Descended from Dragons: an Urban Fantasy (Moonlight Dragon Book 1) (8 page)

Goatee seemed to realize things had taken a bad turn, for he blindly shot magick down the alley in my direction. I tried a graceful leap aside, but I was not a dragon yet. I stumbled and tripped and then rolled across the ground, accidentally kicking the pet carrier.

Sharp arrowheads of concrete spat in my face and stung the backs of my hands as Goatee's magick bounced and ricocheted off every hard surface. His urgency told me he was beginning to suspect that he needed to take me down now, while I was still human.

Not for long, buddy.

Through the maelstrom of Goatee's magick I counterattacked with Lucky. Fire blazed from my dragon's throat. Goatee shrieked and aimed a torrent of magick at Lucky, knocking the dragon back. I sent Lucky at him again. As I did so, I bared my own teeth. A roar shrieked from my throat. I clawed the air and Lucky shredded Goatee's leather jacket down one arm. Cursing, Goatee blasted magick down the alley again, hoping to hit me. One shot struck the carrier and sent it flipping end over end across the concrete.

"Vale!' I yelled.

I was startled by my human voice. Was that me? It cut through the madness filling my head, reminded me who I was.
Be careful, Anne. You're riding the edge.

Vale didn't respond to my cry. I couldn't see inside the carrier because the door end was facing away from me. I wanted to check on him but that stupid Baldy—he pulled out his wand, too. Great. Two warlocks. Since when did I warrant such attention?

It wasn't me, though. It was Vale they wanted.

Well, they were going to have to go through a pesky dragon to get him.

Lucky reared up and he was an awesome sight: tendrils of golden energy whipping around his serpentine body, wings spread, and his long fangs glinting. My ancestral blood demanded that I give him more of my energy, that I feed him with my own life. I wouldn't die; I would become something else. Something greater. Something powerful.

I opened my mouth wide, my teeth bared. Lucky's jaws yawned open in concert. He spat curls of red and gold flames. Goatee put up a magickal shield to defend himself, but Lucky's fire ate away at it until the warlock's hair and clothes began to smoke. Goatee raised his wand at Lucky as if gearing up for something big—

Then he seemed to think twice.

That's right, I thought as I stood there, panting and on fire, at least in my mind.
You can't defeat us. We are dragons.

He must have read my mind, because he turned and bolted down the alley.

Despite having a crazy monkey on his head, Baldy noticed his friend ditching him. He managed to unwind Melanie's tail from around his neck and then flung her off him as though he were chucking an
Alien
face-hugger. Melanie landed nimbly on her feet and chattered what I assumed were monkey insults at Baldy as he sprinted down the alley and out of sight.

Lucky reared up again. He was strong now. He slashed his tiger claws through the air and fanned his numerous fins in a display of dominance. The entire alley blazed with golden light, hurting my eyes. If I didn't rein him in someone on the freeway was going to notice something and call the cops.

Controlling Lucky at this point was easier said than done, though. He was me and I was him and together we were free and monstrous. Deep down, I knew I was riding a slippery slope.

My shoulders itched where wings wanted to burst free. Wings weren't traditional Chinese, but I was only half Asian, so I was a hybrid dragon. My wings were right there, pressing against my skin like fingers poking plastic cling wrap. With just a little push they'd break free…and
I'd
be free.

Or would I?

This was how the stories began. This was how my ancestors had come to be known as predators. They'd given in to their dragons and the dragons had defeated them. They'd
become
dragons.

If I gave in, too, I would lose Moonlight. I would lose my friends. The demon would eat Vale's soul.

No.

I began to pull Lucky in. It was like trying to reel in Jaws. He fought me, teeth snapping and body corkscrewing in the air like a windsock. To anyone else watching it would have been a beautiful sight, sort of like a watching a real-life dragon dance at the Chinese New Year's parade. But it frickin' hurt. Imagine having a hundred tiny fish hooks imbedded in your skin and attached to a kite that was whipping about in a hurricane. Now try to walk backward. Agony to the nth degree.

But if I wanted to remain human I had to do this, so I bore down and pulled him in. It helped that re-absorbing my energy from him dulled the pain from my burn injury. A little. Kind of.

