by Livia Quinn
Dutch
My eyes narrowed and I rose at the mention of my ancient family name.
River’s eyes flared red, a warning and he grated, “Who are you?”
The being was taller and wider than River, closer to my size and was covered in a flimsy grey cloak that swirled in a non-existent breeze. Ah, a weather fae, I determined at once. A hooked beak poked out from under the gray cowl and talons where the fingers should have been held the hood in place. The pungent foul odor identified it as a harpy, a vengeful lot that often traveled in groups though no one stood with this one.
The hole in the center of his “face” sounded like a washing machine as it pushed air in and out. At his hip a blue sword stuck out from under the layers. Not good. Weapons were supposed to be surrendered at the door except under certain extenuating circumstances. I stayed where I was, for the moment.
Thick cottony lips opened, the words came through its hole of a mouth, like it had been dredged up from the depths of the Isle. “I am Lord of the Wind. I’m here to reclaim my power from your family.”
Well, that’s a new twist. Millenia ago, harpies had been stripped of their power over hurricanes and strong storms, but it had nothing to do with my family, I thought as he drew the sword from the sheath with a clang and pointed it at one of the entrances. A stout gust entered the room. He’d used the sword to command his magic, like a wand.
River stood with one arm on the counter, not even jostled by the stiff wind, though others were struggling to stand. I stepped toward River. The creature’s head turned in my direction and a voice like a grating debris-filled torrent rasped, “You need your daddyyy to fight your battlllesss?” Tables rolled to the floor around us, and I sensed the harpy was frustrated that he’d been unable to budge us. River was steady as a granite mountain and… he was growing.
River crossed his arms over his chest and said, “Listen, Lord Blowhard. Not only don’t I need my father, but it’ll take a more than one of your impotent wind farts to take down a member of our family. My sister could take you in her sleep.”
The being bristled and the wind increased at River’s words. I stepped forward, addressing him. “Who told you we have your power?”
The harpy’s sparring partner approached and whispered into his ear, sending a glance toward the corner where another hooded figure sat at a table against the wall. His boss? Or just an interested party trying to prevent the fae from experiencing the fate of Morpheus?
The wind picked up under the blowhard’s gray rags and his mouth closed in a disgruntled line, but he lowered his sword and backed away, not releasing my gaze until he reached the table. Then pointing the sword one last time at River, he said, “We will finisshhh this later at a time of myyy choosssing.”
With a scraping of chairs, the so called Lord and his sparring partner cautiously backed out of the Moat, trying to save face, though Gods truth, it made them look like cowards.
River’s reaction was even worse. “What’s wrong with now?” he roared. Yes, he was itching for a fight, his voice shaking with rage, the first emotion I’d heard from him in weeks. Any other time I might think that was good but though he appeared to be in control, I felt the building energy he held under tight rein. What would it take for him to snap? I put my hand on his arm to bring him back to himself. He shrugged it off and stomped back to the bar.
My spine tingled a warning and I scanned the room to see where the threat was coming from. There in the corner, lounging against the wall near the fighters’ table was a black hooded figure. I felt his gaze though the shadow from his cowl disguised his features. His black-gloved hand moved across his chest and I caught the glimmer of something between the folds.
His mouth turned up in an evil grin and he drew the material closed but not before I got a brief look at the necklace hanging against his chest with a dragon’s eye in the center. I steeled myself not to react as he rose and sauntered out.
What was a dragon hunter doing in the Moat of Morpheus?
Conor
The sun was sinking onto the horizon as I searched the eastern part of Laccassine parish. I spotted Dylan running along the road to the levee where’d I’d seen him several times since his healing had gone awry. The wolf probably liked the view of the moon from the high point at Grande Colline. I swooped down to nab him behind the scruff of his neck, turned my head and deposited him on my back.
It had become a game with us. He ran, I chased, and then he happily rode high on my nape until I wore him out. It was hard work trying to maintain your balance on a live dragon while wind gusts tried to send you plummeting to your death. I cut the ride short to find out what was disturbing the wolf and landed near a lone Cypress to wait while he drank from the river and took a quick swim to cool himself off.
