Nicholas had planned their visit to the Sunsphere the night before after hearing enough of the visitor’s story to make his own stomach just as sick as hers must currently be. The tale began sixteen years earlier when Steph was sold to a band of feral dragons who bound her wings and prevented those all-important appendages from growing into their proper orientation. By the time the dragonet was old enough to hold her own against male tormentors, the damage had been done. Her wings had solidified into their current malformed position, useless for the art of soaring.
Now, Nicholas gritted his teeth and forced himself to fly idly by as Steph slowed her own roll with frantic beats of stubby wings. And he breathed out a fiery snort of relief when they both touched down safely atop the bulbous skyscraper known as the Sunsphere.
If anyone could make their guest feel at home, that person was his mother.
Sure enough, Sarah was waiting for them, wrinkled face wreathed in welcoming smiles. She was usually thrilled by the appearance of any of her children, but this time she batted away Nicholas’s salutation and turned to face the newly shifted young woman instead.
Steph had lost her clothes during the shift just as Nicholas expected, her borrowed dress having disappeared in the space between one building and the next. Instead of commenting upon the issue, though, Nicholas merely draped the robe he’d brought along around his companion’s slender shoulders, shrugging subtly in response to the questions in his mother’s gaze.
Steph, for her part, shivered slightly as fabric brushed against bare skin, but she kept her gaze downcast as she spoke. “Thank you so much for having me.”
“Of course, dear,” Sarah answered, reaching forward as if to pull Steph into a hug. But the older woman quickly turned the gesture into a handshake when the newcomer cringed away from even a female’s touch.
Nicholas could almost hear Sarah’s maternal instincts engaging, and he hid a smile as wheels began turning within his mother’s head. Yep, bringing Steph over to the Sunsphere had been his best idea yet.
But Sarah didn’t dive right into nurturing the traumatized shifter. Instead, she turned back to face Nicholas, her mouth firming up into the closest it ever came to a scowl.
“I know you’d planned to stay and join us,” his mother said. “But your twin called on the intercom while you were flying over. There’s a blockade of strange dragons surrounding the Aerie, and the Intrepid’s due in later today....”
And, immediately, the puzzle of Steph’s nakedness and timidity was replaced by a far more pressing concern. Could it be coincidence that enemy dragons had shown up so soon after this poor, malformed female landed atop the Plaza? He thought not...and he certainly wasn’t going to allow Steph’s former captors to take his sister away by force.
Nor did he intend to allow harm to come to the intriguing airship captain who had entered his life the previous summer after becoming fast friends with Nicholas’s new sister-in-law. The memory of Sabrina’s face brought a faint smile to the shifter’s lips...but then his mouth pursed instead as he recalled the buried secrets that always swirled around the captain’s tall form.
Secrets. Too many secrets, Nicholas thought, fleet feet carrying him backwards so the impending shift would harm neither companion with secondhand flames. Then, far more quickly than he’d touched down, Nicholas pushed wings against unresisting air to launch himself back aloft.
Something told him the secrets he’d thus far uncovered were the least of the ones currently filling the air. And secrets harmed people he cared about.
Not this time, Nicholas decided, ignoring both the remembered visage of his long-dead brother and the vivid image of the airship captain’s teasing taunts. Not on my watch.
***
“General quarters!” Sabrina bellowed, half expecting her crew to disobey. Instead, to her relief, each man scurried to his battle station with alacrity.
First, five airmen clambered into rigging that attached the dangling gondola to the tremendous hydrogen balloon above all of their heads. Together, the men began unrolling a thin silver blanket across the bulbous expanse, only a few mutters suggesting they didn’t believe Zach’s experimental covering would do its intended job of keeping dragon fire at bay.
Not that these particular dragons should attack. After all, Gleason was on their payroll and Sabrina had unwillingly become a subcontractor as well. Still, the captain didn’t call off her weapons officer as he led the other half of her crew below deck to ready the cannons. And she definitely didn’t stop the chief engineer from nearly stepping on the latter’s heels in his haste to start up the auxiliary motors that ensured her ship could turn on a dime.
