Mercy Burns

Chapter Eight

Damon moved so quickly he was little more than a blur. He hit me low and fast, dragging me facedown onto the wraparound couch while he knelt beside me on the floor.

“They shot him!” I said, voice half muffled by the leather and more than a little shaky. “Why the hell would they shoot him?”

“Maybe they’ve figured he’s outlasted his usefulness.” His attention was on the window above us rather than me, and his body hummed with an energy that seemed dangerously ready to explode. “Keep your head down until we know if they’re still out there.”

The warning made my heart race even harder, and I hadn’t thought that was possible. “But why would they risk shooting him with so many people around?”

“With rifles these days, you don’t have to be anywhere near your target to be certain of a kill.”

“It just seems wrong for dragons to be using weapons,” I muttered, and looked up at the middle of the three windows that lined the side of the boat. The thick glass was shattered, the pebblelike shards littering the top of the couch, glittering like diamonds in the cabin’s bright light.

“A gun is anonymous,” Damon said, his face so close to mine that his breath washed across my cheek. “Dragon fire isn’t.”

“It’s still wrong,” I said, wishing he weren’t so close, that he didn’t smell so good. Wishing I could just snuggle up a little closer to all his heat and strength and confidence.

“It’s not the weapon,” he refuted. “Weapons have their place in the world. It’s the reasoning of the man behind it that’s wrong.”

I shifted to stare at him. “Says the man who kills for a living.”

“What I do, and what these people do, are two different things.”

“Both of you have reasons and both of you think they’re good ones. But that doesn’t make either of you right.”

On the floor, Angus made a whispery noise.

“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.”