The Mammoth Book of Paranormal Romance 2

Lara Adrian NightDrake

People are strange.

A twentieth-century philosopher once said that, or so I’ve been told. As I drove my rig through the rain and sludge towards the docks in Port Phoenix, I couldn’t help thinking how apt the observation was. Especially now, some 300 years after Earth hiccupped on its axis in 2066 and brought about all manner of changes to the world mankind once knew.

The waters rose in many places; vanished in others. Landmasses shifted, ripped apart by earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, or drowned by mudslides several storeys deep. Once-great cities toppled, technology and infrastructure were swept away overnight.

Kingdoms and governments, corporations and institutions were all rendered impotent with the sudden, irreparable, global financial crash. Survivors of the planet’s changes — a population estimated to be only in the tens of millions — fled across borders that no longer existed to rebuild their lives and form new communities.

And, after some long millennia of hiding, living in the safety of the shadows, a small number of other survivors came out of the dust and rubble of this altered new world.

They are the Strange.

Shapeshifters and telepaths, nymphs and hobgoblins.

Goddamned freaks of nature, I thought to myself as I rolled to a stop at the dockyard entrance and glanced through the box-truck’s window at a pair of grey-skinned gargoyles squatting atop the tall pillars of the gate. I stared for a long moment, if only to let them know that I had no fear of them. The disdain between the Strange and me is well-known, and definitely mutual. As I rolled down the glass, one of the hideous creatures perched overhead sneered down at me through the dark and drizzle of the cold summer night.

“Nisha the Merc,” he hissed, obviously recognizing me while I reached out and pulled the rope on a copper bell, then waited for the guard on duty to come over and let me inside. Above me, the beast crouched lower, dropping his voice to a gravelly whisper. “Nisha, the cold-hearted bitch.”

Amused, the other gargoyle chuckled quietly and shifted on his taloned feet, rattling the heavy iron manacles that ensured he and his companion remained at their posts. Even if they weren’t shackled in place, these two Strange beasts couldn’t touch me and they knew it. Harming a human was punishable by death.

But they could hate me.

They could despise that I made my living as a mercenary, although I’ve always preferred to think of myself as a facilitator. Generally speaking — and for the right price — I was a problem-solver. When something needed to get done quickly and quietly, no questions asked, folks with the money and the means usually turned to me to make it happen.

Tonight’s job was no different. I had been hired to pick up and transport a cargo shipment for someone who preferred to keep his business at the seedy Port Phoenix dockyard confidential. Not that any of the lowlife humans working the yard, or the even lowlier Strange enslaved there as labourers, would give a damn what was coming or going from the supply freighters that arrived from all parts of the globe.

Still, my client had his reasons, I supposed, and that was good enough for me. I didn’t need to know who he was or what I was moving. All that mattered was the two rough-cut diamonds currently tucked into the fur lining of my boot and the three that would be given to me after I’d delivered tonight’s cargo to its destination.

The big human guard humped out of his shack near the gate, a long black rifle slung across his body from a wide leather shoulder strap. I leaned out and he peered at me through the rusted iron bars, recognition lifting the heavy brow visoring small, avid eyes that made my skin crawl. “Back so soon, eh, Nisha?” He grunted, leering now. “You sure are a woman in high demand these days. Not that I’m complaining about that, of course.”

I gave him a smile that a smarter man might have recognized as loathing. “What can I say? Business is booming.”

He grinned as he unlocked the gate and let me drive through. “Which slip is it tonight?”

“Three-East,” I said through the open window, the designation indicating the docks where cargo from New Asia arrived. When the guard hopped up on to the truck’s running board alongside me, I gave him a flat look. “I know the way.”

He dropped back down with a scowl. “That freighter just came in about an hour ago. They’re still unloading. Could be a while before they’re done, so if you need to get out of the cold, you come on up and I’ll let you sit with me in the guard house.”

I waved him off without looking back. The icy rain was turning to sleet, pelting the windshield like tiny pebbles. Burrowing deeper into the hood of my parka, I drove towards the deep-water port that had long ago been desert lands and city skyscrapers — before the planet’s shift had cracked a wide saltwater chasm between the island of Mexitexas and the shrunken coastal borders of North America. As I neared the enormous ship moored at the slip marked 3E, the stench of brine and steel and belching exhaust fumes blew into the open window, clinging to my throat and stinging my eyes.

I slowed to a stop near the loading ramp, where four big, tusked trolls were carrying a tarp-covered crate across the plank to the dock. They shivered in the bad weather, their clothing sodden, their long braided beards dripping water with each lumbering step. The workhorses of the Strange, trolls were built like tanks and able to labour tirelessly in all kinds of climates. These four walked gingerly — almost reverently — with the large rectangular container, one of them on each corner, taking great care with it. A human supervisor waited at the end of the ramp, closely monitoring their progress.

“Be careful with that, you brainless clods!” he barked. “One slip and I’ll have your bloody hides!”

I got out of my rig and walked over to the dock boss. “I take it this one’s mine?”

