Dragon's Honor (7 page)

Lightning flashed, lighting up the windows. She squeaked as, in best horror movie tradition, branches from the tree outside tapped against the window pane. For a second she wanted to dive under the duvet and take shelter like she had when she was a child. Back then the duvet had been both shield and invisibility cloak rolled into one, and nothing, no monster from under the bed or the closet could get to her. But much as she’d like it to, the real world didn’t work that way. The wrongness in the air caught in her lungs as she dragged in a shaky breath, and the shadows around her whispered dire warnings. If she stayed here in bed, she would die. She knew she would, beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Danger crawled over her skin, making her feel sick. Surging to her feet, she grabbed the robe and hauled it on, tying the belt in a shaky hand. She’d had this feeling before, a couple of times. The first she’d been out with a few friends but when it came time to walk home, she’d felt sick and said she’d catch up after visiting the restroom. Her two friends had been mugged, one beaten so bad that she’d ended up in intensive care. She’d felt so guilty she’d camped at the hospital all that week.

The second time it had happened, they’d been about to get on a subway train. The sickness and wrong feeling had hit her out of the blue, so strong it had driven her to her knees. Her friends had thought she’d gone mad, but she persuaded them not to get on the train. And she’d been right. Less than five minutes into the journey, a bomb had taken out the center carriages, right where they would have been. Since then she swore, if she ever got that feeling again, she wouldn’t ignore it. And she wasn’t going to. Emptying her purse onto the bed, she grabbed her car keys and cell phone. The rest she could leave, all she needed to do was get to Lucy’s. She could deal with anything else from there.

Her steps were silent on the carpet as she raced for the door. Her breath billowed in icy puffs in front of her. What the hell…? How was it this cold? She yanked open the door, intending to race down the corridor and hit the service stairs at the end of it. But before she could, a dark shadow rose in front of her. Hard hands grabbed her arms, spinning her around. She slammed into the wall, the air driven out of her lungs in a hard
whoosh
as a solid male body pinned her against the hard surface.

She had no clue what was going on, but right now she didn’t care. Whatever other threats were in the house didn’t matter, she had one right up close and personal and she needed to get loose. Fast. Dragging a breath in, she opened her mouth to scream but a hard hand dropped down and covered her mouth, cutting off her air.

Shit, this was it. She was going to die.

Chapter Six

“Shh, honey. It’s just me.” A familiar voice rumbled by her ear.

Smith. Relief hit her like a tidal wave, weakening her knees and almost dumping her on the floor. She clutched at his arms for support and managed to stay on her feet. Only just though.

“You okay?” He pulled back to look at her, concern written in what she could see of his expression in the dim light. Was it her or was his voice deeper now, more animalistic? No, that was just ridiculous. She shook off the silly idea and smiled up at him. Touching as they were, she felt him speak, as well as hearing it and that was why his voice sounded odd. Smith was as human as she was.

Their gazes caught, then held. She sucked a breath in at the dark heat in his eyes. Like pools of midnight, unlit by either moon or stars, they called to her. Pulled her closer. She shivered, biting her lip. His gaze dropped to her lips and a deep groan rolled up from the center of his massive chest. His warm breath stirred the fine hairs on the side of her neck, sparking heat to swirl through her veins and further threatening the rigidity of her knees. Crap, she wasn’t doing this. Wasn’t having a female moment over him when there was…whatever the hell was going on in the house.

“Don’t….” he started, but before she could ask him ‘don’t what?’ his lips crashed down over hers.

He parted her lips with a hard sweep of his tongue, a dominant act that took her breath away all over again. She clung to him, absorbing his strength, and kissed him back. No meek embrace, heat flared between them, intensified, and became an inferno. Desire rolled through her veins, fanning out over every inch of her skin before diving underneath and centering in her core. Her pussy clenched, panties instantly damp with her arousal as she tried to get as close to him as she could. Unbidden, amongst the heat of the torrid kiss, a sense of calm stole over her. Everything was going to be okay. Smith would make sure of it, she knew he would. How she knew, she had no clue. The knowledge was simply there, deep down, as though it were ingrained in her being, in her very soul.