The wolf shook his fur and slunk over to lay beside me, leaning against my tail as we watched the moon start its ascent, a white ball against a dusky blue gray sky.
“Yer woman is worried about you,” I said. The wolf’s head whipped around toward me, tilting as if this was news to him. Then his shoulders settled and he resumed his survey of the sunset.
“Ach, what is this about, Dylan? Has somethin’ changed then?” This time the wolf whined and sat up, front paws stepping in place restlessly. “I don’t speak woof, mon, so ye’ll have to give me a hint or a sign if I’m on the right track.”
Dylan’s intense eyes stared at me. “You can concentrate all you want but I canna read yer mind. Montana thinks you’re out of sorts because you were unable to communicate with Katerina.”
Dylan sat up and whined, butting my dragon foot with his nose. “Ah, weel, a pretty fix yer in, then, my fine furry friend.” Dylan huffed and stretched at my feet with his nose between his paws. “She also said your woman believes you are no longer lupus inside, but a man.”
“Woof!” Dylan spun three times in a circle and jumped into the air, staring with a toothy grin that fairly shouted Yes. “Ach, weel then don’t give up. You and Lang are the most impatient charges I’ve even had the responsibility of overseeing. If you get run over or shot there’s no chance at all that you’ll enjoy your woman again in your man form, aye? And, I know you can’t help yerself, but when a bitch in heat flirts with ya, maybe you should try stayin’ inside for a while. Who knows what could happen if you stop following your hormones?”
I’d heard descriptions of the investigator’s intense persona. He would have been a master at intimidation, though this was the first time I’d seen even a hint of it having only known Dylan as a jokester under the influence of the Para-moon. Seeming a wee bit irritated he kept his eyes locked on mine. Drakos! He had balls to look at a dragon like that.
His head whipped to the side as a loud cry came from the other end of the road. A tenth of a mile away a starlit giraffe was practicing his broad jump in the moonlight. I shook my head as we recognized Jack. “He’s bright, aye?”
Dylan shook, sitting down to watch the show, further confirming what I suspected about him. For a half hour we sat watching the dragon make one futile attempt after another to take flight. “Ach, I guess I’m g’win to have to take him for a ride and drop him from about twenty-thousand feet—my version of sink or swim, aye? Sometimes it takes drastic measures, wolf.”
Dylan gave a short whine. Good, it wouldnae hurt the wolf to wonder if there was some of this psychological strategy coming his way soon. He rose, whining incessantly, looking up at the rising moon. “Where are you g’win, my friend?”
The wolf’s head turned back in my direction as he whined again. “Go on back to your lassie’s little funeral hearse.” He yipped, spread his front feet in a playful stance then wagged his tail and took off.
One down, one to go. Children. Things were moving along. I was only to guide and protect, not command.
I lifted off and in a mere two flaps of my wings reached the spot where Jack continued to leap from the levee and splash into the backwater. He’d displaced most of the water and was now wallowing in the mud—appropria
te word since he appeared to be back to his old ways. I dropped out of the sky, my unexpected appearance stopping the silver dragon in his tracks.
He glanced up then planted his front feet on the slope of the levee and sat on his rump looking verra much like a disgruntled silver puppy in the moonlight. I shifted and sat next to him.
Chapter 18
“Ach! ‘re ye havin’ a wee pity party, then?”
Jack
I’d gone at it with more fervor this evening, as if I was subconsciously giving flying one last chance. I’d stashed my clothes behind a Cypress tree and taken aim on the levee. I’d discovered my dragon was not a sprinter, which was probably the reason I was so tired. I’d lose a foot race with alligator. If I had to win in a battle with one, I could hold it down with my foot. There wasn’t an inch of me that wasn’t covered in a layer of gumbo or leaves or slime. I almost smiled. No shiny scales here.
As I stood on top of the levee I looked down into the backwater. I wanted to get over the feeling of inadequacy. I was capable of more than this as a man. How did Conor shift and end up fully dressed, complete with his costume and swords?
