Soul of the Dragon

by Natalie J. Damschroder

  Well, this time, Tarsuinn would prevail. He would see to it.

  * * *

  Days passed with no activity. Alexa tried to learn more about Ryc “R-Y-C” Dreugan to no avail. She expected some kind of contact or attack from Tars. Nothing. She called Kurt and Marilee, only to get a cheery message that they were overwhelmed by baby needs and not taking calls for two weeks, but thanks. If something didn’t happen soon, she was going to explode.

  “Alexa, not only will you wear a trough in the concrete of this hangar,” Cyrgyn told her a week later as she paced maniacally, “your head and mine will suffer terminal vertigo. You must find a better outlet.”

  Alexa whirled and paced back across the length of the hangar, then collapsed into a chair. “I can’t stand this lack of action.” She stared at the ceiling as if counting rivets. “Nothing’s happening. I’m prepared for just about anything, but nothing is going to happen.” She’d reorganized her inventory twice, cleaning her guns and sharpening her knives and arrows, refreshing the charge on all her battery-powered units, testing her GPS and digital phones and portable computer and camera and every other damn thing. All of which would likely be worthless in the face of Tarsuinn’s magical abilities.

  Magic. Alexa looked at Cyrgyn. “Hey. You were watching that night, weren’t you?”

  “Above the building? Yes. I was quite helpless watching you be tossed over the parapet.”

  “Why didn’t the fireball hit me?”

  He looked away. “Uh, Tarsuinn missed?”

  Alexa laughed. Every so often her proper dragon seemed distinctly human.

  “No, that can’t be it. He was only a few feet away. I blocked that fireball, didn’t I?” She rose and began to pace again, this time in excitement rather than boredom. “I somehow blocked it, and not with my arm or a shield.”

  A sigh rumbled its way out of Cyrgyn’s throat and he shifted his feet, putting yet another tear in the poor mattresses. “Yes, apparently, somehow you projected a mental shield. I suspect this new manifestation intrigued Tarsuinn and diffused his rage.”

  “So maybe that’s why he’s lying low. Because he doesn’t know what my abilities are.”

  “Possibly.”

  “I need to develop those abilities so I can counter his.” She spun and went to Cyrgyn. “Teach me.”

  “I do not know how.”

  “Bullshit.” She stepped back and glared at him. He’d sounded apologetic, but she could read him and knew he was lying. Or at least not telling the entire truth. “You are magic. You should be able to teach it.”

  He stretched and let his tail unfurl as much as it could. Darkness was falling and he was getting ready to make his nightly excursion. Alexa curbed her impatience. One thing she’d learned since meeting him in the flesh was that arguing never got anything from him. She changed tactics.

  “Don’t you think it would be beneficial for me to develop whatever powers I have?”

  Cyrgyn paused and looked at her. “Magic is infinite. It is merely the harnessing of external energy and using it elsewhere. Your ‘powers,’ as you call them, are only as finite as your strength, and they are not yours in the traditional sense. The ability to harness the energy is what you must learn. I’m afraid I cannot teach it. But I will send someone who can.”

  He lumbered to the door and exited the hangar. Alexa didn’t bother to call him back. As restless as she was, he was worse because he couldn’t move around inside. He pretended to be stoic, but the inactivity was wearing on him, too. And, of course, he had to eat.

  She shut the hangar door and turned, considering. If she could block an object, could she also move one?

  Maybe, if she knew how she blocked the first one. Her gaze swept the room, settling on the “Tarsuinn” phone on the little table in the sitting area. She held out her hand and willed it toward her. Nothing. She closed her eyes, imagining the phone rising, then drifting into her hand. After repeating the mental image three times, she lifted one eyelid. The phone hadn’t moved an inch.

  “It won’t work that way.”

  Alexa whirled at the voice behind her. “How did you get in here?” Why hadn’t her alarms gone off? They were sophisticated models that she’d programmed to detect her and Cyrgyn only. Anything else would have started a clanging alarm she could hear anywhere in the hangar.

