by Faye, Amy
"Fuck you," she said, and pushed past him. She'd been sleeping so much that her body felt sluggish, but he'd slept so little that there was nothing in him capable of fighting back against her. "I'm staying, and that's final."
Cyanora was waiting for her below. It was an odd name, and not one that would have stood out in her mind except that it started with 'Cyan' and she was less of a cyan color, and more of an azure, as a dragon. She wondered whether or not the things were connected.
"Morning," Diana offered. The blue dragon, still looking like a perfectly voluptuous human woman, raised an eyebrow.
"Hey," the woman said to her. No, dragon. The dragon said to her.
"So what's the talk about?"
"Talk?"
"You and Alex. I heard the two of you, but I couldn't hear much more than, you know, that you two were talking. I can't imagine that every day is like yesterday, so there must be some next step. What's the talk?"
"The talk is, your father would kill me if I let anything happen to you. So we don't let anything happen to you, simple as that."
Diana bit back the comment that Dad would have trouble killing anyone, at that point; the effort left her open to the wave of sadness that hit her, hard and all at once, and let itself out of her throat in the form of a low sob.
"Did you know him?"
"For a little while, yeah."
"I didn't see you at the funeral."
"We held our own little thing. It was, you know. What it was."
"So, are you going to tell me what I'm supposed to know about this? Horde? You tell me he had one, and that you guys are all fighting over it."
"I don't know," the woman said. She seemed tired. Deflated. For the first time it occurred to Diana that she seemed almost sad. It clapped up quickly, as she pushed herself back in the chair and leaned it back onto two legs. "But I know one thing. I'm not going to sit here and accept some big red coming into my territory and thinking he can fuck with me. That's not what I'm going to do."
"Okay," Diana agreed. "Seems like a good idea."
"Good idea? It's suicide. But I'm not going to go out looking like a little bitch. No way, no how."
"So... sorry, if this seems like a stupid question. But what if they had something to do with, you know, what happened to my Dad?"
The look that crossed Cyanora's otherworldly face wasn't one of surprise, but she did take on a far-away expression like she was thinking hard about it.
"That's a very good question," she said, finally. "But it's back to first principles, I guess. If he did it, it was for some reason. I don't know how much you were able to tell from the cabin. I've never been human. Why don't you tell me what you got out of it?"
"It looked the same as always. Then I left, and when I came back, it was on fire. That was new, I guess."
Cyanora got quiet, that same pinched expression, like there was something that she wasn't saying. Diana decided she didn't want to know what that could be. There were a thousand ideas that she could think of off-hand, and none of them were good. None of them would make her particularly happy. And if they weren't going to improve her day, she didn't want to think about them.
"So you didn't smell it, then?"
"Smell what? Alex asked the same thing."
A man's voice came from behind them. Alex may have looked tired, but he sounded in control. Wrapped a little tight, maybe, but it would do him some good. He was usually a little too loose.
"Smelled the magic. Oh, you'd have smelled it, and bad. Someone did something bad in there, with your father's body."
"With Dad's body?"
"Dragon's blood is a powerful thing to use, and the last few drops the most powerful of all. Someone wanted to do something big."
Diana's eyebrows screwed up in confusion, then her mouth opened to ask a question. She closed it again, thought a little more. Thought a little harder. The answer was obvious, of course. The whole thing had already been laid out in front of her, but all of the adrenaline and the shock had made it easy to pretend she just didn't know.
"You mean Dad was a dragon?"
"That's what I mean," Alex said. "Same as me and her, in a fashion. More me than her, of course, for multiple reasons that might be obvious."
"Please," Cyanorath said. Diana's head whipped around to look at her as she spoke. "The two of you had nothing in common."
"Nothing at all? Alright, if that's what you want to think."
Diana watched the female's face instead. She was bad at guarding her expression, presumably because she never needed to. It twisted up in frustration and anger.
"Go to hell," Diana finally said. "Are we going to figure out what to do next or are you just going to sit here and give me shit the whole time?"
"I figured we could do both," Alex offered. He took a seat at the head of the table, where he could look at both women at the same time. Diana looked over at him and frowned.
"Okay, but I thought dragons were immortal."
"I mean, kind of," Alex said.
"They can be killed, but it's hard."
"So what can kill one, then?"
"The list isn't terribly long. A particularly motivated human, for one. Another dragon. A particularly motivated creepy crawly of one of several other varieties, though as a rule they never get that motivated."
"No?"
"Not generally. Too busy with whatever the hell they do. Sucking blood or sucking dog-cocks or whatever the hell they do in their natural environment."
"'Sucking dog-cocks'? Seriously?"
"Hey, you know, I don't judge. I'm just saying. It's possible."
"Sure it is."
"So the way you figure it, it's either a human or it's a dragon?"
"Or both," Cyanora offered, breaking in. "A human working alongside a dragon."
"How likely is that?"
"You've practically got cum still dripping out of you, and you ask me that?"
Diana blushed and went stiff. Oh. So she'd heard that, huh? Alex shot her a look. The look shut her up, but it did surprisingly little to make Diana want to disappear any less.
