Mercy Burns

For too many minutes there was nothing but the hunger of this kiss and the passion that rose between us. Then reality intruded in the form of a gruff voice.

“Hey, you two. This ain’t no lovers’ lane.”

Damon released me and stepped away. Just for a moment, everything around me spun, the abrupt ending to our kiss like a splash of cold water.

I ran a tongue across kiss-bruised lips, drawing in a final taste of him, then turned toward the owner of the voice. He was little more than a gruff-sounding shadow within the confines of a golf cart.

“Sorry,” Damon said, voice as cool and calm as ever. As if he hadn’t just experienced a mind-blowing kiss. “I was just showing my girlfriend where I scored the hole-in-one the other day.”

The other man snorted, and it was a sound filled with disbelief. “There’s a hotel up the road better suited to your purposes. And besides, the course closed several hours ago.”

“Sorry, no harm meant.” Damon touched my elbow, then headed down a small gravel path.

“Do you know where you’re going?” I shoved my hands in my pockets and tried not to think about the man beside me, the way the occasional brush of his arm against mine sent little tingles of desire racing across my skin.

“I have no idea,” he said, his gaze on the night ahead. “But I noticed a couple of large buildings in this general direction when we swooped in, so we’re probably headed the right way.”

“I guess he’d come after us if we weren’t.” I resisted the urge to look over my shoulder to see just what, exactly, the man was doing, and added, “So how are we going to get to Moraga Drive?”

“Simple. We steal a car with navigation.”

I raised an eyebrow. “As grand plans go, that’s pretty lame.”

“You got a better idea?”

Yeah, kiss me senseless again. I pushed the thought away and shrugged lightly. “Death stealing a car just seems wrong.”

“Why? It’s practically a national pastime.”

I smiled wryly. “So my brother says.”

“Your brother sounds like a very sensible man.”

“Yeah, my brother inherited all the sensible in our family.” Not, I added silently, with a wry smile. “And when we get there?”

He shrugged. “It depends on what we find.”

I glanced at him again. “You don’t expect her to be alive, do you?”

“Honestly? I think we’ll be extremely lucky to find her breathing, but you never know—they might wait to get confirmation of Angus’s death before they move on Coral.”

And if we weren’t lucky, then she was dead and both she and Angus were destined to join Rainey in roaming the endless plains between this world and the next. And with all the souls lost in the two towns, it had to be getting pretty crowded.

We walked on in silence. He didn’t mention the kiss and neither did I, but I knew what we’d started would not end here. The genie was out of the bottle and—respect or not, dangerous or not—I wasn’t about to try and push him back.

Ahead, lights began to twinkle through the darkness, and the mellow tones of music rode the air. I frowned. “I didn’t think the clubhouse would be open at this hour.”

“Usually they’re not, but given the chatter I can hear underneath the music, it’s probably hosting some sort of function. Hence the guard. Which means there could be good pickings when it comes to stealing a vehicle.”

His guess turned out to be correct. The clubhouse was a massive two-story Tuscan-style building with white walls and a pale green roof. We followed a path around the side of the building and headed toward the parking lot. It was huge, but not entirely well lit, brightness pooling in puddles and leaving many areas locked in shadow—which made it almost perfect for thieves, except that there were static security cameras on at least one light pole in each row.

Damon didn’t hesitate, moving with certainty toward an older-looking gray Ford parked in one of the more shadowy areas. He touched my back and motioned me toward the passenger side, then said softly, “Keep your back to the camera.”

I did as he said, and watched while he moved around to the driver’s side. Three seconds, and he was in. He leaned across and opened the door, then reached back and grabbed the street directory from the backseat.

“Not a navigation system, but almost as good,” he said, handing it to me once I was in.

I opened the directory and searched street names, looking for Moraga Drive and keeping my head down as he started the car and drove off smoothly. I found it, traced a route back to the golf club, then began issuing directions as we left. Moraga Drive was, naturally enough, on the other side of Santa Rosa, but traffic was scarce and we got there in pretty good time.

Luckily, there was only one blue house on the street, and even in the dark it was obvious that the place was a “major fixer-upper.”

Damon pulled to a halt down the street from the darkened house and turned off the lights. The run-down old house was barely visible through the brick-and-iron fencing, not to mention all the trees, but yellow light peeked softly through torn curtains.

“So what’s the plan?” I whispered.

“Angus mentioned a boundary alarm, so the first thing I need to do is find and disconnect that.” He glanced at me, his expression fierce. Death was clearly gearing up for another fight. “Our friends on the boat said they were only using draman to mind her, but I’ll go in hard and fast, just in case they lied.”

“What do you want me to do?” I didn’t want to sit here and wait. But, by the same token, I wasn’t trained for this sort of stuff, and I might only get in his way.

“Come around to the driver’s side and keep the engine running. We may need to make a fast getaway.”

I nodded and climbed out of the car. The crisp wind spun around me, holding a hint of age and decay. I hoped it wasn’t an omen, hoped that the run-down old house held something more than the chill of true death.

Damon had climbed out of the car and was standing beside the door, holding it open for me.

“Be careful in there,” I said, pausing beside him.

He smiled and touched my cheek. “I have an unfinished kiss to get back to, so rest assured that I will.”

I raised an eyebrow and said, somewhat sardonically, “There you go again—presuming I’ll just fall in with your plans.”

“There’s no presumption about it. You know it, and I know it.” He gave me a devilish grin that just about melted my insides. “It’s just a matter of when, not if.”

I opened my mouth to reply, but just as I did, a soft sound similar to a car backfiring came from the direction of the house.

It had barely even registered as a gunshot before Damon hit me, pushing me down and covering my body with his as the car window above us shattered into a million tiny pieces.

Chapter Nine

I slammed knee-first into the road, but the pain that shot up my legs was nothing compared to the fear. My heart was going a million miles an hour and my throat was so dry, even breathing hurt. We only had the open door as protection, and the metal just didn’t seem like adequate armor against a potential rain of bullets. Only it didn’t happen.

From within the house came the sound of screaming—furious, feminine screaming—and it was accompanied by the sound of tearing metal and a weird whooshing noise. A second later, the roof of the house exploded upward, propelled by a jet of water. And carried along with it was a man, yelling as he tried to fire a gun back into the house.

A sea dragon’s greatest weapon might be the sea, but they can control any sort of