Mercy Burns (Myth and Magic 2)

Though there was little emotion in her voice, it still sent a shiver down my spine. Those men were not long for the world if this sea dragon had anything to do with it.

And while I hadn’t actually saved them from Damon just so they could face this woman’s wrath, part of me could understand her need for revenge. If anything happened to my brother, I’d shift heaven and hell to find those responsible.

Heck, I was doing that now for Rainey.

The front door of the house opened and Damon appeared. Coral spun, her hand raised and the sensation of power suddenly surging across the night.

“No,” I said quickly. “He’s with me.”

She glanced at me, then lowered her hand. The energy died, and with it went the water that had been jetting through the roof. The guard fell with a scream that ended abruptly as his body snagged on one of the jagged rafters, hanging there like a limp piece of meat.

I tore my gaze away, trying to remember that these men really deserved what they got.

Damon walked toward us, his gaze on me rather than the woman kneeling in the grass. His clothes were wet but otherwise he seemed okay. Some of the tension still filling me slithered away—but not all of it. We still had to get out of here before the cops arrived.

“You okay?” he asked, his nostrils flaring as his dark gaze swept me.

“Yeah.” There was blood running down the inside of my sweatshirt, but only a trickle, so obviously I had just been grazed. “We’d better get out of here.”

“I can’t,” Coral said, and pulled down her turtleneck. Around her neck was a band of leather, to which a small black box had been attached. “I’m wired. I can feel the thing now—it’s like a dull fire waiting to explode into my brain. If I get any closer to the boundary, it’ll set this thing off. And it’ll kill me if I go past it.”

“Then we need to remove it,” Damon said, stopping just behind her.

She was shaking her head even before he’d finished.

“I tried that. Unless you’ve got the proper key, the thing just goes off.”

Damon frowned. “Do you know what sort of signal it is?”

“No, but the radius is a quarter of an acre, which is the size of this property, if that’s any help.”

“Maybe.” He glanced at me. “Meet us in the parking lot near the Bodega Bay marina. There are two, so look for the one with the RVs parked in the lot. It’s right near the beach off Highway One, so you shouldn’t have any trouble finding it.”

“The car is stolen,” I reminded him, crossing my arms and wondering what the hell he was up to now. “And the owners will probably be noticing its absence.”

“So steal another.”

He said that just like my brother would have. But then, a cavalier attitude toward other people’s property did seem to infect the dragon population. Even draman weren’t immune to it. “Why would I need to? Where are you going?”

“Most of these devices have a horizontal rather than vertical boundary. Rather than trying to break the lock, I think I should just fly her straight up and unlock it once we’re free.”

“You’re going to change form in the middle of a suburban street?” And he thought I was crazy?

“We have little choice.” He glanced at Coral. “It’s your neck. Are you willing to take the risk?”

She took a deep breath then released it slowly. “I need to get to Angus before dawn, so yes.”

“And you need to answer some questions first,” Damon said, then glanced over his shoulder as the wail of sirens began to shatter the silence. “You’d better go, Mercy.”

I didn’t move. “You’ll wait for me there?”

He hesitated, obviously knowing that I was referring to his questioning Coral, then nodded.

Something inside me relaxed a little. At least he was making an effort to treat me as a partner some of the time. As the blue fire began to crawl across his skin, I turned and walked across to the car. The curtains in the house opposite twitched—an obvious sign we were being watched. While the trees hid some of his shape-shift, there was little hiding the explosion of air as he launched skyward. But he was a black dragon surrounded by night, and I doubted the eyes of an old woman would even be able to see him.

And even if she could, who would actually believe her?

I climbed into the car and drove off. I was barely two blocks down the road when a police car screamed past, its flashing lights almost blinding in the darkness. While I knew Damon and Coral had already left, it didn’t stop the tension crawling through me. Luck really hadn’t been in our corner, and while the old woman probably hadn’t seen Damon clearly, she would have been able to see me.