“Trust has nothing to do with it,” he said as I pushed myself back and accepted the handful of tissues he swiped from a nearby table. “What I’ve seen of these dragons, they’re a rowdy bunch. Someone could make no end of trouble if Drake treated you as if you were still his second-in-command.”
“Not the green dragons. They’re very supportive of him, and aren’t like that at all.”
“Oh?” His look was level and so pointed, it could skewer cement. “So it wasn’t one of the green dragons that tried to overthrow him last month?”
I hesitated. “All right, point taken. But to exclude me now—it hurts!”
“Have you been involved in his business the last month?” he asked.
“I…well, not really. I was busy with the wedding, and trying to deal with the situation in Paris, and taking care of the demon lord stuff that my steward kept tossing at me. Then there was shopping and decorating for the holidays, and…well, there hasn’t been any sept business for me to be excluded from.”
“Businesses don’t shut down just like that,” he said with a dark look. “I can’t imagine something so complicated as these dragon septs appear to be would, either.”
“Which means he’s been excluding me all along,” I said, wanting to cry again.
Uncle Damian crossed his arms and gave me a stern, unyielding, wholly unsympathetic look. For some odd reason, it made me feel immensely better. “Buck up, woman! You just took a hard left to the gut, but I trained you better than this.”
“I’m pregnant,” I said, sniffling as I wiped up the last of my messy tears. “I’m allowed to be emotional.”
“You’re not allowed to be an idiot, and that’s the path you’re heading down if you don’t stop right now. I trained you to be a smart, savvy woman who could handle herself in any situation. Now let’s see the last of this pitiful creature, and more of the Aisling I know you can be.”
He was right. I straightened my shoulders, lifting my chin as I sniffled my last sniffle. Drake wasn’t excluding me because he wanted to—he’d always been proud of me as his mate, demanding I be at his side for everything. I was just giving in to my hormones, and that wasn’t going to help anyone. If I wanted things to change, I’d have to see to it myself. “You’re absolutely right. Dammit, I am a Guardian. I am a wyvern’s mate—we won’t go into whose right now because that’s all screwed up—but I am still a wyvern’s mate, and that’s important.”
Righteous indignation filled me, but it was a cleansing, energizing emotion.
“That’s better,” Uncle Damian nodded as I stormed over to the window and flung back the curtain.
“And I am a demon lord, one of the seven princes of Abaddon!” I yelled, spinning around to face him, shaking my fist to the ceiling. “As god is my witness, I’ll never go hungry again!”
“Eh…” Uncle Damian pursed his lips.
“Sorry. Got carried away with the moment. Jim, Traci! I summon thee!”
Both demons appeared before me just as Rene cracked open the door and peered in.
“Is everything all right? We heard yelling.”
“Come in and join the fun,” I said as he slowly came into the room, Nora on his heels. “Everything’s crap right now, but it’s about to get a whole lot better. I’m tired of the world spitting in my face! If people, dragons, demons, whatever else want to mess with me, if they think they have me cowed, they have another thing coming.”
Jim whistled, eyeing my uncle with obvious admiration. “I don’t know what you said to her, but you win my uncle-of-the-year vote. Look out, world, Aisling is back!”
“We’re going to start at the top and work down the list,” I said loudly, slamming my hand flat on the table. “Bastian will get my help when he needs it. Next up is the homage to Bael, and the proscription. I think two birds with one stone will suit us there. Traci, take an e-mail!”
“Take a what?” the demon asked, looking startled.
“E-mail.”
“My lord? If you wish to send a message, tradition dictates it be done via written document, sealed with blood, and sent by hand.”
“Yeah, well, I’m the demon lord who owns a software company, remember? We’ll use e-mail to contact every single one of my minions, all the demons in every legion. And the other demon lords—Bael excepted.”
“But that’s…that’s over a hundred thousand demons in your legions alone,” Traci said, gasping slightly.
“You can copy and paste,” I said kindly. “Tell my minions to wrap up the business concerns of the software company and to prepare for banishment to the Akasha.”
