Page 19 of Red Dragon’s Flame

The blood smear began to glow and shimmer. As he watched, the magic moved in the direction of the far wall, where a row of low bookshelves stood against the cinderblocks, half-filled with file boxes.

Then it stopped, pushing as if it was encountering resistance. Countermagic?

He sang two more notes, and his own magic grew in power. The other magic dissipated, and he could see it had been hiding a blood trail that led directly to one of the bookshelves.

A wide, smeared blood trail—like someone had been crawling.

He went to the wall, running his fingers over the bookcase, looking for a hidden latch. He found it near the floor, a square of wood that moved when he pressed it. The wall moved with a grating sound, revealing a tunnel opening about four feet square at floor level—with a woman curled inside it.

Her face was waxy pale under short dark hair, her shirt torn and soaked with blood. Blood smell filled the opening. Too much blood.

“Shadow?” he said softly, wishing he knew her real name. “It’s me, Starthrower. You’re okay. I’m going to get you out of here.”

He touched her neck. Was that a pulse? It was so faint—he couldn’t be sure.

He shoved down the fear that clawed through him. He’d found her. He couldn’t be too late. Moving carefully, he crawled into the tunnel beside her.

Chapter 10

Mikah hunched into the tunnel, edging up to Shadowfire. She must have been trying to escape and had only made it a few feet into the tunnel before passing out. From the size of the blood trail revealed under the magic, she’d been lucky to make it this far.

She was so still, her skin so pale. He couldn’t feel a heartbeat when he put his hand on her chest, and he couldn’t be sure if he was imagining the tiny flutter of a pulse at her throat.

She didn’t seem to be breathing.

Please, he thought. Please tell him he hadn’t gotten here just minutes too late. He didn’t want to move her when she was so fragile, so he repositioned her as best he could inside the tunnel and began compressions on her heart.

Five compressions, then breathe. He put his lips on her soft ones and huffed life-giving breath into her lungs. Five more compressions, two more breaths.

On the third round, he felt a stirring in the air, a prickling of magic. One breath. Two breaths. He was about to pull his mouth away when her neck arched and she pressed her lips harder to his. His dragonfire rose up unexpectedly within him and he tried to pull away, but some force wrapped around the back of his neck and kept him there, his mouth on hers.

He fought, trying to break away before he breathed fire and destroyed her from the inside out. Please… no…

He felt her breathe in, harder and longer than seemed possible. His dragonfire streamed out of his mouth—straight into her lungs. The force holding him there seemed to drink it in—more and more and more—and somehow she didn’t burn. He felt the fire between them and all around them, and suddenly her whole body arched in what felt like a seizure.

Heat like a supernova flooded through him, into her, and then she dropped away from him, stirring and coughing weakly.

She opened her eyes.

They were electric blue, like the heart of an intensely burning flame, staring at him in wonder. “Starthrower?” she murmured. “Hero… after all…”

She reached up to him, her hand curving around his neck, her touch soft and intimate and comforting and arousing. Pulling his head down, she kissed him again, softly, slowly, her lips lingering on his in a moment of complete perfection.

Then she slipped into unconsciousness, her limbs going slack and her eyes drifting closed.

This time, though, she was breathing normally, and her pulse was strong.

Mikah stared at her, lying trustingly next to him. What the actual hell had just happened? What kind of creature was she? How had she pulled the fire out of him—and not died when she did it?

There were no answers, and this was not the time or place to look for them. At least one of her attackers had escaped, and they knew she’d been wounded. There was no guarantee they weren’t on their way with reinforcements, to finish the job.

He was about to pull her back out of the tunnel when he heard a faint sound just outside the computer room, out in the basement. Could be a rat—but it could be an enemy.

Mikah considered pulling the tunnel shut and taking Shadow out that way, but he didn’t like not knowing what was on the other end. They could be trapped.

And he wanted to know who the hell he was dealing with.

Cloaking himself and concealing any sounds with magic, he eased out of the tunnel and shut the entrance, then stole across the room to the door.