Kissed by Fire (18 page)

I pulled up the memory of the hot pink sticky
note. “Simone Williams. According to Alison’s notes, she was the
last person to see Dara before her disappearance. Her last known
address is in Willesden Junction, but she could be anywhere by
now.”

“I’ll get Adam to track her down. I’m going
to have a little chat with Simone. She might know something, have
seen something. Even if she didn’t, she should be able to give me
the names of some of the other people in Dara’s life.”

“Great, while you do that … ” I was cut off
by the ring tone on my mobile. It was Sandra.

“Morgan, can you come to my shop this
afternoon?”

“Sure,” I said. “What’s up?”

“I’ve found someone who might be able to
translate the diary.”

This time on my way through Soho there wasn’t
a sidhe in sight, which was something of a relief. Thank the gods
for small favors. My life was complicated enough without the
sidhe.

Sandra’s shop was shut, the closed sign
dangling in the window. I rapped once and the door swung open.
Sandra waved me in, her eyes darting up and down the street as
though she was afraid someone was spying on us. I couldn’t imagine
what she had to be nervous about. Unless her translator was some
kind of criminal or something.

“Thank you for coming so quickly, Morgan.
It’s not good for … my guest to be out among people for very
long.”

Oh, boy. “Of course. Thanks for helping me. I
really appreciate it.”

She gave me a look that reminded me there was
backbone underneath the sometimes loony exterior. “I’m not doing it
for you. I’m doing it for my friends.”

What could I say? I nodded and followed her
into the back room.

I didn’t know what I was expecting. Maybe a
cerebral professor type complete with tweed jacket and smoking
pipe. The man lounging in Sandra’s desk chair was pretty much the
exact opposite.

He was big. Really big, with broad shoulders
straining at a battered black leather biker jacket. What looked
like size sixteen combat boots were propped up on her desk, massive
arms crossed over his chest. He made Muscle Head the security guard
look undernourished.

He was handsome, I’d give him that. His
cheekbones would make a romance cover model weep with envy.
Sapphire blue eyes ringed with ink black lashes the same color as
his shoulder length hair swept over me and dismissed me all in one
go.

Oh, no he didn’t. Nobody dismissed Morgan
Bailey like some kind of bug. Especially since I knew exactly what
he was. I’d had no idea until that moment that dragons could take
human form and I wasn’t sure I liked the idea.

“So, you’re the one who can translate dragon
tongue.” I sniffed the air. “Barbecue any sheep lately?”

He was out of the chair with a snarl before I
could blink. I probably should have backed down, but there wasn’t
anything that irritated me more than a man who treated a woman as
inferior. Even if he could, quite literally, eat her in one
gulp.

Then his eyes shifted, turned silvery gold,
pupils elongating. I realized that it wasn’t a gender bias. It was
one species treating another as inferior. Much like a human might
view a dog. I swallowed hard, but stood my ground.

“Drago, please.” Sandra laid a calming hand
on his arm. He didn’t budge. Not just any dragon, then, but a
dragon king.

“Drago is your title.” I made it a comment,
not a question. Meanwhile I held his eyes with mine. They were
familiar, those eyes. Not his specifically, but something about
them. My mind tried to catch the thought, but it slid away.

“Yes.” His voice was deep and grumbly. I knew
that voice.

“Do you often play with the dreams of
humans?”

Just a hint of a smile played around his
mouth. I noted his lips were full and sensual. In human form he was
definitely sexy, but he honestly did nothing for me. It wasn’t
because he was a dragon, either. Like with Trevor Daly, I could see
the sexy but I wasn’t into it.

“Sometimes I find it is the best way to
communicate. Little humans are prone to fits of hysteria when faced
with such as I.” His voice rose and fell in the odd cadence I
remembered from the dream. His speech patterns felt more formal,
which I supposed made sense seeing how English wasn’t necessarily
his first language. Not modern English, anyway.

“Well, next time could you knock first?”

His smile grew wider and he inclined his
head, his eyes slipping back into their human shape. Sandra
breathed a sigh of relief. If I were honest, so did I.

“You have something which needs
translating?”