“What?” shrieked Traci.
Jim’s eyes widened. Rene looked as surprised as Nora. Uncle Damian almost cracked a smile.
“Then I want you to e-mail the other five demon lord princes—but not Bael—and tell them I want to meet with them to discuss the future of Abaddon.”
“The future…” Traci’s hand clutched its chest, as if it was having trouble breathing. It cleared its throat a couple of times before it continued. “What exactly do you wish me to tell the other lords?”
I smiled at my uncle. He nodded curtly. “Tell them I intend to overthrow Bael and take control of Abaddon myself.”
A loud whump! echoed around the room as Traci fainted dead away.
18
“This is insane, you know that, right? I think the dark power has warped your sense of what’s smart and what’s incredibly stupid.”
“On the contrary, I’m being proactive and taking charge of things, dammit. You like it when I do that,” I told Jim.
“I don’t like it when you go stomping off to prove something, and we end up in seriously hot water.”
“I always get you out before you actually boil.”
“Not always,” it answered, looking pointedly at its feet.
“Will you stop with the toes? You have enough of them left.”
“I am just surprised that Drake let you go,” Nora said as we approached our goal. “He has certainly changed since I have seen him last if he’s allowing you to meet with other dragons without him.”
“Oh, he hasn’t changed. He’s worse if anything, because of the baby. But he knows I’m protected.”
Her eyes shone brightly behind her glasses.
I grinned at her. “And there’s the fact that he is making me check in every half hour, in case something goes wrong.”
“A half hour? I’m amazed he let you get away with that long,” she answered.
“It started out at five minutes. We negotiated down to half an hour, but I only got that concession because he knows I won’t be alone.”
“I just hope you know what you’re doing coming here,” Jim warned.
“I think we’ll be all right. Fiat isn’t stupid—he has to know Drake is keeping a close eye on me, and besides, I’ve got a Guardian extraordinaire with me,” I answered, patting it on its head before pointing down the block to where a sign hung announcing a pub named Wyvern’s Nest. “There it is.”
Nora smiled. “Technically I’m only supposed to be helping you with the proscription situation, but in this case, what the Guild doesn’t know won’t hurt it. Although…Aisling, I have to say, I’m not certain that your plan in regard to Abaddon will go as you hope.”
“There’s no other option as far as I can see—I’ve got to make Bael realize that I’m going to be far more trouble than I’m worth without him actually wiping me off the face of the earth. So. What do we think?” I asked, as we stopped outside the pub. I tried to peer into the windows to see what was inside, but the interior was too dark.
“The word ‘doomed’ comes to mind,” Jim said, pouting just a little. “Also ‘scary’ and ‘feed the demon before it ruins this magnificent form.’ And lastly, ‘what are you thinking walking into such an obvious setup?’ but I expect you’re going to ignore that last bit.”
“Wrong. I’m going to ignore all of it.”
Jim sighed heavily as it shuffled forward
to the door. “I’m gonna lose more toes, I just know it.”
“Gah!” I yelled at it. “One more mention, just one more mention of your toes, and I’ll see to it you don’t have any left to complain about!”
“See?” it asked Nora. “She’s all evil and stuff. She never used to be that way. The dark power is warping her brain.”
Nora stifled a smile and asked me, “What exactly do you expect will happen here?”
“Despite what Jim thinks, I’m well aware that it’s likely to be a trap of some sort,” I said cheerfully as I entered the pub, taking a quick look around its interior.
“Ah. A trap. Sounds fun,” she said, looking brightly around the room.
Rene sidled up to me from where he’d been sitting at the counter, his furtive manner so pronounced it attracted the attention of everyone sitting nearby. “I have scooped out the pub. It is clean.”
I stifled the urge to giggle at his attempts both at subterfuge and idiom, instead nodding gravely and thanking him. “Where’s Uncle Damian, by the way?”
“I do not know,” Rene answered, a little frown pulling down his brow. “We split up before entering the pub. He asked me to check the rear of the building before we entered. I did that, but by the time I came into the pub, he was nowhere to be seen.”
