The Adversary by Thea Harrison

Chapter Six

But even from that distance, even in an instant, Pia knew better. She knew.

The man strode toward her, his long legs eating up the distance, gold eyes gleaming.

“It’s about damn time!” she screamed at him. She launched.

He was far enough away she had time to build up to her best sprinting speed. Her control over her Wyr form vaporized, and Lord have mercy, she didn’t have the sense to slow down. No matter how fast she ran it still wasn’t fast enough, and when she was about ten feet from him, she gave up and leaped.

He snatched her out of the air and swung in a circle to break the force of her momentum, and he was still spinning as his hard mouth slammed down onto hers. She latched onto him with everything she had, arms, legs, lips, soul.

It was just too bad. They were going to have to live like this now and go everywhere together, her clinging to him like a limpet.

Bathroom visits would be awkward. Maybe over time their skins would melt together. They would become the PiaDragos. Or maybe the DragosPia. Part of her knew she was babbling telepathically like an insane idiot.

“I hear you,” he whispered against her mouth, hand fisted in her hair, one muscled arm wound around her hips. “I hear everything you’re saying. It’s okay now. Shh, Pia, stop crying.”

She had to drag her mouth away to sob raggedly, “I can’t stop, you motherfucker. Don’t you ever scare me like that again.”

His face. His face was everything. He looked fierce, and determined, and tender at once. Carrying her over to a large boulder, he perched on the edge. “Then you take all the time you need and let it out.” He said over her shoulder, “Give us some space.”

The others went somewhere else. She didn’t know where, and she didn’t care. “I’ve been just about as crazy as I have ever been, and I’ve been pretty nuts at times before.”

“I know.” He stroked her hair and pulled a strand out of her eyes. “I’m so sorry.”

“Stop that!” She slapped his shoulder. “Don’t you apologize for what that corrupt, thieving, evil, nasty, smarmy, grasping, parasitic, lying son of a bitch did.”

“If I could rip him limb to limb, I would,” he growled. His eyes glowed brighter than any glowstick, any forge, and the length of his powerful body felt feverishly hot, so much so she started to squirm.

“You’re getting too hot to handle,” she told him, in what someone who didn’t know her might think was a more or less calmer voice. Then she thrust her face into his and glared at him nose-to-nose. “Don’t make me let go. THAT’S NOT OKAY!”

He drew in a breath. “No, it is not. Hold on.”

As he forced his Power under control and cooled down, she started to notice details. He was bruised and bloody again. “You’re a mess. I can’t take it. I’ve got to heal you.”

“PIA, NO,” he said with such harsh urgency, it brought her up short. He added telepathically, The others are still nearby.

Oh. Okay.She sniffled. There was no time like the present to get everything off her chest. Live every moment like it’s your only one, right? I punched you a lot, and the unseen saw my Wyr form. And I’m not proud of this, but I might be a helicopter mom after all.

What?!he snarled. Outrage flashed over his brutal features.

I know! I tried my best. I wanted to let Liam go off and be an adult, but then I broke down and sent Bayne after him.She plucked at his dirty shirt. I hope he’s not too mad at me—oh, and I also didn’t put on Kevlar when Eva wanted me to.

What are you talking about?

I’m reciting a litany of my sins, she explained.

Forget about that! Those creatures SAW your Wyr form?He glared around, his mouth set in a hard, ruthless line. I’m going to have to find a way to kill them. All of them. I just have to figure out how to see them first.

She yanked at his shirt. I’m not done talking about me yet.

“Jesus, give me strength,” he uttered out loud.

Her mouth dropped open. “You’ve never said anything like that before. Y-you’re not religious. You’re especially not Christ—”

Cupping her face, he kissed her, and she forgot what she was saying. Here it was, what she had needed so desperately. Home. He was home. She was home. She kissed him back with all the longing that had been pent up in her terrified soul. Gradually, her Wyr side stopped beating at the inside of her skin to be let out and calmed down, soothed by the presence of her mate.

At last he pulled away just enough to whisper, “Better?”

“Mmhm.” She nuzzled him.

“Me too.” Stroking her hair, he told her telepathically, As much as I am struck by the idea of melting together and becoming the PiaDragos—

Or the DragosPia, she interjected.

—or the DragosPia, he added with a slight smile, I’m pretty sure you don’t really want to sacrifice your alone times in the bath. Ready to be set on your feet?

