Page 6 of Wild Fire

Dani ducked out the side door to the parking lot away from the throng of reporters out front. Finding her Jeep, she started it up and headed back to the warehouse. She needed to get back to the dragon. If nothing else, she needed to know his name. She needed to know a lot more, but that was a good place to start.

As she drove away from the station, Dani called a friend, a woman butcher she had befriended her first week on the job. Someone had tried to assault Julie. Dani had been able to stop the assault and put the guy away for a long time. The two had forged a bond that had proved strong and true. Julie was always offering Dani the best cuts of meat for free or at a greatly reduced price.

“Hey, Dani! Are you all right? I heard about the bust. How terrible.”

“It was pretty grim. We saved a lot of girls tonight; I’m not sure how many of them will make it all the way back. I need a huge favor: no questions asked; not a word to anyone.”

“That sounds ominous. But whatever you want, if I have it, it’s yours.”

“Got a side of beef?”

Julie met her at the shop and helped her load the side of beef into the back of Dani’s Jeep. Giving her friend a quick hug, Dani drove out of the alley and headed in the opposite direction of the warehouse. Once she was certain she wasn’t being followed, and her police scanner was quiet and picking up nothing of concern, she drove back to the building in which a dragon was chained to the floor of a subterranean level.

She opened one of the doors to the main floor, carefully moving the yellow crime scene tape out of the way, backing inside and then down the ramp, parking by the door that led to the basement below, which contained a dragon. She shook her head at the absurdity and insanity of that statement. Could she be losing it? Could the stress of the last year have led her into the depths of madness?

Dani opened the door to the stairway. Taking the bolt cutters she kept in the back of her Jeep and using one of the tarps she kept back there as well, she leveraged the side of beef out of the back and onto it before making a controlled slide to the bottom of the stairs.

The dragon lifted his head as she approached—well, lifted as much as he could. Seeing no padlock, she wedged one side of the bolt cutters under the band wrapped around his muzzle and using all her strength managed to cut the thing away.

She noticed a small spot of blood. “Shit. Sorry about that,” she said, dabbing at it with her shirt.

“It will heal quickly. What did I hear thumping down the…” he sniffed the air and grinned. “Beef. You brought me beef.”

“That’s what you said you wanted to eat. I also have a couple of gallons of water back up in the Jeep.”

“That isn’t what I said I wanted to eat,” the dragon teased, “but as it’s all that’s being offered, I’ll take it. I am Warrick.”

Dani rolled her eyes and proceeded to cut through the links of the chains used to secure the dragon to the floor. “I’m Dani.”

The dragon got to its feet and then turned towards the side of beef, moving its tail to block her path so she was shielded when he inhaled deeply and roasted the entire side of beef in one breath.

She was now convinced she was mad as the proverbial hatter. She’d just seen a dragon barbeque a side of beef… a fucking, fire-breathing dragon.

CHAPTER 3

WARRICK

Not hours before Warrick had thought he would not live to see the sunrise. Those who had placed him in chains and bonds of iron had not fully anticipated the hazards of keeping a dragon or a warrior prisoner. Certainly, they had not recognized the danger in imprisoning one who was both. Regularly spraying him with a solution of salt water mixed with fresh, they had kept him weakened.

Then, when he’d thought all was lost, she had shown up. She, of the dark hair, doe eyes, and luscious figure. She, who he could gobble up in a single bite or feast on for days. Never had a female called to him the way she had—not in all the centuries he had trod this earth. Neither drakaina or human had ever made him want to dominate and possess the way she did.

Was she some cruel jest of fate here to show him what he might have had if he’d only ignored his arrogance and contacted his brethren for assistance?

Warrick had figured out early on how to ignore the deep ache that accompanied the continual contact with even diluted salt water. The sea was toxic to dragons and those who had imprisoned him had been well aware of that fact.

They had trapped him in his dragon form and fed him just enough to keep him alive. Their master, whoever he was, had not deemed Warrick the great prize his captors had thought he might be—not that he wasn’t valuable, but having to imprison a dragon was not for the faint of heart. Besides, who would they sell him to? They couldn’t very well sell him to a human. Even the military would have questions other shifters wouldn’t want to answer. The only shifters who might be able to make use of his legendary prowess were other dragons, who wouldn’t want to incur the wrath of the Phantom Fire or the Ruling Council itself. The problem was that there were far too many weaklings on the Council for it to hope his captivity could be kept a secret. The only group he could think of that might be able to use him as a weapon was the Shadow League or, more likely, whoever was behind them pulling their strings.

Normally, Warrick didn’t pay much attention to the environment in which he found himself. It was pretty much all the same to him. But this latest hellhole had begun to get to him—dark, dank, and with the sound and smell of fear permeating the air from up above. They had chained him down close to the floor. He couldn’t rise up at all, much less stand. They’d added another chain at the base of his neck and right behind his head to ensure he couldn’t raise his head to get a better idea of where he was being held.

The restraints and chains not only held him captive in the building, but in his dragon form. Iron kept him from making the shift, but Warrick wasn’t sure it wasn’t overkill. They kept him weakened with the use of the diluted seawater. Even if he was free of the shackles and chains, he wasn’t sure he’d have had the strength to shift from dragon back to man. At first, he had worried that even if he was able to free himself, how would he escape without being seen?

They’d moved him several times since his captivity, but this was the first time he’d been held in the same place as the other slavers’ victims. He wished he could have saved them all, but at least he had accomplished his mission and saved the two he had set out to find.

As the chance of freedom began to diminish and his physicality began to deteriorate, he accepted that if he had any chance at all to break free, he had to take it and damn the consequences of being seen as a dragon. Even if he was pursued by military jets, better to plunge into the cold and fatal embrace of the sea than to die as some unknown entity’s prisoner.

And then she had appeared before him. At first, he’d thought her an apparition—perhaps the angel of death come to spare him with her sweet salvation. It wasn’t as if she’d appeared like sunshine on a bleak and cloudy Seattle day. No, she was more like the goddess of the moon, parting the dark clouds of the night sky and shining down her shimmering light upon him.

All Warrick knew was that when she had appeared, hope had sprung anew. She might well be his way to avenge those the cult and the slavers had condemned and to make them pay for what they’d done. He knew that if he were able to escape, his first duty was to return to the Phantom Fire and report what had been done, but duty was not the fire that burned within him. No, he would name that spark that had kept him alive for the past three months for what it was: revenge.

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