Dragon Moon: The Amaki #2

By Tori Minard

Amaki—or fae—sorcerer Thorn is notorious in the fairy world and among the few humans who know its secrets. Some humans will go to any length to capture and punish him for his crimes.

Maddy De Guiscard has served the Order since childhood. She’s dedicated her life to killing Amaki and exacting revenge on Thorn for murdering her parents.

Yet when she hunts him down and traps him, she begins to suspect there’s a great deal more to the story than she’s been told.

Can a woman raised in hatred and fear learn to trust? And can Thorn forgive the woman who betrayed him?

A hot romance novel of forbidden love.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Enchanted Lyre Books
• Release date: Jul 7, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465915320

Tori Minard

Tori Minard writes paranormal romance and urban fantasy. When she isn’t writing fiction, she enjoys dancing, gardening, reading about folklore and mythology, surfing the web, and most of all immersing herself in other people’s fiction. Tori has had a lifelong fascination with magic and ritual techniques, and has had years of self-study in these areas. She was born in Alaska and now lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband, son, and micro-dog.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

The girl was doomed unless he intervened. The agents he’d targeted were following her, although why they thought an ordinary college-age human had information worth knowing was beyond Thorn. She was just a drum-circle aficionado. Her knowledge of the Amaki was about as accurate as one of those flower fairy coloring books sold at toy stores. The Order must be getting desperate.

He ghosted along after them, soundless and nearly invisible in the winter night. The girl wore knee-high snow boots under her denim prairie skirt. She left gaping holes in the snow as she trudged toward her car, a rime of white crystals stuck on the hem of her skirt. The men who followed her obliterated her tracks with their own and made enough noise they could probably be heard two blocks over.

The girl gave no sign she knew they were there.

She lugged her drum, a huge Native-American style one with a medicine shield painted on it, around to the back door of her brown sedan. Opening the mismatched green door, she stuck the drum on the seat and dumped a bulging tote bag on the floor in front of it. When she turned her head, the earbuds of her MP-3 player flashed silver through the thickly falling snow. No wonder she hadn’t heard the agents.

They closed in on her in a pack. Her head came up, her eyes round behind the wire-frame glasses she wore. She gasped at the sight of the ski-mask-wearing men. Her fear beat at Thorn. She turned as if to duck into her car, but the nearest agent grabbed her arm and spun her around. Thorn tensed, ready to spring.

Leave me alone! Her voice was already tight with anxiety.

We want to talk to you, the agent said. Thorn had heard them say it before, to other humans who’d gone with them and never come back.

Who are you guys? Her voice rose in pitch.

That doesn’t matter.

Are you cops? I haven’t done anything.

The other two agents formed a wall around her, trapping her against the car. He hadn’t planned to kill them tonight. Information was what he wanted. But he couldn’t allow them to hurt this innocent girl.

We just have a few questions for you, the head agent added. Come with us.

I want to see your i.d.

Thorn tensed as they chuckled. If they took her off to question her, she might not make it out alive. The agent holding her started to drag her away from the vehicle, and Thorn broke into a run.

No! Her knee slammed into the agent’s groin.

He roared and backhanded her. The girl stumbled, falling to her hands and knees in thickly drifted snow. Then Thorn landed on him, taking him to the ground.

He cuffed the human in the head, knocking him unconscious. When he turned, the others had drawn semi-automatics and were aiming them at him. Were the bullets lead or iron? One would merely be painful. The other would be deadly. His lips pulled back from his teeth in a humorless grin.

The agents fired.

Thorn’s body jerked with the impact of the bullets. They hurt like fuck-all, but his powers were still intact. Lead, then. He strode toward them.

They continued firing into him. They were using silencers, but at point-blank range the bullets weren’t slowed enough to matter. Thorn gritted his teeth against the savage pain, watching their eyes go wide with panic as he got close. He yanked the guns out of their hands, the heat of the barrels scorching his palms.

Behind him, in the snow, the girl whimpered.

The humans turned to run. But Thorn was faster than any human. He dashed around, appearing in front of them. They had just enough time to scream before he put a bullet in each of their heads. Their bodies slumped to the snow, sprays of blood and brain matter decorating the whiteness behind them.

Now the girl screamed.

Thorn went to the first agent, who was still out, and shot him in the back of the skull. The girl continued to shriek.

He tossed the guns into the snow next to the agent. Then he turned to the girl, extending his hand.

There was some effort involved in speaking English. He took a breath and focused his thoughts on the alien language. I won’t hurt you, Terra.

Her head flew back and forth so violently that her brown hair fell over her face, obscuring it from view. No, no, no, no.

He crouched next to her and laid a hand on her shoulder, sending a command to her psyche. Calm. Be calm. All is well.

Terra stopped shaking her head. She peered up at him through the thick fringe of her fallen hair. W-who are you? How do you know me?

