“Baltic!” I yelled as both Brom and Nico asked me what was wrong. “Baltic! We have to get out of here. Now!”
“We can’t until it is safe for me to take you and Brom,” he said, appearing at the head of the stairs and tossing a metal negret down onto a stack that sat at the base of the stairs. “There are fewer of them coming now. Another hour or so and we will have depleted their forces enough that I can take you away.”
“We don’t have an hour. We have to go now!” I insisted, starting for the chapel. “We’ll have to go out the bolt-hole and blast with dragon fire any negrets that remain.”
“Ysolde!” Baltic said in his most domineering voice. “I insist that you allow me to decide when it is safe for you and Brom to leave.”
“Thala’s here!” I yelled over my shoulder, pausing long enough to gesture toward the north. “She’s not in Nepal; she’s here!”
He froze for an instant, then smiled.
I shivered at the smile.
“Good. We will capture her and take her to the watch.”
“You don’t understand. Oh, for the love of the saints—” I shoved Brom at Nico and marched back to Baltic, taking him by the arm and trying to pull him after me. “She’s not alone!”
“She has ouroboros dragons with her?” He shrugged, refusing to allow me to budge him from where he stood. Pavel slowly came down the stairs, looking curious.
“No, she doesn’t. She’s in the graveyard. And unless I’m way off base, she’s resurrecting the dead people there.”
I’ll say this for Baltic: he may love a battle, and will happily fight when the odds are greatly against him, but he’s not stupid; he knows when the time is upon him to retreat.
That time was now.
He had to see for himself, however. While Nico and I whipped together a makeshift stretcher in which we gently rolled the still-unconscious Holland and his arm (we couldn’t find his ear), he and Pavel went up onto the north wall, returning almost immediately with identical grim expressions.
“Liches,” Baltic said, moving me aside as I threw myself on the tomb, trying to slide it back. “We will leave now.”
“I can’t go with you!”
We all turned to look at the woman who stood in the doorway, Savian next to her. She held up her hand. “Someone has to get this off, because I’m sorry, but I really cannot leave.”
“Look, I know you feel some sort of loyalty to Thala—”
Her face twisted in pain. “No, it’s not that at all. It’s—it’s…Oh, it’s too complicated to go into now. You just have to believe me when I say I can’t leave.”
I turned to Baltic. “She’s been nothing but helpful since we got here. Would you go ahead and break the handcuffs? Savian lost the key to them, so you’re going to have to use brute strength to get her free.”
“He won’t be able to,” Savian said wearily as Baltic started toward Maura.
“Don’t be silly. Baltic is extremely strong, and even stronger in his dragon form.”
Savian shook his head. “These aren’t mortal handcuffs, Ysolde. They’re titanium, spelled, warded, and scribed with not one, but two banes. They are unbreakable, even by a dragon.”
“Oh goddess,” Maura said, moaning as she put one hand to her head. “What am I going to do?”
“I have another set of keys in my flat,” Savian told us. “If we can get back to England, I can unlock them.”
“You’re just going to have to come with us,” I said loudly when Maura vented her spleen on him, telling him in no uncertain—and sometimes anatomically impossible—terms what she thought of his ineptitude. “I know it’s not what you want, but we have no choice, and no time to stand here arguing about it!”
The negrets in the tunnel were taken by surprise when not one, but three dragons all descended upon them, filling the entire passageway with fire. Brom and I carried Holland—over Savian’s protests that he felt fine, really, and the fact that he fainted when he stood up a minute before was just the merest coincidence—while Maura and Savian brought up the rear, the latter in a drunken stagger that owed its existence to a severe loss of blood.
“It’s clear,” Baltic said once he and Pavel returned from reconnoitering the entrance of the bolt-hole. “She has raised only a half-dozen liches thus far. Ysolde, would you—”
“No,” I told him, taking his arm. “I know you want to take her while she’s so close to us, but”—I glanced toward Brom—“she wouldn’t bat an eyelash over the idea of using him against us.”
