Dragon Blood Read online

  Dragon Blood

  Madelaine Montague

  © copyright by Madelaine Montague, July 2010

  Cover Art by Eliza Black, July 2010

  ISBN 978-1-60394-445-8

  New Concepts Publishing

  Lake Park, GA 31636

  www.newconceptspublishing.com

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, and places are of the author’s imagination and not to be confused with fact. Any resemblance to living persons or events is merely coincidence.

  Chapter One

  Special Agent Marlee Madison paused, checking her position and then glancing uneasily at the glint of sunlight pouring through the lower branches of the thick forest that surrounded her.

  It was nearly sunset. Before much more time passed, she would be stumbling along through cave-like darkness, blind, through unfamiliar territory, and potential prey to things a good bit more dangerous than the men she’d been tracking.

  They had been tracking … although from where she stood, it looked to her as if she’d become separated from the other agents taking part in the exercise.

  After carefully surveying her surroundings for any sign that the suspects they’d been tracking might be hidden close enough that they could overhear her, she decided it was safe enough to try the radio. Transferring her service revolver to one hand, she scrubbed the dampness from her other palm along the leg of her trousers and unclipped the walkie-talkie from her belt. “Team alpha, come back,” she said in a voice barely above a whisper.

  With the volume nearly at its lowest setting, she lifted the radio to her ear to listen for a response. There was no answer to her hail. Nothing but static echoed back to her. Frowning, she lowered the radio and studied it. The casing was banged up from her fall a little earlier but the damned things were supposed to be practically indestructible!

  Maybe she’d knocked it off the frequency in the fall? It looked like the right setting, though. After glancing around again, Marlee shoved her pistol back into her holster and tried adjusting the dial. “Anyone? Team alpha? Team beta? This is Special Agent Madison, come back!”

  Again, she picked up nothing but static, although she tried several different frequencies.

  Anger flickered through her. Granted, she’d been focused on following the signs left by their target group, but if everyone else had been, how the hell could she have gotten so far from them that she was out of range?

  Maybe it was just interference? She tipped her head back and studied the rise above her.

  She’d allowed herself to become too focused on her prey and not nearly cognizant enough of her surroundings or the rest of the team, she realized in dismay. She’d caught hell over that more than once during training and it had begun to look like that particular failing was going to cost her the prize.

  Or worse.

  Shrugging off her uneasiness with an effort, she considered the situation. The exercise had been a planned four day manhunt scenario through dense forest for a group of bank robbers who’d kidnapped a clerk. The teams tracking them were supposed to meet up at sunset each day, however, since the bureau hadn’t wanted to risk losing any trainees in the exercise.

  And it was nearly sunset.

  Yep! She’d screwed up—again! And all because she’d been determined she was going to bag a bad guy her first day out and prove to the rest of the team that she hadn’t been ‘helped’ through training because she had a pussy and knew how to use it!

  Well, fuck!

  Was it close enough to sunset that the ‘bad guys’ would already be making camp? Or was she running the risk of becoming another ‘hostage’ if she came out of cover to find the rest of her team?

  She glanced at her watch and then squinted at the sunlight again. ‘Officially’, she should have at least an hour till sunset, but the terrain in this particular area made that an iffy prospect.

  The gloom of dusk was already descending upon her surroundings and she had a bad feeling she didn’t have an hour to locate the rendezvous point.

  Clipping her walkie-talkie to her belt again, she pulled her map and compass from her pocket. She’d left the trail approximately thirty minutes earlier. She’d noted the time and looked for a landmark. She’d descended down the ridge marked on the map … at least twenty feet—rapidly—after she’d stepped in a patch of loose pebbles and lost her balance.

  She shouldn’t be more than a mile from the trail, she decided. She thought it was closer to half a mile, but figuring a mile at the outside and two more to the rendezvous point marked on the map—she should be able to make it to the site before dark, she thought.

  After studying the map, the compass, and her surroundings until she was certain she knew the direction she needed to take, she folded the map again and carefully replaced the map and compass in her pocket, buttoning the flap to make sure she didn’t lose them if she took another tumble. Straightening, she adjusted her backpack and began climbing the slope.

  If she could just make it to camp, she could cover her ass and no one needed to know she’d gotten lost off from the group. Not that it would look good that she’d deliberately ignored protocol, but that beat the hell out of the alternative—‘loose cannon’ still sounded better than ‘liability’ to her!

  She’d been climbing the steep slope for maybe twenty minutes, pausing from time to time to check her bearings and listen for any sound indicating someone else in her vicinity when she thought she spotted the edge of the trail above her. Her heart leapt with relief and she made her second serious blunder of the day.

  She was in such a rush to reach the point where she thought she’d seen the trail that she threw caution and good sense to the wind. She was on top of the bear before she even knew it was there.

  Unfortunately, she caught the bear off guard, too, and the bear wasn’t happy about it.

  Uttering a challenging bellow, the bear stood up on its hind legs. Marlee’s first inkling that she was about to be majorly fubar (fucked up beyond all recognition) was the shadow that darkened her vision just before the paw made impact with her head. The scream that peeled the skin from her throat was instinctive, but she’d barely reached the highest decibel before the blow threw her into a deep, black well.

