by Alex Rivers
“Careful, it bites,” I said, and touched it. It circled around my wrist, and I could almost hear it hissing in outrage.
“You have the chain?” I had the satisfaction of seeing him surprised for the first time.
“Yup.”
“Do you know what it can do?”
“It can thwart bicycle thieves really well.”
“You use the chain of Apollonius as a… bike lock?”
“I usually do. Though right now it’s locked with a regular lock, because I thought you might want to see some proof that I know what I’m doing.”
He considered this. His cigarette went out, but he didn’t seem to notice.
“Okay,” he finally said. “I’ll do it.”
I tensed. He didn’t seem particularly interested in the dragon scales, so why would he agree to risk his life on this heist so quickly? I considered getting up, telling him I’d changed my mind, that he wasn’t what I was looking for.
But Kane was the best choice. The only choice.
“Good,” I said. “So… now we need to seal the deal.”
“I’m sorry?”
“I wasn’t born yesterday, Kane Underwood. When I work with sorcerers, I always seal the deal with blood. It’s the only way we can really trust each other,” I said. “We both cut our hands, and squeeze them together. We bind our hands with white silk. We swear an oath of loyalty as the silk slowly turns crimson. Then we untie the knot, and lick the mixed blood from each other’s fingers.”
I savored his stare of bafflement.
Finally, he cleared his throat. “Lou… are you fucking with me?”
I grinned at him. “Maybe a little.”
“Okay then.” His lip quirked in amusement, his eyes twinkling. “That was fun. Now let’s talk some more about our dragon vault.”
Chapter Ten
“I’m not sure I understand what you want me to do.” Isabel frowned.
We were in her shop, drinking tea. She’d been more than happy to join our crew. Dragon scales were rumored to enhance psychic senses, and that was something she just couldn’t refuse.
“My hands,” I said. “They burst into flames sometimes.” I opened my right hand and concentrated on it. On cue, a flame rose from my palm, dancing merrily.
“I know. Because you played with phoenix blood.”
“I wasn’t playing, I was working with it. It’s a very volatile material. The thing is, I can’t always control it.”
She eyed the flickering flame. “Looks like you’re doing fine, hon.”
“Sure, because I’m relaxed right now. But when I’m angry or scared, it can go off without my control.” I clenched my fist, the flame disappearing.
Isabel raised her eyebrows. “That’s quite a problem. Good thing you don’t drive. The way some people behave on the road… There was this one asshole this morning—”
“Right.” I hurriedly interrupted her. Isabel was the most relaxed and patient person I knew. But thirty seconds behind the wheel turned her into a frothing, screaming madwoman. I once saw her get out of her car, intent on smashing all the windows of a vehicle that had parked diagonally across two parking spaces. I really didn’t have time for one of her road-rage rants. “The thing is, I need a way to control my emotions. You have relaxation techniques, right? You said you have to be completely relaxed to glimpse the future.”
“Well… yes. I’ve studied and practiced them for years. Mediation, guided imagery, self-hypnosis, dream walking—”
“Awesome! I need something quick. A sort of crash course. Relaxation 101. How to relax for dummies.”
“Quick?” she frowned. “How long do we have? Months?”
“Well…” I thought about it. “Preferably… two, three days?”
“You want me to impart all I learned—”
“Not all you learned,” I interjected. “Just some quick breathing techniques. You know? To get me all nice and relaxed and not in a burning sort of mood.”
“So we have three days—”
“Not whole days, really. Something like an hour every day.”
“Three… hours. To teach you self-relaxation.”
“Let’s start now, shall we?” I said brightly.
She sighed. “Okay, fine. Maybe I should put on some soothing background music before we begin.”
“Well… it’s not like I’ll have soothing music in the dragon’s vault, right?” I pointed out. “If anything, there will be screaming alarms and police sirens. Better do it without the music.”
