6
She blushed a little at his words, clearly flattered. He felt his cock react to her. He wanted to sit her on his lap right here, and—
Shit, that was just the start.
“I don’t see why it matters if I like it,” she objected.
“You’re special,” he said. “I want you to feel like this is…this is a place where you can belong.”
“I won’t pretend I’m not flattered,” she said, and he felt his whole body warming more at her pleased smile. “Though I’m still not sure why I’m so—special.”
“Well, there really aren’t that many dragons, honestly,” he said. “And even if there were a lot of us, we have to be a part of the world. Having humans as our friends, our allies—it’s incredibly important. It’s been important all our lives.”
“So you need, what? Men, women on the outside?”
“That’s…well, that’s a mercenary way of putting it. I guess my uncle would probably put it that way. Dad’s a little more—romantic, maybe? He says it’s about interdependence. Just like everything else in the world. We rely on each other. We’re not that different from humans who aren’t shifters, anyway.”
Rachel looked skeptical. “Except you have lairs carved out of stone.”
“Well, yeah,” he said. “There is that.” Probably not the best time to talk about what was in the hoards. Not yet. She was still getting used to a lot of things about his world. “Not just carved, if it’s any consolation. This isn’t all one big piece of marble. It’s joined, mostly. And if you look up in the ceilings there are a lot of small openings for ventilation, that sort of thing. It’s not as perfect as it looks.”
“Is that a dragon shifter thing, making things look perfect?”
“It’s…it’s not uncommon. But it’s not really my style, if you want to know the truth.” He wanted to slip his arm around her waist, but he wasn’t sure if it was the right time. “I guess I like things to feel a little less planned. Little more real.”
“I’m all for real,” she said. “Though I can’t deny that this is pretty.”
“It’s even more beautiful when the sun’s out. I can’t wait to show you.”
She walked ahead of him down the stairs, so he got to watch the gentle sway of her hips as she moved. She might have been wearing just a straightforward pair of jeans and a sweater, but the way she filled them out was still something to see.
With her walking ahead of him, he didn’t have to worry so much about his…interest showing. And he sure was interested. Dad had told him that he’d know, beyond all doubt, when it happened, when he saw his mate. Dad had been 100% right.
All he wanted to do was pull Rachel in his arms, kiss her passionately, and take her into his hoard.
“Brad?”
Oh. He hadn’t been paying enough attention. “Sorry,” he said. “Just thinking.”
“I’m just going to grab another drink before the rest of the tour,” she said. “I’m just—I guess I got dehydrated, with everything that happened. And the sardines were salty.”
“Of course,” he said. “And—”
His thoughts were interrupted by the rumbling, like an earthquake that appeared to start at the center of the mountain. He caught Rachel’s arm. “Hold on,” he said. “This place is solidly built, but—”
“This is why I came out here,” she said. “And it’s not—you’re sure it’s none of the work you’ve done here in the mountain?”
“More than sure,” he said. “This place has been here for decades, and we’re well aware of the potential impact our actions have. The patterns don’t match up to any of our activity. I think—I fear—that it’s those other dragons. Anyone reckless enough to attack you might not care about what damage they would do to the mountain around them.” It certainly didn’t make much of a long-term plan. “I took a look when I went to find your stuff, but—well, they didn’t leave any calling card. I guess that’s not a surprise.”
He wished he’d seen what had happened. He wanted to know what his family was facing.
He wanted to throttle whoever it was personally, too, but that was another story. He couldn’t risk a war without having a better idea of what was going on, no matter how much he wanted to.
The rumbles faded, but he kept his hand on her arm, steadying her. The urge to pull her into his arms was almost too much to bear. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” she said. “We need to know what they’re doing, though. As soon as we can.”
“Agreed.”
“Your uncle—well, is there anyone in your family with geological knowledge?”
“My younger brother’s studying mineralogy,” he said, “and Doug’s an engineer. Grandpa was a stonecutter. He learned it from my great-grandfather, who was from the old country. Slovakia So—some? A lot of hands-on experience.”
“I’m worried,” she said. “If these people don’t have a good understanding of what they’re doing, they could do some real damage. Bring down the lair, and everything around it.” They both started walking down the stairs again. “Including us.”
That wasn’t an encouraging thought.
“So…what do you do?” Rachel asked. “When something like this happens?”
