Dragon Rising (4 page)

“That’s why you stay in these ivory towers and never mingle with anyone.”

“Correct.” Sitting on a bed with a half-naked Dragon made that even more important.

“But you’ve touched me.” Her hand went to her neck, to exactly where he’d touched her at the bar. His touch
had
left an impression on her. “So how is it fair that you can touch me, but I can’t touch you?”

“Who said life was fair? Look, I won’t touch you either. That should even things out.”

He didn’t like her expression that indicated she was trying to figure him out. She was smart, this one. Her desire pulsed at him in waves, physically pulling at him before he pushed back.

She cat-walked across the bed toward him, stopping inches from where he stood. “It’s okay. You can touch me.” Her voice was husky.

“No, I can’t.” His fingers curled, fighting the need to do as she said.

“But you want to. You know how I can tell? Your eyes are shimmering the same way they did back at the bar.” She took his hand and placed it against her neck. “When you did this.” Then drew it down to rest against her collarbone.

He couldn’t breathe. Even muffled by being in full wing, desire rushed through him as it had at the bar. He’d nearly lost it then, until the pain grew too harsh. He pulled his hand back. “Don’t. I have no interest in getting involved with you. Or anyone.” He took the washcloth, still in her other hand. “I have to figure out who sent wraiths after us. We picked them up at the nightclub, which means someone’s watching us, probably has been since we left Jeremy’s apartment.” He wiped the blood—her blood—from his chest.

Lyra settled back on her heels, hands on her thighs. Hurt played over her expression and his heart. Let her think he was an ass, like most Crescents did. Those snobby, asexual Caidos who think they’re better than anyone else because they came from those closest to Luca, the highest god on the island. They also paid the biggest price for betraying him.

His wings brushed the wall. For certain skills, like healing, he had to transform to angel. Now that she was healed, he had to become human again. “Excuse me a second.” He swallowed any expression of discomfort and pulled in the energy of his wings.

She was watching in fascination. “Did you shred your shirt?”

Archer sank to the edge of the bed, fatigue gnawing at him. “It’s in tatters with your clothes in the garage. We’ll pick everything up when we leave.” Fortunately, he still had on his pants.

“It probably looks like there was a sex frenzy down there.”

And thank you for putting that particular picture in my mind, me tearing off your clothes…

She wrapped her arms around herself. “Those things were creepy. You said wraiths were dead Caidos.”

“If a Caido isn’t properly interred after his death, his soul becomes a wraith.”

“I hate to even say this, but could one of those wraiths we fought be Jeremy?”

Archer’s stomach tightened. “I thought about that, too. There’s no way to tell. All of a Caido’s individual features are gone, everything that makes them who they are.”

“But they had a will. They definitely wanted to kill us.”

“As though they were following orders.” His gaze fell over her, remembering her fighting them. His emotions—fear, desire—pressed uncomfortably against his soul. “Do you still want to go into your memory?”

“Yes, please. Maybe if I know the note contained nothing incriminating, my brother and Ellie will forgive me. There might be a clue as to what happened to Tara, too.”

“You said the note was at your bakery. It would be optimal to go there.”

The farther away they could get from his bed the better. Because the temptation was getting to be way too much.

A
whole slew of emotions battered Lyra as they drove from her apartment, where she’d grabbed a change of clothes. She noticed that, as she ran through all the craziness of the last few hours, Archer leaned away from her.

Caidos were enigmas, but she had never bothered to care about their mystery. Until now. She had some ideas, just enough to tantalize her. One thing she knew for sure, at least as far as Archer was concerned, he wasn’t asexual. When she’d placed his hand to her throat, not only had his eyes glittered, but his body had responded, too.

So he was what? Too stuck on himself and his Caido status to deign to admit he liked her? No, it was more than that. He cared about her, even in the way he glanced over to check on her from time to time. How he’d watched over her, fought to protect her from the wraiths.

She loved the way his hand felt on her, electric and right, and that had nothing to do with his Caidoness. Damn but she wanted to touch him, too.

He was wincing now, his fingers gripping the wheel.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“Just…thinking.”

She was going to ask about what but decided against it. He probably wouldn’t tell her anyway.

He pulled up to the curb in front of Lirin’s Bake Shop.

“Lirin?”

“It’s a combination of my and my brother’s names. My parents thought it would be cute.”

“Ah. Cute.” He said the word “cute” as though he’d never used it before.

She glanced at her watch. Three in the morning. “I’m supposed to be at work in an hour, along with the early shift.” Then she would work right on through the afternoon shift, too, because her father’s absence left a big hole in the schedule.

Archer got out, and she swore he was going to walk around to her side to open her door if she hadn’t already done so.

She pulled her keys out and jammed the right one into the lock. “Why are we coming here?”

“It helps to go to the place where the event happened, keeps you from wandering to other memories.” He stepped in behind her, and she flicked on the lights. “You’d be surprised what I’ve found in people’s minds.”

Oh, gawd, she hoped he couldn’t see anything but the memory. What if she had a thought about him? Of course, the memory of his jeans, tight over his erection, and his bare chest, and his wings…

Oh, boy, she was in trouble.