“Fine.” She sounded irritated and pretty far from relaxed. “I want you to close your eyes… not that hard. Just close them. Loosen your muscles a bit. Start taking deep steady breaths. You sound like you’re hyperventilating. Slow down… you don’t need to breathe so hard. You don’t get points for volume, Lou—”
“How long should the breaths be?”
“How long?” She sounded confused.
“Like… two seconds in, two seconds out? Three seconds? I’m good with recipes.”
“Relaxing is not a recipe. Just… breathe in, breathe out. Yes. Something like that. Good. Now I want you to focus on your toes.”
“My toes?”
“Stop talking. From now on you don’t talk. Focus on each toe. I want you to imagine feeling the muscles in your toes relax.”
The muscles in my toes. Up until now I’d never even known I had muscles in my toes. It sounded perverse. Could someone train their toe muscles? Could they work them out in the gym? I bet Jason Momoa had really muscled toes. I bet he could lift weights with them.
“Feel them grow lax, liquid, completely dormant.”
I had a million things to be doing right now. I needed to start scouting the dragon’s mansion. And we had to find a hacker who could crack the dragon’s security systems. There were some potions I had to make. Did I have the ingredients? I began to tally a shopping list of what I needed. I could probably get Breadknife to pay for the ingredients. Maybe I should buy some extra stuff while I had an expense budget.
“Lou, you have to concentrate.”
“I am concentrating!”
“Hon… open your eyes.”
I did, feeling sheepish. Isabel smiled at me, her face looking a bit sad. “I’ve known you for a long time, hon. You have a mind that races like a speeding train. It’s full of whirling ideas, and plans, and inspirations. I’ve seen you think on your feet so fast, it left me breathless.”
I blinked, surprised. I’d never thought of myself that way, and definitely hadn’t imagined Isabel did.
“But to truly relax you have to think much slower. I could almost see your mind racing right now. You have to focus on this one, tiny part of yourself, and push away all other thoughts. Do you think you can do that?”
“I… I can try.”
“Okay. So first, when you close your eyes, I want you to focus only on my voice.”
I shut my eyes, and began breathing deeply again.
“I want you to feel each breath as you inhale. Focus on your lungs, follow their rhythm.”
I focused on my lungs. Breathing in and out. In, and out.
“Good. Now, focus on your toes. Feel the muscles relaxing.”
She made me focus on each toe, then on my ankles, my knees, my thighs, feeling each muscle grow soft. Her voice—that deep soft voice—lulled me, made me feel mesmerized. Slowly, my breathing slowed, and I sank into a calm stupor.
“Now, focus on your stomach. Feel the muscles in it relax, the tension dissipating…”
A question crept into my mind. It had been there all along, waiting for me to pause for a moment, to really think.
Breadknife knew there were six dragon scales in the safe, but he hadn’t demanded even one. Only the box with the crystal. It seemed so unlike him. It was as if the scales were almost irrelevant compared to the crystal.
What if it was the Yliaster crystal in the dragon’s vault? Could I really discount that so quickly? What if the Yliaster crystal existed
? If it did, it would definitely be more powerful than a dragon scale—a crystal that could hold souls.
But if that was true, it could mean something even more sinister. The Yliaster crystal could trap a soul. Could that be what Breadknife’s client was really after? Did they want me to steal a soul for them? If they did, whose could it be? What did they want with it? Could I really hand over someone else’s soul?
“Lou?”
I sighed, and opened my eyes. “Sorry,” I said, dejected. “The thoughts just popped up.”
Isabel patted my hand. “Don’t worry about it. You did much better than I thought you would. Want to try again?”
I shook my head. “Not tonight. Tomorrow.”
Perhaps by tomorrow, I would manage to push the troubling thought of the trapped soul out of my mind.
Chapter Eleven
The sun broke through the morning clouds, illuminating the sky in the sort of crisp magical light that was perfect for picnics, walks in the park, and surveillance.