“Hmm. He’s probably hiding somewhere, being all stealthy and stuff. He lives for that sort of thing.” I allowed my purse to fall, turning around quickly to fuss with it for a minute while covertly surveying the room. It was a typical pub in most respects, with the usual arrangements of small round tables scattered around the bulk of the floor, the walls lined with tables and wooden settles, a jukebox, low timbered ceiling, various glowing neon liquor signs…and there wasn’t a single visible human in it except for Nora and me. “At least we were right about this having something to do with the blue dragons.”
“Yes, but which dragon is it who summoned you? Fiat or Bastian?” Rene asked.
“We’re prepared for the worst, and we’ll hope for the best. Jim, I don’t suppose it’s much good asking you if you sense any danger?”
“Oh, yeah, serious danger,” it answered, watching a dragon walk past bearing a couple of glasses and a plate of appetizers. “As in, I’m in serious danger of starving to death unless you order something to eat.”
I stepped forward and everyone in the pub turned into statues. “Hello. I expect some of you know who I am.”
The publican was a dark-haired dragon with the most startling blue eyes I’d ever seen, framed with thick, lush black lashes. He set down a glass in front of a waiting dragon and inclined his head. “You are the pretender.”
I cleared my throat. “The pretender? As in, pretending to be a blue dragon?”
He nodded.
“Ah. Well, that’s a bit of a long story, but the upshot is that as nice as you guys are, I’m not Fiat’s mate by choice. You are aware of that, aren’t you?” I asked, suddenly worried that the blue dragons might think I was slighting them without any due cause.
A woman emerged from a back room, her resemblance to the first dragon marking her as some sort of a relation. A look of dislike swept over her face as she recognized me.
“What are you doing here?” she growled, setting a wooden crate on the counter.
“Marta,” the man said, putting his hand on her arm as if to stop her from vaulting over the bar. “It is not wise. You do not wish to anger him.”
She spat out a word that I had no difficulty translating, although I thought it best to overlook it. “I do not fear Fiat. And I will not treat his whore with respect.”
“Whoa now,” I said, recoiling from the venom in her voice. “I had a feeling you guys weren’t happy about me being in the position of mate to your wyvern, but as you must all know, I am only here because he tricked Drake and me. I dislike Fiat more than I can politely express, and I certainly am not having any sort of illicit relations with him—”
“Cara! What a pleasant surprise. You did not tell me you were coming to visit.” Fiat’s voice cut across mine, the man himself oiling his way out of an all-but-invisible door set into the far wall of the pub.
He tried to take my hands, no doubt to kiss them. I put them on my hips instead, and leveled a glare at him. “I thought it might be you. The next time you want to see me, I’d appreciate it if you could leave your name and the nature of the event, so I know whether to bring Drake, or my über–protection team.”
Fiat’s gaze moved from me to Rene and Nora before returning accompanied with a brittle smile. “Cara, you abuse me for no purpose. I did not request your presence here today, if that is what you are implying.”
“You didn’t?” I looked around the room, as if the answer would be found in one of the closed, hostile faces that watched me so closely. “Well, there’s obviously been some sort of a mix-up. I’m sorry to bother you.”
“As if I could find your so-charming presence a bother,” he said, snagging one of my hands and pressing a wet kiss to my wrist.
The woman behind the bar exploded in a fury of Italian. I leaned toward Rene and murmured, “I get the feeling she doesn’t like me.”
His eyes were round as he watched her evidently chastise Fiat. “This woman, she is most brave. I cannot imagine someone speaking to a wyvern the way she does. It is most hot.”
Fiat evidently thought so, too, because he listened to her for about ten seconds, then slapped her so hard, her head snapped back.
“Hey!” I yelled, leaping forward.
Rene grabbed my arm as I raised it to draw a ward on Fiat. “Aisling, that is not wise, either,” he said in a low tone.