  Ryc walked toward her and held up a hand. “Nothing nefarious, I assure you. I just walked through the door. You shouldn’t turn your back on it until it’s completely closed.”

  Jerk. Of course, he was right. “Did you disable my alarms?”

  “No.”

  She scowled and checked the indicator, which showed the alarms were functional and active. “Why are you here?”

  “Because Cyrgyn’s not.” He tucked his hands into his jeans pockets and leaned against the hood of the Hummer.

  “He’s been gone before and you haven’t shown up.”

  He shrugged. “I’m here now. So just be happy about it.”

  Alexa didn’t respond, mainly because she was happy about it. She decided that being annoyed at that or indulging her suspicions would be unproductive. Still, she wasn’t going to get careless.

  “How do you know Cyrgyn?”

  “He didn’t tell you?”

  “He avoided it.” And Alexa let him, because it hurt that he wouldn’t tell her.

  “But he told you I’m okay.”

  “He told me he knew you.” She could barely remember the conversation, she’d been so angry. She didn’t know what was wrong with her lately. No one she knew would recognize her. She didn’t recognize herself.

  “So, what won’t work that way?” she asked.

  “The magic.” He motioned to the phone. “You can’t just think it, then do it.”

  How long had he been standing there, anyway? “Can you do it?”

  In a blink the phone was in his hand. Shit. Alexa felt like she’d been sucked onto a movie set. Very weird, because her job was usually exactly like an action movie. “How did you do that?”

  “That’s the tricky part.” He straightened and came closer. “Did you ever read Robert Aspirin’s Myth books?”

  Alexa nodded. She’d loved the adventures of Skeeve and Ahz, though she couldn’t really remember them at the moment, overwhelmed as she was by Ryc’s lack of aftershave. She’d never known a scent like his. It was so…primitive, even though he wasn’t.

  “Alexa, are you listening?” He was frowning but his eyes sparkled like pyrite. Caught, she simply nodded again. Somehow he’d cleaved her tongue to the roof of her mouth.

  “Anyway, in the books magic existed in lines that Skeeve could see when he looked at them properly, right?”

  “Are you saying magical energy really is colored lines crisscrossing the earth?”

  “No, but it’s not far off. The energy is everywhere, and it swirls as it’s moved, much like a mist swirls when you walk through it.” He moved his hands in a wind-like motion. “You have to sense the swirls and draw from their strongest concentrations.”

  “Okay. How?”

  He shrugged and dropped the phone onto one of the upholstered chairs. “I don’t know.”

  Alexa tossed up her hands. “Great. I keep hitting this wall of ‘I don’t know.’ Why bother?”

  She started to turn away but Ryc grabbed her hands and held her in front of him. “Don’t give up.”

  Alexa looked into his face, struck by the near desperation she saw. “I won’t,” she reassured him automatically. He was only inches away and she felt caught in a web of emotion—part hers, part his—that intertwined them. “I can’t,” she whispered. His eyes closed for a second, then he released her. Able to think again, she watched the cocky protector/teacher return. Just what did he have at stake here? He was more than some guy who’d happened upon Cyrgyn and become his friend. Who was he?

  He pretended the moment hadn’t happened and tried to describe what the energy felt like, how to detect it. Alexa focused, trying and suggestin
g methods that didn’t work.

  “How do you sense it?” she asked for the fourth time. “Close your eyes and tell me how to find the damn swirls.”

  Ryc started to argue, then closed his mouth and eyes and stood still. Alexa waited. And waited. Since waiting was not her strong suit—one of her weaknesses as an operative—she automatically sought diversion. It was easy to find as her perception focused on Ryc’s pecs first. He’d discarded his leather jacket half an hour ago, and his black t-shirt clung delectably to powerful muscles. He wasn’t large, but he was well defined, and she easily imagined her fingers tracing those muscles.

  Ryc opened his eyes and shook his head. “It’s not that simple, Alexa. It’s different for all of us.”

  Urgency gripped her. If Tars could command this energy and she couldn’t, the success she’d been so certain of moved further out of reach.

  So she had to come at it from a different angle. She jumped on what he’d said. “What do you mean all of us? Who are you? Where did you come from? Why are you here?”