"Come on," I gritted out. "Come on, you bad, bad dragon."

He fought. I lost ground.

Don't be the thing everyone accuses you of being.

Hell, no. I fought back.

By the time I'd reined Lucky in completely, I was sweating like an Inuit visiting Vegas on the fourth of July. Pain blazed behind my eyes. With a groan, I collapsed back onto my elbows.

Melanie danced over to me and pawed me with her soft, tiny hands. When she discovered my wound she let out a screech of dismay.

"I'm okay," I muttered, one arm flung over my eyes. "It's fine if it scars. I'll tell everyone I crashed my Ducati. The red one."

Her monkey hands plucked at my burnt clothing for a bit, maybe trying to see if it was salvageable. Or maybe she was grooming me.

I lowered my arm and studied her cute little face, which was black with dark eyes. The rest of her body was covered with reddish brown hair. All except the top of her head, which was dyed blue, just like her human form. She was one punky monkey.

As I watched, she hopped away to where her clothes lay in a puddle on the ground. The good thing about shifting into something smaller than a human was that you never ruined your clothes. She shifted back into her human form, a transition as quick as blinking your eyes, and redressed.

"Anne, you got cooked like carne asada!" she said as she re-laced her boots. "We need to go to my parent's home and pick up Tepezcohuite bark. My mom swears by it! It's like crazy Mayan magick, only not magick." Dressed, she returned to me and studied me with a strained expression on her face. "That was seriously bad. Do you know what you did?"

I sighed heavily. "I know."

I abruptly twisted around, ignoring the lightning bolt of pain that radiated out from my burn, and said, "We have to check Vale."

Melanie and I hurried over to the pet carrier. There was a big dent in the side that faced us, which was the roof of the thing. I started to carefully tip it right side up when the cage's door swung open.

"Oh, no," I said before I peered inside and confirmed what I'd feared. "He's gone."

"But why would he leave? We're the only ones who can help him!"

"I don't know about that, but I'm guessing he felt like a sitting duck inside this thing. I don't blame him for getting out of it, but where is he now?" I looked hopelessly down each end of the alley. "How are your tracking abilities?"

"We'd be better off using Lev for that," Melanie admitted. "My monkey's sense of smell is only slightly better than yours. Ack! How come I can smell my brothers' stinky feet but I can't smell a gargoyle?"

"Those warlocks were after Vale," I said. "How did they know we had him? Only Orlaton, Celestina and Lev knew that."

"Someone at Orlaton's? There was that cult there…"

"Maybe."

But I didn't think so. The cultists hadn't heard us mention that the gargoyle statue contained a demon, and nothing about the statue had hinted that it was magickal.

"Dammit, I feel like I let him down." I stank of burned fabric and my own singed flesh, but I was so frustrated I couldn't care. "Let's talk to Liliana and see if she has any suggestions."

Melanie touched my arm. "It really bothers you that he's gone, huh?"

I shrugged, trying to play off her comment, but I realized she was right. The thought of Vale trapped in an endless battle with a demon who wanted to eat his soul…it made my wound throb.

I didn't know anything about him except his name, and yet I wanted to know more. He was a guy who I could see holding my interest even with his clothes on. That sounded shallow of me, but it was the truth. Most of the guys I'd attempted to date I'd chosen because of their looks. Nothing had held my interest after that.

Vale was different. He seemed like he had stories to tell, a deep life to share. After being trapped by Moonlight, I saw in him a way for me to travel beyond the shop's walls and experience the world.

Or maybe I was just a sucker for brunettes.

"Maybe Liliana can find him," I said instead of directly answering my friend's question.

"You're crazy powerful," Melanie said as we headed for the back door of the strip club with the battered carrier in tow. She gave me a pointed look. "You seriously, seriously need to be careful. Like, go on the super down low."

"I know," I said, grim. "I hadn't expected to go that far."

"It's just there's such an awful history—"

"I
know
, Melly."

She flinched. I felt awful.

"I don't plan on using Lucky again," I said, more softly. "But, thanks for worrying about me."

She bumped shoulders with me. "Aw, you don't need to thank me. You're my best customer! My family can't afford to lose such a valuable source of income. Why do you think I'm your bodyguard?"