He grunted in acknowledgment and wiped the back of his filthy hand under his runny nose. That same hand then reached out to me, palm up. “I’ll have my payment now, Nisha.”

I dug into the pocket of my coat, withdrew a chip of cloudy pink stone and dropped it into his waiting hand. “There you go. One quarter-carat raw ruby, same as always.”

His greedy fingers closed around the paltry gemstone that represented a fortune to him. The little rock disappeared an instant later, and I didn’t follow his hand to see where he’d stuffed it. “Whatever’s in that thing, it’s got my labourers spooked,” he told me, staring through the sleet as the container neared the end of the ramp. “What the hell are you picking up tonight?”

“Don’t know and don’t care,” I said. “I don’t get paid to care.”

He scoffed. “No, I reckon you don’t. Most folks say you’d sell your own mother if the price was right.”

“Harsh,” I replied, wholly unfazed. The insult was based on reputation, more than fact. All of which served me just fine.

As for my mother. . it was harder to remain unaffected by the thought of her. She was killed years ago, when I was just a young girl. The nightmare of that day still haunted me, sometimes even when I was awake. Her death had haunted my father too, until his heartbreak had finally claimed him.

The dock boss said nothing more, watching with me as the trolls carefully brought the crate off the ramp and set it down in front of us. The contents shifted slightly as the box came to rest on the ground, something metal clacking quietly from within. Whatever was inside must have been valuable, given that it was protected from the elements in an enormous sheet of rare, extremely expensive plastic.

Guns, I guessed, having transported a fair share of munitions in my line of work. I stepped up to the corner of the crate to check the bindings on the plastic tarp. Although they looked secure, I wanted to be certain before I gave the okay for the trolls to load the container into the back of my rig.

As I reached out to test the straps, something growled and began to move inside the box.

Something big.

Something mired by what sounded to be heavy chains and shackles, but something very much alive.

A couple of hours later, I was sitting atop an empty grain barrel in the back of my truck, eating a tin of hydrated soymeal for supper while I waited for my client’s people to come to the private warehouse where I was parked and relieve me of my newest cargo. I had to admit, if only to myself, I was eager to be rid of it.

I’d never moved live goods before and, despite my willingness to transport all manner of other things without batting an eye, I was suddenly wondering if the three diamonds waiting at the end of this job were payment enough. More than that, I was wondering about the contents of the container sitting just a few short paces away from me in the truck. Speculating on just what was shuffling around inside there and what my client could possibly want with it.

I picked up the instructions the dock boss had handed me before I’d left Port Phoenix. They were written on a small square of dried animal skin that had been affixed to the container at its point of origin. I’d read the directions already — three succinct orders, penned in a bold hand:

Keep the crate and contents dry at all times

Do not insert anything into the crate

Do not open under any circumstances

I set down my empty soymeal tin and hopped off the barrel. From where I stood, I saw there were small tears here and there in the plastic tarp. I knew whatever sat inside the large box had been watching me the whole time I’d been in the back of the truck with it. I’d felt eyes on me — shrewd, predatory eyes. Now, as I walked closer to the covered crate, the fine hairs at the back of my neck rose in warning.

“They say you are colder than ice,” came a deep, cultured male voice from behind the concealing plastic and confining wood. “No one ever mentioned that you were also very beautiful. As dark and enticing as night itself. . Nisha, the Heartless.”

I didn’t say anything at first. Shock stole my breath and I stood there for a long moment, dumbstruck and unmoving. I hadn’t expected to hear my cargo speak to me, let alone know my name. Oh, I’d assumed it was some kind of beast in the crate — even now, I knew that he was something Strange, more than likely — but the smooth tone and elegant voice took me aback completely.

“What are you?”

“Come closer and see for yourself. I have no wish to harm you, even if I were able.”

I snorted, snapped cleanly out of my stupor by that treacherous invitation. “The only way I’d come any closer to one of the Strange is to put a pistol up against its head.”

“Ah, yes,” he said, exhaling a quiet sigh. Chains clinked and straw rustled as he moved about in his tight prison. “How you love your weapons, Nisha. Particularly when they are used against my kind. Many have died because of the weapons you’ve put into the hands of bad men.”

“I do what I have to in order to survive,” I said, unsure why I felt the need to defend myself to him. “I’m in the supply-and-demand business, that’s all. My clients pay me to deliver things they want. What they do with those things is not my concern.”

“Hmm.” He shifted inside the crate again, and I could feel that assessing stare locked on me still. “So, you’re saying that you would just as easily sell your weapons for war to me — to one of the Strange — if I had the wherewithal to meet your price?”

I wouldn’t and we both knew it. I glared at the covered crate. “I don’t need to justify what I do, least of all to someone like you.”

He released a heavy breath. “No, you don’t. And it was pointless to even ask it. My kind has no desire to wage a war against man. We never did.”

“You’d never win anyway,” I pointed out flatly. “You have too few numbers, for one thing, and most of you are indentured, besides. Wars take more than guns, you know. They take vision and determination. They take leaders, and that’s something your kind has lacked all along. If the Strange were going to fight, they should have done it long ago.”

