The Elf’s aura held a lingering taint of the Machine that was interwoven with another, third identity. Much as he was interested in locating the Machine itself, he was less interested in the aftereffects of its use. Instead, he filtered that out carefully until he could concentrate all his attention on that last thread of Power. The dragon savored the taste of it like it was the blood of his prey.
And in a way it was.
That’s who you are, he said silently. Amras Gaeleval, adept at persuasion and beguilement, and fire. It appears that we might have a few things in common, you and I. And no matter how you might change your looks, or where you go and what you do, I will know you again now.
Anywhere.
He could kill the Elf in the chair with the twist of his mind, and he could kill the others in the holding block too, quicker than they could do anything in retaliation but inflict incidental damage. He would not be who and what he was if he didn’t at least consider the fact that he had unprecedented access, not only to Calondir but also to several key remaining Elves in this demesne.
And the unforgiving part of him that knew how to nurture a grudge wanted to. Oh, it wanted to.
Instead, he said, “I can try to remove the lingering beguilement from him and the others, but you must understand I can only try, not promise. Both Gaeleval’s Power and the Machine he used are threaded into their core identities. Gaeleval had to go deep to establish the kind of control that would make them turn weapons on their own family and friends.”
“What would happen if you can’t remove it?” Calondir asked.
“Oh, I can remove it,” Dragos said. He straightened lightly from his crouch and turned to the High Lord. “The question is whether or not it will break their minds if I did.”
“My lord!” the healer exclaimed. “I beg of you, do not allow this. Give us more time to try!”
Dragos regarded the healer indifferently. Then he said to Calondir, “Personally, I do not care which you choose. But if you give your healers time to study this, they will only come to the same conclusion I just have. The beguilement cannot be completely removed without some risk to the victims.” He met Calondir’s sharp gaze. “You will lose more people here. That is a fact, unless you want to leave them as they are, in which case you will have lost them all, for the only thing you have contained here are their bodies.”
The Elves began to talk over each other and argue. Dragos turned away.
As he did so, the male bound in the chair whispered, “He knew you would come, Beast.”
Dragos spun back around. He ignored the others’ reactions as he stared at the Elf. The bound male’s gaze was blank as ever, and a thin line of drool spilled from his slack lips. “Why does this not surprise me?” he murmured.
A woman’s voice spoke from one of cells. “He saw you when he spoke his manifesto, just as you heard him.”
Another woman, across from the first, said, “Then he saw your mate and unborn son.”
At the mention of Pia and the baby, a fiery red haze obscured Dragos’s sight. “Yes,” he said between his teeth. “And Gaeleval tried to take them like he took the others.”
Dead, he thought. You are dead.
Another male from down the hall said, “They would have been a worthy addition to his cause, their lights turned to new purpose and grand change.”
“Grand change,” he said.
Taliesin, the god of gods, was god of the Dance, of change. Dragos prowled down the hall, looking at the caged empty shells of the Elves’ bodies. Someone who stood by Calondir was weeping. Dragos quoted softly to himself, “‘Lord Death himself has forgotten that he is but a part of this fractured whole.’” He pivoted and stalked back to the High Lord. “Calondir, which of the Deus Machinae did Numenlaur possess in the war?”
“Taliesin’s,” Calondir said. He was pale, his expression drawn stark. “Camthalion of Numenlaur was the one who insisted we rid ourselves of the Machinae. We all agreed to the pact then Numenlaur closed itself off from the world.”
Threidyr, bound to the chair, whispered, “The guardian fulfilled his duty and barred the passage with a flaming sword so that none could enter. Thereafter he stood vigil at the gate for an age, until the time came to pass that this all must pass.”
“I think I’m hearing a little manifesto starting to creep back into the conversation again,” said Dragos. He looked at Calondir. “At a wild guess I would say Numenlaur did not live up to their part in the pact.”
Calondir said, “Camthalion was so persuasive and insistent, I always thought that of all of us, they would have been the ones to keep to their word.”
Dragos rubbed his mouth as he considered Gaeleval’s mouthpieces. It did not surprise him that Numenlaur might not have fulfilled their part in the pact. What was more surprising to him was the possibility that they might have held on to Taliesin’s Machine successfully for all of this time.
Holding on to an item that belonged to the god of change would have been a challenging task. How would Taliesin’s Power have affected the minds in Numenlaur over all these many centuries? What changes would it have caused physically? The longer it had been held in stasis, the more dangerous it would have become, and the more drastic would be the change it now induced.
“You know they’re going to starve if you don’t remove the beguilement,” Dragos said. “They’re shells right now, just mouthpieces. They won’t remember to eat.”
“Beast,” hissed one of the women in the cells. “For the first time in your existence, you are truly vulnerable. Be careful what you meddle in. Nothing shines forever.”
“Go home,” three of them said.
Then others picked it up until the whole group spoke in eerie unison.
Go home, go home.
This time when rage took Dragos over, nothing would hold him back. Nobody threatened Pia and the baby and lived to tell of it. Nobody. He looked at all the empty shells of people in the cells. “That’s it,” he said. “You’re done.”
