Charred Heart (#1, Heart of Fire) Page 5

  He instinctively glanced towards the door whenever someone new walked into the bar. He wasn’t sure why he expected to see her again, even knowing he’d moved the hangout spot across the country to try to prevent any of them being tracked.

  The men and women in the bar were uneasy, adding to his sense of foreboding.

  “They feel it,” Gunner said from beside him, untouched beer in hand.

  “Yeah,” Chace agreed. “Our next move might need to be around the world.”

  Gunner’s dark gaze flickered to him.

  “One every two or three days is disappearing,” said Luke, the burly, blond-haired phoenix shifter with a sharp eye and quick smile.

  Chace sipped his beer, eyes going to Max, who was eyeballing everyone who entered the bar. The restless bear of a man was even less friendly than usual, and Chace assessed it’d take all four of them to pull him off any stranger that walked through that door.

  Not that Chace wanted to pull him off any stranger.

  His one-night-stand hadn’t seemed like someone who could bring down a shifter. She hadn’t been armed, and yet, she had to have been part of the crew that was tracking down the members of his shifter family. It scared him to know she’d walked right into their midst and weaseled behind his defenses. He hadn’t taken a chance on sleeping with any woman since, and his temper was beginning to show it. Unlike Gunner, who was proudly chaste, Chace loved sleeping around.

  The bartender caught his eye and waved him over.

  “Be back,” he said, standing. Chace wove through the crowd. As the unspoken leader of the shifters, he felt the gazes of everyone on him and knew they were secretly imploring him to tell them about their danger.

  But he couldn’t, because he didn’t know. Besides, he never wanted to lead anyone. He wanted to be alone with his misery the rest of his life, however short he hoped it was.

  “This was left for you earlier today by a blonde chick,” the bartender said, handing him a familiar appointment card. “She said she had instructions that you weren’t supposed to get it before ten o’clock.”

  Chace snatched it, relieved Mr. Nothing didn’t bear a grudge for being stood up two weeks before. It was ten, and he frowned at the time marked on the card for their meeting.

  Ten minutes. Great.

  “Thanks,” he said to the bartender.

  He made his way back to his table but didn’t sit, instead holding up the card his friends were bound to recognize.

  “Mr. Nothing,” he said. “I’ll be back in a few.”

  “You want me to come?” Gunner asked, standing.

  “No, I’m good.”

  Chace didn’t wait for Gunner to reseat himself but turned away, striding out of the bar into the cool night.

  This time, they were in the northeastern part of the country, near the coast. The scent of the ocean was thick in the cold wind blowing off the Atlantic. Chace breathed in deeply, enjoying the flavorful smell and chill in the air. The moon hung low in the dark sky, lighting up the parking lot of the bar.

  He tucked his hands into his pockets and walked along the dirt road. They’d avoided their normal exits near the highways for the past two weeks, hoping to make it harder for their pursuers to track them. Five miles away was a sleepy coastal town, and the bar was between two farms.

  He walked for about five minutes then stopped. The wheat in one field was silver in the moonlight, rippling in the ocean breeze, while the fields of the other farm were barren and smelled of freshly turned dirt.

  The faint magic of a shifter reached him a moment before Mr. Nothing spoke.

  “I see you got the message this time.”

  “I did,” Chace replied, turning to face the mysterious shifter that had never been seen in his other form.

  Tall, slender and lean, Mr. Nothing had dark hair and eyes and wore all black – a turtleneck and slacks.

  “Your mind is set?” Mr. Nothing asked. “Nothing has altered your choice?”

  “No,” Chace said firmly.

  “Once made, this choice can’t be broken.”

  Chace said nothing at the reminder. His instincts – and his friends – were against what he chose to do. Tired of running, hiding and outliving everyone he cared about, he didn’t see any other choice. Besides, he couldn’t get over the idea that maybe he had been the one who drew those hunting down the shifters. As the oldest, he was the strongest, which meant his magic was probably a dead giveaway and pulling their hungers to them.

