Celtic Dragons

by Dee Bridgnorth

  “What was her life like then?” Kean said, leaning forward and having to force himself not to reach for Leitheia’s arm to urge her to tell him everything all at once. “If I don’t know everything, then how am I supposed to help her?”

  “It’s not that I’m not willing to tell you,” Leitheia said, lifting a hand to calm him. “It’s that what I have to tell you is…unbelievable. Dhara was born to an unwed woman who didn’t want her. Her father didn’t want her either, and both of them were people more concerned with their next meal and their own comfort than with the well-being of the child that neither of them cared for.”

  Fury burned low in Kean’s gut. The idea that any person could be so callous toward a child was bad enough, but the fact that it was Dhara—sweet, beautiful, precious Dhara—made it so much worse.

  “For many years, Dhara was merely neglected. Her name was Ankita then, when she was a child, and she was left on her own. Starvation plagued her, sores ate at her skin, and she suffered much from the elements—extreme heat and extreme cold.”

  Kean turned his face away, unable to look at Leitheia while she conjured images for him that made him want to rage and weep simultaneously. He would find the people who had brought Dhara into this world and then made it miserable for her, and he would exact his own revenge as painfully as possible. They would feel starvation. They would feel cold. They would feel the scorching heat of summer on their exposed skin as their veins shriveled from dehydration and their lips cracked with need for water.

  “Your rage will not help her now,” Leitheia said quietly, picking up on his emotions easily. “Isn’t it best to focus on what you can help her with?”

  He gave a tight nod. “Tell me more.”

  Leitheia closed her eyes, as though watching the memories that she had seen inside of Dhara—memories that Dhara didn’t know she had—playing on the backs of her eyelids. “It wasn’t long before Dhara, or Ankita as they knew her, became more useful. She was a ploy to get money—a child beggar, a thief, a young girl who would dance for the pleasure of older men.”

  Kean felt a ripple move over his skin, the intensity of his emotion threatening to trigger his transition. Dhara was the only one who had ever been able to trigger him so easily and completely, and she wasn’t even aware she was doing it. But just the thought of her in pain…or of her pleasure…it made him desperate to claw his way out of his human form.

  “How much do you want to know?” Leitheia asked. “How much detail?”

  He shook his head, knowing that if he knew too much he would not be able to contain himself. “Give me the general idea.”

  “She lived a life that she is lucky she doesn’t remember,” Leitheia said quietly. “And through it all, there were only two people who ever cared for her. They are the people whom she now believes to be her parents, though she knows nothing specific about them. She only remembers their faces.”

  “But she said she was close with them. She remembers a life in New Delhi. She described it to me.”

  “In detail?”

  Kean thought back, then shook his head. “Not really. It was more…referential. A painting of a picture.”

  “Has she ever told you that she contacted her parents? Or that she has something concrete of theirs?”

  “No,” Kean realized. “No, and I’ve never seen pictures of them in her house. There’s nothing personal there.”

  Leitheia nodded. “In the group that her birth parents were part of, two people wanted to help Dhara, and when she was a teenager—perhaps sixteen or seventeen—they took her to a witch. That term is too generic, but it conveys the meaning to a person with power. They asked for a spell to be put on her—one that would erase all of the terrible memories that she had and replace them with a version of her life that would be idyllic.”

  “Idyllic but with no substance,” Kean said. “She only has impressions.”

  “That’s right. It’s enough to keep her happy and make her feel as though she’s got family and connections, but not enough to make her think to reach out to them. If she did try to contact her family, she wouldn’t know how.”

  “Because they don’t exist.”

  “Not as she knows them, no,” Leitheia agreed. “When this spell was put on her, it erased her bad memories of her life and replaced them with new impressions, but all of that darkness had to go somewhere. It lives deep down inside of her, and its magical confines are not strong enough to hold it at bay forever.”

