Luck of the Dragon (Entangled Covet) (16 page)

The group fell to their knees and bent their heads.

“Do you swear to adhere to the ancient ways, swearing loyalty to me as your Jer’ol?”

“Yes, Jer’ol,” everyone chorused.

Alec surveyed the group for any dissention—none so much as lifted their head to look at him. “The Siberians may join the ceremony,” Alec said. There was a murmur of excitement through the group. Siberian, or Russian, or African…every dragon alive wanted to find his mate. “First sign of trouble and all of you will be banished. Police yourselves if you have a hope for your lineage.”

Ambrogino regarded him with a pleased smile that made Alec’s skin crawl. He was beaten. He had just pledged his loyalty publicly.

Why did he appear so content?

Chapter Fourteen

“Do you like the name Lilly Belle?” Lucy hurried beside the Viking, taking two steps for the tall woman’s every one.

“It’s my name.” Lilly Belle glanced at her.

“I know, but do you prefer something else?”

They strode across the casino floor toward the gem exhibit. Lilly Belle grabbed her arm and stopped her when they came to a branching hall. She looked both ways, like a crossing guard, and then pulled Lucy forward.

“Do you have a nickname or something?” Lucy said.

Lilly Belle glanced down at her. “Yes.”

Okey dokey. She only
asked
because she
didn’t
want to know.

Ahead of them, a short-haired woman stood between the guards watching the sealed gem exhibit. As they drew closer, Lucy saw that the woman had something in her hand, something big and metallic.

“Is that a sword?” Lucy asked. “How can you have a sword in here?”

“Thank you, Mia,” Lilly Belle said to the woman and pulled the sword blade, checking the edge before sheathing it and unbuckling the harness straps. It was a sword, real and deadly, with honed steel and a three-inch wide blade. The two dark-suited guards did not react, but stood as still as the Beefeaters at the Buckingham Palace.

“I thought it was illegal to carry weapons in a casino?” Lucy whispered.

The new woman grimaced at her like she had grown two heads. “The human?” The brunette had a slight accent. She reached for Lucy’s right hand and examined the stamp, then muttered a foreign-sounding expletive.

Lilly Belle answered in the same singsong language.

Lucy pulled her hand back and cradled it over her stomach. She knew five languages, including Latin. Their words did not sound Nordic, or Russian, and definitely not Italian. “What language are you speaking?”

The dark-haired woman shook her head. “Be careful, Lil,” she said before she turned and left.

“Lil,” Lucy said, glad to grab onto a safe topic. “Your nickname is Lil. It fits.”

Lilly Belle buckled the sword’s leather harness to her chest.

“You’re like the Beatles song. ‘Her name was MacGill, she called herself Lil, but everyone knew her as Nancy…’”

“You like the Beatles?” Lil gave her a surprised look when Lucy nodded. “They’re a little old for you, aren’t they?”

“Are you kidding? The Beatles are timeless. My Mom and Dad used to dance to them, before my Dad went away…”

It was one of the best childhood memories she and Joey had. Lucy could still remember her parents moving all the living room furniture and dancing to songs from their youth after dinner. Lucy relished the bittersweet memory and heard again in her head the tinny tunes of
The Long and Winding Road.
Their Mom had giggled at Dad’s off-key baritone. He always sang along. He knew every song, and every single word.

They had been a family then. They had been happy.

Little did they all know, the winding road would soon dead-end.

Next to them, a uniformed staff member pushed a cleaning cart toward the bathroom. Lucy watched the cart with unfocused eyes, her mind still in the past. A wheel squeaked on the cart, and Lucy focused on the janitor.

Joey smiled back at her and blew her a kiss.

Joey.
Her breath stuck in her throat and her mind careened out of the past and into her present pile of shit-o-la. “I need to use the restroom,” she said to Lil. Her voice sounded shaky, but Lil didn’t seem to notice.

“I’ll go with you.”

“Can’t a girl do anything alone?”

“No.” Lil seemed unfazed. “I need to stay with you at all times.”

Lucy walked to the restroom with Lil at her side. She stopped beside Joey, who was straightening the supplies on his cart. What a joke. He wouldn’t know how to clean a bathroom if his life depended on it.

“You done in there?” she asked him.

“Yes, ma’am.” The way he said the word ma’am with two syllables and a fake southern drawl got her hackles up. What were he and Gino planning now?