  “I was ready two weeks ago,” he answered.

  Mr. Nothing was quiet for a moment.

  “Release from the curse,” Chace said once more. “For all that is mine.” You’re definitely getting the short end of this stick.

  “As agreed.”

  “Let’s do this.”

  A shadow snaked away from Mr. Nothing and pooled at Chace’s feet before it began to swirl around him. He resisted the urge to shift and fly away, instead watching the shadow warily creep up his body. It didn’t touch him, yet he felt the chill of its nearness, a reminder he didn’t know what Mr. Nothing was or why he was so powerful.

  The shadow swirled around him until it reached his chest then paused over the tattoo of a dragon over his heart before it continued upwards. The cold, dark fog crossed his eyes then floated into the sky, leaving his body completely.

  “I don’t feel any different,” he said, testing himself mentally.

  “You won’t until the right time comes.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means, Chace, that I will determine when to let you go.”

  Dread sank into Chace’s stomach. “We have a deal.”

  “We do.” Mr. Nothing approached. “But, in all fairness, I don’t think you’re thinking this through. You just gave me everything that is yours. You seem to think it only includes you and your possessions. What about the bar?”

  “What about it?”

  “The protection it offers comes from your magic. No you, no bar.”

  Chace’s breath caught at the idea of turning the shifters out of the only refuge they had left.

  “I’m one of you,” Mr. Nothing said before he could speak. “I don’t want to see our kind decimated, which is why I want you to do something before I honor our deal.”

  Cold trickled through him at the calm words. They weren’t the request they sounded like.

  “What if I refuse?” Chace snapped.

  “I’ll close the bar. Or worse, maybe I’ll tip off those who are slowly bringing down the others one by one.”

  “You would do that to your own kind?”

  “I would do that to get the most powerful shifter in existence to take action, like you should have years ago when the shifters began dwindling in number.”

  “I’m no hero. I just want this all to end.”

  “Then so be it. You just disappear and our kind ends up extinct.”

  Chace’s jaw clenched. It was obvious that he cared enough for the others to offer them refuge. Mr. Nothing knew it was a pressure point. While he did care, he’d stopped short of helping anyone directly, not interested in violence or a cause when all he wanted was peace.

  But he couldn’t let Mr. Nothing take away the only safe place the shifters had.

  “What do you want me to do?” he asked through clenched teeth.

  “Simple. Stop those who are hurting our kind.”

  “I don’t know who they are.”

  Mr. Nothing held out his hand, and a familiar object materialized. A small, fine rope of gold.

  “You’ve already met them,” he said.

  “That little girl takes on shifters and makes them disappear?” Chace asked, amazed.

  “That little girl is a shifter slayer. You have no idea how many of our kind she might’ve brought in. I want you to bring her to me then do whatever you want to the rest of the slayers.”

  He felt a stir of anger and something else, the inexplicable desire to deny his one nightstand was involved. Or ma
ybe, to protect her from Mr. Nothing. But why? If she was what Mr. Nothing said she was, he should have no mercy whatsoever.

  “So I do this and then I’m free?” Chace demanded.

  “Yes.” The image of the rope disappeared in a puff of golden smoke.

  Chace’s gaze lingered, sensing there was more and even angrier with himself for blindly taking some woman to bed without verifying who she was first.

  Gunner’s right. No more sleeping around with random chicks.

  “You’re a predator – act like it. Track her,” Mr. Nothing added. “She’ll lead you to the others who are taking down the shifters.”

  He made too much sense. Chace debated silently.

  “You’re not going to let me go, are you?” he asked finally.

  “When I no longer have a use for you or you get in my way.”

  Chace felt a familiar tingle, the flare of fire down the back of his neck and the heat within his body that indicated he was getting ready to shift. While he was able to shift at will, he wasn’t able to control the involuntary shifting that was often spurred by emotion. And right now, he was pissed.

  “Find the girl, get her secrets, bring her to you,” he said.

