circled again and again, thinking rapidly. One, his phoenix could not fight a cockatrice.

Two, this cockatrice could not have mated, or he would have known about the mate bond. He had stayed in human form while JP had checked earlier, no doubt confident that either JP would fumble into his trap, or be totally stymied. And though a cockatrice could hear thoughts, he could only do that with one person at a time.

Now he had shifted back to his cockatrice to fly low over the storage area.
Looking for me.
JP watched from high above, his mind shuttered until the cockatrice suddenly swooped down and shifted back to human.

Three, and most important: Jan’s light was moving rapidly away.

That left JP free to deal with the cockatrice.

He drifted down into the murk and transformed a short distance away, as big, fat, warm raindrops began to fall.

“ . . . she what?” That was
his
voice.

“Shifted to snake form. Got out under the door.”

“Then where’s her stuff? Shit. You’re a fucking bunch of idiots. Go find her. And find that ferret. I’m going to kill the little fucking traitor myself. And where’s the goddamn
car?
” He went on cursing, so JP backed away, turned the corner at one of the buildings.

Sirens wailed in the distance. He sprinted to where he remembered the line of recognizable auras and found Dennis’s group.

“There you are,” Dennis exclaimed as JP emerged from the gradually fading smoke. “JP, we’ve got ourselves a standoff. They say they’ll kill Jan if we don’t clear out, but—”

“He’s lying. She escaped.”

“What?”

“Hear the sirens? Get everyone out of here.”

In the yellow light of the overhead lamps, Dennis’s face transformed to a fierce grin. “Roger that.” He turned away, then turned back. “What are you going to do?”

“Deal with him.” JP blinked stinging raindrops out of his eyes.

“JP, wait—”

JP didn’t wait. He ran back, hearing Dennis issuing orders behind him and the sounds of a hasty retreat. Excellent. It was too much to hope for that Cockatrice’s guys would get rounded up—if they were shifters, too, they’d all just shift and run off.

JP slowed, listening ahead. The cockatrice and his minions had also heard the sirens. “Get out,” the asshole was saying. “We’ll regroup at Alpha Point.”

“No you won’t,” JP said, walking out of the fog, which the raindrops were fast dissipating.

In the distance, thunder rumbled.

The cockatrice was also naked, a big brute with rust-colored hair, taller and broader than JP. “So, come to negotiate for the woman?”

JP didn’t bother answering, just advanced on the guy, who stood easily. He had only two minions, JP was relieved to see. More than that he doubted he could take on . . .

The guy laughed as JP closed the distance—a gloating, confident laugh. That lasted two seconds as JP feinted a punch at his jaw, the first and most expected attack. The cockatrice lazily swiped his huge mitt to knock aside a fist that wasn’t there, and JP’s left, which had been held in classic fist-fighting block position, snapped out and palm-heeled the man in the solar plexus.

Cockatrice grunted in surprise and pain. One minion stepped in, and JP took him out with a piston-fast kick to the kneecap. The guy went down.

“Leave this ass clown to me,” Cockatrice roared. “You can play with him when I’m done.”

He moved in, big, strong, and over-confident. In the space of two heartbeats JP knew that this guy had been trained once, but had long since relied on his size and ferocious rep. He was slow, telegraphed his moves, but he was also solid muscle, weighing probably a hundred pounds more than JP’s 175.

JP landed three, four hard punches then the guy shouted a curse—and transformed.

Instantly JP transformed before he could be annihilated with a single blow from those mighty talons. The wind from the massive wings knocked the minions into walls. The cockatrice didn’t seem to care—all its attention was on JP, who kept head averted and mind shuttered as he darted upward.

His phoenix was far smaller against the bulk of a cockatrice: as men, they were closer to a match, one bigger, the other better trained. But as cockatrice and phoenix, the only advantage JP had was speed. He had to stay above the cockatrice. Predator birds fought downward in what was called the stoop, using the force of gravity to attack and kill.

The cockatrice shot a stream of poison fire at JP, who dodged with a flip of a wing. The fire splattered to the rooftops of the storage facility below, causing a line of flames to shoot up.

Not far away the red lights of a stream of police cars approached. JP had suppressed his glow to make it more difficult for the cockatrice to see him, but that and staying overhead was not going to defeat this deadly enemy.

And JP was tired. He had to act fast.

He shot upward and veered north, away from buildings and farms. The cockatrice pursued, working hard. Its greater strength, once up to speed, would sustain it longer. Twice JP heard the hiss of air that meant indrawn breath for a release of fire. He dropped the first time, and shot upward the second time. Both streams missed, falling to start what people below would probably assume were heat-caused wildfires. He hoped the oncoming storm would extinguish them.

JP felt his own strength taxed to the max by that flight upward. He needed a plan, and fast. But there was no plan—the cockatrice came after him with one intent: to kill.

There was no negotiation here, no civilized agreement. If he won this battle, the cockatrice would rip apart Sanluce. And Jan . . .

JP gave a last longing thought to her, and did what he had known underneath was going to happen—the only choice now left. He dodged a last shot of flame, opened his mind to the fury boiling within him.

And the phoenix vanished.

The fire dragon had emerged.

* * *

Jan had finally put on the headlights, afraid that she would crash into something, or worse, someone.

