by Jody Wallace
If she never saw another wizard again in her whole life, it would be too soon.
Fuming and enraged and thoroughly contaminated, Nadia did not notice the large person in her path until she stormed right into him, sending them both tumbling down the sandy, rocky, prickly embankment into the desert.
Chapter Three
“Fecking wizards!” the woman shouted as they tumbled into the small gully.
Her knee nearly smashed Barnabas in his nethers as he attempted to shield her smaller form from the worst of the damage. They skidded to a stop with her atop him, glaring down at him as if he had been the one to cause this accident.
Barnabas opened his mouth to ask if she was stark raving mad when his tracking talisman emitted a soft chime.
The blood drained from his face with a chill of certainty. “Nadia Silver?”
“Who wants to know?” she snarled, her pale blond hair sticking every which way around her head. “If you’re a wizard, sirrah, you will meet your demise in seconds. Mere seconds.”
Her white sleeveless top was ripped, hanging off one creamy shoulder. Her bare legs twined around his far more intimately than he’d been with a woman in some time. And her skin shimmered in the harsh sunlight with an intricate dragon lattice, except it was distorted and wavering instead of shining and pure.
“I’m…not a wizard?”
“Good blasted damn thing you’re not.”
Ten thousand rehearsed speeches of how he’d come to rescue her stuck in his craw. This was not the pampered, frightened, grateful, very young lady he’d pictured. When Victoria the Valiant had displayed her silver, Nadia had generally been too far off to see.
This woman, this real woman, this sweating, lovely, enticing woman…was cursing at him with all the creativity of a Lower Street pickpocket.
“Anyway, how do you know my name?” she said. “Are you a tracker? How did you find me? ‘Twould be bad for wizards to find this place. I’d have to silence you and…” Her words slurred as she glowered down at him. Her huge blue eyes flashed silver with the intensity of her emotions. “I don’t think the special spells on this town will keep the confounded wizards out. I could tell Topper wizards are the wrong kind of special.”
“I am not a tracker,” he said evasively, as he had, indeed, tracked her here. But he’d purchased the talisman from a tracker. He himself wasn’t a tracker. “I’m a scholar.”
“Good thing. Wizards should all die,” she told him viciously. She clambered off him, kneeing him in the crotch in the process, and began angrily dusting sand off her abbreviated clothing.
Barnabas choked back a moan as he inspected the woman standing above him like an avenging gorgon. Her long legs were scraped from their fall but no less fashioned to wrap around a man’s waist. Her torn white shirt revealed breasts that would curve into a man’s hands.
She was the most beautiful creature he had ever seen in his entire life. He found himself wanting nothing more than to gather her in his arms and ply her with kisses.
It was…not like him. The week of desperate searching, the trip through the portal, and the fall off the road seemed to have addled his brain.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“Looking for you. And how do you come to be in this land, Nadia Silver?” he said, remembering the dank labyrinth he’d traversed in Tarakona to reach the portal. “How did you escape?”
“I freed myself,” she said haughtily. “Dug out the crystal. It wasn’t as if that muck-sucking Victoria the Vain may she die a miserable death was going to unshackle me.” She wobbled as she tried to dust the sand off her delectable ass.
“You dug out the crystal?”
She grimaced. “It had to be done or the governor would simply track me wherever I went. Completely worth the pain, I assure you. Why are you staring at me like that?”
He had not known what to expect from this world. Cross-dimensional gateways were exceedingly rare, created by the most talented of wizards and crystal dragons. When he’d realized that Nadia had used one to Earth, he had used his knowledge of the dimension to prepare himself to rescue her from whomever had dragged her there.
He had never for a moment imagined that she might have saved herself.
“You ripped your shirt,” he said lamely.
She clapped a hand to the torn sleeve. “Blast. It’s my absolute favorite. But tell me, since you’re obviously from Tarakona. How did you get here?”
“The portal.”
“Huh. Thought it was harder to find. So my brother hasn’t closed the portal?”
“What?” She had a brother? The silver dragon had a brother?
“Has my brother closed the portal?” she repeated. “The one beneath Valiant City?”
He needed to refrain from idiotic answers or she would think him a halfwit.
“I just came through it,” he repeated. Was the brother human, wizard, dragon? How had the DLF never sussed out that Nadia Silver had a brother?
She shook her fist at the heavens. “What is taking him so long? Fecking, fecking wizards. If they go anywhere near him with a thrall crystal, I will rip them to shreds. Look, people from Tarakona won’t like it here. You should go back. Unless… Did my brother send you?”
“Yes,” he lied, so captivated by her vitality and beauty that his renowned control deserted him. Plus it seemed unwise to tell a drunken, somewhat murderous dragon that indeed, he was a wizard. “Your brother sent me.”
“But he hasn’t managed to close the portal. So why are you here?” Nadia held out a dirty hand to him.
