Besides him. He had his own…needs.
He reeled Anjali under his arm. “Summon me when you’re done with her.”
Bale grunted. “I have no doubt one of you will be back here before that.”
Piper gave a little wave to the darkness as they bundled into the elevator.
Except for Esme, standing on her own two feet but wavering next to the brazier.
“We can’t leave her,” Anjali hissed, although the door was already closing.
“We can’t save her,” Piper replied. “But maybe he can.”
“Him? That—” Anjali made a muffled noise as Torch clamped a hand over her mouth.
She bit him, hard, but he waited until the door had closed all the way and the elevator began to descend before he loosed his hold on her jaw.
She hung on for a second, her incisors embedded in the meat of his palm, her hazel eyes snapping as brutally as her teeth.
“Don’t take a chunk,” he chastened.
“Don’t try to silence me.” At least she had to let go to yell at him.
Piper winced. “Get a room.”
Anjali swung to face her. “How about a dungeon, like where we just left Ez?”
Torch snorted. “It’s a penthouse dungeon.” He knew he was in trouble when both females rounded on him. Putting his hands up in the air defensively—but not too close to Anjali’s teeth—he added, “And he’ll do everything in his considerable power to keep her from Ashcraft.”
Anjali just glowered at him, and Piper wrung her hands. “Are you sure? Rave seemed…not sure that Bale should take on such a task.”
“My cousin questions everything that’s not his idea, even from our reyex,” Torch said. “You must’ve noticed that by now.” From the way Piper pursed her lips, he knew she had. “Anyway,” he continued, “we have our own tasks. You”—he pointed at Piper—“are going to meet Rave in his lab. He thinks he may have isolated the substance in Anjali’s black oil dragon trap that paralyzed me. He wants you to confirm the contaminant.”
Anjali grumbled under her breath, “It wasn’t my trap.” When he arched his eyebrows at her, she shrugged. “Although I did throw it at you.”
“You threw it at Rave,” he reminded her, “and hit me. But you’ll have a chance to make up for your terrible minion-ing. Because you are going to turn me over to Ashcraft.”
Chapter 10
Both females stared at him like he was insane.
Torch thought he could get used to the look.
“You can’t do this,” Piper said. But he left her on the elevator heading down to Rave and dragged Anjali out when they stopped at the casino level. Piper stared daggers at him as the elevator doors closed, but she could take it out on his cousin.
Meanwhile, Anjali was staring flamethrowers at him. “You can’t do this.”
He tilted his head. “Is there an echo?”
“Only back and forth in the empty space between your ears,” she snapped. “Why’d you fight me so hard if you’re just going to give in to the ash-hole?”
“We’re not giving in,” Torch said. “We’re tricking. Some might say cheating. I learned about it in Vegas once.”
He strode through the casino atrium. Despite the vast open space with plenty of room, Anjali clung to his side.
“Explain,” she demanded.
“It was your idea, actually. Give Ashcraft tainted ichor and let him choke on it.”
Her gaze shuttled nervously from side to side, as if someone might be listening. “But your ichor isn’t contaminated.”
“Yet.” He led her through the foyer with its faux cave décor. Like Bale’s jail except with more bling.
She blinked as they emerged outside into the hazy day. Thin clouds flattened the light, but she was a bright splash of color in her boutique finery.
The circular drive in front of the Keep was busy—it was always busy—but a valet standing at attention waved.
“This way.” Torch put his hand at the small of Anjali’s back.
She balked. “We’re confronting Ashcraft now?”
“Not quite yet,” he said. “Just going for a ride.”
She dragged her heels a little but picked up her feet when she saw the bike next to the valet, who held out a black leather jacket and two helmets.
“Thank you, James,” Torch said as he took the jacket.
“Good day to be flying through those curves, sir.”
“Always.” He tucked Anjali into the jacket. It was too big but it would do until he got her one of her own.
He choked that thought.
Apparently something of it showed on his face, though, because her hazel eyes narrowed. “What are you—?”
He plunked the helmet on her head. While she sputtered, he tightened the chin strap. Not quite tight enough to ensure she couldn’t bite, but with the padding of her dreadlocks, it fit perfectly.
