“Shit, he’s alive,” I said, and scrambled toward him, away from Damon’s grasp. I grabbed the sea dragon’s hand and stared into the blue of his eyes. His flesh was like ice against mine. I tried not to see the blood soaking into the carpet behind his head, and tried to ignore the sensation of death gathering close. “Angus? We’re here. We’ll get help. Just hang on.”
His mouth opened, and although no words came out, he struggled on, trying to speak. I glanced up at Damon. “We need to get a doctor here.”
“It won’t do any good, Mercy.”
“But we just can’t sit here and watch him die!” Although I didn’t raise my voice, the desperate need to do something—anything—to help this man filled it with a hard edge.
“There’s no dragon medic close by, and we can’t risk human intervention. That could lead to complications with the council neither of us would enjoy.” His voice was as stony as his face. “But even if we did bring in human help, they wouldn’t be able to save him. Look at him. Half his head is gone.”
“But—”
“I’m not arguing about this. We’ll wait to see if the shooter comes to investigate his kill, and then we leave.”
“But someone has to stay here until dawn.” Disbelief and anger ran through me. “Someone needs to be here to guide his soul on. You can’t just leave—”
“We can, and we must.”
It was said so coldly that I could only shake my head. “God, you’re an unfeeling bastard.”
“Death often is.” He said it almost gently, like he was speaking to a child.
“But you’re not death,” I snapped back. “It’s just your job. It’s not what you are.”
“Then you see things that no one else does.” Humor touched his tone, but it held an edge that was lightly mocking. “Including me.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I simply glanced back down at Angus. His face was etched with pain and the knowledge of death, but when his gaze met mine, the blue depths were aware and desperate.
“Coral,” he said, his words slurred and voice hoarse. “You must—”
“Shhh,” I said, squeezing his fingers. “Just rest. We’ll help her. I promise.”
“Go to her now. Save her. They’ll kill her.”
“If they haven’t already,” Damon murmured.
“No, she lives. I’d know.” Angus gulped down air and his fingers clenched against mine, squeezing them hard enough to hurt. “Moraga Drive. Blue house—”
His voice faded, and a heartbeat later his eyes rolled back into his head and his grip against my hand suddenly loosened.
He was dead.
I blinked back tears as I leaned forward and closed his eyes. This man might have betrayed both Rainey and me, but he didn’t deserve this sort of death, didn’t deserve to be alone when his soul moved on.
“Damon—”
“We are not staying here to pray for his soul, Mercy.”
“If you’d just shut up and let me finish a sentence,” I snapped back, “you’d learn that I was about to ask how quickly we can get to Santa Rosa.”
Because if we could get Coral free soon enough, then Angus would not be alone come dawn.
He looked at me like I was crazy. “You’re not actually going to attempt this rescue?”
“I promised—”
“That’s neither here nor there. By the time we get there, the woman will be dead. They’re obviously getting rid of all possible complications. It’s your own safety you should be worried about.”
“Except that Santa Rosa is the last place they’d expect me to go, so it’s probably the safest place to be. Besides, she might know something that could help us, and that alone makes it worth trying.” I stared at him mutinously. “I’ll do this alone if I have to.”
“You’re crazy enough to do it, too,” he muttered, and ran a hand through his hair. “Okay, we’ll rescue this woman. But if she doesn’t have any information, we start doing things my way.”
“I don’t like your way. It involves killing people.”
“If I kill them, I can’t get information out of them,” he snapped back. “If we want to get there quickly, the best way to do so is to fly.”
My heart began to race. Not from excitement but rather from fear. Flying and me weren’t exactly compatible. And I had the scars to prove it.
“We can’t—”
“We can take the boat out to sea and fly from there. It’s going to be a cloudy night, so the chances of being seen are low. Especially given we’re black and brown respectively.”
“That’s not the problem.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Then what is? Are you afraid of the sea?”
“No. But as I told you before, I can’t fly. I’m a draman without wings.”
Confusion touched his expression. “But you have every other dragon skill imaginable.”
“Well, as you keep noting, I’m strange. And I didn’t get the wings.”
“I said you’re crazy, not strange. Totally different things.” He made a frustrated sound. “And this makes things more difficult.”
“You could carry me.”
He raised an eyebrow. “You say that like it’s easy.”
“Well, isn’t it? There’d hardly be all those myths of dragons carrying off virginal women if it wasn’t possible.”
Humor brightened his eyes. “Ah, but virgins have always held a special place in a dragon’s heart. Something to do with the meat tasting sweeter.”
And he wasn’t talking about actually eating them, if that smile was anything to go by. I slapped his leg. “I’m trying to be serious here.”
“Okay, serious question. How much do you weigh and are you a virgin?”
I raised my eyebrow. “That’s two questions, and why would you need to know the second one?”
“Because I make a point of not seducing virgins.”
Meaning he had every intention of seducing me if I wasn’t? My pulse rate danced joyously at the thought.
“Then you’d be the first dragon in history to do so.” I shifted back from Angus and sat on my heels. “Or is it a muerte thing? The bringer of death not taking innocence, or something like that?”
“It’s a personal thing.” He glanced up at the window, and frowned. “I don’t want to seduce anyone who might expect more than just a good time, and virgins tend to get a little clingy with their first lover.”
“Speaking from experience, are we?”
My voice was dry, and he looked back at me briefly. “No. Just consider it a warning.”
I snorted softly. “As if any draman actually needs a warning when it comes to dragons, sex, and emotion.” Hell, we learned all too quickly that the latter just didn’t come into the picture when you were a half-breed. “And you’re getting a little ahead of yourself. The whole respect thing I was mentioning before has to be addressed before the whole seduction thing even comes into play.”
He didn’t answer, and something in the way he was holding himself—a mix of intentness and alert readiness—had tension crawling down my spine. I lowered my voice a little as I asked, “What’s wrong?”
“Footsteps, coming this way.”
“Could it be the guy Angus referred to when I first stepped onto the boat?”
He was shaking his head before I’d finished. “There’s at least two men, and their steps are cautious.” He glanced back at me again. “Slip down the stairs to the lower deck. Don’t come up until I say its okay.”
“Damon, I can help—”
“This is what I do,” he said coldly. “Please let me do it without having to worry about you.”
Annoyance flared, but I held it in check, scooting across the floor to the stairs before heading downward. There were four bedrooms here, as well as a large storage area toward the stern. I opened several doors, looking for something I could use as a weapon and finding nothing but wetsuits, flippers, and life jackets. But in the final locker there were several air tanks and a large tool kit. I opened that up, grabbed a heavy-looking wrench, then walked across to the door that led out to a small platform at the back of the boat. I tested the door handle to ensure it was locked, then stepped back into the confines of another locker and waited.