Stroke of Fire Read online

  “I most certainly have time, Mr. Harper. Thank you. Thank you for this opportunity.”

  Mr. Harper laughed. “You can get excited, Ms. Everett. I don’t think I’ve ever encountered an artist maintain such composure after being offered their first show.”

  Briella laughed, her body loosening. She clapped her hands together under her chin, arms and legs weak, and blinked back tears. “I think this surreal moment is safest for you and most definitely safest for my pride.”

  Another laugh echoed through the office as Mr. Harper took the seat behind his desk. “I have a feeling this is going to be the start of a wonderful business relationship.”

  * * *

  Briella couldn’t get home fast enough to share the incredible news. Her very first exhibit. A debut artist with a lucky break. Mr. Harper wasn’t the only one who had to thank Bruno for the recommendation. She would have to call her former co-worker and thank her for the introduction.

  She had a bunch of phone calls to make and her friends to meet at one of the local jazz bars, but first she had to change out of her wet clothes and put on a more suitable pair of shoes. At least Mr. Harper offered to hold her paintings to frame for her debut so she didn’t have to chance them getting damaged in the rain.

  She crossed Bourbon and was two blocks away when a strange tingling sensation crept up along her spine and unleashed goose bumps down her arms. She slowed, opening her mind to any thoughts that might accompany the unsettling feeling.

  “…get her when she returns…”

  Briella faltered to a stop and licked her lips. Standing in the street, a couple of feet from the sidewalk, she scanned her surroundings. Music and lights and the crazy hustle and bustle of busy Bourbon Street two blocks away lent little comfort.

  She was alone, except for a straggler here and there.

  Keeping her mind open and her senses tuned into the sodden night, Briella stepped onto the sidewalk. She dug into her purse for her stun gun, a gift from her mother. Pepper spray wouldn’t do a damn thing in the rain. She silently cursed her choice of attire, especially her tractionless shoes, and the weather. The combination was a losing pair for her, a winner for an attacker.

  The street before her blurred. She came to an abrupt stop, reaching blindly for the wall of the closest building. The vision of a rain-drenched, hooded man covered in shadows filled her head. The dark, hulking figure set off more than a chill that spread to every limb of her body. Fear should have ridden the coattails of the chill, but all she felt was confusion.

  It only served to set her more on edge.

  In a blink, the vision vanished. She was back on her street, hand braced against the wall, with a faint wave of weakness coasting from head to toe. She almost dropped the stun gun, but grappled for the handle before it escaped her fingers.

  “Get her. She’ll give it up.”

  Briella shivered and headed for her apartment at a fast clip. The splash of a disturbed puddle sounded behind her.

  She spun, the weight of the stun gun heavy in her hand.

  No one.

  She observed the buildings and the nooks between brick, wood, and gates. Nothing. No movement. No sensation of a hooded man lurking.

  With only a sliver of relief, Briella turned around.

  And shrieked.

  A strong hand clamped down on her shoulder in the same instant she twisted from his attempt to grab her arm.

  “Stop,” a gruff voice bit out from a pair of shadowed lips beneath the hood of his jacket.

  Briella snorted in disbelief. As if she would. She twisted again, freeing her shoulder, and jumped back when he made another swipe for her. She thrust her arm forward, showing off the stun gun. The attacker paused.

  “Put that away,” he demanded.

  “What do you want?” Briella countered, unwavering. The man took a long-legged step toward her. She shuffled back, well aware of her bad footing with her shoes this evening.

  “You need to come with me.”

  If the situation wasn’t dire, she might have laughed. Hard. But the odds of her coming out on top against this particular stranger were not in her favor. In a split-second assessment, she knew if she didn’t act fast, his hulking size would overmatch her like a beast against a bunny. At least a head taller and twice her width, she was doomed without an advantage.

  He reached for her again. She moved agilely, toward him instead of away, and connected the stun gun to his neck. In the same motion, she pushed the activator.

  Electricity sizzled and sparked along his skin.

