Naked Dragon Read online

  “I have something to tell you,” Vivica said. “You can hear it from me or the doctors. It’s up to you.”

  “You mean, Steve and I will be able to have wheelchair races?”

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  McKenna raised herself in the hospital bed and braced herself for the worst. “I’d rather have you tell me than the doctors,” she said, clutching the covers.

  Vivica took her hand. McKenna felt exposed. Vulnerable. Somebody takes your hand when there’s bad news.

  “You won’t be confined to a wheelchair,” Vivica said. “You’re a miracle, remember? And so is your baby. Nobody can figure out how it survived the fall, but it did, and it’s healthy and growing exactly as it should.”

  “It?”

  “Too soon to know the baby’s sex.”

  The night the condoms overflowed, McKenna thought, and though she smiled inwardly, her face felt wet. “I’m not so much worried about the sex as I am the species,” she admitted.

  Vivica chuckled. “On your nightstand, here, are the results from the checkup I had Bastian get when he first came to me. His child will be as human as he. ‘Anything out of the ordinary’—and I don’t know what—was ‘a physical defect,’ to quote the doctor who gives my clients their physicals.”

  Not a defect, McKenna thought. A gift. A baby maker, as it turned out. “How far along am I?”

  “Nearly a month.”

  Bastian had left her his heart in their child. As much as she wanted Bastian himself, love overflowed in her for his baby.

  “Your guests couldn’t have been happier with the Dragon’s Lair,” Vivica said to break the silence. “They’re booked for next fall, same week.”

  “How can I thank you for everything you did to help?”

  “Get better and get home.”

  Without Bastian, it wouldn’t seem like home anymore. What a bittersweet victory, going home to her successful bed-and-breakfast.

  Had Bastian flown away and survived? Or had Killian taken him back to the island? Even if he’d lived—a long shot—he was lost to her.

  The next morning, Vivica checked her out of the hospital.

  “Viv,” she said in the car. “I didn’t see a hospital bill.”

  “Didn’t you? Can’t imagine why.”

  “I’ll pay you back.”

  “No,” Vivica said. “Consider it the investment in the B and B that my instincts said I shouldn’t make so as not to hinder destiny. Not the slightest hint of intuition stopped me from paying that bill, so I knew it was the right thing to do. Besides, you’re carrying on the family line. I’m all for that.”

  Her first day home, McKenna imagined Bastian in every room, but she had him, still, in the small being with his genes—not jeans—beneath her heart. She chuckled and wiped her eyes.

  She looked for Dewcup and Jock, but they had disappeared as well. Still, her friends made sure she had no time to mourn or curl up on her bed to wallow in grief.

  Lizzie was over the moon about her pregnancy. Her best friend’s advice alone would keep her busy for the next eight months, not to mention baby practice with the triplets: Pay-ton, Piper, and Patrice. Whitney and Wyatt’s auntie kisses made for good distractions, too, and Steve’s progress, which might come to a stop without Bastian, though she wouldn’t mention it.

  An investigation into Huntley’s suspicious conglomerate revealed too many parcels of “coincidentally” acquired bargain property, so the police were digging deeper into his business practices and, thanks to Vivica, into Steve’s insurance company for their refusal to pay after his fall.

  On McKenna’s second morning home, as she noted an e-mail reservation in her book at the registration desk in her wide front hall, a man knocked at her front door. He looked familiar, but she couldn’t place him. He stood tall, his long, wild, sandy hair streaked with sunshine, his eyes a bright . . . violet? With that scar crossing his left eye, he looked a lot like the tawny gold dragon Bastian painted in one of her bedrooms. “Can I help you?” McKenna asked, the hair on her arms bristling.

  “Vivica sent me.”

  Her heart skipped a beat. A connection. A reminder. Vague. Disturbing. “Thank you for coming, but I’m not ready to hire another handyman.”

  “I just got to Salem last night, and I don’t need a job. Vivica hired me as her bodyguard. She has a bit of a stalker problem.”

  That journalist, McKenna remembered. This familiar man’s story made sense. “So do you need a place to stay until you find an apartment?”