That is of no consequence. Go home now. And don’t walk around in dark places such as this alone. Do you have a male companion?

She looked at him blankly.

Thorn searched for the correct word. A boyfriend?

Yes.

He should be watching out for you. The nights are dangerous. Thorn helped her stand. Get in your car, lock all your doors and turn on the heat. You’re covered in snow.

Okay.

He watched as she obeyed. She wouldn’t remember anything that had happened this night after she’d left the community center where her drum circle was held. But he would.

He was tired. Tired of the killing, tired of being alone, cut off from his people and everything that made life worth living.

Maybe he’d been on this crusade long enough. It was time to go home.

Two and a half years later

Maddy guessed that Colin Grant was only about twelve years old, but his bizarre behavior made it difficult to tell. He sat in a chair in her office, between piles of books and research documents, rocking himself and giggling continuously. The laughter had a mechanical quality, as if it came from a bad television actor. There was nothing of real humor in it.

His curly brown hair stuck up all over his head, as if it hadn’t been combed in days. While he laughed, he made repetitive gestures with his hands, swooping and fluttering them in what looked like a combination of sign language and Asian dance gestures. He wore gray sweatpants in defiance of the Willamette Valley summer heat, and his toes, clad in running shoes, tapped rapidly on the oak plank floor. Maddy looked at his mother.

How long has he been like this?

Tracie Grant clasped her hands together so tightly her fingers turned white. It started last night.

What makes you think it’s a fairy attack?

The woman ran her fingers through her frizzy dyed-auburn hair, making it stand on end. She leaned over her son and caught one of his hands in mid-swoop. When she turned his palm upwards, Maddy saw the band of red abrasions on his inner wrist. It looked like some kind of clamp had been applied to his skin.

She caught the mother’s eyes. This looks mechanical to me. Not like the work of a fairy.

He hasn’t been anywhere, Tracie said. The only thing he did last night was play in our back yard before bedtime. We heard him screaming and ran outside. He’s been like this ever since.

Could someone have gotten in your yard and attacked him?

I don’t think so. Our dog was with him. He’s a big dog, a Rottweiler. He was barking and snarling like crazy. He would have bitten any human who came into the yard.

Maddy frowned. The Grants were members of the Order, and they were familiar with the ways of fairies, but there was something about this case that wasn’t right. Most fairies shunned machines of all kinds.

I’m going to call my uncle in to have a look at your son.

Tracie nodded nervously.

Uncle Stephen’s office was right next to hers, and luckily he was in. He usually worked from home. He poked his head in the doorway with a smile. His gaze fell on the Grant boy and his smile faded.

What’s going on?

Tracie Grant described what had happened to her son, while Stephen’s face grew more and more grim. He came into Maddy’s office and sat in her desk chair, pulling it up to face Colin. The boy continued giggling and gesturing, oblivious to the adults in the room.

Have you ever seen anything like this? Maddy said.

Stephen nodded, his brows knit together. It’s definitely a fairy assault, by a very rare creature. We don’t know much about them, but we have seen their victims.

Those goddamn fairies. They preyed on humans for no reason Maddy could understand, except for pure malice. There was no other explanation for an attack like this. What did it gain the fairies? They didn’t eat humans, or love them, or have any kind of relationship with them that she could fathom. They were alien, in the truest sense of the word, senselessly cruel even to children, and she’d like nothing better than to see them gone from the face of the Earth.

Tracie took a step forward. Is there anything you can do for him? she said in a pleading tone.

I’m afraid not. Stephen shook his head. I’ve never heard of anyone recovering from this kind of thing.

She put her hand over her mouth. Maddy’s heart pinched at the expression of horror on Tracie’s face. Stephen’s careless remark seemed wrong under the circumstances, and although she barely knew the woman, she placed a hand on her shoulder for comfort.

Have you taken him to a doctor yet? she said softly.

No. I brought him here first thing. I hoped—

Maddy put her arm around Tracie’s shoulders. We’ll look into a solution for this. We’ll do everything we can to help Colin, but in the meantime I think you should take him to a doctor. They might have a medication that could help control this behavior.

Tracie nodded, her eyes glistening.

I’m so sorry we don’t have better news for you, Maddy added. I wish there was something we could do right now to make it better.

Thank you, Tracie whispered.

Fifteen minutes later, Uncle Stephen was shaking his head at Maddy. The Grants were gone, and she was alone with him, her office door closed against intrusion.

She folded her arms over her chest. What?

You shouldn’t give her false hope.

It isn’t false. I think there might be something we can do.

Maddy, you don’t even know what you’re dealing with here.

And you do, so why don’t you explain it to me?

He shrugged. I can’t. Really, all I know is what I already told you. It’s a creature so rare we don’t even know what to call it. We’ve only seen a few cases like this, and no-one has recovered.

