As Cold As Ice (21 page)

“
Incoming,
guys!”

The little vehicle Jessica was on came to an
abrupt halt. The tires screeched, and there were lights flashing
everywhere. Not just the yellow lights of the tunnel, either.
Flashlights. Then there were shouted commands.

“
You all in the buggies,
put your hands on your heads and step away from the
carts!”

She didn’t know who it was calling out the
orders. It could have been hunters, collectors, guards, maybe even
handlers, though she doubted that last part since they were usually
inside of the building.

It had to be someone, however. Markus might
not be able to get in there, but he still knew where this thing
led. All he had to do was get some people inside so they could cut
off Jessica and the people who’d come rescue her.

The snow picked up around them. Jessica
couldn’t stop it.

More shouting. More noise that went right to
her aching skull, making her even more tired, maximizing the pain.
“Stop with the blizzard!”

Not only could she not stop, but she
wouldn’t have even if she could. If it was making trouble for the
hunters and collectors, then good. She wished she could control her
power so her cold and frost wouldn’t blindly go after everyone,
though. She only wanted the people working for Markus to be cold
and uncomfortable in the wind.

“
Can she turn that
off?”

“
Don’t worry about her, let
me handle it,” Soren said.

Uh, what?

Jessica looked over at him just as he
started removing his clothes. He looked at her, a sad smile on his
face. “Make it as cold and foggy as you need to, baby. If they see
what I’m about to do, they’ll shoot me before I can get out of my
pants.”

Jessica’s eyes widened. She nodded. Her body
was tired, but it was stupidly easy to call on a North Pole-quality
blizzard. People shouted. Soren smiled.

“
I said stop that! This is
your last warning!”

His body seemed to shimmer and started to
change, but then the whiteout was too much, too thick for Jessica
to see more than the dark outline of his shape as it grew and
changed. His body expanded and stretched as he released the beast
inside.

With the explosion still making her slow, it
took her a couple of long seconds to realize what he was doing,
what he was becoming.

A
dragon
. He’d said he was a
dragon.

“
Open fire!”

Chapter Twenty-Three

The gunfire was quick and a
lot closer than the gunfire that had come from the men in Markus’s
arena. The
pop, pop, pops
didn’t come from automatic rifles. They were once
again from the standard smaller weapons that were handed out to
guards and collectors. They probably weren’t even real guns, just
more tranq guns and other firearms that were so small the only way
they could kill anyone would be if someone was shot in the
face.

But that didn’t mean those fuckers didn’t
aim high. They did. Someone dropped hard to the floor, and another
man cried out and went down.

“
Ethan!” Jessica screamed,
at the same time a loud roar pierced the air, like the kind that
should’ve come from the T-Rex in every
Jurassic Park
movie. It drowned out
any noise Jessica could have made. It made the walls shake, and it
jarred Jessica enough that her blizzard, without warning and
without her even trying or telling it to, came to a sudden and
complete stop.

The fog melted away quickly, and there was a
split-second of shock from the hunters and collectors as they
realized what they were looking at.

A dragon, the size of a fully grown
elephant. Bigger than that when she took its wingspan into
account.

Soren
. That was Soren, staring down at the men with their weapons
that probably seemed a little on the puny side right about
then.

He’d told her he was a
dragon, but to actually
see
him as one…

His scales were ocean blue with
frost-colored edges. They even glimmered in the pathetic yellow
lights of the tunnel. He looked just like every medieval painting
she’d ever seen of a dragon, all the way down to the spikes on his
face and the horns on his head.

He was gorgeous. Without a doubt the most
magnificent thing she’d ever laid her eyes upon, and her body
heated with all kinds of new lust, and something else. Admiration
for his amazing strength. Okay, yeah, the female side of her brain
was incredibly turned on and impressed. So sue her.

She was reminded of her brother when, from
the corner of her eye, she spotted him on the ground, gripping his
shoulder. Jack was beside him. They were both wearing white body
armor, something similar to what the stormtrooper guards wore, but
not quite. It was likely meant to throw off anyone who happened to
see them, but the bullet that hit Ethan got him right in the joint,
the sweet spot where the armor was at its weakest.

Jack was trying to put pressure on the
wound, but it was difficult because of the armor. There probably
wasn’t much pressure on there at all thanks to that damned outfit,
and from the sounds Ethan was making, Jamie was hurting him more
than he was helping.

“
Fuck! I need to get you
out of that!”

“
Don’t even think about
it!” Ethan snapped. “I can’t take my armor off here!”

He was right. As much as Jessica’s head was
spinning, she pulled herself out of the cart, or buggy, or whatever
the hell the tiny vehicle actually was.

More gunshots sounded as she made her way to
her brother. The bullets struck Soren’s scales, and it was
interesting yet terrifying to watch the way they bounced off, tiny
grey lines zooming back at the men and women who were shooting in
the first place. Or the bullets would just ricochet and hit the
walls and ceiling, making tiny bits of concrete chip off.

Soren spread his wings and sucked back a
harsh breath. More than half of the hunters and collectors started
to make a run for it. Those who didn’t followed suit when Soren
released another roar that shook the walls. More cement dust fell.
The hunters and collectors ran for their lives, vanishing down the
long hall and through doorways like they thought Soren was about to
breathe fire at them or something.

It was kind of what Jessica
had been expecting, but it was still incredibly impressive to see
so many running
away
from something they were supposed to be trying to catch,
instead of toward it.

Jessica was sexually
attracted to an oversized lizard. The word
dragon
was all kinds of erotic, but
the facts were the facts. In that form, he was a giant lizard, and
she thought he was hot. The sight of him
made
her hot.

