The Fire Eater and Her Dragon: A Dragon Rider Urban Fantasy Novel (Setting Fires with Dragons Book 3)

by S. W. Clarke

  Valdis’s eyes widened on my wounds.

  “What?” Erik said to me, breathless in the next chair over. “What do you mean, a demon?”

  I briefly met eyes with Erik, and in that moment I remembered his lips touching mine. Testing a flame. A momentary longing struck through me, and I thought, If I survive this, I won’t be such a fool and put my hands between us next time.

  He gazed back at me, confused and worried, and I gave him the tiniest ghost of a reassuring smile.

  “It would have killed me already,” I went on, turning back to Valdis, “but Seleema slowed the process down. And I figure I should ask the guy who’s lived two millennia with a demon inside him for some advice on how to deal.”

  Frank met eyes with Seleema, and he mouthed words at her. They had a brief, silent conversation across the table, and it ended with Frank looking heartbroken.

  Seleema had burned time. That was my fault.

  I tried to keep my attention off the poor guy and on Valdis. What was done was done. “So?”

  “A demon inside you,” he repeated, sitting forward and lifting his eyes to Seleema. “What is the nature of this demon, houri?”

  “It stems from her soul,” Seleema said. “It is from her and of her.”

  Valdis’s eyes snapped back to me. “This is a different sort of demon. And it does not come from Mariana’s essence?”

  Seleema was reluctant to answer that.

  “It hunts me,” I said. “And I’ve been told I can’t fight it. Not with my hands or my feet. But we’re running out of time to stop it. And from the looks of you, old man, you’re running out of years to stop Lust.”

  Valdis had been staring down at his hands. Now he fixed his gaze on me again. “I will cut your essence out of her body. I will rend you from her soul.”

  Erik’s hand swept over my chest. “You’ll do no such thing.”

  Seleema stood behind me. “It will do her no good. Killing one essence would kill both.”

  Valdis slammed the table with his fist. Even the chandelier above us tinkled. “Then I will give her my own time.”

  I sat forward, finally understanding—finally realizing where the demon lived. “I don’t need your time. Not a minute of it. What I need from you is your memory. That’s the least you can give me.”

  Valdis didn’t seem to understand. “What memory?”

  “You were the only other person in this room who was present on the night my family died,” I whispered. “You remember it all.”

  “Of course,” he said, the most ridiculous note of pride entering his voice. “A vampire forgets nothing.”

  How fitting, in a twisted, macabre way.

  The old woman in the massage parlor had been able to help me see only so much of my past. It would take the creature who ruined my life to help me see it as it really happened.

  He remembered it all. He knew the truth.

  The thought struck terror through me. Here sat the creature who possessed the answers to questions my own mind had locked away.

  I took a deep breath before my next question. “Were you in the main tent when my mother and father and sister were killed?”

  “I was.”

  I began shivering. “Then you’ll show me what my brain won’t allow me to see.”

  Seleema’s hand fell on my shoulder. “Tara …”

  “I don’t want to hear your naysaying, Seleema,” I said up to her.

  “It is a good idea,” she said. “It is the right course.”

  Oh, well then.

  Valdis’s bloody hands half-opened on the table. “What do you speak of?”

  “You will help me to see,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper. “You will take me where I need to go, and you will help me to see it properly.”

  “See what properly?”

  “The night of the GrandExodus.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that’s where the demon lives,” I said, and I knew I was right. “The demon shrouds the truth of it from me. And only a bastard like you could force me to sit and witness it properly.”

  “And how can I do that?”

  I raised my hand, setting my fingers over Seleema’s. “She knows. She’ll guide us.”

  Valdis looked up at Seleema. “We do not have time for this.” He gestured to Ariadne. “She must escape. She must—”

  “If you wish to save this soul,” Seleema said above me, “you must do this.”

  “Remember,” I said, “you swore an oath. You’d bring her back, right?”

  “Yes,” Valdis said, “but I have already done that.”

  I ticked a finger at him. “Have you, though? Cause it seems to me little old snowdrop isn’t here yet. And she may very well not make it at all. You know why? Because she’s being held hostage by your sins.”

  “My sins?” Valdis said.

  “That’s right,” I shot back, rising. “You killed my family. Whatever happened on that night—the truth of what happened—created a darkness in me that has festered in my soul for five years. You’re the source of this, Valdis. And if you want to fulfill your oath of bringing Mariana back, you’d better get to repenting.”

  Chapter 9

  I pointed between Seleema and Valdis. “You two. I need you both if I’m going to see my memories properly.”

  Valdis pressed both hands on the table as he stood. “Very well. What must I do?”

  Seleema remained standing behind me. “Come stand here.”

  “Should we not move to a quieter room?” he offered.

  Seleema was right. “Here,” I said, gesturing left and right of me. “Here, I’ve got everyone I care about nearby. I can practically hear Percy snoring. If I’m going to see anywhere, it’ll be here.”

  “Sit, Tara,” Seleema said. She indicated for Valdis to come around the table. “And you must take my place behind her.”