“Yes. You’re right, Nisha.” I heard regret in his voice now, and told myself I had no reason to feel guilty for that. “But there are those among my kind who believe that, in time, there will be peace.”

I exhaled a humourless laugh. “That’s why you’re sitting in a crate in shackles, about to be shipped off to who knows where and for what purpose.”

“I know what lies ahead for me,” he replied, that velvety deep voice as calm as I’d heard it so far. “I won’t be enslaved. That’s not why they took me. My capture will have only one outcome.”

“Death,” I whispered, ignoring the twinge in my chest. I wanted to see his face in that moment — whether or not it was Strangely hideous — to determine if the thought of dying scared him even a little. It didn’t seem to and I held my ground, fisting my hands at my sides instead of reaching out to move aside the tarp that hid him. “You know you will be killed.”

“Eventually, yes,” he said, without a trace of fear or sorrow. “I feel my death might serve a higher purpose.”

I shook my head, unsure if he could see me or not. For some reason, despite everything I knew and felt about his kind, his resignation bothered me. More than bothered me, it pissed me off. “You’re just giving up. Don’t try to pretend it has anything to do with honour.”

“Sometimes, Nisha the Heartless, there is a greater good to be gained in dying than there is in living. For me, certainly. I go to my fate willingly.”

I barked sharply. “Well, then, I guess that makes you either very courageous or very stupid.”

I reminded myself that he wasn’t my problem. His fate — whether or not he welcomed it with open arms — sure as hell was not my concern. I walked over and picked up my empty soymeal tin, my movements tight with aggravation.

“I’ve had enough thought-provoking conversation for one night,” I told him, more than ready to spend the rest of the wait up front in the cab by myself. “Get some rest. Your other ride should be here soon.”

I jumped out of the back of the truck and closed the doors, sealing him inside.

I fell asleep in the cab.

The dream woke me, as it always does. Not the violent nightmare I’d had since my parents’ deaths, but the dream that started soon afterwards and visited me more often than I liked. This time, everything seemed more vivid — so real I felt as though I could sweep my hand out before me and touch it.

Sunlit skies. Glittering azure ocean. And me, soaring high above it all, twisting and gliding on a gentle wind towards an infinite horizon.

I jolted awake, trembling and breathless.

It was the usual reaction. Just the thought of flying terrified me. The act itself was unnatural, whether achieved in the thunderous, now obsolete, metal machines of decades past, or as performed by those rarest of the Strange who’d needed none of man’s inventions to aid them. Flying was nothing I’d ever done, or ever wanted to know anything about.

Desperate to purge the troubling sensations, I pushed myself up in the driver’s seat of the cab and fumbled for the wristwatch I kept fastened to the steering wheel. It was an ancient wind-up type, the only time-keeping devices that still functioned in the post-technology age. I checked the gloved hands on the smiling black-and-white mouse.

“Shit.” I’d been asleep for more than two hours.

The truck was quiet. No movement at all in the warehouse and no sign of my client’s people coming to take the Strange cargo off my hands yet.

“How much longer before I can collect my pay and get out of here?” I grumbled, climbing out of my rig to go and check on things around back.

I heard the dry, choking rasp as soon as I opened the doors.

“Are you all right?” I asked, climbing in and stepping cautiously towards the covered crate. There was no reply, only a further round of coughing and a terrible-sounding wheeze. “Are you hurt in there?”

I realized I didn’t even know his name, not that I needed to. Nor did I need to run for my water canteen when he started to dry heave, but that’s precisely what I did. I told myself it was only reasonable to make sure Mr Honour-and-Higher-Purpose stayed alive long enough for my client to kill him, since that’s what he’d claimed he wanted so badly.

I returned and jumped into the back of the truck. He was gasping now, sucking in air, each breath sounding deathly parched. Canteen in one hand, I hurried to the crate and tugged loose a corner of the tarp. “I have water. You need to dr—”

My voice fled as I lifted the plastic sheet from the front of the wooden container. A liquid gold gaze peered at me through a slim crack between the nailed planks of the box. It startled me, penetrating and intense, sending a swift, unbidden heat into the core of my being. Just as quickly, the golden eyes were shuttered as they turned back into the darkness of the cell and the prisoner’s wheeze grew more violent.

“Stay away,” he rasped from deep within the shadows. His throat scraped with every syllable, sounding as dry as cinders. “Leave me. This will pass.”

I muttered a curse, low under my breath, knowing he was in far worse shape than he wanted me to think. I walked around the crate, pulling off the tarp as I went. The few gaps that separated the wooden planks were so tight not even my little finger would be able to slip through them. No way could I get the canteen to him without breaking open the box. And that was out of the question.

“Hold on,” I said. “I have an idea.”

Slinging the canteen strap over my shoulder, I hoisted myself up on to the side of the crate and clambered to the top of it. I brought the canteen around and took out the stopper. Beneath me, his bright citrine eyes followed my every movement through the narrow breaks in the wood. Every nerve ending in my body tingled, warning me that something Strange and powerful lurked just beneath me.