I must be getting better about shifting because I’d reverted to my human form on purpose today after Tempe and I found those bones, and I didn’t change in front of Ryan, or Dan, when everyone was shifting around me. What would I do when that happened, because suddenly I was sure it was bound to, in front of someone I cared about—someone not privy to the secrets of Paramortals, like Jordie.
A giant shadow crept across the moon obscuring the light on the water. I couldn’t explain how I knew it was Conor and not heavy clouds. Did I have dragon radar now? That would be so ironic, radar without the ability to fly. One giant foot landed next to me but I didn’t flinch.
The ground shook under my feet as he lowered his massive frame onto his backside. I glanced up at him, way up. At nearly twenty feet tall myself, I was even more amazed at how big he was.
“Ach! ‘ere ye havin’ a wee pity party, then?”
I glared and faced away from him, sulkily. I felt guilty enough on my own. I didn’t need him to rub it in. “Go away, Conor,” I growled. Naturally, he ignored me and shifted. Now he was significantly smaller than me. I looked down at him. I should have felt more powerful, like I had an advantage, but I knew it wasn’t true.
“Change, Lang. We must talk and I canna understand yer garbled dragonspeak, aye?”
Well, sorry. Could I do it again? I tried to remember how I’d initiated it before. It seemed to be easier to hold on to the dragon form than to actually trigger the change. As if reading my mind, Conor said, “If you can remain in dragon form you can do the same with the other.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. Conor yelled, “Ach! You try too hard. It seeps from your pores like sweat. Take your mind down inside your belly, feel it in your soul. Breathe it.”
What was this, some kind of dragon Zen?
“I’ve been hearing about you Navy jet pilots. You train in machines, like visualizing a practice run, eh?” His black brows winged up so high they looked like two black condors taking flight.
Crazy, I know, but that triggered a memory of a formation we used to call “condor”. A squadron of five F-18s on command closed distance to form a tight arrowhead, sleek and deadly. It was an emergency formation that took incredible teamwork and precise maneuverability. That formation merged with the image I had of Conor shifting into his knight form, and I found myself standing, a naked man, still considerably shorter than my counterpart.
“There, ye see? As your daughter says, ‘easy peasy’.” He grinned.
I shook my head and looked down at myself. My transition hadn’t gone quite like his. “Isn’t there a way for me to change like you do and be clothed with my gun belt and no mud?”
“Oh aye. Twill come.”
“Yeah well, not soon enough.” I waded out into the swamp water to rinse the hardening mud from my skin so I could don the clothes I left in my duffle. Before—what should I all it—BTC before the change, BMD before my decline, BTD before the dragon, I’d never have tried to clean up in these leach and mosquito and alligator infested swamp waters. It was just one more indication of how my life had gone into the toilet.
A grunting sound came from a short distance away and Conor laughed. A very large… tubular creature was undulating across the muddy grass. Its reddish brown wormy body alternately stretched and contracted as it approached. Several protruding antennae swiveled in a different directions—the better to see you with—and its mouth was set in a grim line. Then I noticed what was attached to its tail, my duffle bag looking much the worse for wear.
“Aw, jeez. Another audition?” I looked at Conor. He fell back against the levee laughing as the worm arrived at our feet and the duffle was deposited nearby. It looked at us both as if to say well, do I get the job?
Conor looked at me. I looked at the worm. “Um, thanks,” don’t call us, we’ll call you if we need you.”
It oozed away. “I know you’re trying to help, Conor, but why don’t you just tell me what I’m doing wrong. My stomach growled and Conor grinned. “You have to learn to feed.”
“I… feed. I ate before I left town.”
“Ach no, in dragon form. That man belly cannot sustain a dragon. We’ll talk about it tomorrow. It’s time you jumped into your normal life with both feet.”