Fiat’s eyes spat blue anger at me as he spun around to face me. “You dare raise your hand to me, mate?”
“I do not tolerate abuse of women, in any form,” I snapped, shaking off Rene to stalk forward. “I don’t happen to be horribly fond of this woman, but I will not allow you to smack her around in front of me.”
“You challenge me in front of my people?” he asked, stepping closer so that we stood toe-to-toe, the threat very evident in his voice and body language.
“No, I do not challenge you,” I said, trying to keep a hold on my temper. That was a lie, of course—I wanted nothing more than to smite him where he stood.
Oh, a smiting. I haven’t done that in a long, long time. You know, it really is your duty to protect those weaker than you. You owe it to this poor, innocent woman to teach Fiat a lesson.
“I don’t want to belittle you in front of your dragons, but I will not stand by while you beat up someone who can’t strike back,” I said as evenly as possible.
“Do not mistake my tolerance of your past insolence as a given,” he answered, leaning forward, his voice low and so mean it raised the hairs on the back of my neck.
I took a step closer. “As long as we’re into the warnings, let me remind you who I am and what I control. I may look like a squishy little Guardian, but I assure you I am as badass as they come.”
“Oui,” Rene said, taking up a position on my left. “As am I.”
“I’m not bad…er…ass, but like Aisling, I will not stand by and watch someone being abused by you,” Nora said, moving into a flanking position on my right.
My heart warmed with the show of support.
Oh, give me a break!
“It’s a weak man who has to prey on those weaker than himself,” Uncle Damian said as he emerged from the shadowed hallway that led to the bathrooms. He took up a position behind me. I flashed him a grateful smile.
“You mess with Team Aisling, you’re going to be kissing the pavement,” Jim snarled, showing its teeth as it marched over to stand in front of me.
“You dare? No one threatens me!” Fiat yelled, causing me to stumble backwards into my uncle. He righted me, keeping a warning hand on my arm.
He didn’t need to hold me back—Fiat’s face was suffused with anger, his eyes blazing as he suddenly leaped to the top of the bar. “You will not speak to m
e in such a manner! I am wyvern here, and you will show respect to me at all times! Kneel before me, Aisling Grey.”
“Oh, that is so not happening,” I told him, my arms crossed as I tried to decide if I needed to call in Drake or not. On the whole, I thought not. Uncle Damian and Rene were pretty intimidating.
“Still bullying women, eh, Fiat? I see you haven’t changed, not that I had any hope you would,” a voice said from the door. Fiat’s head snapped around, his shock at seeing the man standing there apparent for a fraction of a second before he turned to me and yelled something extremely unflattering.
“Cazzo! You did this!” he screamed. “You will pay for such treachery!”
A fireball hot enough to melt steel blasted me. Rene yelped and leaped to the side. Nora screamed as the fire engulfed her where she stood next to me. I hurled myself on her, throwing her to the ground and covering her with my body in order to protect her from Fiat’s fury.
“Stop it!” Bastian bellowed, marching into the room with three dragons in close formation behind him, pulling Fiat’s attention to himself. “This will stop now! Aisling is not to blame—it was inevitable that I face you again.”
The conflagration eased up on me, but judging by the sound of breaking glass, I suspected Bastian’s ploy at invoking Fiat’s wrath had worked.
“I am the wyvern here. You do not give me orders!” Fiat shrieked before erupting into violent Italian. The dragons in the bar were apparently frozen at the scene being enacted before them, all of them watching with shocked faces.
Clearly, there wasn’t going to be any help from them. “Uncle Damian, call an aid unit,” I yelled as I slid off Nora, hurriedly checking her over for injuries.
“I’m all right, I’m not hurt,” she said quickly, crawling backwards as the flames burning the floor crept toward us. “Just a little singed around the edges.”
“Are you sure?” I asked, helping her up. Uncle Damian, thankfully protected by being behind me, had escaped any injury. He checked Nora over quickly before giving a curt nod.
“No injuries, although that coat won’t be the same. Don’t these places have fire sprinklers?”