“Come closer, bring your mouth up to me,” I told him, more a command than request. “Stop being noble, and take a drink.”

“Nisha.” My name was barely a whisper in the shadows below. “You know the rules.”

I swallowed, recalling very well the instructions I’d been given for this job. Instructions that all my logic and experience told me to follow. But then he coughed again — a deep, shredding heave of his lungs — and neither logic nor experience had prepared me for the concern I had for him in that moment.

I leaned down and brought the mouth of the open canteen to the largest gap in the top of the crate. “Drink.”

I thought he might refuse again, but then I heard him moving — sensed him drawing nearer to where I waited. His eyes locked on mine. I felt a warm rush of breath puff through the crack and skate across my hand. White teeth gleamed as he parted his lips near the break in the wood and waited for me to pour the water into his mouth.

I gave him only a trickle, not wanting to rush him before he was ready. His lips closed on a deep growl that vibrated through the crate and into my bones. And then the growl became louder. The crate rumbled beneath me, shuddering and shaking.

I leapt off — just in time to watch the whole thing explode before me, wood planks splintering in all directions like nothing more than toothpicks.

The Strange being within the container erupted out of the wrecked crate in a blur of gleaming, iridescent blue-and-black scales and immense, talon-tipped wings. The great head of the dragon swung toward me, massive jaws agape, those golden eyes looking far fiercer in the light of my rig than they had in the dark confines of the box.

Terrified, I scrambled backwards, then pushed to my feet and fumbled for the pistol holstered on my belt. Hands shaking, I chambered a round and lifted the gun up in front of me to take aim on the beast.

But he was gone now. In his place was a man. A shapeshifter. Breathtakingly handsome, and utterly naked. He was tall and muscled, his skin a warm, sun-kissed bronze. Blue-black hair fell down around his shoulders in thick, glossy waves. Ageless citrine eyes seemed to bore straight through me as he strode forwards, undeterred by the weapon I held squarely in line with his head.

“Stand down, or I’ll shoot,” I warned him. “Don’t think I won’t kill you.”

He gave a mild shake of his head and kept advancing, easy paces that devoured the distance between us. I didn’t fire on him, and I suppose he guessed I wouldn’t. With gentle strength, he brought his hand up and wrapped his fingers around the barrel of my gun, slowly lowering it to my side.

“You tricked me,” I muttered, wondering why I should feel such a sting at that.

“No,” he replied, his voice as tender as I’d heard it all night. “My captors had denied me water and I was dying of thirst. You saved me. You. . surprised me. It’s been a very long time since I’ve been surprised by goodness, particularly in a human.”

He smiled and stroked my cheek. When I turned my face away, ashamed of the pleasure that raced through me at just his praise and light touch, he caught my chin and gently drew my gaze up to his. “I think, Nisha the Heartless, that despite what you lead others to believe, you are, in fact, very kind.”

His hands were warm and firm as he cupped my face and brought me towards him. He kissed me — a sweet, tender brush of his lips across mine. All of my senses reached for him as though I’d been starving for this — this Strange kiss — all my life. I could have kissed him all night.

Perhaps I would have, if not for the sudden rumble of an approaching vehicle outside the warehouse.

“My client,” I managed to gasp as I broke away from the shapeshifter I was expected to surrender to his would-be killers that very moment. I heard the crunch of gravel, the sharp squeal of brakes. . the hard thump-thump of two vehicle doors being closed. “They’re coming for you.”

He nodded solemnly and stepped back from me. Back towards the splintered remains of the cargo crate and the broken shackles that had fallen off him during his change. He wasn’t going to fight the men who were coming for him now. Wasn’t going to threaten me or attempt to bargain his way out of capture.

He was noble and proud, and I’d never been so livid in my life.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” In truth, I should have been asking myself that same question. I had but a split-second to decide my next move — a decision that would set the course of my future, right then and there.

Did I surrender my Strange cargo to his captors, collect my pay, then roll on to the next job and the next one after that? Or did I throw everything away to help one crazy shapeshifter escape a death he neither feared nor resented?

I swore under my breath and ran over to grab some clothing from the personal supply chest I kept in the back of my rig. The wool tunic I found was moth-eaten in places, and the ancient blue jeans had last been worn by a dead man, but both were big enough to cover him. Whoever he was.

“What’s your name?” I asked him, hastily pulling the clothes out of the chest. Outside the warehouse, I could hear my client’s men nearing the door. I threw a hard look at the Strange man behind me. “Your name, dammit!”

“I am Drakor,” he replied, scowling at me.

I threw the sweater and pants at him. “Get dressed, Drakor. We’re getting the hell out of here.”

His golden eyes were grim with understanding. “You do not know what you’re doing, Nisha.”

“Tell me about it.” I shoved my gun back in its holster as he shrugged into the clothing. “We need to hurry if we’re going to outrun these guys.”