Ddraig Goch’s mansion was located in the so-rich-you-could-never-afford-to-live-here town of Weston. Less than a mile away, on a green-grassed hill, stood another mansion, which belonged to a lawyer who knew Breadknife through ways best left unexplored. Since he was currently on vacation, he had agreed to let us use the place. It was anyone’s guess what dirt Breadknife had on him that made him so complaisant.
By sheer luck, due to a combination of topography and aggressive gardening, there was one bedroom on the top floor of the lawyer’s mansion that had a direct line of sight to the premises of Ddraig Goch’s home. And this was our base of operations. The room enabled us to maintain a constant surveillance on the mansion’s personnel, slowly figuring out the shift changes of the security guards, what time the gardeners showed up and left, the exact path of the patrol routes… anything that might be important.
Through the twin lenses of my binoculars, I looked at Ddraig Goch’s home for the first time, making small notes on the blueprints that were spread on the king-size bed by my side. The bed was inviting, the bedsheets tightly spread and clean, the mattress possessing that perfect balance between soft and firm.
Sinead and Isabel had taken the night shift, and now it was my turn, with Kane as my shift partner. I’d showed up at six in the morning to relieve my friends, who were blurry-eyed and cranky, as expected. I’d asked Kane to show up at seven-thirty. I felt a bit tense about spending a long day with him, and I wanted to have a bit of time to myself before he arrived, to settle into the relaxed atmosphere of a long, eventless day.
As I waited, I practiced breathing steadily, and relaxing the different muscles of my body. I had to be able to control my emotions by the time we broke into the dragon’s mansion. I couldn’t let the entire job be blown because my hands suddenly decided to combust.
When does a house stop being a house and become a mansion? Is it a simple matter of number of rooms? Six rooms means it’s a house, eighteen means it’s a mansion? Or maybe it’s the size. If it takes a few minutes to cross from one side to the other, it’s definitely a mansion. Or it could be style—the expensiveness of the furniture, the intricate carvings framing the doors and windows, the serving staff roaming the halls.
Ddraig Goch’s mansion had left those distinctions far behind. It was one-hundred-percent mansion, and inching its way toward being a palace.
The front lawn was immense, a bright green carpet of carefully mowed grass. At the edges grew enormous red maple trees, their leaves creating an explosion of orange, red, and pink. Towering above the garden was the mansion itself, a light-brown three-story structure spotted with arches and ancient-looking windows and terraces. An enormous porch, large enough to contain my entire apartment, protruded from the third floor. A greenhouse sat on the roof of the mansion, its glass panes clean and translucent, a myriad of strange plants growing inside.
I had stared at the blueprints of the mansion for hours and knew the layout well, but the place still took my breath away.
The sound of footsteps coming up the stairs made me lower the binoculars and glance at the time. Twenty past seven. He was early. A second later, Kane appeared in the doorway, a smile on his face, holding a Starbucks bag.
He set the Starbucks bag on a tasteless mahogany dresser that stood against the wall by the door. “It’s the first time I spend a whole day with a woman in a bedroom, and all she wants to do is peep at the neighbors.”
“How long did it take you to think of that quip?” I asked, raising the binoculars again and looking through them.
“About ten minutes. My quick wit doesn’t really show up until noon.” I heard the bag rustle as he rummaged through it. “I didn’t know how you drink yours, but you struck me as someone who likes her coffee strong.”
“You were right,” I said. I still held the binoculars to my eyes, but I heard his soft steps on the carpet and smelled the strong scent of coffee. I lowered the binoculars and took the cup from him. “Thanks.”
“I also got us some muffins.” He sat on the edge of the bed, moving aside the blueprints, and his leg brushed against mine accidentally. He had taken off the trench coat. Underneath he wore a white T-shirt that accentuated the width of his shoulders. His face was lit by the sunlight filtering through the window, and his grass-green eyes seemed to shine. It took me a few seconds to realize I was staring at him, almost mesmerized, and I pulled my eyes away, doing my best not to blush.
“See anything interesting?” he asked.
I blinked, my tongue suddenly tied. Oh—he was talking about the mansion, not about his face.