Meanwhile, her brother brushed against the final descending crew member as the teenager emerged from his lab to see what all the fuss was about. Owl-like eyes blinked against brilliant sunlight, and Sabrina’s heart lurched. What had she been thinking dragging a mute teenage scientist along on a journey of deceit? And what am I going to do with two civilians on my deck? she wondered as Gleason stepped out from behind her brother to further clutter up the space.
Unlike Zach, the merchant took in the situation at a glance, and his squinty-eyed glare in Sabrina’s direction got his point across quite nicely. These dragons are your boss, Gleason’s squinty eyes and flaring nostrils said without words. Don’t annoy them.
Well, Sabrina hadn’t intended to annoy anyone...but she also didn’t plan to show her hand to the world at large by rolling over without a fight. If enemy dragons had shown up along her starboard bow on any other day, the Intrepid would have prepared for battle. So prepare for battle she did.
Turning pointedly away from her uninvited passenger at long last, Sabrina counted off second after second until cannons rumbled into place beneath her feet. She watched the bosun’s mate berate their newest apprentice airman as the latter nearly tumbled to his death while attempting to strap the tremendous silvery sheet across the billowing bulge of the overhead balloon. Then she turned her gaze toward the unknown dragons, who continued to close on her fleeing but relatively slow-moving ship.
“We won’t fire until they make their first offensive move,” Sabrina told the cabin boy hovering by her side, not bothering to glance at the youngster who waited to relay orders throughout the ship.
“Offensive?” the boy parroted back. It wasn’t entirely clear whether Tom simply didn’t understand the word, or whether he thought Sabrina was nuts for failing to realize that four fast-approaching dragons were enemies due to their existence alone.
Well, battle wasn’t the time to deal with either shortcoming. Instead, ignoring Tom’s question, the captain hummed an invisible lens into existence using water particles waiting in the air before her nose. Then she peered into the distance, not quite sure what she was looking for but not wanting to sit idly by either.
Because the unfortunate truth was that Sabrina had no definitive way of telling friend from foe other than waiting to see how these unknown dragons behaved. Still, the captain made no move to attack despite mutterings from her waiting crew as the tremendous shifters drew ever closer to her highly flammable ship.
“Shall we turn broadside and fire?”
What had it taken—thirty seconds for Claude to leave his post and come to ensure their female captain wasn’t daydreaming about hair bows and flowers? Sabrina ground her teeth together. At least Claude wasn’t overtly gainsaying her orders, not in front of the cabin boy who was the lowest man on the ship’s totem pole.
But the first mate shouldn’t have been sneaking up behind his captain to ask questions, either. Should instead have remained poised by the instrument panel at the front of the ship, ready to take in the commands Sabrina would fling out like buckshot during the heat of battle.
“We wait,” she said tersely after a lengthy pause, then was gratified as Claude’s footsteps retreated back in the direction from which they’d come. For now, her first mate was still willing to obey.
But fractious crew members were the least of her worries now tha
t the dragons had flown so close that their bulk dwarfed the Intrepid’s gondola, if not the massive balloon above all of their heads. Sabrina could make out individual scales even without her magnifying lens, each hard plate nearly as big around as her head. Meanwhile, the heat of the dragons’ inner fire pressed air currents awry and sent the dirigible tilting off true.
Out of the corner of one eye, Sabrina caught a glimpse of Gleason nearly sliding off the deck before he grasped the rail to prevent himself from plummeting to his death. But the little man didn’t appear nearly as terrified as he should have been while virtually staring down four enemy dragons’ gullets.
So these are his buddies after all. Or at least he still thinks they are.
Which is why Sabrina was so shocked when a gunmetal gray beast peeled away from his compatriots and swooped toward her. Dragons didn’t actually breathe fire anywhere other than in fairy tales, but they were fire when it came right down to it. And as this dragon winged his way closer, he released the restraint that had previously prevented flames from licking around his scaly body.