“It’s not common, which is good, but also why I have to check in with my uncle. There’s protocol. Complicated protocol.” The kind of thing he was glad that his uncle handled and not him. “He’ll have to ask the other clan leaders if they’ve seen this sort of thing, try to figure out who might be wanting to overstep their boundaries. A lot of careful discussion and negotiation. I don’t really have the patience for it. One of my younger brothers will probably take over as clan leader, when Doug passes it on. Or a grandkid.”
“Not your sister?”
“She’s not a shifter,” he said. “Most women aren’t, and not all men are, it can skip a generation. That’s one of the reasons it’s so important to honor our relationship with humans who aren’t shifters. Without them, we wouldn’t have many little dragons around.”
She smiled at the thought. “Little dragons, huh? Can you shift when you’re babies?”
“Not babies, but toddlers,” he said. “A lot of shifter families end up home schooling, because they don’t want any embarrassments. We went to public school, though. Doug and my dad were pretty adamant about that, actually. They thought it was worth the tradeoff. It’s not like people don’t know shifters exist.”
“Did you ever—blow your cover?”
He grinned. “We did not, which just made them feel more vindicated that if a dragon shifter was just raised right they’d never screw up and shift as little kids. I’m…a little skeptical about that, myself.” Accidents could happen to anyone. “One of my best friends ended up shifting on a playground in first grade, just before he fell off the jungle gym. Didn’t want to break anything, so he went soaring. Flew all the way home. His mom came back from work, found him crying in his bed.”
“No one from the school called?”
“She’d just gotten a job, and the school didn’t have her number yet. From how Jace tells it, there was a lot of yelling.”
“I bet,” she said. “I’d freak out if a kid of mine had been home alone all day, for sure.”
But not about the dragon part. Brad felt his heart warming, along with everything else. I told you, his dragon said.
They’d reached the bottom of the stairs, and he resisted the urge to take her hand in hers. “So,” he said, settling for standing at her side, close enough to feel her warmth. “I promised you a tour.”
“You did. I confess, I’m looking forward to it.”
He offered his arm. It felt old-fashioned, but he wanted to touch her, and it seemed like an offer that would be easier to say no to.
She smiled, a gentle, sweet smile that made his insides tighten and his dick twitch, and took it. Her arm felt warm in hers.
“So, let’s start where you started, the room you woke up in, at the end of the hall. You’ll find it a little it different than it was. The…special features were pretty well hidden.”
“Special features,” she said, and he could hear pleasure and curiosity in her voice. “That sounds very interesting.”
“I’m not sure it’s that exciting,” he said. “But everything here is custom-made for shifters in both forms, dragon and human. Which means that they have to be big, to accommodate wings, and the lighting is pretty soft.” He opened the door to the chamber. “Dragons have excellent eyesight, which can make harsh lighting—well. Harsh. Also…we like gold.”
The recessed lights had golden fixtures, and there was a line of deep gold trim about a foot down from the ceiling.
The real treasure was the floor, though. It was a patterned marble inlay, with gilt covering the mortar. Totally impractical, of course, which is why it was only in the guest room.
“What the heck?” she said. “How did I not notice that?”
“You didn’t notice it because our magic told you not to,” he said.
“Wow,” she said. “What else didn’t I notice?”
“Not much, honestly. Using your fingers meant you saw how to get out of the room early. And I didn’t show you more than here and the kitchen and bathroom.”
“I still haven’t seen the bathroom,” she said. “You just showed me where it was, and I—I guess I was too busy being hungry.”
“You needed to eat, for sure,” he said. “I wouldn’t apologize for that. You’ve been through a lot today.”
“I guess you’re right. It still doesn’t really feel real yet, and I still don’t know why. I mean, all I had was a few instruments. I can’t believe I posed any kind of threat to them, you know?”
“The kind of people who would do what they did to you—” A shadow passed over his face. “They’re not the kind of people who make smart decisions. Clan law is pretty clear about getting close to another clan’s lair, and we don’t have much patience for hurting innocent people. Whoever it is, they’re either desperate or dumb. Maybe both. With a side of just plain evil. If they show up again—” Anger flashed over his face for a second. “Well,” he said. “After dinner, I should be able to talk to Doug…even he’ll be getting worried that he hasn’t heard from me. We’ll start getting things straightened out, and get you safe.”
“Thank you,” she said. “I honestly don’t know how I’ll explain it all, when I get back.”
