Chapter 4
A knock at the door hours later brought Claire abruptly awake. She scrambled out of bed and rushed across the suite.
“Way to go, Claire!” Will whooped as she opened the door and he slid past into her hotel room. “I wasn’t sure you had it in you.”
What was he talking about? she wondered as she closed the door behind him, though the vestiges of sleep still clung to her and it took her mouth a moment to form the question.
“What are you going on about, Will?”
He grabbed her hand and pressed the newspaper he was holding into it, but she recoiled so quickly, the paper fell to the floor. He was jealous, fiercely so, though he was doing his best to cover it up. She didn’t understand why until her eyes caught a glimpse of the paper’s front page. “Billionaire Tycoon Plays Hooky with Mystery Beauty,” the title read, and right below it was an unmistakable picture of her—her naked upper body wrapped in Noah’s arms. At least his back was obscuring her state of undress, but her face was clear as day.
“Oh god,” she moaned in mortification. How long would it be before word got around and every professional in her industry saw her as nothing more than a mindless bimbo?
“Come on, it’s not that bad, is it? So you had a little fun—you’re entitled to let loose every once in a while, you know?”
She didn’t want to be discussing this with Will, particularly not now that she was painfully aware of his own feelings on the matter. Why hadn’t she had the forethought to cover up her hands before she’d opened the door? She knew why; because as much as she wanted to deny it, she’d been hoping it was Noah standing outside her room.
But it wasn’t Noah, and it looked like that was a damn good thing. She’d seriously messed up, gotten herself plastered on the front page of a big city newspaper in a less than flattering position. A friend was exactly what she needed at the moment. What she definitely didn’t need—and shouldn’t want—was a man who apparently had people snapping photographs of him everywhere he went.
And yet, Noah was precisely what she wanted.
She wanted his hands, and his mouth, and every other inch of his body. And even more than that, she wanted to feel that connection to him, to deliberately touch him and feel the depth of his own desire. The curse that had been with her since childhood hadn’t felt like a curse for those few moments with him. It had been nearly overwhelming, both his desire and her own flooding her body, but for once she had also felt something she hadn’t felt in a very long time—home.
But it had all been an enormous mistake. He’d run off, and all she was left with was the humiliation that would no doubt follow her around for some time to come.
“Don’t tell me you fell hard for the guy, Claire,” Will broke into her thoughts, the teasing in his tone replaced with concern.
“No, of course not. We didn’t…I mean, it’s not what it looks like…” she trailed off. Did she really want to be having this conversation with Will?
“Man, it’s worse than I thought. I said to have a good time, not to get yourself emotionally invested in the guy,” he said sympathetically, wrapping his arm around her bare shoulder.
She gritted her teeth, trying not to see what was there, but that wasn’t possible, and she couldn’t just pull away without hurting his feelings.
Jealousy. Will was jealous, and his feelings for her were much deeper than he’d ever let on. Anger. Pity. Fear. All those things that belonged to him swirled in her own head, making the room spin around her.
Just as she was about to pull away, he released her. She breathed a tiny sigh of relief and resisted the urge to put out her arms to steady herself.
She needed to say something, to put an end to this conversation. It was wrong of her to keep Will out when he’d unknowingly shared so much with her, but she needed him to leave even more so because of it.
“Will, I’m fine, really. I just didn’t expect to see myself on the newspaper’s front page, that’s all. I don’t think it’s going to do much for my career, but I’m a grown woman. I’ll survive.”
“If you say so. Do you want to go get some breakfast?” he asked, switching topics more easily than she expected.
“I think I’ll stay in this morning, but thank you for the offer.”
It took another couple of minutes to get Will out the door, but by the time she did, her plan for the rest of the morning was well-formed in her mind. Actually, it was simple. There was a decent possibility her newfound fame would hasten the inevitable end of her career. And if she didn’t have much time left, she couldn’t afford to leave any stone unturned.
So, with that thought fresh in her mind, she laid out her clothes and hopped in the shower, trying not to remember the feel of Noah’s hands on her body—and failing miserably. Still, she did her best to stay focused, dressing quickly and hurrying downstairs to hail a cab.
