Licked by the Flame (7 page)

“How about there?” he asked, calling over the wind and pointing to the shadowy side of the mountain.

It was dark and desolate, and they could see for miles around them. Nothing but vast emptiness. If they were worried about being discovered by someone, they could lay those fears to rest right now. There was simply no one to do any discovering.

“It sure doesn’t look like a hotbed of human and magical corruption,” she commented.

“It doesn’t look like a hotbed of anything,” he agreed.

They had left the gusty shoreline behind them, and it was easier to talk now. The winds still blew with good force, but neither of them had to yell quite so loudly to be heard. Flight was easier in these conditions. He could spare a glance here and there to admire the way Raea’s hair tossed in the breeze and how the strange colors in the arctic skyline reflected off her wings.

“Wait, look at that,” she suddenly called out, pointing toward a shadowy area near the base of the mountain.

He studied the spot and a glint caught his eye. It wasn’t large, but something metallic seemed to be reflecting. With so much nothingness around them, clearly this bit of something was worth investigation.

“Let’s move closer, but be careful,” he admonished. “We have no idea what to expect.”

They swooped down, darting erratically just in case anyone should be trying to track them. When they were close enough, he could see that the object was indeed metallic—at least parts of it were—and clearly human in origin. It was some kind of scientific instrument, mounted on a stake that was driven into the rocky earth.

“It doesn’t look like the machinery we found in the wood,” Kyne pointed out.

“It’s smaller, and no one went to any trouble to hide it. Do you think maybe it’s one of the devices being used by that scientific team Baylor warned us about?” Raea proposed.

“It could be. I wonder what it does.”

“This doesn’t appear to do anything. It just pokes into the ground.”

They moved in closer, approaching the object and circling it.

“Why would they monitor the ground?” Raea asked.

“This is on the edge of a volcano. Maybe they want to find out if it’s going to become fully dormant, or if it’s waking up.”

She nodded. “Makes sense. Without magic, they’d have no way of knowing that sort of thing.”

“I think it’s safe. I don’t feel any of the effects we’ve experienced before near the hybrid machines.”

He touched down carefully on the rough, rocky ground. She landed softly beside him and brushed him ever so slightly with her wings. When he looked at her she was smiling.

“You don’t feel
anything
like that?” she asked.

“When you’re around, I
always
feel some of that,” he replied with his own sly grin. “What I don’t feel is the presence of the kind of equipment we came here to locate.”

He studied this device. To a human, it would have stood up as high as a knee. To fairies, though, it towered over them, twice their height. About the size of an average fairy dwelling, it was rectangular in shape and rather ungainly in appearance as it hovered there on its thin stake. Raea fluttered upward, studying the pinpoint lights blinking on the front of it. Kyne walked around the base, investigating it from below.

A strange little box had been affixed onto the side of it, he noted. Somehow that didn’t seem to belong, with odd wires protruding from a roughly cut hole in the side of the device. The humans who had constructed this clearly did not care for aesthetics.

He wondered how deeply this stake was imbedded into the ground. Most likely a hole had been initially bored into the rocky earth so the stake could be wedged in tightly. Curious, he kicked the stake. To his surprise, the odd box with the wires suddenly began humming.

“What did you do?” Raea called. “The lights on this thing just started blinking like crazy.”

“I don’t know. I kicked it, and now it started making noise.”

He put his hand out to touch the stake. He shouldn’t have. A jolt of magic suddenly coursed through him. He jumped, then swore.

“What is it?” Raea asked, dipping low to check on him.

“I don’t think it’s good,” he said, reaching to touch it again.

Sure enough, there
was
magic around this device. It must not have been functioning when they first arrived, but somehow he’d triggered it. By the Skies, he could feel the effects already. Raea moved closer to him.

“So Baylor was right,” she noted. “The humans
are
using magic here.”

The worry and effort of their travel must have been taking a toll on her. He could see fear wash over her expression and she leaned on him for support. Her body trembled, so he put his arms around her. She felt immeasurably good up against him, so he pulled her close.

