“I will pay. I have some money that Ysolde forced Baltic to give me until I can make my own.”
“And it will take longer. Surely you want the dragon curse broken pronto.”
“A few hours will not matter.”
“The longer we hang around here, the more in danger we are of Asmodeus’s demons seeing us,” she argued. “And if I can put up with being chained to a dragon, then you can just suck it up and go through the portal.”
He raised one eyebrow at that. “You can’t really imagine that they don’t know exactly where we are right now, can you?”
“Of course I can.” She frowned. “Why shouldn’t I?”
“We were allowed to escape,” he said simply.
Bee looked like she wanted to protest that idea. “But—you knocked the demons down so that we could get past them and go through the door.”
“Yes, and when is the last time you saw a dragon take down two wrath demons with one blow to each?”
She opened her mouth, closed it, and opened it again a couple more times before answering. “Well… they were… you took them by surprise… you are pretty buff…”
Constantine shook his head. “We were allowed to escape, Bee. Asmodeus is no fool—he clearly understood the importance of you and I both trying to get a talisman from him. He knows that his ring must be in the possession of dragons, and thus he intends to use us to find it. That is why we have nothing to fear from demons while we are in Seville. It would be folly for them to attack us before we’ve led them to the ring.”
“Ugh. That wouldn’t be good.” Bee thought for a few minutes, then tapped him on the wrist when he straightened up after giving Gary a glass of water. “But it does give us even more reason to take a portal. The company won’t transport demons—they never have, and I can’t see why they’d suddenly start now. This is our chance to get away. We can get the jump on them and make it to Paris before they even know we’re out of town.”
“A plane is fast,” Constantine said stubbornly, but he feared he was losing the battle.
“Also, there’s a chance it can break the shackles.”
“How so?” He looked down at the metal around his ankle. “It is forged by a demon lord. It will not be easy to remove.”
“You melted the bars of the cell I was in,” Bee said, looking thoughtfully at the chain. “Do you think you could break this that way?”
“I can try, but I doubt it would work.” He studied the chain for a moment. “The bars were not forged by Asmodeus. The links in this chain have runes on them, which means that a demon lord most likely made it.”
“It’s worth a try, isn’t it?”
Constantine agreed, and bent down until his head was under the short white-and-blue-checked tablecloth, whereupon he blew fire on the chain held between his hands.
“It is as I thought,” he said, sitting up in his chair again.
“Dammit.” Bee bit her lower lip for a few seconds before saying, “The portal is going to be our best bet. No, hear me out: portals displace time and space, so using one might well knock the shackles right off our legs. Plus, there’s the added bonus that most portalling places refuse to cater to demons, and thus anything demonic like the chain formed in Abaddon wouldn’t be transported.”
“Which might also result in our legs being left behind as well,” Constantine pointed out. “Flying poses no such risk.”
“Look, I’m not some brave superhero woman out to save the world. I’m a simple Charmer, one who came into the trade wholly by accident. I do what I can to help people because that’s what my parents raised me to do—although they had no idea I’d end up unmaking curses, and hanging around people who could be found in a medieval bestiary. All that aside, I’m willing to take the chance with the portal,” Bee said, her chin raised in challenge. “So get with the program, and let’s get this done so that I can do the job I’m being paid to do.”
A muscle twitched in his jaw. He liked his legs, dammit. Both of them. He didn’t want to lose one, but on the other hand, he did wish to be rid of the shackles, and if there was no time to find someone locally who had the ability to do so, then he had little choice. He felt that the potential loss of a leg in addition to the trauma of traveling through a portal qualified him for sainthood.
And that is why, less than an hour later, when he leaped through the swirling oval of nothingness that was confined in a back room of the small portal shop deep in the heart of Seville, he resigned himself to feeling as if his atoms had been smashed flat against an anvil, then exploded into a million bits.
“Anvils,” he groaned when he hit the landing mats on the receiving office in Paris. He rolled to his side, his head spinning, and feeling as if he were covered in barbed wire. “Definitely lots of anvils.”
“What on earth are you babbling about?” Bee suddenly loomed over him looking tidy and not the least bit in disarray, whereas he felt as if he’d been turned inside out and back again. She also appeared to have both of her legs, and no shackles.
He tried to raise himself to see if he did as well.
“Hrn,” he told her and fell back when the room spun and dipped perilously.
Just as he got to his knees, a strange keening noise seemed to come from nowhere, then resolved itself into a joyous “Wheeee!” that resulted with the metal birdcage bursting free of the portal, and smacking him in the kidneys.
“Are you all right?” Bee asked, pausing in the act of helping Constantine to his feet. Both of them, he was relieved to note.
Gary rolled around his cage whooping with laughter. “All right? That was a blast! Can we do it again? What a trip! It was like wham, bang, zippee!”
“Did you notice the shackle is gone, Constantine? I’m so relieved we don’t have to fight with that any longer. Now we can go find the ring and get this job done. No, Gary, you can’t go through the portal again.”