“Nisha.” He came to me, dressed like a pauper, yet his handsome face was serene. I was even tempted to call it regal. “This could be a very costly mistake for you.”

I shook my head, hoping to dismiss some of my own misgivings, slim as they were. “We need to go now. Come on, Drakor. Follow me and don’t argue.”

He growled something dark in a language I didn’t understand, but when I jumped out of the back of the truck, he was right beside me. I slammed the doors and threw the lock bar into place. I motioned him towards the cab as I ran around to the driver’s side. I hopped in, and he took the passenger seat.

“You’d better hang on,” I said, glancing in my side mirrors. The men started to open the warehouse receiving gate behind us. I threw the rig into reverse and watched as their faces lit up with surprise — then fear, when they realized what was about to happen. I looked over at Drakor, sitting beside me in silent observation. He probably thought I had lost my mind. Heaven knew, I was beginning to wonder myself. “All right, here we go.”

I stomped on the gas and the truck rocketed backwards out of the place, sending my client’s men scrambling for cover. I righted the rocking vehicle and put us on the road, heading off into the cold, dark night. The two of us. . together.

We were six hours north of Port Phoenix before I dared slow down even a little.

The rig’s dim headlights piercing deep into the darkness ahead of us, I glanced out the side windows, trying to get some idea of where we might be. The night was fathomless on all sides. Nothing but stars overhead and vast forest wilderness encroaching on the broken pavement of the seldom-used highway.

No one behind us, either, which I figured was about the best luck we could hope for at the moment. I didn’t suppose it would hold out forever. Tonight I had put a giant target on my back. I had been in business with powerful, dangerous people long enough to know that a stunt like the one I’d just pulled would not go uncontested.

“You look tired,” Drakor said from the seat beside me.

He’d been quiet most of the trip. Pensive, I thought, having caught him staring out into the dark more than once since we’d been on the road. I knew he had to be as exhausted as I was; he’d confided in me during the drive out of Port Phoenix that his body was depleted after being starved of food and water during his captivity. Breaking out of the crate had drained him even further.

But I didn’t think it was any amount of physical fatigue that had him so still and brooding. His mind was burdened, perhaps his heart as well.

“I’m fine,” I told him. “And we need to keep moving.”

“No, Nisha.” In my peripheral, I saw his dark brows lower over those shrewd canary-yellow eyes. “I want you to have rest. Find some place to stop the vehicle now.”

There was an air of command in his voice that almost made me obey simply on instinct. Almost. “We can’t afford to stop until we’ve put more distance between them and us. They could be following even now. We have to push onward.”

He reached across the cab, his strong, elegant fingers closing over my hand where it was locked in a death grip on the wheel. “Nisha, we go no farther until you rest. It is not a request.”

I gaped at him, astonished by his arrogance. “Last I heard, I was the one calling the shots around here. Unless someone died and made you king, I’ll thank you to sit back and let me handle the situation.”

He removed his hand from mine and I found I instantly regretted the emptiness left in its place. Drakor settled back into his seat and gazed out the window. “My father passed 157 years ago, after centuries of a peaceful, noble reign.”

I threw a sharp look at him. “Excuse me? Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

He sighed remorsefully and glanced back at me. “My father’s death made me King of the Strange. Or would have, if I’d actually been worthy of accepting that mantle of responsibility. Either of my elder brothers would have been far better suited, but they had both been killed in wars with mankind by the time my father took his last breath. I was little more than a stupid boy, unfit to rule.”

I hit a rut in the ruined old road and had to jockey to keep my rig on course. When I was able, I stared at him again, incredulous. “If you haven’t assumed your father’s place in all this time, who has?”

“I was twelve years old when I relinquished my power to his court. I believed our kind would be better served by someone other than me.” He grunted then — a soft, wry exhalation. “Apparently someone in my homeland felt the need to make certain I could never change my mind. I suspect it was a member of the court who betrayed me to the person who hired you.”

I was outraged — not only by the thought of Drakor being sold out by a traitor, but also by the notion that he would have so readily accepted it. “So, you are willing to let yourself die rather than risk failing as king?”

He looked at me for a very long moment, a storm seeming to brew beneath the burnished gold of his gaze. “I was willing.”

“And now?” I asked.

“Much has changed since I was shackled inside that box and shipped across the ocean to this place, Nisha. Now I find myself questioning quite a lot of things.”

Although he was contemplative and hard to read, I sensed the flicker of determination beneath his calm demeanour. He would make a dangerous adversary, I had no doubt. His kindness and intellect would make him a formidable but fair ruler.

“It seems to me that you could better serve your people by being a leader, Drakor, not a martyr.”

“Indeed?” He smiled at that, only the subtlest curving of his sensual mouth. “I think you may be wiser than any of my long-lived counsellors and advisors, Nisha the Heartless.”

For some reason I didn’t care to examine, it bit somehow to hear him refer to the cold reputation I’d prided myself on for so long. I wasn’t heartless — not when it came to him. I looked at Drakor and felt as though my entire being was made of awakening emotion and sensation, not the logic and fear and mistrust that had been drummed into me from a very young age.

