Bayou Born, page 17
When my heart stopped clogging my ears, the first thing I heard was nothing. The forest held its breath, even the crickets tucked in their forewings. One ballsy frog croaked but the sound choked off, and I imagined the guy sitting next to him smacking him upside the head like, Really? You want that thing to eat us next?
A steady rumble, the rustle of a low body brushing the earth, a twig snapped beneath a heavy foot.
I had been found.
I lifted the gun and strained to see past the gloom. I wished I hadn’t. The super gator was bigger than I remembered. More horse than pony. I hoped the angle was playing tricks on me. Eyes glittering in the moonlight, it entered the wooded copse and huffed a wheezing sound resembling laughter.
Sweat stung my eyes, and I wiped my face on my sleeve. That was the head injury talking. Bad enough a prehistoric relic had waded out of the swamp. I wasn’t believing it enjoyed a sense of humor too.
The thing panted whistling breaths, its body built for bursts of speed and not for endurance. Now that it had me treed, it took its time circling my hideout. A hissing rattle vibrated its throat, and it scratched at the bark before hefting itself upright and sinking its front claws deep.
“Shoo. Go away.” Panic lifted my voice an octave. “Go find yourself a nice, fat deer. They’re high in protein, and they taste so much better than people. Seriously. You should try one and then report back.”
Nothing I said or did made any difference, and I had too few bullets to fire them until presented with a possible kill shot.
Through sheer determination, the beast managed to climb a few feet before its weight hauled it back down to earth, leaving furrows raked into the trunk. I almost cheered until it bunched its muscles. Typical gators could jump up to five feet from a dead stop. This thing wasn’t normal. I was guessing it could manage twice that if not three times the height.
Brain, we really need to chat about this factoid obsession of yours.
Town wasn’t that far. Help could be here in fifteen minutes, maybe twenty. I’d hiked at least ten minutes to get to this point. A half hour. All I had to do was last thirty minutes, tops. I could do that. I gasped when the creature made its leap and snapped its jaws so close its fetid breath closed the distance. Each reset took it a minute, but it kept trying, gaining altitude with each lunge.
I was eyeing the limbs above me, debating their ability to support my weight when a grating rumble poured through the air, vibrating my bones. The thing aborted its next attempt and wriggled back a step. No, no, no. One was bad enough, big enough. There couldn’t be two out here. The growl causing the metal beneath me to hum projected from a throat a lot bigger than the one I’d been staring down a moment ago.
The gun wobbled in my grip. I held on tight and tried again to find my calm, but my nerves were shot to hell.
What was that noise?
Then I didn’t have to wonder.
“Son of a bitch,” I breathed.
A second monster prowled forth, this one the cured ivory of aged bones. Moonlight caressed its faceted scales, glittered in its leonine mane and illuminated immense racks of branching antlers. The creature married the serpentine lines of a Chinese dragon with the sturdy arms and thickly muscled thighs of a European dragon. Its tail ringed the clearing, a whip of impossible length, and its graceful neck arched as it studied me through crimson eyes peering from a feline visage. I allowed myself a second or three, maybe five, to admire its regal beauty before terror set the muscles in my legs quivering.
Nope. Not happening. Not real. This was not real. Dragons weren’t real. This was a stress-induced hallucination brought on by my head injury. I must have jarred my brain again when I hurled myself out the kitchen window. Was that part even real? Had any of it happened? Or was I home in bed sweating out the nightmare to end all nightmares?
The dragon—and it was definitely male—positioned himself at the base of my tree, lowered his head and hissed through teeth as long as steak knives. The rattling noise it made had me leaning over the edge of my seat, peering down for a better look at the membranous folds it shook and puffed out to make itself bigger.
Wings.
It had wings.
Stick a fork in me, I was done. I was no princess, and this tree was no castle. The dragon wasn’t guarding me. He was about to hand the super gator its ass and then flitter up here to gobble me up like a children’s book gone horribly wrong. A frantic part of my brain shouted I should lift my phone and snap a picture to warn the others when they found my cell instead of my body, but I couldn’t lift a hand. I was paralyzed. All I could do was watch and make my peace.
