“Byrd,” Noah called out to his dragon, “we need to be human.”
“No.” The dragon’s response was fast and firm.
“I can get us out of this cage, but I need my magic to do it. And I can’t work magic like this.”
“No.” The answer was a little slower, but still very firm.
Noah tilted his head down and closed his eyes. He had to get his dragon to agree with him. “Byrd, if we want any hope of saving Kara, we need to get out of this cage. I can do that. But you have to let go.”
“Mine.” The word came out conflicted as Byrd waffled on his choice.
“Yes.” Noah nodded. “We can save her, but we have to go now. Before they come back.” Noah didn’t know how long it would take the pair to get coffee, but he didn’t stand a chance of escaping if they came back before he was free.
“For mine.”
Noah felt the dragon’s hold release. He breathed out as the familiar tingle of magic rushed over his skin. He let it take him, shifting his form to something more familiar. Opening his eyes, Noah blinked. After being in dragon form for so long, the world looked strange. Duller than it should be. Shaking the feeling away, he sat up and moved towards the door.
The lock was exactly what he’d thought it was—a simple padlock. Wrapping his hands around it, Noah pulled energy from the world around him and aimed it at the lock. He muttered his spell, spinning it into the enchantment already there. Concentrating hard, he pulled the enchantment apart, shredding it free of the metal. When he was done, the lock was still latched, but now it was nothing more than a lock. Pulling his fingers back from the metal, he muttered another spell that ate the heat from the lock. It was a very simple spell, but it super-cooled the steel to a brittle temperature. Leaning back, Noah kicked at the door with his heel. It rattled hard before the latch on the cage gave way. Noah stared at it in shock. He’d expected to have to beat on the door to get the lock to shatter.
Sitting up, he looked at the thin bar that had held the door shut. The pin that held the joint together had snapped in the extreme cold. Someone had forgotten to enchant that one little piece. Aww, hell. All that work for nothing. Shaking his head, Noah climbed out of the cage.
The feel of scales pushed against his skin.
“Not yet, Byrd,” Noah pleaded as he wrapped his arms around himself. “We need to be human.”
A wordless question bubbled up from Byrd.
“To blend in,” Noah explained. “We need to find Kara before we transform.”
Byrd paused to think about that before backing down.
“Thank you.” Standing up, Noah concentrated on what he needed to do. Now that he was free, he needed to find clothing. Being human would let him blend in, but whoever was holding them would probably notice a naked man running around. Voices from the hall drew his attention. The voices of the two men coming back with their coffee.
Racing across the room, Noah slipped behind the door and drew up more power. He whispered the first part of a spell, weaving the energy into something akin to the spell he’d used in his basement, only more lethal.
As the two men came into the room, the shorter one stopped when he saw the empty cage. “He’s gone!”
Barking the last line of the spell, Noah leaped out and grabbed both men by their shoulders. Electricity coursed through them, burning out their nervous systems.
The two men dropped without a sound.
Clinging to their shirts, Noah lowered them both to the ground. Carefully, he shut the door in case someone else came by. Byrd coiled in satisfaction as Noah dropped down next to the men and started stripping them. He studied them as he worked, trying not to think of what he was doing. There was something vaguely familiar about the smaller man. He struggled into the taller man’s pants as he thought about it. The jeans were much too tight to be comfortable, but the smaller man’s clothing would be too short. His shirt, though… that would fit him better than the T-shirt.
As he pulled the work shirt off, something caught his eye—a small symbol embroidered on the dark material. An infinity symbol with a line through it. He stared at the dead man. This guy worked for Eternity! Flipping the dead man over, Noah grabbed the back of his pants and rolled his belt down. Outrage ate at him. Just on the inside of his pants was an iron-on tag with the man’s name and department listed on it. Lambert. Maintenance. The man was a goddamned housekeeper at the main office. Noah slammed his hand down on the man’s back and ripped the shirt the rest of the way off him. How the hell could anyone from work be involved with this? They were supposed to protect dragons, not slaughter them!
Byrd growled his anger, and Noah committed the man’s name to memory as he pulled on the shirt and buttoned it up. He tried to button the pants, but they were too tight. Leaving them open, he fluffed the shirt out over the open fly and went to the door. They would stay up for what he needed to do. Glancing back, he considered the men’s shoes, but both pairs looked too small for his feet. A second thought occurred to him, and he went back for Lambert’s ball cap. He pulled it down tight over his hair and returned to the door.
Easing it open, Noah glanced up and down the hall. No one was around. Pulling the cap low over his eyes, Noah pushed the door open and stepped out. Unsure which way to go, he turned away from the direction the men had gone and walked towards the door at the far end. It opened into a large room. Wrong way.
“Mine,” Byrd grumbled.
“I know,” Noah growled. They needed to find Kara, but he had no idea where to start. Taking a deep breath, he calmed himself and thought. If only he had a way to find people. An idea hit him, and he whispered his aura spell. Blinking a few times, he turned around and surveyed his surroundings. Viewing things on an astral plane took a lot more work than seeing them with his eyes. The energies of living creatures radiated out, unhampered by inanimate objects like walls, but it was harder to judge spatial distance than with normal sight. Thankfully, this was a skill Noah was used to. If the mages were working on getting Kara’s dragon out, they would be concentrating hard. He scanned around until he found what he was interested in. A grouping of intense colors. That was where Kara would be.
Byrd growled his impatience.
“Easy,” Noah soothed the dragon as he released the spell and blinked the effects away. Contrary to his words, he hurried back into the hall, past the room where he’d been kept. He’d expected a few powerful auras, but what he’d found were a few very determined people surrounded by a haze of auras dense enough that it was hard to distinguish the individuals in the group. They must be working on Kara in a wide area where anyone could watch.
Byrd’s anger grew. His mate was being tortured on display, and no one was stopping it!
Noah held on to his dragon but let that anger push him forward. At the end of the hall, he turned right and started looking for a staircase. The grouping of energy had been lower than he was. His feet picked up speed as he searched. When the hall ended in a door, he slammed through it.
The hum of energy stopped him in his tracks. Catching the door, Noah looked around. The path ended abruptly in a railing. To the left was a set of metal steps leading down, but it was the people who captured his attention. Towards one side of the room was a wide space where three men in dark robes stood around a table. Noah didn’t have to look to know Kara was laid out on that table. It was the stacks of crates surrounding the area that stopped him from racing down there and killing them all. There had to be twenty people perched on those boxes.