"So, it's not unlikely, then?" Her voice sounded wooden and hollow but Diana was surprised she could speak.
"Not at all," Cyanora confirmed. "Even without the sex."
31
Alex Blume's opinion of Cyanora, an opinion that had been carefully formed on centuries of not particularly liking lightning drakes, an opinion that she had continually reinforced until yesterday, reverted to its default.
For one thing, she didn't know when she should just shut the fuck up, and for another, she'd upset Diana, which was another strike against her record regardless of what he might have thought of her type.
"So what do we know, then? We know that there's a stranger in town, and there apparently isn't room enough for the three of us."
"Well, the... lord. Six or seven of us. They were moving so damned fast that I don't even know."
Cyanora nodded. "The six of us, you're right. Though, somehow I doubt that losing his lackeys would hurt that big red one bit."
Diana spoke up. "I'm sorry, stupid question, and I know it's off-topic, but I have to wonder."
Alex looked at her blankly and waited.
"If my dad was a dragon, does that mean I'm a dragon, too?"
The two of them looked at each other. The thought had honestly crossed Alex's mind, earlier. Half-dragon, maybe. Or at least, she was a very dragonesque little human.
Cyanora looked at her, hard. "Doesn't mean anything if you were adopted."
"But you said yourself, he looked like me."
"I'm sure he did," the other dragon said, indifferent. "I can see the similarities. But that doesn't mean anything."
"No?"
"If he wanted to change his appearance that badly, it would have been easy."
"So I was adopted?"
Cyanora shrugged. Alex watched Diana's face. Watched it shift through a thousand emotions.
"So what color was he, the
n? I assume that's important."
"It's dead important. Color might as well be a damn family tree."
"Okay, so what color then? You might need DNA testing or something to decide my dad's really my dad, but you should be able to remember what color he was, right? If he was a dragon, like you're saying."
"Red," Cyanora said finally. "Aleroth was a red."
"So he's related to the big one."
"Right," Cyanora said. "He's related to the big one."
"So we can cross him off, then, right? It's his kin. Who would kill their own family?"
Alex was silent, and for once in her life, Cyanora was, too. Wisely silent. If there was any proof that Diana wasn't a dragon, or at least she'd never been among that society, that was the proof.
Humans care about their young. There are occasional stories of mothers, drowning their children. Always in a fit of madness, or killing someone else's children that they should have cared for.
Nobody ever just killed their kids for fun. Why would they? Dragons were about as sentimental as razor blades. They would kill for any number of reasons, and sport was certainly among them. Explaining that would be useless, because regardless of how much she might have wanted to understand, there was no way that Diana would.
"Oh," Diana said, as if she got the meaning of their silence.
"It's possible that he didn't do it. It's very possible. It's just possible that he did do it, too. Don't, uh... look, it doesn't mean anything."
"I'm fine," Diana said. She was quiet, and she didn't sound fine, but then again, even after all this time, Alex still wasn't really sure that he understood her emotions, or anyone's.
"So let's pretend for a minute that we could assume it was him. You said something about magic. Can dragons do magic?"
It was entirely the wrong mood for it, but Alex couldn't help the laugh that ripped from his lungs. "Dragons are magic. Stem to stern. The whole fire thing? Or lightning, in some cases," he nodded at Cyanora. "That's raw-ass magic."
"And it stinks?"
"It has a smell, but no, most dragons don't tend to think it stinks."
"But this did?"
"Black magic, I guess. Dark. Unnatural."
"And dragons can do it?"
"They can, sure. But they generally don't."
"Why would they?" Cyanora offered. "Big, strong, fast, practically unkillable."
"So what's the next move?"
"We figure out what they wanted out of that spell. Figure out what your father died for."
Alex nodded. "You said it was wrapped up around me."
Cyanora nodded as well, confirming. Her eyes looked askance and she seemed to be thinking.
"So if I didn't cast any spells, and you're going to have to take that on faith, then what else could that mean?"
"You're the target," Cyanorath said simply. "That's all it could mean, really."
"Could it be they picked the target at random?"
"It could be that they cast a spell to make spaghetti and meatballs fall on the next person to walk out of LAX. But it's a big coincidence, to have picked the two outliers. The two pretending to be humans. And none else, far as I can tell."
There was more in common between them than just that, Alex thought sourly. There was a lot more. The idea immediately flashed through his mind, and he immediately pushed it away. There was a good chance that it was retaliation, twenty-five years distant, but he wasn't going to suggest that.
It would mean explaining. Explaining would mean a thousand other things he didn't want to do, and more than that, it would mean that they could stop what was coming if they tried hard enough. If it was retaliation or revenge, for what they'd done twenty-five years ago, he'd always promised himself that he wasn't going to fight it. They would deserve their revenge, and he would deserve to die.
"You look like you're thinking something."
That was Diana speaking. She sounded like she'd calmed down, at least a little bit. She looked like she almost had all of this under control, which was a surprise and a half. She'd gone through a lot in the past two days. Most people wouldn't believe a single part of what she'd been told. Without seeing it first-hand, she probably wouldn't believe it either.
