“Really, you’re shocked that the League is behaving in a less than absolutely pristine ethical manner? Have you ever dealt with the League before? The same people who threatened all magique creatures with extinction if we didn’t agree to the Pact of Secrecy in 1800? The same people who threatened us with extinction if we didn’t agree to a regular census in 1908?”
“But that was more than a hundred years ago,” she protested.
He didn’t mean to tilt his head and look at her like she was an adorable imbecile, but honestly. “The same creatures who were in charge of the League a hundred years ago are in charge of the League now, Jillian. It’s one of the benefits of being a magie. We live longer than you.”
Jillian asked, “Instead of forcing the town to rely on the League, couldn’t the Boones spread their wealth around a little bit?”
He frowned at her. “It’s not in our nature to ‘spread our wealth around.’ My family already helps in some areas that offer them some return on the investment, like providing faster Wi-Fi infrastructure for the town, which the citizens pay a monthly fee for. It wouldn’t do for the town to be any more indebted to my family. It would disrupt what is already a pretty delicate balance of power.”
“So it’s better to indebt them to people who have threatened to mass murder you?”
“Better the devil that’s far away than the devil who lives in your backyard?” he guessed.
She sighed and sagged against the rope suspending the swing. “I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault. But you see now, why I get a little agitated, talking about your study.”
She nodded. “When does that doctor get here?”
“In a few months, after we make a good show of participating in the study.”
“I want to see it,” she said, firmly.
“The doctor? Not very nice to call him an ‘it.’”
She kicked off the floor and swung, nearly kicking him in the shin. “The rift.”
“You can’t.”
“Because it’s invisible?” she asked.
He lifted an eyebrow. “No, because everybody who tries to get too close to it ends up passing out and sleeping for about six months until they heal from the internal trauma caused by random barometric pressure spikes. The closest we magique can get to it is about three hundred yards. Humans? Five hundred or so. Just close enough to see it through high-end binoculars.”
“I’d still like to see it, document the area around it. Note how it changes the environment. What effects it has on you.”
“I mentioned the six-month coma, right?”
She grinned at him. “Come on, be a buddy. If you pass out, I’ll carry you back to town!”
Bael stopped her mid-swing, lifted her arm, examined her bicep and made a skeptical face.
“I would go get Zed and he would carry you back to town,” she conceded.
“If I say no, you’ll just go out there on your own, won’t you?”
“There’s a very strong possibility of that, yes.”
9
Jillian
Hours later, she was wearing her sturdiest boots and thick canvas field pants, wading through waist-deep ferns along the edge of the “Afarpiece Swamp.” It was so-named because the trek of marshland was so remote that the only way locals referred to it was saying that it was “A far piece away.”
Bael didn’t seem to be struggling with the vegetation like she did. He was slipping between the fronds, barely moving them, keeping a sharp eye out for the animals that seemed to be calling from every corner of the swamp.
She thought she’d been primed for the hike, because after all, she lived on the swamp in her little maison de fous. She carefully packed a day bag with water and sunscreen, bug spray and camera equipment.
She’d had no clue. She was not prepared for the way she could smell the heat, wet and earthen, like rotting leaves. She wasn’t prepared for the way the humidity absorbed into her clothes, sealing them to her skin in a thick layer of sweat. She was not prepared for the distraction Bael’s ass would pose, bobbing through the brush ahead of her like a perfect peach wrapped in skin-tight denim.
She was staring at it, suffering the oddest craving for peach pie, when he called over his shoulder, “You all right back there?”
“Are you really taking me to see the rift or is this some sort of horrible backwoods prank?” she asked.
“No, you wanted to see it,” he told her. “And you're going to see it. Because I know you and if I don't help you, you’d just come out here by yourself, fall in a sinkhole and then I’d have to fish you back out. This way, I save time.”
“Well, I appreciate your commitment to efficiency.”
Despite the aches in her shoulders from her pack, she noted that her legs and feet didn’t hurt. The moss created a thick, soft carpet beneath her boots. In fact, everything seemed to grow thick here, and super-sized. The honeysuckle climbing up the trees dripped with blossoms the size of her fist. The scent was alluring, for the first few seconds, and then it was cloying to the point that she felt like she was choking on it.
“Everything seems to be growing…more out here,” she said. “Is that a normal swamp thing or a rift thing?”
“It’s a rift thing. You can see the effects all over town, though. You should see the gardens we get in the fall. Pumpkins the size of a playhouse. The only problem is the kudzu.”
She frowned. “Well, kudzu’s a problem all over the south.”
“Yeah, but our kudzu seems to be growing toward town like it’s personal.”
Jillian nearly tripped over a stone hidden under the fern fronds. She nudged at it with her foot and found that it was part of a line of moss-covered stones that stretched as far as she could see.
“That’s the human line,” he told her, catching her arm and righting her onto her feet. “This is as close as humans should get to the rift. Stay on that side of the stones.”
She nodded, peering over the water, into shaded trees. “I don’t see anything.”
“And you’re not going to from this distance.” He handed her a pair of binoculars from her pack. “Wait for your eyes to adjust. It’s not gonna be as dramatic as you think.”
