Vibrations under my left butt cheek drew a low growl of irritation from me. “Hello?” I waited but no one answered. Oh. Yeah. That only worked after I swiped. I reached under me, wiggled the phone out of my pocket, smeared my fingers all over the screen, then pressed it against my cheek. “Yeah?”
“Luce? Where are you?” Rixton barked. “I have thorns in places that have never seen daylight, a tick burrowed in my navel, and a rash resembling the Easter bunny on my throat. Me and thirty of our closest friends spent all night combing the woods behind your house. What in God’s name happened? Where the hell are you?”
Hazy memories solidified into a nightmarish tableau that snapped open my eyes.
“Buck was attacked. He emptied a clip before backup arrived, but whatever bled out was gone when we got there. He sustained a head injury and his leg is broken, not that you asked. Now I’m going to ask one more time. Where. The. Fuck. Are. You?”
“I’m . . . ” I squinted against the sunlight pouring over the foot of my bed. No. Not my bed. “I’m . . . hold on.” The head rush as I sat up left me reeling. “I don’t know where I am. I don’t recognize this place.”
“Luce?” Miller entered the room holding a soda, his gaze zeroing in on my phone. “Tell him you’re fine and that you’ll be home soon.”
“Are you insane?” Stockholm Syndrome had not set in, if that’s what he was hoping for, and no way was I telling my lifeline to call back later. I was clinging to Rixton until Miller pried him from my cold, dead fingers. “Where am I? Why am I here? What is that poking me in the—?”
Cole. I was in a bed. Cole’s bed. He was stretched out beside me. Naked. A wall of hard, male flesh.
I shielded my eyes before they dipped past his navel. Okay, fine. So his happy trail dragged my gaze a skosh lower than his outie. The heat sparking low in my belly chilled to glacier coldness when I dragged my attention higher. Bandages covered his chest, and fresh blood seeped through them.
Cole slept with his head at the foot of the bed, and his wide palm wrapped my ankle in sleep. His watch and wristband had gone the way of his clothes, and both his wrists were bare. Thick scar tissue ringed each, and when I shifted my leg a fraction, dragging his hand into the light, a single rose gold band glittered in the valley created by the raised skin.
The first thought that balled tires through my head left me giddy. Cole is like me, like Jane. That meant he must have answers. The second slammed on the brakes. Hard. Cutting out the metal worked for a few days. I had no blemishes where the doctors had removed their test section on my upper arm. Regeneration had taken three days? Four? How many times must he have bled to earn those ridges? Over and over and over again. The third thought sat idle as I worked through the ways this could have happened. No matter the scenario, I came to the same end conclusion. He hated those bands. That’s why he kept them covered, why he kept digging them out of his skin. Knowing I had seen them would leave him feeling exposed. Of that I felt certain.
A thrumming rattle moved through his chest as he resettled, the noise as close to a purr as human vocal cords could produce.
“Luce.”
Rixton’s snarl snapped my focus back to him. “Give me two hours.” I challenged Miller with my timeline, and he nodded agreement. “I’ll meet you then and explain everything,” I promised my partner. “Just don’t rat me out yet.”
“Your dad is pulling out his hair, and he didn’t have much to start with. I can’t keep this from him.”
I made a fist in my lap. “Two hours.”
He ended the call first.
“The dragon was real.” I pointed out the fist clamped around my ankle, remembering the solid weight of a coiled tail doing the same. “That is the dragon.”
“That is Cole.” Miller offered me the drink. “You need the sugar. We don’t need shock to set in again.”
Again? “How do I know you’re not trying to poison me?”
The stupidity of that statement heated my cheeks. They had a dragon. Cole was a dragon. He could swallow me whole and there would be no evidence left behind. Who needed poison with a dragon on the payroll?
Miller popped the lid on the can, took a long drink, then opened his mouth and stuck out his tongue to prove he’d swallowed.
“That’s gross, and I’m not drinking after you.” I scratched a red welt on my wrist, and another memory popped into the forefront of my brain. “Thom bit me. What the hell is wrong with you people? Who are you?”
“We’re your people,” Thom said from the doorway. “I’m sorry I entered your me space, but my saliva has a narcotic effect. You were in pain. I helped.”
Nope. Nope. Nope.
I changed my mind. I couldn’t accept this. Too much crazy too fast. Dragons that shifted into men, okay. I owned a Kindle. I read paranormal romance. I could get behind non-people-eating-dragons. But men with narcotic saliva? Men who drank out of other people’s drinks? That was the last straw, no pun intended. Gah. Gallows humor strikes again. Apparently I wasn’t yet convinced I wasn’t going to die horribly at the hand of these . . . whatever they were.
