Scales and Flames

by Catherine Banks

  “Good thinking,” she said.

  Ikran opened the door and took out his phone. “Just enjoy the AC for a minute while I call for backup,” he said, his smile broad and genuine.

  Dyadra waited for him to take a few steps away, then silently opened her door. Slinking along the front of the car, she watched as he raised the phone to his ear. She focused her attention on the wind, feeling for the crackle of energy swirling all around her. At her command, the air condensed into a laser-thin beam and pierced Ikran’s wrist. He shouted in surprise as blood sprayed from the bullet-sized wound.

  “Wh-what are you…” he stammered. A telltale shimmer of energy sparked to life around him. His amber eyes ignited with flame, and he started to hunch in the first throes of transformation. With a tremendous effort, she spun a cocoon of air around him, pressing in tight on his squirming body. Green scales broke through the skin on his face, but he couldn’t get enough space to begin changing his torso. “Dyadra, please!”

  She stepped in closer, tightening the cocoon around him. He let out a genuine scream this time, and the unmistakable sound of bones breaking found her ears. It was a beautiful sound. “If you change, you’ll be pulverized,” she said calmly. “I advise against it, but I won’t stop you.”

  “I don’t understand,” he babbled.

  Keeping her eye on him, she picked up his phone. A smear of blood gleamed bright against the screen like stained glass. His call hadn’t gone through. She swiped back to his text messages and found a message chain between him and V. Tamar that went back for weeks. She didn’t have the time to read it all, but the messages from that day were enough to confirm her suspicions.

  She called the Gate for help. I volunteered

  V. Tamar: good news. Find out if she knows anything, then take her out of town and kill her

  Got it

  “Well?” she said. “Any explanation?”

  “I’m just trying to help you,” Ikran said. His voice was strained, coming in near-sobs. “To find your daughter.”

  “Did you learn anything interesting from me? And did you plan to deliver me to V, or tie up loose ends by killing me here in the desert?” His amber eyes narrowed. “I’ve done this a lot longer than you, an’kadi. Why do they want Will? Is it the map?” He was silent. She squeezed tighter, prompting a shriek of pain. “I already heard you on the phone. No point in playing stoic now.”

  “They want the map,” he choked. She loosened her hold slightly. He let out a rasping sigh. “They…we figured out he’s Arik’tazhan.”

  “Did you figure that out? When we came to the Gate?” Ikran nodded slowly. His breathing was ragged. “How clever of you. How?”

  “Tarek was telling Shazakh. I just overheard it,” Ikran said. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”

  “No, you’re not,” Dyadra said. “You’re sorry you got caught. I understand that. So let me tell you this. You weren’t wrong. But you got your message mixed up. Will is part human. And me?” She shrugged. “It’s a name I haven’t used in many years. They gave us all these frightening names back then. We encouraged it. Sometimes it made the enemy think twice about fucking with us. There was the Black Fortress, the Cold Death, the Firestorm. All good friends of mine. They called me the Silent Tempest.” His eyes went wide, and she smiled, baring her teeth. “And when they thought I wasn’t listening, they called me e’nesh khandari. It’s an old word, from a dialect that not many speak anymore. It means one who never forgets and never forgives. The High Empress used to have a position called e’nesh khandari, who would be her executioner. Her right hand, her spy, whatever she needed, it would be done without question or hesitation.” She released her hold on Ikran, and he tumbled to the ground. As he impacted the hard earth, he cried out in pain, back arching. His shirt tails had come undone, revealing black bruising across his ribs. “You’re a smart boy. I’m sure you can figure out why they called me that.”

  “I didn’t know,” he said, trying to roll onto his back. She knelt next to him, resting her knee on his back.

  “Well that’s obvious, or you would have taken me instead of him,” she said. “And I don’t blame you. Looking at the two of us, if you had to guess between us who was the dragon and who was the hybrid, he makes more sense. Had you only involved him, I could forgive you. That’s war. But you harmed my child. You would use an innocent child to get to us.”