“Yeah.” I sat down on the folding chair
Sandra had pulled out of gods knew where. I slid the diary out of
my pocket and laid it on the desk. “This diary was written by a
woman called Alison Jones.”

He nodded and propped a pair of reading
glasses on his nose. I gave him a look. “Seriously? You wear
glasses?”

He smirked at me. “We all have our
weaknesses, little human. Best not to forget it.”

“I never do. Believe me.”

He flipped through the pages of the diary.
“This woman, Alison. She was human?”

“Yes, she worked for MI8.”

“Ah, that explains it.”

“Explains what?”

“See, here.” He leaned forward his finger
pointed at a symbol in the diary. His scent caught me by surprise.
He smelled like a s’more. I loved s’mores.

Thinking of s’mores reminded me of Inigo.
Thinking of Inigo got me more than a little hot under the collar. I
cleared my throat and squirmed a little in my chair. “Yeah. What
about it?”

“It’s very old. We don’t use it anymore
except, perhaps, in very formal situations.” He frowned, flipping
through the pages. “This isn’t in dragon tongue.”

I gave him a doubtful look. “Come on. Those
are dragon symbols. Even I know that.”

“Yes,” he admitted. “They are symbols of the
dragon tongue, but this diary is written in English. The dragon
symbols are simply a code of sorts.”

“You mean she substituted dragon tongue
symbols for English words?”

“More like she used the symbols to represent
similar English sounds. Many of the symbols are very old and have
fallen out of use in the centuries of our exile beyond the Wall. My
guess would be Alison Jones had access to some type of dictionary
of symbols most likely stored at MI8. She used it as you might use
hieroglyphs or Morse code, to protect her findings.”

He leaned back again. Gods he smelled good.
And he was making me hungry. I had the sudden desire to visit
Paul’s Patisserie for something ridiculously gooey and
chocolaty.

“So, can you translate it or not?”

He peered at me over his glasses. “Oh, I can
translate it. It may not be exactly as written, but close
enough.”

“Fine. Can you tell me what Alison was
working on before she was murdered?”

“Of course,” he said with a shrug. “That is
easy. She was trying to find the dragons.”

I swear my mouth dropped open like an
idiot.

“Tea anyone?” Sandra popped her head into the
room. We both nodded. She smiled and popped back to wherever she’d
been. I could hear the clinking of china and the slosh of water as
she busied herself in what was obviously a kitchen area.

“Does it say why?” I couldn’t imagine why
Alison had cared about finding dragons. After all, nobody believed
they were real anymore, and those that did thought they were all
dead.

“It appears she accidently discovered the
truth about our race. When she brought the facts to the attention
of her superiors, she was shut down, ordered to keep silent.” His
finger traced the pages. “Instead she kept investigating quietly.
She came to believe that someone within the organization was using
MI8 to further his or her own ends.”

“What does that have to do with your
people?”

“It is not clear. However, she also
determined that the Dragon Hunters were not extinct, but that there
was at least one in existence.” He shook his head, strands of inky
silken hair sliding over his shoulders. “I do not see how this is
possible. Even worse, instead of being trained as a Hunter, this
one had been spirited away to live in the United States.”

Sandra bustled out with a tea tray piled with
the requisite tea things and a load of tea biscuits. Drago smiled
when he saw the cookies and helped himself to a large handful. I
had a weakness for the biscuits myself, so I didn’t blame him. They
were just so moreish.

“The U.S.?” I picked up the conversation.
“You’re kidding. Talk about small world. But why was that a bad
thing? And what’s not possible?”

He stared at me for several moments, as
though trying to determine if I was worthy of knowledge. I tried to
look studious or innocent or something. I was not sure it
worked.

“You’ve no doubt been told that the Dragon
Hunter ability is genetic and that it appeared out of nowhere.”

I nodded. That was exactly what I’d been
told. What Alister Jones himself had told me.

“It isn’t genetic. It can’t be passed from
one generation to the next. Each Dragon Hunter must be
created.”

I stared at him for a full minute. “Excuse
me? Created by whom?”

“Centuries ago, the first Rogue dragon began
slaughtering humans by the hundreds. Horrified, the Clans tried to
restrain him, but they could not and so thousands of humans
died.”