He began to whisper, picking the echo of it up with his Power. It reverberated off the walls, the ceiling and the floor, slipped through the bars in the cells and soaked through the invisible bonds in each person’s mind.
Someone in a cell halfway down the hallway laughed sharply. A few others sobbed. At first Calondir, his healers and the guards looked confused, but when a woman began shrieking and throwing herself violently against the wall, a few raced forward to stop her from hurting herself.
“My lord, stop him!”
“No,” Calondir said. He told Dragos, “Break the beguilement.”
Throughout it all, the dragon whispered, whispered, whispered. Breathe on your own, he told them. Be who you were. Act, live. Separate.
He spoke of freedom and remembrance as he tugged at the threads of Power from Taliesin’s Machine. When he pulled out those threads, there was nothing left to sustain Gaeleval’s spell.
Half were unconscious when he finished, and he knew that three were dead. Their bodies would be more fuel for those who hated and resented him.
As far as he was concerned, he had learned what he had come to learn. He gestured to Miguel and turned to leave the Elves to their chaotic reactions. As he did so, a runner came down to the block, bearing more news.
The Wyr had arrived.
THIRTEEN
Pia had slipped into a half doze, slumped against the arm of the couch, when running footsteps in the hall roused her. She jerked upright to a sitting position. Someone shouted in the distance, and the psychos rose to their feet.
“Don’t tell me that’s more bad news,” she said, her voice blurred with sleep.
James strode to the window to look out. “It’s good news this time. Our peeps have arrived. They had to have pushed hard to get here so fast.”
She imagined they did push har
d, as she could not personally recall ever hearing of Dragos himself summoning the Wyr to war. Granted, she was only in her twenties, but that was still a long enough period to cause people to take note.
She stood and moved to the window along with the others, and they all stared at the fantastic sight outside. A gryphon coasted in the air low over the river, wings outspread and steady as he headed for the torch-lit clearing. The golden feathers on his eagle’s neck and the tawny fur on his gigantic lion’s body were dark brown and deeply shadowed in the uncertain light. He carried three people on his broad, muscular back.
Behind him came another gryphon, similarly laden with passengers, his huge body seeming to float impossibly in the air. Then came a third. Pia smiled at the strangely beautiful, deadly sight.
Graydon, Bayne and Constantine were here, along with at least nine other Wyr.
A harpy flew in close after the third gryphon, her body and wings a study in grays darkening to black. She moved with powerful, confident assurance in the air, wheeling with precision to pass out of their line of sight and land in the clearing.
That was Aryal. Bleh, but okay. She had to admit it was far better to have that harpy with you than against you.
“Lookee there,” said Eva. “Them’s the big guns. They gonna smack that bad Elfie a good one.”
Andrea and Miguel laughed, and Pia smiled.
“That mean we can take off for Atlantic City?” Johnny asked. He still chewed a bite of his meal. “I want to practice counting cards again.”
Eva smacked Johnny on the back of his head although clearly there wasn’t any real strength behind the blow. In the next moment Pia became too preoccupied to pay attention to any of the psychos’ antics.
A large darkness sliced the night air. Like her experience with the Elven sculptures and the High Lord’s home before fire had damaged it, at first she couldn’t figure out what she was actually looking at. Then her perspective shifted and the scene became clear.
A pegasus soared over the river, his wingspread as wide as any of the gryphons. His wings and massive horse’s body were pure, unrelieved black. A glimmer of torchlight rippled over him, highlighting a powerful chest and long sleek legs. She caught a glimpse of his proud, arched neck and a graceful equine head.
“Whoa,” Eva whispered. “Now that’s a fine sight you don’t see every day.”
Unlike the gryphons, the pegasus carried just one passenger, a tall figure that appeared to be male. Pia wasn’t sure, but she thought the rider might be Quentin, her old boss and current friend—and quite possibly one of Dragos’s future sentinels. She still couldn’t get over the fact that Quentin was part Wyr. Her heart twisted. If he was also part Elven as she had always guessed, then the devastation here would hit him very hard.
Close on the pegasus’s heels came another gryphon.
A fourth one. Like the pegasus, this gryphon carried only one passenger.
Rune was here. His rider must be his mate, Carling Severan.
Did Dragos already know that Rune and Carling had come? Should she say something to warn him? Dragos had a huge telepathic range, but he had been silent for some time and she suspected that meant he was still busy with the beguiled Elves, and she didn’t want to disturb his concentration. God only knew what he might be involved in.
Pia turned abruptly from the window. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go.”
She didn’t wait but strode for the door, and the others sprang to assemble in a protective formation around her as she stepped out of the apartment. The halls were abandoned, everyone occupied elsewhere. She picked up speed as she reached the exit, and so did everyone else.
The clearing was a hive of activity. She paused to take it all in, and naturally her psychos all paused along with her. More torches had been set at regular intervals, and the whole area was well lit for the new arrivals.
Several Elves worked at the sad task of carrying out the covered bodies that lined one end of the clearing. Pia wasn’t the only one affected by the sight. Andrea muttered a curse under her breath, and James shook his head, the corners of his mouth turned down.
Pia said, “I don’t need all of you to stay with me, if you feel like helping.”