  What the hell?

  Every muscle in her body prepared to bolt the short distance to the garden gate that led to her apartment, but the shock of what she beheld in the man’s shadowed face held her prisoner. A plume of gray smoke cut through the rain, exhaled from his nose and mouth. The small slices of visible skin on his cheeks turned dark red before changing back to tan. Similar to the dark red that erupted beneath the prongs of her stun gun.

  But his eyes… She gasped and darted away as he growled in evident pain, reeling back as he swatted at his neck. She didn’t stop, and burst through the waist-high iron gate.

  “Don’t go in there!” he bellowed at her back.

  Yeah, right.

  She didn’t understand why he wasn’t right on her heels, but was grateful for the few seconds the delay gave her. With shaking hands, she dug the key to her door out of her purse. It took three tries and one drop to finally get the key in the lock.

  “Stop!” he demanded.

  Briella shoved open the door, adrenaline pulsing through every vein in her body. She caught a quick glimpse of the monster as he lunged at the door.

  She screamed as she slammed it shut and engaged the bolt lock. There was a crash and the door bulged with the massive weight of the assailant barreling into it. She shuffled back until she hit the wall across from the door, at the base of the stairs that led to her apartment on the second level.

  The door shuddered as he banged on it with what she imagined to be a massive fist. “Don’t! They may be in there! Please, come out!”

  Briella dashed up the stairs to the second-floor studio, threw open the inner door, and flipped on a light.

  A gasp fled her mouth before she slapped a hand over it and stared in horror.

  Trashed. Her small apartment, trashed. Her paintings, her paints, her easels all lay scattered across the floor. Her dresser drawers had been turned out, her bed stripped, her armoire open and empty. Clothes had been strewn all over the place. A lamp lay in pieces in the area she had designated as her living room. Her kitchenette? Every drawer and cupboard open and empty, contents scattered over the floor.

  The adrenaline drained from her veins, leaving her shaking in her boots. The stranger continued to yell and bang on the door below. Keeping her stun gun handy, she snatched up her cell phone from where she’d left it on the counter, and instinctively shuffled toward the nearest corner. She wanted the safety of walls at her back. She couldn’t hear any strange thoughts coming from inside her apartment, only a sense of frantic, wild desperation from the stranger below. There was no essence, no energy left by the person or people responsible for this invasion. She was alone.

  She tried to steady her fingers and punch in 9-1-1. As the phone rang, she yelled down the stairs, “I’m calling the cops!”

  A brisk but soothing voice said, “9-1-1. Please state your emergency.”

  “My apartment’s been broken into and there’s a stranger banging on my door trying to get in. Send someone, please.” Briella inched along the wall, phone tucked between her shoulder and her ear. She dug out the pepper spray from her purse, keeping the stun gun in her other hand. She nudged a strewn painting with the toe of her boot to keep from stepping on it.

  “Is anyone with you now?”

  “I don’t know, but the guy downstairs is going to break down my door.”

  She gave the operator her address, and haltingly answered questions she presumed first respon
ders would need to know.

  “Stay on the line. I have two units coming to you now.”

  Oh, she had no problem staying on the line. She’d stay on until she had uniformed officers pulling the phone from her shoulder. She stopped inching along the wall when she could see her entire apartment unobstructed, and keep an eye on the stairway leading down to the pounding lunatic.

  Anyone who could produce fire in his eyes had to be a lunatic.

  When the hell did this great night tank on me?

  Chapter Two

  “My damn luck.”

  Syn Terravon slipped away into the rainy night when he saw the flashing lights of the approaching police cruisers. Soaked down to his scales, he had waited over an hour for her to traipse her way home. He had not expected her to be feisty to the point of zapping him with a bolt of electricity. It had taken him by surprise, the fierce jolt threatening to unleash the dragon. In those short moments when he battled to control his dragon, she escaped.

  Briella Everett ran straight into danger, and he wasn’t fast enough to stop her.

