“I’m getting a little fed up with your negativity,” Ysolde told him, much to my surprise. I hadn’t expected anyone to stand up for Constantine. “And your bossiness. We’re trying to get something accomplished, and you’re just making a fuss about nothing.”
“Baltic, control your mate,” Kostya said, looking daggers at him.
“No,” Baltic said, leaning back in his chair. There was something about him, perhaps the line of his jaw or the way his chin was shaped, that reminded me of Constantine.
Kostya goggled at that answer. “You must!” he finally said.
“Have you learned nothing from Aoife?” Aisling asked, shaking her head. Drake put a warning hand over hers, causing her to say in a whisper that was heard by everyone there, “I know I shouldn’t say it, sweetie, but honestly, sometimes your brother is the biggest boob who ever lived.”
“Hey,” Aoife said, sitting up straight. “We can hear you, you know.”
“Good,” Aisling said with a bright smile.
I stifled a giggle.
“My mate can say whatever she likes,” Baltic interjected, still looking mostly bored by the proceedings.
“It is against the rules of the—”
“Perhaps it was against the rules of the sarkany,” Baltic interrupted, leaning forward to pin Kostya back with a warning look. “But the old weyr is gone. Destroyed. This new weyr will have new rules, and one of those should be that mates have a voice.”
“Here, here,” Aisling said, applauding.
“Well done,” Ysolde said, kissing Baltic’s cheek.
Kostya looked like he wanted to argue, but evidently caught a glimpse of Aoife’s face, because he shot her a puzzled look.
“Sorry,” she told him with an apologetic gesture at the rest of the table. “About this, I agree with them. If you want me to be a part of your life and a member of the black dragons, then I think I should be able to say something.”
“It is not the way we have done things,” Kostya argued, but the fight had gone out of his body language, and he sat back down when Aoife patted his arm, and said, “I know it is, but now is an excellent time to change things, don’t you think?”
Kostya might have realized he had to give in on that point, but he stuck like a burr to another one. “Even if we do change the rules to allow mates to have input, that still does not address the fact that Constantine is here with an outsider.”
“Look,” I said, standing up and putting my hands flat on the table. “I know I’m an outsider, okay? I’m human, and I’m a Charmer, and I don’t particularly like dragons.” I slid a fast glance at Constantine. “Well, I like one dragon. The rest of you are a bit much to take in close quarters. That said, Constantine and I have just as much a right to be at this planning session as you do. More, since we’re the ones who broke the curse.”
“Which you bungled the first time you tried,” Kostya snapped.
“Because you two didn’t bother to give us the proper information!” I slapped the table hard enough to make Aoife jump. “Dammit, do you think I’m here because I don’t have anything better to do with my time than listen to a bunch of scaly human-shaped beasts bicker with each other? Bael killed the Venediger and her assistant, Guillaume. They saw it.” I pointed at Ysolde and Baltic.
Ysolde went a little pale. Baltic put his arm around her and hauled her onto his lap.
“Now, I may not be a big, tough dragon like Constantine, or even mated to him, but I did know Jovana for almost three years. She passed along many jobs to me over that time and was never anything but thoughtful. She cared about the Otherworld. She wanted to protect not just them but the mortals from any bad influences on the immortal side. And she provided us all with a safe haven where everyone could meet without fear or danger.” Tears came to my eyes, making me blink rapidly. “So yes, I’m only a mortal Charmer, but I’ll be damned if I let Jovana be snuffed out of existence like she’s nothing more than a cigarette. I will do everything within my power to see that Bael pays for his crime, and if that means he has to be destroyed, then by the gods, I’ll help cut him down!”
Silence fell on the room. It was a stunned silence, one that was eventually broken by the slow clapping of one pair of hands.
I turned my head to look at Constantine. He smiled at me, then rose and stood at my side, his hand on my back. “And so too do I swear. I will rid this world of Bael, or I will die trying. I have died once, and did not enjoy it. I don’t wish to do it again. Especially now as I am responsible for Gary’s well-being and Bee’s sexual needs.”
