Dragon Hunter Box Set: A Dragon Shifter Serial Page 8

  Neko came close to smiling at the thought before reminding herself again where she was, and why. This wasn’t a pleasure outing, after all.

  And it wasn’t the first reference he’d made to the idea of their budding partnership, of course; he’d told her in no uncertain terms that they would eventually be together. That they would be lovers, even. Though at the moment such a thing seemed beyond impossible. They were from different species, with different sets of rules dictating their behaviour, their very lives. She hunted Lapsed and shifters alike. He was her prey, not her friend.

  Though once again she felt drawn to him, as she had the first time they’d met. Visions danced through her mind of a life as his lover, his partner in crime. Of giving in, telling him again that she wanted him. Because the truth was that she craved him even now, even as she was being led into the mouth of danger. She wanted his hands on her. And to touch him back, to feel the hardness of his chest under her fingertips.

  Again she banished the thoughts, stiffening, an inner battle waging as she tried to mask everything that was going on inside her. The situation was too volatile; she was at the mercy of the Dragons and had to remain on her guard—particularly now that her weapons were gone.

  * * *

  Minach led the way down the hall, which turned out not to be so dark as it had seemed at first. Light generated in a cool glow from the walls’ glistening dampness, green moss growing luminescent over the stone walls. The occasional iron lantern hung on chains suspended from the highest point of the arch overhead, flickering flames adding to the glow surrounding them.

  Neko walked behind the two shifters, her eyes fixed on Minach’s back. He was as tall as Lumen, though perhaps a little thinner. Also incredibly handsome, of course. But he had very little of Lumen’s kindness about his features; his was a face that suggested a little anger, even. As though someone or something had hurt him in the past and he’d never quite forgiven them—or anyone—for it.

  “What news from London, Lumen?” he asked, his voice rough as they walked down the long hallway, the walls revealing a series of presumably locked doors embedded in their thick stone encasements.

  “A Controller is on the move,” said Lumen. “He’s been enlisting the Lapsed to take me down, and I suspect that he’s behind Conlon’s death last week, as well. Neko here killed one of his zombified minions a couple of days back—defending me. Of course, that was before she was hired to murder me.”

  “Ah,” said Minach, turning his head to look back at Neko. “So begins every fairy tale romance.”

  Neko scowled. Minach was the last person to whom she’d admit her developing feelings. “Romance? Hardly. This is more of a Stockholm Syndrome scenario than Snow White.”

  “The plot thickens. Did my brother here kidnap you, then?”

  “Brother? You two are siblings?” she asked, too distracted by the notion to answer the question.

  “Only in title,” said Lumen. “The Dragons form an extended family of sorts; we prefer to think of it that way, as it keeps us from wanting to kill each other. Not to mention that there are likely some blood ties in our distant past. That’s one of many reasons that we don’t find our mates within the Dragon Guild.”

  “I see,” replied Neko, recalling what she knew of the legends of the Kindred, of their strange mating rituals and their legendary bonds that ran deeper than the Atlantic Ocean. “Anyhow, no, your brother here didn’t exactly kidnap me. Unless you call breaking and entering, then forcing me to stay in my house and sleeping with me in my bed kidnapping. I call it something different entirely.” Thrilling. Sensual. Arousing.

  Infuriatingly delicious.

  It hadn’t exactly been unpleasant, after the initial shock of his presence in her kitchen, at least. A sudden flash went through her mind: the memory of his face between her legs, his tongue sweeping along her most sensitive places. She shuddered quietly as they walked, a sharp pulse hitting between her thighs.

  “Lumen, I’m impressed,” said Minach, turning to the other shifter. “Normally you’re far more reserved. You moved very quickly with this one.”

  Neko tightened. “This one? So you do this sort of thing often, do you?” A pang of envy struck her in the chest; envy of any woman who’d ever had the pleasure of Lumen’s mouth on her.

