Celtic Dragons

by Dee Bridgnorth

  The look in her eyes immediately made his decision for him. It was the first time that Ronan realized that, by keeping his friends in the dark, he was hurting them more than helping them. She looked so frightened, and Siobhan never—ever—looked frightened.

  He stood up and hugged her hard. “On one condition.”

  “Name it?”

  “Let me tell you what I need to tell you in my own time. If you agree, I’ll go with you…and I will tell everyone more.”

  She relaxed against him, hugging him so hard that it hurt his tender physique. “Deal.”

  “I’m sorry that you’ve been feeling this way.”

  Siobhan eased back from him, punching him lightly in the shoulder. “Get well and I’ll let it go.”

  Chapter Two

  Natasha

  “Mom.” Natasha Ransom knocked loudly on her mother’s closed bedroom door. “Mom! Mom, I can hear you. Mom, it’s after ten in the morning, and I have clients coming in—” She checked her iPhone. “In twenty minutes! You guys can’t be…doing that in there when they show up.”

  Behind the door, there was a great deal of rustling and whispering, then the door opened and Rosemary Ransom poked her rumpled head out, her face flushed and grinning. “Hi, sweetie. What were you saying?”

  Natasha rolled her eyes, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Mom. You and Jack have to keep it quiet, okay? I said that I didn’t mind you bringing him over, and I don’t. But these are my work hours now, and I work from home. Remember? I can’t have…sounds like that coming from in there.”

  “Oh, we’re just…we’re watching TV,” Rosemary said, stepping further out of the door and wrapping her silk robe closer around her slim body. Natasha was the mirror image of her mother, and it was just an older version of her own symmetrical features, wide brown eyes, dark hair, and snow-white skin staring back at her. Rosemary was a beautiful woman, and she had aged well, entering her fifties with as much life, spirit, and sex appeal as she’d had when she was younger. And she was certainly aware of it.

  “Mom, don’t even try it,” Natasha told her mother, crossing her arms over her chest. The one difference between Natasha and Rosemary was that Natasha had gotten her father’s height, and she towered a solid four inches over her mother’s much more petite frame. “I can hear what you’re doing, and I don’t care what you’re doing—as long as my clients don’t hear it.”

  “Well, how long before they get here?” Rosemary asked, pouting slightly.

  Natasha checked her phone again. “Fifteen minutes.”

  “Oh, that’s not long enough,” Rosemary said, sighing. “Fine, fine, we’ll keep it down. But honestly, Natasha, isn’t it time that you got an office for this work that you do?”

  More and more, because of things like this, it did seem as though it were time. But that required money, and Natasha didn’t have enough of that to go banking on starting an office somewhere. Being a supernatural healer who used acupuncture and massage therapy as a front for her real business wasn’t as lucrative as she might hope, and the only way she was making ends meet was by working out of her home—even with her mother, her mother’s boyfriend, her father, and both of her siblings living with her.

  “Just please keep it quiet in there,” Natasha said, rather than answering her mother.

  When Rosemary disappeared back into her bedroom to do God-knows-what with the man who she had only been seeing for the past three months, Natasha headed toward the kitchen to get herself one more cup of coffee before she prepared to meet her clients. But when she walked into the sunny yellow room, filled with natural light, she saw her father draining the last of the pot into his own mug and taking a sip of it, smacking his lips as he stood there in his boxers.

  Again, Natasha groaned. “Dad, are you serious?”

  He turned toward her, smiling in greeting. “Morning, sweetie.”

  Her parents had been divorced for over six years, and yet they both still lived in the same house, called her by the same pet name, and got along more famously than ever. It didn’t seem to bother Ned in the slightest that his ex-wife of twenty-two years was in her bedroom with her new boyfriend, Jack, and it didn’t bother Rosemary at all when Ned went away for a few days to stay with the woman he was seeing in New York City.

  Neither of them seemed to understand—at all—why Natasha and her siblings found it all a bit strange.

