The Witch Thief (Harlequin Nocturne) (8 page)

Where would she like to go?

* * *

Joarr stepped through the portal alone. It opened onto a dark street lined with blinking neon signs that advertised cheap rooms and all-nude dancers. The temperature was cool but not cold, and the pavement beneath his feet was wet.

Could be any number of worlds or in-between places. But something fairly well populated.

He sniffed the air. The distinct scent of human came back to him.

Interesting. He had been to the human world only a few months earlier, but aside from that it wasn’t a place he’d visited much. There really wasn’t much here for a dragon. Actually, the place made him uncomfortable. It was the only one of the nine worlds where he was expected to hide his powers. It was a bit of an unspoken law—hiding from humans the existence of the other eight worlds and the beings that populated them.

He found it tiresome.

With a resolved sigh, he stepped onto the sidewalk and leaned against a deserted brick building. If Amma was going to follow, she would be along soon.

If she wasn’t… He twisted his lips to the side. Where would she go? And did it matter? As he’d admitted to himself earlier, he didn’t need her, not with someone offering to hand over the chalice. But he’d gone to so much trouble to catch her, letting her go had seemed wrong.

Something gouged into his back—a rock that had been embedded in the concrete to add decoration to the building. He adjusted his stance and resisted the urge to calculate how long he had been waiting.

If she came through the portal, would that mean he should trust her, or question her motives all the more?

Something flickered, a flash in the darkness and a faint whirring noise. The portal, surely.

Joarr tensed but didn’t move. He didn’t want the witch to think he was eager to see her—but he was. With that disturbing realization weighing on him, he waited for Amma to appear.

Someone short and dressed in black stepped into the street. Glancing from side to side, scanning the area for something or someone, the being stepped forward. A neon sign that had previously seemed dead flashed to life, catching the all-too-clear profile of a dwarf in its glow.

A trap. The witch had tricked him.

* * *

Amma stepped through the portal. She hoped she’d made the right decision. She had waited until it was almost too late, until two elves had approached and asked for passage. The garm had given her a now-or-never look, forcing her to stop thinking and just move.

As her foot landed on wet pavement, something hit her from the side, knocking her to her knees. She cursed and pulled the tiny reserve of power she’d gathered into her hands. Arms wrapped around her, shoving her to the ground. A hand covered her mouth. She cursed again, then unwilling to let go of her magic until absolutely necessary, she found bare skin and bit down.

Joarr hissed against her ear. “Surely you can do better than that. Call off your partners or I’ll blow an arctic wind through your skull.”

She twisted her head to the side, pulling her face free from the dragon’s now-bleeding palm. His blood clung, thick and warm, to her lips. She rubbed her mouth across her shoulder. “What is wrong with you? I thought you wanted me to follow you. Is this how you make it worth my while?”

“Don’t play games. You fooled me once—you won’t again.”

Something whizzed overhead.

His hand on the back of her neck now, he shoved her lower. “I don’t know what deal you’ve made, who you are working with or why, but you might want to rethink your partnership. They seem as willing to take you out as me.”

“Maybe because I have no partners.” She flung back an elbow, hitting Joarr in the gut. “I’m here of my own free will, to work with you…for pay.”

He raised his head. Cold air flowed from his mouth and with it, balls of ice that smacked into a metal trash can a few feet away.

Three bodies rushed forward. They were short and dressed in black and in their hands were axes and swords.

“Dwarves,” she muttered.

“Yes, dwarves. What else?” His hand moved to her back and with a hard thrust pushed her flat on the ground. Above her she heard a roar, then crackles. The temperature soared. A few feet away there were screams. Then the unmistakable stench of burning flesh. The dwarves were toast.

She pressed her palms onto the pavement and pushed herself up. Joarr didn’t stop her.

But once she was on her feet he watched her. Suspicion shone from his eyes.

“Why should I trust you?” he asked.

Her shirt and skirt were wet. The thin cotton of her blouse clung to her breasts and tiny bits of gravel had embedded themselves into her skin. She brushed her hands over her body, knocking as many free as she could and then stared at him. “I can leave.”

“Yes, you can. So, why are you here? What do you hope to gain?”

She gritted her teeth. He said he wanted her to follow him, then when she did… She turned on her heel and started to walk away.

He grabbed her by the arm and twirled her back around. “Talk to me.”

His voice was at least low now, encouraging rather than demanding.

She swallowed. She wouldn’t tell him the truth, that she wasn’t sure why she had followed him, or even a partial truth, that she wanted the chalice for herself. Instead she’d stick with the lie she’d concocted at the bar.

“You said you’d make it worth my while. I’ve been locked out of my body for one hundred years. Anything I had is long gone. I have nothing.”

