Sparks Fly: A Novel of the Light Dragons

by Katie MacAlister

  “We’re going to make more fire bombs,” he said, his expression one of excited satisfaction. Nico emerged behind him, his arms filled with cases of beer.

  “Keep him inside the tower,” I told Nico as they passed. “The negrets are coming in through the murder holes.”

  “They won’t get past Holland and me,” he promised. I watched them go into the tower before running across the bailey to the opposite set of stairs that led to the curtain walk.

  As a rule, I dislike harming any living being, but negrets were a dangerous cross between a demon and a savage animal, and although they had a human appearance and wore clothing, one look at Savian’s still-bleeding wounds reminded me that their culture revolved around killing whatever living things crossed their path.

  But that thought brought up an interesting question.

  “How do you think—oh, there, on the left, that group is starting to build a pyramid—how do you think the negrets knew to come here?” I asked, handing Savian another bottle as I watched a small pile of metal negrets slide down the wall to the rocky ground.

  “Someone called them up, no doubt. Probably that redheaded she-devil.”

  “Thala?” Maura asked, looking thoughtful.

  Horror crawled up my skin. “She’s not here, is she? I thought she was in Nepal.”

  “I don’t know where she is.”

  “Whew.” I wondered if she’d made her escape and slipped back to Spain without our knowing it, but a moment’s consideration had me shaking my head. “She can’t be here. If she was, she would have come stomping out and made all sorts of dramatic declarations and such. Not to mention probably tried to kill me.”

  “I just wish she were here; there’re a few matters I’d like to settle with her,” Savian answered with a dark note in his voice.

  “She hasn’t been here for a few weeks,” Maura said, prepping another bottle. “I heard a rumor she was going north toward Russia, but I am not at all privy to her plans.”

  “Really…That’s interesting.” I filed away that fact for future consideration. “I wonder if Gareth called her. That rat, he probably did. I bet he told her we were here, and she did something to arrange for the negrets to attack.”

  “Necromancer,” Savian said, grunting as he heaved another bomb out of the murder hole.

  Maura looked vaguely startled. “What about them?”

  “Necromancers can call negrets. Amongst other things, they are eaters of the dead; thus, they answer the call of anyone in the Akashic League.”

  “Oh. True,” Maura said. “Makes sense, then.”

  “Ruth,” I hissed to myself, wishing for a moment that I really had roasted her when I had the opportunity. “She’s a necromancer, too. Not as powerful as Thala, but I bet we have her to thank for this.”

  “Probably called them up before she ran off with your ex,” Savian agreed, snarling under his breath as a fresh wave of negrets collected beneath us.

  “Ruth is a necromancer, too?” Maura asked, disbelief written on her face. “Why did she never mention that?”

  “No clue, but I get the feeling she doesn’t use her skills very often. Not that I remember much about our time together.” I stopped myself from adding any more. I had a few choice things I’d like to say to Ruth, and kept myself occupied with them until we ran out of ammunition.

  “What now?” I asked as Savian dropped the last bomb.

  “Let’s hope Brom has more made.”

  We followed Savian down the stairs into the inner bailey, but there I let Maura and him head for the tower. I went in the other direction, calling after them, “I’m going to check on Baltic; then I’ll help you with the fire bombs.”

  “Sounds goo—holy shit!”

  I spun around at his exclamation. Flames licked out of one of the windows at the bottom of the tower, scorching the stone black.

  “Brom!” I screamed, and ran for the tower door. I didn’t make it into the tower—just as I approached it, I saw a familiar green tail lashing the air before disappearing around the side of the tower, and I raced after it.

  Nico was covered with negrets, his dragon form more red than green as the little monsters tried to shred the flesh from his bones.

  Holland lay unconscious or dead—I didn’t know which—and was being dragged through the bloody dirt by six negrets, their faces covered in blood as they took periodic bites from his body.

  “Unlock me so I can fight them!” Maura demanded as she shifted into dragon form.