  Maybe if he had gotten to New Orleans a few days sooner. Maybe if he hadn’t taken a call from Cade—the Firestorm tatsu clan leader—to aid in thwarting a possible Baroqueth ambush in a nearby town, he would’ve tracked her sooner.

  Cursing his luck, he hung out in a dark alcove a few buildings from Briella’s and watched as officers entered the ground-floor entry to her second-story apartment. He had seen the Baroqueth slayer go in, but hadn’t seen him leave. That was why he’d been so desperate to stop her.

  Right now, eyes on the action behind the illuminated windows over the small courtyard, he wanted nothing more than to march up to that open door and explain himself.

  You’ll earn yourself a night in jail if you do that.

  What had caused her to panic? He hadn’t come off as threatening, had he? He certainly didn’t want to.

  You put your hands on her. You didn’t even wait before you touched her.

  No. She was spooked before she laid eyes on him. Seeing him sent her into a panic. He felt it when her heart rate skyrocketed and her muscles tensed. Her hand twitched with the weight of that electric gun. Maybe he’d been intense, but he’d worked to keep his voice calm and soothing. She hadn’t even given him a chance to lift back the hood of his jacket and explain the situation before she zapped him.

  Syn leaned back against the wall, partially sheltered from the rain, and caught another tantalizing sight of the magnificent woman through a window.

  Okay, so maybe he’d let his overprotective nature get the best of him, but Briella needed protection. More than she realized. He had no idea what she knew about herself, her gift. Did she know about the Keepers? That she was one?

  Did she know about the Firestorm dragons? That she was his lifemate?

  Since the attack on Alazar and Ariah in Georgia a few months ago, Syn and Cade had been working tirelessly to track down the remaining Keepers and any family they might have. It was an effort to bring all of them back to The Hollow, the dragon homeland that existed outside the human realm, untouched by mortals. A land of magic and beauty and purity. Two of the eight dragons that survived the last deadly attack by the Baroqueth slayers—their sorcerer enemies—had found their Keepers and their lifemates. It gave the remaining six hope that maybe, just maybe, they would find their own lifemates in hiding somewhere.

  Locating the Keepers was their first chore. Determining if the Keepers had daughters—potential lifemates for the dragons—was another. Time was critical, now that the Baroqueth knew there may very well be more untrained female Keepers alive and well in the world.

  Syn had been lucky in every facet of the word. He’d only stopped in New Orleans to meet up with one of his dragon kin. By pure chance, he stumbled across Briella at a restaurant in the company of friends. His immediate reaction to her was both visceral and all-consuming. His dragon recognized Briella as his woman, but he chose to be civilized and refrained from approaching her until his business with Taryn Chovetz was concluded. Unfortunately, by the time they were through, Briella was nowhere to be found.

  Two days later, he saw her again and refused to let her out of his sight. He tracked her to her small apartment. That had been yesterday. Since then, he’d kept vigil over her, waiting for the perfect opportunity to introduce himself.

  “Failed.”

  The woman with the stunning dark red hair and creamy complexion stood framed in the window. He sensed her distress, her anxiety, the fear and anger that welled up inside her. Her personal space, her private little sanctuary, had been ruthlessly invaded. Her ideas of security ripped out from under her. Her anger resonated deep inside his soul. His dragon yearned to hunt down the Baroqueth responsible for the desecration and destroy him before he went near the woman again.

  He wanted nothing more than to comfort her.

  “You blew that tonight,” he said under his breath. With an aggravated groan, he raked a hand through his hair, pushing the damp strands beneath his hood.

  The faint vibration of his phone in his pocket drew his attention from the window. He glanced at the number on the display. With one last look at the apartment, he slinked off, heading away from the activity. For the time being, she was safe. Now, he needed to rethink his plans.

  Starting with answering the call.

  “Taryn. What’s up?”

  “Got word our friends are scoping out the area. Doesn’t surprise me that they’d eventually come to the Big Easy. Took ’em long enough.”