  Mr. Nothing stepped back, sensing he was ready to morph into his secondary form.

  With no control over the magic, Chace didn’t know what size he’d end up. He’d been as small as a mosquito or as large as a warehouse, depending on what the magic wanted.

  Unwilling to take the chance he went big and ruined his favorite jacket, Chace stripped off his clothes, overheating to the point of panting. He dropped on all fours and waited while the magic worked its way through his system. He transformed from human to dragon quickly. The twisting of his insides stopped, leaving him to figure out how big he was this time.

  Chace shook his head. In his dragon form, he opened his eyes, his senses a hundred times more sensitive to the world than when he was in his human form. The ocean breeze ruffled the fur between his scales and lining his wings, tickling him to the point he sneezed fire.

  “Intriguing.” Mr. Nothing remained a few feet away.

  By the way Mr. Nothing towered over him, Chace guessed he was the size of a bat this time. Unable to talk, Chace still understood when someone addressed him, though the bombardment to his senses often distracted him.

  He leapt into the air and hovered in front of Mr. Nothing’s face, using his dragon abilities to confirm that Mr. Nothing was a dragon in his other form.

  Mr. Nothing smelled faintly of fire and something else, a familiar scent, like that of wet fur. Chace’s infrared vision picked up nothing, not even a stray hair on the man’s clothing, while also confirming that Mr. Nothing lacked the familiar pooling of heat around where his heart should’ve been.

  Why am I suddenly different?

  “Go. Fly. Then return to our kind and protect them,” Mr. Nothing said, swatting at him.

  Chace maneuvered around the quick movement with ease, his instincts engaged. He hovered a few feet above Mr. Nothing, trying once again to figure out more about the dark shifter. At last, he gave up, sensing Mr. Nothing expected to be scrutinized and somehow managed to hide who and what he really was.

  With the ocean breeze ruffling his fur and the open night sky around him, Chace vaulted towards the stars, surrendering his human thoughts to the sensations of soaring, tumbling and floating in the cold night sky. When the magic released him, he’d think about Mr. Nothing’s ultimatum. For now, he needed the release that only flying gave him.

  As he flung himself into the air currents, he became aware of something else. He’d missed out on the chance of asking Mr. Nothing about his heart.

  In his dragon form, he was even more cognizant of his beating heart. It no longer made him nauseous, but it was still freaking him out.

  Chace balanced himself in the air, letting the currents hold him aloft as he double-checked his heart, unable to prevent his fascination with it. He heard his heart beating with his enhanced senses. He sensed that somehow, he was different now.

  What did Mr. Nothing do to me?

  Chapter Seven

  “Two and a half weeks, and we’ve got nada,” Mason complained, pushing away the notebook on the table before him.

  Seated with her two partners at a Starbucks, Skylar’s gaze rested on the laptop and pile of paper alongside the venti sized cups of coffee they’d been nursing for an hour.

  She automatically scratched the back of her neck, the same spot where the damn shifter had bitten her just over two weeks before. She began to wonder if dragons had some sort of rare bug that gave her a skin infection that wouldn’t go away.

  Scale flu? She scratched harder, annoyed. It was worse today than it had been since the first day she got it. She’d slept horribly in her apartment since that night, too, plagued by the weird sense that she didn’t belong there. The dreams weren’t helping either. Each one was more vivid than the last, shedding more light on a life she didn’t recall.

  “Would you stop?” Dillon snapped at her. “You’re being paranoid.”

  “You know I get itchy when I feel someone watching me,” she grumbled. Or apparently, when I sleep with a dragon. “Maybe I’m allergic to dragons?”

  “Like you are to commitment?” Dillon returned.

  She glared at him. His dark eyes didn’t leave her, and she saw the latent anger burning deep within them.

  “Oh, snap. Time for more coffee,” Mason interjected before she could retort. “Dillon’s turn to buy.”

  The tall dragon slayer shoved back from the table and rose silently, stalking to the counter.

  “Thanks, Mason,” she said, forcing herself to calm down. “What an asshole.”