Whimpering in the back of her throat, she tried to get closer, but he pulled away. For a second, she tried to pull him back, disappointment a knife that sliced through her gut, but just as quickly reality intruded. Embarrassment swept all other feelings away. What was she thinking? She wasn’t some too-stupid-to-live gothic heroine who needed a man to come save her. She was the hero of her own tale and she’d damn well rescue the prince instead of vice versa, if she wanted to.

“What’s going on, Sm—” She frowned. “And what’s your first name? I can’t carry on calling you by your surname. Not after….”

He looked down at her, a strange look in his eyes. As she watched, a gold sheen washed over them. Here one minute and gone the next. She shook her head, amused by her own imagination.

“Baron,” he said, his reluctance obvious.

“Really?”

He sighed. “No, it’s Thorningumbald Burtswick the second. Of course, really. I know my own damned name.”

She couldn’t help the grin that stole over her face, both at the name and his reaction. Definitely a sore point there.

Baron. It was unusual, not bad but unusual. Living in the upper echelons of society, she’d heard some odd names. A lot of biblical types and some old, obscure ones as well, but they tended to come with the rider ‘Junior the fourteenth’ or something. But Baron, that was a new one…. Not many of the upper crust were ballsy enough to give their kids names drawn from noble titles. Baron was nice though, she liked it.

“Must’ve been difficult as a kid, with a name like that,” she commented as she trailed him down the corridor. She reached out to flick the light switch at the top of the stairs but he stopped her with a shake of his head.

“Why not?” Confusion flowed through her thick and fast. Helped her not think about the fact she was wandering the house in a very thin shift and night robe, with a guy that looked like he’d just stepped out of a GQ cover shoot. “There’s an emergency generator in one of the outbuildings, it should have kicked in by now.”

Baron had paused just ahead of her on the top step, and as she watched, moved his head from side to side, almost as though he was trying to pick up a scent. It wasn’t a human movement, more like that of a dog.

“Air is thick with magic. I would say they’re using some kind of suppression spell. Even if they aren’t, or it lapses, we need the element of surprise.”

Spells? Air thick with magic? She narrowed her eyes, her belief he was human taking a battering. How could he know that? Either he was like Lucy, a para-CSI nut, or he was way more than the average bodyguard.

“My father didn’t get you from the normal security agency, did he?”

Given how tight-lipped he was with information about himself, she hadn’t expected an answer at all. Instead, he surprised her by glancing over his shoulder as they made their way down the stairs, then shaking his head. Before she could ask anything else though, he paused, listening for something she couldn’t hear.

“Shit, they’re coming in the front. We need to go out the back.
Now
.”

Grabbing her arm, he bundled her down the last few stairs in front of him and shoved her down the hall. Heavy crashes and the sound of breaking glass behind them proved he was right. Something was coming through—literally through—the front door and whatever it was, it wasn’t human.

“Go, go, go, go!”

Snarls and thunder behind them added wings to her heels and she sprinted toward the kitchen, and beyond it, the back door. If they could get out into the garden, they could reach the garages at the bottom and her father’s SUVs parked in there. At least two of the vehicles were bulletproof, so that should mean that they were whatever-was-coming-through-the-front-door proof as well. At least, she hoped they were. She
really
hoped they were.

Skidding into the kitchen doorway, she stopped dead. There were men in there. Very small, old men. With pikes.

Baron ran into the back of her, a big arm around her to stop them both tumbling to the ground. His gaze followed hers.

“Shit. Redcaps. The panic room….
Run
!”

*

Honor ran, her footsteps pounding a desperate beat against the polished wood of the hallway. Baron couldn’t allow himself the luxury of watching her. Instead, he kept his eyes on the redcaps causing mayhem in the large kitchen and hoped like hell the trolls hadn’t managed to figure out how to get through the front door yet. As a species, they’d definitely been at the back of the queue when the brains had been handed out. Honor wasn’t stupid, she’d be able to outwit them. Easily. Maybe.

There was a roar from upstairs, the unmistakable sound of a very pissed off dragon shaking the house. A sigh of relief punched free from Baron’s chest. His brother was awake and free of the spell, which meant...he cocked an ear just as a troll squealed in pain. Yup, he was dealing with the rock-heads.