But she had seen it first hand, and there wasn't much choice but to believe it. That, or she was just looking at the whole thing like it was just something that was in her head, like she'd been having a two-day dream, and that was probably understandable if she was thinking that way.
"No," he lied. "I'm just trying to think of what else it could be."
"Most of the time, it's humans who cast magic like that."
"Magic isn't real. Humans try to cast it all the time."
"What, you mean like your 'thaumatic seals' and the like?"
"I don't know. Like, Aleister Crowley and stuff, right? They all tried to cast spells back in the day."
"He was a pervert and very little more. Gotta say, though, he knew how to keep a woman entertained. And men, too, if we're being honest." Alex looked at Cyanora hard, his eyebrows furrowing together, at that comment.
"What? A girl can't have a little fun for herself?"
He blinked. Hard. It wasn't unconscious. He forced his eyes shut and then forced them open again. She smiled at him like she was so pleased with herself over the reaction he was giving her.
"But magic is real, then?"
"Things are magical, and if you know how to harness that, then you can do what you like, more or less."
Alex stood himself up and stepped away, let out a long breath. The house was big, and it was dusty, but even then it looked nice. There was a kitchen dining area, a proper separate dining room, and probably more space to eat somewhere else, too. How they had such a nice place out in the sticks, he'd never know.
"So what about the rules of magic? Threefold rule and so on?"
Cyanora laughed behind them. She must have been loving the conversation. Then again, she seemed to have a fascination with human understandings of magic. Without a doubt, she had at least a hundred different grimoires filled with made-up spells, back at her proper lair.
Something moved in the distance. A tree swayed in the wind. Then it swayed another way. The wrong way. It swayed both directions at once, and then straight back. Alex stepped closer to the window and looked up, afraid that he was right. Afraid he was going to confirm exactly what he knew he was.
"Guys?"
He didn't get a reaction. He could hear the silence in the other room crackle with the effort of Diana trying to put magic into a box that she already understood. Then she tried again, and he cut her off again.
"Guys?"
"What?"
"It's time to go," he said.
The big red spot in the sky moved closer, and in another two minutes he'd be right on top of them, and there wouldn't be any more running away after that.
So the time wasn't in two minutes, after Diana asked her question. It was right now. He was already moving toward the garage door by the time he realized that wasn't going to work.
32
Alex hated what he was. He'd hated it for a long time, and there was something strange about it. When he changed back into the lizard, he was like a different person. It messed with more than just his body. It messed with his brain, and made him different. There was more to it than he really could have understood by himself.
That was exactly what had driven him to suggest staying in his current form. It changed him, and it changed Keleth. They were fundamentally different than they'd been before. And that was fine, in its own way.
It was hard to stay human, hard to force himself to think like a human, even for a minute or two. It was harder still to change back, after he needed to transform. But all of that paled in comparison to how hard it was to change into the giant dragon. How much he didn't want to do it. But there wasn't much choice, either way.
He caught Diana going the wrong way and pulled her by the arm, pulled her in the only direction there was to go. Out
the front, and then travel au-naturale.
Alex stripped as he ran. It was hard, and slowed him down, but having the clothes still on would be harder and slow him down just as much. So he stripped in spite of himself and kept moving as best he could. Thirty seconds later, he was running in the nude, made it to the street, and transformed with a conscious effort of will.
Diana had made it a little way ahead of him, thanks to the delays his clothes introduced, and that made things easier for him. No need to turn back to get her; she was right there in front of him. He beat his wings, pushed with his legs, and skimmed along the surface of the ground.
As he pulled higher and higher into the air, high enough to start hitting warm, powerful gusts of air, Alex thought that for Diana, it probably seemed as if he spent the majority of his time split between his dragon and his human life. He smiled at the thought. The past two days hadn't only been strange for her, no sir.
He flew hard, away. There was a lot of thinking they had to do. A lot of planning. They couldn't be going off half-cocked.
Then he noticed something else. Something a little bit strange. Something that twisted his gut up inside, even as he whirled to avoid a darting white dragon, its scales practically reflecting the sun's shine right into his eyes. There wasn't any blue beside him. She was somewhere else, and he knew without having to look where she was going. He knew further that she was making a mistake.
For an instant, he considered turning around. She was going to get herself killed, that much was clear. But then a second thought occurred to him, one that twisted him up inside. He soured and closed his eyes and tried desperately to pretend that it wasn't a problem, but it was.
Cyanora, for better or worse, was going off to die. There wasn't much avoiding it.
He turned and ducked low, careful to swirl in a loop around Diana, rather than whirling her around like a discus-thrower. Then he turned hard to the side, ran through his head what his options were. There were few, and with the blue disappearing behind them, disappearing to her own death, the options were fewer than they had been before.
Whatever happened, he thought, they hadn't followed the three of them onto the mountain. There was a reason for that, a reason he didn't begin to understand. It didn't bear considering. They were short on options, and if there was some danger on the mountain then it couldn't possibly have been greater than the danger that they were leaving behind. He swooped toward the slope, mapping the space in his mind. The distance was long, but he had a long lead.