Damon Cross had mentioned the Creag Bruadar, and the name had reverberated in her mind many times since. While she couldn’t be certain there was any significance to it—and it wasn’t a name her uncle had mentioned—she had a vague recollection of the artifact, though she couldn’t yet place it in any particular memory. It might be nothing more than desperation that had her reaching for memories that didn’t exist, but if there was any hope at all, she couldn’t afford to ignore it.
Stealing herself against Damon Cross’s dark, eerie aura, she paid the cab driver and stepped out in front of the White Mesa Animal and Nature Preserve. But it appeared the preserve was closed. There were no cars in the parking lot and no staff members strolling around the property. If it weren’t for the light on inside the front building, barely visible through the glare of the morning’s sun, she would have hailed the cab back and abandoned this foolhardy errand.
She pressed forward, crossing the short walk to the front door and tested the handle, which turned easily. Ignoring the voice in the back of her head that was screaming at her to run, she took a deep breath, opened the door and stepped inside. The soft-colored walls and vibrant green plants that greeted her created a serene environment that contrasted sharply with the turbulence inside her.
“Claire, I’m so glad you decided to come,” Damon’s voice jarred her out of her musings and she spun around to see him striding purposefully toward her from the hallway beyond the reception desk. She resisted the urge to cringe when he grasped her gloved hand in both of his, and instead murmured something cordial in greeting in return.
He then led her through the building to his office, located at the far end. Through a wall of glass on the opposite side of the office, she could see that it overlooked the sprawling beauty of the untouched nature preserve.
Inside, slim shelves striped the wall to the right of her, each shelf adorned with artifacts that she would guess spanned the early modern period to the First World War. Outside of a museum, she’d never seen such an extensive collection of relics. Beyond those on the shelf, Grecian statues sat proudly on the desk in their place of honor, several paintings from the Renaissance decorated the wall behind the desk, and seemingly random collections of items were arranged on stands and shelves throughout the rest of the room.
He led her past all these to a long, rectangular display case. There were no other relics near it, suggesting it was the centerpiece of the area, if not of the entire office. And upon closer inspection, she could easily see why. A bronze dagger, possibly from the Qin Dynasty; an arrowhead, perhaps from the Macedonian era; an Olbian bronze coin cast in the shape of a dolphin; and a stone carving she clearly recognized as Kuzuryū.
“That is the stone idol of Kuzuryū I told you about,” he spoke up seconds after her eyes settled on the well-preserved item.
“It’s a fascinating piece, certainly,” she replied, enthusiasm replacing some of her trepidation. “How did you come to have it?”
Damon eyed her strangely, but rather than responding he began to pace back and forth, from one end of the display case to the other. “What I found fascinating was the article on your Iron Age discovery, Claire. Tell me, what else did you discover along with that impressive find?”
“I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean? There are further excavations planned, but to the best of my knowledge none have been carried out yet.”
“Yes, well, it will be interesting to see what is unearthed in the near future.”
He moved to stand behind her, leaning in close, much closer than she would like, but he nodded toward the display case then and pointed to another item there.
“This is the Creag Bruadar,” he said, reaching around her to lift it out of the case and then turning it this way and that in front of her.
Though warning bells sounded in her head, she ignored them, distracted by the rock.
“It’s quite magnificent, isn’t it?” Claire replied, though her hands clenched at her sides. It looked familiar, she was certain of it now. She couldn’t place where she’d seen it, only that it had been a part of a collection of relics that were believed to be Celtic in origin when she and her uncle had seen it. The faint glow that had surrounded the rock back then still illuminated the rough edges of it, though the light was dimmer now.
It had been the strange glow that had attracted her to it as a child, finding it far more interesting than the other mundane rocks and dirt-encrusted objects she hadn’t recognized. She couldn’t recall if the haze had begun to appear after she’d touched it back then, but she could now clearly remember the vibration that had tingled its way through her hand and up her arm when she’d picked it up. She’d nearly dropped it, already nervous that her uncle would catch her playing with priceless relics.
“Would you like to hold it?” Damon asked with something that sounded an awful lot like a challenge in his tone as he held out the jagged piece of ancient stone.
Her head jerked up and her eyes met his.
He knew.
It wasn’t possible, and yet there was no other explanation for it. But how much did he know? And what exactly was he going to do with that knowledge?
