Free Mercy Burns by Keri Arthur

Stairs ran down into the darkness and small garden lights curved away from the house, their brightness muted by the fog.
    We ran down stairs, trying to be as quiet as possible, but the wooden steps rattled and the sound creaked across the foggy silence. We’d barely reached the main path when a flicker of awareness ran across my senses, signaling someone up ahead. Obviously, my dragon senses were slowly coming back online. A heartbeat later, a bright light pierced the darkness, sweeping across the trees and the stony path, missing Damon’s toes by inches.
    He didn’t say anything, simply pulled me off thepath and into the trees. I couldn’t see the point of hiding. The man ahead was a dragon, which meant he’d sense us in here anyway. Though I guess the trees did give us one advantage—it was harder for the guard to get off a decent shot if he was carrying a weapon.
    And he probably was. Full dragons couldn’t flame at night, so carrying a gun was probably the next best option, even if it was unusual for a dragon to do so.
    Stones crunched softly up ahead. Damon released my arm, then bent and grabbed a fallen branch, hefting it lightly, as if testing its heaviness and maneuverability. The footsteps slowly drew closer. The guard might not know who was in the trees, but he knew someone was.
    Damon tossed the limb across the path and into the trees opposite. It landed with a crash, scattering leaves as it fell to the ground.
    The footsteps stopped. Damon touched my shoulder, his fingers warm against my skin. As I looked up, he grabbed the nearest tree branch, shaking it lightly but making no noise. Then he raised two fingers. When I nodded, he melted back into the darkness and disappeared.
    I couldn’t sense him, even though my senses were humming with the presence of the guard up ahead. I shivered. Obviously, the man who’d called himself Death had a few skills up his sleeve the rest of us didn’t know about.
    But his departure meant I was now alone and feeling rather vulnerable. Which I wasn’t, of course—at least, under normal circumstances.
    The footsteps resumed, edging up the path toward me. The bright flashlight swept across the darkness, moving ever closer. I raised a hand and gripped thetree branch above my head, my knuckles almost white with tension.
    The light pierced the nearby shadows and my heart just about jumped into my throat. I licked dry lips and watched as it moved on, slowly sweeping across the trees, drawing ever closer.
    Two minutes seemed to be taking forever.
    The beam of light hit my tree and stopped. Tension slithered through me and my legs twitched with the need to move. While I was protected by the width of the trunk and several lilac bushes, he didn’t actually have to see me to know I was there. His dragon senses would be screaming with the knowledge. Whether he actually realized it was me, or whether he simply thought I was an intruder, didn’t really matter. He’d know I was here, and that meant time had run out, whether or not Damon’s two minutes had passed.
    I dropped my weight onto the branch, dragging it down and then letting go. The branch sprang upward, creating a whole lot of noisy distraction. The light jumped around the tree, piercing the shadows in which I stood. I ducked down behind the bush and held my breath, waiting.
    For a moment, nothing happened, but my awareness of the guard was so strong it was painful. Then a hand reached over the green leaves of the lilac bush and grabbed at my shirt. “Got you,” the man with the silky voice said.
    There was a whoosh of air and the guard released me so suddenly that my butt hit the ground, jarring my side and sending pain shooting through the rest of my body. I ignored it, trying to watch the two men fight, but the darkness and the lilac bushes made it all butimpossible. So I shifted position, getting ready to run should Damon go down again, my breath catching in my throat and tension winding through me.
    After several