“Ow!” His grip loosened. She closed a leg iron around his leg, pleased to see that his dress pants made it a tight fit. When he bent to grab at the shackle, she gave his shoulder a shove. He went down in an ungraceful heap, scraping his nose on the floor.
She turned back to the firefight. Neither dragon nor mage had managed to make a hit. The water energy she had left was only enough for one throw, and Cyrgyn was so big it was difficult to get a clear shot. Then Tars backed away from Cyrgyn and held up his hand. Alexa prepared to strike, pulling the little ball of energy into a tighter ball. Tars closed his eyes and she whipped the energy at him.
She didn’t know if it hit. Clear white light flashed from Tarsuinn’s hand. It struck Cyrgyn’s scales and shattered, and Alexa was blinded by hundreds of tiny lightning bolts ricocheting around the room. She ducked and held her hands over her closed eyes, trying to clear them. She heard Cyrgyn chuckle and Tarsuinn hiss.
“That was new,” she muttered. She cast about, but the water energy was gone.
Well, she knew how to do things the old-fashioned way. She pulled her gun from the ankle holster that Tarsuinn hadn’t bothered to check and stalked him. She’d only gone a few steps when something hit her in the chest and she skidded backward on her rump.
Okay, he could do two things at once. She jumped up and leveled the gun at him.
“Halt, Tarsuinn, or I’ll blow a hole through you.” She held firm when she felt him try to pull the gun from her hand. He hefted the pike again and tried to throw it at Cyrgyn, but she fired and the bullet deflected the weapon, which clanged to the floor. She fired again, but with a flick of his wrist Tars averted the bullet to bury itself in the door.
Luckily it didn’t penetrate the wood, because an instant later the door slammed open and Kurt came through low, his weapon out but worthless as soon as he caught the scene in front of him.
“Wow,” Alexa heard him murmur. “He’s real.” He glanced at Alexa, then sidestepped and reached for her.
“Hold on, Kurt,” she said. “Just stand ready.”
Alexa watched Cyrgyn rear as another fireball bounced off his scales. This one was smaller. Tars must be running out of energy.
“We both know this will be a draw,” the dragon said to Tars, who was now backed against the wall, panting. “You created me, but you could not control me. I have grown strong in nearly a thousand years, stronger than you imagined, stronger than you can withstand.” He settled low and furled his wings, coiled his tail. He seemed to be relaxing, as if about to engage in social conversation.
Tarsuinn looked the opposite, however. He didn’t make any new moves, but Alexa figured by the tension in his body that he was gathering his strength. She heard a scrape out the window next to her. No doubt it was Rock, rappelling from the roof and biding his time. She didn’t look.
“Guys, come on. We’ve got to come to an agreement.” Gambling, she holstered her weapon and took a step forward. “Tars, release Cyrgyn from the curse. I won’t go to either of you. Then no one wins, no one loses. It’s a draw.”
Tarsuinn leaned his back against the wall, crossed his legs at the ankles, and slid his hands into his pockets. In his linen shirt and dress pants he looked a cross between old and new, the mage and the businessman. His hair, swept off his face and touching his collar, gleamed in the sun. He now looked in complete control.
“First, Alexa, thank you, but there is no basis for trust and I’m afraid I doubt you would hold out against the strength of your feelings for Lord Dreugan.” He straightened and began to circle the room. Cyrgyn paced him around the brazier, which had somehow managed to remain upright during the short fight.
“More importantly—and probably more relevantly,” he continued. “I cannot reverse the curse. You’ll recall the words. ‘Attempt, four times, to overturn this curse.’ The power lies within you, and only you.”
What the hell? Did that mean Alexa could only reverse it by going to Tarsuinn? “Bullshit,” she started, but Tarsuinn had leaped at Cyrgyn, the dagger in his hand aimed at the dragon’s heart. Alexa could almost see the blade slipping between scales, piercing Cyrgyn at his core. She cried out, started to run, reached out for energy to stop the dagger, stop Tarsuinn, protect Cyrgyn. Anything.
