“Others? What others? More ouroboros dragons?” Suddenly remembering he’d been battling them, I checked him quickly for injuries. Fortunately, he had none.
“No, we destroyed or chased off those who were left.” His voice was rich with satisfaction, and I had a startling memory of just how annoyed I used to be over his love for the opportunity to battle. It didn’t matter who was his opponent; he just loved to fight.
“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” I said, poking my finger into his chest. “Don’t you deny it! I can see how much fun you’re having. You always loved to fight with people! I used to beg you not to, but you were never happier than when someone you could beat up wandered near Dauva. You’re incorrigible, do you know that? I bet you even found a sword to use while you dealt with the ouroboros dragons, didn’t you?”
“Where would I find a sword?” he asked, his voice suddenly persuasive as he held up his hands to show they were empty. “Chérie, you are overset. You must calm yourself and lead our son to safety while I distract the attackers.”
“Baltic, you left your sword upstairs,” Pavel said somewhat breathlessly as he thumped down the stairs, two swords in his hands. “You will want it, yes?”
I glared at the love of my multiple lives.
“Two of the ouroboros had them,” Baltic said, not meeting my eye. “Go with the half dragon, mate.”
“My name is Maura. Maura Lo. You can even call me Mo if you like, although no one but my mother calls me that.”
“Mo Lo?” Savian asked, his lips twitching.
“You do, and I’ll deck you,” she said, shaking a fist at him and jerking her handcuffed arm again.
I poked Baltic a second time. “If you think I’m going to leave you here to face at least a hundred negrets armed with nothing but a sword, you can think again.”
A metallic clang sounded from the gate. Baltic shoved Brom and me toward Maura, before he snatched the sword from Pavel, and raced toward the gate. “Go!” he yelled over his shoulder as he shifted into dragon form, the rosy morning light burnishing the white scales that covered his body.
I didn’t argue. I wanted to stay and help him, but he was right—I had to get Brom to safety first. I took Brom’s hand and ran after Maura and Savian.
“This way,” Maura cried as they dashed around the side of the tower. “The bolt-hole is in the chapel’s crypt.”
Out of nowhere, two blue dragons in their respective dragon forms burst from the chapel, snarling various obscenities.
Maura yelled something at them when one of them raised a gun toward us. The dragon hesitated, which was his undoing. Before he could blink, Savian and Maura were on them, Savian handily disarming the gun-toting dragon, before knocking him senseless with a swift move that had me more than a little envious. Maura, naturally, had to move with Savian, but she took me by surprise when she leaped on the second dragon, somewhat hampered by being tethered to Savian. Her surprise attack took the second dragon off guard enough that before he could do more than slash through the air with his tail and splash a little dragon fire around, he was on the ground, bleeding and unconscious, but alive.
“That felt good,” Maura said, sucking her knuckles after grinning at Savian.
“Friends of yours?” he asked with an answering grin.
“Hardly. This way.”
We ducked to avoid the low lintel of the chapel, the cool, musty air inside making my nose wrinkle with the need to sneeze.
“The crypt isn’t big—really, I think it was just put there simply to disguise the secret exit—but finding the right bit of stone to push can be tricky if you don’t know the pattern.”
The chapel was obviously not used much by Thala’s dragons; it was full of rubble, with bits of broken masonry, antique painted statues of various saints, and carved reliefs piled up on one side. Two arched windows let in some of the morning light, but it had a hard time fighting its way through the general air of abandonment.
“There,” Maura said, climbing over a stone altar and pointing. We scrambled after her, peering down at stairs cut into the stone that faded into blackness. “Watch your step—some of the stairs are broken.”
“I’ll go first,” Savian said, pulling out a penlight from an inner pocket. “Ysolde?”
“Right behind you.” I pushed Brom in front of me, my hands on his shoulders as he followed Savian and Maura. Before taking a step into the black maw of the crypt, I glanced over my shoulder, but the two dragons were still flaked out on the ground. “Careful of the steps, lovey.”