“I was in a car accident a few days ago, and I sustained a head injury,” I informed them. “For all I know, none of this is real. I probably cracked my skull like an egg, and my brain seeped out on the pavement before the EMTs arrived. A coma would explain why I’m living a paranormal romance novel.”
Miller and Thom exchanged the look that men gave each other when a woman was being difficult. Well boo-hoo, guys. Cry me a river. It must be so terrifying to wake up and realize humans were real. Oh wait. Flip that around. This was happening to me. Except with more terror and more dragons.
“Would you feel more comfortable outside?” Miller pushed open the door, and blue sky beckoned. “We can sit on the deck and talk, and then I’ll drive you to meet your partner.”
“All right.” I gave my leg an experimental tug, and Cole growled under his breath. “What do I do about him?”
Thom held up a finger, darted from the room and then returned with a plush orange pony in his hand. “It’s not mine.” He tipped up his chin. “It’s Portia’s.” He crossed to me, set the toy aside and pried open Cole’s hand. “Do the honors?”
I wedged the pony under Thom’s hand, its head smooshed against Cole’s palm. Thom let go and, like a bear trap springing closed, Cole clenched his fist and resumed sleeping.
“Healing takes its toll,” Thom said when he noticed I hadn’t stood yet.
Nodding, I eased off the bed. The ankle that had gotten me into trouble in the first place bore my weight without so much as a twinge. I bent my legs, testing the knee the dragon— Cole—had crushed, but it flexed without aching. Confident my legs wouldn’t collapse under me if I had to make a break for it, I escaped out the door, Miller and Thom at my heels.
Beyond the curiosity factor, the one quirk of my biology that got me in the most trouble was the fact I healed fast. Really fast. So fast doctors salivated at the idea of poking me full of holes, cutting me, hurting me to test my limits. Never had I healed injuries to this extent in such an abbreviated timeframe, but, then again, Thom’s saliva might have boosted my already hearty immune system.
The exit leading from Cole’s bedroom opened onto the massive deck from last night’s fiasco. I walked backward, admiring the rest of the structure. The design reminded me of articles I’d read on the Winchester Mystery House, with doors that opened onto air and staircases that terminated mid-climb. “What is this place?”
“It’s home,” Thom answered from his position behind a chair he had drawn out for me from a wrought-iron table. “This is where we live when we’re not working.”
“All of you live here together?” I sat and allowed him to push the seat in for me since it weighed a ton. “Are you all . . . dragons?”
“We’re a coterie, so yes. We all live together,” Miller said, joining me while Thom crouched where a third chair might have gone. “None of us are the same as Cole, or the same as each other for that matter, but we are all charun.”
“Demons,” a smug voice grated out behind me. “The closest approximation for you is to say we’re demons.”
Leaning forward, I spotted Santiago floating in the water near the edge of the deck. Most folks don’t do morning laps in swamp water, but I guess he wasn’t most folks. Or even a folk since he wasn’t human.
“There was nothing demonic about Cole.” Infernal? No. Ethereal? Yeah. That I could believe. I shifted my hips to keep Santiago in sight. “Is he right?” Miller seemed the sanest of the bunch. “Or is he being an asshat?”
A tight smile curled his lips. “Both.”
“That thing we saw in the swamp the night Jane Doe was discovered, that was one of you too?” Having been on the bitey end of the super gator, I had no trouble believing it had clawed its way out of hell. “It’s a person too?”
“Hear that, boys? Cole is a swoon-worthy dragon. The rest of us are just things. We’re its.” Water splashed, and Santiago heaved himself onto the dock. Snorting, he shook off like a wet dog and sprayed us all. “Some things never change.”
Thom hissed at the spattering droplets, or maybe the posturing was meant for Santiago. “She doesn’t know any better.”
“Stop defending her and grow a pair, Thom. She doesn’t care about you or Miller or Portia or me.” He advanced on Thom, leg cocked like he might kick sense in to him. “It’s Cole. It’s always Cole. It’s always been Cole. It’ll always be Cole.”
“What is your problem?” I demanded. “So what if I like Cole? How is that any of your business?”
Peeling back his lips over his teeth, Santiago snarled, “You asked him out on a date.”
“It’s her right—” Thom began.
“Fuck her rights,” Santiago snarled. “What about our rights? What about what we want?” His lips curved into a cruel smile. “Or what we don’t want. He walked out on you, didn’t he? Given the choice, he left you. Unless you force him, he’ll always leave you. Gods, you two make me tired.”
