Dragon Unbound Read online

  “I’m so sorry,” Aisling apologized again to us. “But you know how it is with demons.”

  “Yeah, we’re irrepressible,” Jim said, turning its attention to me. “Hi there.”

  “Hello,” I said, my palms pricking with a sudden dampness. I had no idea if demons were prescient enough to tell what I was. “I’ve never met a demon before. Is the dog form common?”

  “Only for demons of extraordinary good sense,” Jim answered.

  “I’m so glad you’re here. You wouldn’t believe how hard it is to find bands who are hip to people in the Otherworld. If it hadn’t been for the Otherworld Suppliers agency, I’d never have found you,” Aisling continued, giving the demon a warning look. I wondered what I’d do if Jim suddenly started spilling the news that I was a siren. “This party was kind of a last-minute thing, what with Drake not wanting people around the baby, but she’s almost three months old and isn’t going to expire from all the attention. You’re sure you can run those speakers out here? You have enough power? Not that I’m questioning your expertise, but I want to make sure that you sound ... you know ... good,” she said, glancing at the speakers that Cassius was hauling by means of a hand truck. He hadn’t fully come out of the mental push I’d given him, so was more docile and less bitchy than normal.

  Andrew bristled slightly, but I gave his back a pinch before answering. “I know exactly what you mean—we’ve had those gigs where we weren’t allowed to crank up the sound the way we would have liked to, but I assure you Andrew is an expert on sound equipment as well as being a hell of a keyboard player, so we’ll sound just fine for your party.”

  “Oh, good. I’m so glad you understood what I was trying to say.” Aisling gave us both a smile. Her demonic dog ambled over toward me, causing my breath to hitch in my throat. I was braced and ready for it to expose me when it gave my feet a friendly snuffle. Almost immediately it paused, and cocked a furry eyebrow at me.

  “Hey.” Jim took another sniff at my feet. “You don’t smell right.”

  “Jim!” Aisling said, scolding the demon. “I’m so sorry, Vicky. Just ignore it.”

  “I didn’t say she smelled bad—I just said she didn’t smell right.” It took a long, snorting sniff. “Like ... not exactly—”

  “Aisling! We have a problem!” The cry came from behind us.

  “—like not exactly human. Like—”

  I braced myself for an outcry, but Aisling whirled around at her name, and moved a few steps to meet the woman racing toward us across the gorgeous emerald lawn.

  “—like something not normal.”

  I tried frantically to think of what I was going to say when the demon revealed my true nature. “Don’t be silly. What would I be if not human?”

  Jim gave me a long look. “Dunno, but you’re not a human like that guy beside you and that chick on the drums with the seriously kinky fetish about hairy black dogs.”

  A woman with a short black bob hurried up to Aisling, giving Andrew and me a little nod before continuing a bit breathlessly, “There’s a problem with the First Dragon.”

  “Oh, god, what?” Aisling asked. “He hasn’t changed anyone into anything, has he?”

  “He told me he was going to turn me into a slug if I kept slobbering on his shoes, but I think that was just the way his sort shows affection,” Jim said, leaving my feet to join its owner’s conversation. “Also, Drake told him that he can banish me to the Akasha if I get what Drake calls lippy. Me! Lippy! As if! He can’t do that, can he? Only you are supposed to be able to banish me, which I gotta say you do all too often. But still!”

  “No one has been turned into anything, although Baltic looks furious that his father is here. I take it their relationship isn’t the best,” the dark-haired woman said.

  “Well, granted, when your father is the same demigod who literally created the race of dragons, it can be a bit daunting to have him hanging around watching you, but Baltic can just get over it. Ysolde says he will, and look at Drake! He was horrified at first that we have this little wager going, but now he’s resigned to entertaining the First Dragon for a bit.”

  “Resigned.” The demon dog snorted. “Yeah, if you call him threatening to take you and the spawn away and leaving everyone else behind as resigned, then I guess so. Hey, Vicky, are you a Wiccan? No? You’re not a mage, ’cause you don’t have that smell of arcane magic around you, and you’re not a naiad, because I know all about what they smell like.” It tipped its head at me. “May’s twin is a naiad.”

