Loyalty: A Dragon Shifter Menage Serial (Seeking Her Mates Book 4) (5 page)

H
ere they stood
, in a strange city, disoriented and lost with no lodging for the night ahead. At least a roof, even a meagre one, would offer visual concealment from the enemy. But this was no tourist zone where hotels stood on each street corner; this looked more like an area where one might get knifed for rooting for the wrong football team in front of a rival team’s intoxicated fan.

There was no safety here—only isolation.

If only Merriman were here,
thought Lily,
perhaps
he could shield us for a time.
But now it was to her companions and herself to come up with a solution. It was time to own their powers.

She felt once again like a small, helpless girl; not at all like the powerful dragon princess that she’d grown into. The powers that she possessed seemed pointless in times like these; a dragon was a no-no, and leaping would only result in moving backwards to times which they’d already inhabited, not forwards.

Teleportation into a lavish suite at the Ritz Carlton would have been a wonderful thing; why wasn’t that in her arsenal of skills?

The only defence they had from roving eyes was the cloud cover and the few bits of metal and stone hiding their forms from above. It would do nothing to conceal the scents of two dragons and the musky smell of Conor, his hidden déor so enticing, so enervating.

“Well, I suppose we need to move,” said Graeme. “If we remain here, they’ll certainly uncover us.”

Seconds later he was proven right, as a black form darted through the air above: the vulture, no doubt spying them in their hiding spot.

“Come,” said Graeme, taking charge and leading the way deeper into a series of dark alleyways.

The buildings on their left and right rose up, charcoal grey and menacing, closed windows hiding whether there were inhabitants and activities within. A feeling of abandonment hung in the air, as though all the structures were derelict, condemned for their failure to stand the test of time.

They moved quickly, running towards a fork which led to the left and the right. But which way should they go? No plan existed yet, other than to avoid the eyes in the sky.

Graeme turned right, leading them onto a cobbled passageway which led far into the distance.

“Any idea where we’re heading?” asked Lily.

“None.” But Lord Ramsey seemed to have some plan in mind, though it lay deep in the compartments of his mind, unreadable to Conor or Lily.

Ahead, their route was lit by dim lanterns, framed in dark iron and hung by bolts from the walls around them. The light was diffused through particles of water which hung in the damp air, creating a dream-like feeling and obscuring the distance in delicate mist. The buildings’ foundations were coated in a dark green moss as though they grew out of the cobblestones organically, ancient and strong despite their disuse.

The three didn’t speak. There was no need to communicate as they had a common goal: avoidance.

As they moved forward, a wall seemed to spring up before them and they turned again, this time to the left. A few hundred feet in the distance they saw cars moving along a perpendicular road, indicating public. Humans. Safety and potential to hide indoors.

They made their way towards the action slowly now, not wanting to draw further attention to themselves.

But they were too late, they soon discovered.

O
ut of a dark
doorway stepped a figure: tall, imposing, broad. A male shifter, built like a fortress, hatred written all over his scarred face.

Lily gasped, the human woman inside reacting before her fire-breather. This man was enormous, threatening. His light hair was close-cropped and he stood before them, feet spread, arms crossed so that his muscles seemed to burst through his tight leather jacket.

The three companions stopped, quickly assessing their limited options. Conor turned to look back the way they’d come. Two other figures were moving towards them; these ones less enormous, but no less determined.

To their right at the base of the building which rose up above them was a darkened semi-circular opening coated in iron bars. A sewer grate, perhaps? It was probably impenetrable; a blowtorch or dragon’s breath would have been convenient just then, but they were too close to the general population to risk shifting. It looked as though a fist fight, or worse, were inevitable.

“We’ve been waiting for you, my Lords,” said the gigantic man before them. “And you’re not making this meeting easy for us.”

My Lords?
thought Lily.
Strange wording, even for one of them. There is only one lord here.

