“Brace yourself,” Leif shouted over the noise. With his left hand, he pulled a gold pocket watch out of his lab coat and studied the steadily ticking second hand. When it reached twelve, he yanked a chain dangling over his head. The engine screeched like a stuck pig. Green fire burst from the steel dials, descending down the wires in every direction. It snaked toward the pool where stoic Mr. Nils waited with a gallows-bait expression.
Norgard plugged his ears against the shrieking pipes. Time seemed to slow while the fire burned down the wires, closer, closer, until finally they hit the pool with a sizzle.
Water exploded into mist and the world went dark. An Aether wind tore through the airtight room, a storm swirling in the darkness. It pulled at their clothing and tore at their skin. Over the noise of the storm rose a howl, growing louder, until it filled every cranny with the sound of its pain.
The green fire flashed. Once. Twice. Three times. Each one bigger than the last. Each one a momentary reprieve from the terrible darkness.
In the midst of the gale, Norgard felt a ghostly presence. It brushed the outside of his consciousness, the lightest knock to the hollow house of his missing soul. Beneath his woolen coat and linen shirt, cold fingers touched his spine. Slowly, they rose, growing longer and icier, caressing his naked skin, freezing his marrow, stealing his will.
He tensed against the invasion. “Mr. Nils,” he bit out. The wind whipped the words from his lips, but he knew his words had been heard. The fingers paused.
“Mr. Nils,” he said again, louder, an edge to his voice. “I bind you, Mr. Nils, not the other way around.”
The cold fingers turned to claws. They scratched, angry, down his skin, tearing the flesh beneath their electrically sharpened nails.
“Leif! Turn it off!”
With a bang, the machine blew. It wheezed and sagged and moaned, a crone stuttering at the top of a steep hill. Acrid smoke filled the lab, making both men cough. Mercifully, the wind stopped and the icy fingers disappeared. The gaslights flickered back on.
Norgard leaned against a nearby boiler to catch his breath, weakness be damned. He pulled a handkerchief out of his breast pocket and mopped the water out of his now-sopping hair.
“Needs more work,” Leif mumbled. His face was black with soot and grease. He yanked the goggles off his eyes, exposing wide, white circles like a raccoon. He pulled off a leather glove and ran a hand through his filth-streaked hair.
“Indeed.” With measured precision, Norgard folded his wet handkerchief and tucked it back into his pocket. Removing the goggles, he handed them to his brother. He straightened his damp jacket and squeezed the excess water from his dripping cuffs.
“Apologies.” Leif glanced at him sideways. “I told you I'd never tried it at full speed. That's not a fraction of what would happen if the Gate fellâ”
“You just need to find me a solution.” Norgard ran his tongue over his sharp teeth. Next time he would await the report instead of observing the experiment in situ. He would send an underling to play the damned guinea pig. “Mr. Nils,” he bit out.
Mr. Nils's face displayed no remorse at having tried to kill his master. He calmly climbed out of the now empty pool and stood silently next to Norgard. The only show of disturbance was the undulating edge of his ghostly form.
“I'm a scientist, not a magician.” Leif turned to the machine, already lost in his calculations.
Norgard resisted the urge to gut his brother with a carefully aimed claw.
“Come, Mr. Nils,” he said, spinning on his heel and marching back down the cluttered aisle. “We've something to discuss. A few relatives of yours, who areâunfortunately for youâvery much alive.”
They wouldn't be for long.
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Kayla woke with cotton balls in her mouth, sand in her eyes, and a hammer terrorizing the inside of her skull. She lay on something soft, but could see nothing in the absolute darkness. Entombed alive.
Breathe. She had to keep breathing. Had to figure out where she was. Images flashed in her mind: grinding bodies beneath the red glow of gaslights; a striking blond man with a strange mechanical eyeglass offering dark sweets; leathery wings unfolding across the sky; claws; teeth; terror.
Her fingers searched over her body, checking to make sure every piece was still there. Beneath a sheet she was naked.
Oh God, oh God, oh God.
She couldn't panic. She had to think clearly. Her body was sore. Shifting her legs, she felt gingerly between her thighs. Would she know if she'd been assaulted? She had to remember what had happened last night. The city had passed by in a blur while she clutched a hard warm chest. Hart's face, frozen in an expression of surprise. Heat in his eyes. Heat in her core.
God, the heat.
She had to get out of here. Slowly she sat up and braced herself against the sudden rush of blood to her head. The sheet tangled about her legs. She wrapped it around her torso and waist like a sarong. Her legs didn't want to hold her, but she pushed herself to a standing position by propping her shoulder against the wall. Her limbs were jelly. Her stomach wanted to reintroduce her to last night's dinner.
Kayla stepped off what she assumed was a mattress and felt a rug beneath her feet. Running her hand along the wall, she inched her foot forward, slowly feeling for obstacles. When her fingers found the end of the wall she turned, and two steps later encountered a rough door frame. Fumbling for the knob, she found a cold iron handle instead. Something old-fashioned, with a lock for a skeleton key beneath it.
The door wouldn't budge.
Behind her the blackness thickened. She felt eyes on her back. Imagined a cold breeze teasing the skin on her neck. The darkness felt alive.
Nonsense. She wasn't afraid of the dark. Except she'd gotten the proof she asked for last night, and suddenly ghosts were real. Shape-shifters. Dragons. Aptrgangr. Who knew what waited in the dark?
“Let me out!” She banged on the wood. She clawed at it with her short fingernails. “Please!” There wasn't enough air. The walls were closing in on her.
On the other side of the door, heavy footsteps approached. Someone was coming for her. She banged louder. The door opened, and she fell into a hard body. A bare chest. Muscular shoulders. Strong arms wrapped around her. She buried her face against his hot skin and breathed deeply, smelling the astringent mint of shaving cream and pine.
