Chapter Twelve: Melody

 

 

She was having the time of her life.

Melody had never really been interested in the nightlife scene before. In college, she'd gone out clubbing a few times with Tessa or other friends, as one did. And she'd had dates take her dancing once or twice, and had occasionally gone out for drinks after work with Tessa. But in general, as she'd told Gunnar, she preferred to stay in with a book in the evening.

Now she understood why people liked this sort of thing. For her, it was all about the company.

Gunnar grinned at her and she grinned back as she danced to a fast techno beat, her unbound hair swirling around her. She'd stripped off her cardigan long ago—she wasn't even sure where it had gotten off to, or if she'd accidentally left it behind at the last place, and she didn't really care. A couple of fruity mixed drinks were humming in her system, but not enough to make her drunk, just enough to give the world a soft golden edge and fill her with euphoria.

She had been right that they stood out. Even without the cardigan, she was still wearing her modest button-up white shirt that she was well aware looked like the kind of thing a teacher would wear. Gunnar's crisp new work shirt was, surprisingly, not the only flannel she'd seen all evening—there were a few people around, both men and women, sporting a sort of retro lumberjack look—but it was a whole different thing when combined with work pants rather than skinny jeans and man-buns.

But Melody couldn't care less, and Gunnar didn't seem to care either. In fact, she'd be surprised if he'd noticed anything else in this nightclub except for her. His beer was largely untouched. He only seemed to have eyes for her, and he didn't seem to care if the DJ was playing slow songs, fast songs, or any kind of song that either of them had heard before; he wanted to be out on the dance floor with her.

The song ended and she plunked, sweaty and buzzed and happy, into her seat and picked up her half-empty drink, looking at it under the club's colored lights. Most of the ice was melted. It was hot in here.

"Get you another?" Gunnar asked over the cheerful noise of the crowd.

Melody shook her head. "Not right now. I don't drink much. No sense drinking myself under the table." She leaned forward and smiled at him. "I want to—"

She broke off when Gunnar's face changed very suddenly. He was looking at something behind her.

Her first, panicked thought was Nils?, especially when she looked around to see people on the nightclub floor parting in a wave. Then the crowd cleared enough that she could see her brother storming toward them. He looked absolutely furious.

Gunnar started to get up, noticed Melody was remaining seated, and stayed uncomfortably in his chair as Ben loomed over them, scowling.

"What are you two doing here?" he asked, his voice a little too calm.

"Dancing," Melody said. "As if it's any of your business."

"Actually," Gunnar said awkwardly, not looking at either of them, "it kind of is."

"Yeah, seeing as I'm his parole officer," Ben said. "Bad life choices aside, it's not like I can stop you from doing what you want to do, but I can certainly stop him. And you weren't answering your phone."

"I put it on silent because I didn't want to be interrupted," Melody said pointedly. Ben continued to loom, failing to take the hint. "How'd you find us?"

"Called in a couple favors from old buddies on the force and tracked your phone. You realize, with Nils out there, how it's going to look to everyone else if you just vanish and don't turn up at the farm after work, right?"

It finally managed to penetrate her annoyance that, underneath his annoyance, Ben looked really freaked out.

"Okay, so it was impulsive," she admitted. "But, look, we're fine, as you can clearly see. We were just going to do some dancing and then come back. I refuse to live my life under house arrest."

Ben pointed to Gunnar. "He is literally under house arrest. You realize that, right?"

Now Melody stood up. The thing that irritated her most was knowing that Ben did kind of, sort of, have a point. "What was I supposed to do, ask your permission?"

"You could at least have told me where you were going!"

"At which point you would have said no, and we'd have fought, and I'd have done it anyway except I'd be mad and wouldn't enjoy it as much. What's the point of that?"

Ben's eyebrows had been steadily climbing upward until she reached the end of her mini-rant. Turning to Gunnar, he said, "I'd just like to point out that she used to never argue with anyone, including me. It looks like she's found her assertive side. Lucky you."

"I like her that way," Gunnar said with a grin that, Melody thought, would probably have looked casual if you didn't know him. He was very tense. Still, she appreciated the support.

"Apparently so," Ben sighed. Then his gaze sharpened, going between the two of them. That was his "detective" look. "You two got awfully close, awfully quick. Tell me, sis, is this just casual dating, or something more?"

