Celtic Dragons

by Dee Bridgnorth

  And then a shadow passed across the window.

  It hardly registered at first, but Autumn’s eyes didn’t close completely, slowly coming back to rest on the opening. Her heart accelerated and her hand, still tucked in Eamon’s, tightened ever so slightly.

  Had she seen something?

  She didn’t know. It had been like a flash, briefly blocking out the sun, and then it was gone. Two weeks ago, she would have thought nothing of it. Had she noticed it at all, she would have thought it was a bird passing by, dimming the light for a moment before going on with its day.

  Now the brief shadow and the faint chill it brought felt sinister, but then again, everything felt sinister in a world in which covens of evil witches tried to take down entire societies and the supernatural existed all around them.

  Only Eamon was not sinister; however, before she knew him, she might have considered him such—had she known about his dragon form. They had yet to discuss any further the fact that he had shapeshifting capabilities, and she wasn’t in a hurry. It simply didn’t matter to her, because he was still Eamon—still the man she was in love with.

  These thoughts calmed her and the brief shadow that passed her window faded from her mind as she grew sleepy once more, snuggled into Eamon’s protective warmth.

  It was another hour before Autumn woke again, this time to Eamon’s soft kisses along her shoulder blades and his hands seeking for her underneath the covers. Smiling, her eyes still closed, she turned toward him, sliding her arms around his hard upper body as she hooked her leg over his waist.

  They were just beginning to move together when Autumn sensed a movement behind her. She didn’t know why or how she felt it, because Eamon was the only one touching her and her eyes were closed, but she knew that something had happened and that it wasn’t right. Pulling away from Eamon, she turned over in the bed, yanking the covers up under her chin to protect her modesty and darting her eyes around the room.

  The window was still open, perhaps a touch more than before, but nothing else had changed. The room was still, silent, and seemingly peaceful, and the sensation that Autumn had experienced was gone.

  “Honey, what’s wrong?” Eamon was touching her arm, looking down at her from behind with concern. “What happened? Did I hurt you?”

  “No,” she said, trying to sound calm and reasonable. “No, not at all. I …”

  There was pain in his voice. “God, you just realized who you’ve been sleeping with all night.”

  “No!” Autumn turned back toward him, her tone fierce. “No. That’s not it at all. I thought I felt something. Or heard something. I don’t know.” She touched his face, frowning at him. “Don’t think that way, Eamon. What you are doesn’t bother me. Haven’t I proven that the last few hours?”

  He looked appropriately sheepish. “Yes. I’m sorry. I just find it hard to believe that this thing I’ve been so afraid of telling you just … doesn’t matter.”

  “It doesn’t,” she told him, and she meant it. “I know who you are, and this doesn’t change that. I have questions, and we can talk about them at some point, but the fact that you’re a heroic dragon on the side doesn’t make me love you any less.”

  His gaze softened on hers, his hand reaching to lace their fingers again. “You love me.”

  “Of course I do, you ridiculous man.”

  “I love you,” he whispered back, pulling her into him again.

  Autumn got lost in their lovemaking once more, this time making a deliberate choice to put the wary feelings she kept getting out of her mind. There was nothing there to see or to hear—she was just on edge and being jumpy. The best possible thing for that was to let Eamon sweep her away into an ocean of pleasure all over again.

  He did just that, time flying by like it didn’t exist at all as she sank into him and he sank into her. If they could have, they would have spent the whole day there in bed, learning each other and remembering what it was like to be so close to another person.

  But the danger loomed above them, and eventually it lured them out of bed to shower and get ready for another day of preparing to fight back against centuries-old magic. Knowing that if they showered together they would never go downstairs for breakfast, Autumn slipped away to her own bathroom and turned the water on as hot as it would go so that the steam would ease the delicious ache from her muscles.

  Standing under the hot spray, her head tilted back to let the water run through her hair and down her back, Autumn hummed to herself as she gently worked the shampoo through her hair. She was mid-song when she heard the creak of the bathroom door, and she smiled, secretly thrilled that Eamon couldn’t resist joining her under the hot spray, even if they had both maturely decided that they needed to get ready separately and go downstairs to get down to work.

  She bit her lip to hold in her excitement, and when he didn’t pull back the shower curtain fast enough, she did it for him, ready to convince him the rest of the way with the sight of hot water droplets gliding down her naked body.

  Autumn’s eager anticipation evaporated in an instant, and she screamed, yanking the shower curtain back around her body, with just her head showing as she stared in horror at the large, bulky woman standing in her bathroom. “What are you doing? Who are you?” Autumn stuttered. “Get out of here!”

  “Shut up,” the woman hissed, and Autumn felt her jaw close as though by magic.

  Horror gripped her as Autumn realized that her faint hope that this woman was just another of Isabelle’s friends who had come to help but had gotten lost in the upstairs portion of the house was false. It had been a reach, given that the woman would have had to walk through Autumn’s bedroom to get into the bathroom, but she had wanted to believe it. With her jaw locked shut and the woman advancing on her, she knew that this could very well be the moment that lost her life, and her first thought was for her beloved children, her second for Eamon and all the wonderful things they could have shared together.

