Wickedly Powerful

by Deborah Blake

  Bella called hers Koshka, which was Russian for a female cat. It was something of an inside joke, since he was neither female nor a cat . . . nor Russian, if you came right down to it. Bella’s mentor Baba, who had found her as a child and trained her for the job, might have been from the mother country, but dragons came straight from the Otherworld.

  “It’s not bad,” Koshka replied, showing off an impressive set of incisors in a wide yawn. “I prefer the aroma of tuna, myself.” He looked back through the open door toward the compact kitchen space inside, in case Bella had somehow missed his point.

  Bella rolled her eyes. “Seriously. Smell that; it’s practically ambrosia.”

  Koshka dutifully lifted his dark pink nose into the air, the wide ruff around his neck and tufts of fur in his ears making him look a bit like his wilder cousin, the lynx. “Huh,” he said.

  “What? You don’t like pine all of a sudden?” Bella shoved herself up off the steps so she could go open a can of tuna.

  “No, I don’t like the odor of smoke in the middle of a forest,” he said. “Can’t you smell it?” He pointed his entire massive forty-pound body toward the west. “I don’t know why they bother to put those puny noses in the middle of Human faces. They’re not good for anything.”

  Bella lifted her head and sniffed deeply, but still couldn’t detect anything out of the ordinary. But she didn’t doubt Koshka for a minute. “Let’s go check it out,” she said, and they set off at a fast lope through the trees.

  * * *

  LESS THAN A mile from her caravan, they came upon the source of the smoke; she clearly would have scented it soon enough, even with her puny Human nose, since there was a bonfire the size of a Buick burning away merrily amid a pile of leaves and downed tree limbs. Bella looked around for any signs of whoever started it, but the area was empty except for her and her faithful dragon-cat.

  “Shit. Fire again,” she said with feeling. Bella had a love/hate relationship with fire. It was the element she was strongest in, just as Barbara was most attuned with earth and Beka with water. But in her experience, that made for as many problems as it did solutions. Still, there was clearly no one around to wrestle with this particular fire but her, so there was no point in wasting time.

  “Want some help?” Koshka asked. As a dragon, he wasn’t even mildly intimidated by fire. If he was in his natural form, he probably could have just sat on it. As a dragon, he was bigger than a Buick too. Much bigger. But it wasn’t a good idea for him to change where anyone could possibly see him, and it was broad daylight in a public forest.

  Bella gritted her teeth. “I’ve got it,” she said. After all, if there was one thing she had experience with, it was putting out fires. Unfortunately, she was also usually the one who started them, but it made for good practice for situations like this.

  She held her hands up to the sky, gathering her power until it made her fingertips tingle and her long, curly red hair crackle like the flames it resembled. Then she lowered her hands until they were aimed at the fire, making a circling motion. The energy flowed smoothly out to surround the burning tinder, encompassing it in a bubble of magic. Then she snapped her fingers, and all the oxygen within that bubble disappeared. A few minutes later, the fire had died down to a few barely smoldering embers, and she snapped her fingers again to return the air to normal.

  “I love that trick,” Koshka said, walking over to sniff at the edges of the burned area. “Pah!” He yanked his nose away in a hurry, stalking off with his tail held high. “That stinks.”

  Bella glanced back over her shoulder as she followed him, moving faster as she heard the sound of incoming men and machinery. Someone must have spotted the smoke from the fire and reported it. Which was good, but she didn’t want to be seen lurking around the area of a suspicious fire. Her cover as a traveling artist was solid, but there was no sense in subjecting it to unnecessary scrutiny if she didn’t have to.

  “What stinks?” she asked, moving faster. “The fire?”

  “No,” the dragon said. “Whatever was used to start it.”

  “Oh,” Bella said. She’d been hoping it was just a fluke of nature. There hadn’t been a storm for days, but sometimes a lightning strike could smolder for a while before bursting into flame. “That’s bad news.”

  “It gets worse,” he said, growling under his breath as he waited for her to catch up to his bounding pace. “Whatever it was, it had the faint scent of magic on it.”

  “SHIT,” Bella said.