Melody was frozen on the edge of a reply. Ben could usually tell when people were lying; years of practice had made his panther highly attuned to nuance. And she wasn't even sure she wanted to lie, not anymore, not about this.

But before she could open her mouth and tell him the truth, Ben's phone buzzed audibly in his pocket. He raised his hand and stepped away. "Yeah?"

Whatever was being said on the other end of the line made visible shock and alarm go through him like a livewire. "Are you hurt?" he asked sharply. "Is the baby okay? Is everyone okay?"

Gunnar was on his feet now. He exchanged a look with Melody, who shook her head helplessly.

"I've found Mel, so we'll be there as soon as possible," Ben said. "I love you." He hung up the phone and turned to the other two. Taking a deep breath, eyes fixed on Gunnar, he said, "Your brother just attacked Derek and Gaby's farm."

 

***

 

Flying to the farm with two people on her back was a lot more exhausting than with one, but it was faster than taking Ben's car, and Melody wasn't about to leave Gunnar behind. Half an hour ago, she would happily have left Ben behind, but her sisterly annoyance had faded away like snow in the summer sun when things had turned deadly serious.

She hadn't realized until now that some part of her, a rather large part of her, had believed Nils was never going to show up. She'd honestly thought her brother was being paranoid. If she was on the run from the law, she certainly wouldn't head for the first place they'd look! She had assumed that Nils was probably headed for a different country as fast as he could go, and they'd deal with extra security on the farmhouse for a week or two, then go back to their normal lives.

Foolish. Naive.

Ben said that nobody was hurt, but she still pushed her wings as fast as she could beat them, and didn't start to relax until she circled over the farmhouse. The house and yard blazed with lights, an electric wall holding back the dark. Melody glided in for a landing on the open lawn next to where the cars were parked. Derek came down from the porch to meet them, carrying a shotgun, as Melody shifted back and retrieved her glasses and necklace from Gunnar.

As he approached, Derek swung the shotgun to point at Gunnar.

"Knock it off," Ben said shortly, pushing the muzzle away. "He was with Melody the whole time."

"They could be contacting each other somehow," Derek said gruffly.

"He's not a traitor," Melody flared. "Like Ben said, he was with me all day. What happened?"

Derek let out a breath. "Let's get in the house and I'll fill you in. After that, now that you're back, one of us needs check the perimeter. I didn't want to leave the women alone in the house."

The tension was contagious, and Melody felt something inside her ease as the door closed behind them and Ben locked it. The rest of the household was clustered in the living room, Gaby with a sleepy Sandy in her arms and her mother holding the baby. Tessa had been sitting beside Gaby, but she jumped up and came running to hug Melody, pregnant belly bumping awkwardly between them. "Melody! I was so worried when we couldn't find you! Thank God you're okay."

Tessa's obvious worry made her feel guilty in a way that getting chewed out by her brother hadn't. "I'm sorry, Tess. I just wanted to get away for a little while."

"What happened?" Gunnar asked in his deep, quiet voice.

Derek gave him a hard look. It was Tessa who answered.

"We think he was mainly testing our defenses rather than making a serious attempt to get inside. Something tripped the security system, and when Derek went out to check it, Ghost—Nils—whatever you want to call him tried to get in at the back door."

Ben sucked in his breath, and Derek glowered.

"What did you do?" Melody asked, glancing toward the kitchen. Its lights were on, like every other light in the house, and she could see that the back door—leading to the back deck, where she'd just that morning had coffee with Gunnar—had been boarded up.

"Tessa drove him off with an axe," Gaby said admiringly.

Tessa flushed. "You make it sound like a bigger deal than it was. I grabbed an axe that we use to chop up wood for the fireplace, and ran into the kitchen just as the door broke in and swung it at his face."

All three of the new arrivals were now staring at her. "No big deal?" Melody repeated. Ben put an arm around his hugely pregnant wife and kissed her.

"I just swung at his face and missed, though," Tessa protested, blushing hotter under the dark-caramel tint of her skin. "I was yelling, and Gaby was yelling, and Derek heard us and came running with the shotgun. By that time Nils was gone."

"Are you sure it was him?" Gunnar asked quietly, his big hands clenching into fists.