  “No, thank you. My name is Jaydun Dragonelli, and I’m looking for my brother Bastian.”

  “Vivica didn’t tell you?”

  “Tell me what?”

  No, wait. Confusion caught McKenna in its headlights until her mind cleared; hope shot through her and nearly buckled her knees. “Andra sent you from the island? That means—Bastian didn’t fail?”

  “Bastian made way for us and saved us at the same time. Are you his heart mate?”

  “Bastian’s not dead, then?”

  Jaydun looked troubled. “I’m here, and Andra has her magick back.”

  “Lizzie!” McKenna shouted. “Excuse me, Jaydun. I have an emergency errand to run.”

  Bastian might not know he’d succeeded any more than she’d known. He could have flown, heaven knew where, or he could be somewhere in Salem.

  McKenna made her way up the hall, not sore at all after her injuries. Bastian had healed her, though she thought she remembered him cursing his lack of healing power.

  She looked out the window. Where could a huge dragon linger and not be seen? Unless he was a man again, weak, hungry.

  A place to linger undetected. The caves? “Make yourself at home, Jaydun!” McKenna called.

  Lizzie met her in the hall, a baby in each arm. “You rang?”

  “Lizzie, sweetie, can you send Whitney and Wyatt into the parlor with a drink and snack for Bastian’s brother? I’ll be back.”

  “Bastian has a brother?”

  “Lots of them.” McKenna swiped every container of honey from a cupboard shelf into a canvas bag, and grabbed an empty bag to take with her.

  “McKenna, where are you going?” Lizzie asked, looking worried. “You have a baby to think about.”

  “Precisely why I’m going. You always wanted me to throw caution to the wind and chase a rainbow. Wish me luck.” McKenna let the porch door bounce behind her, and she’d no sooner gone outside than Jock appeared and snuffle-puffed purple smoke as he flew in circles slightly ahead of her.

  Following the small blue dragon, McKenna packed the extra bag with lemongrass along the way. When she didn’t see any sign of life at the near caves, she followed Jock to the farthest entrance, the one where she took Bastian the night they met Ciarra.

  If transforming back into a man was a problem, which he expected it might be, and if he didn’t fly away, she hoped he’d foraged at night. She should have looked for him sooner. After all, he’d been missing for nine days.

  “Did you feed him, Jock?”

  More purple smoke.

  What did that mean? Bastian might not even be here. She’d seen him turn into a dragon, which he wasn’t supposed to do. She’d seen Killian’s satisfaction when Bastian turned. She knew then how much trouble Bastian was in.

  Anticipation beat in her breast, made her hands shake and her step falter. She would hold on to hope . . . until she reached her destination, at which point, it could be ripped from her forever.

  She would probably be safer and smarter to reject hope now, but she couldn’t.

  Practically speaking, Bastian could have gotten into trouble after Andra transformed Jaydun and sent him through the veil.

  FIFTY-NINE

  As McKenna rounded the corner of the cave mass, toward the waterfront entrance, she saw a dragon tail trailing from the cave. A ruddy red color, long and scaled, with an arrow-tipped spade, but enough scales had dried up and fallen off to cause alarm. The tail showed no sign of life.

&n
bsp; Oh, God. Adrenaline rushed her, and nausea rose in her. With a hand to her babe, McKenna stroked the inert spade.

  After a dead-space minute, it twitched.

  Bastian could be alive. Barely. But for how long?

  His huge body nearly filled the cavern. Only one way to reach him so he could see her. Climb over him. She started at the narrow end of his tail and worked her way up his back, continuously stopping to wipe her eyes so she could see what she was doing. The higher she climbed, the more that listless tail seemed to twitch.

  Deep in the cave, she saw his wings tucked against his side. She stroked them, too, slid her hands along the velvet-like webs, and closed them around each wing claw. “Your scales tickle,” she shouted, her words echoing in the caves, loud enough for him to hear her, she hoped.

  To get his head into the room where they’d once spent the night, Bastian had managed to knock down part of the entrance that hid Ciarra’s portion of the caves.

