Chapter Six
Jacob didn’t want to leave River at the house without protection, but he had to try to get his sister and brother-in-law on the phone. Find out what, if anything, they knew of a fourth Drakkon. It was most definitely Drakkon that had attacked River’s farm. Was it a coincidence that the same person would have an encounter with two different Drakkon? It didn’t seem likely, and that’s what worried him. What if it had burned the house instead of the field? What if it had killed her?
He was going to find it and kill it before it returned. In the meantime, he’d stay close to her. He realized that he felt overwhelmingly possessive toward River. He knew it wasn’t a good thing. It showed up when he decided to fly here instead of using the ferry. The need to get to her had nearly made him forget his pack…and the fact that he was a man. That was jarring. He’d almost lost himself completely to Drakkon. He’d almost turned and snapped his fangs at her male friend, Noah. Thankfully, he’d controlled himself. He liked her. He liked how she smelled. That didn’t make her his.
The Drakkon within disagreed.
She liked the dragon. He didn’t have to read her thoughts to know it. Should he tell her the truth? That he was the White? He’d already told her too much, but he had to make his purpose there believable and spilling his guts was too tempting. The secret was already too difficult to bear alone.
He wasn’t sure yet what his intentions toward River Wray were. He knew as much about matters of the heart as he did about being Drakkon. He’d never been the guy who stuck around. He’d never committed because he’d always felt incomplete. How could he give a hundred percent of himself if he wasn’t whole?
He was whole now. Man. Drakkon. He was complete. At least, he’d felt complete just before he’d begun talking to River in his head, before he’d heard her music. Seeing her again didn’t help. Being near her in his human form, talking to her with his mouth and hearing her with his ears only made his attraction and curiosity stronger. He smiled, thinking about her believing she wasn’t anything special. He already liked her more than almost all the people he knew. She had guts. She’d made a deal with Drakkon, not just for her sake or her family’s, but for her village. She’d kept her end of the bargain, loyal to her word. And she had a beautiful voice. He wanted to help her, to stay close to her, to possess her. He knew he shouldn’t. She was trouble. She could steal his heart if he let her. But trouble never stopped him before.
He was willing to confirm to her—as a man who’d trained his whole life to hunt them—that Drakkon were real. She already knew it. She thought he’d attacked her farm. Pretending to be someone else was the only way to clear his name and it had worked. She no longer suspected him. She was no longer angry with him. And he cared if she was, damn it.
Why now? Why let himself develop any kind of feelings for someone now when he had a new thrilling path to take? Why had he stayed in England instead of going home to New York? Because she would have been out of range. She wouldn’t have been able to contact him.
So what if a Drakkon ate a few cows or sheep? He’d done it. But this new Drakkon had burned what it didn’t consume. Who was it? How was it? Garion was the only way to become Drakkon. Had he recently transformed anyone? No. Never. Garion was rightly against turning the sky over to Drakkon. Both Jacob and his sister had to be knocking at death’s door before he’d given in and altered them. He wouldn’t have changed anyone else.
The only other Drakkon Jacob knew about was Jeremy the Red. He’d procured Garion’s blood and had used it on himself. But Garion had killed him with his golden tail, the only element that could kill Drakkon.
Something suddenly dawned on him…Garion and Helena had been shot with golden arrows and had healed themselves. Could the Red still be alive? Jacob’s stomach turned at the thought and it fired his blood. Jeremy was a vengeful bastard. Had he somehow found out that Jacob had been altered? Had he picked up Jacob’s scent in Harris and gone after him? Was he in Harris because of Jacob?
He quickened his pace. He wanted to turn back but Garion needed to be told that the Red was possibly alive. He couldn’t use telepathy since the range was only two thousand miles. The phone would have to do.
He hurried toward Tarbert, thinking about River as he went.
You didn’t tell the man about me, he sent to her. He liked being able to talk to her whenever the urge struck him. Which it did often. Now that he was here with her, he didn’t need to continue using telepathy—to continue speaking with her pretending to be a Drakkon. He shouldn’t. It was sneaky.
I was wrong to accuse you. I intended to keep our deal, Drakkon. But he already knew.
Jacob liked her. It was pretty big for him. In the past, he found that he stopped liking most women a few hours after meeting them. Many stopped liking him, as well. He was often distracted with thoughts of something more and it was evident in his careless treatment. But it was different with River. He liked her more each time he spoke to her. They just seemed to click and fit. But it wasn’t him she sang to. In her mind, he was Drakkon.
I’ll keep my end of the bargain, too.
She was quiet for a moment, then, I wish you didn’t have to. If you don’t eat people then I don’t see a reason to ask you not to come back.