She considered that. Let’s negotiate this.

Oh, I’m not letting go of you, especially not down here.He planted a swift kiss to her forehead. I’m just putting you on your feet. We have an audience of eight waiting for our attention.

I don’t care what they want.She scowled at a particularly dark bruise discoloring his hard jaw. She had thrown everything she had into her punches. Had she done that?

He gave her a quick, bladelike grin. I don’t either, but we all have things to say to each other.

Pfft.Another thought occurred to her, and she shook a finger underneath his nose. Do not—let me repeat this, Dragos—do NOT become intrigued by any treasure down here.

He narrowed one eye at her skeptically, as if he couldn’t comprehend the magnitude of what she had just said. Generally speaking, treasure is just inanimate stuff, Pia.

Then why did he like it so much? She knew what he was doing. He was trying to plant a conversational opening that he meant to walk through at a later date.

I don’t care.She met his gaze with an implacable stare. He needed to hear how serious she was. We’ve discovered some shiny stuff down here, but before you lay eyes on it and get all dragony, you have to know—this is a line in the sand that I need for you to not cross.

He frowned. You’re that invested?

You can acquire all the treasure in the world, and I mean aaaaaaallllll of it. You can barter, gamble, cheat at cards, bust open bank deposit boxes and steal it, blackmail for it, go to war with any nation you like to bankrupt them, I don’t care. The stuff down here has evil possessor cooties, and you can’t have any of it. I’m not…I’m not stable enough to be okay with that. We’ll talk about the house later.

His gaze had darkened with speculation and then compassion as she spoke, but at the last bit, his black straight brows pulled into a sharp frown. The house?

She scrubbed her lips with the back of one hand, trying instinctively to wipe away ugly memories. HEwas in that house. He did things there. He ate in our kitchen and rummaged through your closet. He showered in our shower.

He touched me, kissed me, fondled my breast.

Earlier, she’d told Dragos the truth—that bastard had done only what she had allowed him to do, but mostly because there hadn’t been enough time for him to get insistent. And the whole time a part of her had been consumed with what she might have to do if he did.

At her words, the rage that rolled off Dragos was almost impossible to face head on. The tremendous musculature of his body locked rigid.

The dragon said in a deep voice that caused the floor to shake, “I will burn that place to the ground.”

The tremor ran through the gigantic chamber, causing the stressed stone to ring with a great noise like a sonorous gong. A scattering of dirt and rock sprinkled down. Dear gods, if he wasn’t careful, he was going to cause another earthquake and bring the whole place down around them.

“Shh—it’s okay,” she whispered quickly, framing his deadly face with both hands. “I’m okay. Everything is okay now.”

When Dragos’s killer side came out, he was utterly terrifying. He said between his teeth, “I’m not done talking about me yet.”

“I get it, baby, but we have people we care about down here. We don’t want to bury them under tons of rock and dirt.” She touched his ruthless mouth with unsteady fingers. “Please, you’ve got to rein it in.”

He hissed, the image of his savage expression burning into her retinas. Then with a palpable effort, he closed his eyes and breathed heavily. When he looked at her again, the savagery was still there in his burning gold gaze, but he had pulled it under control—maybe just barely. She wouldn’t want him to undergo any more stress at the moment.

She breathed, “I’m asking a lot from you right now. Thank you.”

He shook his head, grasped one of her hands, and pressed his lips to her fingers. Then he eased her onto her feet, kept one hand captured in his, and straightened.

The others had sensibly gathered underneath the clear night sky at the opening of the sinkhole while they waited to see if the dragon was going to cause any more damage to the ruins. Dragos strode over to them, pulling Pia along with him. He hadn’t been kidding when he said he wasn’t going to let go of her.

“Report,” he said to Graydon and Rune.

Well versed in the skill of debriefing, they gave him a clear, concise rundown of what had happened. Morgan and Carling added comments at various junctures, and Grace and Bel inserted their own parenthetical observations about the unseen.

Since Pia had been there for the whole thing, she let it wash over her, concentrating instead on the long, hard fingers grasping hers, the solid sense of Dragos’s presence. Now that the thread of almost unbearable tension had eased, tiredness hit her in a dizzying wave. She fought the urge to curl up on the dirty floor.

After listening to the report, he walked with them back to the sarcophagus and looked at the golden image for a long, throbbing moment.

