The next favor I needed wasn’t quite so easy. I’d pretty much used up my favors with Nash Jones, and whatever help he gave me now would go into my debit column. Owing favors to Nash wasn’t comfortable, but I didn’t have much choice.
When I called the sheriff’s department, though, Deputy Lopez told me that Jones wasn’t there. No, he hadn’t gone home; he’d headed down my way a little while ago and even now should be starting his raid.
Fifteen
The abrupt wail of sirens proved Lopez right. I clicked off my phone and ran out of my office in time to see county and state police flying into my parking lot. Before I could wonder which of my guests Nash was after, I saw that the police weren’t targeting my hotel but Barry’s bar.
Bikers liked to congregate at the Crossroads Bar. The bar was located on a quiet back highway, tucked away from most attention, and Barry, a biker himself, kept a pretty good handle on things. Violence rarely erupted at the Crossroads Bar. That’s not to say Nash didn’t like to walk through the place every once in a while to remind everyone there who was in charge.
Nash usually didn’t do it with ten DPS cars plus his entire department to back him up. He must have gotten a tip about a drug or arms deal going down, or maybe he’d heard that a wanted criminal had stopped to toss back a few.
The cops, led by Nash, poured into the bar as the sun slid below the horizon, bathing the winter evening in darkness. My hotel guests, including Grandmother and Elena, came out to watch, and I counted heads.
“Wait a minute. Where’s Colby?”
Drake hissed, coming alert. “He’s in there.”
“How do you know that?” I asked.
“I know.”
He didn’t explain, but I assumed that Drake could feel Colby’s whereabouts through the binding spell.
What the hell was Colby doing? Helping Nash out?
No, I realized a second later. The crafty dragon must have gotten wind that Nash would be coming to the bar, Nash who negated pesky spells wherever he went. I wouldn’t put it past Colby to have called in the tip. Nash wouldn’t wait for confirmation of a drug deal going down—his policy was arrest first, ask questions later.
These thoughts must have occurred to Drake at the same time, because we both sprinted out of the hotel and ran like crazy across the parking lot. Drake had a longer stride, but I hung in there and made it to the bar’s front entrance alongside him.
The state cops tried to keep us out. I could hear Nash in his stentorian tones telling everyone to get on the floor, hands on their heads. Drake turned and ran around the building, looking for the back door. I knew where it was—a door in the wall that led from Barry’s kitchen to his trash containers.
What barreled out the back door wasn’t Colby but three large human bikers carrying black pistols. The state cops came pounding after them, and in a few seconds, bullets would fly.
“Get down!” one of the cops shouted at us.
A thug decided to take me hostage. Even as I fought him, he got his beefy arm around my neck and shoved the barrel of the pistol against my throat. The cold of the weapon aroused my rage, but it was true that if he pulled the trigger, I would die.
The cops looked furious that civilians had showed up to complicate their bust. Despite me in a chokehold, gun at my throat, they looked in no way disposed to drop their weapons and let the bad guys get away. Maybe they thought that me dying would be worth the price.
One of the thugs shot a state policeman in the chest, and the cop fell, but his bulletproof vest saved him. My thug stepped in front of everyone and used me as a shield.
I didn’t have time for this. My Beneath power fluttered close to the surface of my psyche, ready to go. The very thing I’d been trying to avoid for months—using magic to kill for my convenience—raised its head, and for a second I feared I’d simply destroy everyone in sight. But I had to get away from them, to find Colby. I didn’t have time to consider the feelings of violent criminals who were happy to use a young woman as a human shield.
When I looked up at my captor, he jerked, and I knew my eyes had turned ice green. The man’s finger tightened on the trigger.
My magic twisted the pistol in half. The biker screamed when the pieces exploded from his hand, and I laughed. The Beneath magic surged again, and I barely kept myself from blowing a crater into the desert outside Barry’s bar.
A bullet flashed past Drake’s face, and he looked annoyed. He’d not hit the dirt when the cops commanded it—not Drake the arrogant dragon. He looked annoyed at me too. He flicked fire from his hand in two precise bursts, combusting the pistols of the other two bikers. The three stared at us for one stunned moment, then ran off into the darkness, each in a different direction.
