by T. A. White
“That doesn’t wash,” Tate said. “You’re the one who pointed out to the Red Lady that I had the key. What were your words again?” Tate pretended to think. “Oh yeah, that I had stolen it from Lucius, but he was under the impression that I had it all along. In fact he seemed rather assured that you didn’t have it, almost like he had a little birdie feeding him information.”
It wasn’t Umi she had to convince. At this point she was spewing random nonsense, hoping only to spin a tale plausible enough to stall for time and perhaps drive a wedge between her enemies.
Twelve minutes had passed.
“I would be very interested in your explanation at this point,” the lady said.
Umi was at a lost for words. She couldn’t figure out how Tate had so neatly cast her actions into a suspicious light.
“My lady, on my family’s honor-“
The lady held up one hand imperiously. “I am not interested in your honor. Below the surface, family honor doesn’t exist, only the strength of your actions.”
“She is trying to divide us,” Umi argued passionately.
“Divide? Ha!” The Red Lady threw her head back and laughed. She wiped tears from her eyes when she finally wound down. Umi looked unsure. It was obvious she hadn’t realized how unstable her ally was. “My silly little noble. We have never been working together.”
Umi’s mouth dropped open and her eyebrows drew together in confusion.
“I’ve been using you,” the Red Lady explained. “And I know that you had no intention of letting me have either the fulcrum or the key. None of it matters now.” She shrugged elegantly and waved one hand, “I don’t need the key or the fulcrum for that matter.”
“What?” Umi said in a soft voice.
“I don’t need you,” the Red Lady said. “I have something much more important than your fulcrum.” The Red Lady came to her feet and crossed the floor. The skirts of her heavy ball gown swished across the floor until she stopped next to Umi. She waved dismissively. “You may go.”
“Wait!” Umi grabbed the Lady’s arm. “What do you mean? You said you wanted the power. That once you had it you’d share it with me. How can you give that up just because of something she said?”
The Red Lady looked imperiously at the hand on her arm. She flung her arm up striking Umi across the face with the back of the hand. Umi wobbled and fell to the ground.
Tate hung in her captor’s arms secretly rejoicing. She hadn’t really expected the theory she’d spouted off the top of her head to cause this much friction between her enemies.
“I have something much better now,” the Lady said coldly. Tate’s pulse fluttered and she felt clammy all of a sudden. The Red Lady turned to her and smiled softly into Tate’s eyes. “Did you know that dragons are the most powerful creatures on this planet? They have unequaled power, wealth, and they live for a very long time. Much longer than a human. Normally they’re untouchable except for that slim window of time when they first bond with the dragon,” the Lady pulled Tate’s sleeve up and caressed the tattooed dragon’s wing, “and before their first change.”
For the first time since the last encounter with the Red Lady, Tate’s dragon stirred, rousing itself from slumber at the feeling of danger.
“What are you planning to do?” Tate asked, not really wanting to know the answer.
The Red Lady stared into Tate’s eyes and grinned in victory. “I’m going to rip this dragon from your body and make it my own. You’ll die of course, quite painfully I’m told. Afterwards I’ll change forms and eat your two friends.” Tate’s heart squeezed painfully as the Red Lady leaned close and whispered into her ear, “Are you ready to beg yet?”
The Lady’s lips stretched into a satisfied smirk at the glimpse of horror on Tate’s face.
“Kadien!” Umi cried in a shrill voice. “Kill this insolent creature.”
Kadien sheathed his katana and came to stand at the Red Lady’s side, looking at Umi with hard eyes.
“Kadien,” Umi said softly in disbelief. She looked lost as if the fabric of her reality had been yanked out from under her. Tate could relate.
“I told you I knew of your plans.” The Red Lady turned her back on Umi and drew one gloved hand down his chest. “So I made sure I had someone close to you who was willing to keep me apprised of all of your movements.” The Red Lady faced Umi and Tate with a little moue of surprise. “I confess I didn’t think it would be as easy to gain his cooperation as it was. After all, the Kairi are known for their loyalty. This one, though, was eager to betray you.”