Watching him, she whispered telepathically, All the treasure in the world can be yours for the taking, except this.

The muscle at the corner of his tense mouth twitched. I agree. This piece of hubris will not be allowed to survive. Finger by finger, he carefully released her hand.

Then, moving so fast he was a blur, he leaped at the sarcophagus and slammed his fist into the mummy’s head, shattering it so hard pieces of bone and cloth flew out. Grace and Bel flinched back, but Pia’s attention was caught by Rune and Graydon, who stood watching Dragos with approval. The sentinels had always resonated with Dragos’s more feral side.

As Dragos straightened and turned back to her, she said, “I approve, but just so you know, I am not letting you touch me again until you wash off that mummy dust.”

He grinned. He was beginning to look calmer; at long last, she was beginning to feel calmer. They were making their way back to normal.

“Since this seems a good enough time as any to start asking questions, how did you get free?” Morgan asked.

Dragos leaped down from the edge of the sarcophagus. “I slipped out of his illusions. He set a trap, I set a trap. Once I got a firm grasp on his presence, I started to… burn him with dragonfire.”

Morgan’s brows quirked together as he listened. The sorcerer looked fascinated but still mystified. “This was a fight while you were both disembodied?”

“Correct.”

“While I’m not sure I understand your method, I’m glad it worked.”

Pia was no sorcerer, but she thought she had a grasp on what Dragos meant. When the dragon breathed fire, it was not just a physical flame but one filled with Power. She remembered looking into his eyes when he was possessed and knowing that it was not Dragos looking out at her. The fire in his spirit had been missing, those hot gold eyes dimmed.

“So he’s dead now,” Rune pressed. “Right?”

Dragos glanced back at the shattered mummy. “He was already dead. His—presence, soul, whatever you want to call it—couldn’t handle the dragonfire, so he fled. From that point, it was a fairly quick matter of convincing Aryal, Grym, and Quentin that I was really me again, so they set me free.”

Khalil turned to face Grace. The Djinn said, “Confirm, please.”

Grace blinked. “I don’t know what you want me to confirm.”

“Is he in the spirit realm now?”

“I don’t know his name,” Grace said. “And since he’s been so dangerous, I wouldn’t feel comfortable trying to call him anyway. In any case, even if I do, he doesn’t have to come if he doesn’t want to.” She glanced at Dragos. “And since Dragos is able to injure him, I’m pretty sure he won’t want to.”

Graydon pinched his nose. “So we don’t have any concrete proof that the bastard is really gone.”

“Nope.” Dragos put extra force on the percussion of the P.

Pia’s stomach sank. No, no, no. This, she did not want to hear.

“Postulation,” Morgan said. He began to stroll in a circle around the group.

The sorcerer looked as calm as ever, intrigued and engaged. He was a towering maestro in his sphere, and for a distant moment Pia imagined how compelling a thing it would be to have his passion entirely focused on one, entirely engaged. Sidonie was a lucky woman.

She said telepathically to Eva, While I am completely and happily immersed in loving Dragos, my ovaries just made a little mouse squeak too.

Eva’s gaze flashed to hers.

I might be mated, but I’m not dead, Pia added. She brought one shoulder up in a subtle, droll lift, and the surprise in Eva’s expression turned to quick laughter.

“You have Number Four, who did a complex and specific thing,” said Morgan. “A very targeted thing that was drastically, violently outside his norm. He knew to come down here. He knew to damage what he had damaged. He knew to take what he had taken. How could he have possibly known any of that?”

“There’s only one answer.” Dragos crossed his arms. “He was told.”

“Right,” Morgan replied. “He had to have been informed. And who was the only person who could have known all of that?”

“Me,” Dragos growled. “Or who he thought was me.”

Morgan slanted an eyebrow at Dragos. “Also correct. Bayne was bothered by Number Four’s actions and motives, but they become more transparent if you consider that Dragos—or so Number Four thought—might have given him a clear set of instructions to follow. If Number Four was a good Wyr soldier, he would be highly motivated to follow orders from the Lord of his demesne. While I’m morally concerned by someone so casually killing his coworkers and comrades on someone else’s orders, it’s the only scenario that fits.”

Grim comprehension dawned on Rune, Carling, and Graydon’s expressions, while Bel simply looked appalled.

