Rake My Lust (Dragons of Blood and Bone #3)

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M orning finds us moving quickly through our gilded top-floor hotel suite in Copenhagen. Though the hospitality here at the Gilded Cage has been top-notch, just as good as the Red Letter Hotel Paris, Bjorn, Strom, and I don’t luxuriate in all the amenities.

We’re on a mission today as we have some hasty sex, eat an even hastier breakfast, then zip up into our modern motorcycle leathers. All of us are wearing black today, so we’re less conspicuous, though Strom often favors tawny leathers. But our mission today has a clandestine element; we’re off to investigate the cliffside ocean site Strom recalls from his vision of the thief woman and our enemy Bone Mage.

Which he remembers now, is right next to an old warehouse—our only clue about where these thieves are.

Though we also need to find Mikkel and L?rke while we’re in Copenhagen, we’ve decided to try to connect Strom’s memories first to the Black Dragon. As we make it down the last ornately gilded staircase from our top-floor suite into the sprawling lobby, I see Emil Beck give us the eye from where he stands polished at the concierge station.

Something tells me Emil’s far more than just the concierge here, maybe even the hotel’s owner, with the watchful way he takes in everything. As Strom puts his Axel Larsen personality back into play, he hails Emil, giving him a bright wave across the lobby and a laugh.

Emil waves back, but is busy with another client, helping them secure something just the way my old friend Dusk once helped clients at the Red Letter Hotel Paris. It makes me miss the Paris Hotel, and all my friends there.

Even though Dusk has moved on as the King of the Crystal Dragons now.

We hop on our bikes, brought to us at the front of the hotel by the valets, and fire them up. Once again, we follow Strom’s lead as he zooms through the city, heading north, though a part of me is distracted now as I see the Twilight Realm’s Copenhagen by day.

It’s a blend of old and new buildings like in the human world’s Copenhagen, but the greenery here is just stunning. Copenhagen in the human world is pretty, with all its flowering trees and tulips in the spring. Here, it’s like a Spring Fae wonderland, as cherry trees blossom in a riot of pink flowers and bright red, orange, purple, and white tulips coat the byways.

Everywhere we ride, it’s ginormous beds of daffodils, cascading pots of tulips and creeping vines blossoming with little white flowers, plus more swaths of blooming trees. It’s like the Tivoli Gardens gone to a manicured riot everywhere I look. All of it, decorating lovely Renaissance, Baroque, and Rococo buildings that give this city its charm.

I make a mental note to ask Strom if the Spring Fae have a strong hold here in Danish Blood Dragon land; but we’re already arriving at our destination, a jutting cliff north of the city that overlooks the ?resund.

It’s an industrial area, though it looks like most of the warehouses here haven’t been used in decades. Covered in magical graffiti, windows blasted out and their sides covered in flowering vines, most of these buildings look like they’ve been abandoned, maybe for the site to be reclaimed by a developer .

As Strom focuses now, we walk to the cliffside. He juts his chin at one area, and we walk through a field of short grass and tiny spring flowers that cling stubbornly to the blustery cliff.

We make it to the overlook we saw in his memory; as I glance around the secluded spot, which dips down and is shaded by higher cliffs nearby, I recognize it. I turn to see the lighthouse, burning on its rounds ten times brighter than any human lighthouse, because it’s manned by magic. There’s nothing here, though. No scent or magical imprint of dragons.

Just a lonely cliff, used as a clandestine meeting spot decades ago.

“Nothing here.” Bjorn grunts as he scuffs his boot through some loose rock. “Check out the warehouse?”

“Yeah.” Strom is quiet now that we’ve found this spot. It’s as if he didn’t want those memories to be real. Now that he knows this place exists, he also understands everything he saw in his vision was true.

I take his hand and he looks down, twining his fingers in mine. I squeeze and he looks up.

“You okay?” I ask.

“I will be. Once we find the bastards who fucked with my memory and punish them.” He gives a hard smile, no mirth in it as he nods us back to the warehouse. “Let’s head back there and see what we can see.”

“Sure.” I squeeze his hand again, then we turn, heading away from the cliff.

We’re all on high alert now, however, in a way we weren’t while investigating the cliffs. This warehouse looks like a beat-up old piece of shit. Magical graffiti covers it in endless rainbows of Fae and other Lineage styles, though even I can tell at one glance some of those sigils are dragon-wards. It looks like a bomb went off inside it at some point. All the windows are blasted out, even some of the timbers and rusted corrugated metal of the doors bulging.

We approach with a weather eye on all the exits, the windows high above, and the roofline. Like all the other warehouses around here, it seems to be abandoned, no significant magical signature lingering except for a few minor things that will not harm a dragon.

As Bjorn hauls the rolling rear door of the warehouse open, we head inside. We’re still on guard, hands ready in case we have to use magic or grab a weapon—which all of us are wearing in rigs of carefully hidden knives right now.