  “Can’t! Lost the key somewhere,” Savian answered before grabbing Maura’s arm with one hand, and rushing past me with a fierce battle cry that attracted the attention of the nearest negrets. Dragon fire was everywhere, turning some of the negrets to metal, but there were just too many of them for Maura and Nico to toast.

  Behind Nico, Brom was pressed against the wall, his face smeared with blood and his eyes huge. Nico was using his own body to shield him, but, judging by the number of negrets that poured out of the chapel and swarmed over Nico, I knew that even in his dragon form, he wouldn’t last but for a few more seconds.

  “Nooo!” I screamed when one negret climbed over the top of another, and reached down to grab Brom by his hair.

  I yanked hard on Baltic’s fire, intending to blast the negrets with it, but got only a thin trickle of fire. Baltic, I knew, was using it himself to stem the flow of negrets into the keep, leaving me without access to his fire. There was nothing for it—I had to summon my own fire, weak though it was.

  “Sullivan!” Brom’s cry reached my ears as I dug deep within myself, desperately trying to rouse my fire.

  Savian went down, covered in negrets. Maura screamed as some of them, slashing and biting her, climbed onto her body, keeping just out of reach of her fire.

  Holland was literally being torn limb from limb before our eyes.

  Nico’s fire occurred in shorter and shorter blasts, his body staggering as the massive swarm of negrets was taking its toll on him.

  I spun around, desperately needing Baltic, but he and Pavel were too far away to help.

  “Sullivaaan,” Brom wailed, the negrets viciously yanking him from behind Nico.

  Fury, fear, anger, hate…it all spun around inside me, my soul screaming with agony and impotent rage and desperation, building to such a crescendo, I thought it would explode out of my skin.

  “Brom!” I screamed, leaping forward to attack the negrets that dared touch my child. I literally saw red when my dragon fire finally answered my summons, bathing the area in a scarlet tidal wave of flame that swept across half the bailey, from the towers to the other side, where the chapel and outbuildings stood. Negrets screamed in a chorus that lightened my heart almost as much as the sight of the little metal bodies hitting the ground. “Brommy! Are you all right? Did they hurt you? Stand still and let me see if you’re injured. Oh, lovey, I’m so sorry I wasn’t here to protect you. Is that your blood or Nico’s? By the rood, if any of them harmed you—”

  “Sullivan?” Brom struggled in my arms as I tried to simultaneously kiss, hug, and check him for injuries. “You’re…uh…white.”

  “White? What on earth are you talking about? Oh my god, they hit your head, didn’t they? My poor, poor darling—” I stopped stroking the hair back off his face, staring in surprise at the white-scaled fingers tangled in his brown hair. I lifted the hand, startled even more to see black claws tipping each finger.

  “Good lord,” a weak voice said behind me. “Ysolde?”

  I looked over my shoulder to where Nico was getting to his feet, his dragon body battered and bloody. Beyond him, Savian groaned and moved one arm. Unfortunately, it was Holland’s arm that one of the negrets had ripped off and had been using to beat Savian, but the fact that Savian was alive gave me hope for Holland. Maura, now in human form, was covered in blood as she staggered to her feet, looking dazed.

  I spun around and stared at the chapel, but Holland lay halfway in the door, with no negrets coming from within.
Either we’d reached the end of that particular attack force, or they were wisely hiding from my wrath. “We have to close up the bolt-hole again. But first…Brom, can you walk?”

  “Of course I can walk.” He rubbed his head, his gaze locked on my body. “They just pulled on my hair.”

  “I have to show Baltic this. He won’t believe me otherwise,” I said, taking my child by the hand and marching around the tower to the far side of the bailey.

  “You’re a lot bigger than I thought you would be,” Brom said as he bounced against my side a couple of times.

  “I’m not big. I’m statuesque,” I corrected, staring down at myself, unable to keep from twitching my tail experimentally. It felt strong, as if I could take down a tree with it. “Male dragons are intimidating when in dragon form. Females are statuesque while still retaining femininity. What do you think of my tail? I rather like it.”