“Don’t worry,” he assured her, pressing a tender kiss on her head. “We’ll figure out what to do about this.”

“But what if…” She gazed up with huge eyes. The heat he saw burning there wiped every bit of chill from his body and kindled his desire.

“The machine is affecting me already,” he said.

“Didn’t Baylor mention once that the effects are more powerful when the machinery first starts up?”

“Yeah, something like that.”

She was holding him now just as tightly as he was holding her. “And we are standing very, very close to that little box.”

“We’re closer to each other.”

“I think we could get closer, even.”

“I know that we can,” he said, just before he kissed her.

Raea would never grow tired of his kisses. Her lips gave in to his easily, eagerly begging for more. Her skin celebrated his touch, energy flowing into her body despite the exhaustion she’d felt just moments ago. Desire burst into life inside her and she held on to him tightly.

“I almost wish we’d stayed back in the cabin,” he said as he trailed kisses along her neck and over her shoulders. “This hardly seems the perfect place to give in to passion.”

“It feels perfect to me,” she said and encouraged him by running her hands over his chest and down between them to the heat of his thighs.

She was careful to simply tease him with touch, not let instinct take over fully and explore the hardening shaft she could feel pressing against her already. Kyne’s lovemaking was so generous, so wonderful, she would hate to hurry things along. Although, there was a lot to be said for hurrying, too.

“I can’t believe that I want you so badly right now,” he whispered into her ear.

“We probably shouldn’t let ourselves be so distracted,” she agreed, but made no effort to slow anything down.

“It doesn’t seem like we’re hurting anything, though,” he said. “We can get all the information we need on this damned equipment afterward.”

“Yes. This is what I want right now, Kyne. Can you feel how much I want you?”

And she did want him, madly and desperately. There was no logic to this—one moment she’d been cold and afraid, the next minute she’d been in his arms begging him to take her. Everything that he did made her nearly insane with desire. It was wonderful.

“I want you, too,” he agreed, his hands sliding down to clutch her butt and thrill her with a healthy squeeze.

She wriggled, making sure her feathery skirt hoisted up just enough that she could feel skin against skin. He seemed to appreciate her effort, his hands rubbing and stroking, sliding from the back toward the front. She practically purred from the blissful torture, shifting so that he could make contact with her burning cleft.

“By the Skies, you are so ready for me,” he murmured.

She pressed herself against him. He rubbed the tender nub at her core. One finger dipped inside her. She thrust herself against him and instantly came.

Pressed up against the human device, she climaxed effortlessly without so much as even trying. The urgency and immediacy surprised her, as did the sudden shower of sparks that rained over them. Kyne pulled her away, shielding her as the smell of burning equipment filled the air around them and ruined the mood completely.

“By the Skies! What happened?” she gasped.

“The device,” he panted. “We forgot what happens to this sort of equipment when we get so carried away.”

Her brain was clearing now and she pushed away from Kyne, glancing wildly. How could she possibly have forgotten? The first time they’d encountered this type of technology, it drew out the passion in them, made them helpless slaves to it, in fact. They were left vulnerable and weak, easy targets for humans.

She took a deep breath and embraced the cold air. “Luckily, this thing seems to be out of commission now.”

The little box on the side of the device smoldered and sputtered, a puff of acidic smoke wafted away from it, and the unsightly wires were burned and unsalvageable. As they’d experienced before, the act of passion in the vicinity of these machines sent them into overload. Clearly this was a design flaw that perhaps the humans had not yet discovered. It was going to be exhausting, however, if this turned out to be the only way to defeat them.

“It looks like only part of it is shut down, though,” Kyne said. “The main box seems to still be working.”

He was right. The little lights on the front blinked into the northern half-night. The cadence appeared somewhat more frantic than before.

“You don’t supposed this is transmitting to the humans, do you?” she asked.

“I have no doubt of it. Whoever put this here did it for a reason, and they’re going to be keeping track of it. Come on. Are you strong enough to fly?”

She shook out her wings. A little unsteady, yes, but she could fly. “I am. And you?”