  As McKenna reached Bastian’s neck, his head came listlessly up, though raising it seemed difficult, and he couldn’t seem to open his eyes. “Dreams,” he whispered with barely a breath. “Sweet.”

  McKenna scootched down his neck—scales weren’t made for sliding—and landed on his front paw, where she stood to stroke his jaw. As his jaw relaxed, his lips, if you could call them that, parted. She covered a handful of lemongrass with honey and shoved that in his mouth.

  His entire being stiffened, then he sighed as if hope were a waste of effort.

  “Chew, you stubborn Bastardon! You dragosapien tripod. Chew, damn it!”

  His head came up a bit further, and he knocked her off his foot with the jut of his jaw.

  She rolled onto her bottom while he pawed at his eyes as if to clear them. “Dreams,” he said again. “Stronger every day. Makes no sense. Why can’t I die?”

  “Chew, Bastian. You nearly are dead. Who do you think you are, Dragula?” She sobbed with a rush of happy, and scared, and hopeful, and afraid to hope. “When you’re better, we’re going to talk about why you’re lolling on your lazy ass while I have a B and B to run, and I don’t mean a place where we sit in bed and eat bees for breakfast.”

  He swallowed, but his head lolled to the ground. He didn’t have the strength to hold it up.

  “What happened to the connection between us?” she shouted.

  “It died with you.” A tear landed on her hand. He was too far gone. How to get through to him?

  “You’re a dragon, you troglodyte. Get fired up. Go ahead. Work up some sweat. Huntley lived, you know. Okay, fire when ready—just let me get out of the way first.”

  When she got no reaction to her abuse, she opened his mouth and poured honey down his gullet. “There, does that help the burning sensation in your throat?”

  Nothing.

  “You came here to die, didn’t you, you lazy beast? You will not die! You will not! I forbid it. Turn back into a man so I can beat you for abandoning me before I feed you and make you better.” She pointed an imperious finger at him. “Turn, I say.”

  He coughed up a bit of smoke.

  Panic rushed her. Made her dizzy. She opened two containers of honey and poured them into him. “You have to turn back into a man, because I don’t know what to tell this baby about his daddy if you don’t. I guess it’d go something like, ‘Hey, little one, see the tail hanging out of that cave? That’s your dad! Aren’t we proud?’”

  Bastian turned his head to the side and more rocks fell from the entrance.

  McKenna hoped Ciarra wouldn’t mind. Where were her ancestors? She hadn’t seen a one since she got home.

  Best concentrate on Bastian. “Eat,” she said. “Think of it as eating for the three of us.

  “Why don’t you respond? Bastian, say something!”

  He opened one eye while she stood pouring honey into him. She thought he saw her then, though he barely blinked, but he did begin to take an active part in swallowing.

  After a few jars, he rolled, dragon belly up, to suck honey from the containers. “Now I know how Lizzie feels when she calls herself a walking milk bottle.”

  Bastian gave a snort, and a larger puff of smoke.

  She had to get through to him so he’d at least try to transform. They could barely communicate this way. She wanted her man back. She wiped the smoke from her eyes. “Damned hormones.”

  His eyes looked a little, er, smoky, too, with tears like her own.

  She had to jar him into making the transformation, or at least into making the effort. “Talk about taking the easy way out,” she snapped. “Hey, is that your dragon lance stiffening up? What an itty bitty little thing. Nowhere near as impressive as your man lance. You’re a sorry tripod in this condition. Hell, you barely qualify as a tripod. Let’s see if I can make this lance dance.”

  But as she tried to climb over him to reach his lance, a tremor began in Bastian’s chest, like a swell at first, then a full-bellied rumble, which knocked her off her knees and flat on top of him. “This is where you want me, isn’t it?”

  She rode his chest rumbles like waves at high tide, and the greater the rumbles, the lower she rode, and the more complete his transformation, until she blanketed Bastian, her own dear love, her man-beast, come back to her sporting a supersized trick dick in fine working order.

  Funny how his lance could function without him, because he was terribly weak, probably because of the energy it took to transform.

  McKenna kissed him all over his face and cried all over him, too.