“You know how it is,” said Graeme. “We Lords like to run around alleyways looking for rats. And oh good, we’ve found some. From the looks of it, they’ve mutated in the city sewers.”

The man smiled, his teeth revealing themselves as jagged spikes. Good lord, he was unattractive.

“Hardly rats,” he said. “But if you want to see our true forms, keep running.”

“If you want to see
my
true form, keep approaching,” growled Graeme, pushing himself between the man and his mates. “Do you have any idea who you’re talking to?”

“Lord Graeme Ramsey,
Dragon King,
enemy to my kind and to all shifters.”

“You flatter me,” said Graeme. “I have yet to be called a king, but I’ll take it. As for enemy…”

“Don’t sell yourself short. You are the worst sort of shifter. One with a superiority complex who fails to see his own cruelty. Who thinks my kind inferior, and seeks to destroy all who might threaten his fortune and his prestige.”

Graeme could feel a hand on his arm—whether Lily’s or Conor’s, he didn’t know. Only that it was one of his mates, attempting to remind him to hold back his dragon even as red scales began to appear on the back of his neck as he bristled under his own rage.

“I don’t know about your kind,” he hissed. “But you
are
inferior. You threaten, you pursue. Your people tried to take us out. We have done nothing to you.”

“You have done everything to us,” said the man, who was tearing off his leather jacket as he came. “And now you have mated. Your spawn ensures our destruction. Or our salvation.”

He was moving closer now, and Conor could see the two shifters behind them moving in, breathing hatred through their nostrils. He read no words in their minds, only the coarse glow of emotion. What they wanted remained a mystery, though; they did not look to kill.

Only to take.

L
ily stood between the men
, facing the semi-circular grate at her feet, a broad masculine back on either side of her as her mates confronted the threat surrounding them.

Tension wound itself through the air like tightly-pulled wires, and her mind was a mess of thoughts and emotions as she attempted to find a solution that didn’t involve her multi-coloured Firebird.

The man had spoken of their offspring, his tone threatening, menacing. And she realized in a heartbeat that she had not thought of the Ritual and what might have come of it. For all her strange powers, she had not considered what might be occurring inside her now.

Could it be?

But that matter would be dealt with later—for now it was a question of getting herself and her mates to safety, away from the watchful eyes of humans.

She closed her own eyes, looking to heighten her other senses by robbing herself of vision. What did these three men want? What were they thinking?

To her left, Graeme braced himself not so much for a fist fight but to fight his own déor, to hold it back. This proved more difficult for him than for the others; his instincts had been honed over years and shifting was second nature when a threat arose. In his time, on his land, there had never been a reason to conceal his true nature.

Conor, to Lily’s right, did the same, holding in whatever it was that lurked inside him aching to appear. The rational man scanned his mental banks for a peaceful solution. The creature within wanted to tear to shreds anyone who threatened him or his mate. His
mates.

Lily’s dragon, too, urged her to take the enemy on, knowing that it would win any battle. She could all but feel its massive tail beating from side to side impatiently, asking her to allow its flaming body a release.

“No,” she said under her breath. “Not here. Not now. Stand down.”

She felt her two lovers’ backs tighten as they assumed the pose of fighters, ready to spar bare-fisted if necessary with their opponents as their assailants came to a stop within a few feet of them. Overhead, she knew, the vulture still circled, a beacon for any members of the Stranieri who sought them, announcing their location in no uncertain terms.

On the ground near Graeme sat a large stone, likely a fallen relic from one of the building’s façades. His fingers twitched as he raised it without touching it to the height of his eyes, preparing the floating trajectory to deploy as artillery against the large threat looming before him.

As Lily braced herself for the mayhem about to unfold, a loud clang sounded at her feet. Her eyes shot open to see the head of a young man, standing in the dark space below the building. Somehow, he’d pulled the iron bars away from the rounded opening, which was now large enough to slide through in single file.

In the distance pedestrians had begun to congregate at the entrance to the alleyway, curious about the altercation which was unfolding before their eyes.