Constantine got to his feet at last. He was missing a shoe, his shirt had turned around so that it was on backward, his hair felt like it was standing on end, and his one bare foot was on fire. He cast a look at where Gary lolled around on the back of his head giggling. “I hate you,” he muttered to the head before jerking his arm from Bee’s grasp, and limped with as much dignity as he could manage from the room, trailing fire with every step.
Five
I assumed that even a spirit dragon would be familiar with the most famous nightclub in all of Europe—at least so far as denizens of the Otherworld went—but I was sadly mistaken.
“What are we doing here?” Constantine silently read the curved text over the door. “Goety and Theurgy.”
“G&T is a club, yes. It’s the club for the Otherworld, and is the home ground of the Venediger—the woman who more or less polices all immortal activity in this area of the world—and is the most neutral meeting place in Europe. All of that is why we are here.”
Constantine glanced around, sending piercing looks up and down the street. It seemed that he didn’t like what he saw because he left me to stroll a few yards down the road to where he subjected an intersection to further scrutiny. This section of Paris had few mortal visitors, despite its appearing to be nothing more than a slightly eccentric neighborhood.
I tried not to notice how the slight breeze rippled Constantine’s shirt against his chest, or how the little hairs on his arms gleamed golden in the late afternoon sun, and how the same gold threads glittered in his shoulder-length mane of hair.
Worse yet, I could still remember the feel of that kiss he had planted on me in Seville. I badly wanted to believe that he had taken me by surprise, and that’s why I’d allowed it to go on as long as it had, but my father had made sure that both Aoife and I knew how to protect ourselves from unwanted advances and, unfortunately, the thought of self-protection hadn’t even entered my mind when Constantine had kissed me.
All I could think about was how hot his mouth was, and how much hotter I wanted him to make me feel. I shook that thought away, and tried to
focus on the here and now.
I spent a few minutes trying hard to not watch him, since he wasn’t a man, but a dragon, the most arrogant, alpha, and annoying of all the races. “And I should know,” I said softly, refusing to let myself dwell on the way his jeans fit (sinfully tight). “It took me three years to wash Ben Fong out of my hair.”
“Who’s Ben Fong?”
I turned at the whisper behind me, and peeked into the cage that I’d set next to the door. “Oh, hello, Gary. I didn’t realize you were awake.”
“I just took a little catnap while you got Constantine set to rights after going through the portal. Are we where we’re supposed to be?” He tried to look past me, but just in case there were any mortals on the street, I dropped the edge of my sweater, which I’d wrapped around his cage.
“Yes, but I’d appreciate it if you’d keep quiet until we’re inside.”
“So, who’s Ben Fong?” he repeated.
I sighed, and with my eyes measuring the width of Constantine’s shoulders, answered dismissively, “Just an old boyfriend.”
“A dragon boyfriend?”
“Yes.”
“Did he kiss you like Constantine did?”
“For heaven’s sake, Gary! That’s none of your business.”
“Maybe not, but I was right there when you and Constantine went at it, and it looked like it was a really good one. You were moaning and squirming against him, so I figured it must have been awfully nice.”
“I did not squirm!”
“Okay, wiggled. Your derriere definitely wiggled with happiness.”
“For the love of—look, it was just a kiss, okay? Unexpected, but nothing more than a little peck.”
Gary heaved a sigh of pure longing. “If Constantine kissed me like he did you, I would have yelled about it from the highest mountain.”
I peered into the cage just long enough to give him a good glare. “I repeat: none of your business. Now pipe down until I uncover you.”
Constantine turned back toward me, a half-frown pulling his golden brown eyebrows together. Just as I refused to notice how nice his butt looked in his jeans, now I told myself that it didn’t matter in the least that the man was built like an Adonis and had the lips of an angel. A sexy angel.
Dragons were trouble, pure and simple.
“I see no demons, but that doesn’t mean they have not followed us here.”
“Yes, but G&T is the one place in Europe where it doesn’t matter if they do know exactly where we are.” I opened the door and stepped into the cool darkness, a handful of memories of my time with Ben threatening to swamp my brain. I refused to let them, just as I refused to acknowledge that Constantine might be just as irritating and arrogant and intolerable as the next dragon, but he was also chivalrous. And honorable. And maddeningly interesting.
Dammit, I was perilously close to going against my no-dragons rule of boyfriends.
“Why do you say that?” he asked, and for a moment, I thought he had read my mind.
“Say what?” I cast my mind back a few seconds. “Oh, that G&T is the one safe spot? Because demons can only enter the premises if they are summoned by someone. And that someone would be under the control of the Venediger while in the club. It’s something to do with the original magic used centuries ago. I’m not quite sure what the original mage who built the place did to it, but it sure works. Hello?” The last word was called out into the darkness. My voice echoed unpleasantly.
“I was told the club had been destroyed,” Constantine said, moving Gary to a stack of wooden packing crates. He glanced around, clearly unimpressed with the interior. “I see that information was accurate.”
“It’s in the process of being rebuilt. Hello? Jovana?” I made my way through a maze of packing crates, chairs wrapped in plastic, and a several pieces of new bar-related equipment stacked against one wall. Overhead, lights dangled by electrical cords, obviously awaiting further installation. The room had a naked, unsettling ambiance heightened by the fact that apparently no one else was present. “I can’t imagine that she’d leave the place unattended. Oh, hello.”