I smacked him on the arm. He turned a startled expression to me.
“We have a new rule: you don’t announce to people I’ve just met that we’re doing the sheet tango. It’s hard enough getting respect without them wondering which of your many toys we’ve been trying out that day.”
“Ooh, Constantine has some excellent toys,” Ysolde said, nodding. “I helped him pick out a couple of them from a fabulous shop where I got a really wonderful toy shaped like the letter U.”
“Is that for a he or a she?” Aisling asked, leaning forward to see around Drake.
“It’s sold for women, but a little creativity can do wonders with it,” Ysolde answered.
“Battery operated or electric?” Aoife asked.
Kostya shot her an indignant, “Aoife!”
“It doesn’t hurt to ask,” she told him soothingly.
“Batteries,” Ysolde said with a private smile. “Take my recommendation and get a few extra packs. You definitely don’t want to run short, and using both ends of the U shape takes a lot of battery power.”
Aisling clearly agreed with that sentiment, because she leaned forward again to ask, “And where did you get—”
Her question was cut short when Drake, who had evidently been holding his temper in with a not very patient hand, suddenly roared for silence, and slammed his hand so hard on the table that it sent a long crack out from the center. “Enough!” he cried, sharing a truly magnificent glare among us all. “This is a sarkany, not a sexual aid discussion! We have important things to discuss and decide upon—”
Constantine tapped the table until Ysolde looked over to him. He held a tablet of paper in one hand and a pen in the other. “What shop was the U device sold at, and do they take bulk orders?”
Sixteen
I had to take a little break after that, strolling out to a small park across the street from Drake’s house, along with Ysolde, Aisling, and Aoife.
“I can’t believe they kicked us out like that,” Aisling said, sniffing in a faux-injured manner. “It’s my house, too! I’m definitely going to have words with Drake later about them giving us the boot. Jim! Don’t you dare do that right next to that flowerbed! Honest to Pete, I can’t take you anywhere!”
“What do you think they’re going to talk about?” I asked Ysolde. I kept glancing over at Aoife, expecting her to be giving me the usual cold shoulder that she’d adopted ever since she found out the part I had played to keep her safe from the demon lords, but she walked at my side with an abstracted expression on her face.
“Kostya will argue about unimportant things for a bit. Drake will try to calm him down. Baltic will enrage everyone with his opinion that none of it matters, and Constantine—” She stopped, frowning down at the ground. “I was going to say Constantine would instigate bad behavior in the others, but he seems to have changed since I last saw him.” She looked up and beamed at me. “I believe we have you to thank for that.”
“I’m not a dragon’s mate,” I told her.
“Perhaps not,” she said with a little one-shouldered shrug. “Perhaps so. Time will tell.”
“We don’t have time, that’s the whole problem,” I pointed out. I stopped, looking around the park. It was full summer now, which meant the flowers were bobbing their colorful heads in the gentle breeze, while children screeched and shrieked with joy as they ran around chasing each other. Dogs barked excitedly, the ever-present hum of
traffic provided a low droning background noise, and above it all, the faint, thin twitter of birds floated above. It wasn’t idyllic by any meaning of the word, but it was pleasant, and I hated the idea that it could be wiped out by a wave of Bael’s hand. “We have to stop him. We have to do something.”
“And we will,” Aisling soothed. “You know, it’s a shame you aren’t Constantine’s mate, because if you were, you could join the Mates’ Union.”
“You’ve unionized?” I asked, somewhat scandalized at the thought, although I couldn’t put my finger on exactly why that was.
“It’s just a name, really,” Ysolde said quickly. “It provides us mates—and we’re missing one, a delightful woman named May who was in Australia with her wyvern, but now is coming to Paris to discuss the ramifications of the breaking of the curse—where was I? Oh, yes, it’s just a way for all the mates to get together and have lunches and bond. Aoife will join us now, of course, and we’d be delighted to have you, only…” She stopped speaking, and I felt highly uncomfortable.