“Come with me,” the man below Lily hissed in a loud whisper, gesturing frantically. “Now.”

There was no other choice, and no time to assess him. She stepped forward and leapt into the abyss, calling to the other two as she did so.

Each came after her, quickly but reluctantly, neither wanting to flee. By the time they’d turned around the young stranger had thrust the bars back into position, the shifters outside trying to kick them in. But it was a futile pursuit; the bars weren’t moving anytime soon.

“How did you do that?” Lily asked, watching in wonderment. The iron seemed to have embedded itself once again into the building’s stone as though it had been part of the structure for centuries.

“It’s a little trick I know,” the man said, walking away and gesturing to them to accompany him. “I’m sure that you have some gifts too, dragon.”

“You’re one of us,” Lily replied. She could smell him now, and see his mind: he was leading them somewhere that he knew would be safe for a time. But in him was also a sense of panic, of imminent danger. He knew how powerful those men in the alleyway had been, though he didn’t know exactly what they wanted.

“Yes, I am one of you,” he said. “And I’ve been looking for you.” With that, he threw on a black cloak, reminiscent of those that Xin, Asta and Duncan had worn. Their allies in London; the ones who’d known Lachlan.

“You’re…” Lily began again, searching for a word that she hadn’t yet learned.

“We call ourselves the Díegol,” the man said as he walked into the darkness, leading them along a stone wall, feeling his way with his fingertips as though in search of a hidden object.

“Díegol?” asked Conor. “What does that mean?”

“Secret, dark,” said Graeme. “Old English.”

“It is the name for those of us who hide our identity from the enemy. And you are among us now. Some of us are human—the ones who help our kind. Others are shifters, like us. We look to keep the peace, to maintain the safety and secrecy of shifters. To fight cruelty and evil. Ah,” he said, his fingers landing on a loose stone which jutted out an inch or so from the wall. He pushed it inwards and the low rumble of sliding rock sounded from their left.

“It will be quite dark for a little,” he said, “but follow me and I will light the way.”

An opening had formed in the stone wall, tall enough for even a large man to walk through. As they followed the stranger, the door seemed to read their movements, sealing itself shut. They found themselves in total darkness, walking along precarious downward-sloping cobbles. The shifters’ eyes took a moment to adjust, and then they could just make out one another’s faint outlines.

“Under Edinburgh are a series of passageways, known as the Vaults,” their guide continued. “Hang on one second, and I’ll show you.” His hand reached again for something against the wall and he extracted a wooden torch from a recessed opening in the stone. From his pocket he pulled a lighter.

“I know that you could do this with your breath, but this bit of tunnel is a little small for a dragon.” He lit the torch, which revealed an arched length of steep passageway ahead, ancient and worn by time. “But follow and I’ll lead you through.”

As he led them, he told them about the passageway’s history.

“Most of the Vault is well-known, some used for what they call ‘Ghost Walks,’ used to teach tourists to fear the underground. Originally built centuries back as storage for merchants and tradesmen. But these—the ones we’re in—were built for another purpose entirely.”

With that he held out the torch, revealing that they’d arrived at a large, open space, leading far into the distance. Its ceiling was high and arched, its walls so far apart that they could no longer be seen.

“These,” he said, “were for déors, during the Dracan Wyrre. The Dragon Wars.”

“
W
hat are you talking about
, with these so-called Dragon Wars?” asked Graeme. “We dragons fight on occasion. But outright war? I’ve never heard of combat in Edinburgh by our kind.” He spoke in the present tense, forgetting that he now found himself centuries outside of his own time.

“Oh, there have been many battles in the sky above this city. One reason that the buildings are so heavily constructed of thick stone is to protect against the likes of you,” said the man, who had taken off at a confident pace, leading them into the depths of the underground. “You will see records around this area of Scotland, in artwork and in books, as well as hidden in iconography all over this part of the world. Most humans regard it as fantasy, mythology, of course, no more a part of our true history than a gargoyle is. But it happened, regardless of what you may think, and many of us were around to witness the bloodshed. Some who were there are still alive to speak of the carnage, the mass extinctions caused by the conflict.”

