Mercy Burns Read online

  Few dragons could do that with their fire. Most had full flame or nothing.

  I met Angus’s gaze. “Satisfied?”

  He nodded, but oddly he didn’t seem to relax. In fact, the tension that was knotting his shoulders and arms seemed worse than ever.

  “So tell me,” I added, “what you know about the cleansings.”

  He laced his fingers together, then leaned forward. “I know where the bodies are.”

  His voice was little more than a husky whisper and, for a moment, I wasn’t sure I’d heard him right. “How can there be bodies? After death, a dragon’s flesh is incinerated by the touch of the day’s first rays.”

  His smile was grim. “The sun has to touch the flesh to incinerate it. If the body is underground by then, no amount of sunshine will burn it.”

  As a dragon—or half-dragon—I was horrified at the thought of flesh being left underground to rot. It wasn’t only a sign of disrespect, but utter and total disregard. “Why would anyone do that? Hell, if nothing else, it’s leaving evidence behind for others to find.”

  “Aye, but when a dragon dies and is gifted the sun’s caress one last time, is not the passing of his or her soul felt by those close to them?”

  I nodded. It was the only reason that Rainey had realized something had happened to her sister, and one of the major reasons behind my desperation to find Rainey’s killer. She’d only had the one sibling and, unlike me, wasn’t close to her mother. In fact, she hadn’t seen her since she was five. This wasn’t rare in our clique, as children tended to be raised in crèches rather than family settings, but my mom had made the effort to be involved in both my and Trae’s upbringing, so we knew not only her but her relatives—although I doubted they actually realized we were half dragon. But most other mothers—whether human or dragon—didn’t bother with their children. For Rainey, this meant that there was no one who cared enough to find out what had happened or to try and save her soul.

  Only me.

  “Then why,” Angus continued, “would the people behind these slaughters risk the sun setting the souls of their victims free and thereby notifying their kin that something had happened?”

  “I guess they wouldn’t.” But it meant something had gone wrong when it came to Rainey’s sister, because Rainey had definitely felt her passing.

  “Exactly. So the remains are there to find. It’s just that no one has been left alive to tell the tale.”

  It also meant that the men behind these slaughters were experts at covering their tracks. We’d certainly seen nothing that had looked like graves—or even freshly dug earth—at either Stillwater or Desert Springs.

  But was that so surprising? If the people behind this were clever enough to make the population of two small towns disappear without anyone getting suspicious, then they were clever enough to disguise the graves.

  I took a drink. The remaining ice clinked merrily against the sides of the glass—a sound at odds with the somber feel of the bar. “So you really did survive one of the cleansings?”

  “Aye, I did.”

  “Then why have you never come forward to tell your story before now?”

  He snorted softly and leaned back in his chair. “Who was I going to come forward to? The council? They wouldn’t have given a damn. Outcasts are outcasts because the cliques don’t want them. And I could hardly go to the human authorities, now, could I?” He took a long drink of beer then added, “Besides, I was only fifteen when it happened.”

  “Fifteen? But that means it had to have happened years ago.” And if that were the case, then there wasn’t likely to be much in the way of evidence left.

  “Thirty-one years ago, to be precise.”

  “But—” I stopped. We might have been operating on the assumption that the two destroyed towns we’d seen were the only ones involved, but there was no logical reason why this couldn’t have happened before. After all, dragons had a long history of not wanting too many draman around. “So why agree to this meeting now?”

  “Because I heard whispers that the killings had started again, and it needs to be stopped.” His expression was an odd mix of guilt and anger, but the glint in his blue eyes was something else entirely.

  Cold determination.

  It sent another chill down my spine—though again, I wasn’t entirely sure why.

  “Meaning you’re trying to stop them yourself?”

  He gave me a smile that was part sadness, part grief, and a whole lot of anger. And again, I got that odd feeling of something deeper going on here. Something I just wasn’t catching.

  “No. I’m afraid sea dragons generally aren’t the brave-soldier type. We leave that up to our fiery cousins.”

  But Leith was a sea dragon, and he could fight with the best of them. “Then you’re not actually offering to help hunt down these people?”

  “No.” He shrugged—a casual motion that seemed at odds with the tension still riding him—and added, “But if telling you what I know helps bring these bastards down, then that’s a small price to pay for the nightmares remembering brings. Just be careful, that’s all I ask. I don’t want another death on my conscience.”

  I leaned back in my chair and wondered if he meant Rainey or someone else entirely. While I believed he was telling the truth as far as it went, I also believed there was a whole lot more that he wasn’t saying.

  And that intrigued me—even as all the senses honed by years of watching my back and recognizing trouble before it hit were warning that this man was just that. Trouble.

  It was a damn shame they couldn’t actually tell me whether he was a major instigator or merely a foot soldier.

  “The problem is, you’re not telling your story for free, are you?”

  His sudden smile was grim. “Nothing is free nowadays, lass. And the money will come in handy for the booze it’ll take to drown the memories again.”

  “How much do you want?”

  He pulled at his beard for a moment, as if considering the question, although we both knew he’d had a figure in mind from the moment he’d walked in the door.