One of them sprinted for my hotel. Damn it. I grabbed the sleeve of Drake’s elegant leather coat.
“Stop him! My grandmother’s in there.”
Drake gave me another look of irritation, but he turned and loped off toward the hotel. Cops peeled off to go after them, and others followed the other two thugs into the dark desert.
I slipped into the bar through the back door and found the place in chaos. Barry was swearing, his shotgun in his hands, shattered bottles and glasses all over the floor. The state and county police were walking through the patrons, cuffing each one of them. I found Jones in a far corner, his head still sporting a bandage, bending down to slap cuffs around Colby’s wrists.
I hurried to them, slipping on the alcohol- and glassladen floor. “Let him go, Jones.”
Nash hauled a smiling Colby to his feet. “Every person in this place resisted arrest, including Colby. I’m taking them in and sorting it out at the sheriff’s department.”
“Is that legal?”
Nash didn’t bother to answer, which meant it was legal according to Vigilante Jones.
Colby winked at me. “It’s all right, Janet.” He meekly allowed Nash to steer him out the front door with the others, into the open air.
I examined Colby’s aura as I followed and found it clean and free of the dark binding threads. Nash must have drawn off the spell when he’d touched Colby to cuff him.
I saw Drake break from the knot of cops and start for us. He’d have sensed the spell fail and was on his way to do something about it.
Colby looked at me. “Ready?”
“Nash,” I said. “I’m really, really sorry about this.”
“Now what are you talking about?” Nash demanded.
The cuffs burst apart under Colby’s strength and clinked to the ground. I grabbed Nash and pulled him down as Colby erupted into several of tons of dragon, right over the litter-strewn parking lot. Nash started swearing.
Drake snarled as he ran for us. Colby swooped out of the darkness, reached down, and plucked me up in his talons. I bit back a scream as I rose with sickening swiftness into the freezing air, and then Colby streamed west with me toward the rapidly darkening horizon.
Drake followed us. As fast as Colby winged his way toward the Pacific, Drake remained hard on his tail. Colby was a smaller dragon—at least small compared to Mick—his hide fiery red streaked with black. Drake was completely black, his eyes shining in the darkness as he came on, and he was half again Colby’s size.
Would Drake fire us out of the sky? If Colby ended up a dragon smear on the ground, I would be a smaller smear next to him. I had no way of knowing whether Drake would try to preserve my life or decide I was worth killing to get to Colby.
Colby managed to remain in the lead as we chased the sunset. I’d had no idea dragons could fly so fast. The icy wind bit me as I huddled inside Colby’s talons, wishing he’d given me time to grab my coat. I hunkered down the best I could, but I’d be frozen solid by the time we reached Mick’s lair.
I assumed we were headed to Mick’s lair. Colby had freed himself from Drake’s binding spell—would he honor my request to help me find Mick’s name, or was he taking me someplace of his own? I couldn’t communicate with Colby when he was in dr
agon form, and I wasn’t telepathic, so I had to shiver, huddle, and wait.
I saw the enormous bulk of lights that made up Los Angeles and the surrounding metropolitan area, the lights glittering like jewels all the way down the coast to San Diego. Then the cities dropped behind, and an updraft from the ocean sent Colby soaring high.
As we winged out over the Pacific, I noticed that Drake was keeping pace, not catching up. I doubted he planned to let Colby go; he must want to come with us to find Mick’s lair.
I grew sleepy, which worried me. If I fell asleep, if Colby relaxed his talons, would I fall? Would Colby bother to catch me, or would he swipe and miss? I didn’t think my Beneath magic could keep me from splatting on the surface of the ocean, hundreds of feet below me.
The air warmed. From the faint glow that was the horizon, I could tell we’d turned south, Colby flying far and fast. Drake kept his pace, neither firing nor trying to overtake us. He followed us through the night until night was gone and the eastern horizon began to lighten.