“So we went to the Raphael because of the wraiths?”

“I didn’t want to engage them here. I’m sorry you had to fight them. I would have sent you away, but I suspected one would have followed you.”

“I can handle myself, as you saw. Dragons are trained to fight from the time they’re Awakened at thirteen. Living among the Hidden, you have to be ready for anything.”

She led the way to the back, where the ovens and worktables were. Footsteps scurried across the floor. Something skittered around the corner.

Archer shifted into fight mode, body stiff, arms akimbo as he scanned the space.

“Sorry, forgot to warn you about the Earthies. Elementals,” she clarified at his questioning expression.

Pink fairy dust, made of colored sugar crystals, covered one of the tables with the telltale impression of squat bodies having been rolling in it. Peering around the corner of a cabinet was one of them.

“Gogo, what did I tell you about getting into the fairy dust sugar? That stuff’s expensive.”

Gogo stepped out, eyes too big for his face, with a bulbous nose and puffy lips. At least he had the decency to look chagrined. Perhaps his chortling sound was an apology. When he saw Archer, he ducked out of sight again.

Archer had been watching. “You employ Elementals?”

She laughed. “No, we sort of have a deal with them. When I started working here during high school, I discovered that Pop had instigated a war with them. The sugar draws them, and they’re hard to get rid of.”

“Have you tried a fumigator?”

She waved that away. “We don’t want to hurt them. Well, my pop did. They would dump out flour and spell obscenities in it. They’d appear when Mundanes were out front, and he couldn’t control himself. He’d yell and throw things, and the Mundanes thought he was a crazy grump.” She laughed, but it died down as she thought about that crazy grump being missing.

Archer took one step away. “We’ll find him. Go on.”

He
had
known what she was feeling. She tucked that away. “So I made a deal with them. They could stay in peace if they behaved. I even leave them treats. Four of them keep the deal. Two, not so much. But it’s better than it was before.”

He turned around. “What do you do here?”

“I manage things. Since my mom died when I was fifteen”—another step away—“I took over her role, which is dealing with the bigger customers and sometimes handling the front.” She opened an old pie safe. Inside were several shelves full of goodies. She plucked out a triangular cookie with a corner filled with jelly and handed it to him. “Raspberry jelly,” she said when he eyed it. “It’s called a Dragon tear. I came up with it myself.”

“Clever.” He took a bite and then finished it off. “Good.”

“I created Dragon pastries and Deuce stars. Nothing for Caidos, sorry. They never come in. And now we don’t even have many Crescent customers. Once Pop was cast in the shadow of suspicion over Tara’s disappearance, it tainted the shop. We lost a lot of locals, people who’d seen Pop’s outbursts and figured he must have done something to her. Luckily, we didn’t lose the bigger accounts, like restaurants and hotels.”

She stuffed a tear into her mouth, letting the butter cookie melt on her tongue. “These are the products that didn’t sell yesterday.” She took in the shelves with a sigh.

He had, of course, moved away again, as he did every time her mood dampened. “What do you do with the leftovers?”

“I put some out for the Earthies. The rest go to a shelter for abused women and children. They love all the treats and breads, and sometimes I even make a batch just for them.”

Hmm, he didn’t move closer when she felt a little happier.

“Where did you have the memory?” he asked.

She nodded for him to follow her into the small, cluttered office that she and her father shared. As soon as Archer stepped inside, it felt even smaller. “We were here, and I was looking up a number for Kirin.” She stood in front of the blotter, her fingers at the edge of it.

“Close your eyes and go back to that memory. From the moment you came into this space.”

She had relived that time over and over again, punishing herself, wishing she could change it. If only she hadn’t bumped the blotter, which revealed a corner of the note. If only…

“Focus, Lyra.”

She turned to him. “I think that’s the first time you’ve said my name. At least you don’t call me ‘Dragon Girl’ anymore.”

“Don’t make too much of it. Focus.”

“Bossy…”

She let the other words drift off and braced her hands on the edge of the desk. Her fingers grazed the blotter as her eyes closed. It came back like a scene from a movie: she, Kirin, and Ellie all crammed in here, Kirin reaching for the address book on the shelf and Lyra bumping the blotter. Something compelled her to pull out that colorful paper and turn it over.

“What’s that?” Kirin asked, peering over her shoulder.

Ellie looked, too, and in that moment, Lyra saw Tara’s signature, along with a heart to signify love. That would not only substantiate everyone’s suspicions about an affair, but it would also incriminate Pop. She thrust it over the scented candle burning on the desk.

“Hey!” Ellie said, “that was my mom’s notepaper. Her handwriting.”

“Stop.”

Archer’s voice. Not audibly but in the memory. Ellie and Kirin froze, and Lyra turned to see Archer leaning against the open doorway. He was transparent as he walked over.

“This is so weird,” she said.

“Stay focused or we both go
poof
. Go back to when you held the note in your hand, before you shoved it in the flame.”

She rewound the memory several seconds.

“Hold it right there.” He moved up behind her, and she could feel him close to her. “Now you can read it.”

