Mercy Burns (8 page)

I slipped off my shoes, holding them in one hand while I felt along the wall with the other. Normally, dragons—and draman—could see pretty well in the darkness, but with my energy levels so low, it seemed “human” sight was all I was going to get.

My fingers hit a door frame and I hesitated. The clock’s ticking suddenly seemed louder, and it was coming from beyond this doorway. I peered around cautiously. Floral patterned drapes framed the deep-set windows opposite, beyond which glowed the sullen, muted fire of an outside light. Little else was visible through the glass. The fog was too thick.

I scanned the small room, noting the plush chairs and mahogany furniture, the bookcases lined with books. This was someone’s home rather than just a place being used as a prison.

I moved past the doorway and continued on. The ticking began to recede and the silence seemed to grow thicker. Another doorway—this time the entrance to a dining room that held a table longer than my entire kitchen. After checking it was empty, I moved on.

The hallway hooked left and led into the kitchen.
On the floor lay a lanky, dark man, the remains of a cup in his left hand and a pool of dark liquid gradually spreading out across the tiled floor. Ten feet beyond him lay Damon.

I swore under my breath and ran over, squatting down beside him and quickly touching his neck for a pulse. It was there, but felt too quick, as if his heart was straining. His skin was cool and edging toward clammy again, meaning the heat I’d loaned him hadn’t been enough to keep him going. This wasn’t surprising considering he’d been locked up for thirteen days, and that he had stopped me before I’d really had a chance to fuel him properly.

I lightly pinched his cheek, trying to get a response. He made a sound low down in his throat—a soft growl that echoed across the silence—but otherwise didn’t move. But we couldn’t stay here. Even if Damon had managed to take care of the second guard before he’d collapsed, there was no saying that Angus or someone else wasn’t near.

I leaned down close. “Damon, we need to get out of here.”

He didn’t respond. I pinched his cheek again, harder this time, and he jerked away from my touch. His eyes flew open but his dark gaze was unfocused and his pupils large.

Behind us, something buzzed, and my heart jumped into my throat. I swung around, and saw the transmitter on the bench.

“Jay, where the hell are you? You were supposed to relieve me five minutes ago.”

Though the voice was filled with annoyance, I recognized it nonetheless. It was the man with the
silky voice—the one who’d looked forward to questioning me.

God, we
had
to get out of here. Now, before that man came up to check what was going on.

I pressed a hand against Damon’s chest and reached for the fires deep inside me. They were still little more than smoldering embers, but I grabbed for them anyway, forcing the heat down through my fingers and into Damon’s body. It left me cold and slightly dizzy, but he jerked under my touch and the unfocused look left his eyes.

“Jay, if you’re asleep,” that silky voice said again, “I’m going to kick your fucking butt.”

The anger in the guard’s voice was sharper. If he came up here to see what was going on, we’d be in trouble.

“We need to go,” I said, pulling my hand from Damon’s still cool flesh. He needed sunlight desperately. The little amount of heat he was getting from me just wasn’t enough to keep his body going for very long.

I rose. My head spun again, but I resisted the urge to grab at the nearby countertop and offered him a hand instead. He ignored it and pushed to his feet, his jaw thrusting out and determination evident in the fierce glint in his eyes.

“Wait,” he said, and staggered across to the man on the floor.

He dropped down beside him, his knees splashing into the edges of the coffee spill, and pressed a hand against the unconscious guard’s chest. Flickers of flame jumped from the guard’s skin to Damon’s fingertips, and I realized that he was stealing the man’s heat.

This was
not
a practice that had council approval—in any way, shape, or form—but I couldn’t lend him more of my own heat, and if we were to have any hope against the remaining guard, then Damon needed to gain some strength.

I crossed my arms and glanced across at the outside doorway, half expecting the other guard to burst in and catch us. He didn’t, but that didn’t stop the nerves or the crawling need to be gone.

“Okay,” Damon said eventually. He pushed to his feet and stepped across the prone guard, who had a distinctly ashen cast to his features now. He’d be weak when he came to, and I couldn’t be unhappy about that, not when our escaping could depend on it.

