“Bronte is safe from Killian only until Bronte means the world to you,” Bastian warned. “Killian came through with me,” he added, “though not in disguise, and she did not set her sights on McKenna until McKenna became my world.”
Jaydun nodded his understanding. “I’ve been having trouble with a leaf pixie on and off. Lightning and scorched tree branches above my head, that kind of thing. I’ve thought on more than one occasion the pixie might be Killian.”
“Manipulating the weather is one of Killian’s strengths,” Bastian said as they walked between buildings.
As if they’d summoned Killian the evil sorceress, the alley turned dark, while raindrops became hailstones, arriving at growing speeds and sizes.
“Some are big as baseballs,” Jaydun shouted, settling his jacket around Vivica’s shoulders. He protected her from the pelting, until a bolt of lightning raced through the alley, one sunny end to the other, raised them off their feet, tossed them around, and left them lying in puddles.
All except Bastian, who watched, grim and helpless.
As fast as the storm came, the sun returned to warm them.
“It only stormed on us,” Darkwyn said. “Look, it’s sunny and dry everywhere but in here. What must people think?”
“Whatever you do, Darkwyn, don’t tell anyone about—”
“Killian’s ba-ack,” Bastian said, stealing their attention. “I’m dry, because when you best Killian, it’s done. I’ve won my final battle with her. Unnatural air, wind, rain, hail—sent by her—all went around me. I saw what happened to you, but her malevolent magick can’t touch me anymore.”
Darkwyn shivered in his polka-dot cloak, dreading the prospect of fighting their enemy, as they emerged from the alley into a world where everyone was dry but them.
Darkwyn rubbed the new-grown stubble on his face, a sign of his humanity. “If I don’t best Killian—I mean if she bests me—she also steals the magick I drew from Andra to get here, and Andra can’t turn our brothers back to men and send them.”
“You got it,” Jaydun said. “They’ll die in a sea of boiling lava.” He whipped the water from his hair. “Besting Killian hasn’t yet been my burden to bear, though it will be, in time.”
“For now, Jaydun is my bodyguard,” Vivica said, “while I acclimate you, and your brothers after you, so I think Jaydun’s task will ultimately be longer lived and harder won.”
“I hate when you explain my mandate that way,” Jaydun told her.
She shrugged. “I tell it like I see it.”
Darkwyn assessed their proximity, Jaydun’s covertly protective stance, his hand at Vivica’s back. “So,” he said. “Jaydun watches your body and you watch his?”
EIGHT
Vivica squeaked and Jaydun removed his hand from her back as if from a flame. His brother straightened. “If Vivica and I had a connection, it would be our business, Darkwyn. She connects us, protects us, teaches us earthen ways, and she respects us and our mandates. We owe her the same courtesy. She is our mentor, our guardian here on earth, acting in Andra’s stead,” Jaydun said. “If not for Vivica, we would be charging around on all fours or getting shot from the sky. Subject closed. Now, as for that masked, violet-haired girl, what do you think she knows of us?”
“Jaydun, the girl is Bronte, and she is my heart mate. Therefore, please give her the courtesy of respect.”
Vivica nodded her approval. “Good beginning. You must continue to act like a man of earth, and after you’re acclimated, you can go back and discover for yourself where Killian fits into your new life.”
“I suppose,” Darkwyn said, reluctantly agreeing to his lessons. “I will return to Bronte in due course. I did not want to leave her. Her heart is wondrous beautiful and speaks to mine. Her emotions speak, too. I do not think she saw the magick in me. She did not mention Jagidy nor the kittens’ wings.”
Bastian frowned. “Are you certain? Having been in the water with you, she did not catch your magick?”
“She pets the kittens as if their wings do not exist. Her hand cuts through them, and when she holds them, her face is framed by wings. For some reason she supersedes their wings.”
“Like when you walk through a ghost,” Vivica said.
Jaydun looked doubtful. “But you say Bronte sees the cats, themselves?”
Darkwyn sought patience. “I believe the cats want to be seen.”
“It’s true,” Vivica said. “They practically made a red-carpet entrance.”