  “A thousand will do.”

  A grand wasn’t a whole lot in the scheme of things—not if it led me to the answers I needed.

  “I’ll give you two thousand,” I said slowly, and watched his eyes light. “Five hundred for telling me your story now, and the rest if you lead me to where the bodies are.”

  “I don’t know—”

  “You asked me to prove myself,” I cut in. “And I’m offering you a lot of money. It’s only fair that you prove the truth behind your words.”

  “My scars are my proof.”

  “Your scars could have been caused by anything. You’re the one who said you know where the bodies lie. I want you to show me.”

  He picked up his beer and drained the glass in one gulp. He wiped the froth from his beard with the back of his hand, then said, “I just have to show you? I don’t have to do any more than that?”

  “No more. I just want proof.” What I’d do with it once I had it, I wasn’t entirely sure.

  Nor was I sure how finding bodies from a cleansing that had happened over thirty years ago would help my quest or find Rainey’s sister, but I had to try. Hell, merely having some evidence might just get the council to take me more seriously. Reporting the empty, gutted towns had caused little more than uninterested disdain.

  Angus studied me, blue eyes still holding that cold determination. “Why do you want proof? It’s not like you can go to the cops, and if you think the council will care, you’re not exactly living in reality. And you’re not going to threaten these people, especially considering you’re just one lone draman.”

  “I never said I was alone.” Although to all intents and purposes, I was. Leith was ready, willing, and able to help, but I’d already lost one good friend to this quest. I had no intention of losing another. “I just want to stop what is going on. Finding the bodies is one more step along that road.”

  �
�But why? That’s what I don’t get. Especially after what they tried to do to you.” He studied me for a moment then added, “Was someone you loved killed in one of the cleansings?”

  “No.” I hesitated, then added, “But Rainey lost a sister in one.”

  “That wasn’t mentioned when we arranged the original meet.”

  “No,” I said, and wondered why the hell he even thought it should have been. It wasn’t something you mentioned on a phone to a complete stranger.

  I gulped down the rest of the Coke and wished it were something stronger. I’d never been one for alcohol, but a little something to help push the memories back into their box would have been handy right now.

  Angus—who was watching me like a hawk—said, “You want another drink? Perhaps something with a little bite?”

  I grimaced. “Not at this hour. But another Coke would be good. Thanks.”

  He snapped his fingers at the bartender, who gave a nod. Obviously, Angus was pretty well known here. I couldn’t imagine the gruff-looking bartender playing waiter for any old stranger.

  Angus looked at me and said, “Okay, it’s a deal.”

  I took my wallet from my pocket and dragged out the cash, but I didn’t hand it over yet. “Tell me how a sea dragon came to be in a town of outcast draman.”

  He smiled. Again, it was a bitter thing. “It was bad timing, nothing more. My parents and I were swimming to Australia to spend the winter, but a bad storm caught us. I was small for my age, so Mom decided to make for shore.” He hesitated, and the ghosts of the past seemed to crowd the room for just a moment. I shivered and rubbed my arms. “The little seaside town seemed ideal.”

  “Seaside?” That surprised me. Both Stillwater and Desert Springs were situated in the semiarid wastes of Nevada. There were rogue towns outside Nevada, of course, but as far as I was aware, none of those had been hit as yet.

  Of course, I couldn’t actually be one hundred percent certain, because no one really knew just how many rogue draman towns there were. As Angus had said—and I’d discovered—the council didn’t give two hoots about them. Their main concern was keeping the thirteen main cliques in line.

  The bartender arrived with our drinks and a strange, forced smile. Obviously, he wasn’t that happy about being treated like a waiter. Angus paid the man, then waited until he’d gone before saying, “Aye, and a pretty spot it is, too.”

  “You’ve been back there, then?”

  Again, sadness briefly clouded his eyes. “I lost my parents in that town. I go back there every year, on the anniversary of their deaths.”

  “So is the town still vacant? Or has civilization encroached?”

  “Only ghosts reside there, even now.” He shrugged. “I’m told the kin of the people who owned the land are keeping it as some sort of memorial.”

  “So is the land draman-owned?”

  “Dragon-owned. At least it is now.”

  “Who by?”

  He smiled, but there was nothing warm about it. “Jamieson.”

  My clique. Great.

  And while that didn’t mean they were in on this whole cleansing business, I wouldn’t put it past them. The bastard we called king certainly wouldn’t be above a little outlawed cleansing if it suited his purposes—and if he thought he could get away with it.

  “But you’ve never seen anyone else there?”

  “No.” He shrugged again. “I just lay my flowers and leave, lass. That’s enough for me.”

  It would probably be enough for anyone. I dragged the Coke toward me and took a sip. The chill of it sent a shiver down my spine. “Has this town got a name?”

  He hesitated. “Whale Point.”

  I took another drink of Coke, then said, “Never heard of the place.”

  “Well, yeah, because the town and the road into it are all but destroyed.”

