Kostya muttered something under his breath.
“I would do just that if I thought I could get away with it,” Drake answered, his mouth twisting wryly.
Jim made a whipcrack noise. I glared it into silence before giving Drake’s knee a pat. “You’re learning, sweetie. I’ll make a husband out of you yet. When do we leave?”
He sighed, eyeing me unhappily. “I will allow this on one condition—you do not do anything without my express consent.”
“Deal,” I said, batting my eyelashes at him.
István cleared his throat. Pál grinned. Kostya threw glances heavenward and continued muttering.
“And they said Aisling couldn’t be subtle,” Jim said, shaking its furry head.
“Now that we have that business taken care of, we can turn to the other topic at hand,” I said, returning to my loveseat.
“What subject is that?” Drake asked.
“Him.” I pointed at Kostya. “No one has yet explained to me why everyone says the black dragons are gone, and yet there’s one standing right there. Not to mention why Gabriel was so upset to see him. I know the silver dragons originally came from the black dragons, but they’re a sept in their own right now, so what’s the big deal? Why has Kostya been hiding for the last couple hundred years? Who was holding you guys prisoner? And why did Gabriel say he didn’t like Kostya’s hospitality?”
The man in question zipped over to me in super-dragon speed, causing me to jerk backwards in my chair. He leaned over me in a menacing fashion. “You might have my brother twisted around your fingers, but I will not be so facile. My business is none of your concern.”
“Except when it concerns my sept or my friends,” I answered.
“Kostya, I have told you once that I will not have you threatening Aisling,” Drake said, pulling his brother back. “She has a curiosity that is often greater than her common sense, but she has a legitimate interest in the situation.”
Kostya’s dark eyes glinted dangerously at Drake. “You forget yourself, brother.”
“I forget nothing,” Drake answered, his muscles tense as if he expected a fight. “You would do well to remember that.”
“Would someone open a window? The testosterone in here is stifling,” I said lightly, pushing myself between the two men, giving Drake a little kiss on the chin.
He shot me an outraged look at the gesture.
“We’re all family here,” I answered the look, and gently pushed him back into his chair, seating myself on his lap to keep him down. “Now let’s see if we can do this without all the posturing. How many questions do I get?”
“None,” Kostya growled, turning his back on us as he stared out the window.
Drake’s fire was still running high, but it cooled a little as I stroked his chest. “Three,” he finally said.
“You said three the last time. I want six.”
“Four,” he offered. “But that will be all for the next twenty-four hours.”
“You drive a hard bargain. Four it is.” I leaned back against the arm of the chair, secretly pleased at getting a bonus question. “OK, first off—why was Kostya hiding from the other dragons?”
“The black sept was destroyed by its wyvern,” Drake answered slowly, his fingers making lazy designs on my leg. “Most of the members were killed in the attempt to bring the silver dragons back into the fold. The silver wyvern—this was several centuries before Gabriel was born—swore he would not rest until every last black dragon was destroyed. The few black dragons who survived went into hiding at the death of Baltic. As Kostya was to be the next wyvern, it was decided that he would go into hiding until such time as the black dragons had gathered enough strength to return to the weyr.”
“So the black and silver dragons are warring just like we are with Chuan Ren? Wait! Don’t answer that! It’s not an official question.”
“It is not a war,” Kostya answered, still staring out the window. “What the silver dragons conducted was nothing less than genocide.”
I bit back the comment that it sounded like they had started the whole thing by trying to force the silver dragons back. “That would explain why Gabriel was so hostile when he saw Kostya, but not why he made the reference to not liking the hospitality offered.”
“The aerie was Kostya’s hiding place,” Drake answered.
“That’s a heckuva way to hide yourself, in a prison cell,” Jim said, rolling over so Pál could scratch its tummy.
Kostya’s back twitched.
“The aerie was invaded, and Kostya taken prisoner. When I received word from him that he was no longer safe, I went to rescue him, but we were not prepared for the force that awaited us.”
I could tell by the way Kostya muttered that he wasn’t happy at all about having to call on Drake for help. Somehow, that made me feel better.
“I know I asked you this before, and you said you didn’t know, but you’ve got to have some idea who the dragons were who infiltrated the aerie.”
“I did not know the few I saw,” he answered, his eyes troubled. “They were ouroboros.”
Jim sucked in its breath.
“Ouroboros?” I poked through the dusty drawers of my memory. “Isn’t that a snake eating its own tail?”
“That is a stylized version, yes. In dragon terms, an ouroboros is an outlaw, a dragon who is expelled from or willingly rejects his own sept. They are considered dead by their former sept members…it is from that death that they regain life.”
“That’s why Gabriel said they didn’t belong to any sept.” Things clicked into place, even though there were still a lot of questions to be answered. “OK, question number three—”
“Four,” Drake said. “You asked what an ouroboros was.”
“That wasn’t—argh! Guys?” I turned to Pál and István. “Am I on three or four?”
“Four,” they answered simultaneously.
“Dragons!” I took a deep breath. “Fine. Question number four, not that I’m going to forget this, buster. What is Kostya going to do now?”
