Mercy Burns (21 page)

Luckily, there was only one blue house on the street, and even in the dark it was obvious that the place was a “major fixer-upper.”

Damon pulled to a halt down the street from the darkened house and turned off the lights. The run-down old house was barely visible through the brick-and-iron fencing, not to mention all the trees, but yellow light peeked softly through torn curtains.

“So what’s the plan?” I whispered.

“Angus mentioned a boundary alarm, so the first thing I need to do is find and disconnect that.” He glanced at me, his expression fierce. Death was clearly gearing up for another fight. “Our friends on the boat said they were only using draman to mind her, but I’ll go in hard and fast, just in case they lied.”

“What do you want me to do?” I didn’t want to sit here and wait. But, by the same token, I wasn’t trained for this sort of stuff, and I might only get in his way.

“Come around to the driver’s side and keep the engine running. We may need to make a fast getaway.”

I nodded and climbed out of the car. The crisp wind spun around me, holding a hint of age and decay. I hoped it wasn’t an omen, hoped that the run-down old house held something more than the chill of true death.

Damon had climbed out of the car and was standing beside the door, holding it open for me.

“Be careful in there,” I said, pausing beside him.

He smiled and touched my cheek. “I have an unfinished kiss to get back to, so rest assured that I will.”

I raised an eyebrow and said, somewhat sardonically, “There you go again—presuming I’ll just fall in with your plans.”

“There’s no presumption about it. You know it, and I know it.” He gave me a devilish grin that just about melted my insides. “It’s just a matter of when, not if.”

I opened my mouth to reply, but just as I did, a soft sound similar to a car backfiring came from the direction of the house.

It had barely even registered as a gunshot before Damon hit me, pushing me down and covering my body with his as the car window above us shattered into a million tiny pieces.

I
slammed knee-first into the road, but the pain that shot up my legs was nothing compared to the fear. My heart was going a million miles an hour and my throat was so dry, even breathing hurt. We only had the open door as protection, and the metal just didn’t seem like adequate armor against a potential rain of bullets. Only it didn’t happen.

From within the house came the sound of screaming—furious,
feminine
screaming—and it was accompanied by the sound of tearing metal and a weird whooshing noise. A second later, the roof of the house exploded upward, propelled by a jet of water. And carried along with it was a man, yelling as he tried to fire a gun back into the house.

A sea dragon’s greatest weapon might be the sea, but they can control
any
sort of water. Even the stuff that came through rusting pipes—which made me
wonder why she hadn’t done that before now, and escaped.

“It appears our sea dragon is still alive,” Damon murmured, grabbing my arms and hauling me upright. “Come on.”

He hurried me across the road and behind the cover of another car, but the shooters were obviously too occupied by the mayhem within to worry about us.

Another muffled shot rang out and the fountain of water dipped dramatically before rising again.

“Stay here,” Damon murmured, then ran, crouched, toward the house.

I shifted position so I could watch him. In the darkness he was little more than a shadow quickly lost to normal sight, and only my odd awareness of the man allowed me to keep track of his progress.

He slipped over the metal gate and ran toward the house. As he did so, an old wooden chair exploded through the front window, hitting the concrete and shattering into a dozen pieces.

A woman with dark hair was briefly silhouetted, running across the shattered remains of the window before disappearing. Several heartbeats later, a blond man appeared, a gun held in front of him as he chased her. More shots rang out. More furniture flew.

In the houses around us, lights were coming on, but no one had come out to see what was happening. I wondered if anyone had called the cops, and how long it would take them to arrive if they
had
been called. I doubted Damon wanted any sort of interaction with the human police, and Coral sure as hell wouldn’t. She’d be desperate to get to her mate before dawn—and any delay would be a problem.

All sounds from the house suddenly ceased. Both the crashing of furniture and the gunshots had stopped, though water still cascaded through the shattered remains of the roof, and the guard was no closer to escaping it. I scanned the outside of the building, wondering what the hell was going on in there. I no longer had any sense of Damon—he’d slipped around to the rear of the house, beyond reach of my senses. I bit my lip, hating having to stand here, feeling like a fifth wheel with nothing important to do or contribute.