“Extinctions?” Lily found her mind reeling at the word. “Who—what—went extinct?”

“Some very powerful species of déor. Various great cats, hounds, other creatures. Some of the greatest of our kind. It would take many hours to give you all of the details. But because of the fighting and never-ending conflict, Rituals and the breeding of young shifters came to an end for many noble families, and so their offspring lost their abilities or never had them; they reverted to mere human form, and their ancestors fell into legend.”

A flash of memory hit as Lily recalled the family tree in Conor’s house in London, where the mating of one woman to two men had abruptly ceased in the fifteenth century. She wondered if there was any relationship to these Wars that the man spoke of.

“And so what happened then?”

“As I said, they lost their abilities. Many have long since forgotten that their ancestors ever had any, of course.”

“Just one moment,” said Graeme, stopping in his tracks. “We’re walking around pitch-black tunnels, following you along with some sort of blind trust, like you’re a tour guide in a museum. What is your name, and where are you taking us? Why should we believe you or anything you say?”

The question was for his own sake only; Conor already knew the answers, though he remained silent. And in all likelihood, Lily did as well. But Graeme nevertheless felt protective, hostile to any threat. He needed to understand.

“My name is Kyne,” the man said, halting and turning to face them so that they could see his features lit by the torch’s flame. He looked about twenty years old, though for a shifter that could mean a good number of things. His eyes were orange, outlined by yellow and accented with dark, narrow lines leading outward from the pupil like a wheel’s spokes, which gave him an other-worldy appearance. Something in him reminded Lily of Merriman; though he lacked wrinkles he seemed somehow ancient, knowledgeable and more skilled than he let on. “And I am taking you somewhere safe, for now at least. An inn, belonging to an old friend, one of the human Díegol himself. He is kind enough to house our kind on occasion, though his staff is human and so you must take care not to let them in on your secrets.”

“Thank you, Kyne, for your help,” said Lily, turning to look sideways her companions as though to tell them that they too should be grateful for the unsolicited aid. “But I don’t understand—why are you assisting us, if you know we’re dragons? It sounds like we should be universally hated. Or rather, that we are.”

“Because I hate no one, even those goons who threatened you. I want to help. I believe that you do as well. I feel that war should remain an element of a long-forgotten past. And nothing in me dictates that I should fear you. You are not bad; you simply have genes in you that could make you so. It isn’t your fault.”

“Why thank you for the kind compliment,” said Graeme, his sarcasm coming out in a growl.

“Do not ask me to be kinder than that, Lord Ramsey,” said Kyne. “Yes, I know who you are. A mutual acquaintance of ours warned me that you three might show up today, and that you would likely find yourselves in some mess or other. I see that he was correct; without me your face would be a bloodied mess by now.”

Graeme took a long step towards the man and Conor held him back, grasping his upper arm.

Don’t,
he said.
You don’t need to prove your strength here, and you don’t know what he’s been through in his lifetime. Let him be.

Graeme held back, silently acknowledging receipt of the message.

“It would be somewhat more helpful if we understood what we’re up against,” said Conor, changing the subject away from dragons. “Much as I search my own mind and those of others, I receive only mixed messages.”

“Ah, you’re a telepath,” said Kyne. “Well, at least I know that I can trust that you believe me when I tell you that I’m here to help. And so your mates must do the same.”

“They do,” Conor replied, sensing a growing calm from his companions; even from Graeme.

“As for what you’re up against, I can only tell you that it is the Stranieri who seek you out. But the reason is unclear. If they’d wanted to kill you, they would have tried to do so already. And let me just say that they’re not in the habit of sending thugs to confront enemies in dark alleys; they’re usually more covert than all that.”