Brom made a noise of profound disgust and disappeared into the darkness. I followed, clutching the rough stone wall as I picked my way down the uneven steps. A few of them were partially crumbled into nothing, but after a few tense minutes, we were all on the floor of the crypt.
“There are four tombs down here.” Maura’s voice echoed eerily in the darkness. “The first three are genuine. The fourth one isn’t. To the left, Bart.”
“Bartholomew. As in Savian Bartholomew, Mo Lo.”
I could hear Maura sigh even from the foot of the stairs. “I’m so going to regret ever opening my mouth,” she muttered before stopping in front of a large stone tomb.
Savian flicked his light over it, casting into faint relief markings typical of Romanesque design, mostly battle scenes, but some domestic carvings as well, including one of three men involved in an act that looked quite inappropriate for a chapel. “This dog here, this is the first piece. Press the stone and you should feel it click. Then over to the north side, do the same to the snake that’s about to seduce Eve. The third is the knights fighting—you press the charger’s rear flank. And last, you go back to the stone dog and press it again.”
As she suited action to word, the stone gave a loud click. Maura leaned down and shoved, the entire top half of the tomb grinding to the side to reveal a short drop down to an earth and stone passage.
“Cool!” Brom said, peering down into the tunnel.
“Voilà, the bolt-hole. Take the right branch in the tunnel, and it will lead you to an exit about half a mile below the castillo. You can’t miss it. Now, unlock this damned thing so I can go do what I have to do.” Maura held out her arm to Savian.
“We certainly won’t miss the turn, because you’re coming with us,” Savian said grimly, pulling her after him as he entered the tunnel.
“No! I said I’d help you get the boy out, and I’ve done that. But I can’t leave! Thala will—”
“I really don’t give a damn what Thala thinks,” I said, swearing to myself as I stumbled over a root, stubbing my toe in the process. I grasped the back of Brom’s T-shirt, feeling blinder than blind as we crept along the tunnel.
“You don’t understand! I can’t leave—” Maura’s protest came to an abrupt halt when Savian, with a muttered oath, leaned down and flung her over his shoulder.
The next ten minutes were fraught with irritation, mostly due to Maura’s complaining loudly about Savian’s actions, antecedents, and at one point, the fact that he was holding her leg in a manner he should be ashamed of in front of a small child.
“Really,” I told Savian when he at last set her on her feet, sputtering threats and vague promises of death and destruction, “I think she has a point about the handcuffs. She’s done what we asked. You can let her go.”
“Just as soon as I know you’re safe,” he answered, patting his pocket, a slightly panicked look coming across his face. I pushed past him, shoved aside the overgrowth of aptenio, a persistent ground covering plant found everywhere in this part of Spain, and emerged into the full morning sun.
A small clutch of four negrets that were ripping something furry to shreds looked up, staring in surprise at me, blood and bits of fur smeared across their mouths. Beyond them, the hillside was covered with small figures, slowly making their way up the slopes to the fortress.
“Holy—” I spun around and shoved Savian and Maura back into the tunnel, yelling at the same time, “Get back to
the crypt! We’ve got to close it off! Brom, run!”
Gareth may have been Brom’s biological father, but, luckily, my genes appeared to be stronger in him, at least so far as his intelligence went. He didn’t say a word; he just turned on his heel and ran. Savian stopped muttering to himself, took one look at the pack of negrets ripping through the aptenio to get to us, and, grasping Maura’s hand, ran after us.
The negrets caught up just as Savian and Maura were bolting up the stairs. Brom and I were already at the stone tomb, leaning into it, ready to shove it closed just as soon as they cleared the entrance, but even as Maura emerged, she was jerked backward when the negrets flung themselves on Savian with high, piercing cries.
“Candles!” Savian yelled as he struggled to beat them off himself. “They turn to metal when touched by fire!”
“You don’t need candles when you have me.” Shifting into dragon form, Maura lit up the tunnel with a blast of dragon fire that caught the frozen expressions of four extremely startled negrets before it dissolved into nothing.
