Did that make me weak in Damon’s eyes? More than likely.
“How do you make contact once the job is done?” Damon asked.
“There’s a card in my wallet. Take it.”
With his free hand, Damon pulled the wallet out of the man’s back pocket and tossed it to me. I caught then opened it. There were tons of business cards inside. This guy obviously had a moneymaking business. “Which one?”
“Black one. Red writing. Jesus, ease up on the wire! I’m being honest here.”
“If you were an honest man,” Damon said, “you wouldn’t have been involved in mass slaughters.”
Our captive didn’t say anything. But then, the dangerous edge in Damon’s voice would have scared even the strongest soul.
I flicked through the cards until I found a black one with red writing. “It says—in somewhat pretentious gothic print, I might add—Deca Dent. Under that is a number.” I looked up at him. “What the hell is Deca Dent? A name or a place? And how is that related to the guy who pays you?”
Damon gave his captive a shake, and he stammered, “Deca Dent is a bar. I have no idea how the bar and the man are related to the money or my jobs. I get paid, and that’s all that matters.”
I shoved the card in my pocket and resisted the urge to ask about all his victims, and whether they’d mattered. It was obvious that they hadn’t.
Which made me study Damon and wonder if there was anything that mattered to him. Or whether I was looking at two sides of the same coin. One light, one dark, and both intent on doing the job and caring for little else.
“Is the man at the bar draman or dragon?” Damon asked.
“Dragon.”
“And is he the man in charge of the whole operation?”
“I told you, I don’t know. He just gives me my orders and I report to him when I’m done. I swear, that’s it.”
“And has he got an elegant-sounding voice?” I asked.
Damon glanced at me, then shook the man when he didn’t immediately answer. “Not really. It’s more gruff than elegant. Please, the wire is fucking hurting.”
“You can thank my lovely assistant for the fact that that’s all it’s doing,” Damon said, and frog-hopped him back to the lounge.
He repeated the process with the other three men, but none of them had anything else to add. The first man was obviously the brains of this outfit. Or at least, the one who made contact.
“What are we going to do with them?” I said as Damon pushed the last man back into place.
“We stop them from escaping.”
I frowned. “The minute we leave, they’re going to flame themselves loose.”
“Not if they haven’t got any flame to begin with,” he answered, and then touched the last man lightly on his forehead.
Damon closed his eyes and power began to crawl through the air. It was dark, that power—as dark and as dangerous as the man wielding it.
The man he was touching screamed—a short, sharp sound that was filled with pain and fear. I swallowed heavily, my gaze jumping between the two men, wondering what the hell Damon was actually doing. The man was alive—I could see him breathing—but he looked as if someone had ripped his heart out.
What the hell was Damon doing to him?
He moved on to the next man. I frowned and stepped forward, touching the first man lightly on the shoulder. His flesh was icy, even through the thickness of his shirt. But it was more than just the chill of stolen fire, and my stomach did an odd flip-flop.
No, I thought, he couldn’t have. I reached down inside myself and unleashed the dragon, letting her energy swirl into the stranger. But instead of fire, she found nothing. Not even the broken, scattered ashes where once the soul of a dragon had lived.
He hadn’t just stolen his heat, as I’d threatened to do. He’d completely erased it.
“How is that possible?” I murmured as I glanced at Damon, feeling sick. “How can you extinguish someone’s very essence?”
He didn’t open his eyes. “Any fire can be put out, Mercy. You just have to know how.”
I swallowed heavily, but it didn’t ease the dryness in my throat. “Can you do that to full dragons as well?”
“It’s harder, but yes.” He dropped his fingers from the last man and looked at me. “It beats killing them, doesn’t it?”
“But—”
“They’re alive, Mercy. They just can’t flame.”
“For now, or forever?”
He hesitated. “Draman do not need flames or wings.”
“Of course not. After all, what right have we got to be able to protect ourselves against you lot?” I snorted softly. “You really have no understanding of what goes on in cliques, do you?”
“And you have no idea just how close the cliques are to being exposed,” he snapped, then made a visible effort to control himself before adding, “Let’s not get into this argument again. If you want to rescue this woman, we need to get moving.”
He went back out onto the deck without waiting for me. I grabbed the backpack, checked that the netbook was still in one piece, then followed. It was a large space, but there wasn’t enough room for a dragon to stand, let alone unfurl his wings.
“You can’t shift shape here,” I commented.
“I know.” His voice was almost absent as he studied the darkness off to our left. The breeze ruffled his dark hair and a half smile touched his lips. “The wind is strong tonight. It’ll help me lift you.”
“Just promise not to drop me.”
I couldn’t help the edge of fear in my voice and he looked at me, his smile growing, once again lending his otherwise arrogant features a delicious warmth. “There may be a lot of things I want to do to you, but dropping you isn’t one of them.”
His gaze burned with sudden desire, and warmth crept into my cheeks even as part of me basked in the heat of that look. “Oh, I’ve seen some looks thrown my way that suggest you’d love to do that very thing. Drop me from a height, that is.”
“Only when you’re being so frustratingly stubborn.”
I smiled. “Which is a lot, according to you.”
“That’s true.” He gripped the railing of the ladder leading up to the steering deck. “Once I take off, climb to the nose of the boat. I’ll swoop down and grab you.”
“Just you watch where you put those claws,” I said, crossing my arms and trying not to think about all the things that could go wrong. “I do not need any more scars, thank you very much.”
“If I pierce you with one of my claws, you’ll be dead.” He grabbed the rail and climbed up to the next level.
I moved to the back of the boat, leaning my butt against the railing in hopes I could see what was happening above. The roof made that impossible, but the burn of energy across my skin told me he was shifting shape. I closed my eyes, enjoying the sensation while trying to ignore the longing that welled up from within. I might have learned long ago that I would never experience the freedom of shifting shape and skimming the wide-open skies, but that never eased the desire for it.
There was a whoosh of air as wings unfurled and began to sweep across the night. A second later, an inky shape appeared in the starlit sky.
And oh, he was so beautiful.
The moonlight glinted off his dark scales, making it seem as if his sleek, powerful body was covered in a million stars. His wings were black gossamer, almost invisible against the sky except for the shimmer that ran down the edges with every stroke as he powered upward. And he was big for a dragon—a big, powerful beast who looked as deadly as the man.
I sighed—a sound that was part admiration and part frustration at not being able to join him in flight—then walked to the ladder and began to climb.
After moving as far forward as I could and ensuring I was clear of anything that would obstruct his wings, I closed my eyes and waited. While part of me wanted to watch Damon swoop in, part of me feared it, too. I’d seen the damage claws could do to a human body and I doubted I could force myself to stand still while such a large dragon swept down toward me.