  “It’s become its own entity,” Kean murmured, rubbing a hand across his forehead as he thought of the implications. “Her past, the evil that’s there, and the magical powers that are twisted up with all of it. It’s haunting her.”

  Leitheia shook her head. “It’s a nice thought, what they did. Trying to give her a fresh start. But it’s never that simple, and there is always a price to pay. What they’ve created is a part of her that is only darkness and evil, and that part of her will be desperate to get out. It will haunt her, maybe forever. And if it grows powerful enough, it will kill her.”

  Kean’s head snapped up, and he stared at the mystic who had so calmly predicted Dhara’s death. “I’m not going to let that happen.”

  “It might already be too late,” Leitheia said. “You’ve said that it’s an entity, one that can live outside of her. That kind of power…and so quickly…” She shook her head gravely. “It’s out of control already. And it’s beyond my power to contain it. Even if I could, it would eventually surface again. It’s a part of her.”

  “Well, then get it out of her,” Kean insisted. “If we can transplant hearts and remove cancerous tumors, surely we can remove parts of the mind that have morphed into evil spirits!”

  Leitheia smiled sadly. “The mind is far more complex than the body, Kean. You know that as well as anyone.”

  “I’m not just going to accept that there’s no way to fix her, Leitheia,” he said fiercely. “I won’t do it. I won’t give up on her.”

  “I can cleanse the house for you,” the mystic said, lifting a shoulder. “That’s all I can offer. I’ll do it for free, too, for your father. And for that poor young girl.”

  Kean dropped his head in his hands, his fingers clenching in the long strands of his hair. “It won’t matter though, is what you’re telling me. Rid the house of it, and it’ll come back. Or find her somewhere else. Because it’s in her.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Give me something,” he said, his voice raspy. “Something that can undo what’s been done to her.”

  “For that, you’d have to talk to a healer stronger than I am.” Leitheia said, getting up and beginning to clear up the mess they had made. “Only someone who can rebalance her would know, but even then…”

  “We have to at least try. Give me a name, Leitheia. If this was someone you cared about, who would you go to?”

  Leitheia glanced back at him, sighing with resignation. “I would go to Percy Cross. If anyone can help you, it’s him. But there will be a high cost, and you won’t get a warm welcome.”

  “I’m not interested in warmth or money,” Kean said. “I just want her well. Tell me where to find him.”

  “Almost as far from here as possible,” Leitheia said, gesturing widely toward the west. “Santa Fe, New Mexico.” She let out a short laugh. “Where else?”

  Kean stood up, desperate for some kind of action. “Fine. I’ll take her there. We’ll book flights immediately. You’re sure he can help her.”

  “I’m never sure of anything,” Leitheia responded. She opened her mouth to continue, but an ear-piercing scream interrupted their conversation and had Kean running back toward the bedroom where he had placed Dhara to sleep.

  Throwing open the door, he found her writhing on the bed, her long limbs flailing as her head tossed side to side and her expression twisted in desperation. She looked like something was attacking her, but he couldn’t see or hear a thing besides her own misery.

  “Dhara!” He rushed toward
her, grabbing her by the shoulders and shaking her. “Dhara! Look at me! Dhara, what’s happening?”

  “It’s stronger than ever now,” Leitheia said quietly, eerily calm in the face of Dhara’s deep distress. “It’s feeding off of her memories. Off of her fear. You can’t see it, but it’s a shadow above her. Haunting her. It’s going to strangle the life out of her.”

  “No!” Kean shouted, dragging Dhara off of the bed as she fought against him and the unseen evil attacking her. “Dhara, don’t you dare leave me. Fight back! Don’t let it—Leitheia, do something!”

  He was dragging her out of the room, shoving past the mystic, but whatever was attacking her seemed to follow. It was sizzling over his skin, like it had before, and he was trembling with the effort to remain in his human form when every single cell wanted to burst into his full dragon nature and fight against the invisible attackers.