"Bodyguard? No way, biyatch. I'm your bodyguard."

Melanie grinned. "No, you listen, biyatch—"

"You're both bitches," said a new voice.

I froze and looked up. Liliana was draped across the open doorway of the strip club like a piece of lingerie. Her smile was a flash of lightning through a dark sky.

"I don't typically like bitches," she went on. "I prefer dealing with delicious men. But you've gone and stirred up trouble and now I have to do something about it." She narrowed her dark eyes at us. A pair of sharp fangs slid from her mouth and over her bottom lip.

Melanie squeezed my arm and gave a squeak of fright.

"Oh, quit it, Lili," I said, "you're scaring my friend."

Liliana broke into a husky laugh that gave me goose bumps. If I were a man, I probably would have been on my knees already, begging to kiss her feet. Liliana could be potent stuff.

"You're no fun, Anne." Liliana sniffed the air and cocked an eyebrow. "Come in for now. We have an audience."

I spun around, fearing the Oddsmakers' pixies, or perhaps more warlocks, but all I saw were shadows.

"Come in," Liliana insisted.

The compulsion in her voice tugged, but I didn't need much incentive to follow her inside. Like it or not, I needed help from a succubus stripper.

I'd never been inside the back rooms of a strip club before, but from what I'd seen in movies about strippers, it wasn't normal for one dancer to have her own dressing room. Liliana, however, was no ordinary stripper. Doubtless she had 'influenced' the owner to treat her differently than the rest.

As Melanie and I tried not to look too awkward as we stood inside a room filled with racks of bikinis and underwear, Liliana, wearing a pale green silk yukata, arranged herself artfully in her chair before her makeup mirror.

She was stunning, with skin nearly black and equally dark hair that she'd curled into waves that spilled down her back. Her eyes were gray and it was hard not to stare at their contrasting color. She was a towering, ebony goddess of Namibia.

Except that she wasn't.

She leaned back in her chair and stretched her long, smooth legs along the vanity table. Her shoes were silver stilettos. They looked deadly.

Before any of us could speak, there was a knock on the door and it opened before Liliana could respond. I was slightly shocked until a middle-aged guy with a thick, blond mustache barged in. He was breathing heavily and was red in the face. One look at him and I knew he must be the manager of the club. He had a wad of folded bills peeking out of the pocket on his black shirt. The outermost bill was a hundred.

"What the hell are you doing back here?" he demanded, ignoring Melanie and me to glare at Liliana.

"Darling," she said, clearly unfazed by the rude entrance, "you're interrupting my time with my girls."

"You're still on shift! I want you back on the floor doing dances now, Lili!"

Melanie sucked in her breath and looked anxiously at Liliana, probably expecting her to respond by tearing the guy's face off. I knew better. Liliana was otherworldly, but she wasn't a beast. Only once had I seen her rattled and it wasn't by a measly human.

She curled her finger at the manager as if beckoning him for a lap dance. "Come here."

He didn't stand a chance. It was fascinating to watch, sort of like witnessing a mesmerized mouse staggering up to a cobra. The manager walked stiffly across the room, the growing lump in his pants leading the way, until he stopped beside Liliana's feet.

"You're making me unhappy," she purred at him. "You don’t want to make me unhappy, do you?"

"No," he gasped. "God, no. I'll do anything to make you happy. Anything. Please tell me." His knees buckled and he fell to the floor. "Liliana, let me worship you."

"Hmmm." She caressed his cheek and he shuddered. "You're a foul little man, aren't you?"

He moaned. "Yes. I am. Please…"

She sat back and lifted one foot and placed the sole of her shoe against his groin. He moaned loudly and then began to pant.

The air between them began to shimmer like the air above the asphalt during the summer. This wasn't a heat mirage, however. Liliana was sucking his sexual energy from the man, feeding from him like a sort of vampire. He moaned again as she rubbed her shoe against him. He obviously felt no pain as he swayed toward her.

Liliana was unique in that she was actually beautiful. Even without her succubus power she could have won the attention of nearly any man. I knew of other succubi and incubi who had to rely heavily on their power to coax their food to them. Watching them suck the energy from a person wouldn't have been nearly as titillating as watching her doing it now.