  “Whoa. Slow down.” He held out his hand. “I thought you wanted me to tell you how to find the energy.” His teasing look faded when he saw the look on her face. Now he looked sad.

  “I can’t answer your questions, Alexa. All I can say is, if Cyrgyn and Tarsuinn exist, so can others.”

  “How many others? How many of them are my enemies?”

  Ryc closed his eyes. This had become so much more complicated when he showed up. Cyrgyn thought his presence was going to be helpful and protective. Ryc saw now that his very existence was weakening Alexa’s strength, forming doubts in her mind, and he wondered if that was going to get them anywhere.

  She stood two feet away, still staring at him. Her eyes were wide, swimming in emotions he couldn’t decipher. Emotions he couldn’t share.

  His biceps twitched and he fought to keep his arms folded. He couldn’t comfort her—even if she’d allow him to. And if he took her into his arms, he’d never want to let go, and that would make a complicated situation impossible. She was committed to Cyrgyn.

  “Let’s stay focused, all right, Alexa? I know I give you no reason to trust me, but neither have I given you reason to fear me.”

  Alexa narrowed her eyes and looked at him sideways. “What did you say?”

  He frowned and ran the sentence back through his head. “I know you can’t trust me but you don’t have to be afraid of me?”

  She shook her head slightly. “Whatever.” Her feet shuffled as if she wanted to resume pacing, but she inhaled deeply, held it, and let it out slowly. “Okay. Let me try this again.”

  Alexa waited, but Ryc didn’t move. He didn’t keep trying to explain something she couldn’t understand. She closed her eyes and tuned out everything around her. Maybe, as he’d said, each person’s sense was unique. She’d tried seeing, hearing, and smelling the energy. Maybe she needed to feel it.

  On cue the hairs on her right arm lifted in a wave. The wave rolled up her bare upper arm and across the nape of her neck. It drifted off her left shoulder and she snatched the tail, whipping it out to grab the phone.

  Her eyes flew open and she stared at the phone. In her hand.

  “I did it. Oh, my God, I did it!” She had the ridiculous urge to jump up and down and squeal. “Did you see?”

  “I did.” Ryc still lounged against the Hummer, but now his perfect mouth curved in a proud smile. Alexa felt electrified again, this time from the inside.

  “Do it again.”

  “What?”

  He pointed to the phone and she looked at it. “Oh. Okay.”

  “Send it over here this time.”

  She held the phone flat on her palm and felt for a swirl of energy. Her left thigh prickled and she guided the stream to lift the phone. She watched it drift across the open space.

  “Faster,” Ryc said. She gave the phone a mental push. It flipped and clattered to the floor.

  “Oops.” She giggled. “I guess I need practice.”

  “Try something else.”

  She moved to another part of the hangar and reached out. This time she kept her eyes open the whole time. Once she realized she needed to use her skin to sense the energy, she could feel it everywhere. She used it to flick a light switch and open the Saturn’s passenger door. Excited, she grabbed a hunk of energy balled in the corner. Pain seared her head and she dropped it, gasping.

  “What happened?”

  Alexa stared at Ryc. “It was hot.” She pressed her hand to the top of her head. Her brain felt burned.

  Ryc nodded. “Thermal energy. That’s what Tarsuinn uses for his fireballs.”

  Ryc seemed to know an awful lot. Alexa’s head started to ache. She didn’t know if it was from the energy burn or tension. Either way, the lesson was over. Before she could say so, however, Ryc levered himself away from the truck.

  “I’ve got to go,” he said. “I’ll see you.”

  “When?”

  He shrugged. “When you need help again, I guess.”

  Alexa wrinkled her brow. “And just how will you know that?”

  His smile was a little too smug for Alexa’s taste. “I’ll know.”

  He went out the regular door and motioned for her to lock it behind him, as if she were twelve. Of course, she had allowed his entrance due to inattention, so she couldn’t even be mad at him.

  She looked at the clock. It would be a long while before Cyrgyn returned. She sighed and headed upstairs for yet another solitary night.