She wasn’t needed, however. Cyrgyn was prepared. His claw came up to Tarsuinn’s chest, met, and thrust. The mage landed on the floor, knocked unconscious by the stone and imprisoned by sharp talons. At the same instant Rock swung through the window, Kurt shoved Alexa toward him, and he dragged her outside and snapped her into a harness attached to his body.
“Wait!” She grabbed the rope to stop Rock from lowering them to the ground. Kurt stood at the window, one leg up, ready to swing through and follow. Mark cowered behind the open door, obviously terrified and fascinated at the same time.
Cyrgyn still held Tarsuinn to the ground but his attention was now on Alexa and her friends. “Go with them, Alexa. You will be safe.”
“For now,” she admitted, nodding at the unconscious mage. “But what about you?”
“I am trapped in here for the moment.” He appeared to grin ruefully. “I cannot fit so easily through the window.”
“The roof.” But he was shaking his head before she finished saying it.
“Stone, of course. Do not worry. He will be out for a time, and Ryc will come for you.”
Anger stirred in Alexa, but she banked it before it became fury. Hope had grown in there, somewhere, and she’d let the emotions war for a while on their own.
“Come to me,” she said, straining toward the window. “Don’t you dare let him kill you. You owe me an explanation.”
She felt the heat of Cyrgyn’s sigh. “Yes, a confrontation is inevitable. But perhaps nothing else is. This is new territory, Alexa.”
Yeah, she thought as Rock lowered them to the ground. New territory. Somehow, she wasn’t as confident as the dragon that that was a good thing.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
In shock, Alexa allowed Rock and Kurt to hustle her to their rented SUV, where Peter sat in the driver’s seat with the motor running. He shifted to drive but looked over his shoulder. “Where’s Ryc?”
Clearly concerned about Alexa’s compliance and not certain how to answer anyway, Kurt shook his head at Peter and quietly told him to just drive.
A look of horror took over Peter’s worried expression. “Is he…?”
“No,” Rock reassured him. “He’s up there.” He, too, kept his voice down. “He says he’ll follow when he can. He…transformed and trapped himself.”
Peter stared at him. “What?” He craned his neck to look at his sister. “He transformed? To what?” Before anyone could answer him, his confusion changed to alarm. “You okay?” he asked Alexa. She figured she looked pretty shell-shocked, but it couldn’t be any worse than she had been last night.
“Yeah,” she told him. “Just go. And be quiet. I’ve gotta think.”
Blocking out the grumbles of “unappreciative wench,” Alexa dropped her head against the seat back and allowed the turmoil of her thoughts to try sorting themselves out.
Ryc Dreugan was Cyrgyn the dragon. It was so obvious now, she felt like a stupider version of Lois Lane. Ryc/Cyr. Dreugan was probably Gaelic for dragon. All nice and tidy with the curse, she supposed.
There were plenty of other signs, she realized with perfect hindsight. She’d never seen them together. Cyrgyn had been very evasive about his associate. In human form, Ryc had the ability to adapt to society. Learn about P-to-E ratios. Modify his speech for a modern world.
That was another clue. Every so often Cyrgyn said something modern, or Ryc spoke formally, if not archaically. She remembered being stopped by that, but ignoring it. Stupid.
What else could she have done, though? She could never have expected this, as suspicious of Ryc as she had been. Then there had come a point when suspicion was pushed aside by desire, and more.
Now hope overwhelmed humiliation. She wasn’t betraying Cyrg
yn by loving Ryc, nor the reverse. When he’d left last night after they made love, and her heart whispered that there could only be one soulmate, that was why. She only had one soulmate.
Duh.
She sighed and closed her eyes. Betrayal came hard on the heels of hope. Ryc and Cyrgyn both—and so help her, she couldn’t manage to combine them into one being—had deceived her, tricked her, outright lied to her. For what? That was one answer she didn’t have.
And that was where their confrontation would begin. If he got away from Tarsuinn. A big if. She wasn’t convinced he could hold the mage for however long he had to wait before he could transform again. Even if the transformation was as instantaneous as man-to-dragon had been, he’d be more vulnerable during and after. Anger pulsed through her. How could she have abandoned him in that tower? She didn’t care that he didn’t want her there, that he would have left with her if he hadn’t been trapped.