There it was. She liked Drakkon. And Jacob liked that she did. But he still didn’t trust his Drakkon self around her. He didn’t know how his instincts would react to smelling her. He’d wanted to lick her the first time he’d seen her through bigger eyes.
For now, he’d get to know her as Jacob Wilder. He didn’t want to think about later.
The truth is, I don’t know if I’d eat someone, say, like Noah. I haven’t been around many people.
Are you jealous of Noah, Drakkon?
Not at all, he defended. I just used him as a point of reference. He still couldn’t believe that he was, in fact, jealous and he sure as hell wasn’t going to admit it to her. Jealousy was an insecurity Jacob hadn’t suffered in the past.
Well, I don’t like that reference, she said curtly. Maybe it’s better that you stay away.
Who was this guy, Noah, that she would protect him? And why did it make Jacob want to eat him?
You love him then?
Yes, like a brother.
That was better to hear. Jacob smiled with relief as he entered Tarbert. Then I’ll never speak of eating him again.
Thank you.
He hurried to the small B&B and went inside.
I just spotted a shark over the Pacific that would fill my belly ’til morning, he told her, needing time to speak to Garion. Excuse me while I go get dinner. He didn’t worry about shocking her. She was going to have to get used to it if she wanted to be friends with Drakkon.
WiFi was only for guests, according to the owner of the B&B, Charlie Owens. So Jacob paid for a room facing the loch and sat on his bed to make his call.
The island in the South Pacific had WiFi, paid for by his millionaire brother-in-law. The connection went through and Jacob waited impatiently for Garion to pick up. He was about to hang up and call his sister’s cell, when the ringing stopped.
“Jacob,” Garion’s voice came over the other end. “Where are you?”
“Harris, in Scotland. Where’s Helena? She should hear this.”
“She’s here. You’re on speaker.”
“Jake?” his sister said. “Everything all right?”
“No. There’s another Drakkon.” He waited a moment for the stunned silence to settle over them. Then, “Have you turned anyone?”
“What? No, of course not. What the hell has happened?”
“Garion, I think it’s Jeremy,” Jacob told them wasting no time.
“No,” Garion said, his voice the rumble of thunder. “It can’t be.”
“Back in Norway,” Jacob reminded them, “when we fought The Bane and I killed Jarakan and the other Elders, you were both shot with gold-tipped arrows. Why didn’t either one of you die?”
“Because we…” Garion paused and Jacob heard his sister swear an oath. “I am Gold,” Garion continued, realizing what it meant. “Golden weapons have no effect on me—or anyone who shares my blood.” He was silent for a moment. Jacob thought he could hear Garion’s heart through the phone as a terrible truth dawned on him. “Thomas…we…we burned Thomas and he wasn’t dead.”
Jacob closed his eyes as the weight of it all settled over him. Jacob’s brother, Hendrick, had shot down Garion’s first foster father, Thomas White, along with two of Garion’s childhood friends. The bodies had been burned. No one had known then the power of Garion’s blood or that the altered Drakkon were not dead, just regenerating.
“I’m sorry, Garion,” Jacob told him, truly heartsick for him. “But we need to find a way to kill the Red.”
“Tell us what happened,” Helena said when her husband remained quiet, still processing what it all meant.
Jacob told them everything they needed to know about the attack on the Wray farmstead the night before. He’d visited the scene. The land had been charred by Drakkon fire. Jacob had been in Harris two months ago and then had left.
“Yes,” his brother-in-law said when he was finished. It sounded more like an answer to a question someone else had asked. Jacob guessed his sister and her husband were speaking telepathically. They’d done it often in Fiji, leaving him out of entire conversations, laughing at seemingly nothing, blushing for no reason. Right now, he guessed his sister was consoling her husband and bringing him back to the present.
“Let me get my Onyx,” Garion said in the next moment.
Jacob had forgotten about the seeing stone. It could locate any Drakkon in the sky. It was just what they needed to find the Red.
“So,” his sister’s voice broke his reverie. “How did you say you found out about the attack?”
He hadn’t said. “I heard about it.”
“You weren’t in Harris when it happened, right? You said you’d left. So, who did you hear it from?”
Hell, she’d always had a way of digging deep for answers in directions other people wouldn’t think to go.
“El called and said she had lunch with you.”
“Yeah.” Here it came. El told Helena what he’d told her.
“She said you looked ragged.”
“I hadn’t been sleeping.” He waited for more but nothing came.
“Are you okay?”
He’d like to tell her about River, ask her advice about things. But she’d figure out too soon that he’d been seen, that he had communicated with a human while he was Drakkon, and that he wanted to tell the human everything. “That’s not important right now, Helena.”
“Back.” Garion’s voice thankfully interrupted whatever his sister was going to say next. “There’s no sign of him in the stone, Jake. How certain are you that this was a Drakkon attack?”