Goose bumps rose on the bare skin of Pia’s arms. She rubbed herself briskly. “But when would he have done it, and why? He was busy getting ready for the beach party, and then we trapped him.”

Graydon said to her, “Dragos collapsed, and when he came to, you said you knew immediately that it wasn’t him. The moment you got to the surface, we started laying plans. What if we weren’t the only ones to do so?”

“Consider this,” Morgan said to the group. “Our god-king lay here dead but not gone for countless years. Dragos and Pia must have been his first opportunity at freedom in millennia, so he leaped at it. I will tell you this much for free, my new, very charming friends—if I found myself needing to possess Dragos, I would be extremely uneasy about it.”

A hard smile notched the corners of Dragos’s mouth. “You couldn’t do it. Not if I saw you coming.”

“I could if you didn’t see me coming,” Morgan told him. “Because that’s what happened, isn’t it? He’s a proficient, skilled magic user. He caught you by surprise and that was his window in. But if that were me, I would be very uneasy for a lot of reasons—your age, strength of will, nature, intelligence, and knowledge of magic. If you were a castle and I had captured you, you would be very difficult territory to keep. And I would know that, because I know magic very well, just like our god-king does. So, I would not assume that I could keep the valuable real estate I had just captured. And I would be laying plans for my fallback position just in case I had to give ground.”

“Fuck, fuck me, fuck,” Graydon muttered. “And just as we’ve been learning about him, he’s been learning about us.”

“Pia described a scene where a figure wielded an object of Power in a battle with otherworldly creatures. That scepter, wand, sword—whatever it is—must be the focal point of our god-king’s magic,” Morgan said. “The more he worked with it, the more Powerful it would have become. He must have also made it into a soul repository.”

“I’ve heard of those,” Carling murmured. “I’ve even read some of the spells, but I’ve never fashioned one.”

“Me neither,” Morgan told her. “Mostly because they’re not a healthy thing to do. If and when I die, I want my soul released into the universe to move on to whatever comes after death. Maybe that’s reincarnation, or heaven or hell, or maybe it’s nothing.”

Grace smiled. “It’s not nothing, I promise.”

He bowed to her. “Whatever it may be, I know for sure that I don’t want to be trapped in a receptacle for eternity.”

Pia had started to feel more and more ill as the discussion progressed. She bent at the waist, propped her hands on her knees, and groaned, “And Liam went after Number Four—and Bayne went after him.”

“I’ve heard enough.” Dragos strode over to the where the rope still dangled from where Graydon had dropped it earlier. He looked over his shoulder at Pia. “Are you coming?”

She leaped at him. “Hell yeah.”

Dragos was too big in his Wyr form to shapeshift and fly out without causing major damage to the sinkhole. He urged Pia to climb on and ride piggyback. Once she had a secure hold, he swarmed up the rope. As a werewolf, Morgan had no wings for flight, so he followed suit, and Eva did as well. The others mounted Rune and Graydon in their gryphon forms and flew out.

“We need to organize a search party,” Dragos told the others.

Even as he spoke, there was a rush of wings. Not otherworldly wings in some half-sensed dimension, but real wings that beat hot, dusty air into their faces. Squinting, Pia looked up in time to see Bayne and Liam hovering overhead.

Bayne landed with precision nearby. Liam’s dragon form was so much bigger, he swung into the cleared area on the other side of the sinkhole and shapeshifted back into his human form, then jogged around to them.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” Pia whispered to any god who might be listening.

“You’re free,” Liam said to Dragos.

“I am indeed. It’s good to have you back.” Dragos hugged him.

Then Liam turned to Pia. She threw her arms around him. “I’ve been so worried, and I’m so glad to see you. What happened to Number Four?”

Liam shook his head. Bayne said, “We didn’t get him. When I caught up with Liam, he was flying along the coastline. The bastard’s Wyr, so he knows how to disguise his scent when he needs to.” He said to Pia, “I know waiting to hear can be hard, so we came back to update you. This is not a quick or easy hunt.”

Dragos said, “Aryal, Quentin, and Grym went back to the house to clean up and wait.”

“I’ll get them,” Graydon offered.

Liam looked at Pia. “I’m hungry.”

“Okay, honey,” she said. “Go back to the house and get something to eat. There’s tons of food. I can’t leave your dad.”

Liam nodded. He stroked Pia’s hair, lingering to finger the ends, and then he strode away.