Damon caught my hand, his fingers wrapping around mine. His flesh was far warmer than before, his grip firm. Part of me wanted to steal some of that heat for myself, but I resisted the temptation. He needed it. I didn’t.

We moved quickly through the rest of the kitchen and out a side exit. Stairs ran down into the darkness and small garden lights curved away from the house, their brightness muted by the fog.

We ran down stairs, trying to be as quiet as possible, but the wooden steps rattled and the sound creaked across the foggy silence. We’d barely reached the main path when a flicker of awareness ran across my senses, signaling someone up ahead. Obviously, my dragon senses were slowly coming back online. A heartbeat later, a bright light pierced the darkness, sweeping across the trees and the stony path, missing Damon’s toes by inches.

He didn’t say anything, simply pulled me off the
path and into the trees. I couldn’t see the point of hiding. The man ahead was a dragon, which meant he’d sense us in here anyway. Though I guess the trees did give us one advantage—it was harder for the guard to get off a decent shot if he was carrying a weapon.

And he probably was. Full dragons couldn’t flame at night, so carrying a gun was probably the next best option, even if it was unusual for a dragon to do so.

Stones crunched softly up ahead. Damon released my arm, then bent and grabbed a fallen branch, hefting it lightly, as if testing its heaviness and maneuverability. The footsteps slowly drew closer. The guard might not know who was in the trees, but he knew someone was.

Damon tossed the limb across the path and into the trees opposite. It landed with a crash, scattering leaves as it fell to the ground.

The footsteps stopped. Damon touched my shoulder, his fingers warm against my skin. As I looked up, he grabbed the nearest tree branch, shaking it lightly but making no noise. Then he raised two fingers. When I nodded, he melted back into the darkness and disappeared.

I couldn’t sense him, even though my senses were humming with the presence of the guard up ahead. I shivered. Obviously, the man who’d called himself Death had a few skills up his sleeve the rest of us didn’t know about.

But his departure meant I was now alone and feeling rather vulnerable. Which I wasn’t, of course—at least, under normal circumstances.

The footsteps resumed, edging up the path toward me. The bright flashlight swept across the darkness, moving ever closer. I raised a hand and gripped the
tree branch above my head, my knuckles almost white with tension.

The light pierced the nearby shadows and my heart just about jumped into my throat. I licked dry lips and watched as it moved on, slowly sweeping across the trees, drawing ever closer.

Two minutes seemed to be taking forever.

The beam of light hit my tree and stopped. Tension slithered through me and my legs twitched with the need to move. While I was protected by the width of the trunk and several lilac bushes, he didn’t actually have to see me to know I was there. His dragon senses would be screaming with the knowledge. Whether he actually realized it was me, or whether he simply thought I was an intruder, didn’t really matter. He’d know I was here, and that meant time had run out, whether or not Damon’s two minutes had passed.

I dropped my weight onto the branch, dragging it down and then letting go. The branch sprang upward, creating a whole lot of noisy distraction. The light jumped around the tree, piercing the shadows in which I stood. I ducked down behind the bush and held my breath, waiting.

For a moment, nothing happened, but my awareness of the guard was so strong it was painful. Then a hand reached over the green leaves of the lilac bush and grabbed at my shirt. “Got you,” the man with the silky voice said.

There was a whoosh of air and the guard released me so suddenly that my butt hit the ground, jarring my side and sending pain shooting through the rest of my body. I ignored it, trying to watch the two men fight, but the darkness and the lilac bushes made it all but
impossible. So I shifted position, getting ready to run should Damon go down again, my breath catching in my throat and tension winding through me.

After several more grunts, silence fell, silence that seemed to stretch on and on, sawing at my nerves.

Then the bush moved and I jumped, half turning to run before I realized it was Damon. His shirt was in shreds and he was covered in dirt and smears of blood, but he was still on his feet and his skin had a warmer glow than before. But heat wasn’t all he’d stolen from the guard. He’d also taken his coat and sweater.

He held the sweater out to me. “You need to keep warm.”