  “May?” I asked.

  The dark-haired woman looked over from where she had been conversing in a low tone with Aisling. “Oh, hello. Yes, I’m May.”

  “This is Vicky and Ernest. They’re with the band.” Aisling frowned. “What’s the problem with the First Dragon?”

  May glanced toward us. “Er ... I’m sure these people don’t want to hear about it.”

  Andrew murmured something about it not bothering him at all.

  “Actually, I’ve always been fascinated by you dragons,” I found myself saying. “I think it’s the juxtaposition of the traditional image of big, scaly fire-breathing dragons with people who look perfectly normal.”

  Aisling gave a short bark of laughter. “They may look normal, but I guarantee you they aren’t.” She turned back to her friend. “I don’t think Vicky and Ernest care if we talk shop. What is going on with the First Dragon?”

  May gestured toward the house. “He won’t take our room. Gabriel is horrified at the thought that you gave us the best room, and the First Dragon should have to sleep in lesser accommodations. I’d say it was cute, but he truly is genuinely distressed. You know how he feels about honoring the First Dragon.”

  “All the wyverns do, even if Drake makes a fuss about having him here,” Aisling said, pinching her lower lip. “They’re so fusty and old-fashioned at times. Well, if he doesn’t want to have your room, he doesn’t have to. Lord knows this house has enough rooms that he can sleep wherever he wants.”

  “That’s just it. He said something about sleeping in the gatehouse, I think. Do you have a gatehouse?”

  Aisling gave a wry smile. “We do. Drake had it done up in case his mother ever visits. The First Dragon can stay there with my blessing.”

  “I’ll go tell Gabriel so he can stop worrying.” May flashed us a smile. “Nice to meet you. I look forward to the show.”

  Aisling watched her trot off to the house before turning back to us. “Sorry, guys—slight crisis. Where were we?”

  “No problem,” I said at the same time that Andrew asked casually, “You said there’s a demigod here?”

  “The dragon progenitor, yes.” She made a face. “I don’t think he’s that bad, but the wyverns—those are the leaders of the dragon septs, if you aren’t hip to dragonkin—are all aflutter at the idea that the head honcho has come down to the mortal plane for a bit.”

  “Indeed, that has to be a very great honor,” Andrew said in a silky smooth voice that instantly made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. He was a true grifter, our Andrew, able to talk his way in and out of the most difficult situations. And now he was using that voice on Aisling. ... Mentally, I shook my head. I doubted if he would have the same effect on dragons as he did the others we had met in the last two years since we’d formed the band. “Will he be at the show tonight? I’d love to meet a real demigod.”

  “Who knows?” Aisling shrugged. “He very much gets to do exactly what he wants, and I have no idea if he’s into music.”

  “Dude’s been around a gazillion years,” Jim said, eyeing one of the speakers. “Can’t live that long without getting into some tunes.”

  “I’ll invite him to watch you perform, of course, but beyond that, no promises. Jim, so help me god if you even think of peeing on that speaker, I’ll send you to the Akasha and you’ll miss the whole show.”

  “You’re so mean to me,” Jim said, but obediently moved away from our equipment. “I’m amazed yo
u haven’t given me a pee complex what with all the bossiness! No piddling on shrubs, Jim. No pinching a log in the flower beds, Jim. Effrijim, I command thee to stop peeing on the leg of that stranger. Sheesh! I’m going off to visit the little demons’ room now, OK? And I might be a while what with having to work through my issues after you’ve stifled my creative peeing.”

  “Good,” Aisling said, shooing the dog off. “Just make sure it’s downwind and in one of the designated potty spots. Now, Vicky and Ernest, let’s talk timing. Dinner will be at six, so if you start around eight, that should give us time to put the smaller kids to bed. ...”

  Andrew, Aisling, and I spent the next five minutes discussing specifics, all of which were moot because we were going to do our own thing, but of course, I couldn’t let Aisling know that.