  “Friends. I suppose you mean that sarcastically?”

  “Man, since when are our ‘friends’ friends?”

  Yeah, okay. His head wasn’t into the humor right now. His blood ran an unyielding hot-cold swirl that left his scales itching to come out and his mind spinning with the drive to return to the small apartment.

  “Who gave you the word?” Syn asked, banking to the right down a narrow alley, his senses on high alert for anything out of the ordinary.

  In New Orleans, that was more than half the city.

  He paused and peered up the side of one of the old brick buildings flanking him. Did he really want to leave Briella alone? Could he justify not watching over her until he rectified this shitty night?

  “…not even listening to me, are you.”

  Taryn’s grumble snapped Syn from his thoughts. He shook his head and sighed.

  “Where the hell are you? What’re you doing? Do I need to come meet you somewhere?”

  “That might be a good idea.” Glancing up and down the alley to ensure he was alone, Syn allowed his talons to extend enough to get a solid grip into the brick. Scaling walls wasn’t his preference, but flapping wings would bring unwanted attention. Magic was also out of the question. One of the many reasons he hated this mortal realm. Back home in The Hollow, the Firestorm dragons had full magical capabilities. Power was natural. The land fed them. Crossing the threshold into the mortal world stripped the dragons of almost everything.

  There were loopholes, such as what Alazar and his Keeper discovered before the Baroqueth attacked in Georgia. An ancient Book of Realms that allowed for magic to be transferred from an object taken from The Hollow for the dragon’s use.

  Syn tucked the phone between his shoulder and ear, protecting the device from the rain as best he could. He dug his talons into the mortar and began climbing to the roof with a small grunt of effort.

  “What are you doing? Please don’t tell me you’re riding a woman right now.”

  “Riding a wall is more like it,” Syn muttered, fiercely ignoring the swell of hot hunger that coiled and pooled low in his groin. Taryn’s mention of riding a woman brought Briella’s potent image to the forefront of his mind. The curse and blessing of lifemates. An instantaneous, overwhelming, and utterly maddening effect, and here he was, no closer to having a decent conversation with her than he was three days ago. “You’ll understand when you get here.”

  “Where’s here?”
/>   “Off Bourbon.” Syn crested the top of the wall and slithered over the wet, puddle-laden roof until he could lift up into a crouch. Unfortunately, the rooftop didn’t provide many options in terms of cover. He gave Taryn the address. “Join me on the rooftop to cloud gaze.”

  “I’m not a romantic.”

  “Shame. Hopefully your lifemate can live with that. When you find her.”

  “You know that’s impossible, brother.” Taryn sounded resigned. “Zareh and Alazar are lucky bastards. I’m rather tired of the casual romances.”

  “Maybe you should stop looking for someone in those bars you frequent and search somewhere a little more respectable. Maybe then you’d find a decent woman to hold you over until Cade finishes his search for the surviving Keepers.” Syn moved silently over the rooftop, avoiding the puddles as best he could. His jeans were plastered to his legs and the hoodie and T-shirt felt like a soggy double layer of unwanted skin. The phone started to slip from the wet grip between his shoulder and ear. “I’ll see you when you get here.”

  He caught the phone before it hit the roof, ended the call, and shoved the device into his sodden pocket. He wouldn’t mind if the damn thing short-circuited. He hated much of the technology in this world.

  He made a short drop between two buildings, perched behind a rusted AC unit and peered into the back windows of Briella’s apartment. The mess he could see inside fueled his smoldering anger. Beams from high-powered flashlights scoured the small courtyards on either side of her building. Officers and crime scene techs searched the area for any evidence while a detective spoke inside the apartment with a very animated Briella.

  What he wouldn’t do to hop down onto her narrow balcony for a closer look. From this angle, he could see the deep rose flushing her cheeks, the fear and anger expressed in her face, the shift of body weight as she tapped feet, scuffed boots, and tried to calm herself. Her hands gestured, but shook.