by Ann Gimpel
Konstantin enjoyed indulging the dragon. His beast fed a primitive, feral part of him, kept it from withering. So he loosened the hold he usually tethered it with, allowing it to swoop and dive, to hunt and kill prey. Earth wasn’t quite the paradise he’d hoped for. Scarcely a place dragons could fly free. Far from a Mu replacement, it had forced dragonkind into a holding pattern.
“Do you suppose our kinfolk located lands better suited to our needs?” he asked Katya.
“I hope so. There is little enough for us here, yet leaving is risky. We could end up someplace worse.”
He didn’t see how, but he didn’t say so. Nothing like tossing out a gauntlet, one the universe would be delighted to slap him down over.
“What are your plans for the humans?”
“We already discussed this,” he told his sister.
“So we did, but they do not appear particularly tractable. The man is quite attractive, though, and I like it that he has spirit.”
Konstantin didn’t reply. The woman, Erin, was beautiful. Tall and stately with a self-possession he didn’t expect in human females. Not that he’d spent much time around humans in general, but the women he’d met before all appeared somewhat timid.
Katya whooped, a wild, joyous sound that could only mean one thing. The weight on his back vanished. Katya’s golden dragon burst through a diaphanous veil, her eyes whirling with happiness. She puffed steam; his dragon puffed back until both wyrms were surrounded by clouds of mist.
He draped them in an invisibility casting to allow their play free rein. He hadn’t spotted the Russian ship, but nor had he looked particularly closely. Now was a time for celebration. Katya’s dragon was back. He suspected his beast might have had something to do with its return, but it would never reveal its secrets.
The dragons had their own world, their own society, both barred to human bondmate entry. They decided which shifters to bond with, but they were loyal. The bond was forever, so they chose wisely. That Katya’s dragon had been gone for years spoke to how miserable it had been hidden beneath kilometers of dirt and ice.
Some animals, like the blind fish in their lakes, belonged beneath the southern continent. Dragons were not blind fish, requiring protection so they wouldn’t die out. Dragons demanded open air and boundless skies. The more Konstantin thought about it, the worse he felt.
They couldn’t remain sequestered beneath tons of rock and ice. The ones who’d left were the wise ones, although he hadn’t believed it at the time. He’d been lost in self-righteous indignation and had labeled the others as quitters. The reality of leaving, of seeking a better home for themselves, put a huge crimp in his plans for the humans.
They didn’t need to create new dragon shifters. Not if they planned to relocate. He had no idea what they’d find elsewhere in the universe of worlds, but bringing two newly minted dragon shifters, created from humans who had never wielded magic, was a very bad idea.
Every dragon shifter he’d ever known had been born, not created, which meant they were born to magic. Born to sharing their skin with a beast. Perhaps the transition would be too much for someone who’d begun as merely human. Even if it weren’t too rigorous a journey, it would take more time than he was willing to devote to the task. Simply learning magic would consume at least a century. By then, his dragon would be in full rebellion. Katya’s was happy now, but that was because it was reunited with her.
All too soon, the reality of being stuck beneath an endless glaciated landscape would rankle once more. As he thought it through, he wasn’t at all certain any dragon would link its essence to a human living in such appalling conditions.
Katya’s dragon flew high. His chased after, grabbing her tail in his teeth playfully. They’d gained enough altitude for him to have a clear view of the Russian vessel he hoped would be long gone. Another ship bobbed on moderately rough seas a few meters away. He scanned the other ship, focusing his sharp, dragon eyesight on writing splashed across the bow.
Darya in Russian characters.
So this was the ship the humans had come from. The one stolen by whoever was in charge of the second ship. Konstantin pulled rank, wrested control away from his dragon and quit playing with Katya’s.
“Look over there.” He could have spoken out loud, but telepathy was easier.
Katya’s dragon flew a figure eight before settling in next to his. “Two ships.”
“One belonged to the humans.”
