Page 9 of Red Dragon’s Heart

Eric Chisholm. Charming, compelling, drop-your-panties gorgeous—not to mention rich, cultured and successful. He’d wooed her, seduced her, played her like a damn violin.

All because of the shapeshifters. People whose DNA had been altered so that they literally turned into animals, like some kind of horror movie. He’d shown her a few in the lab—vicious, insane, slavering beasts. She’d been told there were others who could pass as human until something triggered them—but even when they weren’t in animal form, they’d lost their humanity.

Even worse, they could pass the retrovirus that that caused the mutation from one to another through their blood and saliva, by biting their victims.

Eric had explained that his company was working on a cure—a way to turn them back, neutralize the animal, or reclaim them from the insanity. But then she’d learned about the infection’s positive side effects—increased strength and speed, immunity to disease, and accelerated healing.

If they could understand how it worked, they could cure so many diseases. Regenerate organs. It could change the face of modern medicine.

It could save her brother’s life. His kidney disease could be cured. He could be healthy and strong again.

The research was exciting and terrifying, and utterly fascinating. She’d felt like she was on the verge of some exciting breakthroughs on the healing side, but Eric had insisted she drop that and focus on replicating the retrovirus effect, as a step towards a cure.

They’d fought about it more and more often. She couldn’t understand why he was so intent on replicating the virus effect until she’d done it—and found out he was going to sell it to a foreign warlord, who wanted to create supersoldiers.

Like a fool, she’d grabbed the hard drives and called for him to come to the lab, ready to give him her puny ultimatum. If he went through with the sale, she’d leave him, and turn the data over to the authorities.

And Eric—the man she’d loved, who claimed to love her—had laughed at her. He said she was too valuable to kill, but he couldn’t let her get in his way—and he couldn’t let her leave. He needed her expertise.

And then, right before her eyes, he’d turned into a black panther. One minute he’d been a corporate CEO in a suit, and the next, he’d burst out of his clothes and turned into a terrifying jungle cat.

She’d barely managed to get out of the room. She still had nightmares of him and his security team chasing her through the lab complex—some with guns, some as animals. Terrified, she’d run into one of the chem labs, barred the door, and used explosive chemicals to blow a way out through the wall.

Even though she’d thought the explosion would only damage the building, she learned later that two of the animals on the security team had been killed.

She had nightmares about that, too—she’d known them, worked with them, and it was hard not to still think of them as human.

Once she’d gotten away with the hard drives, she’d hacked into the Belvedere computer network and destroyed all the offsite backups of her work. That’s what you got for hiring a double major in biochemistry and computer science, and then trying to use her work for evil.

But Eric had told the police that Maddie was the one who had set up a deal to sell their research to ‘overseas buyers,’ and that she’d stolen the data and blown up the lab to cover her own murdery, mercenary tracks.

There was no way for her to clear her name. The formulas she’d stolen—even after they were decrypted—would make no sense to most law enforcement officials. And she could just imagine going to the FBI and explaining to them that she wasn’t the bad guy at all—that the rich and famous Eric Chisholm was really a shapeshifter who turned into a panther on moonlit nights. Or maybe whenever the hell he wanted.

And his security guards were werewolves, and everything she’d done was to save the lives of humans that his buyers were going to turn into animals.

It would be jail or an insane asylum for her. The cops would give Eric his formulas back, and he’d sell them to his client, laughing at her the whole time.

Which brought her to tonight. She looked into the room next door, all brightly lit, nothing inside but her great big panther trap.

Eric Chisholm was going to get what was coming to him, and Maddie Fox was going to go home, get back to work, and find a way to save her brother’s life.

Chapter 6

Zakerek lay on the floor in the third-floor storeroom, keeping Madeleine under surveillance through a hole in the floor. She’d tested all her equipment and then locked herself into the office to wait for Chisholm and his minions.

Now, he was a) trying to keep the monster from growling and giving his position away, and b) resisting the almost overpowering urge to just grab Fox and the hard drives right now, and take off.

But while waiting for her to show up and set her trap, he’d discovered he didn’t want to just get his life back, after all. He wanted to be a fucking hero—or at least, he didn’t want to have to go home and tell King Emon and Tristan and the rest of the clan that he’d had the chance to get enough evidence to bring Chisholm and the rest of Belvedere Labs down, but he’d been too much of a self-absorbed dick to try.

He was a self-absorbed dick, but he’d still rather be a hero in their eyes.

Fox had presumably set up the cameras to get some kind of confession from Chisholm, probably about his experiments on shifters. He figured once she had the confession and had knocked them out with the gas, she planned to grab the million dollars and the data, and leave.

But she wasn’t going to get the chance. Zakerek had hacked the feed from one of her cameras, and was sending it to his cloud account via his phone. He’d let the meet happen, and record everything. Then he could bind the rest of the bad guys in a spell net, send the address to the Council, carry off Madeleine, and keep her in his secret lair until she created the antidote.

Even if she set off the gas, it shouldn’t affect him. There were very few toxins that affected dragons, and they had to be specially crafted, using dragon magic or dragon blood. Like the one that had made him a monster.

Chisholm turned out to be surprisingly good at obeying directions—he arrived dead on time. Zakerek couldn’t see much of the adjoining room from his perch above Madeleine, but he could see it all through the camera feed on his phone.