  Not for the first time, guilt pricked at my conscience, reminding me that what I was doing was wrong. I hadn’t been raised to take advantage of people—far to the contrary. But that, I told myself as Aisling hurried off to her friends and family, was the path my life had taken once I discovered my secret talent. “And unfortunately, there’s not a damned thing I can do about it,” I said under my breath.

  “About what?”

  Dammit, I forgot that Andrew had such good hearing. I gave him a wan smile, and absentmindedly coiled up one of the cords that lay tangled behind the closest speaker. “Nothing. Just talking to myself.”

  He gave me a curious look. “You aren’t thinking about backing out, are you?”

  I did a good approximation of an astonished gape. “Are you kidding?”

  “Because I know you were upset the last time.” His gaze was a lot shrewder than I liked. “I told you then and I’ll tell you again that we aren’t hurting anyone. We only hit people who can afford to lose a bit of their blood money.”

  “You don’t know—” I started to say, but stopped immediately, warned by the frown that suddenly appeared between his brows. I held up a hand and added, “Never mind. I’m not backing out.”

  Not now. Not until I found a way to escape them.

  Dear goddess, I hoped I found a way, because I wasn’t sure how much longer I could do this without either burning out my brain or killing my soul.

  The problem was that the alternative—hiding in the seclusion that I’d been in for more than ten years—was unbearable.

  There had to be another way. I just hoped it wouldn’t be the end of me.

  Chapter Three

  If your thoughts were as clear as your eyes, and the whole of your heart were true.

  I picked the man out the second his foot hit the grass. We were well into the third song of the set, and Andrew’s program running on the laptop that sat on his keyboard had switched the big lights from us to the people dancing on the grass in front of us, in kind of a low-budget approximation of the lights in a club. With the brightest of the lights out of my eyes, and from my elevated position on the portable stage, I saw a man emerge from behind the ten-foot-high hedge that segregated this section of the garden, and stroll over to the back of the crowd of approximately fifty people.

  If your pulse beat time to love as fast as you think and plan.

  This man was tall, taller than several of the people at the back, with a silhouette that wasn’t bulky, but wasn’t thin. He had dark hair with a white stripe on one side, and the way he moved reminded me of one of the big cats that lived at a zoo in which I’d taken shelter for a few weeks. Most of the cats were nervous as hell around me, but one, a black panther named Leon, didn’t seem to mind my presence. This man reminded me in some intangible way of Leon ... or at least, of the way Leon prowled through his Amazonian exhibit.

  If you felt as much as you thought, and dreamed what you seem to dream.

  Given our distance, I couldn’t see his eyes, but I felt his presence as if he was Leon ... strong, silent, and filled with a secret power that his prey saw only at the last moment of life.

  These days, half-sweet and half-bitter, would taste like Olympian wine.

  At first the man was watching the crowd, but suddenly he turned to look at me. Here’s the thing about a siren’s song. ... Even when we aren’t trying to control someone with it, there’s something more to the song, some hint of emotion that comes through. It’s literally in our nature to imbue songs with our thoughts and emotions, and it takes years of hard work to be able to sing without letting anything through.

  If you thought in the light of the sun, or let our hearts run free, if you gave your kisses gladly, if you could just let me be ...

  Evidently my distraction allowed a little extra zing slip through into my voice, because I felt the man’s attention, as if his gaze was a tangible thing.

  The song, a bouncy ditty that Andrew had written by ripping off some long-dead poet, and which had about half the dragons present dancing, came to an end, and I lost sight of the man in the dazzle of the lights hitting us full on. I signaled to Andrew that I needed a break, and he gave Cassius the nod to swing into his ballad. I slipped behind the tower of speakers to get a sip of water, and gather my strength for what was to come.

  I knelt there for a moment, contemplating running away, indulging in a brief daydream where I could escape, but the vibration of the stage beneath my knees seemed timed to a rhythm that spelled doom, doom, doom with every beat of the bass drum.