I cared for him.

If I didn’t watch my step, I worried that I might very easily find myself in love with him.

“Do you have somewhere that you can go?” I asked him, needing to steer my thoughts back to the situation at hand. “It won’t be safe for either one of us to be on the road any longer than we have to be.”

He nodded, grim. “There is a hidden enclave of my kind in this region of the new continent. They haven’t yet been discovered by man. No human has been near their settlement, but if I asked it of them, they would provide us shelter.”

I wasn’t sure I was ready to rely on the Strange for any form of protection, but I didn’t tell him that. “Do you know specifically where they are?”

“The place was once called Colorado.”

“It’s not far from here,” I said, recognizing the old name from the time long before I’d been born, when most of this land had comprised unseen borders hemming in and uniting areas known as states. “I can take you there.”

Drakor seemed to consider for a moment. “In the southwest region of that place, there are ancient dwellings built into the side of a cliff. Tribes of humans once lived there, before their modern brothers drove them out and used the dwellings as parkland. Now the Strange hold it.”

I nodded and looked back out to the road. Even though I wanted to put another couple of hours behind us before we stopped to rest, my arms were heavy and my eyes were burning from staring into the darkness.

“I have some old maps in the back,” I said. “Maybe we should pull over and have a look.”

Drakor gave me a silent nod of agreement. I slowed the truck and detoured off the empty highway, taking us toward a thicket of woodlands several hundred yards from the road.

I lit a candle lamp and brought it over to where Drakor was studying one of the dozen or so historical maps I kept on hand in my rig. I sat down next to him on the floor.

“This is about where we are right now,” I said, pointing to the area above a ghost town known, a couple hundred years ago, as Flagstaff. I moved my finger across the map and his sharp gaze followed the northeasterly, diagonal path I indicated on the worn and brittle swatch of paper. “This is the old state border of Colorado. The area you told me about would be roughly around this corner. The roads between here and there aren’t the greatest. It will probably take me a couple of days to get you there.”

When he looked up at me, I felt a question burning in his unsettling eyes.

I slowly shook my head, answering before he could ask me. “I won’t be staying once we arrive there. I can’t. I’m human and I wouldn’t belong.”

His black brows lowered. “What if I said I wanted you to stay? What if I demanded it?”

I smiled, unwillingly pleased by his possessive, imperial tone. “I would remind you that you may be King of the Strange but I’m not one of your subjects.”

He reached over and cupped my cheek. “What if I told you that I don’t think I’ll be ready to let you go in a couple more days?”

I barely resisted the urge to turn my face into the warm cradle of his palm. With a strength I didn’t realize I had, I drew away from his touch and put my focus back on the open map. “We’ll need to stop for fuel sooner than later. Usually someone in the villages has a tank or two that can be bartered for—”

“Nisha.” He cast aside the map, forcing me to look at him. “If you don’t accept my help, then where will you go? You can’t go back to your home. Your old life is gone now.”

“I know,” I said. “I can’t go back to anything I knew before. Word of what happened tonight will travel fast. All I can do is keep moving now, figure out how to make my way. And I will. I’m not afraid of the unknown, Drakor. I know there’s bad in the world. I’ve survived the worst. I won’t run and hide from anything ever again.”

My eyes stung with memories from my past. I tried to blink away the tears, but he saw them. He stared at me, his strikingly handsome face tender. “What did you lose, dear Nisha?”

I shook my head, ready to dismiss the question before it could tear my heart wide open. But Drakor’s eyes were warm and caring, his hands comforting as he stroked my hair. The memories swelled inside me until I couldn’t hold them in.

“My mother,” I began, then took a steadying breath. “She was killed when I was four years old. She and my father and I were living in the country at the time. One day hellhounds broke into our home and chased us out to the woods.”

“Hellhounds.” Drakor’s expression hardened. “Ah, God, Nisha. They are vicious creatures, the worst of our kind.”

I knew all about them, of course, as did most of mankind. Hellhounds lived for blood sport and were most commonly employed as trackers. With their hideous double-heads, razor-sharp claws and incredible speed, there were few that could escape them — human or Strange.

“My father ran with me in one arm, his other hand wrapped around my mother’s wrist.” I blew out a quiet sob. “One moment she was with us, the next, she was gone. She turned back and tried to lead the hellhounds away from us. I can still hear her screams in my nightmares.”

Drakor gathered me to him and I didn’t have any strength to resist. I leaned against his chest, listening to the steady drum of his heartbeat. His arms were strong around me, his lips gentle as he pressed a kiss to the top of my head.

“My father was destroyed over the loss of my mother. I think seeing me only made it worse because I reminded him too much of her. My father blamed himself for putting her in danger, but he never really told me what he meant. We lived in fear of all the Strange after that. He drilled into me that I could trust no one. That no matter what, I should always only look out for myself.”

“And so out of your despair, you arose courageous and strong,” Drakor murmured as he lifted my face up toward his. He kissed me, long and slow and deep. When his lips left mine, I saw hot need in his gaze. “You are such a beauty, Nisha. You are as exotic as the night for which you were named.”