“‘Normal’, he says!” My life would never be normal again. Then, like being struck with one of Tempe’s thunderbolts the proverbial sun shone on the fallacy of my thinking. When was the last time my life had been ordinary? Before the dragons, before Tempe, before Georgeanne—everything had changed when I graduated from high school and joined the Navy.
Where was that brash, cocky, whatever-comes-I-can-handle-it Jack Lang, the man I’d been when I entered the service? I hadn’t been a boy for long. Everything changed… when Jordie came along.
I became a father and a man that same year. And though I’d still been confident and brash, I’d never been careless or casual about my decisions since. All of my choices in or out of the service focused on how it would affect my daughter, the custody suit against Georgeanne, and giving Jordie a normal life. Well, that ship it sailed, for both of us.
Apparently, it had never even existed. Today had exposed our entire life as a cover. What life was I going back to? Not the life I’d believed we were going to live in Destiny, the figment of my imagination, but our true life.
“Ach, mon, are ye listenin’ to me?”
I narrowed my eyes at him. This man—knight—dragon had no conception, or did he? “Conor, were you ever just a man?”
“Nay. Dragons are never just men.”
“Semantics. All right…”
“I ken what you’re askin’. Did I believe myself to be merely a man before I went through m’ change.”
I nodded and suddenly it seemed weird to be standing on the levee under a bright moon talking to a being dressed in full knight costume while I was totally naked. I reached down and retrieved my clothes from the muddy bag.
He looked like a statue of some ancient warrior as he looked across the river. His trousers floated gently in the breeze and moonlight glittered off those deadly swords but he was still as stone, superhero balanced on a tall precipice.
I was beginning to think he wasn’t going to answer me when his voice came out, low and thoughtful, “I always knew what I would become, and when.” There was a glow in his eyes as if his dragon fire burned inside and reflected out through his pupils. I’d never noticed this before.
“Times were verra different then ye ken? Ages, world’s even. It was a time long before the Paramortal pact. Our clan was one of the most powerful in existence.”
Clans. Dragon clans. “Were there humans back then?”
He turned and smiled. “Oh aye. The humans were quite rowdy.”
Rowdy brought to mind caveman with clubs. I blurted,” How old are you anyway?”
Conor grinned, “Thirty
-three.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “If that’s the best you can do, I’m outta here.”
“Where are you g’win?”
“You were right. I have to figure out how to fix my life before I take a plane to the Alps and throw myself off into a gorge.”
“It wouldn’t work. Dragons are verra hard to kill.”
“And my luck I’d change on the plane and take out two hundred innocent passengers. I—” I shook my head and sighed, “I just don’t know what I’m going to tell Jordie.”
“It will work out, Jack. Have ye forgotten your daughter is a Paramortal herself?”
My eyes flared. I’d thought the shock of finding out Jordie was a budding Paramortal would be the last straw. Apparently there was another haystack.
Conor’s eyes narrowed and the fire in his dark scowl brightened. “Of all the new Paramortals I thought yoo were stronger than this. I had nae idea you would be so cowardly. Your bond with your daughter grows weaker by the day. Montana overheard her ask Tempe why you’d ‘abandoned her’.”
Pain sliced through me as if Conor had reached into my chest with his claws and pulled out my heart. No. I blinked the moisture away, squared my shoulders and faced Conor. He’d been wise to remind me that I was a grown man who’d faced enemies of every kind, challenges I hadn’t thought I could handle. Jordie needed me and I had to convince her I hadn’t abandoned her. “What can I do?”
“Get over yerself. You will find this no different than any of the other challenges you’ve faced. What will be, will be.” I rolled my eyes half expecting Conor to dance down the levee and break out into a chorus of Que Cera Cera. But then his eyes narrowed. “Adapt, otherwise you will’na live very long.”
“I thought you said dragons were hard to kill,” I said.
“Ach, there’s always a way, especially when one is so…” he looked me over critically… “weak.”
I groaned inwardly. I was losing ground with this dragon by the minute.
“Your daughter can handle it, and once you stop dwelling on what’s going to happen and what your place is, it will all become clear. When you were a young recruit, did you expect your life to be easy?”