Fire flashed from Katya’s dragon, lighting the cloudy skies. “We can kill it.”
He matched her fire with some of his own. “The operative term is sink, not kill, but we gain nothing.”
“It might be fun.”
His dragon pushed hard against their bond, clearly in agreement. Destroying anything was sport. Never mind the ship wasn’t alive. Odd waves formed between the ships, swells that didn’t match the rest of the sea.
“Something is down there.”
“Yes, two ships.” Katya’s dragon bugled laughter.
“Look between them.”
Konstantin flew to one side, hoping for a clearer view, but maintaining enough distance to evade detection. His invisibility spell should still protect them, but he didn’t care if it wasn’t absolute. He hated the Russians who’d invaded his territory with death and incendiary devices.
Maybe sinking their ship wasn’t such a bad idea.
And the Darya too. He knew enough to understand that dropping Erin and Johan back on board wouldn’t do them any good. A ship that size required crew, and from the sound of things, the Russians had gotten rid of them.
A long, sibilant hiss came from Katya’s dragon. He focused his attention on the strip of ocean that wasn’t behaving properly. Probably a whale—or a school of them. A blast of unfamiliar magic shot from the heaving sea, followed by an even stronger flash.
The sea turned shades of deep violet before it took on a brackish, black hue.
Not whales.
What in Y Ddraigh Goch’s name was down there? Suddenly, he cared a whole lot about his invisibility casting and made an effort to strengthen it. “Sister. Remain close.”
Men poured out onto the decks of both ships, high powered rifles raised and ready as they stared over the railings. Shots rang out. Konstantin fanned his wings, holding his position.
Men were worse fools than he’d imagined. Who fought magic with bullets? It was a contest they were certain to lose. An enormous black triangular head broke the surface, followed by thick coils.
Goddess’s breath! A sea-serpent.
It opened its mouth and sprayed poison in an arc at the stupid fools leaned over the side of their boat. Konstantin could smell the taint from where he hovered, perhaps half a kilometer away. It was harsh, acrid, and it burned his eyes and nostrils. His dragon closed its third eyelid, the transparent one, to protect itself.
A second serpent joined the first, and then two more emerged from the unsettled waters. Men fell over the sides of the boat or collapsed on the decks. A few, the ones with brains, tried to run back inside, but it was too late. Sea-serpent toxin was not only deadly, but airborne. Anyone near enough—anyone human, that is—would die a slow, painful death as skin sloughed from bone.
He'd seen plenty. Wheeling, he led the way back to their protected spit of land. Katya didn’t give him any problems. Sometimes, she defied him, but not in the face of such a threat. He summoned shift magic as soon as his talons dug into the dirt. By the time Katya landed, he was mostly back in his human form. He waited for her to craft her own transformation. They had to talk, and the sea-serpents could intercept telepathy.
Any magical creature could, and the serpents were unspeakably ancient and powerful.
Katya’s fingers and toes were still forming when he said, “Thank you, Sister. I understand you’d rather have remained in your dragon’s body for longer.”
She inclined her head. “It’s all right. Both she and I understand the need for haste and secrecy. Do you think they saw us?
”
He hunkered behind the headlands. Once she’d joined him, he said. “About seeing us, I’m not sure. They didn’t glance upward, nor did I sense their magic directed our way, so perhaps we escaped detection. Where do you suppose they came from?”
She shrugged. “Same place we did? Not Mu obviously, but their own world must have become an inhospitable place, and—”
“What makes you think this isn’t some kind of power grab on their part?”
“I don’t know.” Breath rattled through her clenched teeth. “Remind me about them, Brother. You were always fascinated by mythology.”
He put an arm around Katya and drew her close. “This tale is painful. It is one we had to learn, yet I understand why many of us chose to forget about it.”
She twisted her neck and glared at him. “Skip the lecture. I remember something about them and us having common roots, but that’s where my recollection ends.”