Four metallic thumps could be heard, followed shortly by Savian yelling about his clothing being on fire. By the time we got him up the stairs, his head and face were black, his shirt both shredded by the negrets and burned by the dragon fire, and blood was welling across his back and chest where their sharp little claws had struck home.
He helped us heave the stone tomb across the opening, all of us slumping on it when it clicked into place.
“Is there any way to open it from the tunnel?” I asked Maura.
She shook her head and blew on a bit of Savian’s hair that was still smoking. “Not that I’ve ever found, and Thala had us make a comprehensive examination of it.”
We looked from the tomb to the stairs to the chapel.
“Which means we’re trapped in the castillo,” I said, closing my eyes for a moment and wishing I were a thousand miles away.
Brom’s eyes lit up. “Cool! I’ll go make some bombs. I wonder if there’s any gas around. I heard about this thing called a Moscow cocktail, and I bet I could make some of them, too.”
“Molotov cocktail,” I corrected him wearily, rubbing my temples where a headache blossomed. It was shaping up to be a very long day.
Chapter Eight
“Fire in the hole!”
The cry forced some of the negrets swarming the metal gate at the entrance of the castillo to look upward. Savian leaned out through a murder hole cut into the stone curtain that surrounded the inner keep buildings.
“Take that, you murderous little bastards,” he added, lighting the piece of cloth that was wedged into the top of a glass beer bottle.
“Niiice,” Maura drawled, trying to peer over his shoulder.
“You’d say the same thing if they tried to eat your face, too,” he snapped.
“Hrmph.”
“I can’t see,” Brom complained. I stood on tiptoe to peer over the edge of the curtain wall, watching as the explosive shattered on the rocks behind the main group of negrets, immediately turning into a wave of fire. A few screams and metallic clangs followed.
“You don’t need to see. It’s enough I let you make bombs, which is probably something that will keep me from ever being on any Mother of the Year list, but this is an emergency.”
“You said the negrets don’t burn up. You said they don’t have guts coming out or anything like that. Why can’t I watch them turn into metal?”
“Because you’re only nine years old, and even I have some limits.” I gave him a gimlet eye, which effectively shut up his complaints. At least for the moment.
“Yippie ki-yay, mothersuckers,” Savian yelled down to the negrets, a third of which were now directly under the murder hole, trying to climb the stone wall. He lit another Molotov cocktail and tossed it out the opening.
“Savian!” I gasped at the same time Maura whomped him on the arm.
“I said suckers, not…er…I made it PG,” he told me with a cock of his head toward Brom.
“It’s a very fine line, nonetheless.”
“Some people,” Maura muttered.
“I could do without comments from the peanut gallery,” he told her before turning to me. “Sorry, Ysolde. Will be more careful. How’s my aim?”
“You’re out about ten feet too far,” Maura answered as I tried to look. “No, to the left. Lordisa, man, your other left.”
“It’s not easy doing this handcuffed,” he snarled, giving her a glare.
“Then take them off!” she retorted.
“I will when Baltic says we’re done with you.” The words emerged as if he were grinding them through his teeth.
“I swear, if you two make me pull this fortress over, you’ll be sorry,” I said, giving them both a mom-look that should have scared ten years off their lives.
“Sorry,” Savian said immediately.
“He started it by handcuffing me to him,” Maura said, but subsided when I leveled another look at her.
“You’re still a little outside the main group, Savian. If you can drop one right at the foot of the gate, I bet it would get at least half of them.”
“I can’t lean out that far,” he said, on his knees before the murder hole, his body twisted to the side as he stuck his head out of it. “The hole isn’t big enough. I have to do this at an angle as is, and even then, only one shoulder will fit through it. I think I can stretch a little bit farther, but—Christ!”
“What’s wrong?” I asked as he pulled himself back onto the walkway that ran the length of the curtain wall.
“The negrets. They’re making a pyramid right beneath the murder hole.”