There was only one way to find out. Her curse—or whatever it was—didn’t give her the ability to read minds, not exactly, but it showed her something deeper. Could it…
She slipped a glove off her hand, ignoring the way her fingers trembled. She didn’t reach for the Creag Bruadar, the very thing she might have been searching for all this time. Instead, she reached out and grasped Damon’s hand. His eyes widened briefly, as if he hadn’t been expecting that, but before he could pull back, she snatched her hand away.
She’d been right; he was dark, but there were two sides to him, both black as night. She could see nothing else, but her whole body quaked in fear. Forcing her feet to move, she took a step back, and then another as the corners of his lips turned up in a sinister smile.
“What…are you?” she asked, surprised she’d been able to form the words.
“I was worried that might be the way of it. You see, Claire, it matters less what I am, and more what you are. You are a threat; a very dangerous one.”
“A threat to you? I don’t understand.”
She really didn’t. What kind of threat could she pose to anyone? It was him who was the threat if he did, in fact, know what she was, and the murderous look in his eyes told her she was definitely the one in danger.
Terror rose high in her throat, but she forced it down and glanced toward the door, trying to calculate the likelihood she’d make it there. No, even if she caught him by surprise, she wouldn’t make it far before his long legs overtook her. She scanned the room looking for something she could use to defend herself, because she was certain now he meant to kill her.
“Did you know that not so many centuries ago you would have been beheaded, or burned at the stake for being what you are?” He took a step away from her as he spoke, reaching toward the drawer of the desk.
This was it. It wasn’t much of a lead, but she couldn’t risk waiting for another. She turned on her heel and dashed toward the door, but she didn’t even make it five steps before he was striding in front to cut her off. She had to brace her hands against his chest to stop herself from colliding into him.
“You’re not a witch, Claire; I know that,” he spoke as calmly as if they were sitting down to afternoon tea as he backed her up against the wall next to the door. “But you see things other humans cannot. People have been tried and executed for much less.”
“I’ve done nothing to you.”
He shook his head, looking at her with a sympathetic expression, though his eyes were cold as ice. “If you hadn’t stumbled upon that shrine, Claire, maybe we could have come to…an understanding, but not now. You know too much. You’re a risk to me now; to my kind.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He ignored her, pulling a long, lethal looking weapon out from behind his back instead.
“This,” he began in the same deceptively calm tone, “is an executioner’s sword, the one used to execute Christenze Jensens in 1621. She was a nice girl; not as pretty as you, Claire, but she saw too much, just like you. It was a shame I had to kill her. But what do you think?” he asked, turning the sword over in his hand, “Do you suppose it’s as sharp now as it was then?”
She couldn’t speak. What was she supposed to say? Sharp or not, she had no doubt the sword would be lethal. With her back against the wall, she could do nothing to stop him when he raised the sword and grazed the tip of it across her neck. The razor-sharp blade cut through her skin like butter, and the sting of it brought tears to her eyes.
“Just let me go, Damon,” she pleaded, knowing it was futile.
He moved lower, slowly swiping the blade across her chest, deeper this time, drawing blood instantly.
She cried out and tried to bat the blade away, but knew immediately it was a foolish mistake. The blade cut deep into her hand and she let out a shriek as blood filled the gash and welled over. She clutched the injured hand to her breast as she fought against the panic that had already begun to take over.
Perhaps she couldn’t stop him, but she wouldn’t cower and beg. There was no use. She’d seen the man’s soul and it was black; devoid of mercy. There would be no plea that would detour him from his goal.
Forcing her trembling, injured hand to her side, she squared her shoulders, tilted her head up and met his eyes. If he was going to kill her, then he was going to stare into her eyes as he did it. Whether or not he ever felt remorse for what he was about to do, he would never forget her face.
He drew his arm back and she held her breath, trying not to see the blade he held steady in his hand. Her whole body shook and she desperately wanted to close her eyes, but she didn’t. She stared back at him, seeing out the corner of her eye as his shoulder flexed in preparation for what it was about to do.
Another movement caught her attention, this one from the wall of windows across the room. But before she could turn her head in its direction, a dark figure crashed through the panes, sending shards of glass sprinkling through the air, catching the morning sunlight like prisms.
