Page 38 of Dragon Compelled
“I need to get back to work,” Paige says finally.
“Me too.” I yank the door open and stalk out, relieved that I don’t immediately see Oliver lurking nearby as I go. Mostly because, if I spotted him now, there would be no stopping my dragon from taking his head off.
But more than my desire to rip him apart is my disappointment that Paige refuses to see his treachery. That means, whatever game he’s playing with her, it’s working. And I’m going to have to find another way to stop him.
Rather than return to the apartment alone, I head for the break room where I can only hope Mag has come through with a large pizza and maybe even some ale to go with it. Then we can get this last mission over with and put an end to this miserable damned day.
What I want most is to go to Paige, snatch her into my arms, and leave this place and its threats behind forever. But I already know she’ll refuse. She won’t leave the battlefield before the fight is over, and while I respect that trait in a warrior, I hate that it means she’ll be surrounded by danger even a moment longer.
Because, one thing’s for sure, now that Paige trusts him, Oliver Stark is absolutely a threat of the worst kind. He’s the danger she’ll never see coming.
* * *
An hour later,I stand in the basement beside Mag and walk through the portal that will take us into our last search for the day. He’s exceptionally cheerful, considering we’re both exhausted and this morning's search was so fruitless.
The world we enter is bustling with traffic and noise. Instead of trees or vegetation, we are surrounded on all sides by tall buildings like the ones I can see from Paige’s apartment window. The air is slightly stale with some kind of chemical and full of the presence of other creatures—shifters, mostly, from what I can sense.
From the moment we turn out of the alleyway where we arrived and onto a walking path, I’m immediately distracted by a stream of human-looking pedestrians that nearly mow me over in their single-minded haste to get by. Every single one of them has a shifter signature attached to them.
“What is this place?” I ask, both awed and horrified by the machinery and cold steel.
“It’s called a city,” Mag says, amusement lacing his words.
“Whoa, watch it,” I mutter as yet another shoulder bumps mine.
Mag snorts.
“What?” I demand.
“You’re not from around here, are you?” Mag drawls.
“What the hell does that mean? You know I’m not—”
A loud whir drowns me out, and I glance up in time to see a large, wheeled box of machinery speeding straight toward me. Jumping back, I nearly stumble onto my ass to avoid being run over by it. Catching my footing, I straighten just as the giant machine screeches to a sudden halt beside us. I’ve seen them before from Paige’s window and even from the skies above the library when I’ve secretly flown there. But up close, it’s even more confusing—and impressive. I sense no heartbeat or life force in the thing, and yet it moves and hums.
I can only assume some kind of magic is behind it.
Two men sit in the front seats, one of them with a hand dangling from a wheel that’s been mounted to the inside of the contraption.
“Who the hell are you?” the man holding the wheel demands.
“I’m Mag. This is Aries. And you are?”
Mag’s cool demeanor doesn’t do much to relax me. I stand, tense and ready to fight should it come to that. Though, I have no idea what the machine’s weaknesses are.
“Dutch. This is Grey.” The man holding the wheel eyes me coolly. “You got a problem?”
“What’s the name of your machine?” I ask.
“My...” His forehead wrinkles. “You mean my car?” He glances from me to Mag in bemusement. “You want its name?”
“My friend’s new,” Mag says simply, and I watch as the passenger, Grey, assesses everything with eyes that I suspect don’t miss much. Something tells me, of the two, he’s the one in charge.
“You two aren’t from Indigo Hills,” Grey says.
“How do you know?” I can’t help but ask.
Their quick arrival reminds me of Anastasia, the woman from the world we visited earlier. She’d appeared seemingly out of thin air, though, while these men apparently prefer this box of metal as their transport.