She wondered how he transformed. How long he’d been able to do it. Tarsuinn hadn’t known about it, that was clear by his reaction when he realized who Ryc was. How could Cyrgyn have so much power, yet be unable to break the bonds of his curse?
It was so…so Ladyhawke, she thought. As heartbreaking, and as inspiring.
The SUV swerved from right to left, and Peter cursed. “Sorry. Forgot where we were.”
Jarred out of her train of thought, Alexa looked around. They were close to the hotel, but she didn’t think that was the best place to go. For a moment she was at a loss to find an alternative. Her brain didn’t seem to want to think analytically at the moment.
She closed her eyes. Cyrgyn, she thought, calling him by the dragon’s name out of habit. Tell me where to go.
She felt his laughter in her head, and had to smile in response. I mean, tell me where to meet you.
At our hut was all he said in reply.
She would have asked where, but instinct had her telling Peter to turn left instead of right.
“The hotel’s the other way,” her brother argued.
“You have to drop me somewhere else. Take the next right.”
She directed him for the next fifteen minutes, once or twice having to make him backtrack when she got confused by changes since she’d last been here—hundreds of years ago. It didn’t help that she had to argue with three obstinate males all the way there.
Finally, deep in a rare patch of forest, at the end of a barely visible trail, they reached the cabin. Alexa couldn’t believe it was standing until she realized it wasn’t the original structure. Only her heart told her it was the same spot.
They all climbed out of the vehicle and surveyed the building. Kurt and Rock began to circle it, but Alexa strode straight to the front door and walked in.
“Alexa,” Rock growled from the corner of the porch. “You know better.”
“Yeah. I do. This is my cabin. No one is here. Trust me.”
She didn’t know how she knew, and they for sure shouldn’t trust her since she was going on less than instinct, but she went in anyway.
The cabin was small, one room. A rough-hewn table and chairs stood on stone in front of a giant fireplace. The rest of the floor was wood, and the only other furniture was a small bed in the opposite corner.
She’d built this in her last life, she remembered. Before she’d gone to marry Tarsuinn. A marriage that had not been consummated, because when she pushed him to reverse the curse, they’d died together.
She should have learned from that one, she mused, though she doubted it would have kept her from trying again anyway. Twice.
She sank onto the edge of the bed frame—the mattress had long since deteriorated—and tried to figure out what to do next. Nothing came to her, and she leaned forward, resting her head on her hands. A pair of boots appeared in her vision.
“Yes, Peter?”
The boots shifted to the side and he sat beside her. “So, Cyrgyn is Ryc?”
She nodded. The others must have brought him up to speed.
“Okay.” He sat for a minute. Then, “What are we doing here?”
“Cyrgyn told me to come here.” She didn’t lift her head. “Maybe it’s enchanted, protected to an extent against Tarsuinn. I’ve lived here before.”
“I don’t mean that, though that’s good to know. I mean, what are we going to do?”
Alexa sat up and shoved her hair back, then realized most of it was out of its ponytail. She ripped the band out, hoping the release would ease the headache she was beginning to get. “We just wait. Or rather,” she added, standing, “I wait.”
Peter jumped up and protested. Rock and Kurt, who’d completed their surveys of the building and surrounding area, added their voices. Alexa held up both hands and they stopped.
“I appreciate your help. I really do. But I don’t know what more you can do, and it may not be safe for you here. Not to mention the lack of sleeping quarters,” she added, glancing around.
“We brought bedrolls,” Rock said. “We’re not leaving.”
“Why?” she cried, suddenly overwhelmed by the combined responsibility for so many people. She’d been in charge of ops before, but never on such a personal level. And she’d never lost an operative, not one. Now, she faced the possibility of losing one, some, or all of those most important to her. “Why won’t you just let me do this myself?”
“Because we love you,” Peter said quietly from behind her. No other argument could have been as effective. Rock nodded, and she could see in his eyes that he meant it.
Kurt stepped forward and wrapped her in a hug. “We all love you,” he said.
