Hour of the Dragon - Heather Killough-Walden Page 0,67

dim of the lamplight. He went by “Gray” not only because of his name but because he actually sported full head of gray hair, and not many wardens lived long enough for that.

Gray’s tall figure was haloed by the lamp post behind him, obscuring his features in shadow. A beat later, Cain stepped appeared in front of Ares, separating him and Anna from Sterling, Gray, and the others. The Monsters clan leader glanced over his broad shoulder at Ares. Their eyes met.

I’ll check in with you later.

It was a dismissal and a final command. Irrespective of Ares wanting to stay and get this figured out himself – and maybe just rip off Sterling’s arm for good measure – he was now under direct orders to do otherwise. Besides, Cain was right. This was not the place, and now was not the time.

Ares didn’t bother responding with an affirmative. Instead, he wrapped his arms more tightly around Annaleia’s already struggling form and muttered the words of a powerful spell.

“Don’t let him transport!” someone shouted. “She’s one of ours!” At once, the Rigel clan’s magic users moved in. One in particular had already finished his incantation, and Ares immediately felt a grounding spell whip around him like invisible metal coiling ropes.

But it was too late. If Cain wanted Ares gone, he was damn well leaving; that was just a fact. As if to prove as much, the grounding ropes that had coiled invisibly around him frayed and tore everywhere at once, shredded by a million unseen claws. The spell disintegrated to dust, freeing him up just as his own transportation magic took hold and the world began to waver.

The last thing he saw in the alley before the spell filled his vision with the swirling colors of a transport tunnel was Cain glancing back one final time, his blue-burning gaze glowing hot as a thousand suns.

Annaleia shrieked her outrage at being abducted against her will, and Mace’s mind spun. One of ours…. What had the warden meant by that? It echoed in his mind, further fodder for an already bountiful conversation he would damn well have with Annaleia.

In his arms, her struggles became desperate. If he let her go, she would probably run right through the transport wall, most likely to her death. She was no doubt aware that in normal, black-hearted human circumstances, her chances of survival diminished significantly once she allowed her captor to take her to a second location. But these weren’t normal circumstances and he was not a black-hearted human.

He was a black-hearted dragon.

The moment his boots made contact with marble, Ares released his hold on Annaleia and stepped back, almost needing the space between them as much as she did at that moment. At the same time, he waved his hand and the cuffs he’d slapped on her disintegrated.

Leia wobbled a touch and lurched away from him just like he knew she would, but before he could give in to the need to reach out and steady her, she did it herself. She was fast, regaining her footing in record time. A second later, she went very still and warily looked around.

He took another step back, giving her the space and time he knew she required.

“Where…” she began, but her voice trailed off. There was far too much she wanted to know, and she wanted to know it all at once. He knew that feeling too.

Slowly and unsteadily Leia circled the room with her enormous amethyst eyes, absorbing as much as she could of their surroundings. When she finally faced him again, her gaze locked on his, where he trapped it with his will. He might have to give her space, but he couldn’t go on without possessing at least some aspect of her.

As if to thwart him further, she took another step back.

Two steps forward, he thought wryly.

There was now a good distance between them, around six feet or so. It was suddenly too much for his tastes. But he would wait. He could do this. She wasn’t going anywhere. He may have removed the cuffs, but the building was warded.

And she didn’t want to leave. Not really. She thought she could hide that fact from him. She was so damn wrong.

Ares watched her not only with the eyes of a dragon, but a warden. They observed meticulously and with a perceptive vigilance that caught every breath, noted every tiny movement, catalogued every small and fleeting expression. In this way he gauged her, strategizing her thoughts