Cooper Isabel - Legend Of The Highland Dragon

Colin pocketed the gun, then clapped his good hand to Stephen’s shoulder. “Stay alive,” he said, serious for a second.

He closed the door behind him, but there was no time for Stephen to lock it. As Colin left the room, Stephen had already begun to change shape, not caring or even really noticing as his clothing shredded around him. He did notice when he burst through the closed window, but he didn’t care any more about the shattered glass than about his ruined shirt.

Launching himself into the fog, he sped toward the docks, only hoping that he’d arrive in time.

Touch was the first sense to return. Mina awoke to the feel of cold metal against her back and rough ropes cutting into her wrists and ankles. Her hands were behind her, and when she wiggled her fingers, she felt more metal, pitted and flaked with age. She could smell old metal too, as her head cleared, and a vague hint of rotten eggs.

Sulfur was not a good smell, considering the circumstances. At least Mina didn’t see any flames when she opened her eyes.

Demons, on the other hand, were clearly in stock. Half demons. Five of the creatures from before surrounded her, human features variously afloat in shadow. Each had a different arrangement of…bits…but their eyes were all the same, gray-white and completely expressionless. Mina would almost have preferred rage or hunger—or eyeless faces like the manes had. She wasn’t fond of the middle ground.

She wasn’t fond of anything about this situation. She rather wanted to be sick.

It was important to keep calm. It was also important, she realized after a breath or two, not to look too calm. The less Ward thought she knew, the more likely he’d be to overlook something. So she shrieked and threw herself about, imitating the heroine of every three-penny melodrama she’d ever seen, calling for help even though she knew there was nobody to hear.

Screaming and thrashing against the ropes relieved her feelings a bit, too.

At last, Mina let herself slump in her bonds, hanging her head as if exhausted. Blood was trickling from her wrists where the rope had rubbed off some of the skin. Feeling it, she thought she might have overdone the hysteria a bit.

Footsteps came toward her, echoing in the sudden silence. Mina looked up under her eyelashes. If one of the half manes was approaching her, actual hysterics became a very real possibility.

The half manes stayed where they were. The figure approaching was human, at least, although the man had very little else to recommend him in Mina’s eyes. He was tall, stout, and well-dressed, his coat and hat rather absurd given their surroundings.

He stopped in front of her: not, to Mina’s relief, within arm’s length. “Don’t bother with another show,” he said. “Nobody will hear.”

That wasn’t just a threat. He knew what he was talking about. Mina could tell as much from his voice, and she was glad of the dim lighting. There were several dark patches on the floor that she didn’t want to see clearly.

“I hope you’ll be a sensible girl. I’d like to do this quickly, and I don’t really need to hurt you. Someone should teach you a lesson about sticking to your place and keeping your nose out of the affairs of your betters,” he added, and in the flexing of his fingers and the light in his eye, Mina saw a rage that had passed rationality long since. She shrank back as much as she could.

Whether her fear had sated him for the moment or he’d just turned his mind to more practical matters, Ward cleared his throat and went on. “But it doesn’t have to be me. Not if you’ll be smart.”

Mina widened her eyes and raised her head. “Who are you?” she asked, letting her voice slip back into the accent she’d grown up with. “What do you want with me? I ’aven’t done you any ’arm.”

Ward was a big man, and past middle age, whatever spells he used to keep himself from growing any older. Mina saw his open hand lash out and had time to turn her head so that the blow missed her nose and mouth. It was still hard enough to make her cry out, and it knocked her head back into the pipe, which hurt worse than the slap.

“Don’t lie,” Ward snarled. “Don’t think you can get away with it. Not gutter scum like you. I can see right through you.”

He stepped back. He also rubbed his hand, which tempted Mina to smile, as stupid as that would have been. “You grew up in Bethnal Green,” he said. “Then you somehow learned to speak a little bit like a lady and you worked for Professor Carter—until two months ago, when you showed up at MacAlasdair’s in the middle of the night and got taken on as his personal secretary.”

There was no point asking how he knew. Any of the servants or the servants’ friends or their friends’ friends could have told him. Mina had never tried to keep any of that information secret. Clearly it was time to revise her tactics; the old ones had earned her a bruised face and a throbbing skull.

She swallowed and managed to get words out of her throat, though it felt clamped shut. “What do you want with me, then?”

“He wouldn’t have employed you for your personal charms or your skills,” said Ward, and Mina wasn’t sure whether he meant to insult her or Stephen, or both. “You must’ve found out a thing or two about ‘Laird MacAlasdair.’ What was it?”

The ropes were securely tied and the pipe was solid, with no sharp edges that Mina could find. The half manes stared at her blankly. Off in the distance, a rat squealed.

She cocked her head to the side. “What’ll you do if I tell you?”

“Let you go,” said Ward. Mina didn’t believe that for a second, but she tried not to look openly skeptical. “If you don’t tell me, I’ll let them go to work on you.” He gestured to the half manes. “They like live meat.”

That, Mina believed.

Her nails scrabbled against the pipe’s surface. Her hands had more hope than her mind, it seemed.

Looking down, she bit her lip. “I don’t know everything,” she said, very small and very frightened. She didn’t have to fake that. “He didn’t tell me very much.”

“No,” said Ward, “he wouldn’t. Not even MacAlasdair would be that stupid. Start at the beginning. What did you see that made him hire you?”