He turned his attention back to the scene in front of him. The redcaps had all but trashed the kitchen. Doors hung cock-eyed on their hinges, the contents of the cupboards strewn over the floor. Some had been torn free completely, two redcaps near the back door using a couple of them to play tennis with a cabbage. At least, it looked like a cabbage. Since they were just as liable to turn on each other as anyone else, it could easily be a head.

There were three in the refrigerator, hooting and calling out to the others as they hurled food out from the chilled depths. One had found the vodka and was slumped half in and half out of a cupboard, singing something with enough profanity to make a marine blush.

Redcaps and trolls, suppression spells, and a serious sensor net with a shadow dragon guard? Whoever the Crofts had pissed off, they’d got some big muscles magically speaking, and balls too for setting redcaps and trolls loose in a city. Both were fuckers to control.

Silence fell as the redcaps noticed him in the doorway. A couple dropped off counters, and the three in the fridge abandoned it to gather in the center of the kitchen. One kicked the singer and when he didn’t shut up, slashed his throat from ear to ear. Baron didn’t flinch, just stared them down.

“You little fuckers picked the wrong house,” he snarled, letting his dragon free enough to shine in his eyes.

“Oh yeah, says who?”

A redcap leapt onto the central island, a swagger in his step and an evil light in his deep-set eyes. They looked like wizened little men. If it weren’t for the fact they were all carrying pikes, he’d have thought they’d escaped from a fantasy film set.

Now that Honor was out of the way and safe, he found he was looking forward to this. On normal jobs, even ones where violence played a part, he and Duke always had to reign themselves in. Hurt the humans, scare them, yeah but they weren’t allowed to actually
kill
them.

Redcaps though, were murderous little bastards of the faery persuasion. Dwarf, or goblin, he’d never worked out which and frankly, didn’t care. They weren’t human which was all that mattered. Not human meant he could barbecue the vicious little shits.

“Says me.” Baron grinned, showing a mouthful of teeth that were nowhere
near
human.

The redcap leader looked less than impressed and flashed a set of teeth that a Mako shark would have been proud of.

“D’ya think we’re bothered what a big-job like you says?”

Baron didn’t bother with a reply, and launched himself into the kitchen. Redcaps leapt off every available surface and battle was joined, fast and furious. Unable to shift properly in the small space, Baron called his scales and used them to cover his human body like armor.

Reaching out, he grabbed the nearest redcap and used it as a club to knock down the three closing in on his left side. Two threw themselves off the top of the refrigerator, bellowing war-cries at the top of their lungs. He altered his throat to draconic for a second and incinerated them mid-Braveheart moment with a gout of flame.

Troll screams and loud crashes at the front of the house told him Duke was having as much fun as he was. Nearly. Trolls were ponderous and slow, not quite as much fun as the redcaps. Trying to grab them was like trying to grab chickens on the run, or herding ferrets.

Lashing out with a taloned hand, he decapitated one and caught the head. Judging the weight, he took a step to the side and rolled it like a bowling ball. If a bowling ball was thrown at the speed of a bullet. It knocked another couple off their feet, breaking bones in the process if the screams were anything to go by, and buried itself in the dishwasher door.

He’d never fought them before but the agency was real big on Species Threat Familiarization, so he’d sat through the lectures. Redcaps were a level four threat. They were creepy little fucks who liked to lure travelers off roads and murder them in inventive ways, then soak their weird caps in their victim’s blood. And they did it at a rate that would make a serial killer green with envy because if the blood on the cap dried out, then its owner died.

He grinned as a thought occurred to him, and looked down. One was wrapped around his leg, trying to pry scales free. Baron snarled and grabbed him around the scuff of the neck. The creature shrieked obscenities and flailed about with its pike. Baron swore as it tried to kick him in the family jewels with the big boots it wore but missed and got his hip instead. Ignoring the pain, he shoved it head first into the sink on the island and turned the tap on full. Water cascaded over its head and it screamed, a terrible soul-searing scream as blood swirled in the sink and disappeared down the plug. It jerked and shuddered, falling still as the water ran clear.