“I thought the meeting today was supposed to discuss the curse being broken,” I said after a few moments’ awkward silence. Ysolde and Aisling had been sending each other telling glances, but I couldn’t see them well enough to read them.
“It is. But there are two other wvyerns who weren’t in Europe when you Charmed the curse, and they will want to have their say. May and Gabriel, that’s the silver wyvern, were holding down the fort in the South Pacific as best they could. The blue wyvern was in the U.S. for a while, then I think he went to Canada.”
“Interesting,” I said politely, even though I didn’t particularly care about where the other dragon septs were. I had enough trouble with the ones present.
“I need to talk to you for a few minutes,” Aoife suddenly said, tugging on my sleeve with a look toward Aisling and Ysolde.
I was surprised; Aoife hadn’t said more than a half dozen words to me of her own will since our last argument, so I paused, giving her my full attention.
She glanced around us, biting her lower lip for a minute before finally meeting my gaze, and saying, “What you said back at the sarkany—about the Venediger—I thought that was nice.”
“Thanks,” I said, my heart filled with pain for the way our relationship had been destroyed. Was this a sign that it could be mended? “I meant every word.”
She nodded. “You always were the altruistic one of the three of us.”
“Pfft. I’m the oldest child.”
“Rowan is older than me,” she pointed out.
“Yes, but he’s a man,” I said lightly. “He gets the double whammy of being a brother and a male, which pretty much guarantees he is always thinking of himself.”
“Not all men are self-centered.” Her expression turned guarded again. “Kostya isn’t like that. Well, he is sometimes, but most of the time, he’s very devoted to his sept and his brother.”
“Well, if we’re going to be pedantic, then neither is Constantine. He may seem like a big goofball, but he really is the sweetest, most thoughtful man I’ve ever met—” I stopped at the look of surprise on her face.
“You’ve fallen for him, haven’t you?”
I glanced around us. Ysolde and Aisling had gone on ahead of us, and evidently realized we’d been left behind, because they had turned and were strolling back toward us, Jim snuffling the grass beyond them.
“I don’t know what I feel for Constantine other than I like him, and I like being with him. And honestly, I don’t think the question of my emotions is very important given the situation we’re facing.”
She tipped her head to the side, her long brown curls swinging to the side. It was such an Aoife move, one that brought back memories of our childhood, that tears pricked behind my eyes. “It’s kind of ironic,” she said, “isn’t it, that we both ended up with dragons? I mean, five years ago we didn’t even know they existed.”
I looked away, not wanting to hurt her feelings any more now that she was finally making an effort to talk to me.
“Wait…” Her eyes narrowed on me, and she clutched my arm with a hard grip. “You knew about them five years ago?”
“I dated a red dragon when I was twentyish,” I admitted, wishing like hell I could lie to her, but I’d never been good at it. “It didn’t last long, but yes, I knew about dragons then.”
“And you never told me?” The outrage was stark in her face. Her fingers tightened on my arm. “What the hell, Bee?”
“I couldn’t tell you. Not at first—the Charmer’s League doesn’t allow that in their apprentices, and by the time I was made a full-fledged Charmer, you’d gone off to university.”
“That was years ago,” she argued, then made an effort to control her temper, and said in a tight, level voice, “What about Rowan? Did you tell him?”
I hesitated again, which was the wrong thing to do.
“He knew, too? Did everyone but me know?”
“Of course not, don’t be silly. And for what it’s worth, I didn’t tell Rowan. He… er… he found out by chance one night.”
Her lips were so tight, they were just about nonexistent. “I see. And it didn’t occur to you to tell me once our brother found out?”
“It’s not like that, Aoife. It’s not something we discussed—”
“Never mind.” She was spitting out the words with sharp little barbs aimed right at me. “There’s no sense in hashing over old injuries.”