  ———

  Eli’s head whipped toward his brother, John, as the enraged bellow of a bear cut through the stillness of the forest. For a split second, their gazes met—before the terrified scream of a woman galvanized them. Almost as one, they launched themselves into a run in the direction from which the sound had emanated, racing through the familiar terrain at speeds that far exceeded anything any other animal, man or beast, could achieve. Despite that, regardless of the fact that the rough terrain posed little in the way of obstacles when they could bound over five or six foot tall shrubs with barely a pause to gather themselves before or to regain their balance afterwards, the sight that met them when they reached the scene of attack was appalling. The woman was as limp as a ragdoll and bloodied and torn beyond recognition and the bear had the woman in his maw, shaking her.

  A red haze of fury swept over Eli. Uttering a roar that vied with the bear’s, he launched himself at it, driving his balled fist into the bear’s snout. The bear bellowed in pain and dropped his victim. Before Eli could follow with another punch, John drove himself bodily into the bear, slamming into the beast with such force that it staggered backwards several steps and fell to all fours. The bear heaved itself up onto its hind legs again almost at once, sniffing the air and uttering threatening growls, but the scent it caught took the urge to fight out of it.

  It backed away as the two men stalked it, slowly circling. Snarling, it lunged at first one and then the other, swiping at them with its meaty paws and drawing blood as its nails bit
into the bare skin of their chests. The smell of blood maddened the bear, but it maddened the beasts stalking it even more. In concert, they launched themselves at the bear, grappling for a hold, rolling with it when it lost its balance and tumbled to the ground.

  John curled a stout arm around the bear’s head, his muscles straining and bulging as he slowly but surely twisted the bear’s head as far as it would go and then snapped its neck like a twig. Eli, who’d grabbed its lower jaw when the bear snapped at him, had torn the bone, skin, and ligaments, ripping its jaw from its head before it dawned on him that the fight had gone out of the bear.

  He leapt back as the heavy beast slumped toward the ground. His chest heaving with his exertions, he stared at the bear for a long moment to make certain it wouldn’t rise again and finally turned his attention to the woman.

  John had already bounded from the back of the bear, he discovered, and was crouched beside the woman. “She’s alive,” he said grimly as Eli joined him, crouching on her other side.

  Eli’s lips tightened as he met his brother’s gaze.

  “We agreed to leave the affairs of humans to the humans,” John said quietly.

  Eli flicked a look at the woman struggling to hang on to life. “Fuck it!” he growled, slipping his arms beneath her and carefully lifting her.

  “They’ll be looking for her,” John said warningly, “and you know who’ll take the blame for her condition when they find her. If they capture even one of us, they’ll find out what we are and they’ll hunt the others down.”

  Eli snorted derisively. “Humans don’t believe in dragons anymore—and they’ve no reason to when they’ve slain them all save us.”

  “I don’t want to leave her either, but look at her!” John said angrily. “We can’t save her. We were too late.”

  “She’s still alive,” Eli said coldly. “When and if she dies, I’ll agree with you.”

  Marlee was drifting in and out of consciousness, but she heard snatches of the conversation. Wondering if any of it was even real, she responded anyway, or tried. “Help … don’t want … die,” she whispered, or thought she did.

  Eli glanced at her face sharply. Her eyes were still closed, but she was more aware of her surroundings than he’d thought. Shifting her weight to one arm, he curled the arm supporting her shoulders so that he could place a palm over her eyes and sealed them to prevent her from seeing them.

  She heard us.

  She won’t remember even if she survives, Eli said pointedly.

  We’re risking discovery, Eli! And there’s more at stake than the two of us. We don’t have the right to decide for all! What are we going to do with her, anyway? We don’t have the magic of our ancestors! We can’t heal her.

  She’s bleeding to death while we argue! Get out of my way if you don’t want any part of this. I’m taking her to the lair.

  Gods damn it, Eli! I didn’t say I didn’t want to help. I just don’t see it doing any good!

  We can’t if we don’t try! Eli growled, pushing past John and beginning to race through the woods as he had before, moving almost as swiftly burdened with the small woman as he had without any burdens.

  John turned to stare after him for a long moment and finally followed—more slowly, taking the time to cover their tracks until they reached the rocky slopes of the mountain where their lair lay. Once they’d begun moving over the rocks, there was little to mark their path beyond the occasional droplet of blood and he thought they’d covered enough ground to make detection unlikely. Leaving the blood for the moment, he hurried to join Eli and the woman.

  He discovered once he’d entered the lair that Eli had settled her carefully on the floor of the cave and was busy tearing her clothing off. With mixed feelings, he joined his brother, pulling off her boots and socks as Eli unfastened the belt around her waist and jerked it through the loops. In a few moments, they had her stripped completely.

  John’s heart sank as he studied the gashes across her formerly smooth skin from the bear’s claws and even those paled beside the jagged tears from the bites. Gods have pity! She was such a pretty little thing, too.

  Even Eli seemed taken aback by the extent of the damage, to suffer doubts that he could do anything at all for her. Abruptly, he leaned toward her and began to lick the closest wound.