After about ten seconds of this, she used her foot to push him away. He whimpered, disappointed, and I felt a bit embarrassed for him. Liliana smacked her lips as though she'd just enjoyed a delicious meal.

"That's enough for now, darling. We'll do this again later. Stand up and run along now."

"Yes, Liliana. Thank you, Liliana."

The man climbed to his feet and staggered out of the room. He closed the door behind him gently, as if to apologize for his earlier brusque entrance.

Though Melanie continued to gape, Liliana was over it. She waved her hand as though clearing the air of a nasty stench.

"Anne Moody, why are you darkening my doorstep with warlocks and shape shifters?"

Her voice made me sway toward her, but again, it was something I could resist since I was the wrong gender.

"I came to ask for your help," I said, "but obviously we were attacked before I got the chance."

"I felt it through the walls. It distracted me from my work, as you've just heard."

"I'm sorry for that."

Liliana waved her finger at me. "Best watch out for that dragon of yours. It loves the spotlight."

"I know."

She studied my burned side with idle curiosity. "Magick scars will never heal if left untreated."

I shrugged, though the action hurt. "I'll be fine."

"Come here."

I really, really didn't want to, especially after the scene with the manager. But since I needed to remain on Liliana's good side, I reluctantly walked forward until I was within her reach. She extended a long-fingered hand that was tipped with silver fingernails. "Closer."

The air began to shimmer, much as it had earlier. I glanced at Melanie. Her eyes looked ready to pop out of their sockets. She was perched on the edge of her chair, ready to fling the monkey at Liliana even though she wouldn't have stood a chance against a succubus.

But whatever the manager had felt, it wasn't this. Instead of irresistible lust, I felt a cool relief spread over my injured side. When I pulled aside the burned edges of my clothing, I could see that my skin was perfectly healed.

Now
that
was a handy skill I wish that I possessed. In truth, I could heal myself if I gave in fully to the dragon. In that situation my human injury would be insignificant to a dragon. But too many negatives outweighed that benefit. Better to be a vulnerable human.

"Thank you, Lili."

Her smile was a slow, sensual stretch of the lips. "My pleasure."

I got the uncomfortable feeling that it really was her pleasure. Probably anything she did, from clipping her toenails to sautéing shrimp gave her some weird succubus pleasure.

I reached into the pocket of my jeans and pulled out my phone. "This is mine, but someone else handled it recently. Can you sense anything about him from this?"

Her lips curled. "I'm not a psychic."

"I'm aware of that, and I realize this is beneath you, but it's tied to the gargoyle you sensed outside. We're trying to help him."

"He's yummy," Liliana purred.

"You haven't seen him."

She licked a finger—pretty much fellating it—and held it up as if testing for a breeze. "I don't need to. I've tasted him on the air. He's strong and he's dark. He's delectable."

Her comments irritated me, though I didn't want to think about why.

"He's going to be dead soon if I don't find him. He's having issues with a demon."

"I smelled that, too, darling."

Liliana pursed her lips and blew out a streamer of smoke. There was no cigarette in sight. I tried not to be wigged out.

Succubi were demons. A person learning that might have been afraid of Liliana. But in truth there was a whole catalog of demons, each presenting varying degrees of danger, similar to how daddy longlegs and black widows were both spiders but only one kind was a concern to you. Condemning all demons as bad was incorrect, but I understood how the uninformed could make that mistake.

A succubus, though more like a daddy longleg than a black widow in terms of threat, was still a demon who possessed demonic powers. Liliana evidently wanted to remind me of that.

I said to her, "Then you're aware that the demon possessing him is not like you are. It's—" I struggled for the appropriate word,"—barbaric."

I could see that she liked that. She held out her hand.

"Barbaric demons make life more difficult for sophisticated ones like me," she said as she closed her fingers over my phone. Her gaze held mine. I sincerely hoped she was sensing something from the phone and not engaging me in a staring contest. "Hmm, he's a magick user. Delicious as well."

I probably shouldn't have been surprised to learn that Christian was magickal, but I was. I hadn't sensed anything from him.

"What is he?"