She lifted the glasses to her eyes and stared. For a few long silent moments, she saw nothing and she thought maybe Bael was pulling a joke on her after all. But then she noticed a tiny movement over the water, between the trees. He was right. There was no light or dark, no crackle of electrical light. It was a ripple, like the haze of heat over asphalt in summer.
“Wow,” she sighed, moving closer, barely feeling the stones bumping her feet.
She pulled out her camera and connected the long-distance lens. She put the viewfinder to her eye and focused on the ripple, firing off several shots. She was sure it would come off like out-of-focus pictures of tree branches, but she had to at least try. She switched to an infrared camera to record the wavelength shifts in complicated color patterns. On the monitor, it looked like a rainbow was having a seizure.
She glanced from the monitor to the rift and back again. The longer she stared at it, the more she could see it move, the more she saw the patterns in its dance, like it was trying to tell her something. She reached her hand out, as if she could touch it, and she could feel intent from the rift. She could feel what it wanted and it wanted—
Everything went dark.
Her head drooped and she couldn’t seem to control any of her muscles. She felt her body drop toward the ground like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Her jaw ached and her stomach felt like it was filled with stones. An arm slipped under her back, breaking her fall just before her head hit the stone circle.
She could feel her feet dragging over the ground as Bael moved her farther back from the stone line. Her eyes fluttered open. Bael’s face swam over hers, an expression of concern furrowing his brow. She weakly lifted her hand to try to trace the lines of his cheekbones with her fingers.
“That’s the rift pullin’ at you,?
?? he told her, sliding his free hand under the base of her skull. “We need to get you out of here.”
She nodded and immediately regretted it. It felt like her ears were going to explode. Thunderclouds rolled over Bael’s head. Something cold splattered against her forehead. Bael’s thumb stroked it away and he righted her onto her feet.
The cypress limbs whipped back and forth like an octopus possessed. The sky opened up and great howling sheets of water poured forth by the bucketful. Lightning sliced through a tree far too close to them and her fingers twisted into Bael’s t-shirt sleeves to pull him closer. Thunder rattled through her chest and the pressure on her chest was so great, she was afraid she might pass out again. No, she had to keep going.
Shaking it off, she started to run, with Bael close behind her.
“I thought you were supposed to be able to see hurricanes from far off?” she yelled over the chaos. She reached out blindly to try to avoid running into trees. And in reaching out, she felt Bael’s hand warm and solid close around her wrists. He pulled her to a stop, and panic made way for relief. She wasn't alone. She had Bael, and for all his blustering, he would not leave her alone in this.
“Not around here. The weather works differently, because of the rift. You get ten miles out of town, you probably won’t even feel this. The closer we get to the rift, the more unstable the weather. It should blow over in a couple of hours. I know a place where we can go, but you have to promise that you’ll never tell anybody where it is.”
She winced as the rain fell in stinging sheets against her face. Lightning flashed, sending a limb crashing just next to her feet. “If it gets me out of this rain, I promise.”
He cupped her chin in his hand and lifted her eyes to meet his. “This is a solemn promise, Jillian. I need you to swear.”
“Take me to this hiding place and I’ll never tell a soul where it is.”
Without another word, Bael slipped his arms under her knees, throwing her legs around his waist, and started running through the woods as if she weighed nothing. She yelped, curling her body around him as he moved at superhuman speed through the trees.
The rain had soaked through her clothes and though she didn’t think it was possible, she was cold. The warmth of his body seeped through the sheriff’s department t-shirt. She couldn't help but snuggle against him.
The farther they moved from the rift, the easier she felt. And by the time Bael skidded to a stop, chest heaving against hers, she’d almost relaxed. She lifted her head from his shoulder to see that they were in front of a large steel double door embedded in the side of a hill.
Bael set her on her feet while he approached the doors. The hill itself was weird because there was no elevation here in the bayou, only flat, marshy land. It took a few seconds of staring to realize it wasn't actually a hill. It was concrete that had been carefully obscured with live vines.
“Is this the part where you take me out to the swamp and I disappear?” she asked, looking around. She couldn’t see another building or a road, just miles and miles of swamp.
“No, this is the part where we get out of the rain and you stay warm and dry. Now, please turn aside.”
Jillian frowned, but turned away and heard a series of metallic wrenching noises which she did her best to ignore in favor of dancing and rubbing her arms to keep warm.
“Okay, turn around.”
She turned just in time to see Bael jerk the double doors open, revealing a dark, cavernous space. A rush of warm copper-scented air hit her in the face as he pulled her through the doors. Bael locked the door behind him and she was enclosed in this lightless void.
Panic crept up her throat. She reached for her cell phone, with its trusty flashlight feature, but she heard a loud exhalation from Bael and suddenly the space was illuminated in a golden glow. Lying before her were piles of gold as far as the eye could see, coins and platters and goblets and chests filled with jewels. She was overwhelmed by the vast size of it, shielding her eyes from the blinding reflected shine.
His face was set in an odd, nearly shy expression as he said, “This is my hoard.”
She looked from the sea of gold to the flaming torch Bael was holding, back to the treasure.