“Like Dewcup the faery,” Bastian muttered. “Irritating brat. And when I first got here, Killian wanted me to see her, as well. I understand what you’re saying about the cats wanting to be seen. Could a kitten, or the bird, be Killian?”
“I suppose. The bird is irritating enough, yet I feel a kinship.”
“Trust your instincts,” Bastian said, then he snapped his fingers. “I know why your magick did not infect Bronte like mine did McKenna when she was in the lake with me. Cat Cove is off Salem Harbor and the Atlantic. An ocean is too vast a body of water to hold magick intact. It probably got splintered into a trillion tiny glistening shards worth no magick at all. While in McKenna’s tiny lake my magick remained whole.”
“That makes sense.”
Bastian gave a half nod. “So, you landed at the Phoenix. Less public, I hope, than landing naked on a thorn bush in a circle of chanting women.”
“More public,” Vivica said. “Darkwyn was practically up for bid when I got there. Oh, and now that we’re alone, Darkwyn, I’ll sell the raw diamond you slipped me and bank the money for you and your brothers.”
“Minus expenses for the three of us, Andra said to tell you. When Bastian came, we did not know the rocky shores of our beaches were valuable on earth, so he took nothing. Jaydun, I heard the pouchful you tried to bring was torn from your hand on the journey. So the secret is for each dragon to bring one raw diamond, firmly grasped in the palm of his hand. And, yes, three women peeked over the bar and wanted to take me home.”
Jaydun slapped him on the back. “You make a decent man, if a little tall, though we still see you as a dragon.”
Darkwyn flicked one of Jaydun’s wings. “The way I see you.”
Vivica led them beside buildings, along which odd wheeled boxes rolled, which Vivica called cars, trucks, trolleys, and buses. “Supernaturals see each other as they really are,” their acclimator said. “An angel coming down the road is probably not the angel of death; don’t freak. He looks human to everyone else. As do you.”
“I appreciate the warning. What I see is not what humans see.”
“Don’t mistake me, humans will be in costume. It’s Halloween, and even when it’s not, we’re a magickally theatrical city, but I think you’ll be able to tell the supernaturals from the workers and trick-or-treaters.
Whatever the obstacles, Darkwyn intended to enjoy this new world.
“I still sense the warrior poet in you,” Jaydun said. “You have always balanced the cruelty of life with a higher purpose better than most.”
Darkwyn frowned, unsure. “We were all taught as much by the ancient tradition of our Roman leaders.”
“But you excelled,” Bastian said.
“Andra called me her black ice dragon. I would rather be hard-hearted than a thinker.”
“Our sorceress bolstered our egos.” Jaydun chuckled. “Did you never catch on?”
“No, he’s right,” Bastian said. “Darkwyn was one of the fiercest dragons, as unpredictable and dangerous as black ice. Andra meant it. She told me so.”
“Now I don’t believe either of you,” Darkwyn snapped. “I am on earth, Andra is on the Island of Stars, and I do not know what I meant to her.”
“We all meant the world to her,” Jaydun assured him. “She sustained us on a dying island, protecting us from Killian at every turn for centuries.”
“She did, and well,” Darkwyn agreed.
“Speaking as a man of earth,” Bastian said, “I understand Andra’s meani
ng of black ice. Warrior men and dragons are often called upon to harden themselves against emotions. We then think our hearts are dead, but they are not. Bruised perhaps, and so hollow they echo like empty casings, but still there, beating faint and steady. The good news is the right heart mate can heal you, bring you back to life. I know this for a fact.”
Darkwyn’s rude feathered friend landed on his head, but Darkwyn removed him. “You may sit on my shoulder.” He regarded his brothers. “A warrior poet, really?”
“Little bit.” Bastian shrugged. “But as a dragon you are also huge, dark, and hard as black ice.”
Darkwyn growled low in his throat. “I do hope, Bastian Dragonelli, that you pierced your ass, but good, on that thorn bush you landed upon.”
Bastian firmed his lips against amusement. Jaydun and Vivica did the same.
His brothers’ temperaments had improved. Darkwyn appreciated being with them again. “So I landed at the Phoenix, tattooed with a Phoenix, though the two are hardly the same.”