  I lowered myself into the chair, my hands automatically going to grip the sides of it as I anticipated my mortal enemy coming to stand behind me. “Now this part doesn’t make me feel comfortable.”

  “He must face the direction you face,” Seleema said. “He must be close enough to touch you.”

  When Valdis came over, his footsteps stopped behind me. I couldn’t hear him breathing, because I suppose he didn’t need to breathe; he was very nearly a vampire again, after all.

  Which meant when his hands fell on my shoulders, I would feel more than just their weight through my jacket. I would feel a chill.

  He hadn’t touched me yet.

  “May I?” he said above me.

  I glanced up, into his waiting face looking back down at me.

  And in the most unexpected moment of my life, I thought: His features are fine. Handsome, even.

  No—no, no, no. None of that, Tara.

  And yet there was a certain worry, a softness in his dark eyes. He had requested my permission to touch me.

  He was quite genuinely worried about Mariana. And the more she and I became one, the more it felt like he worried about me.

  My eyes drifted to Ariadne, seated at the end of the table. She was as much a darling beauty as she had been before the gods left. And if we protected her long enough in his GoneGod World, perhaps we would find a way to regain the half of her soul ripped away from her.

  Then she would smile again.

  On my left, Percy slept on. My head turned that way, staring through the doorway. I couldn’t see him, but I could practically feel him. I could feel an equal tug left and right, toward the two children of the two essences inside me.

  They were precious souls. They were in danger.

  If I didn’t destroy this demon, I would not be able to protect them.

  My head lifted until I met eyes with Valdis again. I sensed Mariana there, her words on the tip of my tongue. And for the first time, I allowed them to spill out.

  My hand—and her hand—rose, reaching for his. “I trust you.”

  Valdis recognized her inside me, and his h
and came out to find ours. His skin wasn’t nearly as cold as I’d expected, and his grip was firm, reassuring. “I will not let you die to this.”

  His right hand squeezed mine once more before detaching from my hand and settling on my right shoulder. The other hand came up, fell on my left shoulder.

  “Close your eyes,” Seleema instructed. “Both of you. If you concentrate hard enough, you may be able to join.”

  I did so, my hands now settling in my lap. “Join?”

  “Join your memories,” Seleema said. “It is only possible between two with long shared histories such as yourselves. And it will only happen if both are willing.”

  I hadn’t known this could happen. Did I want it to happen?

  I’d thought he would tell me about his experience of the night … not join his with mine.

  But something told me this was what I needed. My brain was too stubborn to allow me into the places I truly wanted to go, so I would have to find a back door.

  That back door would be Valdis.

  “Relax,” Seleema said. “Concentrate on your breathing, on evening it out and slowing your heart. Only when you do so will you be able to see.”

  I had never been much for breathing exercises, but I was determined to follow Seleema’s instructions to the letter. And so I focused on my inhalation, and the exhalation that followed. Then the next, and the next.

  “Valdis, you must guide her back to the night of the GrandExodus. You must tell her what you see in detail—smells, sounds, tastes.”

  He took a long, slow breath above me. Then his voice came. “When I approached the circus grounds, I smelled shit.”

  I almost barked out an absurd laugh. Almost opened my eyes.

  He had smelled the very same thing I had first noticed from my memories—the steer in the adjacent fields. How much worse must it have been for a vampire with such an acute sense of smell?

  “Then …” he said, “I smelled her.”

  “Who?” Seleema said.

  “The woman I had loved for seven hundred years. She smelled just the same as she did the first day I met her in the forest—of sweet pine and rainwater. She was just the same age.”

  “That’s gross,” I shot back. “You’re old, man.”

  Valdis chuckled. “By this point, your soul was centuries old. You just did not know it.”

  “Where did you find her?” Seleema said.

  “I took on an illusion of a boy, and I followed her scent into the circus grounds and to a small tent with a sign that read ‘The Girl Who Eats Fire.’ And when I went inside, there she was. My snowdrop, a plume of fire pouring out of her mouth.”

  ↔

  I gasped. “You saw me there?”

  “Yes. I stood among the crowd, and I watched your brilliance.”

  I had all but forgotten about The Girl Who Eats Fire, my sideshow. I had only been at it for six months, and only because I had sworn to my parents I was old enough to evolve from regular whips to flaming ones.

  In it, I filled my mouth with a flammable and spewed it out over my whips. They were coated in a special substance that kept them from burning up, and so I was able to perform all my tricks with my two whips aflame. It wasn’t a long show—maybe twenty minutes—but it always drew a respectable crowd.

  “But my father kicked you out,” I said. “You snuck back in?”

  “Of course,” Valdis said. “I had sought you for centuries. I would not be parted from you ever again.”

  I struggled to open my eyes, but found I couldn’t. Somehow I was sunk deep into this connection between us, whatever it was. “Why didn’t you just take me then? Why did you kill them all?”

  “Because you did not remember,” he said. “It was obvious your soul had forgotten, and it was only in recreating the events of your life I could stir in you the beginnings of the woman I lost.”

  Even now, I could see myself performing before the crowd, flaring my whips across the stage. He was out there, watching. Planning.

