Dragon Fall Read online

  “Holy cheese on whiz!” I stumbled backward, my eyes huge as I watched the two dragons fight. Tails whipped through the air as bodies twined around each other, claws slashing and drawing crimson arcs of blood that splattered on the yellowish-brown grass.

  “What the—Fires of Abaddon! Is that Kostya?”

  Jim had come at a run, evidently having been taking a stroll down the beach, judging by the amount of seaweed clinging to his legs.

  “The black one is. I don’t know who the other guy is. Nooo!” This last wail was directed to my home when with a roaring whoosh, the roof suddenly collapsed, blasting us with a bank of scalding air. I grabbed Jim and pulled him backward toward the beach, my gaze flitting between the house—now fully engulfed in flames—and the two dragons rolling on the ground locked in deathly combat.

  “I dunno either, but he has friends,” Jim said, looking around me. “Wow, they’re dragons, too. Kinda cool-looking, huh?”

  I spun around to see three more men come running around the burning house. They didn’t even pause, shifting in midstride to a similar dragon form as the one whose head Kostya was bashing on the ground. Kostya got to his feet, leaving the other dragon twitching and groaning.

  “Behind you!” I yelled, pointing at the oncoming dragon horde.

  He spun around, stared for a minute, then hurdled the downed dragon and raced straight for them. “Use it!” he yelled over his shoulder at me. “I will hold them as long as I can, but you must use it. They will come for you once they kill me. Use it now!”

  “Use wha—Oh.” I looked down at my hand where the gold of the ring glinted gently in the sun.

  “What’s he talking about?” Jim asked, watching with interest as Kostya, with a battle cry, flung himself on the three other dragons, sending them all tumbling in a mad whirl of legs and tails and claws.

  “The ring. Terrin said it was magic, but I don’t know how it works.”

  Another wall of my house crumbled in a roar of flames. Jim and I stumbled backward another few yards. I dragged my gaze from the sight of my childhood home being destroyed to where Kostya fought. One of the dragons was crawling away, his arm at an odd angle. The other two were wailing away on Kostya.

  “Yeah, I don’t see a giant glowing eyeball or anything, but that doesn’t mean diddly so far as magic rings go. At least, I think that’s true. I’m not absolutely certain since I can’t remember squat. Ouch, that’s gotta hurt.” Jim flinched as one of the dragons tore off a piece of the picket fence and started beating Kostya with it.

  “I just don’t know what to do,” I said, still twisting the ring, but at that moment, two more men emerged from the far side of the house. They, too, shifted into dragon form, but it was the long, silver sword that one of them held that decided me. “Stay here!” I told Jim, and ran forward a few steps, holding my hand out in a dramatic fashion while yelling, “I use this magic ring to stop you!”

  For a moment, the dragons fought on as if nothing had happened, but then all of them, even the one moaning on the ground, turned to look at me.

  “Oh, hell,” I said, my eyes almost popping out of my head when the dragons sprang toward me. I backpedaled, waving my hand wildly in front of me, praying the magic in it would go off before the dragons reached me.

  There was a rush of air, an oath snarled in a voice that seemed to come from the depths of the earth itself, and then Kostya was there in front of me, back in human form, one side of his body hitched higher than the other, with blood dripping down his arm. “Use it!” he demanded, snatching up a piece of driftwood and wielding it as if it were no different than the shiny sword. He turned to face the dragons, using his body to shield me.

  “I don’t know how!” I wailed.

  “Focus on them. Harness the power of the ring. Use it on them!”

  “You say harness the power as if I’m supposed to know how, but—”

  The dragons leaped at that moment, all five of them (the one guy on the ground had to be happy with crawling toward us in a menacing fashion). Kostya snarled something unintelligible, his legs apart, head down, clearly ready to sacrifice himself in order to give me a few seconds of time.

  I knew with absolute certainty that he would not survive the attack. My fingers doubled into a fist, and clutching my hands together, I closed my eyes and bowed my own head, forming a mental image of the ring as a giant club. I swung it back, gathering my strength for one breathless moment before slamming it down before me, my eyes snapping open at the percussion blast that resulted.

