I ignored the slight emphasis on the last two words. “He was going to garrote Mrs. P. Look, he’s even got the garroting thing right there out in the open where anyone can see it.”
The plane man smiled and held up his hands. Between them dangled a silver chain. “This is a simple gift to express my apology for having unwittingly disturbed the lady earlier today.”
I snorted, disregarding the fact that such actions are never feminine, let alone charming. “Oh, pull the other one, it has bells all over it. You were going to strangle sweet little old Mrs. P, and there’s nothing you can say to convince me otherwise.”
“You seem to believe the worst about this individual,” Rowan said. “Almost as if you knew each other and are suspicious about his motives.”
I felt like he was poking around trying to get at something, but I wasn’t sure what he was after or why. “I don’t know him,” I said slowly, my joy at seeing Rowan fading somewhat. “I don’t even know his name.”
“Mauritius Kim,” the man said, bowing. I blinked a couple of times at that—I mean, what were the odds of meeting two men who bowed like that? And was I expected to respond in kind? Maybe curtsey? My jet lag had me giggling again at the thought of even trying to pull off such a move, which resulted in the plane man—Mr. Kim—giving me a mean look.
“Sorry,” I said, passing my hand over my mouth as if that would hold in the giggles. “I’m seriously jet lagged. I don’t know what your deal is with Mrs. P, but she doesn’t want any of it.”
Mrs. P looked the man over. I half expected her to come out with a risqué comment, or at least a mention of how she used to be a hoochie-coo dancer, but she just gave a little sniff, and said, “No.”
“See? It’s not just me being paranoid.”
“No, of course she doesn’t.” Rowan reached out and, before Mr. Kim knew what was happening, snatched the necklace from the latter’s hands.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Mr. Kim snarled, his face flushed with anger. Something about him set off all my warning alarms, and I decided right then and there to get Mrs. P out of the tea shop no matter what.
I put my arm around Mrs. P and hefted her to her feet, much to her surprise.
Rowan examined the necklace closely for a moment, then raised an eyebrow at Mr. Kim. “I believe what I’m doing is obvious.”
“That’s the second time you’ve taken my property,” Mr. Kim snarled, and took a step forward as if he was about to throw a punch.
I kept my arm around Mrs. P, with my other hand on her free arm as I turned us and started toward the door. “And now I think we’ll just take ourselves off and get some dinner.”
“And you mean to do something about it?” Rowan shook his head, and gestured with the necklace toward the rest of the room, which was continuing on with their séance just as if we were not there. “With so many witnesses to the action you were about to make? Witnesses who, I might add, apparently include the silver wyvern and his mate.”
Gabriel smiled and slowly got to his feet. Despite the dimples, it wasn’t a pleasant smile, focused as it was on Mr. Kim. I sent up a little prayer that thanked whatever deities were around that the smile wasn’t directed at me. “It is as the Dragon Breaker says.”
Dragon Breaker? What on earth was that about? I shook my head at the question; it didn’t matter what sort of game these people were playing. “We need to get out of here before there’s any trouble,” I said softly, and stopped at the row of shoes, quickly picking out our pairs.
Mr. Kim choked on whatever it was he was going to say, then shot me the most malevolent look I’d ever received, one so potent it sent shivers down my back and made my stomach feel like it had just been spun upside-down.
Mrs. P crossed her arms over her sunken chest when I tried to hand her the shoes she’d worn in.
“Please,” I whispered to her, glancing over her shoulder. The air felt downright static-filled. I wanted us out of there pronto.
“No,” she said. “I wish to speak with one of my former lovers.”
“Had a change of heart, have you?” Rowan continued to verbally prod the other man, which earned him extra bravery points. “Perhaps this would be a good time for you to leave. And by leave, I mean vacate yourself from Mrs. Papadopolous’s presence. You won’t get what you want, and you’re just going to annoy a great many people.”
Aware that reasoning with her wasn’t going to work, I bent down to try to slip one of her flats onto her feet. She responded by curling her toes into the Turkish carpet lining that section of the shop.