A roiling ball of dragon and fire and magic burst through the ropes attaching gondola to balloon with the ease of a hot knife cutting through warm butter. Then, with an ominous creak, her precious ship began falling apart.
Chapter 5
Hardened seamen screamed as a solid quarter of the twenty-four sets of lines holding cabins and cargo bay aloft disappeared in a haze of acrid smoke. There were enough hefty ropes remaining to hold the deck steady beneath Sabrina’s feet. But the strain was already showing in the remaining lines, and the ship now tilted ever so slightly to starboard.
For the first time ever, Sabrina wasn’t confident the Intrepid would make it back to port with ship and crew intact.
From across the deck, her gaze latched onto that of her first mate. Claude’s eyes flashed with reflected fire, his anger evident in the straight line of his back. This, she suspected, was the last straw, his ultimate proof that Sabrina wasn’t fit to captain her father’s ship.
Ignoring the twinge of disappointment—in herself, in her crew, in the double-crossing dragons—Sabrina grabbed the cabin boy’s wrist and hauled him toward the hatch, then turned back to do the same with two civilians who stood gawking with widened eyes that did nothing to move them out of the path of danger. “Abandon ship!” she bellowed as she ran across a deck that skewed further off true with every second that passed.
Then, out of the corner of one eye, she caught a flare of orange-streaked gray as the lead dragon turned in preparation for another sweep. He’s not done yet, she realized, even as Gleason turned to glare at her while being shoved far too quickly down steep stairs.
Just like the treacherous first mate, her blackmailer was annoyed by Sabrina’s actions. But Sabrina had no time to worry about either man’s tender dignity or even about the job she’d accepted against her own will. No, she needed to ensure every crew member made it safely back to solid ground before the Intrepid crashed and burned.
Airmen thudded onto the deck around her before running down the stairs toward the bottom of the ship where parachutes were stored. But Sabrina didn’t join her crew. Instead, she made a beeline for the command panel that Claude had abandoned and pressed button after button in efficient, if terrified, haste.
“Abandon ship,” she repeated as each comm connection went through. “Abandon ship.” There were men in the belly of the Intrepid who might not have heard her original command. Men who deserved just as much lead time as the aerial crew to don parachutes and escape what seemed poised to turn into a death trap.
“All accounted for captain,” came her chief engineer’s calm voice through the intercom after what felt like an eternity. But his words cut off as Sabrina released the button and turned to face the flaming mass of wings, scales, and tail that was now flying directly toward her.
The dragon’s teeth were the length of her forearm, his eyes glinting with pleasure at her fright. Flames licked across his metallic hide and formed eddying spirals that streamed in luminescent tangles across his back. Meanwhile, the jagged barbs on the end of his tail lashed like butcher’s knives through the air.
It was too late to run, too late to hide. Instead, Sabrina stared defiantly at the dragon who now swooped down for another pass through her familial ship. And after one last glance around the deck to ensure her crew was safely absent, the captain allowed herself to lose her long-constrained temper.
“That’s enough,” she bit out. Then she opened her mouth and blew.
Wind came out of nowhere to curl through Sabrina’s braids, to slap at the canvas of the balloon above her head, and to push the dragon off course. He twisted in the air, his flames eating through another set of lines in the process and making the captain wince.
Okay, so maybe an outright attack hadn’t been the smartest approach to prevent further devastation of her precious ship.
But then the dragon righted himself, flaring bright orange just before hitting the deck in human form. The newcomer was tall and handsome...and every line of his face and shoulders spoke to an arrogance that rubbed the captain entirely the wrong way.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Sabrina demanded, advancing upon her opponent with finger extended. She would have liked to pull her pistol or sword to increase the threat quotient. But this shifter was supposedly her ally, never mind his apparent intention to crash her beloved ship.