“What kind of
cleaning
are you doing?” The question sounded rather obvious since he was outside the bathrooms, but Joey would know what she meant.

Lil frowned and crossed her arms. “I thought you had to go?”

“I do.” Lucy glared at Joey. “I’m just
so
curious about the
cleaning
.”

Joey grinned. “Just double checking everything, making sure it’s all ready to go.”

Ready to go.
Dammit, they must have gotten new keycard somehow. “When do you finish your cleaning?”

Lil shifted beside her impatiently.

“I’ve got a long shift today,” Joey said. “I don’t get done ‘til midnight.”

“What happens then?” It was a question too far—she knew it and Joey knew it. Lil dropped her arms and glanced between the two of them, like she was aware she was missing something.

Joey rearranged green and red spray bottles on the cart. “Got a little party planned. If you’re interested, my friends and I are meeting in the employee parking garage.” Joey pushed the cart away, not waiting to hear her response.

“Are you flirting with the staff?” Lil’s voice was incredulous.

It was Lucy’s turn to not respond. She pushed the women’s bathroom door open and fumbled into a stall. Gino and Joey must have a card if they were going to hit the gem collection at midnight. Holy Hell. Lucy shimmied her pants down, sat on the toilet.

She studied her hands, one manicured with smudged white tips, the other with ragged nails and the bizzaro stamp. Neither hand felt like it belonged to her. What should she do? She couldn’t let Joey steal from Alec. How could she get Joey to leave with her before Gino pulled the job at midnight? She didn’t even know what time it was now.

While she washed her hands, she thought hard. “What time is it?” she asked Lil.

Lil pushed at her ear and said something to somebody else. Interesting. Lucy hadn’t noticed the tiny mic/com in her ear earlier.

“Ten o’clock,” Lil said.

Lucy dried her hands. Maybe she could do something to break the thumb access and foul up their entry, set off the alarms when they tried to enter. But then Joey would go to prison. She couldn’t be the one to throw the pitch on his third strike.

Lucy swallowed hard. She had been drying her hands for too long. Lil was staring at her like she was a nut. Little did she know.

“Let’s go see those jewels.” Lucy smiled, overly bright.

Inside the vault, Lil locked the steel door. Bolts engaged and electronics and metal swished closed. When they were alone, Lil took a deep breath and released it slowly. Her brawny frame seemed to deflate with released tension.

“You like it in here?” Lucy stepped to the first case. A gold breastplate studded in colorful jewels rested against black velvet. It had to be Mayan with the crude studding on the edges. The next case held a 15
^th
century Venetian diamond necklace.

“I like it that you’re safe in here.” Lil sat on the second step leading to the balcony.

Lucy’s head buzzed with frustration. Enough with all the innuendos.

“Truth time.” Lucy stopped in front of her. “Why are you wearing a sword? Why do you think I’m not safe out there? What is this thing on my hand?” She turned her wrist in case Lil had forgotten the stamp.

Lil smiled a genuine smile. It softened her features and made her appear like she could be someone’s friend. “You’ll have to ask Mr. Gerald those questions. He’ll be here soon.”

Lucy gritted her teeth. Lil’s response only made Lucy more determined. She was programmed for the ready response of Google, not slow microfiche basement searches. “Am I really in danger?”

“I believe you are.”

“Why?”

“Mother Superior is jumping the gun.” Lil smiled at pun. “I like the Beatles too.”

Lucy put her hands on her hips, but couldn’t help a smile. “Are you calling me a nun?”

“Happiness is a warm gun.” Lil held up her hands. The gesture would have been playful, if it hadn’t made the vein on her bicep bulge and the sword scrape across the stair.

“That doesn’t tell me why you’re carrying a sword—a real sword. I know my metals. That is non-alloyed steel. That sword is old. Very old.”

“Lucy, let it go. I can’t tell you more than I have.”

The door beeped. Someone was entering the exhibit.

Lil jumped up, pulled her broadsword, and pushed Lucy behind her. They stood for the space of several seconds while the bolts disengaged and the door slid wide.

Gino ran through the gap, carrying a wicked-looking curved blade. At his feet, the two exhibit guards lay unconscious, bleeding.

“Gino!” Lucy yelled, aghast to see him. “What are you doing here?”

“You know Ambrogino?” Lil cast a shocked look back and forth between the two of them.