  “Get out of the shower.”

  Every demand the woman gave her, Autumn was helpless to resist. Against her own will, she felt herself getting out of the shower. She caught sight of her naked body in the mirror and flushed, though the woman seemed utterly unaffected by her nude state.

  “Dry yourself off.”

  Autumn picked up the towel and scrubbed it over her body, afterward holding it to her as she stared at the strange woman. Her frame was so tall and large that she blocked the entire doorway, and Autumn knew that there was no chance that she could run past her, even if her body would work to allow her to move her legs. Her voice was gone, and she had no other recourse against the woman whose word was now her law. Her only hope was that Eamon really would come and try to sneak into her shower, only to find her entrapped by this bulky, bare-faced, masculine-looking woman.

  “Put your clothes on.”

  Again, Autumn obeyed, picking up the clean clothes she had brought into the bathroom to dress in after she got out of the shower. Her hand shook as she pulled the jeans up her legs and her fingers trembled as they tried to work the buttons on her shirt. Autumn stared at the woman the whole time though, refusing to look down or let her fear show on her face. If the woman looked closely, she would see the evidence of Autumn’s nerves, but she wasn’t going to advertise them. Maybe she didn’t have control over this situation, but she wasn’t going to act like the victim the woman was trying to make her into.

  “Walk into the bedroom.”

  Autumn did so, the woman following close behind her. They stopped in the middle of the room, and the woman directed her to stay where she was before going over to the window, unlatching it, and sliding the glass upward. A breeze moved into the room, ruffling Autumn’s clothing, and the woman turned toward her, jerking her head toward the opening.

  “Walk over here.”

  Autumn did, though every thought and every muscle was concentrated on finding some way to resist the woman’s orders. Her feet shuffled as she tried to order them to stay pu
t, but they moved anyway, one reluctantly in front of the other. When she reached the window, Autumn shot out a hand and slammed it shut, and it made her realize that although she had to obey the woman’s commands, those weren’t the only actions she could perform.

  Quickly, she raised the window and slammed it again, praying that someone—Eamon—would hear the unusual noise and hurry in to check on her.

  But she only got to do it once more. The large woman’s hand clamped down on her wrist, and Autumn screamed internally as her bones and ligaments painfully protested the violent twist of her arm behind her back.

  “You little slut,” the woman hissed. “Try anything again, and I’ll kill you right here.”

  Autumn believed the woman, and she squeezed her eyes shut, trying to block out the pain as she looked for some way to take control of her body again.

  The woman didn’t give her the chance, grabbing her by her injured arm and shoving her toward the window. “Climb out.”

  Her body began to obey before her mind could catch up, and Autumn was gripped with fear as she started to lower herself out of the second-story window with no idea where she was supposed to land. Her fingers gripped the windowsill so tightly that her knuckles turned white and the tendons and veins in her arms became visible, and then the dreaded command came and erased her efforts.

  “Let go.”

  Autumn did, and she prepared herself mentally for the plummet to the grass below, but it didn’t come. She floated where she was, her feet cautiously resting on what looked like nothing but air but felt like solid floor beneath her feet.

  In an instant, the woman was beside her, and Autumn had just one moment to ponder how a woman of such size could move with such agility. Grabbing Autumn by her injured arm again, the woman jerked her upward, and Autumn lifted higher into the air with her, as though rising on a cloud. Although she seemed to be floating on nothing, Autumn felt as though there were some sort of box around her, protecting her from the elements, and it wasn’t so much a fear of falling out of the air that gripped her but a fear of where the woman was taking her.

  They flew higher and higher, and when the world beneath them had largely disappeared, the woman began to propel them forward. They moved so quickly that Autumn couldn’t tell what direction they were going or for how long they traveled. There was just a mass of cloud around her, and then they were falling—not tumbling out of the sky, but lowering quickly and precisely until the roofs below them reappeared, and then the trees, and the cars, and even the flowers came back into view.

  They dropped all the way down onto a terrace that bordered the second-floor of a large suburban house, and Autumn immediately looked around her, trying to determine if there was anyone there to witness what was happening to her. Surely someone must have seen them fall from the sky. Someone had to be looking out the window. Someone would help her—they had to.

  “It’s amazing how little people pay attention to things in the suburbs,” the woman said, as though reading her mind. “People see what they want to see. That’s always the way it is.”

  Then she opened the door and tossed Autumn inside a plain bedroom, consisting of a bedframe with a mattress and a beige bedspread on top and absolutely nothing else.

  “Welcome to your last home,” the woman told her, smiling with an evil glint in her eyes. “Just so you know, I’m the person who’s going to kill you. You’ll be the first person I’ve ever killed without using magic, and I want to make sure I get it just right. That’s why you’re going to sit here like a patient little girl while I figure out exactly what I want to do to you. Don’t speak a word and don’t move a muscle unless I say you can.”

  Autumn didn’t react externally, because the woman hadn’t told her that she could. But internally, she was screaming, clawing, and fighting for a way out of this impossible situation.

  How far was she from Eamon? How long would it take him to realize she was gone? What clues would he have to find her? Would she ever see her little girls again?