Bemused that the dragon would allow him to touch her, he took it, and she helped him to his feet as if it was nothing. Once erect, he stood a head taller than her. Everything he’d intended, every plan he’d made, vacated his head as her presence washed over him. If he lifted her fingers to his lips and kissed them, what would she do?
But she had asked him a question. Something about why he was here. “I’ve, ah, been sent to protect you. I’m called Barnabas C…Collins.”
“I don’t need protection, Barnabas Collins.” She stumbled up the bank, sending an avalanche of sand and stone onto his shoes. “What I need is to go home and have a bath. And sober up a bit.”
Before she could stomp down the road again, he called out to her. “Wait.” He leapt nimbly up the bank. “Take me with you.”
She whirled and stared at him. His top hat had fallen off during their tumble, and sand and stickers marred his waistcoat and trousers. His shoes would never, ever be restored to their original shine, and his cravat was hopelessly wrinkled. He’d shed his greatcoat, stuffing it in his travel bag after five minutes of this infernal heat. It had been a shock after the chill darkness of the ancient ruins where the portal had been hidden. His tracking beacon had ceased to chime after he’d first come through the portal, but after some walking it had detected a faint tracery. It grown more and more urgent until…
They’d collided.
She didn’t speak. He wondered what she was thinking.
“Are you sure you aren’t a wizard?” she asked.
He resisted the urge to make sure none of the talismans around his neck were showing. Or any of the talismans in his valise. Only wizards could use talismans, and she was not fond of wizards, clearly.
“I am quite sure. Your brother sent me.” If she tested him about her brother, he would fail, so he elaborated. “Through, ah, a mutual friend. I have never actually met your brother, but I volunteered to protect you nonetheless.”
“You must want something from me,” she guessed.
“Yes, I do. Your safety.” Perhaps he could explain his cause, his mission, without mentioning his status as a wizard. Perhaps he could come to know her, and let her know him, and plant the seeds of trust in her understandably suspicious heart. He picked up his hat and dusted it off. “Have you heard of the Dragon Liberation Front?”
She shifted her bulky cloth sack to her other hip. Pieces of dried leaves stuck to her
socks and shoes, and a scrape on her knee oozed blood. She didn’t seem concerned, more frazzled with a tinge of drunken cantankerousness. “Aiden isn’t part of the DLF. He’s not one for crusades. Thinks they’re a waste of time. A bit out for himself, my brother.”
“Yet the DLF is how I heard you were…in need.” He would only lie as much as strictly necessary. And he would shed all lies as soon as possible.
“Victoria loathes the DLF. Calls them the Lizard Wizards. She wouldn’t allow any of us to speak of it.” She scowled. “You surely do look like a wizard.”
“It is the style of our homeland,” he pointed out. “You look like an Earthling.”
“As I should. This is my homeland now.” She turned again and tromped down the road, her shapely, determined body awakening feelings in him that shouldn’t be there. Dragons and wizards could mate, obviously, but dragons and wizards did not usually mix romance with business. It kept lines from being crossed. “Are you coming or not?”
“Indeed, I am.” He hastened after her, his long strides bringing him abreast of her. “Have you met any other Tarakonans since your arrival?”
“No.” She stumbled on a rock, grabbed his arm, and righted herself. “Just you, me, and Aiden. That portal is stealthy, isn’t it?”
He agreed. He’d only found it because he’d been tracking her. Of course, the governor would also be possessed of Nadia’s blood and able to do the same. But he couldn’t consider the ramifications of that until he organized a way to keep Nadia safe.
They ambled along companionably for some time, though the temperature was uncomfortably warm. Nadia, with charming frankness and no little wit, told him of the town of Magic. She obviously trusted his honesty and believed him to be harmless. If only she knew.
He could harm her like no other—but he never would. And that was what he would most like her to understand. He sought a way to bring it up, but she seemed so enthused to be talking to someone, pointing at everything she noticed, that he couldn’t find an opening.
The silver dragon…was lonely, he realized. She was painfully lonely, and it only made him want to protect her more.
“There are even denizens from different planets here,” she finished. “And ladies with snakes for hair. Ah, here’s the spot.”
The road embankment leveled out, and a roughly circular area without bramble lay near the paved surface. Dragon footprints and smaller, less easily identified tracks scattered in the pale dust. In the distance, the scrubby gully of a wet weather creek meandered past, and jackrabbits nibbled in the sage.
“This is near the location of the portal,” he observed. He recognized the juniper-topped ridge that separated the portal egress from the road.
“I’m not surprised. It isn’t a large town.”
She had to know she’d left blood when she’d fled. Did she not realize fresh blood could be used to track her? Should he warn her or wait until she was more…sober?
“And you are positive no one followed you when you escaped?”