“Go on, kids,” Eva said. “I’ll hang with her. Just stay close to hear any news. I expect we’ll be heading out soon.”
Johnny touched Pia’s shoulder, gave her a small, grave smile and everyone but Eva took off.
A few Elves stood in the middle of the open clearing and waved their arms as they looked skyward. Pia glanced up as well. The smoke or fog had cleared, and parachutes dotted the clear, starlit night sky. Landing in a limited space at night was going to be tricky. She had a feeling more than a few of the arrivals were going to end up in the river.
Almost directly across from where she had paused, Graydon and Bayne talked with Ferion. Both gryphons were heavily armed and dressed in fatigues. Bayne rested his hands on his hips while Graydon rubbed the back of his neck as he looked around. All three of the males wore grim expressions.
Aryal stood nearby, arms crossed as she watched Wyr glide into the clearing. “Hurry up,” she told them as they landed. As usual the harpy’s dark hair was windswept and tangled, the angle of her high cheekbones accentuated by the flickering golden light. “Grab your chute and get out of the way. Move fast and keep moving.”
Hugh and Johnny leaped to help the new arrivals bundle up their parachutes as they landed.
Aryal shot a scowling glance across the clearing. The look in the harpy’s stormy gaze was sharp as a blade. Her glare was so intense, Pia found herself looking in the same direction to discover Quentin standing beside another male. Both men were tall, well formed and handsome, but that was the extent of their similarity. They were almost perfect in their contrast to each other.
Pia rubbed dry, irritated eyes and studied the male standing by Quentin. He was drop-dead gorgeous, with a lean, graceful body, a proud, strong face, mahogany skin, gleaming black hair and a brilliant dark gaze that took in everything around him. He was probably the pegasus that had flown in after the gryphons.
Then she turned her attention to Quentin. Like the gryphons, he was dressed in olive green fatigues and he was armed. It was a huge difference from the casual suits and designer jeans he wore at his bar Elfie’s. He used to have longer, dark blond hair that he kept bound back in a tight queue, but he had cut it for the Games. Now it was military short, which emphasized his spare, graceful features and piercing blue eyes. He looked almost like a stranger to Pia, even though she had known him ever since she had started work at Elfie’s.
Quentin returned Aryal’s stare, his own gaze glittering with such naked hostility that Pia had to blink. Whoa. Not that she blamed him in the slightest. Aryal could make a porcupine appear warm and cuddly, and the harpy was much more likely to make enemies than friends. As Pia watched, Quentin turned away to look around at the chaos in the clearing. His gaze was shadowed and his expression turned tight and bitter. Her heart squeezed. Whether or not he was part Elven himself was beside the point. She knew he’d had connections in the Elven demesne. He had lost friends here.
She wanted to walk over and hug him but resisted the impulse. He held himself in such a way that suggested physical overtures might not be welcome at the moment. Instead she turned her attention to the reason why she had hurried outside in the first place, and she looked for Rune and his Vampyre mate, Carling.
They stood together, well out of the way of those who were parachuting in. Rune was the most handsome of the four gryphons, with a tall, lean swordsman’s body and even, tanned features. His mate Carling was also one of the oldest known Vampyres and one of the most beautiful women Pia had ever seen. The last time Pia had seen Carling, her dark hair had been chopped short. It had grown longer since last summer, and now it brushed the nape of her long, graceful neck.
> Rune and Carling talked with a tall Elven woman. It took Pia a few moments to place her. Then she recognized Sidhiel, the Elder tribunal Councillor for the Elves. Sidhiel had been one of Carling’s wardens when the Elder tribunal had placed her under quarantine. Neither Carling nor Rune appeared to hold any grudges over that. As she watched, the Elven Councillor nodded to the other two and strode quickly toward the main building, her features set in a mask of grief.
Pia kept her focus on Rune and Carling as she walked around the edge of the clearing, Eva keeping pace at her side. Despite the activity and noise level, something attracted Rune’s attention and he turned to watch her approach.
Even though she hadn’t known him for long before he left, Rune seemed different from how she remembered him in New York. He looked a touch sharper, his expression darker. Or perhaps that was just his reaction to his surroundings. She gave him a wry smile as she reached him. “Heya, slick.”
Rune’s smile chased the darkness from his face. He pulled her into a brief, hard hug. “How are you doing?”
“I’m good, thanks.” She hugged him back. “We got pretty warm for a little while, but it’s cooled down some.”
“I can see.” Rune glanced around, his lion’s gaze flaring with reflected torchlight.
Pia tapped him on the arm, and his attention came back to her. I don’t know who got in touch with you, but it’s good to see you, she told him.
He said, Gray called me.
She glanced at Graydon affectionately. God love him, Graydon really was true blue, right down to his bones. She turned back to Rune and said aloud, “I just wanted to tell you Dragos might snort and growl when he sees you, but don’t pay any attention. He’ll be glad to see you, no matter what he might say.”
At least she was pretty sure that was true. Or maybe she was just hopeful. One thing about being in so far over your head that you couldn’t see shore—you just had to strike out in some direction and hope for the best, because the surest way to drown was to tread water and stay where you were.
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