Fire Me Up (30 page)

I mulled over everything Monish had told me about the two
women's deaths, thinking over Nora's comments, spending a little time worrying
about Jim, praying it wouldn't be so rummy from the treatment that it spoke
without knowing it, and finally, wondering how on earth I was going to overcome
the stigma of being once again a murder suspect, which I needed to do in order
to find a mentor.

I made a few mental notes of things to do the following day:
Drake had requested my attendance at an afternoon meeting, there was Jim to get
in the morning, the amulet to deliver to Gyorgy, and oh, yes, the little matter
of that dratted murder investigation.

I was just drifting off to sleep, my arms around Drake, his
soft snoring as reassuring as the heavy thigh draped over my legs, when a
distant pounding jerked me awake again.

Drake was off the bed, stalking toward the door before I
could so much as brush the hair out of my eyes and clutch the sheet to my chest.
I sat frozen for a moment, wondering if something had gone wrong with the
dragons. Then I recognized a voice intermixed with Drake's and his bodyguards'.

I snatched up the nearest piece of clothing, which turned out
to be Drake's satin bathrobe. Cursing softly, I found my sleeping T-shirt,
yanked it over my head, and grabbing the bathrobe, ran out to the living room.
Drake was standing in the middle of the room, his hands on his naked hips as Pal
tried to wrap a blanket around a sobbing Nora. Istvan, also naked but armed with
a wicked-looking pistol, glanced at Drake, then closed the door.

"What the hell happened?" I asked as I ran to Nora.

Incoherent and almost hysterical, she was trying to escape
Pal. I shoved Drake's bathrobe at him and took the blanket from Pal. Nora's face
was bloody and swollen, looking strangely naked without her glasses. Tears
streaked her cheeks, while her body was racked by gut-wrenching sobs. I wrapped
the blanket around her, aware of the scratches and bite marks visible on her
neck and the upper parts of her breasts. She was wearing a simple cotton
nightgown, one side of which looked like it had been shredded by a wild animal.

"Shhhh, it's OK, Nora. It's just me," I said, my arms around
her as I looked over her shoulder at Drake. He was giving Istvan an order, which
resulted in the bodyguard going back to his room, then emerging a few moments
later in jeans and shoes, his gun stuck into the front of his belt. Istvan
slipped out the door. "No one's going to hurt you here. It's just me and Drake
and his men. You're safe here. No one can hurt you."

I managed to get her. onto the couch before her legs
collapsed. She clung to me, holding me tight enough to leave bruises. I rocked
her, stroking her back like I would a sobbing child. Pal finished his call,
spoke quietly with Drake, then ran to his room.

Drake squatted at Nora's feet, careful not to touch her.
"Nora, the watch is on its way. Who attacked you?"

She shuddered, her sobs slowing. Her left eye was swelling
rapidly, a trickle of blood snaking from her eyebrow to her chin. Her upper lip
was split and swollen, blood seeping from who knew how many spots on her mouth.
Clearly unable to speak, she stared at Drake out of her good eye, her body
shaking nonstop.

"Drake, she's too upset to talk."

"If we know who to look for, we might be able to catch him
now, Aisling. To wait would mean he could escape."

"I know, but—"

"I can talk," Nora interrupted, her voice a ragged croak. She
leaned into me, little ripples of horror still shaking her. "It was an incubus.
He was awful. I didn't summon him. He just showed up. And he wouldn't leave me
alone. He .. ." The words dried up as she swallowed hard.

Drake glanced at me, and I knew what he was thinking. "Did he
rape you?"

I cringed on Nora's behalf at Drake's blunt question, knowing
that there was no nice way to ask such a horrible question.

"No. Not in the sense you mean," she said at lastT her voice
as shaky as the rest of her. "He assaulted me and struck me several times, and I
believe would have raped me, but I fought him. He beat me, but I would not let
him rape me. I broke his nose. He left me after that. I didn't know where to go,
where I could go that he couldn't return and find me, but I thought of you,
and.. ." She broke down again, clutching the blanket to her face as she sobbed
into it.

"You did the right thing," I said soothingly, taking the cold
washcloth and bowl of ice that Pal brought. Drake went to answer the abrupt
knock at the door. "It was very smart of you to break his nose. And you don't
have to worry—no incubus would dare step a smoky toe in here, not with three
dragons and one really pissed-off wyvern's mate."

She tried to smile, but her mouth was too swollen. I murmured
platitudes while gently cleaning off as much blood from her face as I could. To
my surprise, the man whom Drake let in wasn't Monish but Gabriel. The two
consulted for a moment, then Gabriel approached carefully, kneeling before Nora.

"This is Gabriel," I told her. She looked a little wild
around the eyes, but nodded when I told her that his sept was known for their
healing abilities. "He's very good," I added, showing her the faint line of scar
that was all that remained of my knife wound.

"I would be honored to see to your injuries," Gabriel said
gently, keeping his hands on his legs, not rushing her. I flashed him a smile of
gratitude and shifted a little to give him room.

"No!" Nora said, clutching my arm. "Please ... I hate to be
so foolish, but if you could ..."

"I'm not going to leave you," I said firmly. "I'll stay here
as long as you want me."

She nodded, swallowing hard. Gabriel gave me a warm look,
then proceeded to doctor the worst of Nora's wounds. I was relieved to see that
he knew other methods of healing than ones involving his tongue. He pulled from
the pocket of his shirt a small silver tube containing a clear gel, which he
dabbed on the worst of the injuries. The bleeding stopped immediately, and even
the swelling of her eye and lip seemed to go down after he spread a light coat
of the ointment on them. Nora tolerated his attentions without a sound until he
peeled back the blanket to look at her blood-soaked nightgown. Then she started
to panic. "No! I don't want... I can't..."