One quick glance down at the front of him, and she could see he wasn’t entirely back to normal. She’d been the one to get lucky this time. Poor Kyne was left with a little bit of a problem.

“Yeah, I’m okay,” he said, sounding slightly pained. “Let’s go.”

L
ianne slid away to go hunt for those condoms. Her pride in her accomplishment lasted only as long as it had taken Nic to compose himself and then shoot her a wicked grin. He’d appreciated what she’d done, but he assured her there was plenty more where that had come from. And she wanted it.
All
of it.

Her bag was sitting on a chair next to the dresser. She hadn’t taken the time to unpack yet, so she unzipped the side pocket and started feeling around inside. Wouldn’t it be tragic now if she realized she hadn’t actually left the condoms in there all those months ago?

Her fingers had just brushed against the familiar packaging when a sudden alarm blared outside her room and startled her. She jumped, blinking wildly for a moment and glaring at Nic.

“What is that?” she asked.

He sat upright. “Seismic activity. Beyond the usual levels.”

“An earthquake?”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t feel an earthquake.”

He gave her another grin. “Liar.”

“Don’t flatter yourself. How far out of the usual parameters would this earthquake have to be to trigger that alarm?”

He had already swung his legs off the bed and was tucking himself back into his pants. “Enough to be of concern. This alarm means there is seismic activity below the mountain.”

“And what does
that
mean?”

She took his cue and began putting her own clothing back in order. Clearly whatever was going on, their interlude here was over. Nic was preparing to leave her and she had every intention of following him.

“It means something is changing. The mountain is changing.”

“Changing? You mean, like some kind of eruption?”

“I don’t know. We’ll have to see what the data says.”

“What data? The so-called data I’ve been trying to make sense out of all day? We can’t trust any of those instruments if that’s the sort of information they’re giving us.”

“Those are the only instruments we have,” he said. “Come on. Let’s go see what they’re giving us.”

He sure was taking this awfully seriously. She was less inclined to give much credence to anything their sensors might indicate. From what she’d seen studying reports all day long, the data being streamed in from their on-site instruments was less than reliable. Who was to say this alarm wasn’t just some additional malfunction?

Then again, the way Nic was putting himself back together and swiping his hair into place, she had to wonder if maybe there wasn’t something to it. After all, he was the one telling her the mountain was unstable. There’d been no actual reports of volcanic activity here in at least the last few hundred years, but the guy must have some reason for getting up out of that bed when he had been pretty damn contented in it thirty seconds ago.

“You really think there’s something going on under that mountain?” she asked. The damn alarm still blared from the horn attached to the outside of the building that housed the computer lab.

“Yeah,” he replied. “And it picked a hell of a time to start up now.”

Good. The way his eyes roved over her just before he pulled the bedroom door open to leave was enough to assure her he was none too happy about this interruption. She wasn’t the only one feeling frustrated and grumpy just now. But at least she didn’t have half an enormous boner jamming up against the front of her pants the way he did.

She smiled and nodded toward his very obvious problem. “You’d better get that under control before we go sauntering into that computer lab. Everyone on the jobsite must be awake by now and headed there.”

“You should go on before me, then,” he said. “I have a feeling it would be better for all of us if no one noticed me walking out of your quarters in the middle of the night.”

She couldn’t agree more. She wasn’t above a little extra sway in her hips as she walked past him, though. His knuckles clenched white on the doorknob, and his breathing sounded just slightly like an irritated growl.

“You owe me some curled toes, Vladik,” she said, meeting his sizzling eyes.

His smoky voice held a combination of promise and threat. “I always fulfill my debts, Ms. McGowan. You’ll soon be paid, I assure you—in full.”

Nic waited for Lianne to leave the guesthouse and dash across the open area between buildings. He let himself out but instead of following her, he slipped around the back of the guesthouse. The moon was bright and the sky glowed around it. He could see the vast, barren landscape around them plainly.

He could also see what the others could not. He opened his dragon senses once again and let his eyes readjust. Not only did he have powers of the mind that humans lacked, but his physical sight was far better than theirs, too. He could detect colors, heat signatures they couldn’t see. These were the telltale evidences of magic and his fellow creatures who lived behind the Veil of the Forbidden Realm.