  “I didn’t—"

  With a quiet growl, she drove her fist into the small of his back. Her knuckles found the delicate, vulnerable place between his vertebrae and shattered it. He gasped, making an awful choked sound. If she’d judged it correctly, the blow was enough to drive the shards of bone into his spine and paralyze his legs.

  “Please don’t,” he cried, hands curling into the dust. He managed to turn his head, and his face was twisted in a pathetic grimace. “I’m sorry. I’ll tell them what I did. I’m sorry, just please don’t kill me. Please.”

  “Shh,” she said, tracing her fingers up his spine, feeling for the ridges through his sweat-soaked shirt. “You have a big decision to make now, Ikran. I need to know how many of them are in there, and what kind of weapons they have. Are they all Kadirai?”

  “I don’t know—”

  “Think hard about it,” she said. She walked her fingers up the knobs of bone. He twitched under her touch.

  “I really don’t know her crew,” Ikran said. “I swear.”

  “Who’s her?”

  “Vienna Tamar,” he said. “She’s a hybrid. She’s super strong. I know she’s got a couple other Kadirai contacts, and this other hybrid guy Alec that works with her. I don’t know who she got for this job. I was just giving her information.”

  “Weapons?”

  “I know they had some chains that could keep a dragon from changing,” he said. “I don’t know what else they have in there.”

  “Anything else I should know?”

  “Nothing, I swear,” he said.

  “Are you sure? Because I can forgive some things. If I get Will and Allana out of there safely, I’ll let you live. But if they don’t make it…” She shook her head and pushed her finger into his spine at the base of his neck, feeling for the meaty resistance there. He whimpered. “Your legs will be the least of your concerns.”

  He gasped. “I swear. That’s all I know.”

  “Okay,” she said. She got up, then took the keys from where they’d fallen in the dirt. She unlocked the trunk, then used the wind to lift Ikran and dump him into the empty trunk. He groaned as he impacted the hard surface. “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure,” he wept.

  He seemed to be truthful. He wasn’t clever enough to hold onto a lie through all of that. If the healers at Broken Stone Gate felt he deserved it, they could heal the damage. If they didn’t, she wouldn’t lose any sleep over it. He was lucky he’d lived. She slammed the trunk, then walked back around to sit in the front seat of the car. Ikran didn’t cry out, but she could still hear his quiet whimpers and the noises of pained determination as he tried to control his breathing.

  A traitor in their midst. She didn’t dare call Tarek Windstriker again. If Ikran was telling the truth, Tarek likely wasn’t in on it, but she didn’t have the luxury of time to parse it out. There were only a few other people she trusted in this world. She swiped through her contacts until she found a name she hadn’t spoken to in years. Her stomach turned as she waited for him to answer.

  A gruff voice answered on the third ring. “Dee? Hi.”

  “Sohan,” she said. There was something impossibly comforting about the sound of his rough, smoke-tinged voice. “I’ve got trouble.”

  “Just a second,” he said. His voice was muffled as he shouted. “Keep it up! I’ll be back.” A moment later, his voice was clear again. “Recruits are training. It’s pitiful. They need all the help they can get.”

  “Recruits?”

  “Ah, don’t worry about it,” he said. “What kind of trouble?”

  For
the first time since she’d gotten Eileen’s call, she felt a lump swell in her throat. Emotion began to break through the relentless drive to find her family. Her voice wavered as she said, “Someone took Will and Allana.”

  “Fuck. What about you? Are you all right?”

  “I am,” she said. “Long story.” He was silent as she told him about the events of the day, from getting Eileen’s call to dumping Ikran into the trunk. As she gave her report, she regained control of her emotions. It was easier to think of this as two random people, not her family.

  “You oughta kill him,” Sohan said matter-of-factly.

  “After I get them back,” she said.

  There was a long pause. “Dee…shit. There’s a good chance this is connected to the mess we’ve had over here.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They’re back. The Raspolin.”

  Her blood went cold. “We ended them.”

  “Not entirely,” he said. “They’re calling themselves the Chosen now. New name, same purpose. Now they’re harvesting Kadirai. Using blood magic to fuel their weapons.”