“You’re a dragon.” She started to laugh as he stabbed the base of the torch into a pile of coins. “Of all the creatures I thought you could be, I wouldn’t have guessed a dragon.”
“You didn’t know?” He grinned, his sharp white teeth reflecting the golden light of the torch he’d lit with his breath.
“You didn’t say! No one in the Boone family has! Everybody else in town just volunteers what they are. And you have no tells and it has been so frustrating!”
Bael was doubled over with laughter, his hands braced against his knees.
“Don’t you laugh at me, Bael Boone or I will take one of your coins and hide it in Zed’s office somewhere.”
“You wouldn’t dare,” he whispered, his teeth growing longer and his voice lowering to a raspy rumble. She shivered as he leaned closer, his nose trailing along her hairline. His lips brushed along her forehead and her hands slid up his arms to pull him closer.
She lifted her head, so her breath fluttered over his lips as she said, “Keep testing me and you’ll find out.”
He frowned. “What else did you think I could be?”
“A lion shifter,” she suggested, smirking slightly. “A tiger, a bear.”
“You think I’m in the same shifter category as Zed?”
“I didn’t know! You could have been anything. The golden eyes and the constant sniffing told me nothing and…so that was smoke I saw coming out of your nose.” She sighed and plopped back on an enormous pile of what looked like Spanish doubloons. “Also, the dragon-themed décor around city hall makes much more sense.”
And to her surprise, instead of telling her to get her ass off of his treasure, his eyes flashed that eager amber and he dropped to his knees in front of her. “Yes, those were my smoke rings. I didn’t realize you saw them.”
“I see a lot more than you think I do. So how does this work? We know almost nothing about dragon shifters. You’re all so secretive. And when an academic tries to get too close, you’ve been known to turn them medium rare.”
“We’re just like other shifters only my form is bigger and more awesome. And I'm a little obsessive about gold or anything shiny really.” He threaded his fingers through her hair, watching as the light shimmered over the shifting threads.
“How far does the cave go?”
He leaned against the coins, settling into them. “It’s not so much a cave as a warehouse. Dragons are mountain creatures by nature. We can’t build underground hoards here, so we make do with what we got. I tried to keep the shape irregular, so it wouldn’t stand out so much against the natural backdrop. I had to dig it and pour the concrete myself, so it took a while. Dragons don’t ever let anyone else know where their hoard is, you see, so I couldn’t hire anyone.”
“And what do you do with it?” she asked.
“I know I have it. I can provide for a mate and many children with it. That’s enough.”
She nodded. “That’s good to know. How often do you get to come out here?”
“Not often. I don’t want my cousins following me and trying to take it for their own. We have a saying, ‘A worthy dragon loses not one coin.’ In other words, if you’re a dragon worth his wings, your hoard won’t get taken from you.”
“But you just like knowing it’s here?” she guessed.
He nodded, his eyes flashing in the torchlight. He slid his fingers over the hem of her shirt, pulling it over her ribs, fanning his hand over them. She arched up to kiss him, his tongue sweeping into her mouth in a filthy dance. And when she ran out of air, she wrapped her arms around him to keep the warmth of his body close.
“How did you collect all of this?” She began pointing at objects she could spot in the firelight. “That scarab plaque is Egyptian. That mask is Mayan. That headdress is
early Roman.”
His brows rose and her shirt rose over her head. He set it aside and she was very grateful that she’d worn one of her prettier bras that day, light blue pinstripes with darker blue lace. There was a matching pair of panties, but it was laundry day so she was wearing white cotton with neon pink and green stars. Maybe she could shimmy out of them before he saw.
“Before you become a paranormal anthropologist, you have to study human history,” she told him. She spread her fingers through the pile of coins they’d settled on, splashing them left and right. “And have you been raiding Spanish armadas?”
He rolled them both and leaned over her, his hands keeping her from dropping back onto the gold. “I inherited a lot of it. I was my parents’ only child. And the rest, I collected or ‘requisitioned.’”
“Requisitioned?” She grinned as he leaned closer, displacing the coins with a steady clink clink clink.
“It’s a lifetime of work,” he murmured against her cheek. She leaned into him, letting his lips drag across her skin. He was warm, so warm in this cold, dark room where they were the only living things. She hissed as her bare skin came into contact with the metal. His fangs snicked into place as he hovered over her, scanning the room for the source of her distress.
“It’s cold,” she said, laughing and pulling his shirt over his head. His torso was just as lean and tapered as she expected, not excessively muscled, but obviously strong and possessing a certain serpentine beauty. His shoulders were tattooed with what looked like the axillaries of a pair of massive wings. She pulled him close, tracing the lines with her fingers.
He reached into the treasure pile and retrieved a bib necklace that was made of several tiers of worked gold and rough, cloudy red gemstones. It looked like something from an Etruscan etching. The light in his eyes as he fastened it around her neck bordered on obscene. She wasn’t sure whether he was more entranced by her body or the sight of his gold against her skin.
Her clever fingers plucked at his jeans, popping the button loose. “Gold doesn’t keep you warm. You can’t eat it. It doesn’t love you back. It doesn’t feel.”