Taking Claire into the city wasn’t a good idea, in my opinion. True, she had the headmistress’s permission. That was the only reason I had her with me now. Still, I was second-guessing this entire trip. Taking her back to the place I rescued her from sounded like pure madness. Per the headmistress’s directions—according to Claire—I was supposed to drop her off, do whatever I needed to in the city, then come back later to pick her up.
I smelled a rat in those directions, but I didn’t say anything.
Instead of my usual way of entering the city via my dragon, I opted for a taxi that dropped Claire off in front of her old house. She was nearly out before I grabbed her hand. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”
“Yes. I’ll be fine,” she promised. “Trust me.”
Trust her, I did. I just didn’t trust the asshole who might be home this evening not to beat her up again. The instant the taxi rounded the corner, I stopped the driver, paid him his fare, and got out.
I was supposed to be heading to Hadley’s tonight to pick up more crystals for the shields, but this was much more important. I walked slowly toward the corner to give Claire enough time to unlock the door.
By the time I rounded the side street, she’d already gone inside. I stopped walking and listened for screaming or shouting.
When there was nothing, I started walking again—toward the alley where I had hidden before. Just because things were going well so far, didn’t mean they would continue to do so.
As if on cue, I heard glass shattering and a heavy thump, followed by a string of cursing. I rushed to the door and flung it open to find Claire backed against a wall, eyes locked on her foster father, who was advancing with a predatory sort of stealth that made me wonder if he wasn’t a shapeshifter, too.
“Figured you would be back,” he muttered. “You no good—” His hand was raised, ready to hit her, when I jumped in front of Claire, shielding her with my body.
The slap stung, hitting me in the neck, rather than the face of its intended target.
Fury roiled inside of me and I took a step forward, wanting nothing more than to fry this guy. “You’ll never lay a hand on her again,” I growled, taking another step that made him back up, uncertain.
A mean glint appeared in his eyes. “So she’s bewitched you, too, has she, boy? You wouldn’t be the first. Likely you won’t be the last, either.”
What does he mean by that?
Claire’s breath caught in a sob, then she bolted out the door.
I turned my head in time to see the screen door slam and the idiot in front of me landed a sucker punch.
Dummy, I scolded myself. You knew better than to take your eyes off him.
Once my breath came back to my lungs, I took a deep breath, letting smoke roll out of my nostrils to give him a good idea of what he had just messed with. True, I was breaking one of Imperium’s rules, but I didn’t care.
His eyes widened, and he started backing up. “You’re just like her…a mutant…a witch.”
That was actually the first time I’d ever been called either of those names. Firebreather, yep. Sky lizard? Absolutely. But never mutant or witch. The thought amused me enough that I laughed, which seemed to make the man against the wall even more uneasy.
Probably thinks I hold the power to make him just like us. That thought gave me an idea.
“The bodies of shapeshifters hold a virus that can be spread. It’s infectious,” I lied as I took a slow step toward him. “I give you this promise; if you ever harm Claire again—or any other mutant—I will make sure you are as cursed as we are.”
The man’s eyes looked ready to bulge out of their sockets.
“Understood?”
He nodded slowly, eyes never leaving me.
“I will know if you don’t,” I said in a menacing voice. “Shapeshifters always know. We’re all connected that way.”
He kept nodding and I left, letting the screen door slam behind me in the same way Claire had.
The first place I went to look for her was in the alley across the street, but apparently she didn’t think the way I did. I came back out and surveyed the dark street, wondering which way she might have gone.
“Out of all the times to wish to be a werewolf,” I grumbled. Dragons had a horrible sense of smell, only barely beating out their terrible long-distance eyesight. No, never in any fairy tale I’d ever heard had a dragon been given the quest of finding long-lost princesses. We guarded them, sure. But we weren’t ever the guys hired for a search party. Our specialty lay in the “setting stuff on fire” department.
“Left or right, left or right,” I chanted as I jogged into the alley to shift. My best bet for spotting her was to just fly above the area and hope. Otherwise, I’d be forced to head back to Imperium and ask one of the wolves for help. “Not happening,” I muttered in the second before I launched into the sky. She couldn’t have gotten far. She wasn’t that fast. Unless she’d shifted to her fox…in which case finding her would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. I’d never find her.
Please be on two legs so I can see you, I begged as I flew as low as I dared over the city. The magic from the shields sent little tingling sparks against my scales, warning me I was as low as I could go without being seen.
Come on, Claire…where are you? I flew from street to street, farther and farther out to a point where I was fairly sure she couldn’t be. Then I returned and started my search in a different direction. Back and forth, from one direction to the next, until I was on the verge of going back and asking Professor McTavish for one of his star student trackers. Movement in a barely lit alley caught my attention. Even before I got there, I knew it was her. It had to be.
The bad news? She wasn’t alone.