"I think she would be more comfortable with you applying
this," he said softly, handing me a clean square of gauze bandaging that Pal had
brought.

Drake was at the door again, this time admitting Monish, who
looked heavy-eyed and sleepy.

"Clean around the scratches first, then use the curcain gel."

I did as he ordered, gently dabbing the long, vicious
scratches on her chest and breasts, concealing her as best I could from the men.
Istvan returned from his mysterious mission, joining the cluster of Monish and
the dragons.

"What exactly is curcain gel?" I asked Gabriel quietly,
dabbing it onto a long scratch on Nora's arm. It looked as if the man who
attacked her had clawed whatever part he could reach.

He leaned close, his mouth almost touching my ear. "Curcain
is a healing enzyme found in some plants. It also occurs in the saliva of the
silver dragons."

I looked in horror at the smear of colorless gel on my
fingers. "This is dragon spit?" I whispered back.

"A highly concentrated form, yes."

I rubbed on a little more, waiting until I was sure Nora was
distracted before asking, "Whose? Yours?"

He just smiled, his dimples flashing. I don't know why it
made me feel better to know it was his saliva I was rubbing all over Nora, but
it did. Chalk it up to not wanting a strange dragon's saliva all over my friend.

"You're going to be just fine," I told Nora, who sat Muring
into the distance, clearly trying to distance herself from everything that was
going on. "You're a strong woman. You have power. You aren't a helpless victim.
You beat the horrible monster."

Her eyes, still liquid with tears, focused on me as I pulled
the remains of her nightgown over her, gently easing the blanket around her. She
nodded, her throat working hard.

"Nora? I must ask you some questions now. You understand I
would prefer to let you recover in peace, but if we are to locate the being that
did this, I must know what happened. Although we cannot be sure of it, since
your attacker did not leave any physical evidence behind, it is possible that he
is the same being who killed the other Guardians."

Monish's singsong voice was as soft and soothing as Gabriel's
had been, but Nora stiffened as he took a seat in the chair next to the couch.
She made an effort to pull herself together, though, saying in a low, raw voice
that she would do whatever she could to help.

"Did you see the man? Can you give us any description?"

She shook her head. "It was dark, and my glasses . .. I don't
see well without them. I saw nothing at all of him, but I know it was a man. He
was nude. Large, and very strong."

"No scars or any physical deformities that you could feel?"

"No. Nothing."

"You're quite sure it was an incubus that attacked you? It
couldn't have been a zduhacz? Or a liderc?"

She shook her head. "No, I would know a zduhacz, and lidercs
have a different odor to them. This was an incubus. He smelled of smoke."

Monish made a note on a small notebook he'd pulled from his
pocket. "Did he give you his name?"

"No. He said nothing. One moment I was sleeping, the next he
was on top of me, biting and clawing."

Monish made a sympathetic face. "You did not summon the
incubus?"

"No."

"You did not conduct any spells or incantations that might
have drawn one?"

"No," Nora said, a faint line between her brows.

"You did not conduct any rituals at all during the evening
hours?"

At the word "ritual" I stiffened. Slowly, Nora's head turned
until she was looking at me. I licked my suddenly dry lips. "She oversaw the
apprentice ritual for me earlier," I said, fear twisting my innards. "But I did
nothing that would summon an incubus. Nothing! It was just basic stuff, like
drawing wards and things like that. Nothing dangerous"

Beyond her, Drake stood watching impassively

"Nora?" Monish's voice was gentle but insistent. "Was there
anything that Aisling did that could summon an incubus?"

Her gaze held mine for another few seconds before it dropped
to where Monish had covered her hand with his own. "No. There was nothing in the
ritual that could have summoned an incubus."

My shoulders slumped with relief. I was about to give her a
reassuring hug when she lifted her head and looked at me with eyes that had gone
dead with pain. "But it was your name the incubus invoked when he attacked me."

"
I think this officially has been the longest day in my
existence," I told Drake an hour later. "Do you have some sort of mystical
dragon power that would allow you to turn back the clock so I could do the whole
day over?"

"No. You need to sleep. You have black smudges under your
eyes."

His thumb brushed over my cheek in a caress so gentle it
almost brought me to my knees. "So do you. Good night."

"Good night. Sleep well, kincsem."

I closed the door of the fourth, previously unused, room in
Drake's suite and paused to listen. Nora had resisted taking anything to make
her sleep, but I said nothing when Gabriel dropped a pale golden powder into the
tea Pal had made for her. She needed sleep as much as the rest of us.

The only sound in the room was of Nora's deep breathing. I
crept along the edge of her bed to the roll-away the hotel staff had hastily
brought up at Drake's demand, using the moonlight to avoid banging my toes or
shins into the few pieces of furniture that were scattered around the room.

The bed was cold. And lumpy. I turned on my side, trying to
find a comfortable position, mentally grumbling to myself that Drake's bed was
never cold or uncomfortable, immediately riddled with guilt for thinking
churlish thoughts. It wasn't Nora's fault she had been attacked, and since she
was quite sure the incubus had snarled my name at her before he beat her up, it
was the least I could do to stay with her through the night.

I fell asleep fingering the amulet, trying to work out the
connection between it and the attacks. There had to be one. It had to be acting
as a beacon or something, causing me to unconsciously summon a vile,
lust-riddled incubus.

Nora was still sleeping very heavily when I dragged myself
out of bed. I mumbled a good morning to Pal, who looked less than his usual
perky self, and I was a bit surprised when Istvan, who had been scarfing down
breakfast, leaped up to open the door to Drake's room.

"What gives?" I asked, too tired and sleep muzzled to phrase
the question in politer tones.

He looked surprised. "Is proper."

I frowned up at him. "You've never opened a door for me
before. Why are you doing it now?"