The super gator, pissed at the interruption, lunged at the dragon. Its teeth slid right off the thick scales covering his body. In retaliation, the dragon whipped its tail around and cracked the gator on top of the head. The gator roared its fury and charged again. The dragon, seeming bored by the confrontation, let the gator inside its defenses, then raked a gleaming talon down its side, gutting it from shoulder to hip.
Blood perfumed the night, and the dragon inhaled with delicate sniffs. Dazed by the promise of fresh meat, it didn’t appear to notice the gator backpedaling into the shadows. The dragon lifted its front paw and licked its talons, cleaning itself the way a cat might. Only when he was spotless, the white of his scales flawless, did he turn his attention to me.
An inquisitive hum left its throat, and he waited as though expecting an answer.
“Hi, big guy.” I wet my lips. “I’m pretty sure you’re just the brain damage talking, but thanks for getting rid of that gator. Maybe you could not eat me, and we could both call it a night?”
The dragon twitched his tail, but I had no idea what he wanted. Except maybe a Luce kabob. A short growl later, he tightened his wings flush with his spine and sank his claws into the bark. Nimble as a jaguar, he climbed until his head hung at my eye level. Intelligence sparked in his gaze as he studied me, and white mist huffed from his wide nostrils. He angled his neck so as not to gore me with his impressive racks, then coiled his tail around the trunk, curling the spade-like tip around my ankle.
“I don’t understand.” Why speaking to him felt so natural, why I half-expected an answer, I had no idea. Brain damage. Had to be. Compared to dreaming him up in the first place, what was imagining he could talk too? “What do you want?”
Head the size of my torso, each tooth the length of my hand, he was no housecat for all that his mannerisms reminded me of one. A slivery tongue swiped across his muzzle, and the chill of his breath as his mouth opened made me shiver.
“I don’t want to hurt you.” I tightened my grip on the gun-stock. “Let’s hope you feel the same about me.”
The gun was a comfort object at this point, the equivalent of a blankie for me to cuddle while I told myself everything was going to be okay. Figuring why the hell not, I might as well enjoy myself in the seconds before I became dragon kibble, I reached up and smoothed my hand across his wide brow. The beast cringed away from me, as though it feared my touch more than the weapon braced across my thighs. I was still marveling at the velvety softness of his antlers when a siren squawked in the distance.
The cavalry had arrived.
“You need to go.” Shooing a dragon with a utensil drawer for a mouth seemed like a bad idea waiting to happen. “You hear that, boy?” I flashed back to the days of when I’d had a pet to talk to, though Yeller mostly ignored anything not gelatinous and sliming out of a can. “Those are my people, and they’re good people, but they’re worried about me. They’re going to think you’re the bad guy here.”
The dragon’s English must have been rusty. Instead of hightailing it out of there, he flexed his claws as though kneading the tree behind me.
Out of ideas to save him, I lifted the gun and aimed it between his eyes. “Please, just go.”
A huff of breath blasted my face as he sniffed the barrel and jerked back, eyes wide in alarm.
“I don’t want to hurt you.” I wasn’t sure that I could, even to save myself. “I don’t think you’re real, but I can’t live with you being harmed even in a dream.”
A rasp of rough hide against fabric sounded as he unwrapped his tail from my ankle and then from around the tree. He didn’t climb down the way he had come but flared his wings and leapt to the earth. A forlorn expression lit his eyes as he stared up at me one last time.
I was holding his gaze when the first shot hit its mark, and red blossomed on his chest.
“No,” I screamed. “Don’t shoot. He didn’t hurt me.”
The dragon staggered, scraping at its torn flesh with a clawed hand, and tears filled my eyes. Through them I spied the glint of rose gold bands encircling its wrists, reminding me of a bracer strapped to a homing pigeon’s leg, and wondered if this beast had a master who had tamed him, who would miss him if he failed to fly home.
Another bullet ripped through the dragon, and I leapt to my feet. Quickly, I emptied the chamber on the shotgun, then tossed it to the ground. I figured the risk of it going off on impact and hurting someone ranked higher than the super gator coming back for seconds. That done, I shimmied down to the end of the third section of the climbing sticks and let myself hang until I shut up the panicked voice in my head. I let go, hit the ground hard and rolled with my momentum. My ankle twisted, and I cried out from the pain.