  “Morning,” Natasha said, picking her mug up off the kitchen table and setting it in the sink, since she clearly would not be needing it any further that morning. “Dad, I have clients coming over. You can’t be in the kitchen in your boxers right now.”

  He looked down at himself, as though he hadn’t realized he was walking about in a white undershirt and a pair of red-and-blue plaid boxers. “Oh sure. I understand, sweetie.”

  Dropping a kiss on her head, as though she were still five, he left the room, humming to himself, and went into the bathroom that was right next door to Rosemary’s room. He would be in there for quite a while, going through his morning routine, and Natasha could only hope that would keep him quiet and out of the way.

  With only her twin siblings to worry about now, Natasha grabbed herself a bottle of water from the fridge—that was healthier for her than coffee anyway, surely—and headed down the hall that led to rest of the bedrooms in the house. There were five altogether. One for Rosemary, one for Ned, one for Natasha, and her twin brothers shared a room because she needed the fifth bedroom for her in-home office and studio.

  As she headed toward her studio, she saw no sign of her twin brothers, who were just two years younger than her, and she could only hope that it would stay that way, even if they were both far saner than her parents were. She had about ten minutes before her clients were scheduled to show up, and that would give her enough time to clear her mind of all the chaos before interacting with her clients.

  Natasha sat down on the edge of her massage table, breathing in the gentle scent of the essential oil and listening to the soft, bubbling sound coming from the machine in the corner. She often thought that the calming atmosphere of the room was as much for her as it was for her clients. In such a chaotic household, she needed a haven to which she could escape.

  But the massage table, the aromatherapy, and the nature sounds were really all props that she used to make her studio look more like a traditional massage parlor than the supernatural healing space that it was. The only things she truly needed for her healing services were her own two hands, her body’s ability to process pain, and her intimate knowledge of both natural and supernatural afflictions.

  There was no disease or curse that she couldn’t identify the moment that she touched the troubled person, and once she knew what was ailing them, she could almost always combat it. Her gift had always been innate, and as a young child, she had fearfully informed her father that his thyroid was going to kill him if he didn’t get it taken out. When he had gone to a doctor, they had indeed found malignant tumors growing throughout his throat. He was only alive today because she had known, without seeing, and he had only recovered so well from the surgery and treatment because she had sat with him all day long, holding his hand and drawing his pain and disease into her own body, where it processed through her powerful cells, vibrating out of her and drifting harmlessly back into the world.

  It was her life’s purpose to cultivate her gift and use it to help everyone who would come to her, but Natasha had to be careful in doing so. There were plenty of people in the world who would want to shun her or take advantage of her gift, and she often booked people for massages or acupuncture, then got a feel for them while they were in her studio. Only when she trusted someone did she show them what she could really do for them.

  There were plenty who passed through her studio, having no idea that when she was giving them a therapeutic massage, she was seeping the pain and disease out of their cells and into her own. There were some people who had no idea she had saved their lives.

  Th
e woman coming to her office today was different though. She already knew who Natasha was and what she was capable of. That’s why they were coming, the woman and her friend. They were powerful in their own right, although the woman hadn’t wanted to tell her over the phone just what kind of power they had. It piqued Natasha’s curiosity, certainly, but she had still gone through her normal ritual of setting up her massage parlor as though she was going to deliver a massage and acupuncture combination session.

  It never hurt to be safe.

  The doorbell rang, and Natasha stood up, hurrying out of the room and down the hallway toward the living area of the house. She had to run to beat her father to the door, ushering him back with a wave of her hand before throwing open her front door, a wide smile on her face.

  “Hello! Welcome to Natasha’s Nursery. Come in, come in. Shoes off at the door, please. Then I’ll lead you right back to my home office.”

  She said all this while still mostly looking at her father, trying to convince him with hand gestures behind the door to make himself scarce. Distracted, she didn’t fully look at the man who stepped into the house first until after he was already kicking off his shoes, and when they made eye contact, it took her breath away.