  Kean had himself under control, but then Dhara let out a scream so piercingly agonized that it hit at his very core, triggering every strong emotion that he had. In an instant, his hands let go of her, and she fell to the ground, and then it was happening.

  The skin on his arms was erupting, splitting and pulling back to reveal the chestnut-brown scales beneath. His muscles were expanding, his bones crunching under the pressure of the transformation, and his neck was extending as his face transformed into dragon form. His bone-crushing jaw snapped ferociously, and his yellow eyes flared with a deeply-rooted anger. As his wings unfurled, the walls of the small room cracked and began to split open.

  “Kean O’Shea!” Leitheia’s angry voice was like an annoying gnat, flying about his ears when he had far greater problems to consider. “My house!”

  He would never have chosen to destroy the mystic’s house, but there was little he could do about it now. Kean was in full dragon form, his tail thrashing left and right, crushing furniture and knocking dents into the walls. His power took up the whole room, thrumming through the air as he craned his head back and let out a roar that would deafen anyone in a five-mile radius. The house shuddered in response, and even Leitheia was on the ground, her head covered and her hands over her ears.

  The only one who had gone still and silent was Dhara. She lay beneath his left wing, still, her eyes closed, her breathing shallow but steady. As Kean stared down at her, it was as though he was watching a woman who had slipped into a peaceful sleep. Nothing in the world was harming her, and as he stood above her, a faint smile curved her lips and her fingers, the last part of her that was clenched slowly relaxed.

  He didn’t know why or how, but his transformation had the power to terrify her haunting spirits into fleeing. It didn’t make sense to him, but he didn’t question it. He just wanted to get her as far away from the mystic’s house as possible.

  Bending his head down, he scooped her up in his powerful jaw. There would be time to apologize to Leitheia later, and he didn’t spend any time worrying about the mystic or the shredded clothes he’d left behind as he pushed off from the ground and used the power of his back to break through the roof and into the open sky above it. Once he was in the air, he gently tossed Dhara’s body above him and flew beneath her, using his wings to help guide her fall onto his back, nestling her safely in the valley between the scaled ridges.

  Then Kean took off into the sky, climbing higher and higher. The rain had lessened, though it was still drizzling down over the forest as his wings beat powerful strokes through the air. He was taking her home, and once he got there, nothing was going to stop him from making sure that she never had to endure anything like what had happened to her over the past twenty-four hours again.

  Not even Ronan and the other dragons, even if they were furious at him for breaking every rule the clan had.

  Dhara’s life was worth whatever price he had to pay.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Dhara

  Dreams that were more like a mixture of shadows and sensations plagued Dhara as she slept. A light rocking motion and the gentle sweeping of something in the air kept her lulled into a light sleep, and every time she started to open her eyes, the wide expanse of cloudygray above her only convinced her that, wherever she was, she was better off unconscious.

  She vaguely remembered screaming in Leitheia’s house, as a dark, unseen force attacked her, choking the life out of her as it filled her body with the sensation of fire.

  And then it had just stopped.

  Dhara hadn’t had the strength to open her eyes, and now, as she floated, she was in and out of consciousness, one moment lying on a cushion of cloud and surrounded by rainbows and the next wondering what hard object was stabbing her in the back and why she was flying through the sky.

  Was she really flying through the sky?

  It took time, but Dhara finally had enough motivation to open her eyes and keep them open, staring blankly above her at the canvas of gray clouds. A stray raindrop or two fell on her face, and a cold wind shivered over her, making her wince closer to whatever was propping her up.

  Rather than softness or warmth though, she found that what she was lying on was hard and jagged, the substance beneath her fingertips as hard as steel. Was it the steel that was digging into her back?

  All around her, there was only gray, with no object that would allow her to successfully place herself in space or time. So she began to sit up, her body aching like it had been through the battle of a lifetime.