Thom hissed a warning at Santiago, and Santiago grabbed him by the throat until Thom’s face purpled.
Bolstered by a surge of pissedoffedness, I shoved out of my chair and stalked over to them.
“Back off, or me and you are going to have a problem.” Forget reaching the end of my rope. I was seconds from losing my grip on reality altogether. Bullies were bullies regardless of species it seemed. “This is between us. Leave Thom out of it.”
“Standing up for the weak link. That’s different.” Santiago cocked his head and pursed his lips, forgetting Thom for the moment. “No, I don’t believe the act.” He leaned forward, his nose almost brushing mine. “You don’t fool me.”
A fluid conversation sparked between Miller and Santiago in a language beyond my comprehension. Done with playing human, Santiago huffed and walked away from all of us, tensing his muscles at last moment before he reached Cole’s door. As easy as breathing, he sprang up to one of the second-floor rooms, climbed in through the window and slammed it shut behind him.
“I should go.” I jiggled my leg, anxiety pushing me to run as far and as fast as possible. “Can you drop me off at the hospital?”
“Do you want to check on Jane?” he asked carefully.
“No. I want to check in.” I shook my head. “I need an alibi for last night, and this is the only believable one. You drop me off, I stumble in, folks scramble. I’ll tell them a Good Samaritan found me walking the road and left me at the portico. They’ll admit me, and the tests will begin.” A shudder rippled through me. “I’ll tell them I don’t remember what happened after I jumped through the window to escape the super gator. They’ll assume I hit my head when I landed or jiggled my brain again.”
His jaw slackened. “You hate hospitals.”
“That’s why Dad and anyone else who knows me will believe it’s the truth.” I offered him a weak smile. “Rixton will need convincing after that phone call, but I can make it work. I don’t lie. People don’t expect it of me.”
“You could tell them the truth.” He put it out there with an air of expectation I would out them.
“I’ve seen enough movies to know how that ends for you guys. Torches and pitchforks.” I frowned up at the window of Santiago’s room before zeroing in on Cole’s door. “Cole saved my life last night. The way I see it, he could have let that thing—that demon—kill me, or he could have eaten me himself. Instead, he got hurt protecting me and brought me here, to his home. That kind of trust . . . I can’t repay him by betraying him or his family.”
A light filled Miller’s eyes that suspiciously resembled hope. “We all need to sit down and talk once Cole is awake. You must have questions.”
“Only a million or two.” First and foremost . . . Am I one of you?
“We’ve got a lead on the Claremont girl.” Mischief sparkled in his eyes. “Are you interested?”
“Yes!” I was desperate for a distraction, and I couldn’t shake the feeling Maggie’s abduction was linked to her disappearance. “Spill.”
Miller caught me up to date on White Horse’s findings on the drive to the hospital. Thanks to Super Gator Fever, a cutesy nickname coined by the media, dispatch had been fielding calls left and right. When I asked how he knew this, he just smiled and chatted about the weather until I caved and let him keep his secrets.
According to his sources, amid the frenzy of reported sightings and pranks, one solid lead had trickled through. “A man who lives in the Dunleavy Apartment Complex claims to have witnessed a car run over a small animal from his balcony. He figured a cat. A girl, a teenager by his estimation, saw it happen, then rushed over to check on the injured creature. The driver, an older man with a shiny spot on top of his head, pulled over and joined her. Together they bundled the animal in a shirt the girl removed from her backpack. From there, the girl got in the car with him and they drove, he assumed, to the vet clinic.”
“Why didn’t he report this sooner?” The similarities between that incident and the one Mr. Hendricks, the school teacher, had relayed to me through his classroom window the night Maggie vanished got my blood pumping. The urge to ditch the hospital and say screw it to an alibi kept my thoughts pinwheeling, but the memory of silken scales beneath my palm hardened my resolve to cover my trail, and Cole’s. “It’s been all over the news.”
“The caller’s job sent him out of town for a few days. When he returned home and heard about a second disappearance, he called the tip line.” Miller flicked on his blinker and made the next to last turn. “The Claremont girl was taken on a Friday. It’s football season. There’s a pep rally in the gym every week before the game. The caller didn’t sweat the pickup because the guy who hit the cat was wearing a polo in school colors. He figured the driver was a teacher and that’s why the girl trusted him enough to get in his car.”
A balding teacher with a penchant for committing vehicular manslaughter on strays?
“Robert Martin.” Heart drumming against my ribs, I wriggled in my seat, unable to hold still. “A license plate number from that distance is wishful thinking. How about a description of the vehicle?”