  “With a side of crap,” Koshka agreed. “Now, what about that tuna?”

  THREE

  THE FIRE WAS too far away for Sam to see any details of what was happening on the ground, but he could tell when the smoke disappeared, and breathed a sigh of relief, letting go of a weight he hadn’t been aware of carrying. He’d continued checking the surrounding area, but it appeared that this was an isolated incident.

  The radio crackled and the dispatcher said his name.

  “Corbett here,” he answered. “Looks like your guys got the fire out. Nice job.”

  “Huh,” the dispatcher said. Sam had never met Willy, the person on the other end of the radio, but he knew the sound of the man’s voice better than he knew his own, especially these days. That was Willy’s “I’m not happy” grunt. His “everything is great” grunt sounded completely different.

  “Something go wrong down there?” Sam asked, his heart suddenly hammering in his chest. “Someone get hurt?”

  “What? Oh no, nothing like that.” Willy’s tone went apologetic. “Sorry, Sam, didn’t mean to alarm you. No, everything was fine. In fact, the fire was out when we got there. It had clearly been going pretty well for a bit; the lower branches of a few nearby trees showed some signs of char. But there was nothing left except warm ashes by the time we showed up. Kinda weird, really.”

  “Weird how?” Sam asked. “Some camper let his campfire get out of control, then poured water on it. It happens. We should just be glad whoever did it didn’t panic and run away instead.”

  “That’s just it,” Willy said. “No water. In fact, no sign of whatever put the fire out at all. Just a nice round circle of ash, like somebody upended a bowl over it.”

  “Huh,” Sam said in unconscious echo. “That is kind of weird. Still, the fire’s out, and that’s what really matters.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Did you check on that caravan I told you about?” Sam asked the dispatcher. “Maybe whoever owns it knows something about our mystery.”

  Willy laughed. “I doubt it. The guys went and knocked on the door; said the thing was really cool, like some kind of gypsy wagon, only with a truck to pull it instead of horses. I’ve heard they have modern versions of those caravans, Vardos, they’re called, but I’ve never seen one.” He sighed. “Maybe I’ll get one when I retire, and wander around the country in it.”

  Sam smothered a rare smile. Willy was chatty, and despite the fact that they’d never met, Sam knew enough about the other man to fill a book—including the fact that he’d never been more than fifty miles away from the place he’d been born, and had no real desire to be anywhere else.

  “So what made them so sure the owner didn’t have anything to do with the fire?” Sam asked.

  Willy guffawed. “They said that they knocked for a while, and finally a little old lady answered the door. They said she didn’t exactly look like the type to go wandering through the forest setting fires; said she had a cat that was almost as big as she was, so she must have been tiny. Apparently she asked them in for tea and served it to them on real china. Man, I wish I’d been there.”

  Sam was mostly glad he hadn’t been. Still, a little old lady sounded like a pretty unlikely suspect for a firebug. If they even had one, and the fire hadn’t somehow started accidentally.

  “Did they ask her if she’d seen anyone else around?”

 
“Yup. Said she told them that if she wanted to be surrounded by people, she would have stayed in the city. Then glared at them until they all put their cups down and left.” More laughter hiccuped across the airwaves.

  “Good enough,” Sam said. But it wasn’t, really. He went out of service at 1900, and at seven o’clock in July there was still plenty of light left. As soon as he was off duty, Sam was going to go have a look at the remains of the fire himself.

  * * *

  BELLA WAITED UNTIL the sun was almost ready to go down before she returned to the scene of the fire. She’d wanted to go back and see if she could sense the magic Koshka mentioned. But she needed to be sure the firefighters were gone before she banished her old lady disguise. The guise of an old woman, like the traditional Baba Yaga, was easy to put on. Besides, it often helped that Humans tended to believe that an old crone was of no account. In truth, the hardest part was not laughing while attempting to stay in character.

  But now the forest was empty again, except for the creatures who belonged there, so Bella and Koshka padded silently back down the animal trail that had led them to the other clearing, hoping to discover something useful. Or, in Bella’s case, hoping to discover that there was nothing to discover.