Alexa responded by bursting into tears. Which she immediately shut off. “Shit, I hate that.” She wiped her face and sniffed deep. “Stop being so sweet. I can’t handle it.”
They made themselves busy while they waited. They unloaded the SUV, laid out bedrolls, gathered wood and started a fire. Rock showed Peter the rations and put him in charge of a three-day menu, the furthest the food and MREs would stretch. Kurt set up some crude perimeter warnings supplemented by the one high-tech device they’d had in the truck. He connected a fishing line to a series of sticks set up like fence posts, then fastened the ends of the line to a box trigger. Any time something tripped the wire, the trigger would send a signal to an alarm inside. The alarm would flash red and emit a high-pitched tone that was almost silent, but would alert them without warning off the intruder.
“I don’t know how many small animals there are out there,” Kurt said when he finished explaining it, “but if we get too many false alerts we’ll have to figure something else out.”
Alexa regretted that all her great equipment had been left behind at the hotel, but she couldn’t complain. They had been responding to Ryc’s distress call, and she was the rescuee. It would be ungrateful for her to whine about a few gadgets. They’d make do.
Peter made stew for dinner and they ate out of plastic bowls. Then they played cards for three hours before starting a rotating watch/sleep schedule.
Alexa had insisted on taking the first watch. Ryc should be showing up soon and she didn’t want to be asleep when he did. She poured a cup of high-octane coffee from the pot over the fire, then stepped out onto the porch.
The night was clear and cool. She could see enough of the sky to count dozens of stars. When her eyes glazed over at thirty-six, she stopped.
The room behind her went quiet as the guys settled and fell asleep. To burn off her tension as well as keep her alertness, Alexa began to walk the perimeter. It took all of three minutes.
She sat on the porch step and yawned. It was going to be a long night.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Tarsuinn sat in the darkened tower, alone. The dragon had gone, despite his attempts to draw him into battle. The stinging in his cheek flared briefly, but he ignored it. Physical pain was easily tolerated. It would fade in time.
The rift in his soul would never heal.
His rage had deserted him, leaving the anguish he’d felt at
the lake when Alexa had reneged just moments after her promise. He could not will the rage back, and finally, after confronting his old enemy, he did not want to.
Tars had regained consciousness long after being knocked out. The sky was darkening, illustrating the passing of hours, but the dragon still stood over him. The rage had still been there then, but he was too weary to act on it. Cyrgyn had spoken, tried to convince him to give up his pursuit of Alexa and vengeance against Ryc Dreugan. Tars had not listened, and when the dragon had changed to man, he had risen to his feet and attacked.
But he was more than exhausted. His stores of energy had dissipated, and he had not the strength to summon more. It had come down to hand-to-hand, not one of Tarsuinn’s strengths.
Finally, at the end, Ryc had backed Tars to the wall. “You are a fool,” he said quietly just before backhanding Mark away from him. The assistant had tried to sneak up on Ryc and hit him with a shield, but he was no match for the man who was still clearly the powerful son of a lord.
“Perhaps,” Tars had replied. “I don’t know another way.”
“You haven’t looked for it,” Ryc said savagely. Tars looked into his nemesis’s eyes and suddenly longed for the days when they had still been friends. Ryc’s hand tightened on his throat. “Centuries of agony you have caused, for petty jealousy. I could kill you now.”
Tars did not know what mercy Ryc had found that caused him to release the mage. He had made one last attempt to remove the obstacle from his path. A small stream of atmospheric energy drifted past. Tars caught it and used it to knock the brazier into Ryc’s legs. But Ryc did not fall. He did not even look back as he left the tower.
Mark had offered to go after him, naïve zeal in his eyes as he rubbed the butt of a gun under his thumb. Tars had stopped him, told him to gather his things and go back to the States. He was resigned to loss—bequeathing his battle to another would be folly.
Tars was afraid, now, that sending Mark away so cavalierly had been a mistake. One of many, but what good came of comparing one against the other? Soon, he would have to go to that cabin in the forest. He would end the war, but not before a final battle. Another’s battle, but one for which he was responsible.
Soul of the Dragon Page 24
