14. Chapter 14
Izzy looked away from the message on her laptop screen, but the words kept staring at her, mocking her until they clouded her sight.
A chill ran down her body. She grabbed her aching stomach, and her mind jumped to the Archfiend’s malicious grin—the same expression that had twisted Darcy’s face at the hospital.
“Make it stop.” She stumbled out of her chair and turned her back to the alarming sound her laptop was making. “Just make it stop.”
Daxton and Simon spoke behind her, but human emotions crushed her from all sides like dark walls.
The familiarity of Fotios’s doctrine sat heavy in her heart.
The threat accompanying them was too much to bear.
The Archfiend had been close enough to sabotage her laptop. What else did he have planned?
She couldn’t breathe. The fear shoved her closer to the cracked edge in her psyche. The one where delusions and memories ran wild, and one such memory pulled her under.
“Try it again,” Fotios said in Ancient Greek, limping across the training area from Izzy, one knee bent and arms up.
Her heart squeezed as he couldn’t place his foot down without wincing. Izzy wiped a palm across her damp forehead as she walked around him in the dirt of the courtyard, ready for his next attack. “Can’t we take a break? You’re injured.”
“Do you think a Persian would give me a break?” He sent a jab toward her forehead. She dodged left. “You know by now—”
“Humanity is the hurdle to reaching strength.” She tried to blank out her concern, but it raged inside her. “Come on. I can defend myself. I’d rather learn more about your theory of Fallen energy being in other humans.”
His hands dropped. “Remnants.”
“Right. Tell me more.”
His mouth twitched, jaw tightening and…
He schooled his face, concealing whatever had just surfaced. She’d once been able to read complete thoughts from his expression, but he was a blank canvas to her now. Her stomach twisted. What was he hiding?
Hands grabbed her shoulders. Warmth spread. Walls receded. Eyesight cleared.
Daxton.
“Take a deep breath,” he said.
She did. And repeated until air circulated again through her burning lungs, and she could push away the memory. Daxton rubbed soothing circles on her back. It took a moment, but her tense muscles loosened under his gentle touch.
“It’s okay,” he whispered. “We stopped it. Come sit back down.”
He led her back to her chair, and the closed laptop, void of sound, sat in the chair next to Daxton.
“I’m back,” Daxton said toward his phone.
“You’ll need to send that to me as soon as possible,” Simon said. “If that was a bug, I don’t know how it got on there since the laptop has been on airplane mode.”
The logical move was to ignore the fear of Daxton asking questions and send the laptop straight to Simon, so she concentrated on the laptop.
Drawing the energy from her Fallen wings, she pushed the laptop through space straight to Simon using a miracle.
The laptop disappeared. Something pricked her spine, and she acted as if she were itching her back to crush the fragile feather into dust behind her.
The loss weighed on her mind. She may have just hunted with Thea, but she only had twenty-three left.
“I received it, Izzy,” Simon said.
“What did you—” Daxton jumped in his seat. “The laptop’s gone. How did you do that?”
“It’s an ability I have,” she answered absentmindedly, hoping he’d drop it.
“Did that quote mean something to you?” Simon asked.
“It’s from the Archfiend, I think.” Her voice sounded far away.
“How do you know?” Daxton asked.
“The quote is dear to my past.” He must have known Fotios.
“Can you find where the code came from?” Daxton asked.
“I’ll do my best, but it might take time,” Simon said.
“Is this his first move?”
Her mouth dried. She wanted to scrunch up into a protective ball.
“Izzy?” Daxton asked.
“At the hospital.” She swallowed and rubbed her hand across her wet forehead. “Darcy tried to kill me.”
“Bloody hell!?” Simon said. “Are you okay? I mean, I knew you weren’t close, but she’s your mum.”
The attempted murder stabbed at her insides, pushing her toward the darkness again.
Darcy was a cold mother, but Izzy never thought her capable of murdering her own daughter.
The person who was supposed to love her the most was the one who tried to take her life.
That pain and loneliness did nothing for her, so she kicked it to the back of her brain. “I’m fine.”
The air vibrated with dangerous energy, and the hair on her neck rose. Daxton’s torso flexed under his tight pullover, muscles rippling with barely suppressed power. His face was sealed in remote tension. Gnashing dragon teeth imprinted along the link. And pain.
“Daxton?” she asked.
“I shouldn’t have left the room.”
The grit in his voice pulled at her long-locked caring nature. “You didn’t know.”
“Don’t defend me.”