One of them glowed faintly in the shadows behind this building right now.

“You’ve been spying on me again, Eubryd,” he called out in the low, rumbling tones of the language his kind had used for millennia.

“It is my duty to keep watch over you, master,” Eubryd said, her quivering voice trilling through the icy air around them.

Eubryd was a wyvern, a tiny, ancient creature devoted to serving his kind. They were similar in their properties, wyverns and dragons. They used the same language, possessed similar skills and abilities. Wyverns were dependent, though. Tiny, vulnerable, skittish. They served dragons in exchange for protection. Eubryd had been attached to Nic and his clan for centuries.

That did not give her leave to take liberties and pry into his activities, however. By hovering so close to the buildings, she risked detection by the humans. That was the last thing he needed right now.

“Hush,” he admonished as her trilling voice rose and she began her usual litany of worrying for his safety in this frail human form, as she called it. “Take care, Eubryd. You cannot let them hear you.”

“How could they hear me over that terrible sound? What is it, Master?”

“An alarm. Something is happening out at the mountain. It has set off the alarm and the humans are on high alert just now. They’ll all be roused in a very short time, I’m afraid.”

“I know, and they will want to investigate. That’s bad, Master. Not good for us.”

“Not good? Why is that? Have you been out on the mountain?” he asked, and then glanced over his shoulder to make sure no one was nearby. “Our clutch is well hidden there, isn’t it?”

“Yes, or so I thought, sir. But…there is magic!”

“What sort of magic? What have you seen?”

“Fairies! I saw fairies snooping about the mountain.”

“Fairies? What sort of fairies?”

“I don’t know. I couldn’t tell. They were…they were trying to be hidden. You know their ways. Secretive, calculating creatures when they wish to be. Please, Master, can’t you do something about that alarm?”

The silence was still being shattered by that damn noise. He knew the tiny wyvern’s ears were every bit as sensitive as his own, yet of course she lacked the more rugged dragon abilities to block out such things. She did not have hands, either, to cover her ears. Wyverns were simple creatures, dragon in nature but possessing only wings and one pair of clawed feet. Helpless little beasts, really. They couldn’t even shift into human form when needed. The most skilled of their members sometimes managed to pass themselves off as chickens, but that was the extent of their shifting abilities. No wonder they had indentured themselves to their larger, more self-sufficient cousins all those eons ago.

“I’m sorry about the alarm,” he said, sending out a wave of localized heat that functioned as a slight dampener for the sound. It would not shield the delicate creature for long. “You should go, Eubryd. Just tell me, where did you see the fairies? I’ll meet you there soon.”

She flapped her leathery wings nervously, her glowing eyes flicking around and her voice even more trilling than usual. “I…I’m not sure. They were moving quite a bit and, as I said, they were trying to be invisible.”

Nic knew his own senses would have picked up on even invisible fairies if he’d been close enough, but of course he could not expect Eubryd to do the same. “Where would you guess they might be?”

“Guess? Oh, well I think they might have been on the far side of the mountain, near the…near the auxiliary vent.”

Damn. If they located that shaft, they’d very likely know where to start looking for the way in. By the Fires, what could fairies possibly be doing poking around a dragon clutch? Nothing they ought to be doing, obviously.

“Go,” he ordered. “Wait for me there. Keep your eyes and your ears open.”

Eubryd cringed and he had to chuckle at her discomfort. She gave him a weak smile. “I’ll keep my eyes open, at least.”

“Do your best,” he said, waving her off. “I’ll go to the humans and make some excuse. Then we’ll get to the bottom of this.”

She nodded and gave multiple assurances of her loyalty and dedication until he finally had to remind her time was of the essence. With a puff of steam in the cold night air, she huffed off to do his bidding. If there were fairies on their mountain tonight, she would hunt them with full diligence. He could trust her for that task.

As for himself, his task might be a bit more difficult. If there were fairies lurking about, the last thing he needed was humans getting inquisitive. His plans had to change.