“Some cattle were bitten in half. I don’t know any other creature with jaws that big and powerful, except a crocodile, and there aren’t any crocs here, Garion. The rest of the cattle were charred—not set afire with torches, but charred to the bone. It was Red. He didn’t die, just as we didn’t die.”
“Right,” his brother-in-law pulled himself together and agreed. “Helena and I will be there sometime tomorrow. I’ll book our flights—”
“No. No, I don’t need you both here.” He didn’t want to tell his sister and her husband that he’d let someone see him after his first night out. He didn’t want to tell them that he’d stayed in touch with her, came back to her, and didn’t want to leave. “You’ll rile up the villagers the second they see you.”
“We’re not coming as Drakkon,” his sister said.
“You don’t need to for these people to take notice of you. The last time I saw you, Helena, your hair was down to your ass and almost as gold as Garion’s. You both stand out too much. I’ll take care of Jeremy the Red.”
“Don’t be an idiot, Jake,” his sister said impatiently. “Of course we’re coming. The Red could return faster than we could reach you. He could be there now as a man. Either we go to you or you come to us. Which is it going to be?”
“Neither,” Jacob insisted. “I can handle this myself.”
“We’re hanging up now, Jake.”
Damn it, sometimes he really wanted to strangle her. “Alright. Give me a week.”
“A week for what?” Helena pried.
“To calm the villagers down. They don’t know what the hell attacked them. We don’t want whispers spreading to the tabloids.”
A long silence passed between them. So long that Jacob knew they were talking alone. “Hello?” he snapped into the phone.
“Okay,” his sister snapped back. “We’ll see you soon.”
“Yeah. Great,” he drawled. He knew their concern was warranted. They had to stop the Red and three was better than one. He couldn’t believe he was actually going to hunt a Drakkon. It would be his first time, despite all his training. “Garion?” he said before they all hung up. “How are we going to kill it?”
“Last time we saw him, his arm that I had bitten off hadn’t grown back. If that hasn’t changed, then we cut off his head.”
Not something Jacob was looking forward to doing. He was trained in killing Drakkon, not men. Cutting off a Drakkon’s head was nearly impossible. There was no weapon big or powerful enough to cut through scales. Jeremy would have to be taken down as a man, and cutting off a man’s head was not in Jacob’s comfort zone.
Jacob clicked them off, then paused to do a little online research about Highland cattle and make a few calls. Thanks to the money the band made, his inheritance, and a few “trinkets” Garion had given him, worth over two and a half million dollars, he could afford to buy what he wanted. He’d made some investments from Fiji and still had more than enough.
Thankfully, Mr. Owens was still sitting at the front desk and was able to give Jacob the address of the post office in Tarbert.
Everything okay? He sent to River while he tossed his soon-to-be useless cell into his backpack and left the B&B.
Yes. How was the shark?
What would Garion and Helena think of him communicating with River the way he did? He didn’t care enough to stop. He liked talking to her. He liked it almost as much as flying. How was it possible? Had becoming Drakkon made him mad?
It was delicious. How was your meal with Noah?
Fine. I asked him to come back tomorrow to finish clearing up the field.
Why?
Because Mr. Wilder is coming back and I don’t know what questions he’ll ask. I don’t want Noah hearing about dragons from a dragon hunter.
You don’t like Wilder, do you. It wasn’t a question but a suspicion. One that didn’t please Jacob. It was because of Drakkon. Why would she like a guy who was out to kill her new pet? This whole ridiculous thing could backfire on him. Did she like his Drakkon too much to like him as a man? Why did he care? He was only here to protect her and then he was flying back to Fiji—on a plane.
I don’t know him enough to like or dislike him. He seems nice. He’s a little awkward for a guy who looks the way he does.
Oh? How does he look?
Like he should be in the movies or on a beach in Australia.
Jacob smiled. His appearance pleases you then?
He knew picking her brain about him was a crappy thing to do. She thought she was speaking to someone else. It didn’t put them on equal footing and he wanted to be fair. Besides, if he ever told her that he was Drakkon, the one in her head all this time finding out her every thought and desire, while pretending to get to know her as Jacob, she’d hate him. You know what? he interrupted before she had time to reply. Don’t answer that. I’m sleepy. I’m going to find a place to rest.
He continued on toward Maraig…toward her. Twice, he stopped and thought about going back to England, or New York, or Tahiti. The Red had left. He wasn’t coming back. River didn’t need him to look after her. What if he lost his heart to her? How many years would they have? He didn’t want that life. He wanted to fly. He’d always wanted to. Now that he could, what the hell was he doing here smelling grass and thinking of hunting Drakkon?
Still, he let his feet lead him onward toward the woman who made him forget flying.