He hesitated, torn between the need to take care of the threat Thala posed us and the acknowledgment that Brom was in danger by being so close to her. She was absolutely unscrupulous, and I didn’t doubt for a second that she would use him mercilessly to harm us.
“You are right, I know, but…” He snapped off the word, his jaw tightening until a muscle twitched. “You are right. We will go. There will be other opportunities to find her—ones that do not pose such hazard.”
“If I weren’t already head over heels in love with you, I would be now,” I told him as we hurried through the rocks and scrubby plants to the area where we’d left our cars, praying as we did so that we could get Brom away safely.
Chapter Nine
“I’ve never truly felt like a red shirt before, but I sure do now.” Holland sucked in his breath and winced when I dabbed antiseptic liquid over the six-inch slash across the right side of his chest.
“Sorry,” I murmured. “I know it stings, but it’s the best I can do until we get you to a healer.”
“Red shirt?” Baltic asked, stalking into the portal company’s waiting room, his hand held out to me. “Are you done with my phone?”
“Yes, I just had to make one call. Here it is.”
He accepted the phone, immediately punching in a text message.
“It’s a Star Trek reference,” Maura answered Baltic in a resigned voice. “It means the disposable guy who gets killed. Which is basically what I’m going to be unless you let me go.”
“My mate wishes for you to remain with us,” Baltic said with a dismissive glance at her, still texting.
“Well, it’s not so much that as Savian can’t get the handcuff off you until we get home. Besides, I know your mother and grandfather are worried sick about you, Maura, and would welcome the chance to talk with you.” I wrapped a length of gauze around Holland’s chest before tying it off. “Not that I owe Dr. Kostich anything, but still, I’m sure he’s worried. And you’re far from a red shirt, Holland. We very much appreciate your helping us. Are you absolutely sure your arm isn’t hurting you?”
We both looked down to where I had, with Baltic’s assistance, bound Holland’s severed arm to his shoulder, trying our best to line it up properly.
“Not since Pavel found that morphine, no,” he answered, his voice slower now. “With luck, the flesh will start regenerating by the time we get to England.”
“I’m afraid your ear is going to suffer for the experience, though,” I said, giving the healing remains of his ear a sorrowful glance. “I’m so sorry about that, Holland.”
Baltic turned his back to us, speaking softly into the phone.
“It’s all right,” Holland said with a weak smile. “It was an adventure. Wouldn’t have missed it for anything.”
His eyes closed as he spoke. I looked across him as Brom returned from visiting the portalling company’s bathroom, Pavel dogging his heels. “I feel just terrible about everything, Pavel. I hope you can forgive us for putting your friend in so much danger, and for letting the negrets chomp on him.”
Pavel looked surprised. “You did not put us in danger, Ysolde. Thala did that. Or those under her command. We do not hold you to blame for anything.”
“Nonetheless, I feel terrible about it.”
“Are we going home now, or is Baltic going to draw and quarter Gareth?” Brom asked, tugging at my sleeve.
“No one is going to draw and quarter anyone. Besides, Gareth and Ru
th hightailed it out of there after calling up all those wretched negrets.”
“Yeah, but he said he was going to kill them just as soon as he was done killing the dragons.”
“He what?” I took a deep breath and pulled Brom aside. He obviously needed a little reassurance. “Brom, I know this has been a horrible day for you, what with Gareth and Ruth, and the ouroboros dragons, and then the negrets attacking us, but you know that Baltic and I will never let anything bad happen to you.”
“I know that,” he said with all the insouciance of a nine-year-old. “Baltic told me he’d kill the dragons, though. The bad ones, I mean. Not Maura, because she’s nice, but the others, and then he said he’d draw and quarter Gareth for what he put you through.”