“I didn’t mean to injure you. I was trying to protect you from the dangers of the Otherworld. I had to keep you out of it, all of the family away from it. If the Otherworld knew about you, all of you could have been used by unscrupulous people to put pressure on me. Don’t you see? I had to protect you and the rest of the family—”
She held up a hand as Aisling and Ysolde approached. “Yeah, heard it, did the time in the nut house because of it. What I really wanted to say was that since you finally broke the curse, you won’t need my ring any longer.”
Instinctively, I clutched my hand, twisting the ring around my finger. “Your ring? You do know it used to belong to a demon lord, right?”
“Used to being the key phrase,” she said acidly, holding out her hand. “It was evidently remade and then given to me. So I’d like it back.”
“What’s this?” Aisling asked, coming to a halt in front of us. She was momentarily distracted when Jim, who had loped off to chase after a couple of Dalmations, suddenly turned and raced back toward us, his black ears flopping in the wind. “What on earth has gotten into him, I wonder? Jim!” She raised her voice and gestured toward the demon. “Slow down or you’ll plow into those people—Oh lord. Excuse me, ladies. I have to go apologize…”
Aisling started off at the same time Aoife tugged at my arm.
“My ring?” she said, her face set in a stubborn expression I knew well.
Reluctantly, and with a heartfelt sigh, I started to pull the ring off my finger. I hated to admit it, but I had become attached to it and really regretted giving it up.
Just as I dropped the ring onto Aoife’s palm, Aisling, who had gotten within range of the people Jim had knocked down, suddenly turned and screamed at us, her hands waving as she dashed toward us.
“What the—” I squinted into the sun to see what was going on.
Ysolde must have had better eyesight than me, because she stiffened and said one word. “Demons!”
“Run,” I said, shoving Aoife toward the entrance to the park. “Go back to your dragon. Don’t just stand there, you idiot, run!”
Ysolde, in the meantime, had run forward a few steps, and was standing with her head down, her hands dancing in the air as she wove magic. Aisling had spun around as well, and was evidently casting grounding wards that stopped three of the five women whom the demon Jim had knocked down in his impression of a hundred-pound furry black bowling ball.
“I am not going to run away and leave everyone else here,” Aoife said stubbornly. I was looking around for s
omething I could use as a weapon, but the park was sadly lacking in swords, two-by-fours, or convenient tree branches.
“You have the ring!” I snarled at her, not wanting to do more damage to our already fragile relationship, but knowing I couldn’t let that ring fall into Bael’s hands.
“Here, you take it. I was being rude in demanding you give it to me—clearly, the ring is happy being with you,” she said, hastily shoving it back at me before bolting past, dipping down to grab a couple of stones from a flowerbed as she ran to where Aisling stood casting ward afterward. Jim was wrestling with one of the demons, while Ysolde was sending out balls of arcane magic that mostly missed everyone.
“I don’t want it!” I yelled after Aoife, and had just slipped it on my finger when a man’s voice spoke behind me.
“I am pleased to hear that, since my master very much does want it.”
I spun around, making an ugly sound when the wrath demon behind me simply slammed his arm across my midsection, driving all the air from my lungs as he scooped me along with him. Four more men behind him strode forward with us, none of them speaking when he gave the order to grab the others.
“They don’t have anything to do with this,” I gasped when I had enough air in my lungs to get my voice back. “Bael would have no use for them.”
“Bael,” the demon holding me snorted. “What care we of him? My master does not fear that has-been.”
My new dragon friends might have been able to hold off four demons, but nine of them was a different matter. It took less than a minute for them to overwhelm everyone, tear open the fabric of being, and drag us all back to Abaddon.
“This is really getting to be old hat,” I said a few minutes later, when the demons dumped us unceremoniously into what appeared to be my old cell. “Although it’s made slightly nicer having company—Ow!”