Instead of claiming the alarm warned of earthquake or impending doom, he’d better convince the humans this alarm really meant nothing. While earthquakes might eventually convince the humans to abandon their project here, they would only do so after prolonged investigation. With magical creatures stalking his mountain, he could never allow that. He had to make the humans believe this alarm was nothing more than faulty equipment that hardly merited attention.

This was going to be a problem. He’d already convinced Lianne this was a legitimate concern, and now she’d gone off to rile up the rest of the group. They were being dragged from their beds by a frantic alarm. Redirecting their thought patterns and influencing their perceptions of this new data wasn’t going to be easy for him, especially since his powers of manipulation were not as fully recharged as he had expected to be at this point in the night.

By the Fires, he’d been eager for Lianne and had planned to pleasure her and get what he needed. How had he let her take control? He’d been counting on her submission, the energy of her release, to give him his full satisfaction. He found it impressive as hell that she’d gotten him off before he’d been ready. Impressive and unbelievably sexy. He could hardly wait to get her alone and do all those things he expected to already have done.

But was his mind reenergized enough to take control of the rest of his coworkers? It would likely drain him completely. What if he encountered some unforeseen trouble with these damn fairies that Eubryd was stalking? He wasn’t sure he should risk enthralling a whole group.

Then again, he might not have much of a choice. He needed to take charge of this situation before a team of frightened engineers and science geeks went rushing out to the mountain and started finding things he’d worked too damn hard to keep hidden. That would certainly cause troubles he was in no position to solve.

He’d just have to do what he could and hope it would be enough, at least for now. If he could keep everyone calm, perhaps he stood a chance of staying in command. It might help him buy a little time, too—time he could use for more interaction with Lianne. He hoped what had passed between them left her as hungry for more as it had left him. He’d need a full meal of her passion once this current confusion was under control.

Sure enough, Lianne had been only moments ahead of Dan Casper and Sid Blanchard when she left Nic behind in the guesthouse and let herself into the computer lab. She’d still been flipping on lights and turning on monitors when the two senior members of the team showed up, clothing hastily thrown on and grumpy from being pulled out of bed. If Nic had been here with her, things definitely would have been awkward. Sid was already looking at her funny when he came marching through the door, obviously wondering why she was fully dressed and in here so quickly at one o’clock in the morning. He probably thought she’d done something to trip the alarms.

Sid Blanchard never gave anyone the benefit of the doubt. She’d do well to remember that. She might allow herself to go back and screw the Russian like a woman gone wild, but she’d better be cool, calm, and completely sane on the job. The last thing she needed was for anyone to have reason to doubt her abilities here. She had one shot to get this thing done, and she wasn’t about to mess it up. She wasn’t even going to so much as look at Nic Vladik when he finally did show up in here tonight.

“What the hell is going on?” Sid demanded.

“What triggered that alarm?” Dan Casper asked.

She didn’t bother looking up as she scanned the multiple printouts and seismograms on various machines around the room. “Some sort of readings from one of our sensors on the mountain, it looks like.”

“Probably just another glitch,” Sid grumbled.

“We’ve never had an alarm from a glitch,” Lianne noted.

“Can you verify the readings?” Dan asked.

“How about if we shut off the damn alarm first?” Sid snapped.

“I can’t figure out how,” Lianne announced. “Either the control code is messed up, or it’s continually retriggering. Get in here and help me.”

They did. She wished she could believe it was because they respected her as the authority on-site now, or because she was compelling or commanding, but really she knew they just wanted the alarm to stop blaring every bit as much as she did. Her body was still not quite over the adrenaline surge from her time alone with Nic, so this grating, pulsating alarm was not helping. She needed to relax, to think straight and make sense of these readings.

Was it an earthquake? Right now she couldn’t quite tell. It seemed that what triggered the alarm was the reading from one piece of equipment—a single Remote Ground Sensor that should have been just one of several to detect the harmonic oscillation that set it off. She sat at a computer and typed in the locater number for that unit. A display popped up, showing a topographic map of the area where that specific RGS was located. She hunted down the locators of other sensors in that general area.