Discount Armageddon

in short, hard gasps … this was different. I knew his body wanted this as badly as mine did; even if he’d wanted to lie, my position, settled firmly in his lap, would have made that impossible. I just wanted him to have one last chance to change his mind.

Eyes solemn, Dominic touched my collarbone with the tips of his fingers, watching as my back arched involuntarily. His eyes remained on my face as his fingers glided down, over the top of my left breast, along the shallow divide of my breastbone to my stomach. They brushed across my navel, finally coming to rest at the waistband of my jeans.

“I am assuming,” he said, words tight, like he was almost out of breath, “that this is you giving me one last opportunity to come to my senses?”

I didn’t trust myself to speak. I just nodded, my hands still lowered, trying not to move too much. In his position—in my position—that wouldn’t have been fair.

Dominic smiled, the expression lighting up his entire face. “You foolish creature,” he breathed. “I have gone well past the point of such an easy escape.” And then his arms were around me again, and my arms around him, and we were falling, but that didn’t matter: the bed was there to catch us as our hands began the fevered, frantic removal of clothing, weaponry, and barriers. We were on different sides of this war. One of us might have to die before this ended. But in that moment, with him whispering in Italian in my ear and my every nerve on fire, there were no more boundaries between us.

* * *

The intoxicatingly mingled scents of sex and sweat perfumed the bedroom air, making me want to fight an army, dance a tango, and take a long nap, not necessarily in that order. Clothing and weapons littered the floor around the bed, making it look like we’d already fought an army. If we had, I wasn’t entirely sure which one of us had won.

Dominic lay on his back, breath still a little uneven. I was stretched out at a slight diagonal, so that I could pillow my head against his chest while still dangling my feet off the edge of the bed. Rotating my ankles while I reclined helped to keep them from stiffening up, especially after the day I’d had. I’d have to rewrap them before I left the apartment again.

Lizard-men, rooftop marathons, overemotional dragon princesses, and to cap it all off, sheet-scorching sex with a member of the Covenant of St. George. This was going to be a fun one to try writing up for the family record. Maybe I could file it under “diplomatic relations” or something…

“So,” I said finally. “Did you come over for a reason? Beyond the delivery of dinner and ravishment?”

“Insufferable,” said Dominic. This sounded even more like an endearment than “infuriating” had. “I was coming to let you know that I checked what records I can access without drawing too much attention, and there was nothing definitive on the nature of the creatures that attacked us. Rumors and legends of manlike reptiles, but nothing coherent.”

“Oh, Hells!” I sat bolt upright, heedless of the fact that I was clothed in nothing but the sheet—and, by the time I finished sitting up, not even that. “I got so wrapped up in the Holy Feast and the chicken dinner and the … well, and everything, I didn’t get around to telling you. I know what they were. Are. I know what the things that attacked us in the sewer are, and there are going to be more of them if we don’t find out who’s messing with the dragon.”

Dominic pushed himself onto his elbows, eyeing me with a mixture of surprise and irritation. “You didn’t think to say this before? What are they? Why are there going to be more? Are they breeding down there?”

“I was distracted! You’re extremely distracting.” The sight of him shirtless in my borrowed bed was enough to start distracting me all over again. The desire to throw myself at him and beg him to have his way with me a few more times before we had to worry about the dragon wasn’t really a surprise, but it was definitely inconvenient. “Anyway, I spoke to a representative from the local Nest of dragon princesses.” Catching the shift in his expression, I hastened to add, “She wasn’t aware that there was even a chance that there might be a living dragon around here. She was honestly surprised when I brought it up, and I don’t think she’s a good enough actress to fake something like that. I’m a performer. We know how to judge our own kind.”

The brief darkness cleared from Dominic’s eyes, and he nodded, saying crisply, “Proceed.”

“So you know, the military precision thing, really not nearly as effective when you’re starkers. Anyway, I told her about the lizard-men in the sewer and she flipped out, big-time. She says they’re called ‘servitors.’ They exist to serve the dragon—or, if the dragon isn’t in a position to be giving orders, say, because it’s still in the middle of nap hour, to serve whoever’s giving them the clearest instructions. They’re not very smart, but they take directions real well.”

Dominic frowned, a line appearing in the center of his forehead. I had to fight off the urge to lean over and kiss it away. Bad Verity. No Covenant hottie for you. “Why don’t we have any clear records on these ‘servitors’? You’d think we’d at least have something on them.” The unspoken “even if you don’t” hung between us for a moment before he turned his face away, looking faintly ashamed.

I cleared my throat to break the sudden tension, and asked, “What do your records say about the dragon princesses?”

“They’re inconsequential; as harmless as any cryptid can be. They look human, from the outside, although their anatomy reveals certain … inconsistencies … if examined in detail.” He didn’t look back at me as he spoke. He probably had a good idea of my reaction to the idea of cutting up something he’d just admitted was harmless to see how it worked. “They may have served as bait for the dragons, once. It was never conclusively proven, one way or the other.”

“And then there were no more dragons, and they just sort of vanished into the human population. You can’t hunt what you can’t find. They fell off the radar and stopped being a going concern,” I said, concluding his little history lesson.

Dominic nodded mutely.

“Okay, so here’s one of the pieces we’ve been missing all this time. The reason alchemists were always so damn hot to get their hands on dragon blood? It’s a natural mutagen. I mean, we’re talking some Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles-level crap here.” Dominic turned, giving me a blank look. I sighed. “Dragon blood alters human DNA if it’s ingested. That’s why people disappeared when they got too close to a dragon’s lair. If the dragon caught them, and if they were too much of a danger to release, it … changed them. That way it didn’t have to kill them, but they couldn’t go running off to tell the local villagers where the lair was.”

A look of slow horror swept over Dominic’s face, washing away all the regret and understanding—and yes, the affection—as it passed. “You’re saying that those creatures we fought … those creatures used to be men?”

“Yes, but the dragon’s still sleeping. I mean, the dragon’s not the one that’s doing this. Whatever fucked-up snake cult is trying to wake the dragon up—almost certainly a human snake cult, snake cults are pretty much always human, the assholes—they’re the ones feeding dragon blood to humans. They’re the ones creating servitors, and telling them where to go, what to do. The dragon’s just sleeping. It isn’t doing anything wrong.”

“Its existence is wrong,” Dominic spat, sliding out of the bed. I’d been too busy before to really appreciate the symmetry of his naked body, scars and all. He was gorgeous, possibly the most gorgeous man I’d ever had the pleasure of having my way with.

Pity he was turning out to be a total asshole.

I straightened, locking my shoulders like I was preparing to tango for my life, and glared at him. The power of my glare was somewhat diminished by the fact that I wasn’t wearing a stitch of clothing. Fortunately, I’ve had a lot of practice looking fierce while practically nude; this was just taking it to the championship level. “Its existence is the result of evolutionary pressures, the same as yours. Or do you want to start the argument against humanity? Because right now, you’re offering one hell of an example in the ‘negatives’ column.”

“You don’t understand what you’re talking about!”

If he’d wanted to make me mad, that was the way to do it. “Why? Because I didn’t have the benefit of all your precious Covenant training? Your resources? Your centuries of doing it all exactly the same way every time?”

“Yes!”