She jumped, startled, when lightning flashed somewhere, brilliant as the sun. Thunderstorms were so rare in LA, and never with lightning as bright as daylight. She waited for the crash of thunder, but didn’t hear it. Maybe this huge car was soundproofed. She’d finally found the windshield wipers (the ones on her wreck in LA had stopping working years ago) and they tick-whished steadily. The rain fell in huge summer-storm drops, slowly increasing.

Once again lightning flared. She saw it through the windshield, a fast stream of yellow light, as if the sun had shot a bit of itself across the sky.

She drove as fast as she dared, which wasn’t very fast in an unfamiliar car in unfamiliar surroundings. She was making the last turn toward the LaFleur estate when a whole slew of cars raced up on her bumper, then surrounded her. One honked its horn.

She nearly lost control and gripped the wheel white-knuckled, her heart slamming again. It could only be that creep Niklos. If so, she shouldn’t lead him to the LaFleurs, right? What should she do?

Outrun him
, she thought grimly, and was about to step on the gas when a big SUV roared out from a side street and pulled ahead—then stopped. She had to stop or crash into it, as the other cars pressed in.

She slowed, but clicked the autolock, and sat there with her hands on the wheel, cursing under her breath as figures got out of the cars, silhouettes in the rain. A burly figure crossed her twin headlights—she knew him.

She rolled down the window. “Dennis?”

His grim expression changed to surprise. “Jan? I thought you were—”

“I stole it,” she said.

The surprise altered to a grin. “Nice move!”

Lightning flared again, ruddy as fire, followed by another blast of greenish light.

Once again Dennis’s expression turned grim as he looked up.

“That is the weirdest lightning I've ever seen,” Jan exclaimed.

“That isn’t lightning. That is a dragon fight.” He looked up, ignoring the rain, then back at her, as Mick came out of one of the other cars to join them. “You can’t see the actual dragons, especially in those clouds. The green light is the douchecanoe who did the snatch on you. He’s a cockatrice, one of the most dangerous of all dragons. And rare, I’m glad to say.”

“And the other one?”

Mick motioned to her, glancing to one side. Jan got out of the car, still in bare feet, ignoring the rain that hissed around them.

Mick said low-voiced, so only Jan and Dennis could hear, “Well, I guess he didn’t have time to tell you. But that’s JP.”

Jan shook her head. “He’s a phoenix. That can’t be a phoenix.”

“No, he’s also a fire dragon. It turns up very rarely in his family, like once in two or three hundred years. The fire dragon is also one of the hardest shapes to control. It forgets the human very fast. He’s only let it out twice—the first time he didn’t know what was happening, when we were kids. His grandfather did, and talked him down. The second time was in the service, when we . . . “ The two men looked at each other helplessly.

Jan sensed that this was the deepest secret yet. But need was even deeper. “Tell me,” she demanded.

To her surprise, they didn’t scoff, or say it wasn’t her business. Instead, they moved a little farther away from the car as rain beat down on them all, and Dennis said in a low voice, “We were in the Signal Corps, all three in the same unit.”

He glanced at Mick, who said, “We were network operators, in the field to ensure no network failure.”

“Which could lead to slow response for medical evac, or close air support,” Dennis put in.

“But things change fast in the field. What we thought was a rescue turned out to be a trap. I was concussed, half blind—you tell her.”

Dennis said, “We were facilitating a medical rescue. The attack came on so fast we hadn’t a hope. Then JP began to shift. The dragon was there long enough to shoot a flame at the enemy. They dropped their weapons and ran, and Mick and me, well, we threw ourselves on him, shouting in his ears to shift back. Before he flew. Because the thing about fire dragons is, once they get to the heights, it’s like their human self vanishes below. They might never come back.”

“He knew enough not to blast us. And seemed to hear, and just in time. He shifted back, then took a header. We had to helo him out with the wounded. It was twelve hours before he came down from whatever headspace he was in.”

The other shifters in Dennis’s team waited silently around the perimeter, their human faces pale in the criss-crossing headlights, as Jan said slowly, “What are you trying to tell me? That if he wins that fight, he loses? He’s
gone?
” 
No, no,
the inner voice wailed.

Mick said, “Jan, the only person who might be able to call him back is his mate.”

“That’s me,” she said numbly, and to Dennis, “What do I do?”

He spread his hands. “I don’t know—don’t ask me. I didn’t believe in mates. Don’t want to believe in mates,” he added. “Well, except maybe now.” And he turned to Mick.

“JP might not have had time to talk to you about it—about the dangers. . . . the unknown factors. Since he’s only been the dragon briefly, he might not even know if the phoenix’s mate can also
be
a dragon mate. Not all the really big dragons find mates in human form. That might be why they are so rare. And dangerous.”

She blinked against a sudden sting in her eyes. “I don’t give a
shit
about danger,” she said fiercely. “Tell me what I need to do.”

Dennis slowly shook his head. “I dunno. Call him?”

Mick brought his chin down sharply in a nod. “Call him.”

“Here? Now?” Jan asked.

“Whichever way you can. From wherever you think best,” Mick said. “As a phoenix, he can hear people, kind of, by telepathy. Not words, but he said it’s like a GPS system, sort of. That’s how he found you.”

Jan was going to shout JP’s name, but shook her head. As good as her projection was, the rain would muffle it. She wouldn’t be heard fifty yards away much less however many miles up the sky, beyond the rainclouds those dragons were fighting in.