  Unfortunately, a crew full of firefighters wearing heavy boots and pulling along well-used pieces of equipment had left the place stinking of Humans and their tools and not much else.

  “I swear the scent was here,” Koshka said, swinging his large head to and fro, and making the local birds scatter for safer environs.

  “I’m not doubting you, Koshka,” Bella said, poking at the ashes with a pointy stick. “But I don’t know what you expect me to do about it now. Maybe it was here. Maybe it wasn’t. Even your fabulous nose can’t be right all the time. If we decide to stick around, we’ll just have to keep our eyes open.”

  Koshka made the little coughing noise that passed as a laugh when you were a dragon-cat, and Bella gave him a sharp look. “What?”

  He sat back on his rump with a thud. “You do realize we’re not alone, right?”

  What? So much for keeping her eyes open. Bella turned around and spotted a shadowy figure at the edge of the clearing, barely visible in the oncoming dusk.

  “Hello?” she called, and it took a few steps forward, materializing into a tall Human man wearing worn jeans and a slightly rumpled light blue denim shirt. He kept his face turned partially away from her, looking at the sizable burn mark on the forest floor, but what she could see was attractive enough to make her heart skip a beat—like a Greek god with a straight nose, a strong chin, and longish blond hair that brushed his collar. Her mentor Baba had sworn she’d met Thor once, and this man looked much as Bella had imagined the thunder god might. Broad shoulders, muscular arms, and all.

  Certainly his expression was thunderous enough, the half that she could see of it, although he seemed to make an effort to smooth it out when she greeted him.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice sounding a bit rough, as though he had a cold. “I hope I didn’t frighten you.”

  Allergies, maybe, she thought. Not something the Babas had to worry about, thankfully, since drinking the enchanted Water of Life and Death not only made their magic stronger, but also gave them increased health and longer lives than most Humans.

  “Not at all,” she responded. “Very little frightens me.”

  The corner of his mouth edged up slightly. “Not even bears? I could have been a bear, you know.”

  Bella snorted. “Actually, I rather like bears. They’re normally quite agreeable, unlike many people.”

  “Know a lot of bears, do you?” the man asked, sounding amused.

  “Only a few,” Bella answered quite truthfully. “I’m a lot more familiar with dragons.”

  A rusty laugh escaped well-shaped lips, as though the man was out of practice with the act. “I’ve met some unusual folks in these woods, but never anyone who claimed to know dragons.”

  He looked at the burned spot again, and his smile slid away into the shadows. “Unfortunately, I doubt a dragon did this.” He was silent for a moment. “So, have you been in the woods all day, or are you lost?”

  “I’m not lost,” Bella said, skipping over the other part of the question. “I’m traveling through the area doing some painting. I’ve got a caravan parked about a mile from here.” She nodded her head back in the direction of her home. “I’m Bella, by the way. Bella Young.”

  “Sam Corbett. I’m the fire spotter in the local tower. I saw the smoke from the fire earlier and called it in.” He didn’t offer his hand, or move any closer, but she thought she detected a suspicious glint in the eye turned toward her. “The guys said they met an old woman at that caravan. Nobody said anything about a gorgeous redhead, and that doesn’t seem like something they’d forget to mention.”

  Bella blushed, grateful for the gathering gloom. The Greek god thought she was gorgeous? How about that. “I must have missed them. That was my Baba; she was visiting me for the day, but she’s gone now. It’s just me and Koshka here.”

  Sam looked around the clearing. “I thought I heard you talking to someone. Who is this Koshka person, and where is he?”

  Koshka rose out of the shadows at her feet, where his brown and gray fur and absolute stillness had rendered him practically invisible in the dusky evening light. Once he stood up, though, he was pretty hard to miss.

  “Holy crap!” Sam said, taking a step forward as if unable to believe his eyes. “Is that a cat? That thing must weigh thirty pounds.”

  “Closer to forty,” Bella said cheerfully. “And that thing, as you call him, is my companion Koshka. He’s a Norwegian Forest cat. They get quite large.”

