Page 52 of Tempt the Dragon
“Really?” Magnum asked.
“Yes,” Shola said with a quick shake of her head. “The Scheneks’ spells guard the site from intruders, but only ones that can be seen. Members of Ravyn’s great-grandmother’s coven said they only allow delivery trucks with supplies close to the land. So we were thinking that if Mel coulduse her chameleon power to be on that truck when it’s allowed onto the land, she can then slip out and pour the potion before being discovered.”
“And then what?” Aiken asked, the heat of his angry beast causing a virtual inferno in the pit of his stomach. “What happens when the witches catch her there, when there are no huts or vehicles or anything there that’ll cloak her? How does she getout?”
“I’ll shift,” Mel said, the look on her face conveying she was in full agreement with this plan.
The erratic patter of Aiken’s heart said he was not. This was dangerous. If he couldn’t get on that land to save her, what would happen if trouble broke out? Because those were the types of things that needed to be considered.
“Wait a minute, you’ve only been shifting for two days.”And in those two days she’d done a better job at learning about being a Drakon than some of the others he’d seen on the Far Realm who had been born knowing exactly who and what they were.
“I thought you were all about taking care of this situation?” Mel asked when she turned to stare at him. “Ever since you interrupted my assignment in that townhouse you’ve done nothing but talk about howimportant it is for the vamps to be stopped from bringing their ancients aboveground. So, okay, I’m now totally on board with that.”
“No.” He couldn’t say that one word emphatically enough. “You can’t. It’s too dangerous. We don’t know enough about this potion or these witches. What if something goes wrong?” It would, he could feel it in his gut, and his gut was never wrong. “We should thinkabout this a little more. Figure out a way to break the witches’ spell and then a few of us will go. We can drop the potion and fly away before the witches know what hit them.”
“You’ll never break through their spells,” Ravyn said. “The magick is too strong there. It’s fueled by the land and the fires that burn fast and hot in the volcano that also guards the forest. My ancestors weren’t evenstrong enough to break it.”
“You don’t know the power of Drakon magick,” he countered.
“And neither do you,” Theo interrupted. “At least not in the terms of what it can do in this area when up against not only those witches but the vampires that are undoubtedly going to be headed there, as well.”
“How would they know where to find it? We only just found out,” he countered.
“Temptra,”Ziva said when she walked in looking a little worse for wear. “Enes said she’s alive and kicking and just as she wanted that dagger Ravyn had to raise the dead, she did something to Duncan to make him able to get onto the burial site.”
So that’s why Duncan had been able to turn into a bat when he wasn’t a Lord.
Ziva continued while taking her seat, “But she knew he’d need backup and that’swhy she sent him to Montoy. They want his manpower to accompany Duncan to the burial site to protect him while he gets onto the land and provides the tainted vampire blood running through his veins that’ll wake the dead ancients.”
Nobody said it, but everyone was thinking it.Fuck!
Mel took the bottle from Ravyn. “I’m going. Are you with me?”
For endless moments Aiken sat there ina trance. What the hell kind of question was that? How could he not be with her? They were a part of each other, selected and now joined together in a bond that hadn’t broken in eighty years. He’d be damned if he let some wiccan spells and thousands of dead vampires break it now.
Standing and ignoring the gaze of the other Drakon in the room, he looked directly at Mel. “When do we leave?”