  He was devastatingly handsome, with dark, long, thick hair, blue eyes, and perfectly chiseled features. But it wasn’t just his looks that left her breathless.

  It was the horrible darkness eating him up from the inside out.

  Chapter Three

  Ronan

  The fact that the healer whom Siobhan was taking him to was based out of her home gave Ronan reason for pause, as did the fact that she was thirty minutes away from his house. Over the past few weeks, he had gotten used to not straying far from his home, in the event that his transition took over and he wasn’t able to stop it. He was more than a little uncertain as he walked with Siobhan up the front steps of the suburban home and knocked on the door, and the fact that the woman opened the door and spoke to them while hardly looking at them directly did little to ease his mind.

  But when he stepped inside, kicked off his shoes at her request, and made eye contact with Natasha for the first time, he suddenly couldn’t look away.

  Natasha was mesmerizing in her beauty, just a few inches shorter than his six-foot-three frame, slender, and almost Snow-White-like with her pale skin and dark hair. Her eyes were dark as well, like pools of chocolate that were meant to be sunk into. She could have looked regally unapproachable, she was so beautiful, but there was something about her that just seemed inviting and warm and open.

  At least, there was until he noticed that she was staring at him in utter shock, her hand pressed to her heart.

  “My shoes are off,” he assured her, gesturing toward the floor. He looked toward Siobhan, who had followed right behind him. “Siobhan, shoes. I think you’re upsetting her.”

  “It’s not me she’s staring at like she can see my skeleton on the outside of my body,” Siobhan pointed out, kicking off her Roman-style sandals, that weren’t quite appropriate for mid-September anyway, and shutting the door. “So, he’s bad, huh?”

  Natasha closed her mouth, seemingly with some effort, and tried to cover up her shock. She fooled no one in the process. “Uh, I think …we probably have a few things to discuss. Why don’t we go back to my—” she cut off, having turned around to lead them into the house and run directly into an older man who had been loitering nearby in a pair of plaid boxers and white undershirt. “Dad! I told you to stay out of the way, didn’t I?”

  “I was just coming to say hi to this one,” Ned said, smiling as he reached a hand out to Siobhan. “Hello, my dear. Welcome to our home. I’m Natasha’s father. Perhaps you’d like a drink? Do you like beer?”

  “Dad, it’s ten thirty in the morning,” Natasha said, through slightly gritted teeth. “And we have a lot to discuss.”

  Ned had Siobhan’s hand in his own and was lowering his head to kiss her knuckles when Siobhan pulled her hand away. Ronan bit back a smile as she dressed the man down with her eyes, knowing that Siobhan could have done far worse to him—and likely would have, before the calming influence of Julian.

  “No thanks, Pops,” Siobhan said, keeping a smile, albeit a tight one, on her face. “Natasha, you said you had a studio?”

  “Yes,” Natasha said quickly, looking askance at Ronan once more before she shooed her father away and led them through the living room and down a long hallway with many doors.

  “This is a large house,” Ronan observed, largely because there seemed to be a strange silence between them and because he was spending too much time watching Natasha’s backside swing back and forth in her yoga pants. God, the woman was gorgeous—just gorgeous. He found himself suddenly reconsidering whether or not it was safe to spend some time with a woman, and she was plenty of inspiration to take the risk.

  You’re here to be healed, buddy. Don’t get ahead of yourself.

  Natasha pushed open a door and stepped back to let Ronan and Siobhan walk in first. When he walked into the room, Ronan noted a massage table that was set up, plants in every corner and along the windowsill, walls that were a soft, soothing blue, and a wicker cabinet that was filled with towels, oils, a sound machine, and a number of other instruments he didn’t recognize.

  By the door, there were two chairs with sage-green cushions, and, for lack of anything better to do, Ronan folded his tall frame into one of them. Siobhan took up watch by standing in the corner, looking distinctly out of place in her black jeans, hiking boots, and fitted T-shirt. Natasha was all softness and elegance, and Siobhan was all power and intensity, and both women were suddenly staring at him as he sat there, waiting to see what it was that Siobhan was so certain would help him here.

