Page 61 of Red Dragon’s Heart

Zak watched Maddie follow Lucinda out the door, head up, trying not to show she was scared. Once the door shut, a slightly ominous silence fell.

Caz looked from Zakerek to Emon. “Um. Should I leave? Like, are you going to torture him or something?”

“Why bother?” Emon said. “Nothing I ever did had any effect on either of you; you always did whatever the fuck you wanted. Although you might as well stay, Caz, since it’s your security guys he’s using to guard Maddie’s brother.” He turned to Zak. “I’m assuming that’s what you wanted to talk about?”

Zakerek turned on Caz. “You told him!” he accused.

“I had to. He reviews the security budgets, and the guys gotta get paid.”

Emon said, “What’s wrong with this brother of hers?”

Zak explained about the kidney disease, and Troy’s vulnerability. Emon nodded. “And you thought Chisholm might try to use him for leverage?”

Zak said, “He’s probably not in danger, for the same reason he hasn’t been all along. If Chisholm doesn’t know how to reach Maddie, he can’t threaten her with hurting Troy. But she was worried about him, so I asked Caz to make sure.”

Emon said, “Unfortunately, though that reasoning was valid at one time, it’s not any longer. If the dragon Larkin recognized you when he saw you with Maddie—and we have no reason to think he didn’t—then he knows you’re clan Al-Maddeiri. And even if he can’t find you—or her—he certainly knows where to find me. Eventually, they’ll realize that I can get in touch with you.”

“Fuck,” Zak muttered. He hadn’t thought of that. “Can we put extra guys on Troy?”

Emon nodded at Caz. “Make it happen. But in the meantime, the woman is staying here where I can keep an eye on her. She’s a valuable asset, and I’m not letting her fall into Council hands—or Chisholm’s. Now, go away and leave me alone.”

Maddie walked alongside Lucinda, through more interminable stone corridors and staircases, not having any idea what to say. Too much had happened in too short a time, and she was suddenly overwhelmed.

After a while Lucinda looked at her sympathetically. “How are you holding up?” she asked. “I know all this can be—well, a lot. Someday I’ll have to tell you about the first time I came here. It involved a gang of vampires, Cazbek, my best friend Sophie, and a flying minivan. We’ll need drinks, though.”

“I’ll bet,” Maddie said. “It makes my trip here seem tame by comparison.”

Lucinda rolled her eyes. “Believe me, nothing around here is tame.”

Maddie said, “To be honest, I’m a little nervous around the shifters. They don’t like me, because of the work I did with Grenadier and Belvedere. I guess you’ve heard about that?”

Lucinda nodded, looking uncomfortable. Maddie stopped and faced her, wanting someone here to understand. “Honestly, I didn’t understand about shifters. I was told a lot of lies, about it being a—a kind of zombie apocalypse infection, and shifters all being crazy and dangerous.”

Lucinda gently took her arm, and they started walking again. “Well, that part of it’s kind of true. Not the zombie apocalypse infection, but shifters have their own culture, and they are animals, so there tends to be a lot of fighting for dominance. Some of them are kind of crazy—some of them a lot crazy—and all of them are dangerous, in their own way.”

She stopped at a closed doorway, opened it and ushered Maddie inside. It was an absolutely huge bedroom—almost half the size of Zak’s warehouse lair. It had an enormous canopy bed hung with curtains, a big stone fireplace, and a cozy corner with couches and a TV. There was even a small refrigerator and a microwave. The stone walls were covered in tapestries depicting flying dragons.

“Wow,” Maddie said.

“Wait till you see the bathroom,” Lucinda said. “A tub practically big enough to swim in, and the toilets are solid gold.”

“Get out.”

“For serious.”

Maddie started to giggle uncontrollably. “How do you poop on gold? I couldn’t.”

That set Lucinda off. “I know, right? But when you gotta go, you gotta go…”

After they sobered up, Lucinda said, “About what we were talking about before? I guess you already know that some of the shifters are crazy because they were captives who were experimented on. There are a lot of old wounds here.”

Maddie said, “I understand that. I don’t blame them—I feel horrible, now that I know what was really happening. Zak is the first shifter I ever got to know. I mean, my old boyfriend—boss—Eric is one, but I didn’t know it at the time. Zak told me about his own history, and what happened to the Al-Maddeiri and some of the others. It’s awful.”

“Cazbek was a slave too,” Lucinda said. “With Zak and Mikah. It’s—it’s hard for them to trust anyone. They pretend to be all tough, but inside they have good hearts, all three of them.” She paused, then said delicately, “Zak’s is a little harder to find, but…”

“Tell me about it,” Maddie said. “But it’s there.”

“Yeah. Just seeing the way he looked at you, I think maybe you found it.”