“You okay?” Beth asked me.
I think I nodded, but the world was going dark. It occurred to me that we’d been very lucky that they’d happened by just at the time we’d made it to the road, as though they’d known we’d be in trouble and exactly where to find us.
Guardian angels?
“Did my grandmother put you up to this?” I tried to ask.
Beth gave me a worried look and touched my forehead. She whispered soothing words in Shoshone, and my eyes drifted closed again. When they opened, I was lying alone in a hospital bed with white curtains around it, and the ride in the pickup was fading like a dream.
I first noticed that I was cool and not thirsty, and then I noticed that I felt no pain. Not an iota. In fact, I felt pretty good.
“Mm,” I said in satisfaction.
The curtain opened, and there was Mick, cleaned up a little, but still in the T-shirt and jeans I’d stuffed into my backpack for him. His arms and face were covered with gouges from the demons, but the wounds were closed.
“Hey, Mick.” I held out my hand. “Come and get into bed with me.”
Mick’s smile warmed his face—gods, how I’d missed that smile—but his eyes were still watchful.
“Sounds like you’re feeling better.”
I wanted to throw my arms around him and pull him down to me, but my arms felt like rubber, and they were filled with tubes. I also had a big bandage on my head. No pain, but the bandage was awkward.
“She sounds high.” I saw Nash Jones on a chair behind Mick, a magazine in his hands. “What did they give her?”
I smiled. “Whatever it is, I like it.”
“You had a concussion, sweetheart,” Mick said. “Plus dehydration, the beginning of sunstroke, and a third-degree burn on your arm. Lie back and take it easy.”
In other words, I was lucky my guardian angels got me here before I keeled over. “You find your truck, Nash?”
“No.” The answer was short, irritated. “I have the park rangers and sheriffs in both Nevada and California on alert for it.”
“Must be nice to have so much power.”
He gave me a noncommittal grunt.
“I want to go home,” I said.
Mick smoothed my hair. “Not just yet, baby. You get better, then we’ll go.”
“Turn around,” I said, my mind relaxing. “I want to look at your ass. I’ve missed your ass.”
“Can you gag her?” Nash growled.
“Hey, your ass isn’t so bad either,” I told him.
“Please, gag her,” Nash said.
Fear worked its way through the soothing drug. “Mick, why are you so certain the dragons won’t come after you? What were you talking about—making bail? What the hell does that mean?”
“Janet.” Mick sat on the edge of the bed and took my hands in his warm ones. With muscles and his tattoos he looked like a big, bad biker—and he was—but to me, he could be gentleness itself. Even so, there was some part of him always wary around me, and my little display on the mountain had heightened that. “Like I told you, it was a test of my resources, the equivalent of a human putting together enough money to get out on bail. They won’t lock me in again, but I’m honor-bound to turn up at the trial. They know I’ll show up; it’s a dragon thing.”
My mouth popped opened. “Trial?”
“For breaking dragon law, for letting you live.” Mick’s gaze held mine, that deep, ancient gaze that betrayed how nonhuman he truly was. “When they convict me at the trial, then there will be no escape from that.”
The problem with good drugs is that they wear off. By the time the doctors decided I was well enough to go home the next morning, I was hungover and aching. I had meds to stave off the worst of the pain, but I was stiff and sore, my skin smarting from both the fire in the cave and the brutal sun of Death Valley.
I discovered once I was coherent that we weren’t in Beatty, a small town just inside the Nevada border, but in Las Vegas.
“You made those people drive us all the way to Las Vegas?” I asked in surprise.
“They wanted to,” Mick said. “They were worried about you, and I wanted you at the best possible hospital.”
I remembered my conviction in the truck that Beth and her family were some kind of mystical beings, like angels or gods. Had that been real? Or pain hallucination? I’d been half-gone on sunstroke at the time, so who knew what I’d really seen.
Mick rented an SUV to get us home, but Nash insisted on driving. I wanted to grill Mick about the dragon trial, but the meds kept me too drowsy, and I slept fitfully in the backseat, my head on Mick’s lap. Anytime I slid from sleep, I found Mick’s comforting hand on my shoulder, heard him whispering healing spells over me. I’d drift off again, dreaming of chasing Nightwalkers and demons around Magellan, demanding that they pay their hotel bills.
When I next woke, I was in Mick’s arms, being carried into the hotel through the back door. A short hall led to my bedroom and bathroom, with a door beyond my suite leading into the hotel itself. Through this entrance I could come and go when I pleased, without having to pass any of the guests or reception.
I blessed the privacy as Mick carried me in from the warm afternoon to the cool shadows of my bedroom and laid me on the bed. He quickly and competently undressed me, while I lay there and enjoyed it. What healing spells he’d done on me during the drive made me feel better, though I still had a long way to go.
Mick tucked me into bed and disappeared into the bathroom, and I heard the shower go on. I listened to him cleaning himself up and was still awake when he came out.
“Mick.”
He looked down at me while he toweled his hair, in jeans but with his torso bare. He had the best body I’d ever seen, six-pack abs and muscular chest, his biceps hard and smooth. A dragon tattoo curled down each arm, their black eyes seeming to glitter with life. They kept his dragon essence, he’d once told me, holding that part of him while he walked around in human form.
“You need to tell me more about this dragon trial,” I said.
Mick wrapped the towel around his neck and held on to both ends. “No, what you need is to sleep.”
“I’m tired of sleeping. What did you mean when you said,
when
they convict you? Don’t you mean
if
?”
“That’s not how dragon trials work. Guilt is already proved. The trial is more to clear the air, but the fact that they’re holding one at all gives me some hope.”
How he could talk so calmly about it, I had no idea. “Hope? How can a trial in which they’ve already found you guilty give you hope?”