  Natasha sat down in the other chair, having pulled it out from the wall so she could face him, and she continued to stare at him in silence for long enough that Ronan finally offered her a bemused smile. “Well?”

  “I’m sorry,” Natasha said quickly, averting her eyes. “I just—there’s so much coming from you. I’m being unprofessional though. We should start at the beginning.”

  “No, skip the beginning,” Siobhan said, speaking up from the corner. “I already told him on the way here that you’re a supernatural healer and that you’re reported to be the best at deciphering supernatural ailments and curses. He has something wrong with him, and we don’t know what it is. So let’s skip to that part.”

  Ronan gave Natasha another smile, this one more reassuring. He knew that Siobhan’s manner was a bit blunt, and he didn’t want Natasha to feel uncomfortable or uncertain, especially since, no matter what kind of strain he was under—mental or physical—he was more than happy to end up on that table she had set up with her hands running over him. “I understand what you do. And obviously…you’re having a strong reaction to me. I’m open to hearing why that is.”

  His words seemed to help center Natasha, and she swallowed hard, gathering herself. “Uh, so I’m a healer, as …your friend said. I sense people’s illnesses. And not just their physical illnesses. I know when someone has been cursed.”

  “Are you saying I’m cursed?”

  Natasha nodded. “Yes. I’m sorry, but yes. There’s a terrible curse on you. Does that…make sense to you? Do you understand its origins?”

  Ronan glanced toward Siobhan, wishing that he didn’t have to go into this with her present, but knowing there was no way she was going to leave. “I suspect the origins, yes. A few months ago, I met with a man who was supposed to help me speak with my ancestors. Things didn’t go as expected. He ended up having more power than I realized, and …he died. Arguably, I killed him, though I don’t know why I would take full responsibility for that. Ever since then”—he shook his head—“things haven’t been right.”

  “A curse from the other side,” Natasha murmured. “You said he had the ability to speak to the other side?”

  “That’s what he said,” Ronan agreed. “And he did convince me that
he had that ability by showing me my Nana. My grandmother. She didn’t speak to me, but she appeared, conjured presumably. She was insubstantial and shimmering and looked exactly as I remember her.”

  Natasha leaned forward, her tank top gaping to show her full, creamy cleavage. Ronan could have stared openly at it, but he forced his eyes to stay on her face, and what he saw there was pure concern.

  “He’s cursed you,” Natasha murmured. “I can feel it. Sense it. There’s such a heaviness on you. I’ve never felt anything so strong. It will suffocate you if we don’t ease the pressure off your soul.”

  Ronan watched her as she spoke, noting the total sincerity that he could read from her like she read darkness from him. He liked her so much that he believed that she believed that she could take the curse away from him, but he wasn’t convinced that she was right. If Josiah Webb truly had cursed him from the other side, he wasn’t sure what anyone could do about it without a similar connection to that side of the universe.

  But he wasn’t averse to letting her try her best.

  “How do we ease soul pressure?” Siobhan interjected, interrupting Natasha and Ronan as they stared at each other. “Is there like a stretch for that? A massage technique?”

  “There are things I can do,” Natasha agreed. “But…I need to see Ronan alone. It will be a very intense process. For both of us.”

  Ronan was happy to meet with Natasha alone, and his look to Siobhan said as much. She rolled her eyes at him, clearly understanding that, beneath it all, he was still the ladies’ man he had always been. In some ways that seemed to buoy Siobhan’s spirits.

  She stood up, away from the peacefully blue wall and swept her long sheet of wavy blonde hair back from her face. “Yeah, okay. I’ll give you two some time. Let’s say I’ll come back in …half an hour?”

  “That will be fine,” Natasha said, still looking at Ronan.

  He was looking straight back at her too. “Yeah, half an hour. Sounds good.”