Cold Reign (Jane Yellowrock #11)(119)

“I am aware. The arcenciels are teasing him much as cats tease mice.”

Ten feet off the sidewall of the boat, the water rose in a liquid bowl and erupted. A dragon made of light had become flesh, pearled and glistening and leaping for the sky, a cerulean creature of myth made real. In her jaws was a vampire. She flew straight up and whipped her tail, flipped her body, and dove for the ocean. Carrying the vampire, she leaped and frolicked before leaping for the sky again, and diving back. Two feet above my fragile boat, she hovered and shook her prey. Guns and blades fell into the boat. My weapons. Callan looked like a rag doll in her dragon hands.

Another arcenciel broached the water and leaned over the side of the boat, her face human and gorgeous, human hands holding her in place. Soul said, “We’ll take him to your house. He may provide some intelligence that we don’t yet have.”

“Yeah. Okay. Thanks.”

“You will ride me.”

“Say what?”

“My little bird is fierce but too small for your mass. You will ride me, as recognition for saving our sister.” She stretched out in the water, her hands disappearing, wings out, one under the boat, holding it steady. “This is not a boon offered to another since ancient times.”

Gee seemed amused. “Ummm. Okay?” I gathered my gear, shoving the blades and other weapons in place, hearing the small snaps as they settled. I worked my left hand, happy that my fingers again had feeling. It had taken all day to get the sensation back. I accepted a second bottle of water from Gee. Drank it down, wished I had taken the time to pee. And stepped onto the back of a dragon made flesh.

? ? ?

I spent that night wrapped in Bruiser’s arms. And a blanket. A heating pad at my feet. Riding an arcenciel was freezing business. They fly high, in a nearly airless part of the Earth’s atmosphere. I had nearly suffocated until Soul realized I was having problems staying alive and dove lower. I’d been so cold when she dropped me off on the boulders in my backyard, I could barely move. So exhausted I could hardly speak.

Bruiser had carried me into the shower, cut off my ruined black leathers, and held me there until I started to thaw. It had been nearly impossible to get him to leave me long enough to shift to fully human, and when it took too long, I’d had to resort to bribery to get him to go away—promises of a future date to last an entire day and through the night. On the gulf. On a boat. With umbrella drinks and music.

Shifting had been . . . hard. So hard I didn’t want to think about it just yet. I hadn’t made it directly from half-form into human, and finally resorted to shifting into Beast, and from Puma concolor into my human form. The pain had been incredible. The snake that resides in all things, the twisted strands of my DNA, were tangled and tripled and torn. Finding my form in the mess of genetics had been nearly impossible. I wasn’t sure what it meant. And when the shift was completed, I had been too exhausted to eat. I had never been too exhausted to eat. Not ever.

Now it was night again and hunger rode me, a fierce, desperate need. I sliced into a full slab of very rare beef, a ribeye that had started out postlife as a sixteen pounder, before Eli rubbed it down and threw it on a grill to sear. He had cooked two, thank goodness, so the others had meat to eat. There were potatoes and beer and salad too, but I drank water and ate beef and listened as my partners and my clan filled me in, asking monosyllablic questions to get the info I wanted. The questions did not come out in an order I’d have expected. “Brute?” I asked first.

Eli straddled a chair and cut off a bite of cow. “Brute’s at a local veterinary hospital, being attended to by a vampire and a witch and a vet who’s scared shhh— witless of getting were-taint. She only agreed to help when Dacy Mooney of Asheville agreed to feed her father to help him heal from cancer.”

“Werewolf? Dacy?”

“Yeah,” he said, understanding what I wanted to know. “There’s no record of a vamp ever sharing blood with a werewolf. But Brute seems to be special. And he saved Leo’s life.”

“On the levee?”

“Exactly. He pulled the Master of the City away from his captors. When the vamps were losing Leo, they decided no one could have him. Brute took the silver bullets meant for the MOC.”

“Howee c’aaa,” I said. Holy crap, through a mouthful of food.

Alex talked around a mouthful of potatoes. “He’s like the king of all weres right now, owed a boon by Leo and every other vamp in the city.”

Edmund said, “Leo declared Brute Friend of the Mithrans, which entitles him to anything he wants.” Edmund was chuckling, but there were new scars on his throat where a powerful vamp had tried to drink him down. “Dacy, who showed up at the scene just after you were swept away by the flood—” Ed stopped. Took a drink of his red wine, as if he was thirsty, but there were pink tears in his eyes. The clink of cutlery was the only sound until he was able to continue.

“Dacy kept your Onorio from throwing himself into the waters to find you. Then she fed him to bring him to sanity.”

“I was not without sanity,” Bruiser said distinctly, his dinner untouched, sipping an aromatic tea. “I was grieving. There is a difference.”

“Perhaps in theory, not in practice,” Edmund said. “Dacy then fed the Master of the City and the wolf, at the same time.”

“And Ed had to feed Dacy when she overextended,” Alex said. “It was a regular blood-fest.”