Tate held still, grateful that Umi had drawn the attention back to her. Every second they talked was one second closer to their backup arriving. Twenty minutes had to have passed by now. She hoped.
“Why?” Umi asked. “I thought you loved me. What has this all been for if not so we could be together?”
Kadien’s face was filled with quiet scorn as he answered her question. “Love? You don’t know how to love. How could I love you after what you did? You’re a spoilt child playing at love, uncaring of who you hurt along the way.”
“So you see my dear, your use wore out the moment you brought the fulcrum to me,” the Red Lady added. She smiled cattily at them. “Get the fulcrum out of there and put her in his place.”
“Wait,” Brown Eyes said, rising from where he’d been watching the drama and coming to stand by the Lady’s side. He slipped his arms around her, hugging her back to his front and said into her ear, “Imagine what power you could wield if you had both the dragon and the fulcrum. You could take over the empire.” He kissed one creamy shoulder. “None would be able to stand in your way, not even the Dragon Emperor himself.”
Lust rose on the Lady’s face, not a carnal desire, but the desire for power.
“You’d be an empress,” he whispered.
She cupped his hands with hers and nodded, her eyes going distant as she imagined it.
Tate eyed the two speculatively. She was beginning to wonder who was really in charge here. The Lady or Brown Eyes?
“Do it,” the Lady ordered, her eyes diamond hard.
Tate’s captor obeyed, force-marching her to deposit her in the center of the diagram next to the little boy. He stepped out and an invisible barrier rose, encasing Tate and the boy in the center. The power of it prickled along Tate’s skin like a thousand biting ants.
“You should not have come,” the boy told her. “They have all they need now.”
“This isn’t exactly how I saw things going,” Tate snapped back. She immediately regretted how harsh she sounded. He hadn’t deserved that, just because she was angry at the turn of events.
“What are they planning?”
“They are planning to use the Lourdes,” he indicated the diagram, “as an anchor and then with a spell, they’ll be able to drain the raw power from us. They’ll have to weaken us physically first, though.”
“How do they do that?”
His eerie eyes were stark as they met hers. “Blood.”
Chapter Nineteen
Tate followed his gaze to Kadien, who was pulling down the sleeves of his robed shirt, leaving his chest bare. He tucked those sleeves into the belt of his pants and drew his katana. With a deliberate slowness he stepped over the edge of the barrier into Tate and the little boy’s space.
“By blood, do you mean our blood?” Tate asked, nervously pointing toward him and then her. The boy didn’t respond, watching Kadien warily. Guess that answered that, then. This would probably suck worse then the caning.
She scrambled to her feet but couldn’t go very far. The boy didn’t twitch from his seated position. The chain around his neck made certain of that.
“Why are you doing this?” she asked Kadien.
He held his sword by his side before settling into a wide stance, the katana held loosely in his hands pointing down. She edged further away but stopped before she hit the barrier, which hummed with vicious intensity at her back.
“It does no
t matter to you why I do this, only that I do,” Kadien informed her.
Tate gritted her teeth. In a way what he said was true, but conceding the point meant she wasn’t wasting the time away. Talking about his plans would delay the inevitable, and she was all for that.
“It matters to me,” Tate pointed out. “I’d like to know why I’m about to die.”
Kadien slashed up with the blade. Tate jerked out of the way but didn’t quite make it as a streak of fire ignited along her leg. Blood slid down her leg and with it pain rose. So much for getting him to talk. Evidently that wasn’t something he did.
She stumbled and by some miracle avoided the next slash. It didn’t matter where she went, though. The entire space was within the reach of his blade. Two more slices landed, opening shallow cuts, one on her arm and another on the unwounded leg.
She dodged the next slash but felt pain streak across her back when he reversed his swing. Though she was fast and agile, with such limited space she couldn’t avoid his blade for long. Blood loss was already making her weak.