He put on his own helmet and straddled the bike.
She opened her mouth and he revved the engine.
Her jaw cranked from one side to the other.
But of course she got on.
The vintage Indian was a beast in its own right. It roared as he spun out of the drive, under the Keep’s portcullis, and toward the highway. She was obviously no novice to riding pillion. Her grip around his waist was snug but not nervously so, her forearms resting easily on the points of his hipbones.
The clamp of her thighs was a little tighter but he suspected she was doing that to punish him for his presumption.
When they left the city traffic behind, he opened it up. The Indian raced its own reflection in the puddles from the previous night’s storm, the engine howling as they climbed toward the mountains.
This was the path Ashcraft’s private jet had taken when Anjali had tried to flee with her friends, having failed to kill a dragon. Rave had forced the plane down—or not so much forced as helped Piper land it—because he refused to lose Piper, his solarys. If not for that ancient mating bond, likely the dragonkin would’ve not pursued, the secret of their existence too precious to risk on revelation, even for revenge.
Not that the Nox Incendi didn’t do revenge. Torch was the last of his line because his elders had thought to challenge Bale as reyex, thinking that because the stone blight had struck him hard he would fall easily.
A stone might fall, but it could crush a lot of cluelessly conceited dragon-shifters in its path on the way down.
The Dorados had spared the youngest of the defeated line, and when his line’s name was struck from their rolls, they’d given him their name instead. Because while their revenge was fire and fury, their sense of justice was tempered in that forge as well.
He’d struggled to live up to the second chance, to pay off the debt and maybe someday restore the lost line. Now he finally had a real chance to make it happen.
Or die trying, apparently.
Being on the bike was almost like flying. Well, nothing like flying, but the closest he could get while on the ground. The curves of the road up the mountain soothed him, and for a moment he forgot about everything except the swoop of the asphalt, the bite of the air, and the heat of the female pressed to his spine.
She was so close that he felt the first shiver.
He’d made sure to give her his jacket while he stayed in his t-shirt only so he’d get cold first, but she was more delicate than he’d thought. More delicate than she probably wanted him to know.
But they didn’t have much farther to go.
Three more bends of the road and he turned off at an unmarked side road. The clouds were more tattered, letting through gleams of sunlight, and at the slower speed it was almost warm.
Didn’t hurt that Anjali had tucked herself even closer to him.
How fast would he have to go before they actually merged?
The asphalt gave way to gravel and he had to concentrate on keeping the bike upright. Anjali shifted her weight perfectly with his. He guided the Indian to a halt in the middle of a gravel turnaround and cut the engine.
He’d never actually heard deafening silence before. It was kind of spooky. They were surrounded by rough sandstone and tough, stubby brush—like a tomb.
One soft tick of the engine broke the spell, and Anjali stiffened, pulling away from him, as if that one tick had been the shortest bomb countdown in movie history.
Before she could blow up at him, he said, “You’re probably cold. Come with me.”
He steadied her as she swung off the back of the bike.
She looked at the powerful machine. “Quite the antique. Is this part of your treasure trove?”
He smoothed his hand over the fuel tank as he dismounted. “I told you, I haven’t chosen my treasure yet. This is Bale’s. But…he doesn’t get out much anymore.”
“Probably a good thing,” she mumbled.
Torch didn’t contradict her as he led her through the maze of crumbling rock. “One of my tasks as enforcer for the clan is containing the Nox Incendi within the Keep.”
She cast him a sidelong glance. “Prisoners?”
He snorted. “No one can hold a truly pissed-off dragon. At least not without serious damage. No, with Rave’s help, Bale made a place that was perfect for dragonkin so we wouldn’t have to fight them to keep them.”
“Rich, beautiful, mysterious.” Anjali nodded thoughtfully. “Who would ever want to leave the Keep?”
“Exactly. Everything they want is there. But sometimes…they
need
more. So we come here.”
He stopped and let her step past him between two pillars of rock. She gasped.