“About that—We have a small problem. The SAC was notified, and he’s pinched the lines of communication we were monitoring closed.” He grimaced. “We’ve bumped heads with Special Agent Kapoor a few times. He’s young and hungry. We can’t expect him to discount the caller as a crank. He’ll pin him down and interview him, and we’ll be left picking up the crumbs.”
“Can you beat Kapoor to him?” The white box of the hospital loomed ahead, and I gripped the door handle hard enough the plastic groaned. “Get ahead of him?”
“Not sure.” Rather than turn under the portico, he pulled into the pharmacy parking lot next door. “We have certain resources at our disposal. Santiago is tapping into those as we speak.” He passed me a card with digits scribbled across the back. “You can contact any member of the crew for updates.”
I added that card to the one already burning a hole in my pocket.
“Kapoor gave me his number.” I couldn’t leave without making the offer. “I could—”
“We can’t afford to draw attention to ourselves.” Miller cut his eyes toward me. “We stay safe by keeping a low profile.”
“I’m hardly low profile,” I argued. “And he approached me.”
“Kapoor is smart, and smart humans are dangerous humans. He sought you out for a reason, and until we know what that is, I don’t want you anywhere near him.” He drummed his fingers on his thigh. “We’ve researched him, but his record is clean. Spotless. I don’t trust it. You don’t make it where he is without getting your hands dirty.”
“You think he’s not who he says he is?” A chill whispered up my spine.
“None of us are who we say we are,” he said on a laugh. “Why should he be any different?”
And I thought I was paranoid.
“Cole . . . ” I hesitated remembering Santiago’s anger when the dragon toppled. “He’s okay, right?”
“He’s survived worse.” Miller’s lips hitched to one side. “He’s almost as tough as he is pretty.”
A surprised laugh burst past my lips. “How does he feel about being called pretty?”
“He broke Santiago’s jaw two weeks ago for painting his claws with this holographic nail goop Portia uses. He ought to know better than to fall asleep sunbathing on the deck. It’s too much temptation.” He chuckled at the memory before sobering. “The rest of us . . . not all of us are like him. Not all of us are . . . pretty.”
“As long as you don’t try and eat me when you’re being your other self, I don’t care how you look.” I had a sneaking suspicion the same rule of thumb I applied to people might hold true for demons too. “Beauty is a reflection on the genetic soup we got served. It says nothing about your character or personality. Pretty is just that. Pretty. Substance is what matters. Clichéd as it sounds, it really is what’s inside that counts.” I unbuckled my seatbelt. “As long as what’s inside isn’t me in your belly, we’re cool.”
He scanned my face. “I can almost believe you mean that.”
“Believe it.” I studied him right back, curiosity a prickle under my skin. “Can I ask you a personal question?”
Miller popped his neck, limbering up, before he nodded for me to go ahead.
“How did you end up here?” In this town, this country, this world. I left the scope of his response up to him. “How did you end up with the coterie?”
“I . . . ” His expression twisted before he rearranged his features with careful blankness. “I was born the nameless son of a prince. Nameless because my mother, a slave who worked as a laundress, dared give me nothing of his.” His inhale pained him. “I was born hours before his wife gave birth to a daughter, their third. Males inherit in our culture, and even being bastard-born made me his heir.
“The prince’s wife learned of my existence when I was nine and ordered me drowned in the river where my mother did her washing. Mother stood against them, and they slit her throat. Her death . . . unleashed a terrible power within me. I killed them, and the darkness within me grew. And then I killed my father, his wife, their children—my half-sisters—and any who stood in my path. I was a scourge upon my people until the day . . . ” He tugged down the white T-shirt beneath his polo, exposing an inch-thick band of stacked rose gold rings encircling his neck. “Joining this coterie saved my life, and swearing fealty to a master who was stronger, who could put me down if I crossed those lines again, saved my sanity.”
“A master?” The word tasted bitter and strange.
“Each coterie is led by a high demon. The groups vary in size and species, but the only true limit is how far their master’s control extends.”
Cole. He must be talking about Cole. Their leader, their master. No wonder he went to such lengths to protect them and their secrets.
“Don’t pity me,” he said softly. “I don’t regret my choice.”
The enormity of what Miller had confided didn’t stick. Overflowing with new and dangerous information, my brain was Teflon. He might as well have been summing up the latest science fiction blockbuster. His story didn’t feel real, but the pain in his eyes was genuine. What had I gotten myself into with these people? What sort of power did Cole wield that he controlled such powerful beasts?
