Dreamwalker (Stormwalker #5) - Allyson James Page 0,70
waiting, my PA will have a conniption. Ah.” He paused as though remembering something. “By the way, I’ve sent the cleaning bill for my shirt, the one the Nightwalker bloodied in his vain attempt to bite me, to your hotel. I believe it came to two-hundred dollars.” He gestured toward the door through which we’d entered. “My receptionist will see you out now, fetch you a taxi if you need one.”
The door he pointed to was closed, the wall unbroken, but I had no doubt it would open to release us when he wished. I turned around and started for it, ready to get out of this chilling place.
I was halfway across the glaring white floor when I realized Mick hadn’t followed me. I turned to see him still facing Emmett, his hands at his sides, his dragon aura crackling.
“Smith,” he said.
His voice was quiet and steady, but everything in me came alert. I headed for him, uneasiness surging.
“If you ever try to hurt Janet again,” Mick continued without a break. “I will rain hell down upon you.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Emmett said. “I believe—”
He never got a chance to tell us what he believed. Mick brought up his hands, his dragon aura rushed outward, and the entire office exploded into flames.
I let out a cry and shielded my face with my hands, but the fire didn’t touch me. Mick and I stood in a clear, five-foot space on the white floor, while the flame raced around us and through the rest of the office.
A rope of fire lifted Emmett’s desk and tumbled it end over end straight through the thick glass wall. The windows were meant to withstand impact—and Emmett no doubt had his bulletproofed—but the desk crashed through the heated glass and flew out into the bright daylight. Fire consumed the steel frame and the computer, raining ash to the city below.
Emmett himself was on fire, a pillar of flame, but he only stood there, no screaming, no flailing. He watched, with me, as darkness filled the room, and every window melted and flowed to the pristine floor in a thick river of glass.
Sudden wind blasted through the three open sides, sweeping both Emmett and me off our feet, the wind tunnel sucking Emmett out into open air.
I skittered on my stomach across the smooth floor, hit the edge, scrabbled for hold, and found myself swept into empty space.
Chapter Twenty-One
I screamed and screamed as I fell, knowing that nothing between me and the thirty floors of air would stop me. My arms pumped, as though some primordial ancestor whose DNA I carried instinctively tried to fly.
I tumbled, dizzy and sick, for all of two seconds—a very, very long two seconds—before a talon caught me and pulled me up into the sky.
“Mick!” I yelled. “You …” I choked off my words, knowing he’d never hear me, and slumped down into the now-familiar dragon’s claw.
Mick didn’t like to go dragon in front of anyone, but he should have thought of that before he destroyed the windows of Emmett’s building and dove out to a metropolis of five million on a bright, clear-skied morning.
We soared far too high above the teeming city, the freeway streaming with cars to our left, arteries feeding into it. Mick flapped over the baseball park, the roof open today, letting me see down to the green of the field too far below me. He winged his way toward the airport, then turned and streamed north just before we reached the flight path of the landing jets.
As he passed over the freeway in the middle of town, cars flowing into a short tunnel staggered to a halt, quickly building a jam that began to stretch for miles. Mick let out a screech that I knew was a dragon laugh, then flew straight north, following a main avenue that crossed low mountains to northern suburbs, then beyond to open desert hills.
Mick headed skyward to navigate the eight-thousand foot mountains of Rim country and off to the high desert of Magellan and home.
***
Mick landed with precision on the other side of the railroad bed from the Crossroads Hotel about an hour and a half after he’d destroyed Emmett’s office.
I fell to my knees when he set me down, weariness and reaction taking over. By the time I hauled myself up, Mick had shifted back into his human form and was helping me with strong, warm hands.