I hesitated, then somewhat reluctantly took it. It smelled of musk and sweat, and had my nose wrinkling in distaste. But with my internal fires barely even embers, the sweater would at least keep the night’s chill at bay.

“You took your time taking care of that guard,” I said, as I pulled the sweater on. “I would have thought Death would be a little more efficient.”

He raised an eyebrow as he dragged on the coat, his expression an odd mix of amusement and disdain. “It’s better to take your time and do something properly than rush and end up with a half-assed job.”

I was tempted to point out that a half-assed job was better than remaining here any longer than necessary, but I resisted. “Just because you can’t sense any other guards out there doesn’t mean there aren’t any.”

His dark eyes glinted dangerously. “Trust me; I’m trained to know these things. There’s no one else
nearby, and the guard beyond that bush is currently fighting hibernation.”

He held out his hand. I hesitated, then placed my fingers in his, noticing that not only was his skin far warmer, but the underlying tremor that had been evident the last time he’d stolen heat was absent.

It made me wonder just
how
much he’d stolen and whether hibernation was the worst of the guard’s problems right now—made me wonder just what the man called Death was really capable of.

But if these men
had
been involved in Rainey’s death, they certainly deserved whatever Damon had dished out to them. And even if they hadn’t, I very much doubted whether compassion or kindness was what they’d planned for me tomorrow. The welts on Damon’s body were evidence enough of that.

We walked on through the garden until an archway covered by some sort of vine loomed. Damon led me though the green gateway then turned left, following the footpath with long, sure strides. Trees lined either side of the street, their leafy tops lost to the ever-moving fog. The houses were little more than large, somewhat vague, outlines, but even so, I recognized where we were. I’d done a write-up on one of the homes in this area last year.

“We’re in the St. Francis Wood area, near Terrace Park,” I said softly. I’d been right—Angus
hadn’t
driven very far at all. We hadn’t even left San Francisco.

“Have you got somewhere safe to go?” Damon asked. “You can’t go home. That’s the first place they’ll look.”

Fear twisted through me. I hadn’t gotten as far as thinking what I would do now that I was free. Hadn’t gotten as far as thinking what
they
might do.

“Do you really think they’ll come after me?” Even as I asked the question, I knew the answer. I had firsthand experience of how far they were willing to go. But I was hoping he’d deny the truth, give me false hope, if only for a moment or two.

I should have known a trained assassin would never do something like that.

“They kidnapped you for a reason. I doubt they’re going to just give up.”

My gaze flicked around, searching the foggy shadows for assailants I knew weren’t there. Not yet, anyway.

“But I don’t know anything.” That probably wasn’t the point. They knew I was trying to track down the culprits behind the cleansings—and given the lengths to which they’d already gone to keep their secrets, that would surely be more than enough reason for them to do whatever it took to stop me.

Although again, it begged the question, why kidnap me rather than just kill me?

What was so different now than two days ago, when they’d tried to kill both Rainey and me?

“Understanding the motives of evil men is often a difficult thing,” Damon said, philosophically.

I looked up at him. His prominent nose gave his face a sharpness that should have been less than appealing. Instead, his features suggested strength and courage—much like the character of the man himself, I suspected. “We could go to the police. Tell them that those men kidnapped us.”

It might work—might being the operative word. And really, could I afford to waste the time? Even if the cops caught our kidnappers, that still left at large the
man in charge and the man who’d driven the truck, and it was them I needed caught.

No, not just caught. Dead.

A shiver ran through me. I rubbed my arms, raising static and causing sparks to fly from my fingertips. They spun across the darkness—bright chips of fire that were all too quickly snuffed out.

Much like Rainey.

“You could try,” he said, “but I very much doubt our captors would still be at the house by the time the cops got there.”

“I could give them the name of the man who drugged me.”

“His word against yours. And I bet he’ll have a watertight alibi.”

That was almost funny, given we were talking about a sea dragon. “So we’re just going to do nothing?”

“What you’ll be doing is keeping out of their way.” His voice held the whip of command. “I’ll sort out the problem of our kidnappers.”