Drake’s troubled gaze went to his brother, who refused to turn around. “Alas, that question I cannot answer. I believe his first goal is to establish if there are enough members still living to re-form the sept.”
Kostya turned at that, a smile curving his lips. “I will have my sept, brother, do not fear. I will retake that which was once ours.”
Jim groaned and covered its eyes with its paw.
“That sounded remarkably like a threat,” I said slowly, a little chill forming in my heart. “You’re not thinking of carrying on where your old wyvern left off, are you?”
“I swore that I would not rest until the black sept was whole once again,” he answered, his voice rife with emotion. “And so I will not.”
I shook my head and started to get up. “The silver dragons—”
“Aisling, this is nothing to involve us,” Drake interrupted, pulling me back against his chest.
I twisted around to look at him. “Yes, it is. Gabriel is our friend—I think—possibly—and I’ll be damned if I just sit around while your brother tries to fulfill some madman’s plans.”
Kostya rounded on me. “I did not support Baltic’s actions, but I understood his reasons for taking them. He was not mad…just mistaken in his methods.”
“You call destroying your own people in an attempt to annex another sept the act of a sane man?” I asked.
“Atta girl, Ash,” Jim said.
“They were black dragons once!” Kostya yelled, fire erupting in three different spots in the room. “And with the help of Drake, they will be black dragons again!”
“Cease this!” Drake bellowed, causing me to wince. “We have discussed this enough, Aisling. And you—” He turned his emerald-eyed glare on his brother. “You will remember what I said. The green dragons will not protest your appeal for reinstatement to the weyr…provided you do not start a war.”
“Well, thank god for someone speaking common sense,
” I said, relieved that I wasn’t going to have to try to make Drake see reason.
“I will not stay here to be so abused!” Kostya sent Drake one last glare before exiting the room.
“If I say I think I liked him better when he was imprisoned, would you think I was crazy?” I asked Drake.
“At this moment? No. István, would you make the travel arrangements? Pál, I will leave security of Aisling’s family and the house in your hands.”
“Why is Kostya helping us if you’re not going to help him take over the silver dragons?”
Drake’s jaw tightened. “He foolishly believes he can manipulate me into changing my mind. I do not suffer any compunction at taking his help now, however. He will need our aid later, when it is time for him to rejoin the weyr.”
István finished putting out the fires and toddled off, Pál about to follow him. “Will we be gone long?” he asked.
“No. I hope to be back within a few hours. But her family will be vulnerable until we return.”
My heart warmed at the thought of him taking such good care that no one was harmed. “Uncle Damian is off with one of his army buddies. He said he’d be around if I needed him for bodyguard duty, but I’m sure he’ll be OK puttering around on his own.”
Drake nodded. “It is your stepparents I am more concerned about.”
“What if we got them out of town?” I said, musing over the situation. “We could send them on an overnight trip to somewhere within day-tripping distance.”
“That is what I was thinking. With a suitable guard, of course.”
I smiled. “I kind of figured you were having us shadowed when we went out.”
“They are your family. They must be protected from harm by any untoward attacks from the red dragons,” he answered, turning to Pál. “Aisling will see to it that they are gone for the evening.”
“And I will see to their guards,” Pál said, giving me a little grin before leaving the room.
“Alone at last,” I murmured, pushing Drake back down into a chair.
“Yup. Just you, me, and Drakeykins,” Jim said, settling back on the floor. “You guys going to do it in the chair? Where do your legs go? Isn’t that hard on the back? Not to mention the upholstery…heeeeeeeeeyyy…”
Jim’s voice trailed off as I banished it to the Akasha.
21
“There’s much to be said for wyverns, including their knowledge of people who are willing to portal them at a moment’s notice, but one of the best things is their ability to cushion falling objects,” I said into Drake’s stomach.
He pushed my knee off his face. “You made me bite my tongue.”
“Want me to kiss it and make it all better?” I asked, leering at him as I rolled off his body.
“Sheesh, weren’t you guys going at it when you so cruelly abandoned me to the torments of the Akasha? And you give me a hard time for wanting to call Cecile every day!” Jim grumbled, picking itself up from where it had landed.
“Not that it’s in any way your business, but we didn’t get to ‘go at it,’ as you so crudely put it. We didn’t have time. Paula felt it vitally necessary to unburden herself of yet another lecture about my apparent lack of interest in the wedding planning.”
“Oh. I take back what I said about the Akasha. I’d rather suffer there than have to sit through another one of your stepmom’s tirades.” Jim indulged in a full body shake, then looked up. “Incoming.”
Drake was a blur as he shoved me out of the way just in time. István’s body hit the floor with a heavy whump, Pál following almost immediately, cracking his head on István’s with an audible thunk.
“Ouchie. You guys OK?” I asked as Drake helped me to my feet.
Pál swore in Hungarian. István rubbed his head and staggered to his feet. “Yes. Maybe not. What was question?”
The two men sidestepped handily when a sixth and final form dropped to the floor.
I was less than happy about having Mr. Bossy Pants along, but Drake insisted that to exclude Kostya would create worse feelings than already existed.
Kostya rose to his feet, muttering.