  He glanced thoughtfully over his shoulder. “It’s nice. Doesn’t have pointy things on it like the pictures Nico and I saw in a museum. He said mortals don’t understand dragon form at all, and that they were always giving them wings and horse heads and things like that.” He was silent for a few moments. “Your head isn’t like a horse.”

  “Of course not.” I took a deep breath, enjoying the sensation of power that seemed to flow through me.

  “You’ve got small front arms, though, compared to your back ones,” he continued, then frowned. “Or are they all legs, like on a dog?”

  I held out my free arm. It was perfectly normal in length. I stopped and bent over to look at my legs. They were dragon legs, true dragon legs, not at all human looking, strong and powerful, and covered in white scales that shimmered in the morning sun. I looked back at my arm. “Oh, great, I have tiny little ineffectual T. rex arms!”

  “I don’t think they’re that bad—” Brom started to say, but I cut him off by bellowing Baltic’s name as we approached the stairs to the curtain wall.

  “What is it?” came his answer.

  I stomped up the stairs, taking a perverse satisfaction in the little tremor shocks that accompanied each step. “You never told me I was going to be a mutant dragon!”

  He and Pavel both had their backs to us, the curtain walk around them covered in metal bodies interspersed with blood and gore and the remains of negrets that had been dispatched when they were conserving their dragon fire.

  “What are you talking about?” Baltic asked, turning around to ask, an irritated look on his face that only grew more irritated when I gestured toward myself.

  “I have tiny little arms! They aren’t at all like yours! They’re minuscule! They’re like baby arms or something! I cannot tell you how disconcerting this is!”

  Pavel, who had also turned to look, took a step back in surprise, tripped over a negret corpse, and fell off the wall to the ground below.

  “You see?” I gestured toward Pavel as he picked himself up off the ground. “Pavel is so horrified by my puny little arms that he would rather leap off the wall than stay on it with them,” I declared, knowing it was untrue, but unable to keep from expressing my unhappiness.

  “You choose now to find your dragon form?” Baltic snarled, backhanding a couple of negrets off the wall down onto their brethren. “You couldn’t wait for a time where I might guide you? You had to do it now? I am busy, mate!”

  “It just happened! I thought I was going to explode, and instead, this happened.” I stared at him for a moment, unable to put into words what I most feared.

  “You don’t know how to change back, do you?” he asked.

  I slumped a little, relief filling me that he was there with me. “No. Behind you.”

  He spat fire over his shoulder, sighing heavily as he walked over to us, pausing at the sight of Brom’s bloody face. “You are hurt?”

  “Just my hair.”

  “Ah. Good. Mate, look at me.”

  “I don’t like my arms,” I said, releasing my death grip on Brom to wave them at him. “They’re really, really disappointing. I thought I was going to be big and beefy like you. You have powerful arms. You have arms that make people respect you. You don’t have widdle runty arms like me.”

  His mouth twitched, but he managed to keep his expression sober as he pulled me against him, shifting as he did so back into human form. “You are female. Your arms are suited to your form. Nothing more, nothing less.”

  “I don’t like them,” I repeated petulantly, letting a little of my fire caress his chest.

  “Then change your form. It is simply a matter of controlling your will, chérie. Will yourself to your other form, and it will be so.”

  I kissed his neck, breathing deeply of his scent, now overlaid with the metallic smell of blood. I thought of myself as I normally appeared, of how my body fit so well against his, of the pleasure I took in our embraces, of my true inner self, of who and what I was, and when I reached up to pull his head down to mine, it was a normal human hand that brushed back a strand of his hair. “I love you,” I told him.

  “I know,” he answered, kissed me swiftly, gave my butt a squeeze, and released me to take care of the next batch of negrets that forced themselves through the window. Pavel limped past us, giving me a crooked smile as he picked up his sword.

  “Will you be mad if I said I like you better when you look like a normal person?” Brom asked as we trotted down the stairs to see how the others were doing.

  “Of course not.” I put my arm around him, rubbing his back, relieved to be in my human form once again. “I liked my tail in the dragon form, but I prefer this body, too.”