Through the center of the kaleidoscope of color, something dark appeared. No, it wasn’t just dark, it was black. A brilliant, iridescent black. It was an arm, but much larger than any arm she’d ever seen before, covered in armor that looked shockingly like scales. A clawed hand extended from the enormous extremity and wrapped itself around Damon’s torso. In a blur, he disappeared out the broken window, the seventeenth century sword clattering to the ground in his wake.
It happened so fast, she’d scarcely taken more than a breath and she was standing alone in Damon’s office. She waited to feel the black claw wrap itself around her, too, but it didn’t come. She forced herself toward the window to peer out, perhaps to determine whether she’d imagined it all. But her breath caught in her throat. It hadn’t been her imagination at all.
The arm, the claw…the appendages belonged to something straight out of myths and folklore. A massive, fierce-looking creature that stood taller than the building’s height, covered from head to toe in the scales she’d seen on its arm, scales that were as brilliant as polished obsidian.
A polished obsidian dragon.
There was no sign of Damon Cross, and she wondered if the dragon had eaten him, but her focus didn’t remain on the abhorrent thought for long. There, standing not ten yards from the black beast was another mythical creature. It stood just as tall as the first, and its body was covered with armor-like scales, but its coloring was different—a mottled mix of black and forest green.
It rushed at the great, black beast, but was thwarted in its effort by the mighty, clawed appendage, which thrust out and shoved the attacker so hard, its feet left the ground and it fell with a thud that made the floor tremble beneath her feet.
She stared at the downed beast in petrified awe, but blinked hard at what she saw. Her curse, apparently, was not limited to humans. Surrounding the dragon was a black haze, so vile it sent a shiver down her spine, similar to the way Damon’s aura had frightened her. In fact, it wasn’t just similar, it was the same; an exact duplicate. But that wasn’t possible because no two auras had ever been identical before. And that would mean…
No, she wouldn’t even consider such a ridiculous thought. She was mistaken. Her brain wasn’t functioning right. She was suffering the aftereffects of being on the brink of death just a moment ago. While her own life had forced her to assume a certain amount of belief in the inexplicable and unimaginable, this was beyond comprehension. Wasn’t it?
Not only would she be supposing that the scene in front of her was actually taking place and that it wasn’t a figment of her overtaxed, frightened imagination, but also that the beast lying on the ground was a human, somehow transformed into something else?
Her gaze was drawn back to the black dragon, and her knees buckled beneath her a split second later. She fell hard against the tiled floor, but the pain radiating up her legs did nothing to distract her from the beast in front of her. She couldn’t take her eyes off him. The dragon on the ground wasn’t the only one surrounded by an aura, and the aura that surrounded the great, black beast was unmistakable—dark, but not sinister; a color without name. It welcomed her in. It called her to take shelter within its shadowy haze.
It was Noah’s aura.
When she had gotten back to her feet, she didn’t know, but she was moving now, stepping cautiously over the shards of glass scattered on the floor. But she wasn’t moving away from the terrifying scene outside; she was moving towards it.
One step. And then another.
Its body seemed frozen in place, and its green eyes stared back at her, eyes so much like the emerald-flecked orbs that had blazed with fire last night.
Another step.
The downed dragon surged to its feet. Head down, its massive form rushed at the obsidian-plated chest, knocking the black dragon flat on its scaled back.
“No!” she screamed before she could stop herself, and then immediately regretted it.
The mottled green and black head whipped toward her and a puff of smoke spewed from its nostrils, sending sulfurous fumes wafting through the air. She held her breath against the burnt match smell, but her lungs forced the air out in a rush as the dragon’s jaws parted, revealing dozens of dagger-like teeth. The corners of its massive mouth lifted as if it was sneering at her and it took one, thundering step toward her.
And then another.
She took two steps back but it advanced one more, ten times her own stride. There would be no way to escape it—to escape him. He advanced on her now just as he had moments before in the office. But instead of a sword, he wielded deadly dagger teeth and claws likely much sharper than the sword.
It was Damon. There was no way to deny it, no matter how much she struggled for a more logical explanation. Besides, was it any more logical to presume that dragons existed, but that they couldn’t possibly take human form?
He took another step.
Two more, and no distance would remain between them. She should run, no matter how futile the effort was, but her body wouldn’t listen. It wanted to move, yes, but not away from the scene in front of her. She wanted to run toward it, toward the beautiful, black creature lying wounded on the nature preserve’s grounds.