The front door of a neighboring house opened and an elderly woman peeked out. I shifted back into the shadows to ensure she couldn’t see me. She clutched her blue dressing gown close to her chest, peering out at the water, then shook her head and went back inside.

As her door closed, a muffled scream came from inside the shattered blue house, then another window exploded. This time it wasn’t broken by a chair, but rather a woman. She hit the ground awkwardly and clambered to her feet, running toward the trees and the metal fence beyond. But the blond man appeared in the window, gun raised and aimed at the woman’s back.

“Coral, drop,” I shouted, and reached for my fire, feeling it rip through my body—a maelstrom of deadly force that was eager and ready to be used.

As Coral threw herself to the ground, the gun swung my way. I thrust to my feet and flung the fire. The flaming ribbon arced across the night, the force of it all but drowning out the sound of the shot as the guard fired his weapon. I threw myself sideways and
felt the burn of the bullet cut through the sleeve of my sweatshirt. Saw my flames hit the guard and wrap around both his arm and the weapon.

Then a black shadow engulfed him, and the guard disappeared from sight. I pushed away from the car and walked toward the fence. The dark-haired woman still lay on the grass where’d she’d fallen, her breath rapid and clothes soaked and bloody. I couldn’t see a wound on her back, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t one.

“Coral? Are you okay?”

She shifted and glanced up at me. Even in the darkness, her eyes seemed to glow with an unearthly sea green fire. “Who are you?” she said, her voice scratchy and holding only the slightest hint of a Scottish accent.

“Angus sent us,” I said. “He wanted us to rescue you.”

“But no one can rescue him now,” she said, her voice breaking a little. She pushed to her knees and tucked a wet strand of hair behind her ear. “You were with him when he died?”

“Yes.” I hesitated. “We caught the men who shot him. They’re on the boat with his body.”

That unearthly glow got brighter. “They’re alive?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

Though there was little emotion in her voice, it still sent a shiver down my spine. Those men were not long for the world if this sea dragon had anything to do with it.

And while I hadn’t actually saved them from Damon just so they could face this woman’s wrath, part of me could understand her need for revenge. If anything
happened to my brother, I’d shift heaven and hell to find those responsible.

Heck, I was doing that now for Rainey.

The front door of the house opened and Damon appeared. Coral spun, her hand raised and the sensation of power suddenly surging across the night.

“No,” I said quickly. “He’s with me.”

She glanced at me, then lowered her hand. The energy died, and with it went the water that had been jetting through the roof. The guard fell with a scream that ended abruptly as his body snagged on one of the jagged rafters, hanging there like a limp piece of meat.

I tore my gaze away, trying to remember that these men really deserved what they got.

Damon walked toward us, his gaze on me rather than the woman kneeling in the grass. His clothes were wet but otherwise he seemed okay. Some of the tension still filling me slithered away—but not all of it. We still had to get out of here before the cops arrived.

“You okay?” he asked, his nostrils flaring as his dark gaze swept me.

“Yeah.” There was blood running down the inside of my sweatshirt, but only a trickle, so obviously I had just been grazed. “We’d better get out of here.”

“I can’t,” Coral said, and pulled down her turtleneck. Around her neck was a band of leather, to which a small black box had been attached. “I’m wired. I can feel the thing now—it’s like a dull fire waiting to explode into my brain. If I get any closer to the boundary, it’ll set this thing off. And it’ll kill me if I go past it.”

“Then we need to remove it,” Damon said, stopping just behind her.

She was shaking her head even before he’d finished.

“I tried that. Unless you’ve got the proper key, the thing just goes off.”

Damon frowned. “Do you know what sort of signal it is?”

“No, but the radius is a quarter of an acre, which is the size of this property, if that’s any help.”