Red sandstone and gray limestone banded the wild landscape dropping away from their feet, barely softened by tufts of gray-green brush and a few darker green junipers tucked into the ravines where water would run. From their elevated position, they had a partial view of the city. Wan sunlight twinkled on the fantastical buildings of the Strip, like a washed-out version of the brighter neon of night, but it seemed far away, almost a mirage. Mostly, the mountains and canyons dominated, a reminder that the desert had been there for a very long time before man and would be there a very long time after.
“I can see why a dragon would come here,” Anjali said softly. “Just rock and air and light and shadow.”
He should have known her artist eye would see. Reaching out, he tugged at the end of one dreadlock, red as the sandstone, and the hazel gaze she turned on him was like a distillation of all the other desert colors: sky blue, dusty green, earthen gold.
“Let me show you the rest,” he said.
A faint path skirted the cliff side. He’d never noticed the fall before and kept a close eye on Anjali’s steps as they followed the pebbled ledge into the small bowl formed between the hills. From here they lost the view of the city, as if they’d stepped back into that time when the desert had taken over.
Set deep into the bowl was the house.
Anjali stopped. “Oh. This is…”
He tilted his head. “Yeah. It is.”
The three-story, ship’s-prow peak of leaded glass should have stuck out like, well, like a ship in the desert. But it blended like another mountain. Cut in the same triangles as his aerie, the crystal reflected the sky and sandstone. Torch put his hand at her back to urge her onward.
The back of the house descended into the limestone. Surrounded by the cliffs, the house looked small, but everything was cut to the size of dragons.
Anjali craned her neck to look up as they passed into the shadow of the glass prow. “This is where you come to be free.”
With a nod, he gestured out to the encircling canyon. “Here we can fly unseen. Fluorescent optical properties in the rock here interfere with radar and even cell phone cameras. And it’s too remote and barren for most people anyway. Not every dragon needs it, most don’t. Maybe the Keep has made us a little…” He considered for a moment. “Tame.”
She quirked her lips. “Well, I don’t think
you
have to worry about that.”
He grunted. “The afternoon winds are picking up, and it’ll get colder. But in the summer, the updrafts will carry you for hours without moving your wings.”
She stared across the distance. “To fly…”
The yearning on her face made his stomach muscles tense. But he hadn’t brought her here for that. “Come inside.”
She gasped again as they entered the prow through the huge double doors. “Torch…”
The oasis hidden behind the glass greeted them with lush greenery, brilliantly colored tile, and a azure pool deep enough for a dragon or two. As if all the bleached color outside had been concentrated here. The softly humid air caressed their skin, and citrus trees perfumed every breath, their small white flowers dotted like early stars in the dark, glossy leaves.
Anjali drifted through the space, leaning forward with her hands clenched behind her back to examine the serpentine shapes that inhabited this garden. Next to the white marble figure spitting water into the pool, she stopped to glance back at him. “Is all the art of dragons?”
“I voted for naked women. Rave thought this was a better reminder.” He joined her beside the spouting dragon and dabbled his fingers in the water. “This one is Chinese. The one in the jungle back there is a thunder dragon from Bhutan. Across the pond are Greek and the three-headed Slavic dragons.”
She stared up at the mural stretched across the back wall which was actually the cliff face. “That one?”
“Tolkien.” He gestured to the pool. “And that’s a genuine Viking longship.”
“Dragon headed, of course.” She turned to face him. “Why did you bring me here?”
“The Vikings decorated their warships with dragons for power and protection. We’re going into battle too. But as you realized, this is our place to be free. And I want to give you that chance.”
She sucked in the side of her cheek suspiciously. “What chance?”
“To go free.” He paced away from her a few steps as the dragon inside him reared up in defiance, fighting his hold. “This isn’t really your fight. You made a mistake, but you shouldn’t die for it.”
She stared at him. “I would have killed you.”
Damn, she liked to remind him of that. “I know. But you didn’t. The Nox Incendi have made mistakes too, I think. We’ve gotten tame and lazy when we used to be predators. What if the stone blight is just another symptom of our hidden fears?” He shook his head. “That’s not your fight either. I just wanted to take you away from the Keep to show you I’m not fucking with you. Just say the word and I will leave you here. On the far side of the house is another path up to the canyon rim. At the end of that path is a garage. You can take one of the cars. There’s cash and gold in all of them, enough to get you anywhere.”