Mr. Kim’s hands tightened into fists, and his lips twitched as he sneered, “As if I care for the opinions of mortals. Not even dragons disturb me, and they certainly don’t bother my master.”
And we were suddenly back to fantasy world, the one made up of seemingly normal people who went nuts.
“You’re leaving?” May asked me, rising and giving her husband an odd look. I’d almost forgotten about her, so caught up was I with protecting Mrs. P from Mauritius Kim’s clearly nefarious intent. “You don’t have to leave, you know. Do you fear the Dragon Breaker? If so, you needn’t. You’re quite safe with us.”
There wasn’t a whole lot I could say to that. It certainly wouldn’t do for me to point out that her husband was talking about dragons and other magical things as if they were real. So instead of arguing, I simply said, “It’s getting to be dinnertime, and I think we’re both tired from the long flight.”
“You are quite safe in my presence,” Rowan said to us, his voice level, but the way he was looking at Mr. Kim was an open invitation to dispute the statement. “You may stay if you wish.”
I looked helplessly at Rowan—the way he had stood up to Mr. Kim told me that he saw the latter as a threat just as I did, but how he could suggest we stay was beyond my understanding. I didn’t feel in the least bit secure, not so far as the vulnerable Mrs. P was concerned. “Thanks, I think we’ll just leave now.”
“If you wish to do this the difficult way, so be it,” Mr. Kim said, gesturing toward his friend, who rose and moved to his side. “My master does not care about witnesses. They are easily disposed of.”
I stepped back, feeling like someone had punched me in the gut. Mr. Kim alone was bad enough, but with his buddy standing next to him… I shivered and said quietly, “Put your shoes on.”
Mrs. P pursed her lips, but still refused to comply with my urging.
“Do you know what a bane is, mate?” Mr. Kim called to me, lifting his voice to be heard over the sound of the séance. “In the case of the one that Elton is about to cast upon you and the thief, it will make you our slaves, your wills totally subjugated to ours. Banes aren’t easy to cast, of course, and require the blood of an innocent to cast, but luckily…” He smiled over my shoulder. “Luckily, that is easy enough to come by.”
Air swirled behind me as the door was opened, but before I could turn to see who had entered, Rowan was suddenly at my side, his gray-green eyes no longer sleepy. In fact, I figured they were about as close to spitting out laser beams as they could be. Before I could say anything, his left arm shot out, followed by a squeal of pain.
Still on my knees before Mrs. P in an attempt to either cajole her into putting on her shoes or force them on myself, I looked into the tearoom to see if no one else was curious about the craziness going on at the front. No one was even looking our way. I wondered if this was part of the floor show, but decided I didn’t want to stay to find out.
Gabriel and May hurriedly moved around the table toward us just as Mr. Kim instructed his companion to begin. His friend closed his eyes, started drawing symbols in the air while chanting unintelligible words.
“Right,” I said, standing up and grabbing Mrs. P’s arm. I spun her around, lifting her over the man who rolled on the floor in the doorway, evidently disabled by Rowan. “We are so out of here.”
“My shoes,” Mrs. P wailed when I hustled her barefoot across the street, holding up an
apologetic hand at the drivers who had to slam on their brakes to avoid mowing us down.
“I’ll go back and get them in a bit,” I promised, and mouthed apologies to the drivers while pushing Mrs. P forward until I got her back into the lobby of the Hotel Ocelot. There I released her and peered through the window to see if anyone from the tearoom was following us.
No one emerged from the door, but while I was watching, a man’s body was slammed up against the window, causing some plants in pots sitting on the interior windowsill to fall. All I could see was the back of the man, so I couldn’t tell who it was, but after a few seconds, the man slid slowly down the glass, leaving a smear of blood behind.
“And with that, we go upstairs and lock the door, and don’t open it for anyone,” I told Mrs. P, who was telling Hansel about how I had forcibly parted her from her shoes across the street. “I just hope it was the nasty Mr. Kim and not Rowan. Come on, Mrs. P. Let’s go barricade ourselves in. I have a feeling this is going to be a much longer night than I originally imagined it would be.”
