Hour of the Dragon - Heather Killough-Walden Page 0,93

to try to recreate her. And it was fast that he learned he could do no such thing. No matter how hard he tried, something always went wrong and the canvas was ruined. There was always a fresh canvas available when he needed it, which was strange now that he thought about it. It was strange how easy it was for him to subdue them…. He’d discarded so many of them.

Randall stopped re-dressing the prisoner’s wound for the second time that hour and turned to glance at the frames along the walls. “Your friend is one in a billion,” he told her. “Or rather just one, plain and simple. She’s unique.”

“This is just like a man,” Piper seethed.

Randall looked up, meeting her gaze.

“You find the one flower in a field of weeds, and because it’s beautiful you can’t help but pick it.” She sneered at him, her look one of absolute disgust. “I bet you can’t wait to traipse across fresh white snow, either.”

Randall blinked. Actually… he hated people who did that.

He winced when more pain shot through his right eye. He closed his eyes and held his head for a moment, wondering at this new, horrid pain and the blossoming confusion in his brain.

“What happened to your eyes, asshole?”

Randall frowned, lowering his hands again to look up at the prisoner. “What?” he asked.

“Your eyes,” she told him. “Something’s wrong with one of them. I swear it wasn’t that bad when you lifted us.”

“They’ve always been uneven,” said Carmen softly from her easing world of not-so-much-pain. “Dark green and light green.”

Randall’s gaze narrowed. He looked from one of them to the other, then stood and made his way to the nearest framed photograph. He used its spotless glass to study his reflection, and his blood ran cold.

His right eye was white. It looked as though it had been afflicted with cataracts. Calcification, he thought as his stomach experienced a dropping sensation and the world tilted a little under his feet. The eyes of the dead turn white due to calcification. That’s what his right eye looked like right now.

“I think I can take things from here, Mr. Price,” came a familiar voice from the shadows on the side of the room.

Randall was caught off guard. He spun, his heart making a hollow racing sound in his chest as Victor Maze stepped out of the darkness in a perfectly tailored gray suit. As usual, he looked like a model fresh from a shoot. But Price could sense a change in him. He was more pale than before. And there was something else….

“I see Miss Maddox still hasn’t stopped bleeding.” Maze sighed and waved his hand. Piper looked down to find that the wound that was only half-covered by fresh bandages was closing up. All five of the deep slices Randall had so carefully carved into her, making sure to take some of the muscle as well, were sealing up before his eyes.

Anger rushed through Randall. He’d even done her the favor of making sure it looked like a claw mark. It would have appeared amazing when it healed.

“There now,” said Maze, who ignored Piper then and made his way to Carmen. “Miss Seville, how are you feeling?”

But she didn’t answer. Instead, she turned her face away from him and seemed to become more sober, more awake.

“Mr. Price took good care of you, I see. I’m glad.” Maze then turned to face Randall. “One should not go to their death in pain. Where is the mayhem in that?” He walked toward him. “When death is merciful, there is no raging, no struggle against it. But when it cuts short something good, something healthy or happy, well… then it is the very essence of chaos.” He stopped in front of Randall and lowered his voice. “It’s time.”

Chapter Thirty – Santorini, Greece

Anna felt the touch of his hand around her neck like a gentle but deliciously threatening intrusion into the miasma of Anna’s emotions. Her head swam with past-induced pain, guilt, and regret, and current mystification at where she found herself now – in the candy closet of an honest to goodness dragon – who had once been her best friend.

And then he was encircling her already trapped form with more than just his hard body.

She felt his magic curl around her, licking at her wounds like gentle, lovely brushes of some magical narcotic, flushing her skin and changing the rhythm of her heart. It no longer beat too fast in the grip of