When Liliana grinned, her fangs were fully extended. "He's a water fey."

I nearly choked on my tongue as I immediately pictured red-haired Ariel from the
Little Mermaid
.

"Why would a water fey live in the desert?" Melanie asked while I pulled my tongue out of my throat. "That makes no sense at all!"

"One would imagine he lives in a home with a very nice backyard pool," Liliana replied.

"That doesn't explain why he would move out here in the first place," I said, dogged. "His kind will always yearn for naturally formed bodies of water."

"Mmm, maybe you should ask him. But I'd be careful if I were you: he carries the taint of brimstone."

I exchanged a look with Melanie, who had slapped both hands against her cheeks. You only ever smelled brimstone when you were in Hell or when you were dealing with demons. Vegas could feel as hot as Hell sometimes, but my money was on the demons.

"So Christian is the one who locked the demon in the gargoyle statue with Vale."

Now I
really
didn't like red-heads. However, I still couldn't figure out one thing.

"Say he dumped the statue with me in the hopes that some tourist would buy it. It would be an easy way to get it far away from him. But if that was his plan, why give me his number?" I pointed at the phone Liliana still held. "Why give me the chance to trace everything back to him?"

She opened her hand and studied the background of my phone. It featured a photo of me and Melanie with raccoon eyes while the rest of our faces was covered with the white dirt of the playa at Burning Man.

"Cute," she said. When she smiled, I got a little wobbly in the knees. "I have no idea, Anne." She handed me back the phone.

I slumped. There went my hope for a last-minute, come-from-behind epiphany. "Okay, well, thanks for trying."

"You're a friend, and I hate to see you leave here unhappy." Liliana unwound herself and stood. With her heels she was well over six feet tall. She was striking and intimidating and I couldn't wait to get out of there, friends or no. "Come along, my bitches."

I laughed before I could stop myself. It was a good release of tension and Melanie seemed to appreciate it, too. She mouthed 'Wow!' at me as we followed Liliana out of her dressing room and down a hallway to the back entrance of the club. Muffled music followed us out. I made a mental note to catch Liliana performing one day. Hers must literally be the most entrancing show in the city.

Out in the alley again, I looked for signs that our earlier skirmish had caught the attention of the authorities, but all seemed quiet. Liliana remained framed within the doorway, her eyes on the shadows farther down the alley.

"I once attended Burning Man," she told me, surprising me. Her smile was fond and slightly wistful. It was the most human expression I'd ever seen her wear. "I met a human there who was obsessed with fire. For four days, he kept a pyre of wood burning and danced around it. I danced around his fire, too. We danced together."

You fell in love with him, I thought, amazed. I'd thought succubi were impervious to the emotion, subsisting only on desire and lust.

Liliana shook her head and the dreamy expression faded from her face, replaced with a look of cunning.

"This is only temporary," she warned me. She stared out at the shadows. "You'll need to find a permanent solution soon, or else he'll revert. But just for this little while…I think you will appreciate this." She extended her hand and curled her finger in a come hither motion. "Come along, darling. Don't be shy."

I hastily scanned the shadows, afraid of another ambush. A second attention-grabbing battle with the baddies wasn't ideal, so I called Lucky to me only in his weakest form.

However, nothing moved out in the alley that I could see.

"Mmm, but you're a strong one, aren't you?" Liliana sounded delighted. Her voice changed, growing softer, huskier. She was seducing someone, and I was damn glad it wasn't me because I would have tossed aside all shame and done whatever she'd asked of me. "Stop resisting me, darling. I don't want to take a bite of you. Not just yet. I need you to come out for Anne's sake."

Then: the sound of a halting footstep.

The moment I heard the hesitance in it I knew whose it was. "Vale," I breathed.

The shadows took on a shape. Then he separated from them, entering the light of a streetlamp. He appeared exactly as he had when I'd viewed him through the magick mirror, although I hadn't anticipated how tall he would be.

And that he would still be wearing clothes.

Trying to figure out why he hadn't shifted into a naked state like Lev always did when he transformed from wolf to man would destroy my brain. Or maybe just the image of Vale naked would. Regardless, there were too many magicks involved for me to make sense of them.