“Noah!” she cried, calling out to the black beast who couldn’t possibly be Noah. And yet, he was. It was as clear as the sun in the cloudless sky in front of her; as clear to her as the welcoming aura that surrounded him.
He moved so quickly, she saw little more than a blur as he sprung from where he laid and his iridescent wings spread out to full span. He took flight, crossing the distance between them in the blink of an eye. He came down just as quickly, landing in the space that remained between her and Damon.
He looked at her, the sun glinting off the emerald specks in his eyes for a brief second before he spun around to face Damon. She couldn’t see what happened next, her view blocked entirely by Noah’s plated back, but the roar that filled the air next told her a heavy blow had been dealt, whether at Noah’s hand or Damon’s, she shouldn’t have been able to tell, but she could. Something inside her would know if it had been Noah’s tortured scream, whether it came from the dragon’s throat or the man’s.
The black beast’s massive body stepped to the left a split second before a black and green blur jetted into the sky, though as it flew into the distance, she could see one wing stretched out wider than the other, while the retracted wing flapped wildly to keep the dragon in flight.
She’d been right; it had been Damon’s roar she had heard, not Noah’s. But the black dragon wasn’t moving. He sat on his haunches, looking up at the retreating form, now little more than a speck in the sky. Why wasn’t he moving? Had he been injured as well?
Ignoring every rational thought in her mind, she took a step forward. And then another. The sun shimmered off the smooth, iridescent scales of his back, and her fingers itched to touch them. Would they be cold beneath her flesh? Or warm? Yes, they would be warm. Noah had been so warm to the touch; hot, in fact. Her fingers tingled in memory.
The dragon spun around all of a sudden; it was a wonder such an enormous creature could maneuver with so much speed.
She didn’t move. He looked down at her from his towering height, and the terror that had gripped her the moment Damon Cross’ vileness had reared its ugly face began to diffuse, seeping out from her fingertips. He could kill her with a single swipe of his razor-sharp claw, but he wasn’t going to hurt her.
She was safe.
But could she trust that feeling? She couldn’t possibly be thinking straight, she knew, because right then, as the beast gazed back at her, the peace that had begun to wind through her veins turned to something else, something much more urgent and fiery.
It had to be the tumultuous events; how else could she explain the way her body was responding? But he was beautiful; black as night except for emerald-flecked eyes, and covered with staggered and overlapping rows of teardrop-shaped pentagonal scales. Great spikes jutted back from a high brow, each one like an onyx spear, and a long, plated tail tapered into a sinister-looking arrowhead.
His eyes roamed over her as hers did him, but his lit up with angry fire and a low growl rumbled deep inside him. A tremor of awe rippled through her body. Safe or not, he was an overwhelming presence and she could well understand why ancient civilizations worshiped these beings as gods.
But she realized what it was that angered him. She’d all but forgotten them in the past few moments, but her attention was drawn there now; the deep wound across her chest stung viciously and her hand and wrist throbbed along with her pulse. Caught up in terror at the time and faced with the imminence of her own death, she hadn’t realized either wound was so deep. Blood had long since saturated the bodice of her dress and it dripped a steady stream from the gash in her hand, even now.
It reminded her of how she’d come by her wounds. Damon had said she knew too much; that she was a risk to him, to his kind. How much more would this dragon want her dead when there was no doubt she knew what—and who—he was?
“Noah…” she called in a faint whisper, finding it suddenly took more strength than she possessed to speak louder, though she didn’t know why. But she needed to tell him…something. She needed to reassure him that his secret was safe with her; that she knew how to keep secrets.
That she’d done it well for a very long time.
At the moment, though, she seemed to be having difficulty forming words. It was as if some connection had been severed between her brain and her vocal cords, and the odd way the world around her had begun to spin slowly on its axis made speech all the more troublesome.
The scene at the periphery of her vision began to darken in wave-like increments until the beautiful creature in front of her was all she could see.
Something wasn’t right.
Her knees wobbled in their effort to hold her up, and before she could react, they lost the battle, collapsing beneath her weight. Shards of glass dug into her, piercing her flesh from shoulder to ankle, but it didn’t hurt. In fact, she couldn’t feel the sharp stabs at all.
She’d realized she lost more blood than she thought, at the same moment the creature disappeared, lost to the darkness behind her eyelids.