She was afraid to see what it said. Which was ridiculous, because she wasn’t afraid of much, and she believed in her pop’s innocence with everything in her. But this note could change everything.

Archer didn’t move away from her agonizing emotions this time.

She forced her gaze to the colored paper.

She turned to the memory version of Archer. “He was helping her. Not having an affair, but helping.” A little twine of doubt unfurled inside her, one she didn’t know she had. Pop’s evasiveness had only been about keeping Tara’s secret.

She and Archer were face-to-face. She glanced at Kirin and Ellie, still frozen. “They look solid, but you don’t.”

“Because I wasn’t in your original memory.”

She reached out to touch him, her hand going through his image. “I hoped maybe it wouldn’t bother you if I touched you here.”

“Why?”

“You weren’t bothered by my trepidation just now. Or my gratitude that you helped me solve a mystery.”

“I can’t feel emotions in a memory.”

“So you
can
feel them.”

They snapped back to present, standing in the same position as they had been in the memory. His expression was shuttered.

“You feel my emotions, don’t you?” she asked. “That’s why you back away whenever I feel something. Good or bad.”

“It’s the angel side of us. We pick up feelings.”

“But it’s more than that.” She stepped closer. “They’re painful. When my emotions are strong, you wince.”

His mouth tightened, as though he were going to refuse to answer. But his eyes took her in with a softness she hadn’t seen yet. “Yes.”

She put her hand to her solar plexus. “That’s…horrible. The man who connected me with you said Caidos had good reason for being reclusive. No wonder you stay in your ivory towers. I’m probably hurting you right now.”

Archer didn’t step back, but the tendons in his neck corded. She remembered his remark about her being a yellow Dragon, the most emotional type.

“No one is to know, Lyra. If you tell anyone, you expose us to great harm.”

She shook her head, the reality still bombarding her. “I won’t say a word.”

He brushed the back of his hand against her cheek. “I know you’re trustworthy. I wouldn’t have told you otherwise. But you must understand the need for secrecy.”

“I do.” She started to reach for his hand but stopped. “Is being touched painful, too?”

He hesitated. “It’s not the touch itself but the emotions behind it. If you touch someone, it’s often out of anger, comfort, or desire.”

“Desire hurts, too?”

“It hurts the most, your desire—for example—and my own.”

Her desire. Gawd, he’d been feeling it all along. “That’s what Kye was talking about, pleasure and no pain. What cruel irony, that women are drawn to you, and it hurts when they are. Who relegated you to this existence of pain and torment? Luca?”

“Luca punished the angels by making desire painful so they would never be tempted by humans again. Unfortunately, it carried through to their progeny. The rest is, I think, a result of the opposing natures of angel and human.”

Could he feel her compassion, the ache flowing through her? “So you shut off your desires.”

His gaze dropped to her mouth for just a second. “Out of necessity.”

“You do feel desire?
Can
feel it, anyway?” She struggled against the pull to move closer. “When you see a beautiful woman, like those at the club, you must have to fight it.”

“I have spent the last fifty years unaffected by any woman.” Chagrin was clear in his voice when he added, “Until you, Dragon Girl.”

Her heartbeat skipped. “Why me?”

“Your emotions, while painful, are pure and true. Not convoluted with ego and noise and lust.” He nodded toward the desk. “Watching your agony over your decision to protect your father, your belief in him despite the evidence, your bravery while fighting the wraiths…it touches something inside me that hasn’t been touched in a long time.”

He wanted her. Only her. The realization throbbed through her, making the need to touch him ache even more. Not the Thrall. She let out a soft sigh and walked to the front door. Archer stepped out first, scanning the darkness between the glow of streetlights.

“Do you think there will be more wraiths?” she asked.

“We must be prepared for anything. Whoever sent them might try something else.”

They got into his car, and his hand gripped the top of the steering wheel as he started the engine. “Three missing people.”

Lyra put her finger to her mouth. “Four. Kirin told me that Tara’s husband, Huff, has been missing for the same amount of time as my pop. What the heck is going on here?”

Archer seemed to consider that. “Tara is the common denominator. But how a woman who’s been gone for over five months can cause three men to go missing now is beyond me. We have a lot more questions than we do answers.” Archer put the car into drive.

“That’s how I felt when I first discovered Pop was missing. So I went back to his house and looked closer. That’s how I found the feather. We could go to Jeremy’s and do the same. Did you find his cell phone?”

“I did. I suspect he had it on him when he got Stripped, because it was singed.”

Speaking of phones, Archer’s rang. He answered. Lyra could hear a woman’s hysterical voice but not her words. Archer’s face tightened at whatever she was saying. “I’ll explain what that means when we meet. If I can go into the memory of what you saw, maybe we can figure out where he is. We’ll be right there.” He disconnected. “That was Anika. She finally felt Jeremy. He’s in a lot of pain and physically trapped in a house.”

“Which at least means he’s not one of those wraiths.”

He nodded. “I suppose there is good news in that.”

“She sounded pretty freaked out.”

“She just saw the wing dust.”