Chapter Sixteen #2
“Look at your smile,” Angela said softly.
I probably was smiling at the thought of Remy wearing a flower necklace over his now-soaked Brioni suit. This Remy seemed a thousand miles away from the terrifying one who’d yanked carnivorous ghosts from his chest a couple nights ago.
“I’m happy,” I said, slightly stunned to realize that, in this brief moment, it was true.
Angela smiled, too, but she couldn’t stop the slight shake of her head. “I’m glad. But still, be careful, Raine.”
I took her hand. “I will.”
She gave me a light squeeze, and then let go. “I’ll be right back. Have to find the ladies’ room. All that champagne is kicking in.”
“I’ll go with you,” I offered.
She shooed me back with a smile. “Stay. That leggy brunette found you, anyway.”
I turned. Through the line of trees, I saw Zenobia headed for me, her smile so sweet it practically dripped saccharin.
“Raine! I’d hoped to steal a moment alone with you.”
Angela left with an encouraging go get ’em look.
I pasted a smile onto my face. One happy girlfriend act, back in place. “Zenobia. How lovely to see you again.”
Zenobia’s smile didn’t slip until she was safely behind the screen of thin, leafy trees. Then it fell like a dropped anvil.
“What have you done to Remy?”
My own smile froze. “What do you mean?”
“The Met. Lorelei. That dress.” Each word bulleted past her red lips. “In the past three days, Remy has yanked deadly spirits from his chest, shrunk a siren’s head, and gowned you like Tuatha Dé Danann royalty. Remy never flaunts his power in public this way. It has to be something you did.”
Ah, she was one of those nosy relatives. And if I hadn’t already guessed that she wasn’t human, this proved it. Zenobia knew things that none of his regular family did. Was she a siren? She was certainly beautiful enough.
“It’s really not. Our lives were in danger at the theater, Lorelei set me up to drown, and I brought the wrong dress for this party, so Remy fixed that.”
“There’s more to it,” she said in a hiss that made me wonder if she was a Basilisk instead. “Remy could have handled all that without revealing such abilities. Again, I say, why?”
Weren’t Remy’s abilities well-known in the non-human world? He’d told me that Wardens were more powerful than sorcerers. But maybe some of his abilities weren’t common knowledge?
“You’ll have to ask Remy,” I responded.
No way was I going to volunteer that the Beast had meant the concert incident required drastic, immediate action. Nothing less would have caused the Beast to stand down. As far as Lorelei and this dress … well, both had seemed easy for Remy.
Were they not supposed to be?
Zenobia stared at me. “You’re hiding something. I will find out what it is.”
“What you see is what you get,” I replied, spreading my arms for effect. “Sorry if you disapprove of Remy’s actions or of me, but that’s not my problem.”
Her dark blue gaze frosted over. “Don’t make an enemy of me, girl.”
“Back at you,” I replied before I could stop myself.
Zenobia smiled in a way that promised blood.
The Beast woke all the way up. My vision changed, showing red haloing Zenobia with what looked like a huge pair of wings. The blue sky abruptly filled with pitch-colored clouds.
I blinked. Was that really happening? Or was it something supernatural that the Beast saw?
Thunder shook the ground with the force of a tank rolling by.
Parents immediately began to get their kids out of the pool.
Oh yeah, that was definitely real. So were those new dark clouds blocking out all hints of blue in the sky above our part of the atrium.
Another clap of thunder had the party guests streaming past us for the safety of the hotel’s interior.
Zenobia didn’t move. Neither did I. The area around her darkened, too. Soon, all I could see was the glowing, bloodred color of Zenobia’s aura, shaped like a pair of huge wings.
The Beast snarled. I choked back the sound with a very feminine-sounding gasp. Not now, for fuck’s sake!
Zenobia’s scarlet wings snapped out further. All at once, I was shoved back by what felt like a huge wall. My ass hit the ground, and I felt more than saw all the trees around us crash down, too. A strong, spicy scent suddenly burned my nose.
The Beast tore at me. I fought it with rising panic.
Not with Angela this close by!
Those red wings shot up into the sky. Metal screeched and wind punched me in a downdraft. With another snap, those wings rose even higher. Their glow was all I could see. The rest of Zenobia had been swallowed by those stygian clouds.
Remy was suddenly there, pulling me back onto my feet. I didn’t look at him. I was still staring at the sky. I couldn’t see the winglike glow from Zenobia’s aura anymore, and the Beast liked that. It stopped tearing at me, but I could still smell that sharp scent. Like cayenne mixed with ozone.
“Raine!” Remy gave me a light shake. “Are you hurt?”
“No,” I breathed out, watching as those dark clouds vanished, replaced by normal, grayish wisps in the now-blue sky.
The Beast sank back down completely.
Remy gave a single, incensed look at the sky. “She’ll pay for such rudeness.”
Several hotel attendants rushed over, looking at the destroyed, flattened trees around us in shock.
“A rogue downburst,” Remy said with crisp authority. “Storms today are so unpredictable. Let’s get this cleaned up.”
They hurried to clear away the mess while Remy turned toward the guests who had started to come toward us.
“Everything’s fine,” he said in a gentler tone. “Just a summer squall making a mess. We shan’t let it spoil the day.”
The guests murmured their agreement. Everyone had run into the hotel during that reverberating thunder, and I’d chosen my former spot because of its privacy, so none of them had seen what really happened.
But I had, and I glanced at the bent and misshapen atrium beams above us with a shudder.
Zenobia hadn’t just knocked me on my ass. She’d bent actual steel.
How? Only one answer made sense. Zenobia had transformed into something else within that dark, impenetrable cloud. Something huge, winged, and very, very powerful.
“Are you truly okay?” Remy asked, low.
I finally gave him my full attention. “Not really. Zenobia wanted to send me an explicit message that she disapproved of me as your girlfriend. Got any idea why?”
Remy ground his teeth. “Yes. Zenobia is my former lover.”
I laughed again, a lot harsher this time. I should’ve known. Not only was Zenobia breathtakingly beautiful, she had also been a lot nastier and nosier than the rest of his family.
“That’s not all she is, is it? She’s also a dragon.”
It felt ridiculous to say that word aloud. Still, I knew of only one huge, winged, powerful, flying mythological creature, even if part of me hoped that Remy would deny it.
He only gave another angry glance at the sky. “Yes.”
The first cluster of his family had almost reached us. I only had seconds to say the rest of what I’d learned.
“When she transformed, I recognized the scent. The other creature that tried to kill Brendan that day was a dragon.”