“Glad to hear that your roman tattoo survived dragonhood,” Bastian said.
“A memory from the past I am glad to embrace. Tell me, has Bronte’s building risen from the ashes? If not, why the name?”
Vivica led them through a set of glass doors. “Bronte’s Phoenix lives up to its name. It housed an inn, The Phoenix Hotel, until about forty years ago, then fell into decay. Bronte brought it back to life. It is now simply the Phoenix. Many towns in this country are named for the mythical creature tattooed on your chest.”
“I chose it to help me rise from the ashes of battle.”
“And so you did rise, from a battle of dragons on a plane far from ours.” Jaydun indicated that Darkwyn should precede him.
Puck flew inside. “Bite Me at the frickin’ Phoenix. Ride in a coffin, drink some blood.”
NINE
In what Vivica called “Solitary Confinement,” alone in his apartment at Works Like Magick, Darkwyn sorted his DVD lessons. “Vivica said that I am an undisciplined, disruptive dragon, Puck,” he told the caged bird. “I am supposed to put these DVD lessons in my computer in order of number, yet I find myself choosing according to subject.”
The discs slid in an unruly heap on the floor. As he picked them up, he found one about Salem. “Tonight I’ll sleep with this one.”
His first day, he’d gotten thrown out of a public lecture for “snoring and snorting like a pen of porcupigs” and disturbing the class.
On the second day, he was barred from taking computer lessons in the big classroom beside Vivica’s office. He’d instigated a mutiny by getting every magickal supernatural student to abandon their lessons and compete in a computerized intergalactic war game.
So far, the only course that held his attention, even here in “solitary,” explained women’s bodies, their sexuality, and how he could enhance a woman’s sexual experience. After learning those mysteries, he wanted nothing and no one but Bronte McBride.
His brother Jaydun, who lived here, too, his apartment next to Vivica’s, to guard her from a mean-spirited journalist, said he should bide his time.
Darkwyn tried. He believed Jaydun had found his heart mate in Vivica, though neither would admit as much, perhaps not even to themselves.
Darkwyn opened a window to gaze in the general direction of the Phoenix. Not one for sitting still doing paperwork, or lessons, he’d agreed to a compromise. He slept wearing earphones and woke smarter in the morning. At roughly midnight, he started his night’s lesson, Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Salem, before he settled into bed, arms behind his head.
Sleep became a strong taskmaster as he followed the lesson’s words and wandered Salem in twilight, allowing Morpheus, God of Dreams, to lead the way.
In a sleep state, rest gave way to awareness until panic slammed him to action.
Though he knew he slept still, he ran through foggy city streets, evading ghosts, ghouls, gray-faced zombies, and a floating red casket with Bronte inside.
A surge of strength and energy shot through him.
He reached the Phoenix in record time, but the brick building had spires and stained glass, with firelight dancing behind one peaked window.
“Bronte! Zachary!” Darkwyn shouted, while dragon-leaping from one metal balcony to the next, gaining hand-and footholds on granite bands and blocks.
On the opposite side of the firelit window, cool to the touch, came a destructive commotion. He broke the glass with a fist, blood spiraling down his arm as he leapt inside.
No fire, but moving light swept the room, blinding colors disturbing the shadows.
Everything appeared as if in reality, though he floated somewhere between sleep and awareness, between life and death.
He took a blow of powerful magick to the chest, hard, breath-stealing, his attacker burning a raw path down his cheek.
“Is anyone here?” he asked, then he identified his assailant, a glowing kitten, but which one? Lila or Scorch?
Stumbling across the room, he tripped over lamps, walked into caskets, grabbed the cat and dropped it into a salmon coffin, her growl fierce as a wildcat’s.
A lightning bolt came straight for him.
Darkwyn ducked, and the wall behind him glowed and cracked, the sound reverberating in an endless echo.
Darkwyn turned a dial where a light switch should be, throwing a chaotic jumble of bold, bright, and painful colors into a now pitch-black room. In this hellish light, or the odd black lack of it, the kitten glowed blood-garnet red and evil, its threat more acute and frightening, every hair delineated, almond eyes and paw pads amber with negative promise.