Maddy drummed her fingers on her desk top. In the traditional lore, several types of fairies are known to cause insanity with contact.

Yes.

Is it one of those?

Not as far as we can tell. This thing appears to have machine parts of some kind. The traditional lore doesn’t show anything like that.

I’m going to look into it. If something like that is loose in Eugene, we ought to know more about it.

He patted her on the shoulder. I agree. But don’t let it interfere with your Thorn project.

I won’t. Nothing would get in the way of her capturing her parents’ killer.

How is that coming along, by the way?

We’ve got everything set up and ready for Friday.

Wonderful. Stephen gave her another pat. I hope you nail the bastard.

So do I. She’d been looking forward to it for almost twenty years.

On Friday, Maddy and her team were in position in the Coast Range just west of Eugene, Oregon. She sat on an old fallen log behind a screen of underbrush, in the green shade of a huge spruce, watching the remote video they’d set up to monitor the clearing where they expected Thorn to appear. And he would. She knew it. The others might laugh, but Maddy believed he would be there.

This day was the twenty-first anniversary of his wife and son’s deaths. It had happened in the clearing above her, where they’d set the camera. He would come today. And if he didn’t, she’d wait until he did.

It had happened? That makes it sound so bloodless, like it was a freak accident or something. But it wasn’t an accident. Thorn had murdered them with his own hands.

A tall, male figure appeared on her video screen, as a man ambled across the clearing. She gave a start. It was him. Had to be. Tall, long blond hair, a single narrow braid on one side of his head. He was either a local hippie or he was Thorn. And she was betting on Thorn.

Her mouth went dry. Did she have her cell? She patted her shorts pocket to feel the lump of the phone. Yep. Did she have the cookies? Maddy unzipped her backpack to peek inside. There they were.

Reaching into the hip pocket of her cut-offs, she touched her tin of fairy ointment. No. She’d already applied it.

There were fairy eyes everywhere. Not all of them were the heroic type, like Thorn. Some were more like nature spirits, and this forest was thronged with them, including the one peering out at her from a fork in the branch of a nearby Douglas fir. If she applied fairy ointment while it watched her, it would definitely notice.

She ignored the gnarled, brown features of the tree-spirit as if she didn’t even know it was there. Acknowledging it would make it suspicious, and then it might run off and warn her target. Monitoring the Order’s hidden camera was odd enough behavior, let alone waving at a creature who assumed she couldn’t see it.

Everything was ready.

Quit stalling, DeGuiscard. You can do this.

She pulled out the phone and dialed her cousin.

Drew here.

He’s in the clearing.

Are you sure it’s him? Drew sounded surprised.

Ninety percent. I’ll know for sure when I get there.

Be careful, Maddy.

Her palms were slick with sweat. This was her first field assignment. In fact, it was the first time any woman had worked in the field. The Order was old-fashioned and considered field work too dangerous for women. But she could do it. She had to do it, to bring her parents’ murderer to justice.

Shouldering the pack, she marched out to the trail as butterflies banged around inside her stomach. Fear was no excuse to bail out of this mission. Thorn had killed many people besides her own family—for two decades he’d been the scourge of the Order’s East Coast offices—and he needed to be stopped.

She was going to take him down hard. He’d never murder another agent or hurt another child again.

The Order’s central goal is to exterminate any and all primarily magical beings

—Order Policy and Procedures Manual

CHAPTER TWO

Maddy hiked past dense stands of salmonberry, vine maple and sword fern, all under the shade of the enormous Douglas firs and spruces that cloaked the mountainside. Shafts of sunlight lay like gold across the trail. As she made her way upward, more fairy faces peeked out of the greenery or blinked sleepily from the rough sides of boulders. Tiny sylphs fluttered by alongside the fuzzy bumblebees humming back and forth in front of her, and birds sang in the trees just as happily as if there were no soulless killer lurking in the woods.

A bee droned past her face with a sylph on its back. Maddy kept her face carefully blank. She’d never seen anything like that before, yet she couldn’t let herself have a visible reaction. She couldn’t let the fairies know that she’d seen it. The sylphs might be cute, but under the sweet exterior they were just as treacherous as any other fairy, and they could just as easily betray her to Thorn.

Coming around an outcropping of black basalt, she ran straight into a hard wall of flesh. She didn’t have to fake her yelp of fright as she stumbled backward to get away from him. The man grabbed her by the elbows. The musky male scent of him traveled right to her sex, making her instantly aroused. What the hell was that about?

Steady, now. His breath carried a strong whiff of alcohol. He must have been drinking.

I-I’m sorry. I thought I was alone on the trail.

There’s no need for fear, he said. His deep voice carried an unusual accent.

What if he could tell who and what she was? The urge to reach into her t-shirt and touch her protection charm became nearly irresistible. Had she put it on? Maybe she’d forgotten it.