  “You have normal arms now,” he pointed out.

  “Yes.” I frowned as we approached Nico, who squatted next to Holland. The latter, I was pleased to see, was still alive, although mostly unconscious, and missing one arm and part of an ear. Maura had helped Savian to his feet, his shirt and pants covered in blood and dirt. He weaved as he staggered against her, gesturing toward us. “And don’t you think I won’t have a thing or two to say to the First Dragon about those puny dragon arms when I see him next.”

  “Are you all right?” Savian called.

  “We’re fine. The negrets got in through the crypt, though. We need to block it off again in case more try to come through that way.”

  Nico and I did most of the work since Savian just wasn’t up to it, and Maura was still firmly attached to him. We left them to watch Holland and the door while we swung the tomb back into place, and we wedged the base with a bit of broken wood from a window shutter.

  “Let’s hope that holds. Nico, are you all right to come with me?”

  “Yes. Just a bit worn out,” he said, trying to put a brave face on what I knew were some pretty grievous injuries.

  “Good. Savian, you and Maura stay here with Holland.”

  “If he would just unlock me, I could help you,” Maura complained, shooting a potent glare at Savian.

  He lifted a feeble hand at her. “I would if I could, princess, but I told you that somehow, in all of the excitement, the key fell out of my pocket.”

  “Great, just great.” Maura huffed to herself as she plopped down on the ground next to him. “This is so how I wanted this day to go.”

  “At least you can heal yourself,” Savian said with a soft moan as she jogged his arm.

  “If Holland recovers consciousness, tell him we’ll get him to a healer just as soon as we can,” I told them. “You may not want to let him see his arm lying there, though. That’s an awfully startling thing to see when you just come to your senses. You’re sure the bleeding has stopped?”

  “His, yes. He’s a corporeal spirit. Me, I’m human,” Savian said, leaning back against the sun-warmed stone wall with a groan of pain.

  “We’ll get you and Maura a healer, as well,” I promised, hesitating when my gaze landed on Brom.

  “Can I come with you?” he asked, and I saw fear in his eyes that I knew he would never acknowledge.

  “You would be a big h
elp.” He smiled in relief as the three of us went to pick up the Molotov cocktails that Brom had managed to make before the negrets had burst in on them.

  I yelled up to Baltic my intentions, receiving in return a warning to be careful. We hurried over to the other side of the wall, which fortunately none of the negrets had managed to breach.

  “With luck, they’ve either run out or realized we’re just going to toast them into extinction,” I said as I hurled a lit bottle down on the small cluster of negrets.

  “You wouldn’t think there was an endless supply of them, would you?” Nico asked as he—taller than me—tossed a bottle over the wall.

  “I sure hope not.” I bent down to drop another bottle, but movement to the far right side caught my eye. “What now?”

  “What what?” Brom asked, handing me a bottle.

  I handed it back to him. “You supply Nico for a minute, lovey. I want to see what’s going on over at the far side. If the negrets have found a weak spot, we need to know about it.”

  “Don’t leave the curtain walk,” Nico called after me as I hurried down the narrow walkway.

  The movement that had caught my peripheral vision was around the north side of the fortress, where the wall melted into the heavy stone mountain that rose above our heads. I peered down through the branches of a half dozen lemon trees that ringed a low stone wall that formed a drunken oval outside the bailey. The ground inside the oval was much less rocky than the surrounding area, although a few large flat stones were scattered around. My eyes narrowed as I focused on one of those stones. It looked like a headstone. I turned to look behind me, into the bailey. The chapel was directly below me with Maura, Savian, and Holland propped up against the wall.

  “Must be the fortress graveyard for people not buried in the crypt,” I said to myself, turning back to the area and searching it for signs of life.

  A little flash of red through the green leaves had me gasping in surprise and shock, followed swiftly by terror. The sight of bodies forming out of nothing sent me running back along the wall. I didn’t stop to explain when I got to Brom and Nico; I grabbed my son’s arm and dragged him after me as I raced down the stairs and across the bailey.