Four
“You are the silver wyvern, I assume?” Rowan flexed his shoulder, winced, and wondered if he might not have cracked his collarbone in the fight that ensued as soon as Sophea had removed Mrs. P from the tea shop.
The man next to him nodded, and examined his knuckles. They were covered with blood, and cut in several spots. “I am Gabriel Tauhou, yes. This is May Northcott, my mate. And you are the Dragon Breaker.”
Rowan was expecting that, so didn’t feel the little zip of pain that usually accompanied such statements. He glanced at Gabriel’s hand, but could muster little sympathy when it was he, and not Gabriel, who had dealt with the demon who had come in the door behind Sophea, as well as Mauritius Kim. The silver wyvern and his mate only took down the demonic dragon casting the bane.
“I’ve heard of you from Gabriel,” the woman, May, said, eyeing Rowan thoughtfully. “You killed some dragons a while ago.”
He was silent for a moment, his shoulder hurting, his brain still a bit muzzy from less than an hour’s sleep, and his soul crying for solace. “If I told you that I didn’t kill them, that their deaths were due to their own actions, would you believe me?”
“Possibly,” she said without hesitation. “But that’s not what the dragonkin say about you.”
“No, it is not,” Gabriel said, a chilly look in his eyes. “All dragons know of the Dragon Breaker and how the First Dragon punished you. We know he charged you to aid us whenever we needed, but you seemed to disappear immediately after that pronouncement. How is it you avoided detection?”
Rowan gave a jaded smile. “Perseverance and dedication to being lost to the world.”
“And yet you are here now.”
It was a statement not a question, but Rowan was an intelligent man. “My sister asked for help. As soon as I knew it was to aid dragons, I felt obligated to do what I could.”
“A noble intention, given your past with us,” May said with a little nod. “And now I suggest that since we have to work together, we let the events of the past go.”
Gabriel stayed silent for a moment, his eyes seeming to sear through to Rowan’s soul.
“Let it go,” May said, nudging her mate. “He says the story that we know isn’t the truth, and it may well be that’s so. Regardless of what happened twenty years ago, we need his help now. He’s the only mortal-born alchemist around.”
Gabriel sighed and nodded, his gaze warming up slightly. “You are right, as usual, little bird. Very well, Dragon Breaker—”
“My name is Rowan.”
Gabriel made a little face, then his lips twitched in a smile. “I will trust my mate’s judgment on this, Rowan. We will work together in amity.”
Well, that was something, Rowan supposed. It might not be an outright declaration of his innocence, but at least one dragon had been persuaded to give up that horrible name for him.
“Did you know that they would be here?” Rowan asked, tilting his head toward the tea shop, where the three now-unconscious beings were stacked tidily in a corner. He paused, waiting for a break in traffic before jaywalking across the street to the entrance of the hotel.
“Not them specifically, no,” Gabriel said.
“We knew it was likely that Bael would send someone, though,” May said. “And Bee—she’s your sister, yes?—said that you would be here and that you’d seen a whole gaggle of red dragon–demon hybrids, so we thought we’d keep an eye on the hotel.”
“I don’t suppose it was luck that brought the thief to the tea shop while they were there waiting,” Gabriel said, rubbing his chin.
Rowan would have liked to do the same thing, since his face was itchy with the drying blood of Kim, but that would mean lifting a hand, and at the moment, his left shoulder refused to consider that movement, while his right hand was throbbing and swollen from the fight. He’d get a bucket of ice, check to make sure that Sophea and the old lady were safely locked into their rooms, and then try to recapture the sleep that he’d been rudely woken from when his sister called to say the silver wyvern had arrived and was waiting for him across the street from the hotel. “Hmm? Oh, probably not. It’s not like fate to make anything easy for me, and that includes dealing with the old woman.”
They stopped outside the door to the hotel. The street was busy with evening traffic, whose noise helped keep their conversation relatively private. “You don’t mean to say that the thief is working with the demons, do you?” May asked, looking confused.