  She didn’t know the answer to any of those questions, and she didn’t know what this woman was capable of.

  All she knew was that she was now being ordered to sit down on the bed and stare at the wall, and her body was obeying. The bed creaked beneath her, her feet rested on the floor, and her hands rested on the mattress on either side of her. The wall in front of her was blank, boring, and without so much as a crack to hold her attention.

  The woman left the room, closing the door behind her, and Autumn was left in a prison of her own body with only her own thoughts and fears to slowly drive her insane.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Eamon

  They were making progress. Eamon had showered quickly and gone downstairs to find Isabelle and Leah already at work with enchanting objects that would give Eamon and whoever was fighting alongside him power to combat magic that came toward him. Craig was sitting at the kitchen table, muttering over his ruined life, his crazy wife, and his desire to go back out to the golf course, but Isabelle and Leah were excited by what they had accomplished, and they were eager to explain it all to Eamon the moment he appeared.

  “And this,” Isabelle said, sliding a band over his hand to center on his wrist, “contains a blocking spell. It’s going to deflect basic spells and curses that are put on you, as long as you’re wearing it. This,” she said, grabbing a pendant and looping it onto a string that she tied around his neck, “is going to prevent you from being controlled. One of the most common things that a witch will do is impose a directive on you—that means that when she speaks, you have to do as she says. You have no choice. It’s a surprisingly easy spell to create and hold, and it consumes almost no energy at all, unless it’s being done in mass. En masse, it’s almost impossible. Like…I couldn’t control a whole stadium full of people, but I could control you.”

  Eamon raised an eyebrow. “Oh, you could?”

  “But I don’t,” Isabelle assured him. “And if you wear this, I can’t.”

  He touched the pendant with one finger. “How about making one of these for Craig?”

  Isabelle looked nervous. “Now, don’t go telling him about that. I don’t abuse my power!”

  While he felt sorry for poor Craig, the man’s free will was low on Eamon’s list of priorities at the moment. He touched the pendant again, inspecting it more closely. “So as long as I wear this, I can’t have my actions controlled by another person. Is that right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You’re sure.”

  “I’m sure.”

  Eamon considered this, wondering if the reason that he couldn’t transition was because of this unseen ability to control what he was doing. If he was wearing the pendant, would their ability to keep him from transitioning disappear? He wouldn’t be able to test that out until the moment when he needed to transition, and if he couldn’t, then he might be a lot of trouble. And Autumn might be too.

  He glanced up toward the stairs, wondering what was keeping her. He had been down with Isabelle and the silent, hardworking Leah for over half an hour, and there was still no sign of Autumn. Granted, he didn’t know her habits that well yet, but he didn’t think she was the kind of woman to take an hour to get ready.

  Maybe she had to take an extra-long shower because of how dirty she was last night.

  The thought appeared without his bidding, and a smirk settled on his lips as he thought about the way they’d spent the early hours of the morning. God, he loved the woman. He loved how much she talked, the way her eyes shone, the way she was with her kids, the way she accepted him completely, even knowing what he kept from everyone except those who were like him.

  The crazy thing was that he missed her. He didn’t need her to be there right this minute, going over these spells with Isabelle. They could fill her in whenever they were ready, but he missed her face, her voice, her smile, her eyes, and the way she looked at him. Somehow Eamon had fallen so hard that being without her felt like having a part
of himself missing. She was a part of his heart that walked around outside of his body.

  “Eamon!” Isabelle was tugging on his arm. “Do you want these things or not?”

  He turned back to where she was trying to show him a set of blank CDs that she had enchanted to grow sharp, spiked ridges when thrown through the air. “Yes,” he said quickly, not wanting to discourage the woman. “Isabelle, everything you’ve done is great. This is really useful, and I appreciate it. I just … I need to go check on Autumn.”

  Without waiting for the witch’s reply, he hurried toward the stairs, taking them two at a time. As he had thought about Autumn, an unsettled feeling began to come over him—one that was about more than his newfound addiction to her.

  It was strange that she hadn’t come down yet, and when he tried to listen for her, he couldn’t hear her moving about upstairs. When he tried to find her with his senses, he came up blank as well, and that’s when he became worried.

  “Autumn?” He knocked on her bedroom door, waited for just one moment, then carefully opened it and peeked inside. Immediately, he noticed the open window, and a terrible feeling settled in his gut. An open window was hardly conclusive though, so he moved further into the room, looking at the undisturbed bed, the closed closet door, and the open bathroom door.

  “Autumn?” he called again, edging closer to the bathroom door and peering inside. The shower curtain looked like it had been in a struggle of some sort, there was water all over the floor, a damp towel beside the tub, and absolutely no sign of Autumn.

  Eamon gripped the doorjamb, the undisputable knowledge that something terrible had happened filling him with barely-controlled panic.

  What had he done? He’d sent her away on her own, and he’d just gone downstairs, oblivious to the danger that had clearly overcome her. Eamon had been so high off of the morning they’d had that he hadn’t been careful enough—God, he’d sent her away on her own. These people had so much power, and he’d sent her away on her own!