“We’ll have to figure out a cover story,” he said. “You’ve probably got some pretty good bruising, so we can probably do something with that.”
“Thanks, I think.”
“Come on,” he said. “I want to show you the rest of the lair. The individual hoards are off-limits, but you can see mine.”
“You…you really have a hoard?”
“I’m a dragon,” he said. “There are expectations to live up to.” He pointed at the doors in the hallway, showing his well-muscled arm in the process. They were big, too, though they didn’t seem as spacious as the main doors were. “So all of these are family hoards, and they’re locked. Mine’s next to the kitchen.”
Of course. The hoard next to the kitchen. He said it as matter-of-factly as saying he had the top bunk when he was a kid.
“I have a window, so that’s nice,” he said. “Little bit of a different view than you get from the radio room, if it hasn’t gotten too dark.”
“That sounds nice,” she said. “Is it getting too dark?”
“Maybe,” he said. “But at least you can see the room.”
Without the magic obscuring the real lair, she could see the claw marks that sometimes scraped the marble floor. She could see the brass hooks hanging from the walls next to the lighting; something for young dragons to hang from, perhaps? “You came here when you were a kid?”
“We used to visit pretty often,” he said. “If you’re wondering if I hung off those rings when I was a little dragon, the answer is yes. I went to college in Florida, but then I didn’t have much luck finding the job I wanted, and Doug asked me if I could take a little time working in the family business. He’s right that I can build up my resume that way, even if I did want to break out on my own to start.” He shrugged. “You know how it is. You don’t want things handed to you.”
“I get that,” she said. “My mom still wants to know why I didn’t just take over the family business. She says out here’s no place for a lady.”
“That’s…old-fashioned,” he said. “What do you say back to her?”
“Not much any more,” she confessed. “She—I love her. I’m proud of her. She’s worked really hard to run her business, and to help her community. She—I feel like she doesn’t believe me when I say that, but I do. But I can’t—”
“You wanted to do your own thing.”
“I wanted to be a geologist,” she said. “I wanted to work with mountains. Not smile at customers until my face ached.”
“She’s got a store? A restaurant?”
“Little general store,” she said. “I come from a tiny little town in New Hampshire. Not much goes on there. I spent most of my time out in the backyard digging up rocks and pretending to write scientific papers in my notebook.” Of course at her age, the scientific papers were generally “This rock is cool. It is bluish-gray,” but hey, she’d been little.
“So you’ve wanted to be a geologist your whole life.”
“Well, not my whole life,” she confessed. “I wanted to be a scientist, always. But sometimes it was rocks, sometimes I wanted to work with animals. I definitely didn’t want to work at the store. Guys were leering at me before I even hit puberty, I swear. And after that—” She’d always been curvy. And men didn’t know how to keep their mouths shut, especially when your job was to smile through whatever crap they threw at you. She sure wasn’t going to stay in town and put up with that. And if she ever had kids of her own—they were never going to have to put up with that. No more rotting away in a town small enough to suffocate you.
The university was a pretty small town too, but it felt different. More open, less crushing. And she got to do what she loved. Every day.
She wouldn’t trade that for anything.
“Anyway. I wanted a career in science, and I would have worked just about anywhere else in the world but at that store. So I got a scholarship, and I got out. But she was counting on me to run the store, and I guess she’s never really forgiven me.”
“Were you her only child?”
“No, but I ended up…kind of holding the bag,” she said. “My older brother had a free pass because he was the boy, there was nothing he could do to disappoint her. And my little sister uses a wheelchair, so Mom decided she couldn’t do—well. Anything. Got her out of working at the store, but getting her into college was almost as much work as doing it myself. And of course she wouldn’t give us any help.” They’d both had to file a ton of paperwork that basically said ‘Mom doesn’t want us to get an education.’ “My brother liked working with his hands, building. He’s a master carpenter. I don’t know if Mom would’ve kicked up a fuss if he’d wanted to go to college or not, but I do know she didn’t expect him to smile for the customers 24/7. That was my job.”
“That sounds hard,” he said. “Was your dad around?”
“He died when my sister was a baby. I never knew him, not really. She and I are only eighteen months apart. My brother was a little older, but not enough to really remember him.” She hadn’t known her dad’s family well, either. Most of her life it’d just been Mom and her brother and sister. “I know it wasn’t easy for Mom. I know that. I just wish she’d realized it wasn’t always easy for us, either.”