Maddy stuck her hand in her pocket to keep it away from her charm. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude.

Thorn gave her a little bow, a gesture that contrasted oddly with his threadbare jeans, faded blue t-shirt and hiking boots. I understand. The woods can be dangerous.

He ought to know. They can be, she said, plucking at the hem of her shirt.

I apologize if I frightened you. He gestured up the trail. I won’t keep you from your trek.

He studied her without a trace of friendliness, yet there was something compelling about the way he looked at her. The face of an angel and the soul of a devil. The weight of his gaze pressed into her, made her shiver in the July heat.

Maddy looked up into the depths of his eyes and was lost.

They were deep green, the green of a forest lake, almond-shaped and flecked with gold and brown. Thick, sooty lashes fringed them, looking so soft she wanted to touch. There was sorrow in those eyes, and desire too. Something hot that made her quiver inside as her core moistened, opening for him.

One eye was brighter green than the other. Mismatched. Mismatched eyes were a hallmark of the heroic fairies. Maddy shivered again. This is Thorn, you idiot. Don’t let him draw you in.

She cleared her throat, forcing herself to move away from him. I’m alright. Thanks for catching me.

You’re very welcome. Thorn retreated a few steps, watching her with those compelling eyes of his. Because of the fairy ointment she could see the subtle glow coming from his skin. It was the only thing that differentiated him from an ordinary human male, and it confirmed her guess that she had the correct target.

Whew. Maddy smiled, wiping her forehead with the back of her hand. It’s hot today. Mind if I take a break here?

He made a welcoming gesture. Certainly not.

Thanks. She flopped to the dusty ground. Compared to the fairy women he consorted with, she probably looked like a cow, but who cared? She was human. That was better than any fairy, any day.

Now all she had to do was convince him to eat the poisoned cookies and she’d be home free.

Maddy slipped her backpack off and laid it on the ground in front of her. She withdrew a bottle of water and the bag of cookies. Thorn settled down next to her, lowering himself into a cross-legged position so smoothly she couldn’t even see how he did it. But he wasn’t looking at her. He stared at the dust as if he could see visions in it.

Maybe he could. Maybe he was remembering the terrible things he’d done here so many years ago. Her stomach made a slow, nauseating roll. Was he proud of what he’d done? Did he think of it as an accomplishment? She snuck a peek at him out of the corner of her eye. He didn’t look proud. His eyes had a hollowness to them, as if his inner energy had drained out under the force of terrible memories.

Faking a smile, she extended her hand, hoping he wouldn’t notice the perspiration. I’m Maddy, by the way.

They shook. The touch of his skin, warm against hers, sent another tingle of arousal through her. Thorn, he said.

That’s a cool name.

The fairy smiled back at her. His whole face warmed, the corners of his eyes crinkling. It was just charm, the glamour fairies used to lower a human’s guard. But, damn, it felt real. I’m glad it pleases you.

She blinked. Yeah, um, it’s unusual.

For crying out loud, she needed to get it together. Her protection amulet should block any glamour he tried to use. He couldn’t affect her thoughts or feelings when she wore it. Only a fierce effort of will kept her hand from reaching for the pendant.

She unscrewed the lid of the bottle and took a sip. This is such a beautiful place.

He glanced at her sidelong. I suppose.

You don’t think so?

It has a violent history, he said with a shrug.

Oh. I didn’t know that. Maddy opened the bag of cookies ever so casually and took one out. It feels so peaceful.

He fingered a wooden pendant that hung on a piece of twine around his neck. Maybe it is, now.

His gesture reminded her of the way she wanted to touch her own charm. Maybe his pendant was similar to hers, a protective talisman that would prevent the poison from working on him. Maddy swallowed hard. She had to try—she was here now, and this was likely her only chance to get close to him.

Do you know what happened? Shit. It’s probably not a good idea to talk about it. But the words were already out of her mouth.

Thorn closed his eyes. A woman and her son were murdered here.

Because you killed them. That’s awful. Wait, you mean right here at this very spot?

Yes.

The stubble of new beard shadowed his sharp jaw, and Maddy caught another whiff of alcohol as he moved. He must have been drinking a lot if she could smell it so easily.

People drink when they’re grieving. She told her inner voice to shut up. I wonder if it’s haunted.

It isn’t haunted.

I bet you don’t believe in that stuff. She pulled out a second cookie and held it out to him. So casual. It’s not like I care whether you take my cookie; I’m just trying to be polite.

Want one?

Thorn reached for the treat. That’s kind of you.

An odd feeling washed over her, cold and heavy, like guilt. Don’t mention it, she said stiffly.

There was nothing to feel guilty about. This man, this fairy, had murdered many humans and probably countless numbers of his own people. For two decades he’d made a hobby of picking off Order agents. He deserved no compassion. For