Okay, she was ignoring that for the time
being. Her brother was still bleeding all over the ground.

Jessica went to him, quickly dropping to her
knees.

Ethan hissed, then bit down on his lips. He
looked like he was in major pain. “Fuck, it’s burning. Can you
please do something?”

“
Yeah.” Jessica put her
hands over his wound.

“
You’re a healer, too?”
Jack asked, eyes wide as if he really thought that was a
possibility.

“
No.” Jessica swallowed
hard, summoning more cold.

She focused it in her hands, but it started
to snow again around her. Lightly that time, but it was still
there.

Ethan let out a hard breath when the cold
hit his wound. She was gentle with it, wanting only enough to numb
the area without damaging the flesh. It was the one useful thing
she could do for people in pain. She’d learned that after growing
up with her brother, who had been notorious for getting hurt on his
bike, or his sled, or from falling out of trees. He’d been a klutz
as a kid.

“
Okay, that’s good, that’s
good,” Ethan said, pushing her back a little. Jessica immediately
pulled her hands away from him.

“
What are you both doing
here?” She looked up at the faces all around her. She recognized
none of them. “Who are these people?”

There was another man bleeding from the
stomach on the floor, and another person—she couldn’t tell if it
was a man or a woman with the armor—lying dead on the ground. The
people nearby picked up the body and quickly brought it to one of
the buggies.

If the dead person was a friend of anyone
there, then it only made sense these people didn’t want to leave
him, or her, behind.

“
We had someone on the
inside,” Jack said, and Ethan grunted loudly from the pain when
Jack quickly pulled him to his feet. “He told us where one of the
tunnel entrances was and we got in.”

“
Soren?”

He shrank in size, melting into something
that looked a little more human in shape. More like Soren as she
knew him. He was naked, but he walked tall like he was in a
tailored suit as he moved to his clothes and started putting them
back on. His confidence was beyond attractive.

“
Not me,” Soren said,
shaking his head at her as he pulled on his pants first, doing up
the button and fly. “I didn’t know where this tunnel led,
remember?”

“
Then who?”

“
Me.”

Jessica jumped back to her feet at the shock
of Charles’ voice so close to her ear, which was a huge mistake
because then the floor tumbled and tilted before flying up to slam
her in the face.

“
Whoa! Easy, I got you,”
Soren said quickly. It took Jessica a few seconds to realize his
strong hands were holding onto her arms, saving her from slapping
into the floor. “Let’s get you back into the cart,” Soren
suggested. Everyone seemed to already be packing up.

Where were the attackers? Had Soren gotten
rid of them? Killed them?

Jack rushed to the driver’s side of their
particular vehicle, and it started up again. Jessica could barely
take her eyes away from Charles, staring at him, glaring a little
even, and totally distrusting him. She hadn’t even noticed he’d
been in the tunnel with her until he’d said something.

“
We need to hurry,” Charles
said. “The fact that they cut us off means they probably know where
we came in. We might need another way out.”

“
They didn’t find the blast
hole,” said a slim man with dark hair and even darker eyes. “I made
sure they wouldn’t see it.”

Jessica didn’t need to ask what he was. His
pale, nearly white skin was enough of a giveaway before he smiled,
revealing pointed fangs on the side of his mouth.

Vampire
.

Great. Not only was she sharing space with
Charles, but there was a bloodsucker sitting inches away from her
bleeding brother. If he lost control and tried to go in for a
snack, well, at least she had her powers back to do something about
it, even if her body was so incredibly weak.

“
So, what are you doing
here?” Jessica asked, taking her mind away from the vampire and
putting her thoughts to what may or may not be the lesser
evil.

Charles shook his head. “No time. Soren can
explain when you both get out of here.”

She looked up at Soren, who smiled down at
her softly, looking slightly pained with the half-grimace that made
up that smile. Yeah, she saw it in his eyes that he didn’t like
keeping that from her, but she got it. She wasn’t about to give him
any grief over it, either.

They didn’t come across anymore hunters or
collectors. They couldn’t have been driving for more than five
minutes, but it was the longest five minutes of Jessica’s life.
This wide tunnel really did seem to go on forever. Maybe it
actually did run to the other side of the city.

She kept expecting something super
villainous to happen, mainly a wave of water to appear down the
other side of the tunnel and rush toward them, drowning them like
in one of those old James Bond movies.

Or maybe poisonous gas. Or little holes
would open in the wall, allowing all kinds of automatic guns to
poke through and fire either bullets or more tranquilizer darts
Head Office loved so damned much.

Nothing like that happened, and the carts
Jack and the others were driving came to a stop when the vampire
directed them to.

Everyone pulled out quickly, standing in
front of the wall. Jessica could smell fresh air and hear birds
chirping, but didn’t see anything. She didn’t have to wait more
than two seconds before the pristine, heavy concrete walls melted
away, revealing a massive hole that looked like it had been blasted
open the same way as the door to Markus’ area.

There were mounds of rubble with thick metal
wire, like chicken wire, poking out of the edges. The hole slanted
upwards, through the dirt to fresh green grass.

“
Time to put my mask back
on,” said the vampire, and he along with one or two other men
fitted their faces with a black, thin material that stretched over
their features. Jessica didn’t see any eyeholes, so it had to be
thin enough for him to see through, but still strong enough to
protect him from the sunlight.

“
Good job, Bruce.” Jack
said. “Okay everyone, let’s get out of here before any other
hunters come. Charles, come here. I need to tie you up.”

Jessica was stunned to watch as Charles did
as he was told. Ethan had to lean against part of the wall that
wasn’t crumbling as Jack actually pulled out a roll of silver duct
tape and tied Charles’ hands behind his back.