“What’s your sister doing now?”
“She’s still in college,” Rachel said. “Graduate school now, she wants to be a professor, in linguistics.”
“You must be pretty proud of her,” he said.
“Yeah,” she confessed. “I am.” Penelope had always worked damn hard. They’d earned their degrees and then some, and she couldn’t wait to see what Penelope did next.
“I’d like to meet them someday,” he said. “At least your brother and sister. And it’s past time for you to see my hoard.”
“You—you can’t show that to just anyone.” Wasn’t it full of gold, or treasure?
“No,” he said, matter-of-factly. “I’m showing it to you.”
“Okay,” she said. “You’re…awfully trusting of someone you just pulled in off the mountain.” And he’d said he wanted to meet her family, too. That was a lot of confidence in a woman he’d just met.
“I don’t have any reason not to trust you,” he said. “And…I’m kind of holding most of the cards here. Your phone isn’t working, your snowsuit is torn, and I can turn into a dragon.”
“When you put it like that—”
“And you—let’s just say I’ve got a good feeling about you.”
“I…I have a good feeling about you, too.”
His smile got a little shy at that. “You do? Well. Good. I’m glad.”
“So…a hoard? Like, a real proper dragon hoard with…gold?”
“A real proper dragon hoard with gold. And jewels, if you like those better.”
She’d never really thought about it. She hadn’t exactly grown up surrounded by fancy jewelry. “But really, a hoard?”
He laughed. “Come on, I want to show you.”
If there was anything that took her aback more than anything else, it was how much Brad seemed to like her, how much he wanted to learn about her, all the things he wanted to show her. And how eager she was to see it all. He just—
She couldn’t put her finger on what, exactly, it was about him, but he made her feel so comfortable. At home, almost. And safe.
His hoard was the last door on the right before the kitchen. “Here it is,” he said, and placed his palm on the door, just a little above where a normal doorknob would be. There was a faint glow around his hand, and Rachel heard the door unlock.
“Come on in,” he said. “Take a look.”
This room must have been carved of stone, like the rest of the lair, but it felt softer, warmer. A single lamp by the bed gave a golden glow to the room…which was plenty gold already. There were rich hangings covering the walls in bright blues and purples, which was a cool contrast to the gold in the room.
There was a lot of gold in the room. Rachel saw two gilt-covered chairs, a boat-shaped bed that appeared to be carved from a single piece of dark wood…with gold trim and a gold-colored bedspread. A mirror at the far end of the room had a golden frame with a jeweled peacock at the corner. That must not have been enough gold for Brad’s taste, though, because he also had a marble-and-gold leaf desk against one wall, with a jarringly modern laptop. Adding to the flow in the room were the chests that sat against the walls, taking up almost all the remaining space. Most of them were trimmed with gold or jewels, but Rachel realized that a few were solid gold leaf. Rachel wondered if they were all filled with treasure, or if one of them had neatly folded socks and underwear.
Everything was big, but not as…dragon big as the other spaces she’d been in were. This just looked like it was designed for good-sized humans. The bed was king-sized, maybe a little bigger than that, but not something she would get lost in.
“This…the hoards are like our own personal space,” Brad said, from just behind her. “Bedroom, storage, kind of a separate living space too, when we want privacy. More intimate that way.”
Rachel noticed a collection of eggs on a shelf that circled the room; some were plain stone, some were covered in jewels.
About the only thing that wasn’t gold or jewel-colored was a bookshelf set into the wall by the desk, with books that weren’t leather-bound or lined with gold. As far as Rachel could tell most of them were just…ordinary books. Paperbacks and hardcovers, some authors she recognized and some she’d never heard of. Some weren’t even in English. “You read a lot?”
“Not as much as I should,” he said. “But when I can.”
“What are…what are the ones that aren’t in English? Are they all the same language?”
“They are,” he said. “From the old country, I guess you’d say. Most of them are dictionaries or…basically what you’d call young adult books, not too sophisticated. I’ve been trying to get better at Slovak, but—it’s hard. None of us grew up with it, Grandpa only spoke English once he got to America. I know some Spanish, too, because I wanted to do more international work. Hopefully, I can. I don’t know, though. Sometimes I think I’m just going to do this forever.”
“What is there to manage?” She wanted to put her hands on that shiny golden bedspread. It looked soft to the touch. “Just…keeping track of properties, that kind of thing?”