  Before us, all six dragons lay flat on the ground, each one surrounded by a ring of fire—dragon fire. Kostya staggered forward a step, then dropped to his knees, leaning heavily on the driftwood while he surveyed them.

  “Well, what do you know about that?” I said, staring at the carnage before me. “I have a magic ring.”

  Seven

  “So, let me recap for that part of my mind that’s still high-fiving itself over the fact that I wasn’t ever crazy and did actually see what I thought I saw two years ago. Curses are real.”

  “Yes.” Kostya nodded toward my phone. “Make the call.”

  “Not until I get a few things straight in my mind. Curses are real, and they can affect more than one person.”

  “As I told you.” His lips thinned in impatience. “All of dragonkin are subject to the curse.”

  I counted to eight to let my mind slide over the idea of the world being inhabited by a whole bunch of people who were in reality dragons. “And you guys are trying to break the curse, right?”

  “Of course. It has pitted the septs against one another. Make the call.”

  I consulted the piece of paper he’d given me and slowly tapped in the numbers. “And this ring, the one Terrin gave me two years ago, is the thing that can do that? Break this curse that makes you dragons crazy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I’ll just give it to you—” I started to say, but stopped when he made a sharp gesture, followed by some swearing when his shoulder protested.

  “It isn’t that easy.”

  Before I could ask why, a voice spoke into my ear.

  “Hello?” The voice was that of an American, which really took me by surprise. “Hello? Is someone there? You called me, so I assume you are, but if you’re one of those telemarketers—”

  “Sorry, I’m here. Not a telemarketer. Um… are you Aisling Grey?”

  “Yes. I don’t recognize your number. Who are you?”

  “My name is Aoife, Aoife Ndakaaru. Well, actually, I go by Aoife Dakar, because Dad always shortened his name to that, but I don’t suppose you want to hear about my family name.”

  “Why wouldn’t I? Dakar is a very interesting name. So is Ndakaaru. Is it African?”

  “Yes. Senegalese, to be exact. Dad was from there. My mom was Irish.”

  “I hear you on that. My name is Aisling.” She laughed. “Oh, you know that, don’t you? What can I do for you, Aoife Dakar?”

  “Kostya wants you to know that your demon is here with us, and he’s okay, although he does seem to have to go walkies a lot. Also, he’s lost his memory.”

  “What?” Aisling’s shriek made my ear ring for a few minutes. “Jim’s with you? Wait a minute—Kostya told you to tell me that? Drake! Oh my God, how is he?”

  “Kostya or Jim? I’m sorry, Kostya said that I was supposed to call Jim an it, but he’s a boy dog. I can’t do it.”

  “Kostya! No, Jim. Oh, hell’s bells, both of them—how are they both? Pal, where’s Drake? Well, go get him. Tell him it’s important. It’s Kostya. At least, it’s a friend of Kostya’s—I don’t know. I can ask. Aoife, are you… uh… Kostya’s girlfriend?”

  “What’s she saying?” Kostya asked.

  “She wants to know if I’m your girlfriend.”

  “Oh my God, is he there right now?” Aisling asked, her voice going up half an octave with excitement.

  “Yes, he is. Do you want to talk to him?”

  “I
can’t. May and I tried, but mates can’t talk to other mates any more than dragons can talk to other dragons. It’s all part of the curse. There you are! Kostya’s on the phone. Well, Kostya’s girlfriend. Her name is Aoife.”

  “I’m not his girlfriend,” I corrected, looking over at Kostya. He sat on the edge of the examination bed in Dr. Ek’s room, wincing when he moved his shoulders. Dr. Ek had gone into a back storage area to find some elastic bandages, which he said would help Kostya with his broken collarbone. “Drake is your brother, right?”

  “Yes. Is he there?” Kostya got to his feet. I offered him the phone, but he shook his head. “I can’t hear or understand him. The septs haven’t been able to communicate since the weyr was destroyed by Asmodeus’s curse.”