A nondescript middle-aged man hurried from the area that used to hold the back offices of the club. In his hand he held a clipboard, while a cell phone was clamped between his ear and shoulder. “—paid to have the lights properly installed, not just hooked up and dangling, dangling they are from the ceiling. No, you’ll finish them today. I don’t care if you have other work—” The man stopped when he saw us, his eyes widening when Constantine, who had been peeling my sweater off of Gary’s cage, stepped forward. “Dragons! Oh dear, the Venediger won’t be happy about that, no she won’t, she won’t be happy about that at all. What? No, next week will not suffice. You will finish installing the lights today, or a blight will descend upon your testes. Do you hear me? It will descend with all due vengeance. Good day.”
Constantine stood with his hands on his hips, eyeing the other man. “Who is this?”
“Jovana’s assistant. Um… Willem?” I said, trying to remember the name. I’d seen him around, but never had occasion to speak with him.
“Guillaume,” the man corrected, shooting little worried looks toward Constantine. It wasn’t that the latter was so much bigger or more physically intimidating that clearly concerned Guillaume; I suspected it was an almost indescribable sense of coiled power that seemed as natural to Constantine as breathing. “Mistress Jovana will not be pleased to know that you have brought a dragon to the premises without her permission.”
“It’s the only place we could go. Constantine—oh, let me introduce you. This is Constantine Norka. He used to be a member of—”
“Wyvern,” Constantine interrupted. “Wyvern of the silver dragons. Until I died. Now another is wyvern in my place. Unless I decide otherwise.”
Wisely, Guillaume chose not to reply. Instead, he gestured toward me with the clipboard. “Indeed. I see, indeed I do see. You must be here for the item. It was left in the mistress’s safe only this morning, very early in the morning, far too early in the morning for our happiness, but that is the way of some people, is it not? As it is, we were told that we’d be notified before it was called for.”
“Item?” I rubbed my forehead where a slight headache was forming. “What item is that?”
“The ring, of course.” Guillaume gave Constantine one last look, then turned and started back the way he’d come. “What could it be but the ring? I ask you, could it be anything else? If you will accompany me to the safe, I’ll have you sign the register, and you may then take the item away.”
“You have the ring here? Aoife gave it to you?” I shook my head, not understanding what was going on. “She wouldn’t do that. She swore up and down she’d only release the ring to me when it was time to break the curse, and not a moment before.”
Constantine spun around on his heel, and marched over to the door. There he began hefting wooden crates and setting them down smack-dab in front of the door.
“Nonetheless, it was she who brought the item to be placed in the safe. They said it was the safest spot since their location had been compromised as you were no doubt tortured while being imprisoned in Abaddon.” Guillaume’s pale hazel eyes were dispassionate, leaving me with the impression of a man who was not at all interested in us or our plan. “It must have been unpleasant to be tortured while imprisoned in Abaddon, so one could not blame you for saying all that you knew about the item, one could not blame you in the least. I, myself, have a low tolerance to pain. What is the dragon doing?”
I glanced over my shoulder at where Constantine was making a pyramid of crates. “Looks like he’s blocking the door, which is understandable given what you have in your safe, although not in the least bit necessary due to the enchantments wrapped around the club itself.”
Guillaume was clearly unimpressed. “If you will come this way, I will give the item to you, and we will have fulfilled our obligation to the dragons. The Venediger will be most happy, exceptional
ly happy. We are not overly fond of dragonkin.”
“Ah, but I’m not a dragon,” I pointed out, and handed Gary’s cage to Constantine when he had finished moving the last crates into place.
“Woot!” Gary said, obviously excited when Constantine put him at the apex of the stack. “I’ll be your guard, okay? I can yell out if the door is forced open. And I’ll bite anyone who tries to get past me, just see if I don’t.”
Constantine made a noncommittal noise, pausing when Gary asked, “Hey, do you have any tunes?”
“Tunes?”
“You know, music? Guard duty gets kind of boring when there’s nothing to do but stare at a door.”
“There is music on my phone,” Constantine said, and set his phone up so that it leaned against the cage, turning on a curated music program before returning to my side. “The door has been made fast. Let us conduct the ceremony quickly, before the demons realize that the ring is here.” He took my elbow, and hustled me past Guillaume toward the door leading to the back part of the building.
“Wait just a minute!” I tried to stop, but Constantine was like a rolling stone, and had no intention of giving me a little time to assess the situation. “Who says we’re going to charm the curse right now? It’s not a simple matter of saying a few words, and hey, presto, it’s gone. A curse is a physical manifestation of magic. I have to unravel it to break it and, depending on how intricate it is, that will take some time. I’ll want to study the curse for a while to see how best to tackle it. Here’s how I see this going down: I’ll do some research on other dragons who were cursed, and how they broke it, and then we’ll get Kostya and my sister Aoife, and the other dragons who are around, and once I’ve studied the curse’s physical form, then we’ll have the formal ceremony where I—”
“We will do it now. It will work. You are a famous Charmer,” Constantine said matter-of-factly, pushing me through the door. “I am confident that you will break the curse without the slightest trouble.”