At length, the dragon opened its mouth, and Olaf reached both gauntleted hands into the heated maw to retrieve the mould. He thrust it into some other chamber with an oven-like door and set a timer. And as he turned, the ground trembled and the dragon settled back into the still, silent lines of a creature of metal.
“Olaf, what the fuck, man? You’ve got a dragon down here?” asked Mick, climbing to his feet and offering a hand to Sophie.
The dwarf smiled, his teeth very white in the black of his close-cropped beard. “Not a dragon,” he corrected. “A drakyn forge. Imbued with dragon magic.”
“Where the hell did you get your hands on one of those? The drakyn haven’t been seen in more than a century.”
“Exactly,” said Olaf. “And they left all kinds of fun stuff behind in their lairs.”
“So . . . did it work?” asked Sophie.
“We’ll know in about half an hour. For now, we wait. Anybody want a beer?”
Chapter 6
“—and the pointy eared bastard didn’t realize what he had in his hands was a fake!”
Sophie studiously pretended she wasn’t hearing blatant admission of law-breaking and pulled the phone out of her pocket to check the signal for the tenth time. Three bars. She’d given up on her own phone after the latest irate text from her handler. The likelihood that she’d still have a job after this—assuming she lived—was starting to look like the odds of surviving the sinking of the Titanic. Miniscule
The kidnapper hadn’t called yet, and the counterfeit Eye wasn’t done in the, well, whatever contraption it was in. The whole forging process had taken two hours so far, and the waiting was killing her. They were running out of time.
Tap, tap, tap the phone against her leg.
“So Sophie,” said Olaf, turning his attention toward her. “What is it you do?”
Tap, tap, tap. She grimaced. “Well, up until today, I was an IED agent.”
The dwarf’s smile faded, and he grabbed a fistful of Mick’s shirt. “You bring me a mole, Guidry?”
“I’ve got no intention of turning you in for your activities,” said Sophie. “Of the two of us, I’ll be much higher on the Council’s shit list after tonight.” Tap, tap, tap. “If I survive ’til morning, I’ll probably be executed, so taking anybody else down with me is really not on my priority list.”
“Over my dead body,” growled Mick.
The sheer possession in his voice left her breathless and confused. She’d wondered before what it took to become a part of his Pack. Apparently she’d made the cut.
Before she could respond, the phone in her hand began to vibrate. Her fingers fumbled and dropped it onto the floor, where it skittered and bounced beneath one of the low work-tables. Sophie yelped and started to dive for it, but Olaf bent calmly and fished the phone out from under the table. Both eyebrows were raised as she snatched it from his hand and answered.
“Hello?”
“Took a while to answer there, Sophie. Haven’t run into any trouble, have we?”
Though her hand shook, her voice was steady and cool. “Nothing I couldn’t handle.”
“You have the Eye, then?” She still couldn’t detect any identifiable cadence or accent to the electronically distorted voice.
“I do.”
“Excellent.”
“I want proof of life,” she said.
“I’m afraid Liza is . . . indisposed, at the moment,” drawled the voice.
“I want proof of life, you son of a bitch, or we have no deal,” she snarled.
Mick’s hand settled on her shoulder and rubbed at the tension there. She found herself leaning into him, lifting her free hand until he covered it with his own, giving her strength.
“You don’t seem to understand how this works, Sophie. You have no room to negotiate or bargain. I have your sister, and if you want her back in any condition at all, you will bring the Eye to this address.”