  “I didn’t get to him yet.” I gave Kostya a potent look. “We’ll get to just who this dude is who cursed you, and why, just as soon as I’m done talking—What? Sorry, I was distracted. Yes, Kostya is here, and he’s fine, although beat up a bit. He says the collarbone should heal up in a few minutes. I guess dragons have some super-healing thing.”

  “She knows that,” Kostya said, moving over to stand next to me. “Ask her why Jim was unbound. And tell her about the red dragons.”

  “I said I would, just give me a minute. And sit back down. You look like you’re about to fall over.”

  That made him straighten his shoulders, which caused him to wince again. He snatched up his shirt and carefully inserted an arm into it. “Stop fussing over me, woman. I will be whole again shortly, and then you can resume ogling me and desiring my body.”

  “Oh, you wish,” I muttered.

  “He hurt his collarbone,” I heard Aisling repeat to her husband. A low masculine rumble followed. “I don’t know, Aoife hasn’t told me yet. No, I don’t know that either. Honest to Pete, Drake! The important thing is that he’s okay, and Jim is there. I don’t know—she hasn’t told me that, although frankly, I’m amazed she’s said as much as she has given that you and evidently Kostya are grilling us both to the point where we can’t talk to each other.” Her voice became stronger and louder as she returned to the phone. “Sorry about that, Aoife. Wyverns! Let me get the important details before Drake bursts.”

  There was a male protest in the background.

  “I can’t listen to her and you at the same time,” Aisling said. “Now, Aoife—”

  “What is she saying?” Kostya demanded, having gotten his shirt onto his back.

  “Nothing. And if you don’t stop distracting me, I’ll never be able to ask the stuff you want me to ask. Go sit over there and stop flaunting your chest at me.”

  “I am not flaunting anything at you, least of all my chest!”

  “You haven’t buttoned up your shirt,” I pointed out. “Clearly you want me to admire your naked chest. Go on, admit it—as much as you make a fuss over me ogling you, you secretly love it!”

  “And you love doing it,” he countered. A tiny little curl of smoke emerged from one nostril. I suddenly felt very warm.

  “Of course I do. I’m a perfectly normal woman with a perfectly normal libido, and you happen to be an incredibly handsome man.” I took a step toward him at the same time he took one toward me. I could feel the heat in him, which I realized with a start was his dragon fire. It roared within him, but somehow he managed to keep control of it.

  That didn’t explain why it made me feel hot, though.

  “Cease tempting me, woman,” he growled, the tiny little silver lights in his black eyes glittering at me.

  I turned around to face the door. “Fine, you want to be all chesty at me? I just won’t look. Tempting you, my ass. Hello? Are you still there, Aisling?”

  “Yes,” she answered, laughter evident in her voice. “I was just waiting for you to be done looking at Kostya’s chest. It is a very nice chest. Ow! Drake! There’s no need to pinch me; Kostya is your brother, and he is a very handsome man. Honestly! Talk about jealous… Where were we, Aoife?”

  “What is she saying now?” Kostya demanded. “Why are you laughing? Are you mocking me? Is she?”

  “I’m not mocking you in the least, but I can say this—your brother is evidently just as big a pain in the butt as you are. Sorry, Aisling. I didn’t mean to be rude about your husband.”

  “—can’t possibly carry on a conversation with you peppering me with questions like that. I know you’re concerned about him—I’m just as worried—but he’s evidently all right, because Aoife doesn’t seem like the sort of person who would lie to me about that. What?”

  Silence fell. I pulled the cell phone away from my ear to double-check that I hadn’t dropped the connection. “Aisling?” I asked into it.

  “Uh…” Her voice had an oddly strained quality to it. “Aoife, I’ve been requested to ask who you are.”

  “I told you who I was.”

  “Yes…” She hesitated. “Drake wishes to know if Kostya has named you as his mate.”

  “That again?”

  “What?” Kostya asked, moving around so that he could see my face.

  “Aisling wants to know if you called me your mate.” I made a face.

  To my surprise, a dull red tint flooded his face. “I have not named you as mate, and you can tell her that.”

  “He says to tell you that I’m not his mate.”