  Sitting up was a terrible idea. She was immediately dizzy, and the wind that had been moving past her now got caught up around her, tugging at her hair and her dress. She had to brace herself against whatever she was sitting upon, and it was only as her hands smoothed over rough scales that she looked up and blinked the blurriness from her eyes enough to let her take in the long, elegant, powerful neck that stretched out in front of her and the smooth, sweeping wings that stretched out on either side.

  Dhara’s heart stopped in her chest, and she pressed a hand to her full breasts, trying to catch her breath. The creature beneath her—while utterly majestic—was absolutely terrifying. She was either dreaming, or she was on the back of a dragon, who was flying through the air, wings beating in a steady, gentle rhythm.

  She gulped, biting back the scream that wanted to erupt from her mouth. In all honesty, she shouldn’t have been surprised, given the dramatic turn that her life had taken over the past few months. If there were such things as spirits and mystics, and if the life she thought she had grown up living had never existed at all, then why shouldn’t there be dragons in the world, and why shouldn’t she be riding on the back of one?

  Did it even matter where she was going or when they were going to get there? She didn’t know anymore. She wasn’t even sure that this wasn’t still a dream.

  The only thing she did care about was where Kean was. She knew he wouldn’t be far—he would never leave her on her own. She was confident of that, despite the fact that he had run out of the hotel room that night. He just wouldn’t leave her.

  But she also didn’t see him anywhere.

  Summoning her courage, she sat up a little further, leaning to the left to try to see past the beating wing to the ground, which she knew couldn’t be far from where they were. But when she looked down, she saw nothing but a dense canopy of trees so far away that she couldn’t discern one treetop from the next. Fear broke through her stunned calm, and she clenched her fingers against the dragon’s back, scurrying away from the wing so that she couldn’t see the trees anymore.

  The creature felt her movement, and before she knew it, the head was turning back toward her, its face a scaled mask, its mouth a hard slit filled with sharp teeth, and its eyes …warm and gentle.

  Those eyes. They stopped Dhara from scurrying backward, and she found that she was staring into them, getting lost completely in the dragon’s deep gaze. It soothed her, a calm that she hadn’t felt in so long stealing over her as though, somehow, he was promising her that everything would be all right—and she believed him.


  The realization dawned slowly, but when it hit, she didn’t doubt it for a moment. “Kean…”

  The dragon blinked heavy eyelids at her, and then it turned away, slowly descending down toward the trees. Dhara held on, still having no idea where they were, as Kean flew them down into an opening amongst the trees, settling on a patch of grass that was soft, lush, and green. He pressed himself into the ground, and with one wing, carefully reached back and slid her off of him, helping her to land gently onto the ground.

  She was barely on her feet before the dragon suddenly disappeared from behind her. Dhara whirled, and immediately, her eyes landed on Kean’s familiar, beautiful, perfect face, his eyes searching hers for her reaction.

  But she didn’t know how to react. Not yet. All she could do was drink him in, her eyes slowly moving down his naked form. From his broad shoulders and wide chest to his narrow hips and thick, muscled legs, he was mouthwatering. Even more than just the perfection of his body, there was a power emanating from him that was so intensely sexual that Dhara felt herself almost go limp. She longed to run her hands over him, and as her gaze centered on the hard length that hung between his legs, her breath hitched.

  If she had meant her reaction to be subtle, she failed. The hitch in her breath produced a groan from Kean, and he moved toward her, his arms reaching out to catch her as she stumbled toward him too. His hard, naked body pressed against her soft, clothed one, and their lips met in a kiss so fiery and passionate that it could have burned down every tree around them.

  It was cold outside, and the rain still lingered on the tree branches and soaked the grass, but as they fell down together, rolling over and over in the grass, neither of them felt the cold or the wet. They only felt each other.

  His mouth was hot against her neck, and his hands slipped under her dress, sliding up her legs to grab her hips and yank her up into him as he pressed her into the grass. Dhara gasped, arching up into his body and wrapping her long, tanned legs around his hips.