“What about your home?” He’d moved to the side. His face was lost in shadows, but his tone sounded concerned. It stopped her for a moment, made her wonder again if she should have run.

“I don’t have a home. I never did. I just stayed with one sister or the other, and only one of them had a real home. The other roamed, and not to nice places.”

“The witch with the hellhounds, the one that is missing.”

She nodded. “With her gone…” She let her words drift away. Her position was evident and what she had said was horribly true. She had nowhere to go. Wherever she went from here, wherever she wound up calling home now, would have to be of her own creation. She dropped her gaze. She hadn’t considered her situation before, not really.

She had no one and nowhere to go.

Joarr sniffed the air. “Humans,” he announced. “Have you been here before?” He moved out of the shadows; the fingers of one hand twisted the manacle that still hung from his other wrist.

Amma let out a breath. “When you—” She motioned with her hand. Joarr and his hellhound friend had captured her in the human world.

“Before that.”

“Do you mean, is this where I sold the chalice?” She shook her head. “No, I went to Nidavellir.” The underground world of the dwarves. She had expected to hate the land, but to her surprise, the small, twisting tunnels had made her feel safe, perhaps even bold. “A cave, far underground. It wasn’t exactly on the main path. Wasn’t a place I could find again.”

“You went by portal?” he asked.

She ran her hands up her arms and nodded. “But like our trip here, it was prepaid and I wasn’t given a location. I could just tell it was somewhere in Nidavellir.” The land of the dwarves was hard to mistake for any other place.

Joarr’s gaze flickered and he stepped closer. He looked as if he was about to say something.

A man half of Joarr’s height, dressed in stained sweats and reeking of grain alcohol, staggered past.

He brushed against Joarr. The dragon grabbed Amma and pulled her tight against him.

As the man continued on his drunken wanderings, Amma looked up. Her tone dry, she said, “How gallant.”

Joarr squeezed her upper arm. “I could call him back if you like.” When she didn’t reply, he said, “So, I’m preferable to something.”

“Not much,” she murmured, but low. She wanted him to hear, wanted herself to hear, too—needed to remind herself that she and Joarr weren’t on the same side. No one was on her side, no one ever had been, not really.

Joarr smiled and his fingers danced across her middle. Her loose top slipped up, and his fingers found the bare skin revealed there. She shivered. He leaned down and whispered in her ear. “Oh, I think you find me preferable to many things. Perhaps we should find a room and discuss just how many.”

* * *

Amma flicked a cigarette butt off the stained bedcover and into the equally stained wall. The room Joarr had booked for the night defined the human term
seedy.
In fact she was positive all things vile were growing in the carpet.

The dragon, however, seemed impervious to it all.

She slanted her eyes toward him. He was lying on the bed next to her, a soda can balanced on his table-flat stomach and the TV remote in his hand.

After his less-than-veiled comments at the portal, she had really thought he had something more exciting planned than this.

Not that she would have agreed to anything…personal…but this… His unexplainable fascination with a documentary on the sinking of some city in Jamaica almost two hundred years earlier was just insulting.

As the camera panned over a pile of riches pulled out from under the sea, Joarr shook his head and murmured to himself. Amma threw herself back against the disgusting motel-supplied pillow with a huff.

“What are we waiting on?” she asked, lifting her hand. The manacle still shone back at her; she twirled it around and around. She was beginning to like it. Although she could do without the extra length of chain.

Without removing his gaze from the television, Joarr replied, “For something to happen.”

She dropped her free arm over her forehead and stared at the ceiling. She wasn’t good at waiting. “Of course,” she murmured to herself.

There was noise outside the door. Someone was leaning against it.

Joarr turned to glance at her, his eyes bright in his face, telling her to be quiet. He leaped up, his feet landing on the indoor/outdoor carpet with just a whisper of sound.

Something white appeared in the gap between the door and the jamb. Joarr waited, tense. Then suddenly he was gone. One second he was Joarr the man, broad-shouldered and sexy in his all-white outfit, the next he was a dragon. His scales shone silver so bright Amma could see the dingy room reflected off them. He raised his wings, cutting her off from the room’s entrance. To stop her escape, she thought at first, but when he kept his gaze on the door, she realized instead he was protecting her, shielding her like he had in the cavern. Of course then he had caused her sphere to shatter, to spray its magic over them.

Magic. Late, but not too late, she remembered the magic. Power still hung in the room, like smoke in a bar. With Joarr’s attention on the door, she began pulling it in. She had just started to feel rejuvenated when he changed again, picked something up from the floor and turned back to her. Her face innocent and expectant, she redoubled her efforts while taking care to target only the magic that floated freely, to not draw any directly from the male in front of her. He didn’t seem to notice; he was too focused on the sheet of paper in his hand.