A horrible suspicion struck me. What if the ouroboros dragons who had been in the keep hadn’t run away, as I assumed they had done once Baltic had bested them. What if…I eyed the dragon of my dreams suspiciously, moving over to where he stood, quickly assessing his hurts, and deciding after a few seconds that he was, as he had claimed, not in any danger of expiring on the spot. That didn’t mean others hadn’t done so, however. “Is there something you want to tell me?” I asked, nudging Baltic’s arm when he ended his call and began to dial another number.
“About what?”
“About killing people?”
He looked up from his phone, frowning. “Negrets aren’t people, mate.”
“Not them. The others.” I waited, but his gaze dropped, and he refused to meet my eyes. “Baltic?”
“No, there is nothing I wish to tell you.” The fact that he didn’t even look at me spoke volumes.
I sighed and moved around to stand in front of him. “Tell me you didn’t kill any of those ouroboros dragons.”
“I didn’t kill any of the ouroboros dragons.”
I looked into his fathomless eyes and did not like what I saw there. “You’re lying, aren’t you?”
“You just told me to do so.” Irritation flared in those beautiful eyes.
“No, I said—oh, never mind. How many dragons did you kill?”
“Why?” One of his eyebrows rose. “Are you going to locate a priest and pay for indulgences for the deaths of ouroboros dragons, just as you did in the past?”
The second the words left his lips, I felt as if I were caught up in a whirlpool, spun around, and sucked down into dizzying depths…that just as suddenly disappeared, leaving a man’s voice echoing in my ears. “…are responsible for the deaths of dragons you claimed were ouroboros, are you not, Baltic?”
“Whoa,” said a thin voice, and I blinked away the confusion to see Brom standing next to me, watching with wide eyes the scene in front of us. “We’re in another of your visions, aren’t we? This one doesn’t have Gareth and Ruth. I like it better.”
“Why on earth am I having this? My dragon woke up, didn’t it?” I wrapped one arm around Brom and moved over to where Baltic stood with a martyred expression on his face. Pavel, Savian, and Maura stood behind him, all three of them blinking in surprise. Holland appeared to be asleep on the couch.
“We’re in a vision? I’ve never seen anything like this,” Maura said, glancing around. “It’s a vision of the past, I assume. Interesting. Who are those people?”
I leaned into Baltic and watched the two men before us. “The one standing with his arms crossed, and his back to the fireplace is Baltic. I know it doesn’t look like him, but that was his original human form. The other man is…Who is that?”
My Baltic sighed. “It matters not. I grow weary of your insistence that I relive episodes from the past that are of no interest to anyone, mate. And now you have brought others in, when we have little time to indulge in such matters. End the vision so that we might take that blasted portal out of Spain.”
“Pavel?” I asked, ignoring Baltic’s demands.
“That’s Alexei, the wyvern of the black dragons,” he answered with a little smile.
Baltic shot him an annoyed look.
“Alexei? The wyvern before you?”
“You refuse to answer me?” the man in question demanded of the old Baltic as he stormed past, pacing a path between the long trestle table and a massive fireplace big enough to roast two oxen side by side. Alexei, almost as tall as Baltic, bore a resemblance to the latter, with a similar shape to his jaw and chin, as well as the same dark hair and eyes. Although many black dragons had such coloring, it was obvious even in the dim light that Baltic and Alexei were related.
“Why should I bother to do so?” Baltic asked with a shrug as Alexei paced past him again. “I told you that I would avenge my mother’s death, and I have done so.”
“At the risk of alienating the red dragons, who are already at the verge of war against us because of you!” Alexei said, his hands gesturing wildly in the air.
“I know that can’t be your father, because your father is the—” I glanced beyond my Baltic to where the others stood watching the vision with interest, and bit off the rest of the sentence. I was still coming to grips with the fact that the man I loved with every ounce of my being was the child of a dragon god. “I know Alexei isn’t your father, but it’s obvious you’re related to him somehow.”
“End the vision,” Baltic growled, turning Brom and me to face him.
“I told you before—I don’t know how to end them. What was that bit about avenging your mom?”