Tate lunged under another slash and tackled him around the waist. That was a mistake. He brought his elbow down onto one of her cuts and then with the other drove a dagger into her shoulder. She screamed with the pain but hung on. With a last push, she managed to knock him off his feet. She scrambled to pin one of his arms, but he rolled with her until she was the one pinned by his weight.
Tate snaked one leg around his ankle and then pushed up with her hips. With a fierce twist she ended up on top. Fierce growls rumbled from her throat as the magic grew until it was so thick she was choking on it. The more she bled, the more the magic seemed to build.
With a mouthful of teeth that had suddenly become very pointed, she leaned down and bit hard into Kadien’s shoulder. He screamed under her. The dragon whipped its tail as it relished his pain. So she bit him again.
Hands grasped Tate from behind and threw her against the barrier. She landed in a crouch, her body a mass of blood and her face animalistic as she snarled. Finally, the dragon had decided to help her.
The dragon’s presence seemed to grow in proportion to her pain. It was a struggle to hold onto her reason. To not just give in and let her alter self wreak havoc where it willed.
There were two enemies now. The other held a bloody whip.
“That should be enough,” a voice said from outside the barrier.
The second enemy dragged Kadien out. Blood poured from the wounds Tate had given him, and his normally golden skin color had leached to a sallow white.
Tate managed to focus on the little boy, beating her other self back. It paced restlessly, snapping at the power that crackled around her. The dragon wasn’t talking to her as it had before, but Tate could sense its uneasiness and fear.
She made a sound of distress as she bent down to touch the boy gently. While she had been trying to bite her way through Kadien’s shoulder, his ally had used a whip to create a bloody mess on the boy’s back. He had collapsed unconscious to the floor and didn’t move even when Tate shook him.
An invisible wind lifted Tate’s hair, whipping it violently. The dragon on her arm had crawled its way up to her shoulders and paced down her spine and then back up. Whatever the Red Lady was doing was causing it to go wild.
The Red Lady stepped up to the head of the diagram, wearing an ornate headdress. The head of a gold serpent with mouth opened rose above her face. Red feathers framed the serpent’s head and smaller ones marched down its back.
The magic began to swirl as the Red Lady began to chant. Pressure built in Tate’s chest as the woman’s voice rose in volume. The little boy panted, slumping down as if the very strength was being sapped from his body.
Tate whimpered as streams of blue light flowed from him to the Red Lady. He began screaming, one long wail of sound.
Fear choked Tate, living like a wild thing inside her. With her dragon’s increased agitation, thinking coherently became difficult. All she wanted to do was collapse to the ground and turn into a gibbering pile of fear.
Now would be a really good time for help to arrive, Tate thought desperately.
The magic caressed her skin and this time instead of ants biting it felt like the flesh was being stripped from her bones. A scream tore itself from her lungs as she collapsed. The madness infected her mind, and she ripped at the skin on her arms with her own fingernails.
Give in, the dragon whispered in her mind.
“What?” Tate cried.
Give in to me, the dragon urged. Together we are stronger than we are apart. She won’t be able to take me once we’ve completed the change.
“Something is wrong,” the Red Lady screamed. “The magic from the fulcrum seems to be detaching, but her power is making it impossible for me to absorb it.”
Tate sobbed into the floor as the pain momentarily abated.
“That’s impossible,” Brown Eye’s said. “This spell has been perfectly calibrated to make you the new vessel. The mistake has to have been yours. My master will not be pleased.”
“Wait. Wait,” the Red Lady cried. “I’ll try again.”
Let me out before she starts again, the dragon urged.
“How do I know you won’t take me over?” Tate asked, voicing a fear that had been tumbling around inside her for a while now.
The dragon fluttered its wings uneasily.
Tate took that to mean her concern was valid. “We both know it’s possible,” Tate said against the ground. “I felt you try to take control last time.”
I will admit that normally when my kind fuse with a host that there is some danger of the host fading and eventually disappearing, the dragon said hesitantly. Tate shut her eyes as she felt hope fade. It is usually dependent on how strong willed the host is.
