Beyond the Pale Read Online Free Page A

had taken out a long-term lease on the penthouse suite.
    Nadja wore a smartly cut business suit, a deep green color, almost black. Her frame was elven—slender and just over two meters tall, with square shoulders and long legs and arms. Her raven-black hair shone in the sunlight as she looked down at Virginia Avenue below. At the prismatic cloud hovering over the gaping hole in the street where Dunkelzahn had been murdered.
    Rainbow colors shimmered and danced in the cloud, what her mages called a manastorm. Around the edge of the crater stood masses of people, pressing up close to the hurricane fencing that prevented them from being pulled into the manastorm. Several people had disappeared into the phenomenon already.
    Her experts had told her that it was a puncture—a tear in the fabric that separated physical space and the metaplanes, left by the destruction of Dunkelzahn’s spirit.
    Nadja took a slow breath as images of the explosion rushed into her mind. She remembered inauguration night, two weeks ago. The party in this very hotel, downstairs in the Grand Ballroom. She had danced with Dunkelzahn, a splendid, perfect moment as they tangoed across the floor, adored by the crowd.
    The onlookers were admiring their new president—Dunkelzahn, in his human form, a young man with beautiful proportions like Michelangelo’s David—flawless olive skin and curly brown hair. Only his eyes betrayed his supernatural origin—metallic blue and silver with pupils that were unnaturally black, like pinpoint windows into a deep void.
    He moved with grace and poise on the parquet floor, leading Nadja, the woman who was known as his translator. His voice. She was his aide and campaign manager. His friend and closest ally.
    Their dance entranced the crowd, watching in awe and satisfaction. They were the center of the universe for a sublime moment. A breath-holding instant of pure beauty.
    Their dance was interrupted by Carla Brooks, the tall black security chief, who informed Dunkelzahn of a crucial phone call. Urgent.
    Dunkelzahn had quickly made his excuses and retired to an anteroom to take the call. It wasn’t until later that Nadja learned that it had been Ryan Mercury on the line.
    When Dunkelzahn returned to the dance floor, Nadja had felt his thoughts touch her. I must take my leave of you, Nadjaruska. The dragon’s thoughts passed over her like a static charge, and she understood them, not as words, but as an extension of her conscious mind.
    That had been the last time she’d heard the dragon’s thoughts in her head, and she missed them. It felt like a part of her had died with Dunkelzahn, like a bit of her spirit had fled.
    Now, Nadja gripped the railing and became entranced by the hypnotic patterns in the manastorm below. Images of the explosion flashed through her mind, like a battering of hailstones. Dunkelzahn’s limousine pulling out from the hotel’s circular drive. The explosion ripping through the night, vaporizing the limo in an instantaneous fiery blast as Nadja stood on the curb and spoke with Carla Brooks. The sleek black Mitsubishi Nightsky engulfed by a spiked sphere of plasma and searing orange heat.
    Cars in front and behind Dunkelzahn’s limousine flew up into the air. Trees burst into flames, and Dunkelzahn bellowed in pain, a telepathic scream exploding inside her head before the physical sound reached her ears.
    Out of the explosion, Nadja saw him emerge in dragon form, his body a ghostly white behind the flash spot on her retina. A transparent specter, the detailed scalloped ridge of each scale glimmered with white fire, but there was no solidity to him. Only the outline of him left, writhing in desperate agony as his ancient flesh disintegrated.
    Then he was gone and the blast wave hit her, a wall of fire and kinetic thunder, lifting her off her feet and hurling her backward through the glass doors. She landed on the plush carpeting, the shattered glass cutting her in a thousand places, and