Vampire Dragon (34 page)

Read Vampire Dragon Online

Authors: Annette Blair

Tags: #Fiction, #Romance, #Paranormal, #General

BOOK: Vampire Dragon

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“Sam, Al, go look for his wife. What’s her name?”

“Bronte. Bronte Dragonelli.”

“She is my daughter, Commissaire,” Sanguedolce said.

“It’s not even legal to lock up your daughter, Sanguedolce,” the commissioner said. “Find her,” he told his men.

“Are you hurt?” the commissioner asked. “There’s blood all over your hands and feet.”

“I got stabbed with a poker by thug number three. Yes, that’s the one,” Darkwyn said as one of the officers lined them up.

A medic came over as if to examine him. “No thanks,” Darkwyn said. “Just flesh wounds.”

The medic looked entirely doubtful but he took his cue from the cop who saw everything, and nodded, and the medic closed his bag. “You can be transported to a local hospital, or you can see your doctor when you get home.”

“I’ll see my own doctor, thanks.”

Bronte rushed into the room, embraced Zachary, then Darkwyn. “Oh, the blood. It looks like you slaughtered pigs in here.” She looked around the room. “Whose blood is that?”

Nobody said a word.

“Darkwyn?” she asked. “Who died?”

“You’ll have to check the body count on the pavement out back. One or two thugs went out the window.”

She went to check. “Hey, that’s Boris, down there. He’s been coming to Drak’s longer than Raven Shadow. A mob man . . . in my world all this time. This didn’t all happen because you talked, Darkwyn.”

“I figured that out,” he said. “But I still should have kept quiet.”

Bronte shook her head, relieving him of blame. “You were provoked.”

“You got here fast, Mrs. Dragonelli,” the commissioner said. “My men?”

“I met them halfway. They’re getting the guy I tied up downstairs. I anchored him, arms, wrists, ankles, and legs, to separate cell bars; poetic justice and all that.”

“You do like to do it up right,” Zachary said. “Now give him my mother’s jacket.”

Bronte started to take it off, but stopped to focus on Zachary. “What happened to the book of evidence?”

Zachary shook his head. “Burned to a crisp.”

Bronte removed her sister’s denim jacket which she’d taken from the attic. “Officer, you might know Sanguedolce as a mob boss that you can rarely pin anything on, but if you look behind the crocheted rosebud in this pocket, you’ll find a camera chip.”

“There
was
an evidence book,” Zachary said, “but it’s ash in the fireplace, right there. Doesn’t matter, this chip has a picture of every page and every picture. It pretty much tells you where all the bodies are buried, half a century’s worth.”

Sanguedolce shouted, “No,” as if to the universe, but no one listened, except perhaps the growing hoard of angry spirits crowding him, half a century’s worth. And they were not happy.

Darkwyn looked from Zachary to Bronte and wished that Sanguedolce saw the spirits of his evil work the way they could.

Darkwyn had never seen Zachary smile like he was now, and he suspected that old Zachary Tucker might be bolstering the boy’s satisfaction.

Puck ruffled his feathers. “Happiness.”
Squawk.
“An agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another.”

Zachary faced his stepgrandfather. “You above all know that life ends in a blink.”

The wind hissed a moan, as if agreeing, and the sun peeked out for less than a second.

Darkwyn knew he’d helped
Bronte
reach her goal: to best Sanguedolce and free herself and Zachary.

He would like to think that he had also bested Killian, except that she’d stopped torturing him on her own.

No, the evil one was not a sorceress to give up easily. For now, he must accept a partial victory. Bronte’s victory.

The cop who’d been there all along took off his hat, scratched his head, and gave Darkwyn a questioning look. “Vampire
Dragon
?”

Darkwyn raised his chin. “Just another man in a costume.”

The cop gave him a double take, scanned the blood on the floor, and turned to Zachary. “How about you, young man? What can you tell me about your stepgrandfather’s crimes?”

“Hey.” Zachary gave an exaggerated shrug. “I’m only a kid.”

FORTY-NINE

“I’m only a kid,” Darkwyn mimicked, as they reached
the roof of Castello Sanguedolce several hours later.

Bronte put an arm around Darkwyn’s waist, and squeezed Zachary’s shoulder on her opposite side.

“I didn’t want to be detained,” Zachary said, “and with everything the old man knows, that could have been like a life sentence. No, the evidence
was
all in the book, or it used to be. Old Zachary always worried they’d find it and destroy it, so I got the idea to take pictures.”

“Bronte, why didn’t that cop ask you any questions at the end?” Darkwyn asked. “You’re a mobster’s daughter.”

“Stepdaughter! I’m a woman; I played dumb and got taken away. Zachary, now he fought with old Zachary’s emotions, so no wonder the cop asked. And you, Darkwyn, shape-shifting in front of him. I think he, like the goons, decided to shut up and not get put in a psychiatric ward.”

Zachary grinned. “When they finally put that chip in a drive and took a look, they were so happy, they just let us leave.”

“Which we should do, and fast,” Darkwyn said. “I need to shift again, before something—”

Killian appeared right there on the roof beside them, sending her ten-fingered lightning his way, up close and personal.

That fast, Darkwyn pushed Zachary and Bronte aside, knocking them to their knees, but he couldn’t stop focusing on Killian to worry about that. Neither could Killian stop fighting him long enough to care that Bronte and Zachary now stood behind him, because the evil sorceress had grown weak throwing all her energy at him through Sanguedolce, and not pulling it back. Calculated error, there.