“Are all portals like that?” I asked Drake as I brushed off a bit of dust from his shirt. Drake preferred raw silk shirts, usually dark green, but tonight he was dressed completely in black. “Hey, how did we get turned around? You were holding me when we went through it.”
He shrugged. “Portals are never easy. It is one reason why I wished you would stay home. You could have been harmed.”
“Oh, we’re not going to go into that again.” I straightened my shirt and dusted off the knees to my just-barely-fitting jeans. “You told me yourself that it’s a lot harder for me to be hurt, so a little portalling isn’t going to do either me or the baby any harm.”
“Just remember your promise,” he said, leveling a meaningful look at me before opening the door to peer out.
“Like I could forget it? So where first?” I asked, starting to follow him.
István stopped me, pushing me gently back so he could proceed. “Remember your promise,” he said in his gravelly voice.
I rolled my eyes and made to follow him.
“You stay behind us,” Kostya ordered imperiously, pushing past me.
I stuck out my tongue at his back and turned to consider Pál. “You’re a modern man despite your years. You aren’t going to pull any of that macho protective crap on me, are you?”
He smiled and slipped ahead of me. “You promised,” he reminded me.
My fingers jerked, itching to draw a couple of confinement wards. “Honest to god! As if it’s not bad enough having one mother hen…now I have three!”
“You love it and you know it. So, this is Fiat’s place, huh? Pretty swanky. Drake, I’m thinkin’ you’re going to have to up the stakes a little if you want to beat the competition,” Jim said, snuffling a heavy brocade tablecloth on a glass-topped table.
“Don’t be telling him that,” I said, swatting Jim on the nose. “Our house is perfectly fine. Besides, this place is…too Fiat.”
We stood in a room that was bright and sunny, but cold, as if the air-conditioning had been left on high. I shivered a little as I rubbed my arms, examining the room with curiosity. I’d seen Fiat’s apartment in Paris, but this was his home in Lake Como, and although it was gorgeous, it was lacking in…well, warmth.
Jim wandered over to look out of the window. The room had a high ceiling edged with elaborate moldings. Two crystal chandeliers sparkled in the wintry sunlight shining through tall windows flanked on either side by long, gold drapes. The view revealed a steel gray lake lapping almost to the base of the house. The elegant room was filled with gold and blue furniture.
“You break it, you buy it,” I warned Jim as I stood on tiptoe to see what the guys were doing all clustered together.
Pál held a small black electronic box. He directed it around the room, silently pointing in various directions. The others nodded, taking care to touch nothing.
“Looking for bugs?” I asked Pál in my best espionage voice.
He shook his head. “Alarms. We don’t want to trigger anything.”
Evidently the room was clear of alarms with the exception of the windows. I whispered a command to Jim to not touch anything and silently followed the four men as they opened the door and swept the hallway for signs of a security system. Pál pointed to a small white box perched high on the wall. He pulled out a cell phone–sized gadget, fiddling with it for a minute before setting it on a half-moon table in the hall, nodding to Drake that all was clear.
“What’s that?” I asked Pál as we trailed out of the room.
“It interrupts the camera image.”
“I see you guys went shopping at the James Bond Emporium o’ Spy Stuff,” Jim commented. “I can’t wait to see the exploding breath mints.”
I shushed the demon and gave in to my curiosity by having a good look around. We were upstairs in a pentagon-shaped main hallway, five corridors conver
ging on a sunny spot that had a skylight above. The center was open to the ground floor, flooding the area above and below with light. I had to admit it was very pretty, very elegant…and very lifeless.
We made a cursory examination of the upper-floor rooms. There were security cameras at each of the corridors.
“What are we going to do about them?” I whispered to Drake. “Are you going to scramble them, too?”
He shook his head. “We could disable the cameras, but that is not a viable solution.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“One might go off-line temporarily without causing concern,” he answered. “But more than that would provide a clear signal to anyone watching that someone was in the house. We have another option, although I don’t like it.”
“Why not?”
He nodded to a couple of discreet small, round disks high on each wall. “Smoke detectors. The smoke bombs I’d planned to use will likely set them off before we wish to alert anyone to our presence.”
“Whoever is watching is going to see the smoke anyway—what’s the big deal if the alarms go off?”
“The alarms will do more than bring local firemen. They will likely also summon more dragons. I’d rather we just have to deal with the ones here than cope with additional forces as well.”
“Yeah, but the dragons here will call for help eventually, won’t they?”
He shook his head. “Not if we take care of them quickly enough.”
“Ah. Gotcha.”
The four men gathered to have a confab while I eyed the smoke detectors.
“You’re not thinking what I think you’re thinking, are you?” Jim asked, making squinty eyes at me.
“Will it work?” I asked it.
The demon shook its head. “Yeah.”
“Then why the Negative Nelly business?”
“I hate it when you call me Nelly! And I’m shaking my head because I know you, and something is bound to go wrong.”
“Meh. Don’t be such a pessimist. Sweetie? I’ve got an idea…”
Twelve minutes later, the upper hallway was full of dense, black smoke—demon smoke, the stuff generated by the summoning circle. It was nasty and oily and left a pesky residue on walls and furniture, but it had one beneficial quality—it didn’t set off smoke detectors.