I felt the drafts change, and Colby began circling, spiraling lower and lower like a bird in descent. My exhausted body began to sweat, my clothes now too heavy for the climate.
Colby touched down and released me before he morphed back into a man. Drake landed a little way from us, and by the time I’d unfolded myself and started rubbing my sore limbs, he had become human as well.
I found myself in tropical paradise. The island was volcanic, like the Hawaiian islands, a massive mountain rising from the sea and covered in green splendor. Colby had landed in a large clearing surrounded by trees and thick undergrowth. I heard the rush of a waterfall on one side, with surf pounding out of sight somewhere beyond the dense rain forest.
It was beautiful, in a hot, steamy way. I looked up and around, watching the sky brighten to powder blue. The surrounding trees and bamboo were dotted with flowering plants, and the steep wall of the volcano rose above us, a huge fold of rock cutting into the sea. There was magic in these hills, different from the dry desert magic I was used to, but as powerful. The Polynesian gods had been here, but long ago, and now the island belonged to mortals.
“So where is the lair?” I asked. I imagined a long hike through dense jungle-forest or a climb up that mountain, which must rise at least ten thousand feet. Something I’d enjoy on a nice long vacation with a massage and a mai tai at the end of the trail, not something I wanted to face after an exhausting overnight journey.
“You’re standing in it,” Colby said.
I looked around in surprise. I saw the cleared-out area covered with lush grass, and I realized the meadow had been cleared on purpose, probably so a dragon could land here. “I thought he’d have a cave.”
“He does. Somewhere.” Colby waved a hand at the mountain. “Several of them. But I mean that the whole island is his lair.”
“Oh.”
Mick had never mentioned that he owned an entire island in the middle of the Pacific. I knew there were no people here—human beings leave traces of themselves, and this place was completely unspoiled. How resort builders or researchers had missed it, I had no idea, but very likely, Mick had cloaked it with magic. “How did you find it?”
Colby shrugged. “Trial and error the first time. This time I knew what to look for.”
“Are you telling me that we have to search this entire island for traces of Mick’s true name?”
“Yep.”
I heaved a sigh. Drake had said nothing, only viewed the vast greenery in silence.
Both he and Colby were completely naked, but dragons didn’t share the sense of shame humans did. They dressed when interacting with humans, but they could take clothes or leave them. Though I’d been raised to be modest, I’d stopped noticing naked dragons and naked gods, which showed how different my life had become from what I’d thought it would be.
Colby was tattooed all over, his skin like living art. Drake’s dragon tattoo spread across his back and down his arms, the spikes of wings rising up his neck. He had no tattoos on the front of his buff torso, and I distractedly noticed his nice six-pack and good pecs. With his black hair and dark eyes, Drake was a handsome man, but give me Mick with his bad-boy blue eyes and wicked smiles anytime.
“We’ll have to fly it,” Colby said. Which meant more motion sickness for me, but I didn’t see any other choice.
It took all day. The sun rose, heating the already warm air, the humidity holding in the heat. I found it difficult to believe that hours ago I’d stood in my slushy parking lot, the temperature a toasty thirty-seven degrees. It was about eighty-five here, with about that percentage of humidity, though when Colby lifted me above the trees, the bracing ocean wind cooled me.
We flew across valleys where waterfalls cascaded hundreds of feet into the rain forest below. These valleys cut deep into the island, which, if I remembered correctly from travel brochures I’d longingly perused, must be about as big as Molokai in the Hawaiian chain.
By nightfall, Colby hadn’t found whatever it was he looked for. I fretted, hating to leave my hotel unprotected, no matter how well we’d warded it. And of course I’d been without my cell phone when Colby grabbed me, so I couldn’t check in. I had a piece of magic mirror with me—I liked to always keep a shard handy—but whenever I looked into it, it was dark, and I couldn’t get it to respond. That worried me more than I liked to say.
Drake helped us search but kept Colby in his sight at all times. I grew hungry and very thirsty. Though the waterfalls fell to clear, freshwater creeks, I wasn’t certain how safe the water was to drink, and I hadn’t had the foresight to stash water purification tablets in my pockets when I got up this morning.
