The door exploded inward, and through the smoke, he could make out a figure. Mal reached out with his right hand and the man exploded in a ball of flame. He reeled backwards, screaming, but two more took his place. Mal reached out again but this time the flame hit an invisible wall. They had shielded. He raised his gun and pulled the trigger, keeping his finger pressed down. They kept coming, obviously wearing body armor. He aimed and shot both in the center of the forehead. More took their place.
He'd told Lily the truth, dragons loved to fight, and he'd been getting little enough lately. But he had Lily to think about. Neither side would kill the last Dragon Princess on purpose, but this was getting out of hand. Any one of them could hit her in the crossfire.
At least one of their bullets had hit him, but he couldn't yet feel the pain. He sensed something behind him, and whirled around. Two more figures appeared beyond the broken window. He shot them but knew there would be more to take their place.
The sorcerers had them surrounded. He had to get Lily out of there. He holstered his second gun and turned back to her, drawing the knife from the back sheath. He held it in his right hand, raised his left and drew the blade across his wrist. Blood welled from the wound. He reached down, pulled Lily to her feet, and then twirled her in his arms so he was between her and the men who appeared in the doorway. He shook the blood from his wrist as he turned so it formed a circle around them both, and then he concentrated on where he wanted to go.
And the room vanished.
Chapter 7
Mal released her, and Lily tumbled, hitting the ground hard. Rolling onto her side, she rubbed the dust out of her eyes. She was lying outside on the gravel drive close by Mal's car.
How the fuck had that happened?
Above her Mal was still fighting. Moonlight glinted off the blade as he swung the long knife at a man, slicing open his chest. In the back sweep, he decapitated a second, then lowered the knife to his side.
It happened fast, before she'd even come to terms with the fact that they weren't where they'd been seconds ago.
"How the fuck did we get here?"
"Magic," he replied. "Come on, we have to move. The rest of them will be here in minutes."
"The rest of them? You mean the ones who still have heads." She squeezed her eyes shut to block out the two bodies, and then blinked them open. Nothing had changed. Ugh! "You just chopped that man's head off."
"I know, and now we have to move." Crouching down, he wiped the blade clean on the headless man's shirt, then shoved the knife back where it had come from. "You'll have to drive," he said pulling the keys from his pocket.
Her whole body trembled, but she took the keys. Pushing herself to her feet, she tried not to look at the carnage. Mal grasped her hand and hustled her over to the vehicle and into the driver's seat.
"Come on, Lily, I need you." He bent down, took her face in his hands, and stared into her eyes. "I've been shot. You have to get me out of here. They won't harm you … yet, but they won't hesitate to kill me."
She shook herself and put the keys in the ignition as Mal strode around and climbed to the passenger side.
"Go!" he said.
Lily forced herself to concentrate on the road ahead. "Lights," she muttered, "Lights would be good here."
Mal leaned across her and flicked them on.
The road was narrow, overhung, and winding. She kept her foot down hard on the accelerator and gripped the wheel so tightly her knuckles showed white in the dim light. The engine screamed. She fumbled for the stick as her foot groped for the clutch and with a screech of gears, she rammed the car into third.
Peering in the rear-view mirror, she could see nothing, the road behind them in total darkness. She was sure no one was following, but couldn't seem to make herself slow down. And where the hell were they supposed to be going?
"Mal?"
He was silent. Lily slowed to a crawl and shifted her gaze from the road to glance at him. His eyes were closed, but she couldn't tell if he was awake or unconscious.
"Mal."
"What?"
"Do I head back to London?"
"No. They may be waiting for us." His voice was laced with exhaustion.
"Are you all right?" He didn't look it. The color had leached from his face, and his nostrils flared with each breath he took. Nausea churned in her stomach. She'd started to think of Mal as infallible. "You were shot back there. How bad is it?"
"I'll be fine, Lily, I just need time."