  John frowned. You think that will help, he asked doubtfully?

  It heals us, doesn’t it?

  John considered that and finally shrugged. Instead of pointing out that they were dragons and that was why it served them well, he shifted along the cave floor and repositioned himself to help to bathe her wounds. A strange sensation flowed through him the moment he tasted her blood on his tongue—a tingling warmth. He paused, glancing toward Eli, wondering if he’d felt the same odd current.

  Shaking it off after a moment, he focused on his task again, trying to ignore the odd circumstance. Within a very few moments, he discovered he had no trouble ignoring it. In point of fact, a strange fever seemed to sweep through him. His pulse began to race. Heat poured through him. His balls tightened until it felt as if there was a tight band around them and blood surged into his cock until it was pounding so painfully he lost focus of anything else.

  He began lathing her more and more feverishly—her cheek and neck and then her arms and breasts. When he could find no more blood, he sat back, searching her with his gaze for more. It flickered through his mind that the tears and cuts had vanished with the blood, but he was too focused on finding more to lap to consider the significance of it. Eli, he discovered, had bathed her torso and hips and legs and then had pushed her thighs apart and buried his mouth against her mons. He was lapping at her cleft as hungrily as he’d lapped at her wounds only moments … minutes? ... before.

  John’s throat closed as if from deep thirst. “Turn her over,” he said hoarsely. “I need to check her back.”

  Eli’s head jerked upward. He stared at John blankly for a handful of seconds, his amber eyes wild and blazing with the same fire John felt burning inside himself. Almost reluctantly, he moved her thighs together and caught her hip, rolling her onto her side.

  John’s heart leapt when he saw more wounds on her back. He dove for them only to discover that Eli had, as well. Rage flickered through him. “Mine!” he growled, meeting Eli’s challenging gaze.

  “Mine!” Eli snarled back at him.

  A soft groan from the woman redirected their attention to her. After studying her for several long moments, their gazes clashed again. John bristled as Eli very deliberately lowered his head and lathed his tongue along the woman’s wounds. “You would’ve left her to die,” he growled. “She’s mine.”

  Fury raced through John … and a sense of guilt he wasn’t accustomed to, but that only made him angrier when he knew he’d only reminded Eli of their pact. “I would not!” he denied hotly. “I only urged caution! She isn’t one of us! She’s human.”

  “She’s mine,” Eli growled.

  John wrestled with the urge to settle the argument with battle. “Ours,” he said finally, reluctantly, but it had occurred to him that neither would have her if they abandoned her to her wounds to fight one another. “She’s human—not a mate—and if she were a dragoness we would still have to share. A battle would only settle who mated her first.”

  Eli seemed inclined to dispute that for several moments. Shaking his head after a moment, he stared at the woman, frowning in confusion. He didn’t object when John leaned down to resume his ministrations, however. After a moment, he joined him.

  When they’d finished, Eli saw with a sense of satisfaction that her flesh was as flawless once more as if the beast hadn’t mauled her. The graying color of death had fled, as well. Her skin was pink with health.

  Her skin was smooth and sweet to his tongue. Her scent mingled with his own—and John’s which was less appealing—but it was as heady as strong wine. He’d healed her, brought her back from the brink of death.

  She belonged to him.

&n
bsp; He lifted his gaze to his rival and discovered that John was studying her with the same possessiveness he felt.

  Fury washed through him, but hard upon the heels of it—utter confusion.

  Why, he wondered abruptly? Why did he feel the churning need to possess her? She was beautiful, but she was human and they were inclined to eschew the favors of humans until the desperation to spill their seed in the warm body of a female drove them to seek them out.

  He frowned, trying to remember the last time he’d taken a human as a lover, but he knew it hadn’t been long enough to explain the way he felt. Nothing explained the way he felt, nothing in his experience!

  They shared lovers more often than not and that made the depth of his antipathy toward his brother for sharing this woman all the more incomprehensible. Not that they particularly relished sharing their lovers anyway, but they hadn’t survived so long by being careless and there were six of them—he and his nest mates—the last of their kind so far as any of them had been able to discover. It was far safer to share the favors of one generous hearted woman than for each of them to leave a string of lovers behind to compare notes and perhaps ask too many questions. Beyond that, they had learned to their sorrow the pain their desire to mate could bring them. The human life span was woefully brief, but plenty long enough to tear a dragon’s heart out if he was unwise enough to form any sort of attachment to one.

  Because they did not have their mother’s magic, the magic that should have been their birthright. He was certain that was the difference. Their mother had mated with human males to produce them and yet they lacked the human frailties of their fathers. They were pure dragon, despite the human seed their mother had harvested to reproduce. Deep down, they all knew it even though they had no idea how their mother had managed it.

  The irony was that not one of them had ever managed to achieve their true form. They had been trapped almost since birth in the human forms their mother had bestowed upon them to protect them.

  At least, they’d always assumed that was the reason behind it, that she’d woven a protective spell around them to make it possible for them to hide what they were. They hadn’t had the chance to ask their mother. She’d been slain by the humans, struggling to protect them with her last breath.