Free Kiss of Danger (The Dragon Legion Novellas) by Deborah Cooke Page A

his embrace and leapt into the sky, his wings beating hard as the ground fell away. His every move was filled with urgency and she guessed that he feared they would arrive too late. She knew he wouldn’t drop her, but she held him tightly all the same. The wind whipped around them and the night air turned cold.
    It was when she moved to lean against his chest that she saw the gap in his armor. One scale was missing from the mailed splendor of his chest, leaving a tiny increment of skin exposed.
    Katina touched the spot with her fingertip and felt an involuntary shudder roll through Alexander’s body. She looked up to find his gaze locked upon her, his expression all the more intense when he was in this form. She smoothed the spot with her fingertips.
    “Does it hurt?” she asked, thinking her words would be snatched away by the wind. To her surprise, Alexander heard her—but then, he had admitted to his sharper senses. He shook his head, so dismissive of the idea that she feared he suddenly had the power to hide the truth from her.  
    What did the missing scale mean?
     
    * * *
     
    Alexander had smelled Slayer .
    Just one tantalizing whiff, as if someone had lifted the lid from a fine hot stew and let one breath of its scent meander into the room. It was a tease and a temptation.
    Again.
    It made no sense, but the scent was unmistakable. Alexander knew to trust his nose over his mind—he’d made the mistake of ignoring the information from his senses once already since his return.
    Worse, ripe on the scent of Slayer was that of human terror.
    What had the darkfire crystal done? It was a source of unpredictability, a connection to chaos, but Alexander couldn’t guess how much power it truly had. Could it rouse dead Slayers ? Could it cast all of the Pyr into other times and places than their own? Could it change the future as well as the past? He wished he knew more of what opponent he faced before he lunged into battle.
    “What do you sense?” Katina asked, and Alexander wasn’t surprised that she wanted to know the worst of it. She was clever and might be able to help him to figure out what had happened. He needed to take advantage of all the advantages that came to him.
    “I smell Slayer ,” he said tersely. “That’s one of my kind who has turned against humans.” He shook his head, knowing her had to tell her the rest. “I had a whiff of it earlier, when Cetos returned, but ignored it.”
    “Why would you ignore danger?”
    “Because it made no sense. There aren’t any Slayers ...here.”
    “Yet there is one all the same,” Katina said matter-of-factly, much to Alexander’s relief. “What do you know of them?”
    He considered her, trying to recall all he knew of them. He’d had precious little contact with Slayers in the future, by his own choice. Their scent repulsed him, and he had no interest in being tainted by their evil. “He’s revealing his scent at intervals, then disguising it again.”
    “Like a taunt.”
    “Exactly like a taunt!” She was right. All Pyr taunted each other before battle. He was glad to know what this Slayer wanted, if not why. He’d get a fight from Alexander if he was tormenting a human.
    “How does he do that?” Katina asked. “I’d think a scent would be constant.”
    “It should be. Only those Slayers who have drunk the Dragon’s Blood Elixir have such power,” Alexander explained. He knew of two surviving Slayers who had consumed that vile potion. Assuming that the darkfire crystal hadn’t roused the dead—an assumption he couldn’t rely upon—it must be Jorge or Chen cast into the past with him.
    Or perhaps one of them had pursued him. Chen had released the darkfire in the first place. Was it under his command? Was that why so much was going wrong?
    Katina was watching Alexander closely, waiting for him to tell her more. Alexander wasn’t sure how to easily explain the question of passing through time, so stuck with the essentials. “And I