I reached up and stroked his bold, square jaw. “My mother named me in her language. She was called Jariat.”

Drakor brows arched almost indiscernibly and he gave a soft, amused-sounding grunt.

“What is it?”

“Nothing,” he said, caressing my cheek. “It’s a very old name, from a very old people. A beautiful name.”

“Is there anything you don’t know?”

He leaned down and kissed me once more. “I have been around for a long time. One cannot help but learn a few things. But you. . you are a marvel to me, Nisha. I am amazed by all I’m learning from you. I never dreamed I could care so deeply for a human.”

“Nor I, for one of the Strange,” I whispered, my heart aching with emotion, my body thrumming with desire.

Our lips met again, with a passion neither of us seemed able to deny. Drakor undressed me with maddening care, his mouth tasting each naked inch of my skin. His own clothing came off in a hurry, and then he was poised above me, his thick shoulders and arms bunched with muscles, his bare chest smooth as velvet under my roaming fingertips.

I put my hand around the back of his neck and pulled him down on top of me. His mouth claimed mine with fierce need as our bodies came together, hot and yearning. He filled me up, gave me more pleasure than I’d ever known.

We tossed about in a slick, delicious tangle of legs and hands, insatiable for each other, even after we’d both come down from a shattering release. He was wild and magnificent, and even if I’d spent a thousand nights in his arms I knew I’d still crave more. I hungered for all of him, and for all we’d never have again once we reached our destination and said our goodbye.

As we lay together side by side, he stared into my eyes with the same unspoken longing I felt weighing down my own heart.

“Nisha,” he murmured. “My God, I never expected you. I never expected to feel any of this. I shouldn’t feel it. You are human, and I am not.”

“I know.” I nodded, tried to smile even though it hurt.

He brushed his lips across mine, a sweet, tender kiss. “You are human. . and I don’t care. I want to be with you, wherever you need that to be. I love you, and none of the rest matters.”

I swallowed, uncertain I’d heard him correctly. “You what?”

“I love you,” he said, and kissed me again, more firmly now. A claiming kiss that burned through me like fire.

I started to tell him that I felt the same way, but then I heard something terrible ring out in the distance. A low howl, coming from somewhere in the dark outside. Then another, and still another.

All the blood seemed to drain from my head and settle into my stomach as cold as ice.

Drakor looked at me, his gaze stark. “Hellhounds.”

We barely had time to dress and jump back into the cab of my truck before the beasts’ howls had grown dangerously close.

I turned the engine over and swore when the damned thing sputtered and choked. I tried again. It coughed to weak life, rattling as though it were on its last legs.

And that’s when I noticed the needle on the fuel gauge.

“Shit.” I reached into the dash and tapped the temperamental old gauges, hoping the needle had merely gotten stuck as it so often did on relics like the one I was driving. After a few knocks, it did move a couple of degrees — deeper into the negative. “We’re practically out of fuel.”

In my haste to get us out of Port Phoenix, I’d neglected to do even the most basic systems check. And, in my state of fatigue after so many hours behind the wheel, I’d managed to drive us smack into the middle of nowhere. With hellhounds on our tail.

Another bone-grating howl went up somewhere in the darkness outside.

“I think we can make it another ten miles or so. We can head deeper into the wilderness and try to outrun them.” I grabbed the gearshift and started to put the rig into drive. Drakor’s hand stopped me.

“Nisha, there isn’t time. The truck will only be a hindrance in the end.” He took my hand in his and pulled me across the seat to slide out the passenger side door with him. “Let’s go.”

“We’ll never make it,” I said as we raced away from the sound of the gaining hellhounds. “Are you strong enough to fly?”

“I am,” he replied. “But I wouldn’t be able to carry you very far yet. We have to run.”

I tried to pull myself free of his hold, but he wouldn’t let go. “Drakor, listen to me. You have to get away. You have to leave me here and save yourself.”

He swore something dark and nasty and pulled me into a faster pace. The forest was pitch black, a maze of tall pines and thorny bramble. We tore through it, uncertain where we should go except as far away from the hellhounds as possible.

But each second that I felt hopeful we might elude them, it seemed the Strange beasts sounded closer. Their howls and snarls echoed in the woods, coming at us from several directions.

“Drakor, please,” I whispered fiercely. “We can’t both get away from them. They’re going to catch up to us.”

“Then I will stand and fight them,” he muttered tightly, not slowing his gait.

No sooner had he said this than one of the two-headed hounds erupted from out of the darkness and launched itself at him. I lost his hand in the sudden crash of colliding bodies. I heard the gut-wrenching sounds of the struggle, the snapping of animal jaws. The tearing of vulnerable flesh and sinew.

“Drakor!” I cried, anguished to think of his suffering.

All at once, flames shot up into the night. In the abrupt illumination, I glimpsed Drakor in his dragon form, the thick forest in front of him, nothing but endless night at his back. He hissed a plume of fire at the attacking hellhound, incinerating the beast. Another one came at him with both sets of jaws gnashing and was similarly torched.

