Nice Dragons Finish Last (Heartstrikers) (13 page)

“And his goons will think twice about taking us on after the beating we gave them,” Marci said proudly, tipping her beer bottle toward him in a one-sided toast.

Julius wasn’t at all sure about that, but he like how prominently and confidently she included him in her plans. In fact, he liked the idea of being Marci’s competent partner so much more than being Bethesda’s failure that he didn’t even rush her as she slowly worked her way through the rest of his food.

“So, that’s my story,” Marci said between mouthfuls. “What about you? Where are you from?”

“New Mexico,” Julius said, which was the truth. “I just arrived in the DFZ this morning, actually.”

“I knew you were green,” she said with a chuckle. “Though I couldn’t tell if you were new to the city or just to the Underground. Where are you staying?”

“I hadn’t figured that out yet,” he confessed. “I also came here on a family emergency, and I haven’t had a lot of time to get the details straightened out.”

“Family emergency, huh? Is that why you’re looking for that girl?”

“Sort of,” Julius said. “My brother asked me to find her.” And pleasant as this was, they really needed to get moving on that.

He pulled his phone out of his pocket to pay their check quietly, because despite Marci’s insistence that she was buying, she didn’t have a phone. No phone meant no electronic bank account, and he wasn’t going to sit here and wait while the register validated every piece of cash she handed them. But when he clicked on the AR to check his account, a message was waiting for him.

Duck.

That was it. The sender was listed as Unknown Caller, but Julius had no doubt who was behind it. What he didn’t know was if Bob wanted him to duck
now
, or four months from now.

Just to be safe, Julius dutifully dropped under the table, motioning for Marci to do the same. She obeyed instantly, crouching down on the padded bench. They stayed that way for a good thirty seconds before Julius got up again with a sigh.

“What was that about?” Marci asked, looking over her shoulder.

“Sorry,” he said, glowering at the message. “I think my brother is confused.”

“Oh,” she said, brightening. “The one looking for the girl?”

“No, another brother,” he said, standing up. “Come on, we’d better get out of here.”

“How many brothers do you have?” Marci asked, following him to the counter.

“Too many,” Julius grumbled, paying for dinner with the last of the money Bob had given him and hustling Marci out before she realized what he’d done.

They’d nearly made it back to the car when the hairs on the back of Julius’s neck begin to prickle. He looked over his shoulder, eyes darting to find who was watching him, but the street was deserted.

He forced himself to walk normally to his side of the car, only half listening as Marci berated him for stealing her chance to pay for his dinner while he focused on his nose. He’d always been better at smelling than listening, but no matter how deeply he breathed, he caught nothing out of the ordinary. Just the chemical smell of the factories, rust from Marci’s car, and the warm scent of delicious barbecue mixed with the faint reek of oil from the truck yard across the street.

He shook his head with a sigh, trying and failing to stomp down on the instinctual urge to run for cover. But then, why should his body calm down? Between his mother, Bob’s cryptic messages, guns shoved in his face, and Ian playing games with powerful females from other clans, he’d had enough stress today to last a lifetime. A little jumpiness was a perfectly natural reaction. It didn’t mean there was actually someone sneaking up behind—

A hand grabbed his shoulder.

Julius nearly jumped out of his skin, but the hand kept him in place, four knife-sharp nails pressing into the tender hollow just beneath his collar bone as a cold, soft, female voice whispered in his ear.

“Hello, brother.”

And that was when Julius knew for a fact that he was dead.

Chapter 5

“T
ell your human to wait and meet me in the alley on the left,” Chelsie said, her claws digging deeper into his flesh. “Now.”

Julius nodded, but the hand on his shoulder was already gone, vanishing as suddenly and quietly as it had appeared. He didn’t bother turning around to look after that. The sidewalk would just be empty, and Marci was already leaning over to give him a funny look through the passenger window. “Julius? Are you okay?”

“Just realized I forgot something in the restaurant,” he said quietly. “Give me two minutes.”

Marci nodded, but he was already backing away, trusting his feet to find their own path as he walked back to the barbecue shack’s screen door. When he knew Marci couldn’t see him anymore, he darted to the side and down the alley as Chelsie had instructed.

It was a tiny, dark, dirty place, a gap between factories barely wide enough for a car to squeeze through. The narrowness hadn’t saved the walls from being covered in advertisements, though. Posters covered every inch of the brick as high as a person could reach, mostly for the seedier kinds of services people loitering in alleys would find attractive. But while he found directions to thirteen different massage parlors just off the wall in front of him, he didn’t see any sign of Chelsie. He was starting to panic that he’d gone down the wrong alley when he suddenly felt someone standing right behind him.

The light here was bad even for dragon eyes, but Julius had made it a point to stay as far from the Heartstriker’s family enforcer as possible. As a result, the glimpse he got through the gloom when he whirled around was the best look at Chelsie he’d ever managed.

Oddly, the first thing that struck him was her height. At five eleven, Julius had always assumed his human form was the shortest of all Heartstrikers, but Chelsie was only a hair taller, and that might have been from her boots. What she lacked in stature, though, she made up everywhere else. Everything about her—her lean body packed into black, no-frills carbon-weave body armor, her short, ink-black hair, the long sword sheathed at her hip—spoke to her purpose as the Heartstriker’s bogeyman, but the scariest thing of all was how closely she resembled their mother.