“Pretty much,” he said. “And we’ve got some investments. We’re actually trying to re-invest back in Slovakia. Get in touch with those we left behind.”
“Was there…trouble?”
“If you count World War II and everything that came after as trouble, yes,” he said, “but no bad blood. Grandpa wanted more opportunity than he could find at home, after the war—we like gold, but we use a lot of strategic investing to keep our families going and the hoards growing. No one was investing, at least not in 1946. There was a lot of rebuilding that needed to be done, too, which meant he was going to have to use a lot of magic to keep the family lair quiet. So when he was sixteen he decided to go west, and leave the bad memories behind. He never talked to us about the war. I heard later that he’d helped people, when he could, but…well. I didn’t hear it from him.”
She nodded.
“I mean, I love it here. This is home. I’d just like to leave and come back home sometimes…but you wanted to see the window,” he said, and walked past her, into his room. Hoard. It was hard to figure out what to call things. He pulled back one of the thick blue draperies, and the dark night showed through.
The clouds were right against the window now, by the look of things—it was like something soft and soupy was just outside the room. “Do you think it’s started snowing?”
“Come here,” he said. “You can see it’s coming down if you look carefully.”
It was, and coming down hard. “I’m glad we’re safe inside,” she said. “And it’s nice and warm.”
“Thermal heating,” he said. His arm touched hers, and she felt another jolt of desire run through her body. “And we have a few fireplaces, since we can get a fire going whenever we want.”
“You…because you’re dragons?”
“Exactly,” he said. “As long as we have dry wood, there’s no worry about where to get a flame.”
“That’s pretty cool.” She had read a few things in undergrad about how, while the mechanics of shifting weren’t easy to understand by conventional magic, there were some common theories of how shifters adjusted their body chemistry from form to form. She didn’t remember anything about being able to create flame on cue, though. That seemed a little harder to explain. “This doesn’t seem as—dragon-y as the other rooms. As big.”
“Our dragon forms get bigger as we get older and more powerful. My human form’s stopped growing, but—well, let’s just say that the main rooms are for the kids to shift in. The lower floor’s the only place that can hold more than a couple dragons over thirty comfortably.”
She tried to picture it, without much success.
“Anyway, the storm should be over some time tomorrow, so we can get you home,” he said.
She wasn’t sure she was ready to go home. This place was—well, it was nice even without the gold and jewels. She liked the smooth marble and the warmth of the rooms, and it was certainly hard to beat the view. And Brad…
She wasn’t in any hurry to leave Brad behind.
“What time is it?” he asked. “It’s too soon for the lasagna, right?”
She checked her Fitbit. “We’ve got about another half an hour.”
“I’m supposed to take the tinfoil off,” he said. “You stay here. Sit down, make yourself comfortable. I’ll be right back.”
Make yourself comfortable, she thought. Sure, because this is the kind of place I hang out in all the time.
You couldn’t see much out the window any more; it was pretty much fully dark and the storm covered up any stars. All Rachel could see was what the faint light from the room cast out into the night. She watched the thick snowflakes as they fell and the thicker fog—really part of a cloud, she guessed. There was no real way to tell how high up she was, but it must have been pretty high. Anders Peak was about 4,000 feet, but she wasn’t sure if that was the mountain the lair was in, or if Brad had brought her to one of the adjacent mountains. No way of knowing without asking him, and she didn’t want to ask him to give up more family secrets.
It was interesting that the family had chosen the Adirondacks. They were a pretty accessible range, and saw a lot of hiking traffic. It seemed like it would be a lot of extra work trying to keep a lair hidden.
She was making a mental note to ask him when the mountain shook again. She grabbed, instinctively, for the nearest solid object, and found her hand clutching the expensive bedspread. It was even softer than it had looked, like something spun from a spiderweb or a cloud. After a moment’s consideration, she gave in and got on the bed. It didn’t stop the shaking, but somehow it made her feel safer.
It couldn’t have been more than a minute before Brad reappeared. “Rachel,” he said, as he caught sight of her, and her heart leapt up in her chest all over again. “Are you—”
“I’m okay,” she said. “A little—rattled?” It was a bad joke, but it was hard to think straight while the shaking continued.
“I know you don’t have your instruments with you, but—could you take a look at something for me?”