He had more strength than her, but which of them could outlast the other?

“I’ll help you, Darkwyn,” Bronte shouted.

“Crackle here, fire there.
Snap your heels; sizzle’s fair.
Gone her strength, no one cares.

This my wish, harm prove ill.
Darkwyn’s fight, aim to kill.
Banish Killian at his will.”

The
hiss
and
sizzle
,
fizzle,
and
pop
, however powerless, broke Killian’s concentration long enough for Darkwyn to turn back into a dragon, turn her power on her, so the evil sorceress screeched, glowed gold, then blue, then,
pffftt
, she turned to air.

“Has she disappeared to regroup?” Bronte asked. “Or did I get her in her Achilles’ heel, pure fake distraction? Is she gone?”

“Yeah,” Zachary said. “Did you win?”

One never knows with Killian
, Darkwyn said telepathically.
Let’s get the Hades out of here.

After a satisfactory flight back to Salem, Darkwyn exited the woods near the fairgrounds dressed in his very last set of black jeans and T-shirt, and ruffled Zachary’s hair. “Suppose Sanguedolce had taken that jean jacket, too?” he asked.

“Nothing of my sister Brianna’s meant anything to Sanguedolce, except Zachary. The cop promised that when the jacket’s no longer evidence he’ll send it to us.”

“That house will be released from evidence, eventually, too,” Zachary said. “Our friend the RCMP said that Castello Sanguedolce is mine, so I’m gonna sell it and give the money to kids without mothers, or mothers who want kids. Whatever will please old Zachary.”

Darkwyn shook his head. “I mean, what if Sanguedolce had found the chip
and
destroyed it with the book?”

Zachary flipped a thumb drive in his palm. “I have insurance, right here. And there’s a world of dumbwaiters and getaway tunnels inside those walls. I left backup copies all over the house before I made my big entrance. I heard them take you from the attic, by the way.”

“You could have let us know,” Bronte said. “We were worried sick about you.”

“You only had to wait a half hour more. Besides, if I’d shown myself, I would have been caught with you. Then I couldn’t ply my tricks.” Zachary rubbed his hands together. “I enjoyed that, except for the blood. No, it was best I stayed hidden. Anyway, I’m holding on to the pictures of the book, in case any of Sanguedolce’s highly placed friends makes sure the one the authorities have gets lost.”

“Smart boy,” Darkwyn said. “I disliked that place. I’m sorry you two had to grow up there. Zachary, what did you say to Sanguedolce in Italian that scared him so badly?”

“I’m going to send you to hell.” Zachary released a heavy sigh. “Sanguedolce used to say that in Italian, word for word, before he killed someone—until he delegated the bloody dirty work to someone else. I got it from my soul memories. I don’t think anybody alive could have known.
That’s
what scared him. The words were like ghosts from his past.”

“For a minute there,” Darkwyn said, “I thought you were Zachary Tucker the first.”

“For a minute, I think he took over. He was that mad.”

“I looked into your eyes,” Darkwyn said, “and that wasn’t you.”

“It won’t happen again. The old soul is going into retirement.”

That surprised Darkwyn. “Did old Zachary tell you that?”

“No, we don’t communicate, as such, but I sense these things.”

Darkwyn and Zachary laughed at that.

Bronte looked appalled. “Don’t joke about your reincarnated soul. It already scares me. On a lighter note, it was nice of the cop to look away, more or less, while we flew off.”

“He was probably watching on the security monitors, but he did more than let us go,” Darkwyn said. “He turned a blind eye to meeting a dragon, up close and personal. He saw me transform, half challenged me, and never said another word.”

“There’s more to him than meets the eye,” Zachary said. “He’s the grandson of old Zachary’s RCMP contact, the one you talked to, Bronte. He arranged to get us out of Canada, though he didn’t do it personally. I’m betting he joined the mob as a plant after we were safe.”

Darkwyn gave the boy a double take. “Are you sure?”

“Kind of. He not only looked familiar to my old soul, his name is the same as old Zachary’s contact.”

“Do you think he’s reincarnated, too?” Bronte asked. “I mean, talk about your weird reunions.”

“No, simply on the trail of vengeance. Wanna bet our step-killer killed the cop’s ancestor?”

“What will he say,” Darkwyn wondered aloud, “if somebody asks about Sanguedolce’s dragon?”

“Sanguedolce won’t make the same mistake twice. He won’t mention a dragon nobody else admitted seeing.” Zachary chuckled. “He’s too proud for that, right, Bronte?”

“So true.”

Zachary stopped when he saw the Phoenix. “I’m so glad you survived the fire, both of you.”

“We can say the same.” Bronte blinked her glistening eyes. “Darkwyn saved everybody. When we couldn’t find you, we figured the mob got you, so we went looking.”

Zachary waved a hand. “This is too emotional. I’m gonna see how the place looks.”

“Be careful,” Bronte called after him.

“Yeah, yeah.” Zachary waved but kept walking.

Darkwyn took his wife’s arm. “Relax, there’s no more mob chasing him.”

She sighed, watching the boy. “Remember how we felt when we thought we lost him? I’ll always worry. There are other evils in this world.”

“Just like a mother.”

“A mother? Who’s a mother?”

FIFTY