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I raised an eyebrow. “I wonder why that might be? Surely it couldn’t have anything to do with the treatment dished out to most draman?”
“Not all cliques treat draman the way Jamieson does.” The winter hadn’t lifted from his eyes. In fact, it had probably gotten deeper. “And my friend was not draman. He was merely having a liaison with one.”
Was that liaison Chaylee? Rainey had told me that her sister had met someone, but surely if she’d known that someone was full dragon, she would have mentioned it. “In the draman town of Stillwater?”
He flicked me a glance. “Yes. And before you ask your next question, I neither approved or disapproved of the relationship. It was not my place to do either.”
That didn’t stop him from having an opinion about it—though it was one he obviously wasn’t going to share with me. “How do you know for sure that your friend is dead when no bodies have been found?”
“Because his kin felt his passing. His brother—who had a broken wing and couldn’t fly out himself—phoned me and asked me to investigate what had happened.”
Though his voice was flat, his anger seared the air, rolling across my senses as sharply as an axe and making it difficult to breathe. “Damon,” I panted, “control it.”
He glanced at me sharply, surprise in his eyes. Then the anger disappeared as if sucked away into a vacuum, and suddenly I was able to breathe again.
“You didn’t say you were sensitive to emotion.”
“You didn’t ask.” I tucked a sweaty strand of hair behind my ear and thought about admitting that I didn’t often get so attuned to the emotion of others that it affected me physically. That, in fact, I didn’t usually get a whole lot from him, either. But that might lead to him controlling himself even more, and I actually liked feeling the occasional flashes from him. So I simply said, “You flew straight out?”
“Yeah.” He was silent for a minute, and though the force of it was muted, his anger and guilt still touched the air. Those were emotions I was all too familiar with.
And the only thing that would help either of us feel better would be stopping the bastards behind this destruction. And in my case, saving my friend from an eternity stuck in between worlds, never able to move on and be reborn, but never able to participate again in this one.
He added, “I did get there in time to stop the fires from destroying every building. His belongings were in one of the remaining ones.”
I took a deep, shuddering breath that did little to shake the residual pain, and said, “So if you were there in time to stop the fires from destroying the town, do you know what happened to the inhabitants?”
“No. The place was empty and there were no remains. I suspect they were all taken elsewhere to be killed and buried.”
“But how would that be possible? I mean, you must have gotten there quickly if the place was still ablaze. Surely they couldn’t have gotten rid of that many bodies so fast?”
“If the attackers were dragons or draman with full powers, and the majority of the town were draman without dragon powers, then it would be very easy to herd them into trucks and ship them somewhere else to kill them.”
“But your friend’s brother was a full dragon, and Rainey’s sister had full dragon powers.” And if they’d fought and somehow escaped—only to be caught and killed near dawn—then that would explain how both Rainey and his friend had felt their kin’s passing.
Damon looked at me, his expression grim. “Two against God knows how many? That’s not good odds in anyone’s book.”
“Meaning you think dragons are behind these attacks?”
“Well, it can hardly be humans. While most draman haven’t got dragon powers, they are, as I mentioned, stronger and faster. There’s no way humans could have wiped out a whole town so quickly and efficiently. And why would they bother? They’re more likely to want to stick us in a lab and study us.”
He had a point, but I couldn’t help adding, “Humans have a history of killing things they don’t understand, and even draman can’t outrun bullets.”
“But there were no shots fired at Stillwater. I would have found evidence of it.”
“Which doesn’t mean they weren’t shot somewhere else.”
“No.”
I closed my eyes against the images that arose. I didn’t need to think about all those other people. I had the chance to save Rainey’s soul, but it wasn’t within my power to save anyone else who’d been in that town. Not even Rainey’s sister.
“Would the council have ordered the cleansings?” The urbane man who’d talked to Angus in the van had claimed that it hadn’t, but he’d also mentioned that muerte didn’t move without orders from one of the kings.
“No. If they had, the muerte would have been informed. We were not.”
I guess that was something. “So if not the council, then who? Could this be the result of several kings plotting?”
“It’s possible, though I don’t see what it would achieve.”
