Page 5 of Queens Ride Horny Dragons
"Open sesame?" I honestly had no idea. "It's just a little magic I picked up from a woman who helped me find Asa."
I didn’t want to give too much away about Bad Mama January since she was the leader of the underground human resistance against dragon shifters. Like a dumbass, I'd left my cell phone in her van, so I couldn't even tell her I was still alive. Let alone queen of the dragon shifters. I would need to contact her, and fast to try to explain. Keywordtry.
But Calhoun didn't appear to hear me. His gaze was locked over my shoulder toward a humming sound.
I whirled. The elevator doors dinged open, and a thin streak of dragon fire burnt across the floor, heading straight for us. Calhoun dodged in front of me like he was going to stomp it out, but it zipped underneath his feet and curled into smoke when it hit my heel.
My next inhale stopped just short of reaching my lungs. I knew what that meant. “Someone’s looking for me.” It was what I had used to find the pocket watch I needed in my harem’s house, which felt like decades ago.
Calhoun nodded, the color leeching from his face in a hurry.
“Calhoun?” I asked, touching his arm.
“Dragon shifters don’t have any dragon fire to spare. We can’t even shift, and if we found some like in that vial you had, we would just drink it to replenish our own.” He looked straight at me then, his expression stricken enough to clatter my heart too fast.
“What are you saying?” I asked, keeping my voice low.
“I’m not sure yet. But we need to hurry.” Gripping my hand even tighter, he turned back the way we’d come as if considering getting me out of here instead.
I knelt in front of the office door and freed my lock pick kit from the tape around my thigh. “We stay here. We won’t find out what happened if we don’t.”
But even as I said it, two more elevators hummed to a stop and then dinged open. Two lines of dragon fire crackled toward Calhoun and me from inside and did the same thing when they found us. Poof. Nothing but smoke.
"They’re not just trying to find people,” Calhoun said, his voice tight. “Dragon firekillshumans. If you hadn’t spilled some yesterday, that could kill you. It could kill any human. Whoever’s doing this is reckless as fuck."
"It didn't kill me, though, thanks to you and your brothers. And the dragon fire leaking from the elevators doesn’t seem to be having an effect at all." Squinting through the growing smoke in the hallway, I prodded at the five locks on the door with my tools. Thankfully, they were fairly easy to pick, but with my shaky hands, it was going much slower than I’d like. Despite mypsh, dragon fire; been there, done thatattitude, I was scared as hell.
But I needed to know what had happened last night, and what exactly I was now involved in. That I’dagreedto be involved in.
"We’re countering it with our own. But youarestill human, Yara. You haven’t taken the queen’s magic yetthat’s given by Léas at the coronation. You can’t shift yet.” He dropped down next to me and turned my head with his thumb so I’d look at him, see the tense lines of his jaw, the tight set of his broad shoulders. But it was the sheer panic in his eyes that nearly undid me. “You’re not indestructible.”
Without my having to even look at where I prodded the lock-picking tool, the door finally clicked open, sealing my decision for me.
“None of us are.” I stood, dragging Calhoun behind me before he could protest, and shut the door behind us.
The automatic locks engaged, one after the other, loud in the otherwise silent room. The secret door on the wall next to the safe stood wide open, and the rest of the room looked exactly as it had last night with two chairs tipped over around the large table in the middle. But it smelled so much worse.
"Something definitely died down there," Calhoun grumbled on his way toward the source.
"Agreed." I covered my nose with the back of my hand and followed, then hesitated at the darkness inside the secret door.Iwaved him ahead. "Beauty before age."
He gave me a sideways look. “I’m over a hundred years older than you.”
“Beauty and age before thieves?”
He frowned into the darkness, seeming not to hear me. A haunted look passed over his features, his eyes distant as if not really seeing what was in front of him. “I’ve been down there all too often, so much that I have dreams about the place.”
Something about the way he spoke, devastated and suffering, twisted my heart. He’d been in the dungeon more than once? Before I could ask him what he meant, he stepped through the secret door.
I followed, seeking out his hand as I descended the first step, for his comfort as well as my own. He already had his outstretched as if searching for the same thing, and I took it and squeezed.
A narrow tunnel led to the right, the same way I'd seen Oliver go last night. A faint golden glow came from the very end, and we walked single file toward it. The stink grew even worse, so bad I had to concentrate on not retching up all my coffee and donuts. I didn’t dare speak for fear of doing just that.
We had to be headed in the right direction to find Oliver’s body.
Ahead, another door stood open, the golden light spilling out from behind it. Past Calhoun’s right shoulder, I spotted something sticking out of the otherwise smooth wall. And then the floor. A lot of somethings. Shimmery black color, bumpy…and wet. My feet slid, and I just about struck Calhoun like a bowling ball. I fumbled for the back of his Henley and the wall at the same time, and my hand came away sticky from the stones.
Calhoun suddenly stopped. "Yara,” he hissed. “It's time to turn back."
