Releasing the Dragon Read online

  I can still feel though, whispered an awful voice in her head. I’m going to feel everything when he goes after me with that long knife and nobody will even hear me screaming because the music in the gym is so loud! Oh God, please help me—please—

  “Take your fucking hands off my chosen mate.”

  The low, growling voice seemed to come from everywhere at once and suddenly Dru was there, right in front of them. When he saw what was happening and the long, curving silver blade in Christian’s hand, an angry snarl began to rise in his throat. And his eyes…

  His eyes are doing that same thing they always do in the dreams, Annie thought dazedly. She watched, unable to tear her gaze away, as the bottomless black depths split vertically, widening like the pupils of a cat and, a burning golden light like the fires of some internal furnace flooded out.

  The blinding light illuminated the dark corner Christian had dragged her into and she saw to her horror a whole set of knives and other sharp implements lying on the ground. They had been rolled up into a cloth bundle, like professional chefs use to store their best knives and now they were laid out on the grass with surgical precision, all ready for use. God, what had her old high school crush intended to do to her?

  “Get away from her—now!” Dru’s voice was terrible to hear—not just because of the rage that filled it but because of a kind of double echo that emanated when he spoke. It was almost as though a stronger, deeper voice was growling the words along with him. The sound seemed to make her brain throb in her skull.

  It’s the same voice I hear in the dreams, she realized. So angry and deep…

  The sound seemed to affect Christian even more than her. He dropped his hold on her and clapped his hands to his ears.

  “No,” he screamed. “No, don’t… don’t!”

  Dru made a noise that was almost a roar. Annie had been to the Big Cat Rescue once on a field trip and had heard a lion roar—the sound was a little like that but deeper and harsher and somehow more piercing too. It sounded almost like it had an eagle’s scream and a tiger’s throaty growl mixed into it too. The guide at the rescue had told them a lion’s roar could be heard for five miles or eight kilometers away—she could well believe that Dru’s voice could be heard twice as far as that—it seemed to make her eardrums bulge.

  Christian screamed again and dropped to his knees. He began scrabbling wildly at his knives, rolling them back up into a bundle as though he was trying to get away.

  Without his support, Annie felt herself falling too. Her legs were simply too rubbery to hold her up. But before she hit the ground, strong arms caught her and she was suddenly being lifted and held against Dru’s broad chest.

  “I told you that male was not to be trusted,” he growled in her ear and then everything went dark.

  Eight

  Dru wanted to kill the human male for trying to hurt his female. But at the sight of Annie in danger, his Drake rose so strongly inside him he knew if he didn’t get away quickly, it would come out and wreak havoc.

  So instead of giving the male the justice he deserved, he held Annie close and carried her quickly to his shuttle, now parked in the side of the lot. When he’d left before, he had actually driven a little way away, trying to get hold of himself. But a sudden urgent sense that Annie was in danger had brought him quickly back—only to find that he was almost too late to save her.

  Goddess, let her be all right. He didn’t hurt her, did he? Why did she faint?

  Dru examined her as well as he could but he was no trained medic, though he did know a few triage techniques. He could at least tell that she wasn’t bleeding anywhere and she was breathing evenly, but he couldn’t wake her up. At last he decided there was no other choice than to bring her to someone he trusted.

  Making certain she was fastened securely into the passenger side seat with the harness, he switched the shuttle from land to space mode and took off, rising into the sky. The moment he cleared the Earth’s atmosphere, he put in a call to the Mother Ship, which was in orbit around the Earth’s single moon and asked to speak to Commander Sylvan.

  He would know what to do for Annie—Dru hoped, anyway.

  Annie woke with a sour taste in her mouth and a throbbing headache. A concerned face was peering into her own—a girl with blonde hair and silvery-gray eyes.

  “Oh look—I think she’s coming around,” the girl said. Smiling at Annie she added, “How are you feeling, hon?”

  “Who…where…?” Annie blinked, wondering where she was. The last memory she had was of dancing with the huge Kindred from her dreams at the Halloween dance. No one else had invited her but he had asked her even though she was only a sophomore and he was a senior…

  Annie frowned. No, that wasn’t right. She wasn’t in high school anymore, thank God. So then, why had she been back in her old gym surrounded by all the people who had made her life a living hell for four awful years? Why—

  “Hello, Annie—are you well?”

  Suddenly the man from her dreams was hovering over her too. His eyes were solid black again, not split to show the fire within, and the look on his face was anxious.

  “D…Dru?” she managed at last. “How…?”

  “You fainted and wouldn’t wake up so I brought you up to the Mother Ship,” he told her. “I thought you needed more medical attention than I could provide.”

  “The…the Mother Ship?” Annie had always wanted to go see the Kindred Mother Ship. Being a game designer, she was sure the huge alien ship would provide her with hundreds of new ideas. But getting tickets for a tour was harder and harder because everyone wanted to go—the waiting list was something like five years long now.

  And now here I am and I didn’t even have to get a ticket, she thought woozily.

  “You’re going to be fine, hon,” the girl with blonde hair told her. “Your blood tests show you were drugged but it should be almost out of your system now.”

  “Drugged?”

  Suddenly Annie remembered everything…leaving Dru to go have a drink with Christian…the strangely salty daiquiri…Christian’s bizarre change of demeanor and the way he had dragged her into the dark corner full of knives…

  “Oh my God!” She sat bolt upright in bed, her head giving a throb of pain as she did so. “Christian—he must have put something in my daiquiri! And then he took me outside and he had a knife…a whole bunch of knives! He…he…

  She tried to go on but somehow she couldn’t. The crazy, flat look in Christian’s sky-blue eyes…the gleam of the knife blade…his words whispered in her ear…“Tonight, pretty Annie, I want to hear you scream.”

  Suddenly it was all too much.

  “Oh God, he was going to kill me! I really think he was going to kill me!”

  The tears surprised her, pouring out like a flash flood with no warning. Annie tried, but there was no way to stop them. She started to cover her face to hide the ugly terror she felt there but her hands still felt numb and rubbery, as though she had control of her larger motor functions but her fine motor control was still somewhat lacking.

  The look of concern on Dru’s face deepened and he put a hand on her shoulder.

  “Now, now, teeska, don’t cry. It’s all right—I would never let him harm you.”

  “S-sorry,” Annie managed to get out. “C-can’t…seem to st-stop.”

  “Come here, then. Let me share your grief.”

  Sitting on the side of the hospital bed beside her, the big Kindred gathered her into his arms. Before she knew it, Annie found herself enfolded in what felt like warm, flexible steel cables with her face was pressed to his broad chest.

  Reaching up with her useless hands, she put her arms around him as well as she was able—which wasn’t very well since he was so big—and wept her heart out.

  It occurred to her dimly that she hadn’t let herself go this way since those difficult therapy sessions she’d had in college, to try and get over the awful things she’d gone through in high school. Probably her tears w