He turned the dial again, this time to light the room, and read the markers. ON, OFF, and BLACK LIGHT.
He retested the black light, and the kitten’s eyes glowed gold, again.
Scorch the Abyssinian, her evil revealed. Killian had not taken Bronte’s form, a thought he’d dismissed, but the almond-eyed cat’s. Scorch. How appropriate for a lightning thrower.
Darkwyn ducked a second bolt, and turned on the light. The cat had trashed the room. It meowed now, curling around his ankles—looking cuddly, innocent, sounding less like the cat from hell, so he tried black light, again, and saw a pure white kitten glow.
Killian, the evil sorceress, must sometimes abandon the cat to do her dirty deeds elsewhere, perhaps as a leaf pixie with Jaydun.
Darkwyn took the kitten in his arms. “Let’s go find Bronte.”
He climbed the stairs toward the third-floor living quarters, apartment doors to right and left, four on this hall alone. Going by instinct, he chose the door to the far right and stepped into a red, white, and black apartment, mostly white, lights on, like reality inside a dream.
A boy’s bedroom, he found. A woman’s. Both empty, but he followed his instincts up a round staircase to a library, wonderful and ancient with knowledge, went straight to the door at the far end, and opened it. A closet. Empty.
Darkwyn stepped inside, the bare lightbulb in its socket doing no good. He needed it to shed light on his quest. He made sure it was screwed in properly. As he turned it, the back of the closet slid upward.
There Bronte sat on the floor; Zachary huddled against her.
She pointed a gun his way. “Do you know Sanguedolce?” she asked without recognition and without removing her finger from the trigger.
“I do not, but if you hum the tune, I might be able to follow.”
Zachary sneered. “Sanguedolce is a name, dork. Italian. Deadly.” The boy stood and attempted to pry the gun from Bronte’s hand. “Geez, let go already. Vivica researched and bonded this guy, for Drak’s sake. He’s innocent, true of heart, and healthy. What more do you want?”
Bronte came out of her freeze and released the gun to the boy. It went off and Darkwyn felt the blow to his heart.
He jumped from his bed, Bronte’s scream lost to the dream, and turned on his light. He was still at Works Like Magick, as he should be.
Dream be damne
d. That had been reality inside a nightmare.
All too real.
He touched his cheek, and his fingers came away covered in blood.
Bronte!
TEN
The dream had been a call for help.
But who wanted him to go to the Phoenix? Killian or Bronte?
A knock at Darkwyn’s door startled him. He slipped into his jeans to open it. “Vivica.”
“You shouted Bronte’s name. I heard you clear at the end of the hall. What happened to your face?”
He covered his cheek with the palm of his hand to heal it while she watched. A moment later, the wound had disappeared.
“I won’t kid you,” Vivica said. “Every time I see you or your brothers heal using magick, it freaks me out. Was it the bird?”
Puck squawked. “Contempt: The feeling of a prudent ‘bird’ for an enemy too formidable to be safely opposed. Simply put: ‘Bite Me.’ ”
Darkwyn ignored Puck. “Did I wake you?”
“It’s three AM. What do you think?”
“I think . . . I have to go. Bronte needs me.”
“But you’re not ready.”
“I am. I can speak human, read, write, do math, and find my way back to the Phoenix. Was it ever a church?”
“Before a fire in the nineteenth century, yes. But let me clarify something, you can speak English,” she said, “not human, and I don’t think you know your way out of this building.”
“I do. I have a Google map.” He produced it and waved it in front of her.
Vivica took it from his hand, examined it, and nodded her acknowledgment. “You did ace computer science, but do you know biology, sociology, psychology?”
“I learned about vampires and tonight I tried to learn about Salem, but I dreamed a bit of scary reality. I have looked up the history of the Phoenix. It was rebuilt—now I understand why—by thirty-year-old Zachary Tucker more than a hundred years ago. That would make Bronte’s young Zachary a hundred and thirty years old? Is that suspicious, or what?”
Vampire Dragon Page 5