“No, I didn’t mean that. Sorry, I’m a bit rummy from lack of sleep. Bee called me about half an hour after I’d gone to sleep, so my brain is a bit less than it should be. I simply meant that from what I know of the old woman, it’s just like her to end up being right where trouble is.”
“And what of the mate guarding her?” Gabriel asked.
“Mate? You mean Sophea? She’s a dragon, isn’t she?”
“No. She is a wyvern’s mate. Jian, the wyvern of the now-extinct red sept, must have claimed her before he was killed.”
“I could have sworn she was a dragon…”
“To outsiders, a claimed mate is all but indistinguishable from other dragons. That is why you were confused.”
“Regardless of that fact, I don’t think that Sophea is guarding Mrs. P.” Rowan frowned a little, but that made his eye hurt, so he contented himself with lowering one eyebrow instead. “At least, not in the sense that I think you mean it. She is a captor, perhaps, but the only reason she’s keeping Mrs. P alive is so she can take the ring herself.”
Gabriel’s eyes narrowed on him. “Are you sure about that?”
Rowan didn’t dare risk a shrug with the pain in his shoulder. “It makes sense. She’s a red dragon. Or rather, a red dragon’s mate.”
“Yes, but Jian had not been tainted by the demon strain. He died right before that happened. And to be honest, his mate didn’t seem to be the sort of woman to do as you are suggesting. Far from it—she was definitely protecting the thief from harm.”
“For her own purposes,” Rowan argued.
“Perhaps.” Gabriel managed to shrug.
Rowan damned him and decided a cocktail of ice and painkillers would be in order for the evening.
“I think we should talk to her,” May said, leaning into her wyvern. “She seems nice, if a bit… not standoffish, exactly. But more keeping us at arm’s length. Untrusting, I guess.”
“You’re welcome to talk to her until the cows come home. Right now, I’m going to get some ice and sleep, in that order.”
“We’ll remain in the area in case our friends back there decide to make another attempt on her,” Gabriel said, gesturing to the tea shop.
“I wouldn’t turn down your help, but you do realize that now that the demons know you, they will be wary of letting you see them.”
Gabriel and May shared a smile. “They won’t see us,” May said complacently. “Gabriel and I can both access the Beyond. The demons
will never see us there.”
Rowan gave them a little nod and made his way into the hotel, fetched his key, and headed to the elevator, too tired to take the stairs. He wondered what it was like to be in the Beyond, that part of the Otherworld that was more or less a shadow world, one where spirits of many types resided… but was definitely not a habitat for him.
“My place is a small tent in a muggy bend of the Amazon where the mosquitoes eat you alive, and a bad conversation with one of the indigenous tribes could result in a poisoned dart poking out your back. Ah, bed, blissful bed.”
He didn’t even bother with the ice, just collapsed on the bed, took a couple of painkillers, and was thinking about summoning up the energy to change his alarm so that he could get an extra hour’s sleep before he had to creep into the thief’s rooms, but just as he reached for his phone, it rang.
The number was not one he recognized, but he answered it nonetheless.
“Hi! It’s Sophea and Mrs. P. We were wondering if you’d like to have dinner with us? As kind of a thank you for coming to our rescue twice in just a few hours. We’re going to eat here in the hotel, since that little episode in the tea shop has made me swear off stepping foot outside the building until it’s time to leave for the airport, but you’re more than welcome to join us if you’re hungry. Our treat.”
He thought longingly of the bed, of just sinking into the depths of the mattress, and sleeping for a good three or four days. Then he remembered his sister and the fact that a demon lord was running rampant and about to strike out at the mortal world as well as the Otherworld, and he told himself that sleep was underrated.
“Hello? Uh… this is Rowan, isn’t it? I can hear you breathing, so I know you’re there, but… did I get the wrong number? I could have sworn I punched in the one on the card…”
“Sorry, yes, it’s me. I was just thinking, which is not normally such a slow process, but it’s been a very long twenty-some hours. I’d be happy to join you for supper, although there’s no need to provide it for me. Quite the opposite, it would be my pleasure to take you two ladies.”