  “Vazredakh,” she cursed. “I have to go in. They’ll kill him.”

  “I wish you would wait,” Sohan said. “Give me a couple hours. It’ll be like old times.”

  “No offense, but not quite,” she said. “We’re a broken bunch.”

  He laughed bitterly. “That we are. Point stands. I’ll come out there, and I’ve got two dozen good fighters I can bring. They’re nowhere near what I’d like to see yet, but they’re getting there.”

  “I can’t wait that long.”

  “I figured you’d say that,” he said. He sighed. “You still haven’t changed, have you?” His tone was pointed, and he didn’t have to say aloud what she feared.

  “Nope. That’s part of why I called you,” she said. “If something happens—"

  “Dee, don’t do this dramatic shit. You know I hate it.”

  “Just let me finish,” she said. “Explain it to Will and Allana, and make sure they’re protected.” Her breath hitched. “And remember that no matter what, we are still kin. Forged in blood.”

  “Always and forever,” he murmured. “I promise. I hope it won’t come to that, but you have my word. We’ll be on a plane as soon as possible. If you can find it in yourself to wait, then do. But you do what you have to, eladin.”

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “Just be careful,” he said. “We thought we got it all back then, but they’ve pieced together a lot more than I would have thought possible. They’ve already built an Elegy. Fucked up one of my boys real bad. You know all too well what it can do.”

  She nodded to herself. “I’ll try.”

  “Skymother watch over you,” he said. “Come back to us.”

  Her throat clenched again as she hung up the phone. This certainly complicated things. She could deal with guns and blades, and as long as the numbers weren’t too stacked against her, she could handle the volleys of power from the hybrids. But if these people were associated with the Raspolin, there was no telling what she would be dropping into. One of their most powerful weapons was the Crimson Elegy, a device that generated a resonating wave of disruptive magic. It forced Kadirai to transform against their will, and it had nearly given the Raspolin a victory in the Great War.

  It had also brought Dyadra to the brink of death. Nearly a hundred years ago, they were hunting down a lead on a handful of Raspolin who had holed up in a small South American village. Decades after the war’s end, the splinter cell was just a few elderly humans who had fled, and a dozen younger proteges. Sohan had believed all of the Elegies and the other foul weaponry of the Raspolin had already been destroyed, and so they hadn’t come prepared to counteract it.

  He was wrong.

  Their hidden safehouse was well-equipped with mechanical weapons, a handful of guns, and a small Elegy that cast its debilitating power in a five-hundred-foot radius. Sohan and Dyadra flew right into it and were immediately caught in the throes of its power. Both of them fell hundreds of feet, tumbling from the sky as their wings failed. Sohan slammed into hard stone, while Dyadra managed to keep her wits just long enough to use the wind to blow her toward a small lake. The impact was still enough to shatter her bones, which broke and reformed themselves over and over as the Elegy’s powerful magic consumed her. The world went mercifully black, sparing her the agony of a broken body transforming itself. The next time she awoke, she was in the massive halls of Adamantine Rise, under the care of the gifted healers of Ascavar.

  Their brother-in-arms Velati had rescued her. He was only spared because he was stalking through the woods a mile away to lay a trap in case their prey tried to flee back toward the village. Dyadra had fallen far enough from the Elegy that he could get to her safely, though it had taken him hours to find her, hours of her body tearing itself apart against her will. Sohan was too close, and if Velati had ventured in, he would have been sucked in, too.

  Accompanied by hybrids and well-paid human mercenaries, Velati had returned a few days later to rescue or retrieve what remained of Sohan. By then, the dragon had been ripped entirely out of Sohan, leaving him broken. Dyadra had fared better, but the healers told her that it would take years if she was ever able to transform again.

  She’d tried after a few months, but as soon as she opened herself to the power, she heard that horrible echo bouncing around in her head once more, as if the Elegy had sunk deep into her bones. The transformation was out of her control, taking a grotesque form as scales erupted inside her throat, talons jutting from her belly. She was terrified, lashing out at anyone who moved near her. It took a dozen of the queen’s Adamant Guard to control her and get her back to herself.