The dragon, who appeared more confused by its wounds than afraid, snapped its head toward me. With a stunted roar, he flicked his tail at the officer and sent him flying before advancing on me. Tucking me against the warm scales shielding his chest, the beast climbed up the tree, past the canopy. Cinching his shorter forearms around my middle, he leapt from his perch. His pearlescent wings snapped out, saving us from freefall, and he pumped them until his speed caused my eyes to water.
I clung to him until my fingers went numb with cold and fear. The rush of altitude made my head spin, and I gulped down my rising panic. An inquisitive rumble all but asked if I was all right. I opened my mouth, tasting bile and Thai in the back of my throat, and my answer came out in great, wet heaves.
I really, really hoped no one was down there. Thai just wasn’t the same the second time around.
A tickle of dread in my already tender middle was all the warning I received that a landing was imminent. The dragon flattened me against him and tucked his wings tighter against his sides. He dove, and I crushed my eyes shut. I didn’t want to see. But I couldn’t not look, so I stared up at the sky full of stars that appeared close enough to touch. Seconds later, he snapped open his wings, and we jerked hard as they caught wind and slowed our descent. Made clumsy by his burden, he grumbled a steady hum of irritation as he overcorrected his flight path. The sound of his claws scrabbling on wood made me giddy, and I stumbled out of his grasp, drunk on relief.
I’m alive. Don’t know for how long. But it counts!
“Let’s never do that again.” My butt hit the decking before I realized my knees had buckled. As it turned out, my spine had also liquefied during the flight. I flowed backward until my head thumped on the wood, and I lay spread eagle, one knee half-cocked to the side. “Never again.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” a familiar voice drawled. “It looked kind of fun to me.”
Santiago leaned over me, sizing me up as though I were the real threat and not the freaking dragon who shoved him stumbling back with a pointed jab from his tail.
“Yeah, I get it.” Santiago wobbled on his feet. “She’s yours.” His eyes narrowed. “What the—?”
The dragon’s front legs wobbled, and then he collapsed. He lay half on top of me, and my bones creaked beneath his weight. The angle of my right knee was all wrong. Not broken. Torn. Impact had thrust it sideways to escape the pressure and ruptured the muscle.
“He was shot,” I panted. “His chest.”
“Damn it. Why didn’t you say so?” Santiago stuck two fingers in his mouth and loosed a shrill whistle. “Bring the pliers.” He looked back at the dragon. “And a knife.”
Miller appeared with a toolbox in one hand and a machete in the other. “Luce.” His eyes rounded, and he swung his head toward Santiago. “What did he do?”
Thom landed with a thud inches from my cheek. “He brought her home.”
I might have asked what the holy hell all this meant, but Thom lifted my wrist and sank his teeth into the bone. I thrashed until he pinned down my shoulder. The bite hurt, God it hurt, but I didn’t scream. Not until fire raced through my veins and left me nothing but ash.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Vibrations under my left butt cheek drew a low growl of irritation from me. “Hello?” I waited but no one answered. Oh. Yeah. That only worked after I swiped. I reached under me, wiggled the phone out of my pocket, smeared my fingers all over the screen, then pressed it against my cheek. “Yeah?”
“Luce? Where are you?” Rixton barked. “I have thorns in places that have never seen daylight, a tick burrowed in my navel, and a rash resembling the Easter bunny on my throat. Me and thirty of our closest friends spent all night combing the woods behind your house. What in God’s name happened? Where the hell are you?”
Hazy memories solidified into a nightmarish tableau that snapped open my eyes.
“Buck was attacked. He emptied a clip before backup arrived, but whatever bled out was gone when we got there. He sustained a head injury and his leg is broken, not that you asked. Now I’m going to ask one more time. Where. The. Fuck. Are. You?”
“I’m . . . ” I squinted against the sunlight pouring over the foot of my bed. No. Not my bed. “I’m . . . hold on.” The head rush as I sat up left me reeling. “I don’t know where I am. I don’t recognize this place.”