“You would have me let the murderers of your own daughter escape without punishment?” the past Baltic snarled. “You may not care that her death be avenged, but I do.”
“She was my only daughter! Of course I care! I feel her loss more than you can possibly know, but that does not give you the right to kill Chuan Ren’s elite guard!” Alexei snarled right back at him. “As if the situation weren’t troublesome enough with your actions threatening the peace of the entire weyr, now you must do this!”
Baltic took me by the arms and gave me a little shake. “Mate, you will cease this immediately!”
I said nothing, unable to look away from the scene between Baltic and…his grandfather?
“I will not be dictated to,” the past Baltic snapped. “Not by you, and not by Chuan Ren.”
Alexei spun around, his expression as black as his hair. “You are not wyvern here, Baltic; I am. And if I choose to dictate to you, then I will do so!”
“Ysolde!” the present-day Baltic demanded, his voice filled with ire.
I glanced back to him. “Chuan Ren’s guards killed your mother? Why? Wait—let’s start first with Alexei. He was your grandfather?”
“End this!” he said, his patience frittering away into nothing.
“You keep saying that, but I don’t know how,” I pointed out, wanting to ask him a dozen more questions, but hesitating with the presence of the others.
“Then I will end it for you!” he snapped, and without concern for the fact that I still held Brom close to me, he pulled me against him, his lips claiming mine, his dragon fire spilling out in a spiral around all three of us. Brom squeaked something about being crushed, until I released him and allowed him to pop out from between us, my attention now focused on the man whose kiss dominated me, demanding a response I was unable to withhold.
“Aww,” I heard Brom say a minute later, when I could catch my breath and rally my thoughts into something other than how badly I wanted to wrestle Baltic to the nearest bed and have my womanly way with him. “It’s gone.”
“It’ll never be gone,” I said without a care for grammar, staring into Baltic’s eyes and reveling in the love I saw in return.
“Never,” he agreed, brushing his thumb along my lower lip.
“That was fascinating,” Maura said thoughtfully. “Not your kiss, the vision. I had no idea one could revisit the past in that way. What causes that, Ysolde? Do you know?”
I stepped back from Baltic, not surprised to see that he had, in fact, ended the vision by the simple method of kissing me senseless. “I used to think it was the frustrat
ed dragon inside me trying to get me to wake it up. But it’s woken now, so that doesn’t make sense anymore.”
“It’s not woken,” Baltic said, brushing back a strand of my hair. “It answered your call when you needed it, but that is all. The dragon inside you still slumbers.”
“How do you know?” I asked, warmed to my toes by the gentle caress of his hand on my cheek.
“I know.” He turned back to his phone, dismissing the rest of us.
“I don’t have a dragon inside me, although Sullivan says when I’m older and I have children, they will be light dragons, and will be able to shift into dragon form,” Brom told Maura. “I wish I could do that. I don’t want to have children, but Sullivan says I probably will later on. How come you turned red when you were a dragon, if you aren’t in a sept?”
“My father was a red dragon, so that is the form I take when I’m dragonny,” she answered, giving him a little smile that faded almost immediately. “My mother isn’t a dragon, however.”
“You know I’m going to have at least a dozen questions about that whole scene,” I told Baltic as he consulted a text message he had just received.
He sighed a particularly martyred sigh. “I know.”
“I’ll go check to see if the portal is ready yet,” Pavel said, and slipped away.
“I should check the area outside to make sure no pursuing dragons, liches, or negrets are about to descend upon us,” Savian said, groaning out loud when he limped forward. “Come along, princess. You can pick up any of my body parts that happen to fall off.”
“Oh, for the love of the good green earth,” Maura said, snapping the handcuffs in an annoyed manner. “You’re such a big baby! You don’t have nearly the number of wounds that poor knocker has, and you’re making a much bigger fuss about them than he is.”
“You’re going to drive me barking mad until I can get these cuffs off, aren’t you?” Savian asked her as they left the waiting room.