  Chapter Nine

  Cyrgyn glided silently to the tarmac and approached the hangar cautiously. Dreugan had come to help Alexa learn about magic, and Cyrgyn didn’t know what to expect when he entered. Would the interior be ransacked by power she’d failed to control? Would she be despondent because she had gained nothing?

  Would the man have comforted her?

  He gritted his teeth against the thought and waited as the hangar door silently opened. Alexa had rigged a sensor to open it when only he approached. He couldn’t claim to understand the technology, but he did wonder why she couldn’t rig a way for him to close the darn thing from the outside.

  The hangar was dark when he entered. No light emitted from under Alexa’s door. She’d gone to bed.

  He did not sleep the rest of the night. He was not by nature—or by condemnation—a nocturnal creature, but when he could not venture forth by day, there was little else to do but sleep.

  He waited. The sun began to rise, the glow barely seen through the hangar’s tiny windows. Alexa stirred soon after. He waited some more. He’d grown accustomed to waiting.

  Finally, Alexa emerged from her room, dressed for running. She fixed coffee, then came quietly to the railing and looked down at Cyrgyn.

  “You’re awake,” she said, moving down the stairs to him. “You came in so late, I thought you’d sleep longer.”

  “I wanted to see what you learned.”

  Alexa sighed and leaned against him. “I wish you would warn me when this guy is coming.”

  “I will try to do so in the future.”

  “How did you meet him, anyway?”

  Cyrgyn considered. He did not want to keep ducking her questions, but had to find a vague way to explain his relationship with Dreugan.

  “I was dwelling in the forest and he came upon me.”

  “You didn’t cloak?”

  “It was daylight, and I did not have time. He is an accomplished woodsman.”

  “A hunter?”

  “No. He did not try to kill me. He was simply curious.”

  “And you became friends?”

  He stayed silent for a long while. “It is an exceedingly lonely existence I live.”

  Alexa pressed her head against his breast. “I know, Cyrgyn. I’m sorry.”

  He lifted a forepaw but did not dare embrace her, fearing the damage his claws could do. “Sorry for what, beloved?”

  She leaned back and wiped her cheek. Her ponytail shook. “I haven’t been
taking this seriously. I’ve been mission-minded, and normally outcomes aren’t my business. I’ve been treating you and Tars and this quest as just another job. But it’s not.” The breath she drew vibrated. “It’s not.”

  Real hope blossomed suddenly in Cyrgyn’s chest. “I feared you did not realize that.”

  “I didn’t. I do now.”

  She looked up at him, and the despair in her eyes killed the flower in his heart.

  “I’ve gained a human perspective, and lost the objective one. I’m not so confident of the outcome,” she whispered.

  Cyrgyn wanted to scream his agony. “Alexa…”

  She put her hand on his neck. “No, that’s enough. We can’t talk about that. I can’t feel it. We must succeed.” Her determination was so strong he could feel it flow into him, strengthening his own resolve.

  Alexa squared her shoulders and stepped back. “Let me show you what I can do.”

  Despite himself, Cyrgyn chuckled. “You sound like a proud child.”

  She smiled back at him. “I feel like one. Watch.” She turned in a circle, then stopped with her hand outstretched toward the supply cabinet. The handle turned, and the door sprang open. A gun floated out, then shot across the room to land in her open palm. She gripped it and spun, aiming it at his heart.

  Cyrgyn reared in surprise, then landed with his foreclaws involuntarily extended. Their screech across the floor lifted the scales on his back.

  Alexa turned her arm so the gun rested in her palm. “It’s not loaded.”

  Cyrgyn relaxed. “You surprised me.” He cleared his throat. “I am amazed at the level of your prowess after one training session. Dreugan is better than I thought.”

  Alexa spun the gun on her forefinger. “How does he know magic?”

  “There are many people with control of magic, Alexa. It is usually called telekinesis.” He lifted his head and surveyed the hangar. “Show me more.”

  She shrugged and began a display of her newfound talent. She opened and closed the car door, lifted a discarded sweatshirt and turned it in the air, and moved a chair away from the table.