  His eyes still closed, his breathing shallow, she lay beside him, her arms around him, reveling in the beat of his heart, and praying for it to beat faster.

  All at once, his chest expanded, the back muscles beneath her hand rippled, and they both breathed easier again.

  “You live?” he whispered, as weak as he was, touching a wayward tear on her face.

  She got herself together and fed him more sweetgrass and honey. “I know that you don’t have as much Bastian to carry now that you’re a man again, but I think I should get Toffee to carry you home.”

  “My Kenna,” he said, cupping a cheek and eating her up with his gaze. “No wonder I couldn’t die. I thought I was dreaming my continued connection with you.”

  A crash in the corner caught their attention.

  “Humans!” Dewcup snapped, tossing small rocks from above the trough of spring water. “You have the attention spans of gnats.”

  Bastian ignored the faery and pulled McKenna kissing-close.

  “May the dragons of life roast your hot dogs but never your buns,” the flaky faery said before she flew into the hole she’d made in the formation.

  Ping. Ping. Ping. One by one, coins flew from the opening. Gold coins. Ancient.

  McKenna stood and took one to look at. “The McKenna family treasure?”

  The bright discs flew faster from their centuries-old hidey-hole to mound on the floor. Dewcup flew out after them, hovered in the air, hands on her hips, as she grew bright, and in a burst of fireworks, a human-sized woman dressed in stars stood in her place.

  Bastian pulled McKenna in front of him to cover himself. “Andra. You’re Dewcup?”

  “Blessed Be, my Bastian,” the glittering woman said. “I couldn’t let you face a new world alone, and I needed to see how my dragons would fare here. You did well. I worried when you turned back into a dragon, but that was the only way you could have saved McKenna. Dragon tears are powerful magick. That’s how you healed her.”

  “But I wept only when I thought she had died.”

  “Killian’s evil backfired. She masked her voice to sound like me—she’s a sorceress, after all. It was she who told you that McKenna was dead. She wanted you to lose hope, and you did, so much so that you wept, and your tears saved McKenna, causing you to vanquish Killian, on your own behalf, not on behalf of your brothers. They will have their own battles to fight with her.”

  “May I help them?” Bastian asked.

  “No more
than I was able to help you.”

  “But you didn’t help me.”

  “I rest my case. Destiny is a funny thing. It needs to take its own time and follow its own circuitous route.”

  McKenna smiled. “Vivica said something similar to me not long ago.”

  “I’ll tell you who did help you—Jock.”

  “Yes,” Bastian said. “Jock is a fine guardian dragon.”

  “Did you know that it was Whyzind the elder’s tears that saved you during your transformation on the island?”

  “Whyzind, my old mentor?” Bastian asked. “I hadn’t realized. I was rather preoccupied at the time.”

  “Aged and infirm but determined to serve you, Whyzind is here.”

  “I didn’t think he could make the trip through the planes safely at his advanced age,” Bastian said.

  “By making him smaller, we conserved his life force, which gave him strength for the journey and a longer life. You know him as Jock, and he is determined to serve you till the end of his days, if you will have him.”

  “Does he babysit?” McKenna asked, winking at their guardian dragon, who puffed purple smoke.

  “McKenna and I would be honored,” Bastian said.

  “McKenna.” Andra looked her way. “You have set your ancestors free to move on in the circle of life. They leave you their thanks, their blessings, and their love. You are the champion that generations of your clan had been waiting for.”

  “That’s not possible.”

  “Kenna, how can you say that anything is impossible, given the circumstances?” Bastian asked.

  McKenna wiped her cheek with her hand. “It’s good that they could move on, I guess.” She’d never see or speak to them again, but how lucky was she to have the opportunity to see her parents again? McKenna swallowed her sadness and embraced the joy her family must have experienced at moving on.

  “My work for you is done,” Andra said. “I will move between here and the Island of Stars while I send your brother dragons back to earth as men, one moon at a time, each with his own quest.” The Goddess of Hope bowed majestically and raised a hand. “May your warts and splints be few, your children many, and your nights filled with stars of your own making.” She blessed them and vanished.