Mina closed her eyes and speculated. “He—he was in a big room. There was chalk on the floor, and—and blood. I think there was a chicken in the corner. And there was something in the middle of the room.”

“Something?”

Building from what she’d heard of with Stephen and Colin, she filled in the rest with imagination. “It was a bit like a man.” She talked slowly, trying to sound frightened and reluctant. Every second she took was one more second that she was alive, one more second in which the situation could change. “It had arms and legs and,” she swallowed, “a head. Except its hands had claws, and its head was…it looked like a big frog. With teeth. Its eyes glowed. I remember its eyes glowed.”

After a moment of silence, she opened her eyes. Ward was still in front of her, but now he was scratching his head.

“What was it doing?” he asked, finally.

“Talking to Lord MacAlasdair. I, um…” Mina thought swiftly. The beast she’d constructed wasn’t formed for peaceful work, and Ward would have noticed any mysterious deaths in London, just as Stephen would. “I think he was talking about affairs back in Scotland. An uncle, maybe? I didn’t hear very clearly. I was scared.”

“When you served him, did you have the full run of the house?”

“Not his bedroom, of course!” That got her a glare. Propriety was not a consideration here. “And there was a room in the attic.” Thank you, Florrie. “He always kept it locked, but he went up there every night.”

“Oh? Alone?”

“Mostly,” said Mina, keeping her options open.

“What do you mean—”

THUD.

The sound had come from above. Mina looked up, but the ceiling itself was too high for her to see. Whatever had landed on the roof was heavy; she could tell that much.

So could Ward. He seized her by the shoulders, glaring. “What was that?”

“I don’t know!”

Metal squealed above them.

With no place to retreat, Mina endured. Ward’s hands felt like claws; his breath reeked; and the eyes that stared into hers were almost as inhuman in their rage as the half manes’s. Mina shrank back and turned her face away, the best she could manage.

“What are you doing? What are you?”

“A girl. His secretary. I’ve nothing to do with this!” It was the first truth she’d spoken in five minutes, and ironically, it did nothing to convince Ward.

He hit her again, which she’d more or less been expecting. This time it was in the stomach and with a closed fist. A coldly rational part of Mina supposed that, if she had been casting a spell, that blow might even have been effective—physical pain to disrupt mental concentration. The rest of her knew only pain, breathlessness, and the sudden heat of blood flowing from her nose.

Much as she would have liked to blame Ward, that last wasn’t his fault. He hadn’t come near her face.

“It’s not me!” she cried.

He curled his upper lip at her like an angry dog, released his grip, and stood back. “I don’t feel like taking chances. Kill her,” he said to the half manes.

As one, they surged forward. Terror broke over Mina, flooding her mind beyond rational thought. She shrieked and thrashed, surging against the ropes with the full weight of her body, knowing it wouldn’t be enough.

Metal yielded easily to Stephen’s claws. Brick was only a little more of a challenge. Shrouded in fog, he smashed through the factory roof and plummeted inside, roaring. One taste of destruction had merely gotten his blood up, and he was ready for more even before he heard Mina screaming.

He dove, talons out. He saw the vats and the pipe that had appeared in his vision. He didn’t see Mina; the hybrids blocked his view. They were advancing toward her, unrushed but far too quickly for all that.

Stephen tore into them.

The first hybrid he reached went down in a storm of claws. A swipe of his tail knocked three others back, and Stephen clamped his jaws around the remaining creature. It squirmed in his mouth in a way no living thing had ever done, and the taste was revolting: cold and corrosive. Eating it would probably be a horrible idea, so he flicked his neck and sent the hybrid flying. It struck one of the vats and fell heavily, leaving traces of its shadowy half-flesh on the metal.

When he reached Mina, her face was white with terror and her eyes were red with tears, but she’d stopped screaming and was holding perfectly still. Her nose was bleeding. The bastard had hit her or had commanded one of the hybrids to do it. Stephen hissed his wrath, but anger was, just then, not the wanted emotion. He stifled it, then carefully lifted one of his hands and brought a claw down through the ropes that bound Mina, slicing through them all with one blow. She stumbled forward a few steps, rubbing at her wrists.

He wanted to tell her to run, wanted to at least meet her eyes, but the hybrids were coming toward them again. Stephen roared and spun to face them.

Ward was shouting. None of it was very coherent, but all of it still sounded confident. Why not? He’d be reasonably certain, now, that he knew Stephen’s secret. The hybrids were powerful and almost unkillable. One, after all, had done some significant damage to Colin, even in dragon form, and while Ward didn’t know that, he’d probably gotten some idea of their capabilities in the process of creating them.

Neither he nor his creations had yet seen a MacAlasdair’s full strength.

Now Mina was behind Stephen and the hybrids in front. The building that surrounded them was metal and stone, and there were no innocents to worry about.

Stephen inhaled deeply, feeling the shift and dance of magic deep in his body. This was as much a part of his heritage as his last name or the red scales that covered his skin.

He breathed out.

Fire.

Two of the hybrids melted, shrieking in horrible bubbling voices. Their bodies writhed, the shadows twisting independently of the flesh. If Stephen had had time, he would have been revolted. A third screamed and writhed as well, but didn’t fall. It staggered back for a second instead, and its shape changed as the clothes it had been wearing burned away. Shadow flowed down its left arm, fusing the charred bits of its hand into something more like the tentacle its manes progenitor would have had. Shadow swallowed its left eye too, and the charred bits of muscle and bone on its side.