“Uh… nothing we didn’t know about beforehand. Take a look.” I removed the binoculars’ strap from my neck, handing them to him. He leaned forward to look out the window, and I shifted my chair slightly to give him some space.
“Oh, wow,” he muttered. “That’s a big-ass mansion.”
I sipped from my coffee, and determined that Kane had pegged my taste perfectly. Black coffee, strong, bitter, perfect. I felt almost tearful with gratitude.
“What else do you see?” I asked, my voice flat and innocent. I needed to know this guy was the real thing. Was he an actual sorcerer, or was he just a guy who thought it was cool to mutter in Latin?
He took a few seconds to answer, and when he did, his voice had an edge. “There’s an aura of magic shimmering from all the windows. It’s well hidden; whoever cast it was a master. I assume it’s some sort of ward.”
I nodded with satisfaction. I couldn’t see the aura myself, but I knew it was there. It had been mentioned in Breadknife’s notes. The fact that Kane could see it indicated he had a sharp third eye, a good sign of his powers.
“The windows are all warded against intruders,” I said. “Anyone who tries to enter or leave through them dies. Anyone who breaks them dies.”
“Dies of what?”
“Does it matter?”
“Just professional interest. Is it a heart attack? Does it make your brain explode? Does it make you combust? Turn you into a toad?”
“Turning into a toad isn’t dying.”
“Fine. Do you turn into a dead toad? I just want to know how powerful the magic is.”
“I don’t know. It’s a ward that kills you,” I said testily. “Maybe it disintegrates you, maybe you die of sniffles. The point is, it’s terminal. You die. Cease to be. Can you break the spell?”
“It depends.” He kept looking through the binoculars in concentration. “Maybe. Yes, I think so. With enough time. But whoever cast the spell would instantly know it’s been broken.”
“That’s not good. We don’t want to alert anyone.”
“Then we’re not entering through the windows.” He lowered the binoculars and glanced at me. “There’s no spell on the front door.”
“There’s no spell on the back door either.” I leaned toward him and took the binoculars from him. His eyes lingered on mine for a moment, and I met them, my gaze steady. Then I drew back, and put the binoculars back to
my eyes, looking at the doors. “The problem is, there’s always guards stationed by the doors. No one enters or leaves without their permission.”
“We’ll have to take care of that.”
I shook my head unhappily. He was right, of course, but I preferred to avoid it if possible. I could think of a myriad of ways to take care of the guards, and all of them posed risks I didn’t want to take.
Kane got up and fetched the muffins. They were still warm, and I snagged the chocolate chunk one, leaving the walnut muffin for Kane. In this world’s vicious food chain, I am chocolate’s natural predator. We ate our muffins in silence, and then Kane pulled out his strange cigarette pack. He put a cigarette in his mouth, but I quickly leaned forward and plucked it out.
“No smoking here.”
“Seriously?” He seemed outraged.
“We had very clear instructions. We’re guests here, after all.” I rummaged in my purse and took out a pack, which I handed to him. “Here. I made these some time ago. Smokeless cigarettes.”
“What, like vaping?”
“No. These are actual cigarettes, but the smoke dissipates once you expel it. No smoke, no smell, no problem.”
He lit one suspiciously. Its tip glowed bright green as he inhaled, a strange quirk of the magical tobacco I’d created. He breathed out, the smoke instantly disappearing.
“These taste like ass,” he said.
“Well, they’re a bit old, I guess,” I admitted. “But it’s real tobacco, so you still get the lung cancer and stains on your teeth.”
“You should find a job in marketing.” He took another drag from the cigarette. Despite his complaint, he didn’t seem about to stub it out. He used his empty coffee cup as an ashtray, puffing on my handmade cigarette with a thoughtful look in his eyes.
“So…” he said, five minutes later, the cigarette gone. “Now what?”
“Our shift is just starting.” I smiled at him. “Learn to appreciate your quiet time with me. We’ll be here for ten more hours.”
“Ten?”