Remember the debt, she chided herself. Remember Zach and the Fairweather name. It was a hard sell, but Sabrina managed to halt her forward momentum before she actually poked her finger into the shifter’s well-muscled chest, and both weapons remained firmly holstered at her side. Still, when she stopped at last a few inches shy of her opponent’s fiery form, angry magic flared the captain’s nostrils wide and swirled around the lapels of her high-buttoned jacket.
“I’m introducing myself,” the man responded, unmoved by her magically threatening posture. One eyebrow rose sardonically, the shifter’s gesture and swagger suggesting that Sabrina was entirely irrational to take offense at his recent actions. “I’m Gunnar Drake. And you...are the spitting image of your father.”
My father. Just like that, rage froze in Sabrina’s chest. The supportive breezes that had been gathering around her head and shoulders dissipated, to be replaced by a cold, hard ache that set her rubbing at her temples before she realized what she was doing.
And Gunnar didn’t miss the signs of her weakness either. The dragon’s mouth widened into a grim, predatory smile that set the captain’s teeth on edge, then he turned his back as if she were so clawless there was no point guarding against potential attack.
Sabrina told herself to stand her ground, to ignore the shifter’s retreating form as he ambled over to lean against the starboard rail. Instead, she found herself quick-stepping down the slanted deck in Gunnar’s wake, unwilling to let her opponent out of her sight.
She looked like her father? What would a feral dragon know about the long-dead Frank Fairweather? And did the mysterious connection make her current situation better...or worse?
Definitely worse, Sabrina decided when she saw where the shifter was gazing. Now that she’d left the center of the deck behind, fleeing sailors were visible in the air beneath the belly of the ship. Even from a distance, her brother’s gangly form was easy to pick out, especially when Zach glanced upward before reaching behind himself to deploy the parachute strapped to his rapidly receding back.
“It’s hard to tell from here,” Gunnar continued, his voice so smooth it would have been impossible for a bystander to tell the shifter was making a threat rather than polite conversation, “but your little brother seems to be growing into as fine of a Fairweather as you have.”
And, once again, Sabrina’s cheek twitched in an oh-so-minor representation of the clench within her gut. Zach’s parachute had inflated easily while the shifter was speaking, the few narrow cords of nylon preventing her brother’s frail human body from plummeting
to its death. But a hand gesture from Gunnar sent a feral dragon swooping toward the teenager, the proximity of fiery wings and lashing tail ruffling the fabric of his chute.
Sabrina bit her lip, knowing how easy it would be for the enemy to end Zach’s short life. The dragon would just have to fly a little closer and—oops, so sorry—burn through those lines the same way Gunnar had damaged the Intrepid’s rigging.
Like her current companion, the dragon in question wasn’t anyone she knew. Its scales were brown and drab, a sure sign of a non-Aerie beast. In Sabrina’s experience, those feral dragons were loose cannons, doing what they wanted when they wanted.
But this one had a master. A master who stood beside her on Intrepid’s tilted deck. And just before the fiery beast soared close enough to Zach’s parachute to singe the silk, the dragon glanced backwards as if awaiting instructions from above.
“Wisdom is knowing when you’ve been beaten,” Frank had told his daughter once. Not that the crafty old patriarch had been outmatched often. But Sabrina could definitely see the writing on her own wall now.
So, holding her breath, she forced every bit of wind magic back down her throat. She unclenched her fists with an effort, then she actually bowed her head a little just in case Gunnar demanded a further show of subservience.
Finally, clearing her throat, she gave in to the inevitable.
“I assume you’ve come to provide further instructions,” Captain Fairweather said. “What do you want me to do next?”
***
All three of Nicholas’s brothers were already on scene by the time the carnage came into view. Parachute-assisted figures fell from the belly of the ship one after another while enemy dragons ignored the evacuees but swooped after any Aerie inhabitant trying to break the humans’ fall. On the ground, Alexander risked an impromptu landing in the heart of the wakening forest to pick up stragglers, while Nicholas’s two foster brothers alternated between fending off attackers and plucking sailors directly out of the air.
Cerulean Magic: A Dragon Mage Novel Page 3
