Emergence

Kim Knox Emergence

© 2010 by Kim Knox

Warning: This title contains wild sex, dark violence and irascible dragons who shift into brooding men. Oh, and the utter perversion of mythology.

To Mandy. And to Hailey, for her patience.

Chapter One

In the early hours, as I hit my twenty-seventh birthday, I would belong, body and soul, to Lord Sinon, the First Dragon of the British Isles. It wasn’t a surprise. My human father had reminded me of the honour since…well…forever. Now I faced my last night of freedom, in a little side street up from the docks. Not the most salubrious of areas, but then what I needed on my final night was only just legal.

I tottered around a puddle, yellow lamplight splashing across it, and reached the safety of the flagstone pavement. The click-click of my ridiculously high heels echoed over the narrow side street, mixing with the dull, heavy beat of music throbbing through the spring air. I straightened and pulled at my clinging gold top. My fingers shook and, for a moment, I shut my eyes and breathed in the cool night. It didn’t help.

My gut tightened, the nerves that gripped me for the last week flushing hot panic under my skin. I breathed slowly, in and out, concentrating on each breath as it brought with it the familiar scents of this part of my city. Damp brick, the thick tang of the river, hints of cooked food and the odour of stale beer. No, my fear wouldn’t wreck my final night, a night I intended to enjoy to the full.

I smoothed down my scrap of a top, leaving my toned stomach exposed, and eased my hands over my hips, settling the short skirt against my thighs. The First Dragon would own me…but not for another few hours. In that time, I intended to find a hard-bodied man, or two-a smile tugged at my mouth-I was half gryphon, after all.

The neon sign of the club stretched down the brickwork of the converted warehouse, casting a dull red light over the long, chattering queue of scantily dressed men and women. I tottered along the narrow stretch of pavement between the rope and the cobbled street, ignoring the glares that followed me. They were pure-blood human. I was not. My entry to the club was automatic.

A black-suited doorman held up his hand and he frowned at me. I tilted my head and waited. He was all muscle and attitude under his smooth suit, and my shadow-sense picked out the hint of the mythoi in him. I’d found my ability sharper than most and could find even a drop of hidden beast lurking under its human sheath. Four generations interbreeding with pure humans had diluted the mythoi in front of me, but traced in the air around him was the heavy frame of a minotaur. Through the lamplight, the shadow of great curved horns jutted from his forehead.

He had the strength I needed in the opposite sex, but I liked them lean, pretty, and the frowning brute blocking the arched doorway was anything but that.

“Jaime Dalton,” I said and flashed him a quick smile. As a mythoi, I was listed on the register, a record that held our parentage, our location, our entire sexual history. It was a catalogue of our lives anxious humans had demanded centuries before, terrified of how the mythoi blood would mix with theirs. None of us escaped that infamous list. “I have the right to jump the queue.”

He tapped his earpiece, muttered my name and waited. After a quick second, he gave a curt nod and stood to one side. “Enjoy your evening, Ms. Dalton.”

“Thank you.” My heels sank into the thick carpet running down the wide steps. Fingers skirted the bronzed handrail, ready to grab it if my stupid shoes tripped me. Soft lighting cast shadows over the smooth arch of brick above my head, and the warm scents of other mythoi threaded through the close air. It had been a long while since I’d visited the club. My creature didn’t need to find satiation in constant sex, not like other mythoi beasts…but I was making my final night of freedom the exception.

The low, domed ceiling stretched between thick arches of brick. The glow of golden light washed over rough walls, glimpses and shadows caught in the maze. It was still early, so only a few of the mythoi gathered around the rough-sanded tables.

In the far corner, a pair of karkadann looked up from their beers. They were very close to being full-bloods and their human sheaths reflected that. Tall, lithe with a luminous glow to their pale skin that only enhanced the perfection of their faces…they were tempting, until I met their pale blue eyes. Hunger drove them, and that raging need strengthened the shadow of their true form. Enough mythoi blood meant they could melt into their shadows and shift into that shape. I winced. They were all muscle, hooves, fangs and twisting horns, and I wanted a night of pleasure, not a night of fighting for my life.

I broke contact and my heels clacked against the slate floor. I made my way to the bar as it stretched out against the far wall. Shifting my backside onto a high stool, I rested my feet against the bronze rail running along the base of the bar. My toes thanked me.

The barman, holding a barest drop of roane blood, smiled. “What’ll it be?”

I scanned the fridges behind the counter and pointed out an unpronounceable bottle of lager. He set it and a tall glass before me, the ghost of his mythoi shadow wrapping a fine web around his fingers. “You want a tab?”

Another privilege of being a mythoi in the club: credit. “Please,” I said, sliding a finger down the neck of the bottle and cutting a line through the moisture. I poured the golden liquid into the glass as the barman put the identity pad on the counter. Drying my fingers, I pressed my palm against the cool plastic. A brief glow flared around my hand, and my details, who and what I was, scrolled above it. Tomorrow they would find out I was completely penniless. Tonight…tonight was different.

The barman glanced up. “I wasn’t certain. You’re a gryphon…” His hand traced around the imprint of my mythoi shadow. “It’s fluid.”

I sipped at my beer, the cold, bitter taste sharp against my tongue, and shrugged. “The more ancient mythoi tend to do that.”

“We don’t get many of your kind in here. It’s an honour.” The first group of humans gaggled at the far end of the bar, loud and laughing, and the barman let out a little sigh. “Enjoy your evening.”

I watched the pure-humans, nervous, eager at frequenting the illicit bar. They’d been like this around us for almost two centuries. Fearing us. Craving us. Since the first mythoi had burst into this reality in 1892, wild, untamed and having no memory of where they came from, who they were. With their strange shadows, they terrified the Victorians. And then the dragons discovered they could harness residual mythoi energy-the energy from our breaking into the human dimension-and people feared their growing influence. To reassure them, we were catalogued, restricted, monitored.

However, some pure-blooded humans, like the ones leering at the barman, wanted to mix with us, ignoring the distrust and distaste of the general public. We were the lure of the strange and unknown and-for whoever went home with the karkadanns stalking up to the bar-a source of danger too. Though none were more dangerous than the dragons. Emergence had shown that. Lord Sinon himself had burned down a square mile of east London, a wild, silver dragon, the reports said, alive with flame…

I bit at my lip and stared into my glass, watching the fast rise of golden bubbles. Dragons. I couldn’t push them from my thoughts.

Someone was staring at me. I could feel it as a warm, easy slide over my skin, and it forced me to suck in a quick breath. I straightened, pushing my shoulders back, and my nipples peaked. It was an unexpected reaction. My gryphon-half barely reacted to sexual stimuli; power in all its forms was what got her hot. I glanced to my left and found the heated, amber gaze of a man at the end of the long bar.