  And that was the end of her bloody tenure as one of the Arik’tazhan. Once she fully healed, she’d made do with what she had, still using her powerful affinity for the wind as she could. But she’d not taken a dragon form in nearly a century.

  Until now. It was possible that she would be lost. Part of making a transformation was maintaining control. Her mother had told her stories for dragons who’d gone zhal arve’kadhan, losing control of themselves and going feral. If their kind spent too long in their dragon form, the primal force took over, and they lost the will to change back. But they couldn’t remain in that massive form indefinitely. It would burn through them, until they died of sheer exhaustion. Despite her mother’s stories, she’d never really understood it until the day she tried to change and felt the panic overwhelm her as her control slipped away. That was a fear that could consume a person whole.

  And it was the only way to get Will and Allana out. There was no question of whether she would do it.

  Even after all this time, unleashing the dragon felt as natural as drawing a breath in the morning. As soon as she touched upon the bright blue spark inside her, she felt the warning tingle of the Elegy’s power. Its unsettling echoes resonated down in her spirit, tainting the dragon blood in her veins. The sound was weak, but it still prompted the twinge of panic, the shaky sense of uncertainty. She didn’t know if it was real, or if it was the fear she’d long held.

  She had to push through it. With a growl of effort, she poured energy into the spark. Searing heat enveloped her. Vertebrae stretched and separated, ribs cracking as her frame expanded to twenty times its normal size. Her skin burned, like a thousand biting insects crawled through her veins. It felt like waking from a long slumber as the hard scales formed on her skin and the heavy frame forced her onto all fours. Unfurling her long wings was a joy she hadn’t realized she’d missed this much. She let out a quiet purr of satisfaction as she swished her long, heavy tail through the dry dust.

  Her senses sharpened. A thousand smells competed for her attention. Blood from Ikran’s face. Magic from her transformation. And there, not far, were Allana and Will. The distinct, familiar smell sharpened her focus, grabbing her like a hook through the lip.

  Calling upon the wind, Dyadra summoned a s
himmering shield of dense air around herself, concealing her huge frame from sight. She launched into the air, and her heavy body surprised her, barely skimming the ground before she landed once more. Shaking her huge, horned head, she pushed more force into her muscles and spread her broad wings to their full span, then twisted the air underneath them to give her more lift. That was it. She glided forward, sailing silently over the darkening red of the desert floor.

  The scent of her loved ones grew stronger. Will’s scent was mixed with blood, and the acrid sweat of stress and fear. Anger twisted in her belly. As she flew, the echo of the Elegy intensified, like a dull ringing in her ears. The more she paid attention to it, the louder it seemed. Her stomach churned.

  She was fine. She had to be. They were so close. It was just fear, and fear couldn’t hurt her if she didn’t let it.

  The shield concealed her from sight, and she was deft at flying with minimal muscle movement, letting her move silently through the desert air. As she drew closer, she focused on listening. There was a symphony of natural noise, of birds calling and insects chirping. Beneath the wash of sound was the distinct sound of voices speaking English.

  A female voice spoke. “Go ahead and give her a dose. Time is a factor now. No point in wasting our time if she doesn’t survive it.”

  “I guess so,” a male replied. “You offered her a deal, though.”

  “There’s not a chance in hell I’m turning him loose to come back here and clean this up,” the woman said. “Give her the first dose, and I’ll handle him.”

  There was no time for strategy. Dyadra was a tactician, and if she had a few hours, she could take them by storm. But her family needed her now. These people that had hurt her kin would live just long enough to regret their crimes.

  She began her descent.

  Eight

  A few minutes after Vienna left her in the security room, Allana conceded defeat in the battle of wills and drank half of the Sprite. The cold bite of the soda was a relief after the dry heat of the desert. After eating a few of the crackers, she got up and searched the room, but the door was locked. Though she suspected the manacles would stop her, she still tried to transform. The familiar burning spark was gone, and instead, her stomach cramped, sending a wave of nausea through her.