Page 24 of Forked Tongues Are Fun
“Which are kept where? How do I get Asa out of here without anyone seeing or hurting him?”
“They’ll be off to the side until the goddess is ready for them.” Tavis rubbed his blue pineapple on his shirt as if for luck.
“You’ll need a distraction,” Calhoun said. “That’s where we come in.”
“Okay. Good idea. I’ll give you some kind of signal when I’m ready. I’ll go in first, feel out the situation, and figure out a stealthy way to get Asa out of there.” Stealth and a plan—that was how I did most thiefy jobs, or at least until today when everything had gone to shit.
I rubbed the blue pineapple, too, earning a grin from Tavis.
“For luck,” I said.
He chuckled. “Feel free to rub me anytime.”
The elevator stopped and the door opened. The three shifters surged in front of me outside onto the rooftop, their forms already shifting before their heads had even cleared the elevator’s ceiling. They shrieked as their wings lifted them into the air. Plumes of fire burst out of their mouths as they glared down at the upturned faces of the rest of their species who stood in their human forms.
Stealth and a plan.
I stared in dismay and gulped. “Or that.”
Chapter Eight
Cool night air whisperedover my skin as I stepped out of the elevator and ducked low behind the crowd of shifters. They weren’t paying me any attention, all of their gazes riveted to the three angry dragons swooping low over their heads. Vance, Calhoun, and Tavis were giving me a distraction all right, but I doubted they’d be able to keep it up before another shifter put an end to it. Or put an end to them.
I couldn’t let that happen.I pushed my lips together in a grim line of determination, swinging around and behind the same couple I’d followed into the building. Between their shoulders, I spotted a circular pond built into the rooftop, its dark surface an exact replica of the night sky. The stars glittered around the full moon that floated in the very middle, the wind peaking more craters over its reflective surface. The real moon hung right over the pond, so close I was sure I could reach out and touch it.
“You!” a male voice shouted at the dragons overhead. “You’re ruining Léas’s full-moon ritual.”
Vance shifted back into a man midair and landed on the rooftop in a graceful crouch. He stood, now gloriously naked, though without his earlier hard-on, and leveled the man with a withering glare. “Tell that to those who imprisoned us in a cage Léas’s magic wouldn’t have been able to penetrate. She has rules about that kind of thing. Let no harm come to those who worship her, else her magic will be tainted by her wrath, a dark and terrible thing.” His voice was powerful and seemed to shake down to the foundation of the Vivix building. He swept his gaze over the crowd. “Those who put us in the dungeon deserve her wrath, but not those who didn’t. Pray that she will show mercy. Otherwise, those few just doomed us all.”
A nervous murmur erupted from the dragon shifters. They shuffled from one foot to the other and darted their gazes around.
I crept along, sticking to the perimeter of the building, and when I cleared a raised part of the roof with a doorway marked Stairs, I saw him. Asa. He was inside the birdcage and watching the shifters with awe. My heart skipped several beats and then seemed to make up for them all at once inside my throat, hard enough to water my eyes.
“Who did it to you?” a female shifter asked. “Who locked you up?”
“The cowards tied us up with iron chains, their dragon forms masked by night and magic,” Vance said.