“Maybe.” He glanced at me. “Meet us in the parking lot near the Bodega Bay marina. There are two, so look for the one with the RVs parked in the lot. It’s right near the beach off Highway One, so you shouldn’t have any trouble finding it.”

“The car is stolen,” I reminded him, crossing my arms and wondering what the hell he was up to now. “And the owners will probably be noticing its absence.”

“So steal another.”

He said that just like my brother would have. But then, a cavalier attitude toward other people’s property did seem to infect the dragon population. Even draman weren’t immune to it. “Why would I need to? Where are you going?”

“Most of these devices have a horizontal rather than vertical boundary. Rather than trying to break the lock, I think I should just fly her straight up and unlock it once we’re free.”

“You’re going to change form in the middle of a suburban street?” And he thought
I
was crazy?

“We have little choice.” He glanced at Coral. “It’s your neck. Are you willing to take the risk?”

She took a deep breath then released it slowly. “I need to get to Angus before dawn, so yes.”

“And you need to answer some questions first,” Damon said, then glanced over his shoulder as the wail
of sirens began to shatter the silence. “You’d better go, Mercy.”

I didn’t move. “You’ll wait for me there?”

He hesitated, obviously knowing that I was referring to his questioning Coral, then nodded.

Something inside me relaxed a little. At least he was making an effort to treat me as a partner
some
of the time. As the blue fire began to crawl across his skin, I turned and walked across to the car. The curtains in the house opposite twitched—an obvious sign we were being watched. While the trees hid some of his shape-shift, there was little hiding the explosion of air as he launched skyward. But he was a black dragon surrounded by night, and I doubted the eyes of an old woman would even be able to see him.

And even if she could, who would actually believe her?

I climbed into the car and drove off. I was barely two blocks down the road when a police car screamed past, its flashing lights almost blinding in the darkness. While I knew Damon and Coral had already left, it didn’t stop the tension crawling through me. Luck really hadn’t been in our corner, and while the old woman probably hadn’t seen Damon clearly, she would have been able to see me.

I restrained the impulse to speed up and kept my pace sedate. The quickest way to attract unwanted attention was to do something idiotic—like speed away from an accident.

I switched cars in Sebastopol and continued on, making my way—with the help of the street directory stolen from the first car—to the Bodega highway and toward Bodega Bay.

I couldn’t immediately find them when I arrived, so I parked the car, then grabbed the pack and walked down the marina. Both he and Coral were sitting at the very end of the dock. He had his arm wrapped around her shoulders, and even though I knew there would be nothing intimate in the gesture, something inside me still twisted. Which was ridiculous, given I meant as little to the man as Coral did.

I walked down and sat beside her. “Did you get the transmitter off your neck?”

She pulled down her turtleneck. Only a red-raw strip of skin remained. “It took a while, but we managed it.” Her bright gaze met mine. “Thank you. Both of you.”

I sighed. “We’re here for a reason, Coral, and not just because Angus asked us.”

“I know. And because I owe you the debt of my life, I’ve resisted the call of my lover’s soul. But you need to ask your questions now, because I cannot stay long.”

“Why did those men snatch you and Angus?” Damon asked before I could say anything.

It seemed like a pointless question, because we already had the answer from Angus. But maybe Damon was simply making sure the old sea dragon had been telling the truth.

“You’ve seen his scars?” Coral asked, picking up a long splinter of wood and twirling it absently in her fingers.

“Yes.”

“We found one of the men responsible in a bar. Only it turned out it wasn’t him. He just sounded the same.” She grimaced, her gaze on the twirling splinter and tears bright in her eyes. “As luck would have it,
although he hadn’t been involved in Whale Point’s destruction, he’d taken part in the more recent ones. So we paid for Angus’s mistake by being snatched, beaten, and almost killed. It was only when Angus mentioned he’d been contacted by a reporter about the recent cleansings that they let us live.”

“So he’d lied.” And convincingly, because Rainey and I hadn’t contacted him until the night they’d tried to run us off the road. And that was the contact
they’d
arranged to send us into their trap.