I clutched the stones and stuck my head out to see for myself. About six feet below me, the topmost negret grimaced as another one climbed to stand on his shoulders. “Sins of the saints!”
The negret leaped at me, its claws narrowly missing my face as Savian jerked me backward.
“Be more careful,” he scolded, turning to yell down to the inner bailey. “Baltic! We’re about to have visitors!”
“Where?” Baltic bellowed back, pausing in the middle of shoving a jeep up against the gate.
“Murder hole.” Savian turned back to me. “Ysolde, you and Brom had better get off the wall. I’ll stay here with Her Royal Highness and light up the little devils as they come in.”
“I am not a princess! Stop calling me that!” Maura said, whomping him again.
“They can’t get in the murder hole,” I told him. “It’s too small.”
As I spoke, two little hands reached through the murder hole and gripped the sides before a brown head popped into view. The negret stared at me for a second, then bared its sharp teeth and lunged, getting its entire torso through the hole.
Savian swore and pulled me backward, pushing Brom and Maura back with his other hand. The negret cursed in what I assumed was its own language, apparently stuck, twisting and turning and struggling to get through the hole. Just as I was about to point out to Savian that even beings as small as the negrets couldn’t get through the murder hole, it managed to pull itself through, falling in a heap on the stone walkway.
“Go!” I yelled at Brom, shoving him toward the stairs before pausing to pick up one of the crates loaded with bottles. It had taken the four of us—Brom, Savian, Maura, and me—to manufacture the three dozen Molotov cocktails, and I didn’t want to leave them where the negrets could get them.
Savian, in the meantime, took advantage of the negret’s moment of inattention to pick it up and attempt to stuff it back through the murder hole. He was hampered not only by the negret’s objecting to such treatment, but also by another negret’s attempting to claw its way through the hole to us. I snatched up one of the bottles, lit the rag hanging limply out of it, and said loudly, “Drop him, Savian.”
“Get away while you can,” he answered, grunting in pain as the negret twisted on itself and bit his hand.
“Drop him!” I yelled just as Maura shifted into dragon form.
Savian glanced over his shoulder at us, and dropped the negret, sprinting toward me, one arm around my waist as he took the bottle and heaved it at the two negrets. They both shrieked as Maura’s fire and the bomb exploded around them.
“Go to Baltic,” Savian ordered, grabbing Maura when she returned to human form.
I shrugged off his arm and raced back to grab one of the two crates. “I’m not going to leave you two here with them by yourselves!”
“I’m responsible for your safety, and I say you get down!” he bellowed.
“In your dreams,” I started to say, but was suddenly lifted off the ground from behind, and set down onto the stairs. I glared up at Baltic when his voice rumbled over my head. “Do as the thief-taker says, Ysolde.”
“We agreed that the bombs were my job.”
“Do not even think to argue with me,” he said, then spun around as the now-metal negret that had been in the process of crawling through the murder hole hit the ground, another of its brethren in the process of wriggling into the keep. Baltic planted his feet in a battle stance, spun his sword in his hand, and ordered Savian to stand out of the way.
“We’ll go to the other side,” I told Savian and Maura as Pavel rushed past me on the stairs, his sword in hand, his eyes—like Baltic’s—alight with pleasure. “There’s a murder hole on the south side of the gate, too.”
“All right, but if I say stay back, you stay back.”
“Are you sure you’re not a dragon?” Maura said, puffing a little as we ran down the stairs, our arms laden with the crates. “You’re sure arrogant enough for one.”
“Ha!” Savian said.
“I agree with her. And for the record, one bossy male in my life is enough,” I said, scanning the yard for intruders. It was empty of everyone. “If you keep it up, I’m just going to hit you on the head with one of these bottles, and then you won’t want to work for me, and everything will go to hell in a handbasket. So lighten up. I’m older than you; I know what I’m doing.”
“May says you were resurrected two months ago.”
“Lovey, stay with Nico and Holland,” I called out to Brom as he emerged from the second outbuilding (evidently used as a storage shed) with a plastic container of gasoline, and a couple of men’s shirts.