“We got in her cab,” she pointed out. “She couldn’t exactly have orchestrated that. Sometimes bad luck is just that. Sheer dumb luck.”
“I don’t believe in luck,” he rumbled back. “And cities are like a fucking cesspool of creatures ready to take advantage of weak and stupid humans. A dragon mate is still vulnerably human, and a rogue dragon will always be…a temptation. I’d hoped, with this being a smaller city, that we’d get out before anyone noticed us.”
“Too late for that,” she tossed out.
“Humor? Right now? Seriously?”
Mental note that her dragon shifter got grumpy after being attacked. “Sorry. It’s how I react to stressful situations.”
He grunted his displeasure with that facet of her personality, and Hadyn grinned. A second later, the smile disappeared as he started his descent. He landed them in the middle of a small park that took up a full block in the center of the neighborhood.
Quickly, he shifted, and thanked heavens for a moonless night and his dark coloring. Then he took her hand, as though he didn’t trust her to stay close enough, and practically ran her toward the sight of the crash.
Except he slowed as they neared a small gas station and veered into the parking lot.
“See any cameras?” he asked.
She glanced around, then pointed. “There and there.”
Her eyebrows shot up as he took a trash can from the corner by the store and dragged it around out of sight of the watching lenses. “Stand there,” he said.
She didn’t have to ask why, he was having her block the view of the other camera. In a flash, his chest rumbled, and he leaned over a trashcan and blew flame all over the contents. Then he grabbed her by the hand again and they were run-walking away.
Something was wrong. Hadyn kept quiet, hurrying along at his side, but something was definitely wrong with her. Her muscles were starting to feel sluggish and almost achy.
“What was that for?” she asked, trying to distract herself.
She glanced up in time to see his lips flatten ominously. “A call for backup.”
Chapter Nine
Rune kept a close eye on Hadyn, whom he’d positioned next to a tree across the street from the accident, as he worked his way from the back of the small crowd gathered. Mostly people from the nearby houses, and a few folks who’d driven by the wreckages, had come to try to help or rubberneck. Luckily, nighttime meant fewer observers.
Gradually, he made his way from one to the next, from the back of the pack toward the front. Slowly, he’d stoke the fire in his gaze, then stare a human in the eyes, ensnaring him or her in a trancelike state which made it much easier to do the next thing. Building heat inside him, he would touch them—a shoulder, a hand, nothing too obvious to anyone watching—then he’d push the heat through their skin, using it to wipe the memories that he could. The longer he held, the more amount of time would simply disappear. Only a few minutes were needed for each person as he was wiping only a short period of time.
Around him, those he’d already affected blinked or frowned in confusion. He couldn’t choose which memories to take, only how much time, roughly. His biggest concern was any humans who’d witnessed his shift from behind a curtain in the homes with fenced-in backyards that bordered the road. Hopefully, they couldn’t have seen much given the darkness, trees, and angles of their homes. However, he couldn’t be sure of that, which meant that shortly he’d be going house to house.
“Nice to see things haven’t changed much, Rune,” a husky female voice said softly in his ear.
He jerked around to find Lyndi next to him, her open grin welcoming, which was more than he’d expected given that he’d sent them no warning he was even coming their direction.
She tipped her head at the people. “Still making all sorts of trouble, huh?”
“You’re getting pretty good at the stealth techniques,” he said.
She should be. He’d trained the female-born dragoness himself before he left the team. Lyndi had arrived with her brother, Drake, who had been assigned to the team a few centuries after Rune and the originals came over to the Americas.
“Pretty good?” she demanded now, arching a single eyebrow.
“Pretty damn good?” he corrected.
She gave a satisfied nod. “Better.”
“I’m shocked Levi let you out of the mountain in your condition.” He glanced at the growing swell of her belly.
Her red-brown eyes narrowed, and he had a feeling her tagging along must’ve been a fight. “He’s with Hall and Drake, right behind me,” she warned.
He glanced over her shoulder, expecting that to be literally true, but the shifters weren’t in the crowd. “How’d you get here before them?”
Lyndi smirked. “I’m smaller and darker, so I found a place closer I could land.” She glanced around. “What’s the story here?”
“I’ll tell you when we get back to the mountain. Right now, we need to wipe memories. An hour at most, half an hour is probably fine.” He shifted a small part of his body and sent thoughts to the three dragons shifters still making their way to him, filling both Lyndi and the men in on what had been done and what was left. Lyndi didn’t waste any time, turning to the nearest human.
Ten minutes later a hand clapped on his shoulder right as he finished a mind wipe. He’d been expecting this one. Levi wasn’t bad at sneaking around, especially for his size. Gold dragons were big motherfuckers. Still, he wasn’t black dragon shifter level.
“You look like shit, dude. What the fuck happened here?” Levi asked, unconsciously mirroring his mate’s question.
Hall, his previous informant in the team’s midst, walked up right behind Levi, lime-green eyes flashing suddenly more snakelike. “Let me guess… Our recent problems weren’t enough?”
Sarcastic ass.
Lyndi’s brother Drake, meanwhile, glowered from the edge of the crowd, preferring not to have to interact with people—supernatural or human, didn’t matter.
“Tell you about it later, but you can thank a succubus for the late night.”
Levi’s brows shot up, but all three men nodded, almost in one motion, the team was so in tune with each other. Then they all got to work. At Drake’s orders, Levi and Lyndi went door to door, making sure peepers didn’t remember a damn thing, either.
The human medical and fire teams finally arrived, lights flashing but sirens off. The only body they found was the succubus, or what was left of her. Rune almost smiled at the confounded comments from the men and women working the scene, trying to figure out how running into one light pole could essentially disintegrate a car like that. Even more confused as they started to interview people with no memory of what they’d witnessed, or, for a few, even of how they’d got there.