  “He’s being a giant tosser,” said Lumen, turning his head to glance over his shoulder at her. “A ladies’ man, I am not. And the tactics that I employed with you—and you with me—are not exactly commonplace.”

  “Tactics?” said Minach. “Tactile tactics, perhaps the sorts involving tongues?”

  How the hell did he know that?

  “What occurred between us is none of your concern, Minach,” Lumen said simply.

  “Quite true,” his fellow shifter replied. “And just so that you know, Neko the Hunter, he’s a solitary one, this bastard. A real waste of good looks and raw talent, if you ask me.”

  The relief that surged through her in that moment was enough to drive her crazy. She shouldn’t have cared one whit if Lumen had slept with women by the boatload; it shouldn’t have been any of her concern. They weren’t a couple, and she should, in fact, have been scheming to get far, far away from him.

  But the awful and simple truth was that it did concern her—in fact, the thought of him with someone else made her ache brutally. He was hers, damn it all.

  And she was his.

  And there was no denying it. Not for long.

  * * *

  She shook her head violently, trying to force the thoughts and emotions away and to bring herself back to the present: the reality that she was currently imprisoned deep under Hampstead Heath with two men who could alter into Dragons at the drop of a hat. Not to mention that they could turn her into a pile of charcoal if they so chose.

  “The Controllers,” she said, addressing both men. It was time to remember who she was: a Hunter, seeking answers, if not looking for her next victim. “I know from Lumen that they use the Lapsed for their own means, but what are they, exactly?”

  Both men stopped, turned, and looked at her.

  “They are everything and nothing at once,” said Minach. “And their presence here, in London, is disturbing. The Controllers are ancient yet ageless. Men who could have been great warriors, great shifters. But somewhere along the way, they became power hungry. Addicted to their déors, their shifted forms, choosing to remain in that state in order to take lives, to kill humans and other shifters, often for mere sport. Sometimes for years, decades at a time they roam in those forms: Dragons, Bears, Wolves. Choosing brute strength, rather than succumbing to the weakness of their human sides. They have a great disdain for emotion, for kindness. And so they’ve lost something of their humanity. More animal than person, more cruel than kind.”

  “They’re like the Lapsed, then?” asked Neko. She recalled her client Umbra, sitting upright and stiff in her office. Neither entirely human nor anything else; he’d seemed to float somewhere in between, his flesh pale, his hands skeletal. Transparent and whole at once, somehow. She hadn’t known that there was a name for his kind; only that he was strange and otherworldly.

  “Not entirely like the Lapsed,” said Lumen. “As you know, the Lapsed aren’t solid entities when in their human forms. Whereas the Controllers are—more or less. And of course they can speak, unlike the Lapsed; they’re capable of rational thought and of acting on their desires. But there’s so little human in them that they’re essentially psychopaths, unconcerned about the harm they do to those around them. Empathy isn’t exactly their forte.”

  “Why do they want the Dragons dead?”

  “That’s a very good question,” Lumen replied, his eyes turning to those of his fellow shifter. “And in all likelihood, they don’t. Not yet, at least. Not until they’ve gotten what they want from us.”

  “Want from you? But Umbra—he hired me to kill you. He didn’t mention wanting me to steal anything. He said that he wanted you dead to help protect humans—though
I still have no idea from what. I’ve been watching you Dragons, and it’s not as though you’re grilling people and eating them for breakfast.”

  Lumen and Minach continued to make eye contact for a moment, their faces tense, even sorrowful.

  “Umbra lied to you, Neko, as you know now,” said Lumen, turning her way. “About everything. I’m afraid that you are simply a pawn in a much larger game, as am I. As are we all. But we’ll need some information in order to sort through all of this. And I think I know where we’ll find some of it.”

  As they began to walk again, Neko swallowed hard. In that moment all of Lumen’s lightheartedness had left his eyes and voice. It was difficult, somehow, to see him looking so deeply concerned; a man who seemed invincible shouldn’t even be capable of such an expression.

  As for her, she was now part of something ancient, heavy and important, it seemed. A battle that had been raging for centuries, and she’d only begun to scratch its surface.