Her back bristled. “I took care of it.”
Simon snapped, “You also failed to tell anyone about it.”
Because it hurts to talk about it. “I’m telling you now.”
Simon sighed. “I thought Darcy was acting fishy. Kept calling and asking me where you were. I didn’t expect her to find you that fast. She must have searched every hospital.”
“An Archfiend’s puppet will.” Daxton jerked his hand over his short hair, his body still tense. “They’ll obsess over a thought until they complete it. I’ll get surveillance on her. See if the Archfiend pays her a visit. Hopefully, we can track this thing down.”
Izzy wiped her sweaty palms against her pants. “How many friends do you have?”
“Enough. Afterward, we will rehabilitate her until the manipulation wears off. She won’t get to you.”
Tension eased from her shoulders. “We call it Influence.”
“Influence, then. Can the Archfiend track the laptop?”
“Not with it in airplane mode,” Simon said. “Whoever put the code probably set it off on a timer. It’s safe now. I’m sorry, Izzy.”
She stared out the window, feeling as far from the Earth as the plane was.
“We’ll talk soon.” Daxton hung up the line. “Are you all right?”
She closed her eyes, trying to force down the anger and helplessness his question provoked. Had she not been so emotional, she would have told them about the attack. She would have handled this situation in a more logical way. “Tell me something to distract me.”
He sat back with a sigh. “Some people call me the Wandering Cannon.”
“Go on.”
“It’s hard to behave when your dragon considers itself more dominant than others, so I acted out.
A lot.” He chuckled, rubbing the back of his red neck.
“I’d scare Native Americans in dragon form or use gunpowder to fish.
Keiran, our Centurion, had his hands full with me, especially after my Maternal passed away.
We’re raised by a Maternal or Paternal dragon since our kind is stretched thin hunting Tattered Ones. ”
She couldn’t help but stare at him like one of her books, and she leaned closer with every word.
“Keiran made me run errands, wasting energy so I wouldn’t be a nuisance, though most of the time I got into more trouble. My behavior worsened enough that Keiran sent me across the United States so other chiefs could try their hands at disciplining me.”
Izzy followed Daxton’s gaze as it dipped to her hair dangling over her shoulder.
Tendrils of yearning escaped around her barrier along the link.
Daxton reached forward, and the thread of longing for his touch within herself was too hard to resist, so she allowed him to wrap his hand in her scarf, then grab a strand of her hair.
As he rubbed the strands between his thumb and finger, it tugged and tickled her scalp.
Izzy fidgeted with her glasses and looked at his chest, his face—anywhere but at his fingers. His breath tickled her cheek as he continued his story.
“…been to all fifty states more times than I can count. That’s why I’m friends with a lot of Rogues. I ran away a lot, and I’d stumble upon them. It’s like I couldn’t help but want to be around other dragons.”
His spicy aroma and presence enveloped her. The dragon stood at her shield, its warmth making the hair on her neck stand on end. She craved stories, and one from a dragon was unique. Her mind absorbed his words, cautiously venturing into the web he spun.
What would happen if he leaned closer? Their faces would close in, and if she angled her head…
Her attention slipped to his lush lips, watching him speak. She forced herself to meet his gaze and pushed the sensual thoughts from her mind the best she could.
“Anyway, because of my past connections, I’ve been able to build my company effectively,” he said.
“Were there any women?” she asked.
He paused as if reading into her words.
Heat rose to her cheeks. He cocked his head with a grin, and her breath caught.
He said, “We’re not a partnering group. We keep to ourselves. A life like ours is dangerous and busy, so having relationships can be a burden. But when we mature, we are prone to experiment.”
As attractive as Daxton was, she was sure he experimented without issue. But the thought of him with other women sat heavy in her stomach. “When do you reach maturity?”
“We mature more slowly than humans, typically between the ages of thirty and thirty-five.”
“It’s common for species with longer life spans to reach adulthood later. Is it true that dragon women only go into heat, or what I assume is their ovulation period, every five years?”
Cornelius had complained about how long it took between heat cycles. He’d enjoyed the dragon Dance, when males fought to get into the running for a female’s breeding choice.
“Yes, it makes it hard to reproduce.” He sounded solemn.
Were their pregnancies longer than a human’s?
Were their babies born dragon or human? Was it a live birth or with eggs hatched?
So many questions burned in her mind. But the insistent nagging to learn about him yelled louder.
“So, do you still experiment…sexually, I mean?” She fidgeted in her seat in disbelief she asked that.