She recognized that forest scent, and, damn it, he smelled so
good
. After the fear and the darkness, all she wanted was to lean into that strong, familiar embrace, to cling to Hart's muscled chest and let her racing heart calm. But she couldn't kid herself for longâhe wasn't her friend and he wasn't safe. And the blood galloping through her veins didn't slow at the soothing scent of him; it just moved south to call forth other arousing and unwanted desires.
Her cheeks burned. Yet again, he saw her at her weakest. Her coworkers back in Philly had nicknamed her “The Rock” for her solid, steady nerves. Not in Seattle. She'd never felt so out of control. Never struggled beneath the weight of so much fear, uncertainty, and doubt. She liked things black-and-white, but nothing here was clean cut. Everything was lost in shadow.
Steeling herself, she pulled away from his solid chest and pressed back against the door. “Please tell me there is a logical explanation for this.” She indicated the sheet.
“Calm down. Nothing happened.” Large bruisesânew since she had seen him lastâpurpled his ribs and chin. His face was freshly shaven, and a dab of shaving cream clung stubbornly to his ear.
“Nothing?”
“Norgard didn't have time.” He turned abruptly, giving her space, and strode across the cramped living room to an open door where a small pedestal sink was partly visible. He examined his face in the small mirror above the sink and wiped the shaving cream off his ear.
“And after?”
He glanced at her in the mirror. Hurt flickered deep in his eyes, but was shuttered so fast she might have imagined it. He covered with a sardonic grin. “That good, was I? Memorable. Just what a guy likes to hear.” He pulled a green and brown plaid flannel shirt off the bathroom door and stiffly slipped it on. He met her eyes as he did up the buttons.
Somehow she believed him. “Thank you.”
His gaze shifted, and he shrugged one shoulder. “You should get out of here. Norgard will be looking for you after I finish this job.”
Norgard. She remembered a spiked tail slashing through the alley. Norgard was a dragon. It still seemed so unreal. “About thatâthanks for the warning. Upstanding businessman? Pillar of society?”
“Hey, I never said that.”
She glared at him. “Forget the fact that he's not human. He sells opium, pushes prostitutes, and drugs womenâ
minors
even. How does he get away with it?”
“He's the Drekar Regent. He owns half this state.”
“Fuck.” She ran her hands through her tangled hair. “Listen to me asking the wrong questions. I've clearly lost my mind. What's a little crime, if the big secret around here is that he's a dragon?”
“Most people don't know that.”
“Don't know what?”
“That he's a dragon. Only a small group of humans are clued in.”
That made her feel marginally better. “Why do you work for him?”
“None of your business,” Hart growled.
Maybe not, but she wanted to know. Wanted him to have a good excuse, or some proof that he wasn't a bad guy, despite his employer. She shouldn't care, as long as he helped her find Desi's necklace. But, she realized, she
wanted
to trust him. Around him, her body developed heated desires of its own; it didn't care what he did or who he worked for as long as he took his shirt off a couple more times in front of her. Gawd, what a mess she was. As if his motives could somehow justify her lust.
She needed to get her head on straight. She hadn't held out this long to throw herself at the first guy with nice cologne and a really big
gun
.
She glanced around Hart's small living quarters, which were sparse but clean. With a single chair in evidence, it didn't appear he did much entertaining. In the corner, a small puddle of water collected beneath a mini-fridge. A bookcase overflowed with tattered paperbacks. Science fiction, thrillers, classic literature, nonfiction treatises. The man might act like a thug, but he was well read.
“Joseph Conrad?” she asked, changing the subject. “And here I had you pegged as the Jane Austen type.”
“Oh, I've got Austen.” He walked to the bookcase and pulled a novel from the top shelf. The cover showed Jane Austen with half her face ripped off. “The zombies add a little realism. You want illogical? Illogical is happily ever after.”
“You're a cynic.”
“A realist. Nothing lasts. But back to the subject. You should leave.” On the floor, his weapons lay spread out on a thick woolen blanket. He picked up a curved six-inch knife and began sharpening it.
Trying to intimidate her? Yes, weapons made her nervous, but he knew diddly-squat about her if he thought she would run now. “I'm not going anywhere. We need to find that necklace for the Kivatiâ”
The knife scraped along the sharpener. “We're even.”
“Who's keeping track?”
Disbelief flashed across his angular features. “I don't need your help. Go home.”
That hurt. She steeled herself. “You think you're a one-man army. I get it. But I need your help to find out what happened to my sister, and I made a promise. I don't break my promises. Ever. The Kivati willâ”
“You don't get it.”
“Then explain it to me.”
He inspected the sharp edge of the knife. “Forget the Kivati. This is bigger than both of us. The Drekar worship an ancient Babylonian goddess named Tiamat. You heard of her?”
Kayla shook her head. Mythology had been Desi's specialty, not hers. She'd never bothered with the stuff until now.
“Goddess of primordial chaos. She takes the form of a monstrous dragon. She and Apsu gave birth to the gods and goddesses of ancient Babylon, but when one of them offed Apsu she swore revenge. She birthed the monsters of the worldâdragons, giant sea serpents, maelstrom demons, shark menâyou name it. Then she gave her lover Kingu the Tablets of Destiny and, with this army of monsters, he waged war on the younger gods, decimating the world.”
“But someone stopped him,” she guessed.
“Another god slew Tiamat and trapped Kingu and his horde behind the Gate to the otherworld.” Apparently satisfied with the knife, he set it back on the blanket and moved on to the rifle. He unloaded large silver-tipped bullets, the surfaces etched with strange markings. “Imagine that happening again. Imagine Kingu gets released from his prison. He's had a few millennia to plan his revenge. He's become stronger. He's got cooler toys this time around, thanks to the humans.”