  The question was, which side was she on?

  The Guild

  “All the answers we’re looking for will come in due course,” Lumen assured her as he and Minach marched, leading Neko along the luminous hallway towards an unseen destination. By now the passage had curved around so many times that she wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to find her way out of the labyrinthine series of twists, even if she did find a chance to escape.

  And a part of her didn’t want to flee, not anymore. Something in the place felt like home, dark and foreboding though it was. It was Lumen’s turf, anyhow—his home, the place where Dragons congregated in secret. And that was almost enough to lure her permanently into its depths.

  “How do you intend to find these answers?” she asked, keeping pace behind the two men. “It’s not as though they’re going to drop out of the sky into your lap.”

  “You’ll see soon enough. Right now all we have to go on is speculation, and nothing is certain, except that we need to stop this Umbra in his tracks. And for that, we’ll need to locate your friend Vail—the one who shot at us this morning.”

  “Pfft. Hardly my friend,” Neko scoffed. “He’s a hateful bastard, and devoid of ethics. You’d do well to stay away from him.”

  “I’m afraid that’s impossible. A better suggestion is this: I find the hateful bastard and see how he likes the sensation of a blade or a fang at his throat, shall I?”

  “He’s already experienced that particular sensation. And he doesn’t like it very much, believe me. He’s even less fond of a blade pressed against his crotch.”

  Minach let out a chuckle. “I can see why you like this woman, Lumen,” he said as he continued to stride down the passageway. “She’s got bigger balls than most men I know.”

  They came at last to a door on their right. Like the walls surrounding it, it was made of stone. A large, thick set of iron nails were imbedded in its surface, forming a crude pattern in the vague shape of a cross, surrounded by a large encompassing circle.

  Warm orange light flooded through the door’s narrow outline, presumably shining from a room within. Signalling that the Kindred were lying in wait for them.

  On the door’s massive frame, no knob or handle; just an engraving in a strange series of symbols that Neko didn’t recognize.

  She felt for a moment as though she were about to step into a world stranger than any that she’d ever inhabited; a secret that had been masked by mythology and lore for centuries.

  Minach stood to the side, gesturing to her to enter. She pushed the door, not expecting it to budge an inch. But it opened easily, swinging inward as she stepped forwards, almost welcoming her into the place beyond.

  Protective and close, Lumen positioned himself behind her as though to shield her back, to remind her that he was there.

  Inside she discovered a long, narrow room with a high arched ceiling that drew her eyes upwards at first before they began to explore the structure itself, taking in the beautiful space. Stone and wood surrounding her, warm and cold all at once. Crafted by expert hands and imaginative minds.

  Embedded into its long walls were four gorgeous stained glass windows, each lit by the faint glow of a warm light coming from unseen sources beyond the room itself.

  Each window’s colourful glass design depicted a Dragon in various scenarios: one, a sleek grey beast, surrounded by what looked like an enormous frozen cave. Another, a red Dragon, engulfed in flame and rising up, seemingly empowered by the fire itself. A third, a bronze-coloured Dragon, perched atop a giant stone outcropping. And the last was silver, flying over a vast, flowing river. This one reminded her of Lumen; of how he must have looked as she’d ridden to the Heath astride him.

  Beautiful, graceful and miraculous.

  Neko’s eyes were drawn to each of the designs in turn, admiring and curious. The craftsmanship was exquisite, and she wondered how on earth such creations had ended up in this strange subterranean lair.

  But after a time she felt eyes on her, assessing and judgmental. Staring at inanimate objects was only her way of delaying the inevitable: her first encounter with the Guild of Dragons.

  The room’s centerpiece was a long, ancient looking table made of one enormous slab of solid wood, accented by the occasional dark knot. On its two longest sides the table was flanked by several large men and one tall, slim woman, standing, quietly examining the stranger in their midst.