  It was a reasonable-sounding statement, and yet there was an edge to his voice. My gaze flickered to his arms. If not for those scars—which fit every scrap of information I knew about the destruction of the draman towns—I might have been tempted to believe that this was some odd con. “Meaning the town isn’t on the Cabrillo Highway?”

  “No. The highway bypasses Whale Point and most of the surrounding area is state park. The track running into the town has been left to ruin, and it’s easy to miss if you don’t know what to look for.”

  His voice held a tiredness that made me want to believe him. And yet, part of me didn’t. I wasn’t sure if it was my long history of distrusting the motives of just about everyone, or whether it was simply disbelief that answers might finally be at hand after months of Rainey and I finding nothing but ruins and dead ends.

  And now I had only five days to find my answers and solve this crime.

  Panic swirled, briefly making it hard to breathe. I pushed it away fiercely. I could do this.

  I had to do this.

  He took a long swig of beer, then added, “Whale Point’s down by Limekiln Beach State Park, a good two and a half hours’ drive from here. When do you want to go?”

  I glanced at my watch. It was nearing four now, and I didn’t fancy walking around an abandoned town at dusk, let alone at night. I might not be bereft of fire come darkness—an oddity no one could explain given most dragons and draman were—but I still wasn’t about to be caught at night in a place I didn’t know and with a man I didn’t trust.

  “Given the time, perhaps it would be better to start tomorrow.”

  He nodded. “You got a truck or a car?”

  “Car. Why?”

  “Because as I said, the track was in pretty bad shape last year, and it has probably degenerated since. You’ll need a four-wheel drive.”

  “Then I’ll meet you at the beginning of the road into Whale Point, and you can drive from there.”

  There was no way I was getting caught out in the middle of nowhere without transport, either. Not when I couldn’t fly. He wasn’t to know that, of course, and that’s just the way I intended to keep it. The more he thought I was one of those draman who’d inherited full skills, the less chance there’d be of him pulling something funny when we were out there alone.

  Or was that just my suspicious nature rearing its ugly head again?

  “It’d be easier if I simply drove all the way there, but we’ll play it your way. You’re the gal with the money, after all.”

  It was pointedly said, so I pushed the money across the table. He scooped it up quickly, then reached into his coat pocket and drew out a pen and a business card. He scrawled several lines on the back, then slid it across the table. “Driving directions.”

  I picked up the card and had a look. As directions went, they were pretty detailed, but I guess if this place had been easy to find, more people would have known about it. I flicked the card over. The Captain’s Bay Cruises, it said, in big bold letters. I’ll be damned. He was a sea captain.

  I shoved it in my pocket and took another drink. The ice was melting fast—an indication of just how hot this bar was becoming. I blew out a breath, lifting the damp hair from my forehead, then said, “How did you manage to survive the destruction when no else did?”

  “Blind luck.” Once again, the memory of the past seemed to crowd close. “I’d been out of the water too long and my skin was itchy, so I headed down to the beach.”

  I nodded. According to Leith, sea dragons needed water as much as air dragons needed the sun to fuel their flames. Only for the sea-born, it was a daily necessity, whereas air dragons could survive days on end without being out in the sun.

  “And that’s where you were attacked?”

  He nodded. “I heard screaming and had started to run back, but was confronted by several men with long blades.”

  “Blades?”

  “Blades,” he confirmed grimly. “Big brave men that they were, they felt the need to attack a lone teenager in a pack.” He shook his head. “It was lucky that I was still close to the water. I went under and stayed there.”

 
; “So you didn’t actually see the destruction?”

  He hesitated. “Some. I poked my head up occasionally, but it was all flame and death. There was nothing I could have done to stop it. There were just too many of them.”

  “But the town was right next to the sea—you could have flooded the place and washed them away.”

  “The sea rarely answers the call of one so young.” He grimaced. “Which didn’t stop me from trying, believe me.”

  “So why didn’t your parents—”

  “My parents,” he interrupted, voice terse, “must have been among the first to die. Otherwise, they would have.”

  And he felt guilty about their deaths. Or rather, he felt guilty about surviving when everyone else had not. It was all there to be seen in the shadowed depths of his eyes.

  “Did you see any of them at all?”

  “Not really.” He drained his glass. “They wore masks, all of them. Ski masks.”

  “Why would they hide their faces if they intended to destroy the whole town? That makes no sense at all.”

  He shrugged. “Maybe they simply wanted to ensure that if someone did escape, they wouldn’t be able to identify them.”

  Who in the hell would they identify them to? As Angus had already pointed out, neither the human cops nor the dragon council were likely prospects, no matter how many people had died. And the cliques weren’t any different. The ones who had died were the unwanted.

  Then again, maybe this was the council’s way of taking care of the draman problem. Anything was possible.

  I drank some more Coke, then asked, “Have you ever tried to find any of the men involved?”

  He hesitated, and emotion flashed in his eyes. Anger, regret, and something else I couldn’t really name, but which stirred a response in me nevertheless. I licked my lips and ignored muscles twitching with the need to be gone. Now. I could defend myself. I’d proven that time and again. And one lone sea dragon didn’t pose half the threat that my clique had over the years.