  “I’ll say.” Sam’s gravelly voice was a mix of awe and admiration. “He’s really impressive. Such beautiful markings; I’ve never seen anything like him.”

  Koshka preened, a deep purr rumbling up out of his furry chest. “Tell him I think he’s pretty too.” Of course, to the Human, it would just sound like meowing, unless the dragon-cat decided otherwise.

  Bella rolled her eyes. “He says thanks, and right back atcha.” There was no way she was going to call this hunk of a guy “pretty.”

  “Uh-huh.” Sam appeared to be considering the dubious nature of her sanity. She wasn’t offended; she did the same, from time to time.

  “So, you and your large friend there have been wandering through the woods? I don’t suppose you’ve seen anyone else in your travels?”

  The unspoken “or set the forest on fire yourself” hung in the air between them like an arrow paused midflight. She ignored it.

  “I’m afraid not,” Bella said. “Well, it was nice meeting you, but I should probably get back to the caravan before it gets any darker. Wouldn’t want to be eaten by bears now, would I?”

  “That would be bad,” Sam said seriously. “Probably give the bear terrible indigestion.”

  It would if one tried to eat Koshka and suddenly found a huge dragon inside its stomach.

  “I definitely wouldn’t like to be responsible for that,” Bella said with a smile. “Maybe I’ll see you around sometime.”

  “Maybe. Were you planning on staying in the area?”

  “I haven’t decided yet. You know artists,” she said. “We just go where the muse sends us.” She gave him a cheerful wave good-bye and set out along the trail back in the direction she’d come from.

  Upon reaching the caravan, they were greeted by the welcoming glow of a lantern over the door. Magic, of course, although it looked like a regular lantern to anyone who didn’t know better. In its former life, the now-updated gypsy wagon had been a traditional Baba Yaga’s wooden hut on chicken legs, moving through the forest from place to place, and only found when its owner so desired or fate willed it to be so. Its appearance might have changed, but the enchantments that were at its core were
much the same as they’d been for a thousand years.

  Woman and cat paused in the doorway, purposely not looking back into the woods.

  “You realize he followed you back here,” Koshka said.

  “I know,” Bella said in a low voice.

  “Maybe he wanted to make sure you got back safely,” the dragon-cat suggested. “Or he followed you because he thinks you’re cute.”

  “Sure,” Bella said, a little wistfully. She’d been alone for a long time, and now that her sister Babas had both found love with wonderful men who somehow managed to deal with the fact that Barbara and Beka were powerful witches straight out of fairy tales, she’d found herself dreaming that such a miracle could happen to her too.

  But somehow, she didn’t think that the handsome prince she’d met in the forest had fallen deeply, madly in love with her at first sight. More like deeply in suspicion, if anything.

  “Or, he could have followed you because he thinks you’re a crazy, fire-setting menace,” Koshka added, a hint of laughter in his voice.

  “In that case, he’d be right,” Bella said, and went inside to pour herself a hefty glass of wine.

  * * *

  A SHARP TAPPING noise woke her sometime around two a.m., pulling her out of a dream about a semi-naked muscular blond god.

  “You might want to get that,” Koshka said with a yawn from where he was sleeping at the foot of the bed. It was a small bed, and he took up most of it, leaving one of Bella’s legs dangling half on and half off the platform that stretched across the back of the caravan.

  Bella rubbed her eyes, peering around, and the tapping noise repeated itself, coming from the small round porthole window over the bed. Huh. Bella snapped her fingers, lighting the candle on the wall sconce, and cranked the window open a couple of inches.

  Brisk, pine-scented nighttime air came flowing in, along with a tiny winged being about the size of Bella’s palm. Most of the paranormal creatures that used to live on this side of the doorway had left years ago, summoned back to the Otherworld when the Queen and King decided that it was too dangerous to continue to coexist with Humans. But some, like the tree sprite whose gossamer wings hummed in front of Bella’s face, couldn’t leave their homes. Those that hadn’t died out altogether remained, hiding and lurking in the places that Humans were less likely to go. Bella had met the occasional sprite in her travels, since she tended to spend most of her time in the forests where they lived, but they were solitary creatures, and rarely made themselves known.