  “You saw something in him to date him for four months.”

  She shrugged. “Hot body and I was bored.”

  “I’m hot and you ignore me,” Mason pointed out. “You like ‘em complicated.”

  “You are sexy,” Skylar said and then laughed. She made a show of looking him over. Mason was athletic and friendly, attractive, with a quick wit that never failed to make her laugh. “Think I learned my lesson about dating coworkers though.”

  “Yeah. Never fuck a shifter and never date a coworker,” he replied. “You’ll regret both, but for different reasons.”

  She glanced at him, unable to read the meaning behind his measured tone. She’d begun to think that no one was going to match Chace in the bedroom and wondered if Mason felt the same after his night with a shifter. She was about to ask when Dillon returned with their drinks.

  “Americano for the lady, mocha for the wuss and double espresso for me,” he said, setting down the drinks one by one as he spoke. “Any breakthroughs while I was gone?”

  “Not a one,” Mason reported soberly. “We’ve got people looking for guys that meet the description Sky provided.”

  “I can’t take it anymore,” Skylar said, scratching the back of her neck until it hurt. “I’ll be back.” She rose and walked to the bathroom, automatically glancing through the windows to the busy sidewalks. It was midmorning in Chandler, a suburb of Phoenix, where they’d met after a few days of exhausted, wasted effort attempting to find the elusive shifter bar.

  A man standing still among the people strolling the streets caught her attention. He was taller than those around him, with wide shoulders, piercing blue eyes and blond hair.

  Chace.

  A ripple of warmth went through her, though she wasn’t certain if it was caused by the memory of their night together or the sense that warned her when a shifter was around.

  Skylar backtracked. He was gone, a quick flash she wasn’t certain she’d seen. She lingered for a moment, searching the streets outside with her gaze. It wasn’t possible for him to disappear so quickly and there was nowhere to hide.

  The itching was back.

  Chalking it up to two solid weeks of nothing but trying to track the elusive dragon, she continued to the bathroom. Skylar locked the door behind her
then crossed to the mirror. She lifted the low ponytail she sported this day to see the spot that was driving her crazy.

  “What the hell?” She stared. Beneath the red scratch marks was a streak of black. “If that bastard gave me some sort of plague …”

  Leaning forward, she hesitated then picked at the black. It was raised but didn’t scrape off under her nails. The skin around it, however, did. With trepidation, she peeled back the layer of itching skin and held it out in front of her, disgusted. She dropped it into the garbage can beside the sink and leaned forward again.

  More of the black was visible, curves and straight lines too perfect to be some sort of horrible rash. It was beginning to take the shape of something, like a tattoo.

  “This is the most disgusting … thing …” she drifted off and dug into the skin of her neck, pulling away small sheets of skin to reveal the black lines of a tattoo and the fresh pink skin surrounding it.

  Finally, the itching stopped, a sign she’d reached the last of the bad skin. With dread forming in her stomach, she craned her neck to see the tattoo. It wasn’t big, about three inches across, but the sight of it made her world stand still.

  Dragon. The black tattoo was identical to the one she’d glimpsed on Chace’s chest. He hadn’t just flaunted her and left, he’d marked her somehow, though why, she had no idea.

  Panic stirred as she sought some rational explanation for the mark on her neck. It was at the back of her neck, easy for her to hide with her hair. But she’d still know it was there, even if no one else did.

  “Okay. Maybe it’s his way of saying screw you, Skylar,” she reasoned.

  Unconvinced, she pulled out her phone and texted Mason, asking him to join her in the women’s restroom. Dillon would tell her she was crazy, but Mason would do it. She unlocked the door and paced in the small space. A moment later, the door cracked open.

  “Not that I care, but are you decent?” he called drily.

  She yanked the door open and motioned him in then closed it and locked it.

  “Girls’ bathrooms are always nicer,” Mason said, glancing around.

  “Look at this, Mason,” she said pulling up her hair and turning. She looked down and arched her neck for him to see.