But nothing stirs inside the warehouse. A single ginormous room, like a barn, it has a concrete floor with oil stains and dirt scuffed all over it. Mouse droppings are everywhere, and bigger ones that smell of barn goblins. Barn goblins like to infest old warehouses like these; Bjorn steps in a fresh poop and wrinkles his nose as it lets off a stink like rotten tomatoes.

Disgusting.

“Well, if there was anything here, it’s long been cleaned out.” Bjorn surveys the empty warehouse, hands on his hips. “Just mice and barn goblins. Your usual.”

As he speaks, something suddenly hurls down from the rafters at us. A gobbet of barn goblin shit, it lands with a thick splat as Bjorn dodges it.

“HEY!” he roars up at the roof beams, tittering now with evil little growling voices. “I will fry you little shits, and all the rest of your excrement, if you do that again! I don’t care if I bring this entire barn down!”

Goblins are no match for dragons, physically or metaphysically. The grunting tittering quiets.

Though I hear a raspberry now, as whoever is up there thumbs their nose at us.

“Fucking hate goblins. Little turds,” Bjorn says with a dark growl, as Strom and I both stifle laughs.

“Hey. At least you sidestepped that one little turd. If you hadn’t, you’d smell like rotten tomatoes for days, no matter what you did to get rid of it.” Strom is casual now, his mood lifted as he teases Bjorn. “When I was here last, those little fuckers were notorious for lobbing shit at?—”

Strom pauses in shock as I feel a tirade of his memories flood back.

I don’t get them, and neither does Bjorn, since we’re not opened wide to our shared magic right now. Strom takes a sharp inhale, though, blinking as that storm of remembering passes.

He looks at me, then around the empty warehouse, in shock.

“This was where we stored things for her to look at,” he says as his eyebrows lift in surprise. He is scowling now as he walks to a spot near the far left of the space. Tracing a boot through the dust that covers the concrete, he taps a series of touches on the floor, like some kind of complex Riverdance.

All at once, there’s a flare of dark violet light and a grinding sound as the floor opens up. There’s some kind of basement below; Bjorn and I inhale as Strom nods. He kneels now to peer into it, keeping his hands ready in case something comes barreling out at him.

But after a moment, he nods that it’s safe.

Bjorn and I come over, amazed at what Strom just did.

“The thieves’ secret hiding spot?” I ask, as Bjorn and I both peer into the hole, like Strom. It’s dark, and a few steps go down, like a sub-cellar beneath the warehouse. A single, flickering magical lightbulb has flared to life halfway down the short hall beyond.

But there’s no signature of life down here, the basement empty.

“It was an old smuggler’s cache.” Strom’s voice is quiet now, as if in a trance, recalling lost things from his memories. “We used it because it was the easiest spot for that drakaina to reach us. When she flew over the ?resund…”

“From Sweden.” Bjorn’s eyebrows lift now, before he scowls. “So our enemy Bone Mage drakaina is Swedish.”

“It seems that way.” I nod, even as I rise and move forward, stepping down into the basement. Bjorn growls that I’ve gone first, when he always wants to protect me. He comes along behind me with Strom, as we all step down the steep stairs into the small basement proper.

The basement is a quarter the size of the warehouse above, if that. Lined with rickety wooden shelving a few centuries out of date, I see huge wine barrels and racks of whiskey and mead bottles, everything covered in dust and cobwebs as if this place was forgotten by the drink smugglers who once used it.

Rarer drinks are here, too, like Liftsugade , a Spring Fae cordial that glows bright green from its dusky bottles, so potent it could take down an elephant with one sip.

Something that looks like Harpsbane still bubbles in tiny black phials in a rack among all the Liftsugade. A specialized Harpy’s cordial, it tastes like rank feathers and is forbidden to use in the Twilight Realm or the human world, except among Harpies who drink it. Because anyone else will get poisoned the fuck up.

There is no known antidote—as whoever drinks it screams themselves to death like a harpy.

“Nothing but forgotten drinks in here,” Bjorn notes as he glances around all the dusty shelves. “We should probably notify the Intercessoria when we’re done, though, and have them come clear this place out, especially with that Harpsbane here.”

“We hid things here, among the drinks,” Strom says in his strange lilting voice as he wanders the aisles, his fingertips trailing along the dusty shelves. “Things we found, things we stole. Things we traced down from the instructions that drakaina gave, going through countless metaphysical and physical gauntlets to get them. Killing anyone who got in our way…”

Strom gives a shudder at that, as I feel him repress a memory that’s trying to surface. I’m tuned into him now, and feel what’s happening in there. It was a memory of someone he killed, perished by his Bone Magic.

Which he doesn’t want to see yet—even though he’ll have to retrieve it, eventually.

We don’t have to go there, though, not just yet. I’m content to let Strom wander and explore the calmer memories that are surfacing now, being here.