“Sure,” she said. “But fair warning, I don’t do much work with earthquakes. We don’t really get them here.”
“I know. It’s one of the reasons we came here.” He reached out his hand to her, and she clasped his fingers. Even through all the shaking, his hand felt solid and comforting. She scooted over the bed, and he helped her off the edge. “Just stay close to me and you should be all right.”
“Okay,” she said. She didn’t mind staying close to him, at least. He felt warm and solid. She could guess at how muscular his arms must be under his long-sleeved sweater.
“We’re going to go down a few levels,” he said. “I’m afraid—well, I can sense something’s going on down there. I might need your eyes on it.”
“What—what do you sense?”
“It almost feels like burrowing,” he said. “Dragons do some burrowing, but this feels much larger-scale. Like someone’s trying to break in, if you want to know the truth.”
“And dragons don’t do that, right?”
“Not unless they want a war. And there hasn’t been a war for at least a hundred years.” He sighed. “Just our luck to end up on top of it. Maybe they don’t know we’re here—maybe—but I can’t see how, and they’re not being careful at all. They’re not trying to make friends, at least.”
“I guess not.” The shaking wasn’t as violent now, but it sure hadn’t gone away.
“And I don’t know why they’re doing this in a storm like this.”
“It’d be good cover, if they’re hoping no one notices,” she said. “No one’s going to drive or fly out in conditions like this—would they?”
“No,” he agreed. “Dragons have good eyesight, and they’re strong, but we have our limits. And we’re not usually reckless.”
That made sense. Dragon shifters didn’t want humans to know who they were, much less where their big piles of gold were. Flying around in a snowstorm was the kind of thing that could get you a lot of unwanted attention.
Brad was guiding her into a different stairwell than the one they used to ascend to the radio tower. This one was narrower, and the steps were more crudely hewn. “This is kind of our emergency exit,” he explained as they walked. “There’s a shaft here that takes us out of the mountain completely. It’s how I brought you in, actually, because I wanted to make sure no one saw me getting you in.”
She pictured Brad wrapping his arms around her, bringing her into this space to keep her warm and safe. “Were you a human, or a dragon when you did it?”
“Human, mostly,” he said. “I flew you in, I guess you’d say. And then I brought you to the room as a human—I didn’t think you were likely to wake up but I didn’t want to take any chances. I didn’t know then how special you were.”
“You keep using that word,” she joked. “I do not think it means what you think it means.”
“I think I know exactly—” He reached over and snapped on a light. “Exactly how special you are.”
They were in a low-ceilinged room that reminded Rachel of a parking garage.
Brad scanned the space. “I’m pretty sure the vibrations are from the northern wall. Let’s take a look.”
“Do you have a flashlight or something?” Rachel asked.
“There’s one—” he reached into an alcove next to the light switch. “We keep one here, just in case it’s needed. It’ll help you, I’m sure. Just try to keep it out of my eyes.”
“Of course.” It was a heavy metal light, with a big pushbutton. She turned it on and flashed the light out across the room. “Which wall’s the northern one?”
“Sorry—to your right. I grew up knowing where we were, you just got here.”
She turned the beam toward the northern wall. “I…don’t think you need my expertise for this one, Brad.”
She could hear him whistle behind her. “Are they trying to bring down the whole mountain?”
The north wall was covered with cracks, fine crazing running across the wall along with a few major points of impact. As they stood watching, the shaking intensified for a moment, and one of the cracks—a deep one running parallel to the floor, about a foot up—got even thicker. “It’ll take a while,” she said. “But it won’t be stable forever.”
“I should try my uncle again. One dragon could do this, but it would be a lot of work. We might be dealing with—” He sighed. “I definitely need to talk to Doug.”
She nodded. “Reinforcements wouldn’t be a bad idea, I guess. Back up the stairs, huh?”
“There’s a quicker way, if you’re willing,” he said. “There’s a tunnel that runs throughout the structure—top to bottom.”
“Like an elevator?”
He nodded. “Like a big elevator shaft. You have to do it by wing, though. If you don’t mind being carried, I could take you up.”
“No,” she said. The thought of flying—even indoors—sounded amazing. “Let’s try it. I’m not afraid of heights.”
“I’m glad,” he said. “Just—give me a second. I’ll just take you in my arms, and we’ll go up, all right?”
“All right.” She followed him over to an open space. “Why don’t you take this all the time?”