  “You killed all those people on a hunch?” I said. “Just because you thought it might bring back the essence of one long-dead woman?”

  “Yes,” he said simply.

  Bastard.

  He had killed my family just to bring Mariana back.

  “You made me hateful. Vengeful,” I said. “It didn’t work—I didn’t become her. Which means they died for nothing.”

  “It did not work in the way I intended,” he admitted. “And for that, I apologize.”

  “You apologize. You think that means anything to me? I lost everything—my family, my home, my entire childhood. I became an adult that night, and not a happy one. If it weren’t for Percy, I wouldn’t be sitting here right now. I wouldn’t have made it at all. And you think two words can make up for that.”

  He said nothing. What was there to say?

  “Get on with it,” I spat. “Just get on with it.”

  I felt him squeezing my shoulders. “Later that night, I came for you. When I stood outside the main circus tent, I had a direct view of your mother and father performing in the center ring. They were marvelous.”

  Suddenly, I could see from exactly his perspective. I stood on the bare ground outside the tent, and the flap had been left open enough for me to see into the warm interior.

  There, my mother and father threw their knives. They stood back-to-back, as they always had. This was one night of their working lives, yes, but it was also what they lived for.

  Most people disliked or even hated circus life, but my parents loved it. They were showpeople, and they loved nothing more than fantasy.

  If they had known dragons were real—and that their daughter would eventually ride one—they would have been overwhelmed and tickled to no end.

  Behind me, I sensed Valdis’s guard. Fifteen of them, all vampires he had turned himself.

  Only fifteen? Was it possible only fifteen vampires had murdered everyone seated inside this tent?

  It had seemed like fifty. A hundred.

  But that was the power differential. Fifteen vampires could murder three hundred people in the span of an hour. Hell, in fifteen minutes.

  I took a step back, and suddenly I separated from Valdis. I was watching him in this memory, and I knew he and I had joined.

  I was in his mind.

  I turned, found fifteen shrouded faces staring back at me. No, not at me—at their master. They awaited his command.

  “Don’t do this,” I breathed, losing all sense of the inevitable reality of a memory that wasn’t even my own. “You don’t have to obey him. You don’t have to kill those people.”

  They didn’t see me, didn’t hear me.

  “Patience,” a voice said from not far off.

  I turned, found her soft, small form approaching me. She was the only one who could see me here—Mariana.

  “You have brought Valdis here,” she said. “To your memory.”

  “No,” I said. “This is his memory.”

  Her throat moved as she swallowed. “And what is this memory?”

  “I thought you’d traveled through all my memories. Poked and prodded and …”

  She shook her head. “Not all. Not these.”

  “Why not these?”

  She held up a hand, palm to the sky. “I could not enter. I tried, but the carnival was closed to me because of the power of these memories.”

  I swallowed. That wasn’t a good sign.

  She took a step closer, her face illuminating from below, even though she carried no light. “But I am here with you now. At the heart of things.”

  I reached out, and she did in the same moment.

  Our hands touched.

  “You know what I have to do,” I said.

  She nodded once. “You must go where you cannot. And you are very clever, because you have found a path through him.”

  I glanced back to where Valdis still stood, observing the interior of the tent. “I have a terrible feeling, Mariana.”

  “Wha
t is it?”

  I turned back to her. The whole weight of what I had been pushing away for five years was beginning to settle on me like a millstone. “What if I’m not meant to see everything that happened in that tent? What if seeing it properly breaks me?”

  “Breaks you?”

  “My mind. My sanity.”

  She clasped my hand hard, and pulled me toward her until we were embracing. “That cannot happen.”

  “Why?” I whispered.

  “Because you have a strength in you.”

  “You,” I said. “You’re my strength.”

  “No, Patience. It resides in you, and it is far beyond what my essence holds. Do you know how close we are to the end?”

  “No.”

  “You cling to our soul by a single hand,” she said. “Your essence has very nearly been shorn away, and yet it holds on. It refuses to let go.”

  I hadn’t known that. Here I’d thought I had more time—weeks, or at least days. In fact, I was on the verge of erasure.

  I clutched her harder. “That’s strength?”

  “Oh yes. It is your grit alone which allows your essence to remain inside our soul.” She leaned away, meeting eyes. “And for as long as you remain, the darkness inside that tent eats away at us.”

  Chapter 10

  “Will you come with me?” I asked her.

  “Yes,” she said. “If you wish.”

  “I do.” I gripped her hand, and I turned toward the tent. But instead of coming with me, Mariana held steady where she stood. “What is it?” I asked.

  “The demon,” she whispered. “I see it.”

  I went rigid, scanning left and right. “Where?”

  She pointed up. Above all the gaudy circus lights, a pair of red eyes shone in the darkness.

  This time, they were unmistakable.

  They must have been fifty feet up, as large as harvest moons in the sky. The demon had grown so large, it obliterated the actual moon. And it loomed over us, staring—seething.

  Growling.

  I took a step back, still gripping Mariana’s hand. “Ho-ly shit.”

  I sensed the malice in that darkness, the desire to protect the sacred shame of this night. I had joined with Valdis, and now the demon in my mind had appeared in this shared memory.