“Long ago, much farther back than when we settled on Mu, dragons and sea-serpents were once one and the same. We shared the air and the seas, rulers one and all over everything on every world. They had wings, and our dragon bodies were longer, more sinuous and better suited for swimming.”
Konstantin unclenched his jaw. “Y Ddraigh Goch had a sacred shrine on a distant world. It contained his hoard, and he and his mate set their children to guard it while they ruled over dragonkind.
“Several sea-serpents hatched a plan to steal from Y Ddraigh Goch’s collection of gold and gems. I am not certain, but I believe they only meant it as a prank. It went terribly wrong. Two of Y Ddraigh Goch’s children were disfigured protecting their father’s treasure. One lost a wing, the other a foot.”
“Surely, they grew back,” Katya protested.
He shook his head. “They were severed with magic, dark magic that ate away at the children until they went mad. Let me tell this in order, Sister.”
Katya nodded, her golden eyes filled with pain. “No wonder I didn’t remember the rest of this tale. It’s very unsettling.”
“Y Ddraigh Goch and his mate heard their children’s cries and hurried back to the faraway world. The sea-serpents fell on their bellies and cried, repenting what they’d done, yet they had revealed that they commanded dark magic.
“Such is forbidden to us under our Covenant. Y Ddraigh Goch banished the serpents and cursed them so they would lose their wings. From that day forth, they were limited to swimming in the seas.”
“What happened to the two brave children? The ones who went mad.”
“Y Ddraigh Goch moved them to a hidden world to live out their immortality. I have heard it is a paradise with plentiful food and water. Our dragon god sealed the world off from the universe. No others may enter, nor may his children ever leave.”
“Have you ever heard about sea-serpents on Earth before?” Katya asked.
“No, and it worries me. We cannot allow them to remain.”
“How will we stop them?”
“I don’t know yet.” He pushed his shoulders back amid bones cracking, but it didn’t release the tension dogging his muscles. “I had decided to return the humans to their world, but we cannot do that. Releasing them now would be tantamount to signing their death warrants.”
“What about one of the research bases? The woman, Erin, said it was where they wished to go. Other humans reside in those spots.”
He shook his head. “They are at risk too. Erin and Johan are safer with us than they would be elsewhere.”
Katya squinched her eyes to slits. “They won’t see it that way. Furthermore, they won’t believe you—us—about any of this.”
He furled both brows. “And why not? I revealed my dragon to them.”
“And then we left.” She snorted. “What do you suppose they’ve done with that information during our absence?”
“Hopefully, come to terms with it.”
“Or perhaps they ginned up some scientific flimflam explanation. Like smoke and mirrors and pulleys or something.”
“I doubt it. Faced with incontrovertible evidence, surely they would have…” Would have what? He had no idea. They couldn’t escape, but they probably weren’t sitting around, either. He stood and summoned a light spell to return them beneath the surface. “We should go back.”
“I agree. What will we tell them?” Katya got to her feet and wove a bit of magic in with his.
“I’m not sure. It depends on how amenable they are to listening.”
She laid a hand on his arm. “The way I see it, they’re useless to us as human. To themselves as well.”
“They may not have a choice. I was thinking about that while we flew. Earth is not the best choice for dragonkind. Even if one or both humans express interest in becoming dragon shifters, I’m not at all convinced any dragon would want them.”
“Maybe so,” she murmured. “Too many downsides, but we will need more of us if we challenge the sea-serpents.”
“Yes, but not brand new dragon shifters. We need some of our erstwhile kin to heed our call and return.”
“How will you manage that?” Katya pursed her lips into a frown.
“I have no idea. Telepathy might work for Y Ddraigh Goch across worlds, but it won’t work for you or me. If I broadcast a call for aid too loudly—checking to see if any of us are elsewhere on Earth—the sea-serpents are certain to hear me.”
“Maybe they just got here. Perhaps they don’t plan to remain.”
“A whole lot of unknowns. It’s not as if we can overfly them and engage them in a discussion.”