“Sometimes your wings get tired,” he said. “And you have to learn to fly, just like walking. Most of us don’t start flying until we’re ten or eleven, unless we get spooked or we’re really talented at it. Stairs are pretty important.” He nodded his head forward, and in half-a-second he was a dragon again.
She hadn’t gotten a very good look at him the first time. She’d been too shocked. Now she could see what he really was.
His scales were iridescent, blues and greens shimmering over the gold that covered his body. His wings looked like they were pure gold, stretched over their framework of bone and muscle. He also looked incredibly strong. He reached his arms out to her; thin, with delicate, sharp-looking claws. She stepped into his embrace.
His skin was leathery and very, very warm. He wrapped his arms around her and then—
They were flying.
It wasn’t the open air, just a warm tunnel of stone you could have driven a Mack truck through, but it was still flying.
Her skin tingled as the warm air passed over her.
It was amazing.
It was over too soon, way too soon, and they were back on solid ground again. Brad stood back from her, letting her go, and the air shimmered again. “Are you okay?” he asked. He was human again, handsome again, just like that. She thought she caught a glimmer of gold in his dark eyes as he looked at her.
“More than okay,” she said. “That was incredible.”
He smiled. “Well…good.”
The shaking had stopped.
“Let’s see if I can get Doug,” he said. “I’m starting to feel like we’re running out of time.”
“What can I do?” she asked.
“Stay here with me for now,” he said. “We may have to move fast, and I want to know right where you are.”
“I was looking forward to the lasagna, too,” she said wryly.
“Me too,” he said, and the way he said it sounded like he was more interested in her company than the lasagna.
That was a nice thought.
He slid the headset on and tried to get in contact with his uncle. Still no response. He handed his cell phone back to her. “Can you check and see if my signal’s come back? I’ve kind of given up, but—”
Worth a try, she thought, and took his phone off airplane mode. She watched the bars carefully. Nothing. Not a flicker. “Nothing,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
“Me too,” he said. “We can’t move until the weather clears up. I think we’ve got a spare snowsuit in my sister’s room you might be able to use—worst case scenario, maybe you could use one of my brothers’. Maybe—would you mind staying here, on the radio for a second?”
“Um, of course not,” she said. She wasn’t unfamiliar with the setups, though she hadn’t used one in years. “Give me the headphones and I’ll—”
“I want to get some stuff around, in case we have to leave in a hurry,” he said.
She nodded and took his place at the chair.
“Just call every…couple of minutes or so, whatever feels right,” she said. “You heard me, just do what I’ve done—if he asks who you are, tell him the truth. He’ll know he can trust you if I do.”
“That’s…pretty trusting.”
His hand rested on her shoulder for a second. “Just have faith, Rachel. I’ll be right back.”
“Thank you,” she said. “Wish me luck.”
“You won’t need it,” he said. “You’ve got this.”
She heard him go—he didn’t take the stairs this time, just jumped into the tunnel and transformed. She heard a single noise—his wings flapping—and then he was gone.
She waited a few minutes and then tried calling Doug again. “Thuman, Thuman come in, this is Station Hercules, do you copy?”
Nothing. At least the shaking had stopped. She looked out into the night. It was too overcast to see any signal lights or activity that might be out there. What did the other dragons want? And why had they hurt her?
There was no sense trying to imagine the right answer. She tuned the radio again. “Hello, Thuman, Thuman, Station Hercules here, do you copy?”
“Station Hercules,” came a man’s voice, “This is Thuman. Identify yourself.” His voice was deep, deeper than Brad’s, though she could hear echoes of his nephew as he spoke. He sounded serious. Of course, she was a total stranger. He was probably suspicious.
“Station Hercules here,” she said. “Calling on behalf of—” She looked up at the piece of paper with call signs tacked on the wall next to the radio. “Eltanin of Hercules. Do you copy?”
“I copy,” he said, and she could hear his irritation. “Where is Eltanin?”
“We have a situation, Thuman,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady and calm. “The seismic activity has increased, and someone investigating it from the university was attacked. Um. Me. Eltanin is gathering supplies, in case we have to evacuate quickly. He asked me to keep trying to reach you.”
“You’re in the radio room?”
“Confirmed,” she said.
“So he’s found his mate,” he said. “What’s the weather like there, if you do have to evacuate? I heard there was a storm.”
“It’s pretty—wait, mate?”