Movement started on the other side of the barrier. It looked like Tate had lost time for the crowd had cleared from the room and the only people who could be seen were the Red Lady, Kadien, and the Lady’s henchman. Umi’s body lay on its back, her eyes staring sightlessly up into nothing, a circle of red spreading under her. In death her face was as perfect as in life with an expression of surprise at the sudden turn of events. Dewdrop lay on his stomach not far away with his face turned away from her. She couldn’t tell if he was dead or alive.
I don’t think that will be the case with you, however, the dragon continued.
“What do you mean?”
If you were going to fade, it would have happened already, the dragon snapped.
Tate lifted her head. The male speaker wasn’t there, but Tate couldn’t be sure. Maybe he stood just out of sight.
Tate’s eyes slid closed in a long blink. The players now stood in different places. The Red Lady and Kadien were now on hands and knees trying to etch more symbols into the ground.
“How do I know you aren’t lying?” Tate asked rolling onto her back.
Does it even matter? If you don’t you will have failed. The others will die, and they will have their war.
The boy’s still body was right next to her, his eyes staring sightlessly out at nothing. Tears rolled down Tate’s cheeks. With a herculean effort she lifted her hand to touch his chest. It moved slightly. She’d been wrong; there was still a little bit of life left in him.
The dragon was right in this at least. There was no other choice.
“What’s your name?”
There was a hesitation as if the dragon was uncertain. Ilith.
“Ilith, huh,” Tate whispered. It seemed important to know the name of the being who might be residing in her body after this. “My name’s Tate.”
Yes, I know, the dragon’s voice was soft in her head. Tatum Alegra Winters, my savior.
Tate took a breath and then another. She relaxed that final barrier in her mind that she had only been aware of on a subconscious level. She gave in. Exactly as the dragon had wanted.
Several things happened at once after that. Most of it a blur that barely registered to Tate.
&nb
sp; Dewdrop rose to his feet in a sudden surge, Umi’s hairpin clasped tight in his hand. Nobody had time to react before he plunged the hairpin stilleto into Kadien’s throat. With a scream he wrenched his fist sideways ripping a chunk of flesh out. Blood spurted, splashing on the wall and ceilings as Kadien’s heart pumped its last.
The Red Lady spun with her hands up, and an unseen force picked Dewdrop up and smashed him into the barrier in a flare of white light.
The dragon expanded through Tate, rushing through her veins, pushing the frail human psyche aside. She gloried as her body grew and grew, the bones popping as they lengthened and changed. Her skin rippled and flowed as her muscles snapped and then slid into place over her skeleton.
Finally. Finally.
A small dragon stood in Tate’s place. Her head was no more than a foot above where Tate’s would have been if she’d been standing there. Her scales shimmered in the warm light looking as if flames danced across their surface. She was the color of sunlight with blue on each foot making it look like she wore socks. Her tail flicked back and forth. She lifted one foreleg, admiring her claws. She stretched, straightening her back legs and then arching her back so she could straighten her front legs. She luxuriated in the feel of her muscles stretching pleasantly.
Figures fled before her, drawing her eyes the way a mouse does a cat’s. Her tail twitched as she crouched. She felt… hungry.
She leapt.
Figures spilled into the chamber, releasing war cries that fell silent at the carnage before them.
The dragon lifted her muzzle wet with blood and eyed them. She didn’t feel hungry anymore, but they had the same coloring as the savior’s betrayer. Threats would be killed. The dragon wondered if they’d taste as good as the magic user. The one who thought she could take her from her savior.
Their eyes widened with fear as the dragon rose and crept towards them. A small body sat up and then laid back down when he saw the dragon passing by. He held still when the dragon leaned down to sniff him, holding in a whimper as it nudged him.
The dragon huffed and nudged him again, moving him behind her and away from the interlopers. The savior cared for this one and the boy tethered to the ground. She’d feel sadness if either were caught in the violence.