I frowned. “So far it sounds exactly like the
story I was told. I still don’t understand who created the Dragon
Hunters.”

He held up a hand. “Patience.”

“Sorry. Go on. Please.” My voice was just a
little tart.

He smiled a little at that. “The only result
of such carnage would, of course, have been war. And war meant the
death of millions, possibly even genocide. Faced with such a
horror, the Drago, my grandfather, created a new creature: Dragon
Hunter.”

The dragons had created Dragon Hunters? My
mind stuttered to a halt over that one. How was it even possible?
Before I could go any deeper with that thought, Drago pulled me
back.

“But the Dragon Hunters did not stop at
killing Rogue dragons. Their insatiable lust for death drove them
to kill even the innocent, and so the Human/Dragon conflict began
after all. When faced with annihilation, there was only one thing
left to do. We built the Wall and then withdrew behind it.”

He watched me closely. Did he expect me to go
ballistic or something? I was just too confused by the whole
thing.

“The dragons built the Wall? Not
Hadrian?”

“Oh, please.” He waved his hand. “As though
the Roman Empire ever told the truth about anything. Talk about the
world’s biggest propaganda machine.”

If what he was telling me was true, then
nothing in the history books was right. Well, the history books
that included dragons. Or Romans, for that matter.

“When the Dragon Hunters finished killing
Rogues and started killing the other dragons, my grandfather
stopped making Dragon Hunters. They eventually died out.”

“And that’s why there haven’t been any Dragon
Hunters born over the last few centuries,” I concluded.

“Correct. This Dragon Hunter you speak of
wasn’t made by me. I don’t know who and I don’t know how they
discovered the secret, but someone else made her.”

“Shit.” I had a bad feeling I knew who’d been
playing at god. And he just happened to be my best friend’s
father.

“Exactly.”

I sighed and slumped in my chair and took a
bite of tea biscuit. The sweet vanilla filled my mouth. “Why on
earth would anyone let a Dragon Hunter run loose like that?”

He gave me a pointed look. “Must I spell it
out for you?”

“No. No, not really.” There was only one
reason to let a Dragon Hunter loose. To hunt dragons. “What about
Alison’s murder? You really think someone was trying to stir things
up by framing the dragons? Start another war?” Another war which
would most likely end in the complete annihilation of the dragon
race. Not to mention that some pretty bad shit would happen to my
own human race.

He laid the diary on the table and leaned
back in his chair. Those sapphire eyes of his caught mine, asking,
demanding. “That would be my guess. What I want to know, Morgan
Bailey, is how you are going to play this.”

“Like I always play it,” I told him. “On the
side of truth.”

“No matter the cost? No matter who gets in
your way?”

I stood up and snagged the diary off the
desk. “The way I look at it, Drago, is that anybody who pulls this
kind of bullshit deserves whatever they get.” I wasn’t about to
mention my suspicions just yet. I didn’t know the Drago, but if it
had been me, I’d be out for blood. “We’re talking attempted
genocide. Not to mention the murder of an innocent woman. That is
so not OK.” Understatement of the year, but there you go.

A slow smile spread across his too handsome
face. “That’s what I like to hear. Perhaps we can work with you,
after all.” He stood and held out his hand.

As I took it, he pulled me in close, his
sweet chocolate and marshmallow scent wafting over me, swamping my
senses. Heat ripped through my body, and it was just this side of
painful. I so wasn’t comfortable with the proximity, but he was too
strong for me.

His lips brushed against my ear sending
shivers down my spine. And they weren’t happy shivers. “Remember,
Hunter. The Fire is a gift. Do no refuse it lest it eat you.”

His voice was rough coals and his hand
wrapped around mine wasn’t warm, it was hot, sending flames
shooting up my arm and into my body. But I wasn’t turned on. There
wasn’t much in this world I was afraid of anymore, but the
man/dragon in front of me wasn’t exactly your ordinary monster. I
was scared.

Me. The badass vampire hunter. Scared.

I jerked my hand back and swallowed hard.
With a nod, I turned and strode quickly from the shop. I refused to
let fear, or the dragon king, get the better of me.