  There was no escape, and I knew it. With a sigh of self-pity, I took one last sip of water and rose to my feet, waiting until Cassius had finished before moving forward to take my place at the microphone.

  All three of my bandmates were watching me closely. Nervously, I wiped my palms on the flirty red dress that I wore at the gigs, and stepped forward.

  Andrew gave me a few seconds, but when it was obvious I was just standing there all shades of awkwardness, he leaned forward into his mic and said, “We have a special song for you, one that you have to hear to believe. Ladies and gentlemen, Vicky ... er ... Montrose.”

  Mentally offering up an apology, I lowered my head, my eyes on the floor beneath my feet as I started to draw in the power that I needed to push. It flowed up through the ground to my shoes, up through my legs, and higher up to my torso, rising slowly up my throat, the tingle of it making me feel like I was standing in the middle of a lightning storm. I lifted my head, my mouth opening as I did so, and allowed the song to pour out of me. The words were meaningless, and in fact were never the same. They consisted of random bits of lyrics and poetry that stuck in my head, but what was important was the intention I put behind them. I pushed hard, compelling the people present to move their bodies to the beat of the music. Almost immediately they all started bobbing up and down in time.

  Andrew waited a few seconds, then switched off most of the lights, leaving on only a few surrounding the stage in order to see. The sun had gone down a short while before, and shadows had long since claimed the grass, staining it black. The mass of bodies moved in time to the song, the music slowly dying away until there was just my voice.

  Andrew moved away from his keyboard, gesturing toward the house. I nodded, and kept my push going, feeling it better to overdo it, since I had no idea how much energy it took to get dragons to comply.

  Rina and Cassius followed Andrew toward the house, the last pocketing a pepper spray device that he would use to disable anyone outside my range.

  I sang on, glancing at my watch, knowing I had to pace myself, but afraid to lighten up on the push. At the three-minute mark, I noticed something odd.

  I was being stalked.

  While the rest of the dragons danced, their bodies moving not in sync, but still together, one figure slid through them, slowly moving forward.

  It was the man with the white stripe of hair. The panther man. And his eyes were on mine as he maneuvered his way through the dancing crowd, his gaze fixed on me.

  Helpless to move while I was pouring energy into the song, I watched with growing horror as he started up the four steps to the stage.

  He stopped in fr
ont of me, his face now perfectly visible in the sidelights. He had a long, straight nose, light brownish–dark blond hair that was swept back from the brow, and a square chin with a slight dimple that was barely hidden by light brown stubble. He had gray eyes that seemed to hold mine with an ease that made me even more uncomfortable, but there was something about those eyes ... something that was ... more. It was hard to put into words, but was as if time itself was etched into his eyes, leaving them with an expression that made me think of the stars slowly moving through the sky.

  Holy hell, he’s a handsome devil, was the first thought that went through my mind. The next was who was he, and what on earth was I going to do? I couldn’t stop pushing the dragons lest the lure of my voice wasn’t enough to keep them unaware of what the band was doing in the house, but it was clear this man wasn’t in the slightest bit affected by me.

  He just looked at me for a minute while I continued singing, then slowly walked around me, examining me from toes to nose, all the while I was trapped where I stood.

  The man came to a stop in front of me, and said just one word. “Siren?”

  Unable to help myself, I nodded.

  “Ah,” he said, then turned to look speculatively at the house before returning his gaze to me. “You would steal from my children?”

  I opened my eyes even wider, although I hadn’t thought that possible. His children? He couldn’t be—

  “No,” the man said to himself, shaking his head. “Not children. Brothers. You steal from my kin.”

  There I was, bug-eyed, mouth opened as I sang some barely remembered Elizabethan sonnet, pushing the dragons before me into thinking they were having a truly excellent time dancing to some kick-ass techno music, and a foot away stood my doom.

  Doom, doom, doom.

  For a moment, I lost control of the push, and about a third of the dragons stopped dancing, but with a pleading glance at the handsome man with the compelling eyes, I sang on, spreading the push outward. The dragons all fell into line and danced again.

  Except the man in front of me.