“Because even though you opened the vortexes, as they feared, we sealed them again, mitigating the threat. That act changed the order for immediate execution to one of a trial. It gives me a chance.”
“This is bullshit.” I wanted to leap out of bed, hunt down this damned dragon council, and tell them what I thought. “Take me to the dragons. Let me talk to them.”
Wry amusement danced in Mick’s eyes. “I’m not letting you anywhere near the dragon council, or them anywhere near you. What you’re going to do is stay out of it and get better.”
Like hell. I didn’t have the vaguest idea how to find the dragons and their council, but I’d hunt them down and wring their scaly necks if it was the last thing I did.
“Damn it, Mick,” I said. “You said they know you’ll show up at the trial even if they don’t force you there. Why would you go? Why not fly away to Antarctica or something?”
“If I don’t appear on the trial date, I’ll be immediately hunted down and killed. Antarctica wouldn’t help, and besides, it’s too cold for me.” He smiled, as though he found my human ignorance funny. “I would also be dishonored if I didn’t go, and honor is everything to a dragon. Even if my sentence is execution, my honor will remain intact.”
“Well, thank the gods for that.”
“I know you don’t understand. But there are things I can do in my defense, and I might be able to persuade them to give me a punishment I can survive.”
“Shit, Mick, don’t blind me with your optimism.”
“You won’t have to worry about this, sweetheart. When they schedule the trial, I’ll go, take my punishment, and do my damndest to get back to you.”
“You’re not going alone. The dragons are all hot to kill you because of me, and I’m going with you.”
Mick lost his smile. He turned from the bed and reached for his shirt. “No, you are not. It’s far too dangerous for a human, and I don’t trust that one of them won’t try to kill you as soon as my back is turned. They don’t like you, and your little display up on the ridge hasn’t made things any better.”
“My ‘little display’ saved your life. Which you’re about to throw away when you go to this fucking trial.”
“I don’t have a choice,” he said, words clipped.
I put my hands to my aching head. “Shit, Mick. I don’t want this. I don’t want any of this. Why can’t we just have a normal relationship?”
Mick’s face softened. “A Stormwalker and a dragon? Not in this world.” He leaned to me, his body hard and warm, his fists firm on the mattress. “Janet, sweetheart, I’d a thousand times rather have what I have with you than any ‘normal’ relationship with anyone else.”
That was more what I wanted to hear. His skin was hot and damp, his breath warm, and I’d missed him so much. I brushed my thumb over his wrist. “Stay and do some healing magic with me?”
To my vast disappointment, Mick shook his head and straightened up. “Sorry, sweetheart. I’m still pretty weak. The little healing I did on the drive back was all I had for now.”
I shifted over in the bed, giving him plenty of room. “You do know that asking you to do healing magic is my subtle way of saying ‘come to bed and screw my brains out’?”
Mick didn’t smile. “You’re tired, love. I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Just having you in bed with me will help me feel better. I missed you, Mick. I was so worried about you.”
“Janet.”
I heard the “no” in his voice. My heart ached. Never since I’d met Mick had he been anything but happy to slide between the sheets with me. I needed to reassure myself that he was back with me and unhurt.
I folded my arms. “Next time I’ll leave you at the bottom of the damned shaft.”
Mick leaned to me again, closer this time, his breath hot. “What you don’t understand, Janet, is that I want you so bad right now that I wouldn’t be able to stop myself. The things I’d want to do to you would hurt you, maybe put you back in the hospital. Is that what you want?”
The rough note in his voice rippled agreeable heat through me. I gave him a tired smile. “I think I wouldn’t mind.”
Mick was strong, never mind that his magic was at a low ebb. Gods, that turned me on.
“But I’d mind.” He stood up. “I’d hurt you, baby, because right now I wouldn’t be able to control myself. I’m strong, and you’re injured, and I’d take advantage. I don’t want to have to live with that.” He turned away, but not before I saw his hands shaking.
“Mick,” I called before he opened the door.
He looked back, so much pain on his face that I almost relented. Almost.
“You do have the sweetest ass,” I said.
He growled something, ducked out into the sunlight, and slammed the door.
I grunted and lost my smile. Mick was sexy as sin, but I still had one hell of a headache.
When I woke up again, the sun was setting, and I felt better. The healing spells Mick had done on me in the SUV had helped, and I did a few on myself while I showered, but I could have done so much more if Mick had stayed. He’d taught me the power of Tantra, and together we’d worked some brilliant magic. The wards that secured this hotel were full of it.
I still had a bandage on my head when I walked out to the reception area, though my arm felt well enough that I could leave that bandage off. It was six in the afternoon, and the hotel and lobby were quiet. Tourist season was winding down, and we weren’t full, which was fine with me today.
Cassandra sat behind the reception desk at her computer. The bruise she’d sustained in the fight with Pamela was gone, probably magicked away. She wore an elegant black silk pantsuit with a rust-colored blouse, her blond hair in its usual French braid. A pair of tasteful silver and onyx earrings clasped her lobes, and she wore one silver ring with Hopi designs on her middle finger.
“Mick told me about the rescue and the demon attack,” Cassandra said, flicking me a glance from her screen. “Are you all right?”
I wondered how much Mick had related about my role in it, but Cassandra only looked concerned. “I’ll live.” I shrugged. “Where is Mick?”
Cassandra had gotten used to the fact that I didn’t always know where my boyfriend was. “He said he had errands to run in Flat Mesa.”
Fine. He might believe the dragons wouldn’t capture him again, but I still worried.
“Any disasters here?” I asked Cassandra.
“Depends on what you mean by disaster. Had a problem with a faucet in room six, but Fremont fixed it. I was just paying his invoice. But the magic mirror did run off one of the guests last night.”