His left arm was cradled against his chest. The arm he had sliced open with the big sharp knife, just before they had disappeared into thin air, and then managed to pop up somewhere else.
Behind her, the road remained quiet, but she didn't dare stop yet.
"So where do I head?" she asked.
"Go north when you get the chance."
Lily drove in silence except for when they reached a junction, and she had to ask for directions. His answers were monosyllabic.
As the distance increased, she gradually relaxed, and her brain started to function again. She wasn't convinced it was an improvement. What the hell was going on?
Princesses, dragons, and now sorcerers.
She didn't believe it.
Of course she didn't, but she didn't have another explanation either. The whole world had gone crazy. She'd seen things in the last twenty-four hours that she would never have thought possible. For Christ's sake, she had disappeared in a puff of smoke. At least she thought there had been a puff of smoke. A quick glance at Mal showed his head resting against the seat, his eyes closed, but she knew he wasn't sleeping.
"What?" he asked as though he could sense her glance.
"Nothing," she muttered. She turned her eyes back to the road and continued driving, but her frustration rose with each mile that sped past.
"Relax," he said. "I can feel you thinking from here. It's exhausting."
They were on the motorway now, heading north, but the road wavered before her eyes. She blinked to clear her vision. "I have to stop driving."
He glanced across at her and nodded. "We'll find somewhere to stop for the rest of the night."
Half an hour later, she pulled into the driveway of a transport hotel and parked the car in the farthest, darkest corner between two huge trucks.
She sat rigid, unable to relax her grip on the wheel, hanging on as though her life depended on it. And maybe it did. Taking a deep breath, she relaxed her fingers.
"Come on, get out," Mal said.
"No, not until I get some answers."
He picked up the pistol from the dashboard and pointed it at her. "Out"
"You won't kill me," she said with absolute conviction.
He lowered the gun and pointed it at her leg. "No, but I will hurt you."
She thought about that for a second. "No, you won't."
He sighed, put the gun back down, and rubbed a hand over his face. "I'm tired. Can't this wait? When we get to safety, I'll answer your questions."
"Unfortunately, your safety and mine are not necessarily the same thing."
He sighed again. "Okay. One question."
"Two."
He shrugged, but then nodded. "Two."
Lily thought about it; she didn't want to waste a question. "What did those men want?"
"At a guess-your blood. Dragon blood is the source of all magic on earth. Without dragon blood they're powerless."
"You said I wasn't a dragon."
"They can't take on a full-blooded dragon. You're the next best thing. You have dragon blood." He shrugged. "In all honesty, I don't know what they mean to do with you. But they've had a long time to think about it."
"How long?"
"Is that your second question?"
She scowled again. "No." She knew what her next question was. "What is a dragon princess? What am I?"
He sighed again and rubbed a hand through his hair. "It's a long story and to understand you have to know what came before."
"I'm not going anywhere."
Mal rested his head back against the seat, staring through the windscreen into the night beyond. Was it such a hard question? Maybe she was better off not knowing. Ignorance was bliss and all that. But she had to understand what she was up against. At last, he started to speak.
"Long ago, the serpent goddess, Tannith, created the dragons and gave them Ankesh as their world. All dragons are male and have no ability to reproduce their own kind, but they were immortal and, for a time, they were content. But it's not in our nature to be content." His smile was rueful. "It's said we were created in the image of the serpent goddess, and we have the manners and morals to go with that."
"You're not selling yourself here."
"You wanted the truth. The dragons possessed much magic and with it, they could see other worlds. They saw this world and they wanted what humans had-not the dying bit, but the children, and they asked the goddess to help them. Tannith loved the dragons, but she wanted them to herself and she refused to make a female dragon. Instead, she came down to earth, opened the portal at Taryn Carnack, and let through the Dragon King. They mated and Tannith had a daughter Shula, the first of the Dragon Princesses. Shula was beautiful and the dragons fought for the honor to take her as mate." He glanced over at Lily. "She looked a lot like you, long red hair and green eyes."