Two of the awful creatures were down, but three more were right behind them.

And Drakor had already shifted back into a man.

He was panting and sweating, strain showing in the taut lines of his face. My heart sank like a stone in my breast. The shift had drained him of his power.

“Nisha, behind you!”

I swung around and met with two sets of feral eyes staring out at me from the heads of an enormous hellhound who stood just an arm’s length away. It bared its terrible teeth and fangs, massive hind legs coiled and ready to spring into a leap.

I couldn’t run. There was nowhere to go. I went for my gun, but it was too late.

The hellhound leapt at me.

It knocked me off my feet, sent me reeling through the dark night air. I waited to feel the crushing blow of the ground coming up to meet my spine. It didn’t materialize. Instead, I fell and fell and fell. . into a black void. A chasm so deep and wide it was all I could see.

“Nisha!” Drakor’s voice roared from somewhere high above. It echoed off the stone walls of the abyss that surrounded me. “Nisha, no!”

All my fears of flying — that inexplicable terror at finding myself airborne — pressed down on me like a lead weight. I plummeted faster.

From somewhere deep inside me, I knew it was my fear that would destroy me. Not the hellhound that had pitched over the ledge with me and had since dropped out of my sight. Myself alone.

I thought of my mother, who sacrificed herself so that my father and I could live.

I thought of my father, who died of a broken heart because fate had torn her from his arms.

And I thought of Drakor, the Strange and noble man I didn’t want to love but couldn’t live without. I didn’t want him to know my father’s pain. Selfishly, I wanted to spend the rest of my days in Drakor’s sheltering arms, however long destiny might grant us.

Far above me now, I heard him call to me again. I saw him leap over the cliff’s edge, not in dragon form but as the man I loved.

I screamed, heartbroken and horrified.

Something fell away from me in that moment. I felt my fears dry up and swirl off on the breeze that rushed up all around me. I watched Drakor diving toward me in the empty darkness, and something deep within me shook free of its tether.

I closed my eyes, and when I opened them again I wasn’t falling anymore. I was floating. I was flying, suspended on the night wind, my arms and torso covered in glorious white feathers.

And there was Drakor beneath me now, his massive wings spread out as if to catch me, hovering as I was in the middle of the immense canyon that gaped as far as the eye could see.

In silent understanding, we flew together to the far side of the canyon, leaving the hellhounds to stare after us in disappointment.

Drakor and I touched down on solid ground as one. He shook off his scales, and I watched in amazement as the snowy plumage that covered me from my glossy beak to the tops of my taloned feet dissolved back into skin.

“An eagle,” Drakor said, wonder in his deep voice. “I might have guessed.”

“How could you have?” I asked. “I didn’t know myself.”

His smile was rather smug. “Your mother’s name, Nisha.”

“Jariat?” I shook my head. “I don’t understand.”

“As I told you, it is a very old name, a mythical name. According to legend, Jariat was a beautiful bird who became a human for love of her offspring.”

It took me a moment to process. “You’re telling me that my mother was Strange? The Jariat of legend?”

He bent his head and kissed me with so much love it made my heart ache. “We have a lifetime to figure all of this out. We could share forever, Nisha, if you’ll have me.”

I smiled up into his handsome face. “I like the sound of that.”

“There’s just one other thing.” He grew very serious then. “I will be making some changes in the way my father’s court is run. I will need someone courageous, someone honourable, whose opinion I value over any other, to stand beside me when I reclaim my father’s throne.”

I swallowed, proud of him and hopeful for the future we might build together. “You want me to be part of your court?”

His assenting nod couldn’t have been more regal if his head had been wreathed with a jewelled crown. “I cannot imagine becoming king unless you are with me, Nisha. As my queen and chief advisor.”

I threw my arms around him and caught his mouth in an elated kiss.

“I’ll take that as a yes?” he chuckled.

“Yes!” I cried. “I love you, Drakor. So, yes, yes! Yes to whatever you desire of me.”

He growled with purely male interest. “Now, I like the sound of that.”

Drakor and I spent two weeks with the Strange enclave that dwelled in the hidden cliffs of what had once been southwestern Colorado. Once he’d regained his strength and recuperated from his kidnapping, we travelled back to the coast together, towards his homeland of New Asia.

The air was crisp that day, but the sun was high, its warming rays stretching down to touch us as we stood at land’s end and stared out at the vast blue ocean ahead of us. Drakor’s hand was clasped easily around mine.

“Are you ready, Nisha?”

I looked up into the face of my lover, my mate, my king, and I smiled. “I’m ready.”

He gave me a nod and let go of my hand.

With a shrug of his mighty shoulders, he transformed. I joined him in shifting, giving a shake like a dog throwing off water and watching with still-fresh wonder as my white feathers sprouted into glorious plumage.

My dragon looked at me, and I thought I could see him smile. I gave him a nod of my beaked head. Together we stepped off the steep edge of land.

And we flew.