It would have been hard for an outsider to see. Other than the family’s trademark green eyes and her high cheekbones, Chelsie’s physical resemblance to Bethesda the Heartstriker was limited. Her skin was darker, her cheekbones sharper, her body smaller and more compact. If Bethesda was a resplendent queen, Chelsie was a well-honed knife. Both were deadly, however, and Chelsie’s murderous glare was so like their mother’s that Julius had already backed himself up against the far wall before she could open her mouth.

“Well, well,” she said at last, her voice as cold and soft as the year’s first frost. “I never thought I’d have to pay
you
a visit, Julius.” She paused, tilting her head like a hawk considering the mouse trapped under its claws. “You know why I’m here, of course?”

Julius swallowed, mind racing. On the surface, Heartstriker family rules were simple: don’t do anything that made Mother angry. But what Bethesda took offense at varied according to her mood, the day, the political situation, and who was doing the offending, which was
exactly
why Julius had tried so hard to keep his head down for the last seven years.

When he didn’t answer, Chelsie narrowed her eyes. “One hour ago, six men in an alley by the river—ring any bells?”

Julius’s heart began pounding so hard he grew lightheaded. How did she know about that? The alley had been empty. Of course, just because he hadn’t seen her didn’t mean Chelsie hadn’t been watching. She’d already proven she could get right on his back without him noticing a thing. But just because she
could
follow him around didn’t explain why she
would
. Chelsie had the entire Heartstriker family to worry about. Julius was no one, the underperforming runt of Bethesda’s youngest clutch. It didn’t make any sense at all for her to be watching him, not unless she really did watch everyone. But that was impossible. No matter what the rumors said, no matter how old and powerful and all-knowing Chelsie was supposed to be, there was just no way she could
actually
watch all of Bethesda’s children all the—

“I do.”

Julius’s whirling thoughts screeched to a halt, and Chelsie gave him a slow, cruel smile. “I don’t actually read minds,” she said, her nails tapping idly on the wrapped hilt of her sword. “But then, I don’t need to. You all make the same face when you start thinking, ‘There’s no way she can do it,’ but I’ll let you in on a family secret.” She leaned in, her neon-green Heartstriker eyes bright with malice as she dropped her voice to a whisper. “I am
always
watching. I watch every single one of you conniving little lizards. I watch you every moment of every day so that the second you set one claw over the line, I’ll be there to
cut it off
.”

Julius flinched as she finished, and Chelsie straightened back up, crossing her arms over her chest with a satisfied look. “Now that we’re clear on that point, let me explain what you did to trigger this little visit so we never have to see each other again.”

He nodded, breathing heavily. “I shouldn’t have attacked those men,” he said quickly. “I understand that. I should have stayed out of the human’s business and—”

Chelsie’s eyes narrowed, and Julius snapped his mouth shut. When it was clear he wasn’t going to try and talk again, she continued. “If I came after every idiot Heartstriker who got into a street brawl, half the clan would be dead by now. I also don’t care what mischief Ian has you up to in his hopeless courtship of that Three Sisters ice snake Svena, who, for the record, is going to chew him up and spit him out like a piece of gristle. I’m not even terribly concerned that you showed a bit of tooth and claw in the DFZ. Everyone does that from time to time.
My
problem, Julius, is that you left
witnesses
.”

Julius opened his mouth to explain, but Chelsie grabbed him first. Faster than he could react, faster than he could even see, she wrapped her hand around his throat and slammed him into the wall, scattering the layers of old advertisements in a rain of tattered paper.

“Six humans went into that alley with you,” she snarled in his face. “And when you left, six humans were still alive. Do you know what that is, Julius? That’s a
mess
. And when a Heartstriker makes a mess, it’s my job to ensure they never. Do it. Again.”

Her fingers squeezed tighter with every word, choking him by inches. Just when Julius was sure he’d suffocate, Chelsie let go, dropping him in a heap on the dirty asphalt.

The coughing fit hit him a second later. Julius rolled to his knees, clutching his throat until, after what felt like hours, his breathing returned to something like normal. When he looked up again, Chelsie was looming over him, a black shadow outlined by the lone factory floodlight five stories overhead.

“Poor little Julius,” she cooed. “You’re so
nice
. You don’t want to hurt anyone, don’t want to get into trouble. But you’re not in the mountain anymore, whelp, and there’s no more room for nice
.
From this moment forward, if a human who’s not under your direct control sees you doing anything that might make them think you’re not what you seem, you kill them. Not knock out, not threaten,
kill.
Do you understand?” When he didn’t answer at once, Chelsie slammed him back into the wall with her booted foot.
“Do you understand?”

“Yes,” he wheezed.

She released him, and he slid back to the ground. She let him lie there a second before turning away with a little huff that was a perfect copy of the sound their mother made when she was particularly disappointed. “I can’t believe I’m having to explain something as basic as witness elimination. No wonder Mother kicked you out. I assumed she was exaggerating, but now I think you might really be the worst dragon we’ve ever had.”

Julius had heard this many, many times. He’d heard it in every variation imaginable, and he usually shrugged it off. It was always easier to go back to his room and bury himself in something better—a videogame, a book, a movie, homework for an online class, whatever was at hand—than to try to defend himself. Now though, he didn’t have a room to retreat to. He was stranded in an alley with his back literally against a wall, and he was so, so sick of being talked down to, the words just burst out.