“Well, so far they’ve proven the sort of organization that shows up at a house with an army and attempts to break in using a really, really big bird,” said Lily.

“That doesn’t sound like the Stranieri that I’ve grown to know over the centuries,” said Kyne. “Those are the manoeuvres of a desperate organization in a hurry to acquire something.”

“Acquire?” said Lily. “What?”

Kyne turned as he walked and looked towards Conor.

“I don’t know,” he said.

A chill ran down Conor’s spine then. The man had a theory, and neither of them liked it.

“There is only one section of tunnel that may bring a little danger,” said their guide after a time. “Coming up in a moment. It is accessible from the outside, unfortunately, and vulnerable.”

“Do our enemies know about it?”

“That I cannot answer, though perhaps
you
can.” Kyne looked at Conor once again, searching for any information that a telepath may have acquired.

“I don’t sense anyone coming for us yet,” he replied. “Though I hesitate to assume that all will run smoothly.” He didn’t want to tell them that his mind was otherwise occupied, fashioning theories of his own about their enemies’ motives.

They came to a sort of narrowing in the tunnel’s shape, which now bottle-necked to a passage still wide and high, but clearly denoting the end of the large chamber that they’d spent the last half hour hiking through.

Overhead, a little light poured in through what looked like a grate leading to the street. Kyne reached down and doused his torch in a shallow puddle to his right.

“We’ll have to proceed without our own light source,” he said softly. “No point in signalling the world of our presence. Please—keep quiet.”

Despite its having shrunk, the tunnel was nevertheless large enough for all four to walk through side by side. They proceeded cautiously, eyes turning upwards as they passed beneath one grate and then another. So far, no sign of trouble.

It was after they’d passed the third, though, that Conor’s eyes closed and he stopped in his tracks, a hand reaching out from his sides to halt his companions.

“What is it?” asked Graeme softly.

Lily could feel it too; something wasn’t right.

A shadowed form skulked through her mind, unclear but menacing; a man creeping through the dark towards them.

A moment later, her fears were confirmed as a quiet splash erupted from behind them. She and her companions turned to see that the last grate lay open now, light from the city now pouring in.

Before them stood an enormous creature: a cat, with teeth as long and broad as daggers, prowling towards them through the dark.

“
T
hat’s rather large
,” said Graeme. “It looks like…”

“A sabretooth,” Kyne said. “So much for not being seen from above. It’s the man you saw in the alleyway; the giant thug with the leather. This is his déor.”

They could smell him, his scent stronger now than his human’s had been, filled with hostility, his adrenaline kicking in for whatever underground battle lay ahead.

Running was not an option. Even if not for pride and duty, a large cat would have beaten the companions’ human legs in a footrace any day. Now was the time to shift. There were no tourists about to impede them, and these tunnels had, after all, been built for their kind.

Graeme went first, as always thrusting himself between his mates and danger, his red dragon arching its neck almost immediately towards the cat, who halted, its own back curved upwards, ears laid back in threat.

Lily and Kyne stood back, assessing the situation. Graeme’s dragon could take the beast, they knew. But a little help wouldn’t go amiss. Logistically, however, the tunnel could only support so many déors side by side.

Any hesitation was brushed aside when the other two men leapt down through the hole that the cat had used. It seemed that Kyne was not the only shifter about who knew of the Vaults’ existence, and they wondered how many others might show up.

Lily braced herself for her own change as the other two enemies altered into their forms: a sleek, emaciated-looking cheetah and a jackal, each baring teeth as they skulked behind their leader.

Conor, recalling Graeme’s anger when he’d taken charge and defended Lily against the Mrs. Fitzpatrick look-alike, stood aside, allowing his friend the glory of the moment. Graeme, he knew, revelled in his power and loved his dragon form. He was in his element. And something told Conor to hold off for the moment, until the time was right.

Seconds later, Lily’s flaming dragon-phoenix hybrid stood next to its scarlet companion, the two a menacing pair, showing their strength to their much smaller enemies.