“Why not?”
“Because if we asked the real questions, like what they’re doing here or anything to tease out their intentions, they’d either not answer or lie. We may have been a single race once, but that was a very long time ago.”
Katya nodded slowly. “I suppose they don’t like us any better than we like them.”
“Worse, since our god is who banished them.”
“Makes us righteous, and they’ve had millennia to fan the flames of being wronged.” She rolled her expressive eyes.
“About the size of it.”
A cracking sound dragged his head around. Beyond the headland, brash ice had filled the bay, the pieces shuddering against one another. Konstantin loosed the magic he’d summoned and walked to the shoreline, squatting to touch the water. Not that ice was an unfamiliar aspect of polar waters, but this ice had materialized between the space of two breaths. Odd since the wind had died to almost nothing.
Katya joined him. “What?”
“Ssht.” He leaned toward the water, employing his dragon’s ears to listen intently. It took a few moments before he heard an insidious chant, driven by arcane energy. What were the serpents up to? The ice had to be their doing.
He straightened and strode back the way they’d come, drawing a subtle spell as he did so to encompass them both. Before his sister peppered him with questions, he swept both of them into a casting to move them through kilometers of dirt, rock, and ice to their home.
His spell still flickered, losing steam but not quite gone yet, when he saw Erin and Johan. They’d clearly been in the lake. Their hair was wet, and they carried some of their heavy clothing across their arms. A closer look revealed fish sitting on top of Erin’s pile of outerwear.
Damn it all to hell. They’d been fishing? He and Katya hadn’t been gone for more than a couple of turns of the glass. He tried to muffle his displeasure but didn’t do a very good job of it. He had other problems—ones far more significant than the two pesky humans.
Johan reached them first. He’d been smiling, but it faded fast. Mercifully, he kept his mouth shut.
Erin trotted up, her boots making sucking sounds as they struck the dirt. “What? Why do the two of you look like you just ate broken glass?”
“You have violated our lake,” Konstantin said.
“Sorry, we won’t swim in it again,” Erin muttered.
“Not the swimming. It’s the fish,” Katya
clarified.
“We cannot put them back. They are already dead,” Johan spoke up, adding, “We were hungry.”
“We will provide for you. Why did you leave the house?” Konstantin made a grab for equanimity, but it escaped him. Too much had happened.
“We have a right to look around.” Erin tossed her head defiantly.
Katya nailed her with a stony glance.
“Whatever rules you used to live by,” Konstantin said gruffly, “none of them apply here. Inside. Both of you.”
“Leave the fish,” Katya instructed. Not giving Erin a choice, she chased her command with magic that left the fish flopping at her feet.
“Next time,” Erin growled. “Ask, don’t just take.”
Katya made him proud when she didn’t snipe back, merely noting, “This was more efficient.” Konstantin understood what she meant to do, and her actions clinched it. Magic flowed from her, reanimating the fish so she could return them to the lake.
Erin’s mouth gaped. “What? How in the hell—?”
Johan grabbed her arm and half-dragged her toward the doors. They vanished within.
Katya nudged him. “She was right about your expression. Be gentle. Our world is as alien to them as theirs is to us.”
When he pushed out a breath, fire came with it. He forced himself to take several long, deep breaths until only steam accompanied them. Once he was confident he wouldn’t storm inside and immediately dress the humans up one side and down the other, he followed their path.
“Stop in the kitchen,” Katya said. “We could all do with something to eat.”
He wasn’t hungry. The seal his dragon had eaten had been plenty, but this wasn’t about him. Johan had said he was hungry. It was why he and Erin had gone fishing. Maybe it wouldn’t have been the end of the world to let them have the blind fish.
Konstantin pulled the doors shut behind them, sealing the entrance with magic. The likelihood of sea-serpents finding them was remote, indeed, but caution was never wasted. They trotted down one level to the kitchen. Erin and Johan were already there.
