Free Firewalker by Allyson James Page A

weren’t in Beatty, a small town just inside the Nevada border, but in Las Vegas.
    “You made those people drive us all the way to Las Vegas?” I asked in surprise.
    “They wanted to,” Mick said. “They were worried about you, and I wanted you at the best possible hospital.”
    I remembered my conviction in the truck that Beth and her family were some kind of mystical beings, like angels or gods. Had that been real? Or pain hallucination? I’d been half-gone on sunstroke at the time, so who knew what I’d really seen.
    Mick rented an SUV to get us home, but Nash insisted on driving. I wanted to grill Mick about the dragon trial, but the meds kept me too drowsy, and I slept fitfully in the backseat, my head on Mick’s lap. Anytime I slid from sleep, I found Mick’s comforting hand on my shoulder, heard him whispering healing spells over me. I’d drift off again, dreaming of chasing Nightwalkers and demons around Magellan, demanding that they pay their hotel bills.
    When I next woke, I was in Mick’s arms, being carried into the hotel through the back door. A short hall led to my bedroom and bathroom, with a door beyond my suite leading into the hotel itself. Through this entrance I could come and go when I pleased, without having to pass any of the guests or reception.
    I blessed the privacy as Mick carried me in from the warm afternoon to the cool shadows of my bedroom and laid me on the bed. He quickly and competently undressed me, while I lay there and enjoyed it. What healing spells he’d done on me during the drive made me feel better, though I still had a long way to go.
    Mick tucked me into bed and disappeared into the bathroom, and I heard the shower go on. I listened to him cleaning himself up and was still awake when he came out.
    “Mick.”
    He looked down at me while he toweled his hair, in jeans but with his torso bare. He had the best body I’d ever seen, six-pack abs and muscular chest, his biceps hard and smooth. A dragon tattoo curled down each arm, their black eyes seeming to glitter with life. They kept his dragon essence, he’d once told me, holding that part of him while he walked around in human form.
    “You need to tell me more about this dragon trial,” I said.
    Mick wrapped the towel around his neck and held on to both ends. “No, what you need is to sleep.”
    “I’m tired of sleeping. What did you mean when you said, when they convict you? Don’t you mean if ?”
    “That’s not how dragon trials work. Guilt is already proved. The trial is more to clear the air, but the fact that they’re holding one at all gives me some hope.”
    How he could talk so calmly about it, I had no idea. “Hope? How can a trial in which they’ve already found you guilty give you hope?”
    “Because even though you opened the vortexes, as they feared, we sealed them again, mitigating the threat. That act changed the order for immediate execution to one of a trial. It gives me a chance.”
    “This is bullshit.” I wanted to leap out of bed, hunt down this damned dragon council, and tell them what I thought. “Take me to the dragons. Let me talk to them.”
    Wry amusement danced in Mick’s eyes. “I’m not letting you anywhere near the dragon council, or them anywhere near you. What you’re going to do is stay out of it and get better.”
    Like hell. I didn’t have the vaguest idea how to find the dragons and their council, but I’d hunt them down and wring their scaly necks if it was the last thing I did.
    “Damn it, Mick,” I said. “You said they know you’ll show up at the trial even if they don’t force you there. Why would you go? Why not fly away to Antarctica or something?”
    “If I don’t appear on the trial date, I’ll be immediately hunted down and killed. Antarctica wouldn’t help, and besides, it’s too cold for me.” He smiled, as though he found my human ignorance funny. “I would also be dishonored if I didn’t go, and honor is everything to a dragon. Even if