  Each of the members of the Dragons’ Guild, of course, was beautiful, including the woman, whom Neko studied first. Flame-coloured hair swept away from her face in long undulating waves, flowing over her shoulders. Her eyes were bright and enticing, like Lumen’s and Minach’s, but quite a different colour; they seemed made of copper with flecks of silver, bright, intelligent and piercing.

  And her face was so lovely that Neko instinctively wanted to cover her own in a brown paper bag. She’d seen beautiful women before, but none who felt quite so intimidating as this one did.

  As the red-haired woman and the other Dragon shifters looked towards their guest, a combination of mesmerizing scents hit Neko. The bouquet reminded her of Lumen’s, though thankfully the combination was less sexually intoxicating. All of them at once created a dazzling aroma, sweeping her up among thoughts of the most delicious cooking, most exquisite flowers and most potent aphrodisiac, hitting all at once. A thoroughly pleasant, if unsolicited, assault.

  The most sexual of the scents, of course, came at her directly from behind, from Lumen’s beautiful form. His aroma aroused her even now, in this frightening and dangerous place.

  Watching over her from behind, he seemed to sense Neko’s discomfort and advanced to push himself instinctively between her and the others, shielding her a little from the force that seemed to have frozen her in her tracks. The result was that his scent enveloped her, a safe, dazzling cocoon protecting her mind from the invasion by the others—at least for the moment.

  “This is Neko,” he said, addressing the room. “A Hunter who was assigned to kill me. Of course, needless to say, she has done no such thing.”

  “And as a reward for her failure to do her job, Lumen, you decided to bring her here?” It was the woman’s voice that spoke the words. Sweet and lilting, if not a little bitter.

  “I brought her here because I had no choice, Tryst. A Hash was after us both. He would have killed her if I hadn’t brought her with me.”

  “You should have let her die, then. Those who are out to kill us are rarely allies, Dragon Lord, in case you’ve forgotten that simple truth.”

  “This woman is the exception. She is not only an ally, but far more than that. I…needed… her to come with me.”

  “I see.” The two words were full of a sort of sly understanding, as though Tryst grasped all the subtleties of Lumen’s meaning. Neko, on the other hand, was perplexed. What exactly was he saying?

  Tryst spoke again. “Well, then, tell us why you’re both here.”

  Lumen and Minach took their seats at the table, the signal that a meeting was about to
occur. The others seated themselves as Lumen gestured to Neko to take an empty chair next to his.

  “Neko was hired by a man—a Controller—named Umbra. He told her to take my life.”

  “A hired assassin is a disturbing thought.” This time it was one of the other shifters who spoke; a tall, bronze-haired man with piercing eyes, very much like the woman Tryst’s. Neko looked at him for only a moment before averting her gaze, annoyed at herself for being temporarily mesmerized by his extraordinary bone structure.

  “It is,” said Lumen. “And I’m afraid that it will become a more frequent occurrence.”

  “It’s the second time I’ve heard of a Hash or Hunter being assigned to one our kind. Conlon was a good man, if not strong enough to fight off his assailant. If he’d had the blood of the Kindred…”

  “I know. He’d still be alive,” said Lumen. “At first I thought the killing was random; the work of a rogue Hunter, or even of a thief. But I now have reason to believe that Conlon’s death wasn’t as straightforward as all that.”

  “You think that whoever was responsible was seeking information.”

  “Yes, possibly. And perhaps they got what they wanted.” Lumen’s tone was ominous. “Even though Conlon wasn’t of Kindred blood, he knew enough of our history to be a valuable asset to our enemies. It pains me to tell you this: I believe that the time for the Gathering might have come.”

  The others let out a quiet gasp, sending a shiver up Neko’s spine. These were the most powerful beings she’d ever beheld. To see them thrown into a state of worry, even briefly, was a shock.

  She looked toward Lumen, her expression questioning. In that moment she felt more like a small child than a powerful, independent woman. A stranger in the strangest of lands.

  “The Four need to be assembled, I fear,” Lumen added, doing little to alleviate her confusion.

  The Four? The four what?