“Thank you for telling me. I won’t betray your trust.” I heaved myself out of the SUV and plucked at my muddy pants and tattered shirt. The pavement seared my bare feet, and I hopped from foot to foot. “At least I look the part.”
“For what it’s worth,” he said, voice raw, “I’m glad to have you back.”
I huffed out a sigh. “I have no idea what that means.”
“Call when you’re ready to find out.” A shadow crossed his face. “Then we’ll talk.”
Miller refused to budge on his keep-Luce-in-the-dark stance, so I shut the door and hotfooted it to the rear of the hospital. Walking through the front doors invited too much attention with me muddied and my clothes torn. I didn’t want folks thinking I was auditioning for a The Return of Swamp Thing revival. That meant I had to be sneaky.
Fewer people smoked on the job these days, which was a relief for my allergies, but made the move I planned to execute dicey. I located a nice patch of hedges and squatted behind them then checked the time on my phone. I had thirty minutes until Rixton blew a gasket and my cover. I wasted twenty of those waiting in the bushes.
A harried nurse shoved through the emergency exit and kicked a brick between the door and the frame. I waited until she tucked herself into the alcove that would hide her should anyone pop their head out the door, then texted Rixton where to find me, ran across the lot and ducked inside the building.
I imitated the zombie shuffle so popular on television these days, and it didn’t take long for a nurse to do a double take and ask if I was all right. She attempted to support my elbow, and I recoiled. That’s when her eyes sparked with recognition, and I released an inner groan. Not her again.
“Hey, I know you.”
Careful to keep my gaze distant and out of focus, I mumbled nonsense syllables.
“You’re Luce Boudreau. I don’t know why I didn’t put it together sooner.” Her eyes sparkled with mischief. “Must have been that nurse uniform that Valerie Burke is swearing got stolen from her locker. That girl . . . ” She clicked her tongue. “Let’s just say she lies like a rug and most folks walk over her like she is one.”
She reached for her phone, and I cringed imagining tomorrow’s headlines and photo accompaniment. Wild Child Boudreau returns to her swamp woman roots. Shows up caked in mud and dazed at hospital. Is history repeating? Find out tonight at six.
“I go to church with Nancy and Harold Trudeau. That’s why I recognized you. He came by earlier flashing your picture and checking to make sure you hadn’t been admitted. The poor man’s beside himself.”
“Uncle Harold,” I said softly to assure her I was lucid.
“You poor thing.” She scanned the hall, then snapped her fingers in the direction of an open door. “There we go. We just discharged this patient. We don’t keep rooms empty for long around here, but you’ll have a few minutes while housekeeping comes in to spruce things up for the next occupant.” She showed me to a chair since the bed was rumpled. “Sit tight, and I’ll call Harry.”
The nurse, Ida Bell, made the call at my elbow as though afraid I might toddle off or tip over if she took her eyes off me. She snagged a coworker from the hall and asked him to bring me a soda from the vending machine, then pulled the curtain in the ceiling around to shield me from prying eyes in the hall.
Five minutes later, she poured me a Sprite over ice chips in a foam cup and offered me a packet of peanut butter and honey crackers from her pocket. “Thank you.” I toyed with my straw, but I knew without trying the food and drink wouldn’t go down and stay that way, not after the night I’d had.
Ten minutes later, Dad barreled into the room and yanked me out of the chair and off my feet into a spine-cracking hug. Uncle Harold was on his heels and thanked Ida for her kindness. Fifteen minutes later, I had laid out the story and agreed to a few tests to reassure Dad my brain hadn’t detached and wasn’t bouncing around in my skull. Twenty minutes later, I had been checked into my own room.
News of my disappearance must have spread. No doubt the house had been staked out and all my known associates trailed in the hopes of catching a whiff of story. How fitting would it be for the swamp girl to die at the jaws of an alligator first spotted in the same waters where she had been rescued?
Exhausted from the past twenty-four hours and cold from the clinical surroundings, I pulled the paper-thin sheet up to my shoulders and pretended I wasn’t back wearing the same flimsy hospital gowns I recalled from my last stint as the resident lab rat. Fatigue blanketed me until twitching my toes required herculean effort, but I couldn’t turn off my brain, and sleep evaded me.
Maggie was still out there. Alone, maybe hurt, definitely terrified, while the worst that could happen to me was I get served lime Jell-O with my next meal instead of cherry. Okay, so maybe that wasn’t the worst-case scenario. I did still have to figure out what to do about Cole and his coterie. Those fears melded with the others, and their combined weight pushed me under. Shivering, I dreamed of pearlescent scales and dragons who ate doctors for breakfast.