“Luce?” Miller entered the room holding a soda, his gaze zeroing in on my phone. “Tell him you’re fine and that you’ll be home soon.”
“Are you insane?” Stockholm Syndrome had not set in, if that’s what he was hoping for, and no way was I telling my lifeline to call back later. I was clinging to Rixton until Miller pried him from my cold, dead fingers. “Where am I? Why am I here? What is that poking me in the—?”
Cole. I was in a bed. Cole’s bed. He was stretched out beside me. Naked. A wall of hard, male flesh.
I shielded my eyes before they dipped past his navel. Okay, fine. So his happy trail dragged my gaze a skosh lower than his outie. The heat sparking low in my belly chilled to glacier coldness when I dragged my attention higher. Bandages covered his chest, and fresh blood seeped through them.
Cole slept with his head at the foot of the bed, and his wide palm wrapped my ankle in sleep. His watch and wristband had gone the way of his clothes, and both his wrists were bare. Thick scar tissue ringed each, and when I shifted my leg a fraction, dragging his hand into the light, a single rose gold band glittered in the valley created by the raised skin.
The first thought that balled tires through my head left me giddy. Cole is like me, like Jane. That meant he must have answers. The second slammed on the brakes. Hard. Cutting out the metal worked for a few days. I had no blemishes where the doctors had removed their test section on my upper arm. Regeneration had taken three days? Four? How many times must he have bled to earn those ridges? Over and over and over again. The third thought sat idle as I worked through the ways this could have happened. No matter the scenario, I came to the same end conclusion. He hated those bands. That’s why he kept them covered, why he kept digging them out of his skin. Knowing I had seen them would leave him feeling exposed. Of that I felt certain.
A thrumming rattle moved through his chest as he resettled, the noise as close to a purr as human vocal cords could produce.
“Luce.”
Rixton’s snarl snapped my focus back to him. “Give me two hours.” I challenged Miller with my timeline, and he nodded agreement. “I’ll meet you then and explain everything,” I promised my partner. “Just don’t rat me out yet.”
“Your dad is pulling out his hair, and he didn’t have much to start with. I can’t keep this from him.”
I made a fist in my lap. “Two hours.”
He ended the call first.
“The dragon was real.” I pointed out the fist clamped around my ankle, remembering the solid weight of a coiled tail doing the same. “That is the dragon.”
“That is Cole.” Miller offered me the drink. “You need the sugar. We don’t need shock to set in again.”
Again? “How do I know you’re not trying to poison me?”
The stupidity of that statement heated my cheeks. They had a dragon. Cole was a dragon. He could swallow me whole and there would be no evidence left behind. Who needed poison with a dragon on the payroll?
Miller popped the lid on the can, took a long drink, then opened his mouth and stuck out his tongue to prove he’d swallowed.
“That’s gross, and I’m not drinking after you.” I scratched a red welt on my wrist, and another memory popped into the forefront of my brain. “Thom bit me. What the hell is wrong with you people? Who are you?”
“We’re your people,” Thom said from the doorway. “I’m sorry I entered your me space, but my saliva has a narcotic effect. You were in pain. I helped.”
Nope. Nope. Nope.
I changed my mind. I couldn’t accept this. Too much crazy too fast. Dragons that shifted into men, okay. I owned a Kindle. I read paranormal romance. I could get behind non-people-eating-dragons. But men with narcotic saliva? Men who drank out of other people’s drinks? That was the last straw, no pun intended. Gah. Gallows humor strikes again. Apparently I wasn’t yet convinced I wasn’t going to die horribly at the hand of these . . . whatever they were.
“I was in a car accident a few days ago, and I sustained a head injury,” I informed them. “For all I know, none of this is real. I probably cracked my skull like an egg, and my brain seeped out on the pavement before the EMTs arrived. A coma would explain why I’m living a paranormal romance novel.”
Miller and Thom exchanged the look that men gave each other when a woman was being difficult. Well boo-hoo, guys. Cry me a river. It must be so terrifying to wake up and realize humans were real. Oh wait. Flip that around. This was happening to me. Except with more terror and more dragons.