Finally, as the long day began to fade into night, Colby dove sharply into a pocket between mountains, one we’d circled before. This time, he crashed through the canopy of trees and landed in another big clearing. It was too dark to see much of it, but from what I could tell in the dying light, it wasn’t much different from the other valleys we’d explored.
Colby had barely set me down before becoming human again, laughing in triumph. “Knew it was here somewhere.”
“What is this place?”
I was sore, sick, hungry, and dehydrated. Back here in the dark, away from the bracing ocean air, the humid heat was stifling. My clothes clung to my body, my jeans heavy with the dampness, my hair irritating on the back of my neck.
“It’s the heart of his lair,” Colby announced. “This is where the dragon hides when he needs to hide, where he stashes his most precious things, where he’ll come eventually to die. If Mick’s name lingers anywhere on this island, it will most likely be here.”
“Now you find it,” I said sourly. “When it’s too dark to see anything.” The sun set rapidly in these latitudes, and behind the dense forest, we stood in blackness.
“You don’t need light to find the name,” Drake said. He hadn’t spoken much all day, but his dark voice was as strong as ever, not dry and scratchy like mine. “But if you must have light . . .”
He threw a fireball high. It exploded into a light spell, the same kind Mick liked to use, illuminating the clearing like a million fireflies.
I gasped, and I heard Colby’s sharp intake of breath.
Drake’s light showed us a charred ruin. The entire clearing had been burned out, every tree, vine, and tangled bit of undergrowth destroyed to its roots. The rocks left behind were blackened like lumps of charcoal, and I saw the glitter of gold, melted, coating the rocks, mud, and debris.
It was an amazing piece of destruction. Only molten lava could have caused this damage, except that no hardened black lava remained. The only other thing that could have obliterated this place was dragon fire.
“He destroyed his own lair.” Colby sounded both awestruck and sickened. “No dragon would do that. The heart of the lair is a sacred place.”
Drake lowered his hand, and the light spell died. As the fire faded, stars came out overhead, bathing the stubbled landscape in a
kinder light.
“He is lost to us,” Drake said, his voice holding a note of sadness I’d never heard from him. “Micalerianicum is lost.”
“Or not.” Colby was looking at the sky, studying the stream of stars the clearing bared.
Colby grabbed me and jerked me aside at the same time a huge black dragon swooped in, mouth open, fire roaring, coming right for us.
Sixteen
Mick fired what was left of the clearing, belching flame that ate everything in its path. Without Colby taking to wing and grabbing me up with him, I would have been one of the things roasted.
My stomach dropped as Colby did one of his whizzing turns, but I realized after a few panicked seconds that Mick wasn’t aiming at us. He’d come to finish burning out the clearing, destroying the last of what he was. Drake rose, his dragon as large as Mick’s, ready to stop him, but he dove out of the way when Mick shot a stream of fire at him.
Mick was big, dangerous, and he didn’t care. This was the side of Mick other people saw—the dragon lord, the monster, the force of destruction. I understood why people feared him, why they turned green and sidled away when his eyes went black and determined. Any gentleness I’d ever seen in him had gone. The witch had taken it away.
Trees went up in flame, towering pillars of fire ringing the clearing. Mick burned everything down to the rocks and soil, until the black volcanic gravel gleamed through the mud. Twice Drake tried to stop him, and twice Mick drove him away. Colby, smaller than Mick, had the sense to hover above and outside the clearing, out of range of Mick’s flame.
Mick rose from the fiery lair, climbing up and up, his huge body outlined by the stars. He swung among them like another constellation, but just when I thought he’d wing away from us, back to his witch, he turned and rushed at Colby.
Colby did his zinging hop backward, leaving bile in my mouth. Mick swooped by, giving us a foot to spare, his wings folded behind him as he arrowed past. He cocked his head as he went by, and I looked straight into Mick’s black and silver eye, which was cold—ice-cold—no fire within.
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