"He was shifted," Tessa said, "so, yes, unless there are a lot of polar bears around this part of the country."

"That decides it, though," Derek said. "It's not safe here. We need to move the family somewhere safe."

"Darius," Tessa said promptly. "He'll help us, I'm sure."

Ben made a faint protesting noise, but subsided. "You're right," he said, looking subdued. "I can call him."

Tessa shook her head. "I can do it. If we need is a safe place to go for a few days, I'm sure he'll let us stay with him."

Gaby looked uncertain. "Are you sure we'll be safer in the home of a dragon mob—er—" She glanced down at Sandy, who seemed to have fallen asleep in her arms, but still changed directions with the sentence. "I'm not sure we'll be safer there than here."

"Neither am I," Melody said. In her entire lifetime, she couldn't remember her dad ever having human guests, aside from that one time Ben had showed up with Tessa in tow and hadn't really given him a choice.

However, Tessa and her father seemed to have an unusual rapport. She wished she could get her dad to listen to her the way he listened to the small woman with all the cats.

"Yeah, I'm kinda with Melody on that," Derek said. "There's no need to call your dragon in-laws. We can arrange a safehouse. Probably should've done it already. My fault. I thought we'd be able to hold him off better here, but this place just isn't defensible enough."

"What on earth could be safer than a mansion guarded by a dragon?" Tessa asked. "It'll do good for Darius to have some company for a change. He can get used to having kids around before he has to deal with actual grandchildren."

Melody and Ben exchanged a look of mutual dismay, sharing a moment of sibling same-wavelength rapport. "Honey, Dad is terrible with kids," Ben said. "Including his own."

"Especially his own," Melody muttered.

"Well, that's why he needs practice," Tessa said brightly, taking out her phone.

The soft clunk of the door closing jerked Melody away from the conversation. She spun around, realizing that Gunnar was no longer with them.

"Gunnar!" She ran to the now-unlocked door and opened it. Ben appeared instantly at her elbow, reaching for his shoulder holster.

The porch was empty as Melody ran out onto it, but there at the top of the steps was a pile of discarded clothing. She couldn't tell if it was just her imagination that she thought she saw a flash of white at the far side of the pasture.

"Gunnar!" she shouted into the night.

"Damn it," Ben murmured. Melody turned as he holstered his gun. "Sorry, sis. Looks like they were in cahoots the whole time."

"They certainly were not!" She spun around, straining her eyes as she scanned the woods for another elusive flash of white. "He's going to try to find Nils and stop him. I'm sure he is. Damn it! We can't let him go alone."

"What the hell is the deal with you and this guy, Mel?" Ben asked.

"He's my mate, you idiot," she snapped.

The words fell into a sudden silence. She was all too aware of Derek and Tessa in the doorway, Gaby behind them. Not that she'd really planned how she wanted to tell them, but this sure wasn't it.

Derek cleared his throat. "Are ... you sure?"

This caused everyone else, Gaby in particular, to give him a disbelieving stare.

"Right. Yes. Forget I said anything."

"Melody ..." Ben was looking at her with open worry now, fumbling for words. "I know what it feels like, when you look into someone else's heart like that. I know what it feels like when you think you've found your other half—"

"What do you mean, when I think?" she flared. "You've found your mate; you know what it feels like. You wanted to know why I'm so sure that there's no harm in Gunnar? It's because I can see his soul. Like he can see mine. And the longer we argue about this, the longer he's in danger, all alone, trying to protect us all."

She could see they didn't believe her. Even Ben didn't seem to believe her, and he should know better. Tessa had been her best friend since high school, but she wasn't a shifter; she didn't know, in the bone-deep way that shifters knew.

Melody turned away. "Fine," she said, storming down the steps. "I'll find him on my own."

"Melody!" Ben called, but she was already shifting. The change came more violently than her usual transformations, her dragon erupting out of her with pent-up fury. She didn't remember about her glasses until they fell off her nose. The chain on the locket was stretched tight around her scaly, silver throat, but not tightly enough to break.

Oh well. For perhaps the first time in her life, she didn't care. If no one picked up her glasses, she had a spare pair back in her apartment.

The important thing was to find Gunnar before he found Nils, and got himself killed.

She beat her wings and took off with a hard downdraft, soaring into the night sky.