  “Hmm.” She sounded thoughtful. “But you are romantically involved—Drake, I can’t possibly ask that list of questions. It would take an hour or more. No. She says she’s not. I don’t know! How am I supposed to know the answer to that? I’m not there! Here, you want to ask her? You go right ahead.”

  There was a moment’s silence; then a man’s voice came on the phone, a voice similar to Kostya’s but with a slightly different, more European accent. “This is Drake Vireo. You are the woman with my brother?”

  “Yes.” I eyed Kostya. His brother sounded just as officious.

  “Where are you?”

  “In a doctor’s office.”

  “No, what country. You are American?”

  “Yes, but we’re in Sweden.”

  “What’s the nearest large town?”

  “Boden. Why?”

  “Can you be in—One moment.” A couple of muffled voices drifted through the phone. I held up my hand when Kostya opened his mouth to ask yet another question. Drake returned to the phone. “Can you be in Umeå in six hours?”

  “Yes. It’s about an hour’s drive.”

  “Good. We will meet you at the airport. Bring Kostya and Jim.”

  He hung up the phone before I could respond. I tucked my phone away, giving Kostya a long look. “Wow. I can really tell he’s your brother.”

  Kostya narrowed his eyes. “Why do you say that?”

  “If I told you, you’d just deny it. Oh, thank you, Dr. Ek. I’m sure Kostya will be grateful to have that shoulder bandaged.”

  Kostya wasn’t anything of the sort, but he did take his shirt off again (which allowed me some quality ogling time) and suffered Dr. Ek strapping his injured arm to his chest. The slash marks had long since healed, but evidently it took a bit longer for bones to fix themselves, because by the time we got Kostya’s shirt back on him, and I’d thanked Dr. Ek again for his assistance, there were lines of pain around Kostya’s mouth.

  “Right, everyone into the car. Oh, sorry, Jim. You can talk now.”

  The demon, whom Kostya had recommended I order to silence while at the doctor’s office, let out his breath as if he’d been holding it the entire time. “Fires of Abaddon, Eefs! I don’t know what this other demon lord I’m supposed to have was like, but I can do with less of the ordering around and more of the providing of foodstuffs. Speaking of which—”

  “Yes, yes, I’ll feed you.”

  “I am desirous of food as well, but I wish to know what my brother said to you.”

  At first I thought Kostya was standing by the car waiting for me to give him the keys, but then he opened the driver’s door for me. It was a strangely gallant gesture
for a man who liked to scowl and protest as much as he did. “There’s not a lot to tell, but first: is your broken bone healing up the way you think it will?” I asked when he got in the passenger side. Jim flopped onto the backseat, moaning to himself about starving to death and demon lords who took the word cruel to new heights.

  Kostya tried moving his shoulder. He didn’t flinch, but I got the feeling that it still hurt. “It’s taking longer than I thought it would, but it appears to be better. What exactly did Drake say?”

  “Hmm. You’re sure you can self-heal? Oh, that’s stupid. I watched two slash marks on your arm close up and disappear. Maybe it’s because you’ve been through so much in the past twenty-four hours?” I started the car and headed to a restaurant that was about twenty minutes away. “He said to meet him in Umeå at four this afternoon. It’s about an hour’s drive, so we have time to get some food before I go back home and—”

  “No.”

  I glanced at him from the corner of my eye. “—talk to the police and fire officials, and whoever else showed up—”

  “You will not go back to your home.”

  “—when they noticed the fire. I assume there’s a whole lot of people who wondered what happened, and who will want to talk to us—”

  “We will go to this Umeå. And after that, Paris.”

  I ground off a few layers of teeth, making a concerted effort not to reach out and punch Kostya in the collarbone. “So, new rule: you stop interrupting me, and I don’t pull the car over and shove you out of it.”

  The look he turned on me was downright comical. “You would push me from your car? I have been wounded saving you!”

  “I also saved you,” I pointed out, holding up my hand so he could see the ring. “Me and Wishy the Magic Ring. Jim, stop your bellyaching and take a nap until we get to the restaurant.”

  Kostya fumed silently to himself for a moment. “I did not intend to offend you by interrupting, but we cannot return to your home.”