“No. Yes…” Lucy fumbled her response. “He’s bad.” It was a silly statement, but it covered the basics.

“You don’t say.” Lil opened a storage door under the balcony stair and pushed Lucy inside. “Stay there.”

Lucy crouched in the dark space with her knees to her chest. She should be out there, telling Gino to back off, leave them alone. Tell him she wasn’t going along with his plans anymore. She peeked through the crack in the door. Lil approached Gino and said something in the strange language, but Gino backhanded her, knocking her to the ground.

“Lil!” Lucy opened the door and stepped out. This was all her fault. She shifted from right to left foot, trying to override her desire to get back under the stairs and hide.

Gino laughed. Suddenly, he changed into one of the theater beasts. A brown dragon with red lining its eyes, tail ridge, and wing tips. Spiraled horns grew from its head and fangs protruded from its mouth. Lil jumped to her feet and swung her sword at the creature.

A dragon? In here? Lucy’s body trembled, her breathing grew ragged, and her eyes couldn’t accept what see was seeing. Had Gino somehow joined the Cirque du Soleil show? Her mind skipped over the unbelievable data.

The brown dragon flew a figure-eight pattern near the rafters and roared so loudly, the glass of the jewel cases rattled. Lucy’s heart jumped a beat and her palms left sweat marks on the front of her pants. This was crazy.

Lil jumped on a glass case and swung her sword into the belly of the dragon. Ice seemed to come out of the end of her sword. She was good, like Bruce Lee with a blond braid.

The dragon roared. Blood gurgled off its chest, and it screeched and landed on the ground. It stretched its talons toward Lil, trying to grab her. When Lil swung upward with her sword, the dragon knocked her down. Her head hit the corner of a jewel case, and she crumpled to the floor, not moving.

Above them, the cloth draping on the ceiling burst into flames and fell to the floor.

Heat gusted over her face, tightening the skin. It was a real fire.

Holy Mary, Joseph, and Peter.

The dragon picked up Lil in his claws and shook her like a rag doll. Still Lil did not move. This was too much. Smoke hit Lucy in the face and she coughed.

“Hey, stop this!”

The dragon pivoted his head. It dropped Lil to the ground and trudged toward Lucy. Its spiked tail swung behind it like some crazy dinosaur animation. Jewelry cases shattered into piles of glass and steel.

“That’s enough!” Lucy yelled. Flaming curtains and brocade paper crashed to the ground. Ceiling sprinklers turned on and water poured from the ceiling like a torrential storm.

The dragon stopped a few feet from her. Its lips pulled back to show yellow fangs and black gums dripping with saliva. It inhaled deeply and then blew out, coating her in a foul liquid that smelled like rotten eggs and stale smoke.

The steel door beeped and swished open. Alec and a small army of black-clothed guards rushed inside.

“Lucy!” Alec called.

Lucy wiped water from her eyes and stared at the brown dragon, disbelief paralyzing her.

The dragon opened his mouth and lunged at her. His teeth sunk into her shoulder and he lifted her off the ground. Pain exploded through her body. She saw Alec’s furious face before the floor slammed into her body.

A bigger black dragon came out of nowhere, pinned the brown dragon to the floor, and shook him by the neck. Lucy was so close, she could see the half-circle shaped scales of the black dragon flexing. The brown dragon shrieked, but the black dragon held on, squeezing the other dragon’s throat until it stopped moving.

The brown dragon’s head thudded to the floor next to her. Its pupils dilated to the edges of pink irises and took on the unmistakable mask of death.

This was too
real
to be fake.

Lucy pushed herself up on her arms and looked around the destroyed room. Her shoulder throbbed. She was hurt. Really hurt. Smoke trailed upward from charred fabric and material, gone soggy with the sprinkler water. Priceless jewels scattered on the floor.

Lil was unconscious.

Could they be real dragons?

She stared at the black dragon. Her mouth opened and closed, but no words came out. The dragon walked forward on all fours, watching her. In a shimmer, he changed into a man.

Alec.

One minute it was a dragon, the next minute it was Alec. Beside her, the brown dragon shrank and turned into a bloodied man.

Gino. Dead.

She scooted to the edge of the stairs.

Alec stepped toward her as if he approached an injured animal, uncertain if she would bolt. His hand reached for her, palm up. She remembered him touching her in a caress. It was the same hand, the same man.