Because he’s finally able to do it without shuddering himself to death and nearly Wraithing up into his dragon. Though a maelstrom of emotions pummels him now with the memories he’s receiving, he’s breathing through it, letting himself feel it now rather than going amok.

I reach out with my power, sending steadiness to him, as I feel Bjorn do the same. Strom smiles softly, as he feels our power reach him. He sighs, and there’s so much in it; loss, pain, woe, anger, frustration, sadness. But there’s also love and gratitude that Bjorn and I are here to help. And we’re not going anywhere, as Strom halts now at one aisle full of moldy wine barrels.

Hunkering and retrieving a little metal box.

He stands, brushing off the box. Little more than a small jewelry box, it has an ancient Blood Dragon design on it, though it’s battered and beat to shit. Strom closes his eyes, summoning his Bone Magic in a dark wind around him. He sends all that power cascading through his fingertips, as he taps out a pattern upon the box.

Hidden runes lighting up on it now like Christmas.

It’s stunning, as the silver box comes to life. I feel it chunk open, as some mechanism inside it is unlocked—because a low power wave of Bone Magic goes sweeping through the underground, hitting Bjorn and me like a punch. It comes less to me because I have Bone Magic in my abilities. Bjorn gets the worst of it, hammered to his knees like someone actually punched him.

His power only Blood Magic—connected to Strom’s and my Bone Magic just through me.

“Fuck!” Bjorn cusses as he growls, gripping his solar plexus with one hand. “Whatever that was, it sure didn’t like my magic being here.”

“Bone Mage locking spell,” Strom says quietly, as he opens the silver box. I can see there’s nothing inside, as Strom calmly runs his fingers around the empty box, as if looking for something magically obscured inside it. It seems there’s nothing, however, as he grunts.

Flipping the box closed and staring at the sigils still flaring across it.

“They’re done using this space.” Strom watches the box. “The thieves have cleared out. I don’t know how long ago, but there’s nothing of their magical imprint left here for us.”

“What about that box?” Bjorn comes forward, frowning. “Doesn’t its presence here mean they’re not quite finished with this warehouse?”

“This was left for me,” Strom says as he peruses it. A terrible smile lifts one corner of his lips as he gazes down at the box. “A sweet little fuck you … if I ever retrieved enough of my missing memories to come find it.”

“How so?” I ask Strom now, as I step to his side, wrapping an arm around his waist as I gaze down at the box with him.

“Because I gave this to her, our mysterious thief woman.” Strom’s smile is bitter. “It was something I found in my early treasure hunts for her, long before the enemy Bone Mage drakaina came into play and started using us for our services. I gave this to her as a gift. It had silver earrings inside, an amulet, and a bracelet full of moonstones. I thought they would look amazing on her—silver with moonstones is a symbol of deep love for Blood Dragons, you know. She sold them at a rare finds auction, then laughed at me, saying I should know better than to give trinkets of love to a woman who only needs my adoration to hold me. Forever. ”

“Jesus. What a piece of work.” I stand at Strom’s side, gripping him around the waist. “She is so on my fuck list, and not in a fun way, whoever she is.”

“She’ll get hers when we find her. I promise it,” Bjorn says now, supportive, as he comes to Strom’s other side, gripping his shoulder.

“I know. I hate her as much as you both do.” Strom’s fingers stroke the lid of the silver box. He sighs, harsh. “But some part of me still loves her. The part of me that got me tethered to her vast, horrible power, way back when I was young, gregarious, and ever so fond of the ladies.”

“You’re still fond of the ladies.” I shake him sweetly now, and it gets the smallest smile out of him. “But seriously, she is mincemeat when we find her. Anything else about her you can recall after seeing this? Something that might help us identify your mystery thief, or find out where she is now?”

“No…” Even as Strom says it, he closes his eyes. I feel him rock as another memory hits him—as this one does, I feel Aesa’s Truthstone upon my breast ring, as if this is the memory we have to follow.

It’s not a lonely cliff or an abandoned warehouse now that I see, but a busy club. Booming with bass music and riveting gunmetal sounds, it’s a Euroclub somewhere here in Copenhagen, I understand as Aesa’s stone hums all through me, flashing a brilliant red.

And Strom knows where it is, as I see a vision of him now with the red-haired thief woman, done up to the nines in early 1900s garb, entering the party. But this is not a current vision of the club anymore, as they make their way to the bar. A vision almost a full century out-of-date, I see Mikkel and L?rke Thorsen maneuver through the throng, dressed to the nines in retro fashion and ready for a night out.

Except this is their place, I understand through Strom, as we retrieve this memory.

And the red-haired thief is their VIP guest.

As the thief woman and Strom are shown to the highest red velvet booth up over the swanky dance floor, Mikkel and L?rke slide in with them.

Hailing one of their servers for some bubbly, so everyone can chat.