It had taken him a week to locate her, despite the portal being in Valiant City. Who knew the capital had been built atop the ruins of another metropolis? He himself had never heard about it, and his studies had been extensive. He’d explored as efficiently as possible while tracking her, sneezing the whole time. He had apparently been allergic to the phosphorescent fungus that grew there.
Victoria—whom he would bet all his talismans didn’t have a map of the subterranean labyrinth either—could arrive soon if she hadn’t already. It was possible the governor had an iron dragon in her stable, but blood tracking was no simple art, and iron dragons were the most likely to escape captivity. But Nadia seemed certain no one else from Tarakona was here.
“I don’t see how anyone could have followed me.” She smiled broadly, and it lit up her face like the desert sunshine. “I chucked my thrall crystal into the loo, and anybody without a map would get lost in those old tunnels.”
While her smile threatened to permanently dazzle him, he was forced to confront the fact she did not know what could be done with blood. It must not have been considered necessary education for a dragon, and why would it? Most of Tarakona was bent upon keeping dragons ignorant and submissive. The only way to protect her would be to destroy whatever remnants of the blood Victoria possessed. “That might not be enough.”
“Nonsense. The town of Magic will keep me safe, and we all sign nondisclosure contracts.” She scuffed through the dust into the open area. “If you’ll stand right there, I need to change. My brother told me about a lovely spring-fed waterfall, and the lavatory at his home is insufficient after this day. I’ve a powerful need for a soak.”
Nadia threw up her arms and greeted the sun. Soft flickers surrounded her form as she initiated the shift to her dragon form.
Or she tried to.
He had seen dragons change before, many times. Her body shimmered like a mirage, but sparks crackled in her aura. The dust whirled around her, dislocated by the incipient mass transposition. Her magnificent dragon form blinked on, off, on, off, like flickers of a laggardly zoetrope.
In the end, Nadia was left panting in a cloud of dust—in her human form.
She slumped onto her behind, arms on her knees, and her face twisted with annoyance. “So this is what happens when a dragon’s magic is contaminated.”
“I have heard,” he ventured, “that if one simply keeps trying…”
Actually he had heard that, if she was too incapacitated to shift, she was likely to remain that way for some time. There might also be other consequences. Dragons did not react the same way to intoxicants as wizards and humans.
She arched an eyebrow at him. “You know quite a lot about dragons, do you?”
“I am part of the DLF,” he reminded her. “It is our mission to free all dragons from enslavement.”
She pushed a strand of hair out of her eyes. “You’ve freed many?”
It was perhaps too soon to coax her to join the revolution, but he still had to abide by the organization’s rules. “I am not at liberty to share details beyond a simple affirmative to nonmembers.”
She settled onto the ground cross-legged and shaded her eyes from the harsh sun. “But I am a dragon. Why can’t you tell me?”
“You must know that not all dragons desire their kind to be free,” he told her gently. “Some…have ways of profiting from the arrangement.” And, since no people were a monolith, a tiny subset of free dragons despised their enslaved kin as cowards unworthy of saving.
“Feck them,” Nadia exclaimed, transforming back to the salty wizard-hater she’d been before their delightful stroll. “Zounds, I’ll rip them apart, too. Once I learn how. Aiden has promised to instruct me in the art of combat when he returns, and I intend to master it with vigor. With fecking vigor!”
He had never heard a dragon use such language, and it fascinated him to see this side of the woman he’d shadowed for so long. How wrong he’d been about her. And how enchanted he was by the person she’d turned out to be.
“Say,” she continued, rising unsteadily to her feet. “What do you know about dragon combat? Is that why he sent you?”
“Ah.” Barnabas sought desperately for the best answer. “I have some knowledge of combat techniques but…I would not be the best instructor.” His knowledge encompassed wizard and dragon pairings—not what a single dragon might accomplish. Contrary to dragons from this world, Tarakonan dragons were unable to exhale fire or ice. Without a wizard, they were restricted to fang, claw, size, and cleverness.
Nadia’s magnificent size would give her an advantage over lesser dragons, but a silver’s hide was soft, not as armored as a black or a red. Another reason the rare variant was pampered.
“You can’t tell me how many dragons you’ve saved. You can’t teach me to fight. What in the cracker-jar can you teach me?” she asked, throwing up her hands. “What good are you?”
If he were a mere human, she might have a point. But he wasn’t. Except t
hat he couldn’t reveal the truth yet. “I am an excellent cook, a good listener, an educated scholar, and a skilled long-term strategist. It is important to the DLF that you remain out of the hands of Victoria the Valiant.”
“Obviously,” she said, waggling her head. “My power is corrupting and should not be used by anyone, much less a power-hungry bunter like Victoria.”
“The DLF did send me to help you,” he continued. “This speaks of their confidence in my ability to be…of some good.”
Granted, he had sent himself, but the DLF was completely behind him. Their aspirations, while worthy, had not extended to such lofty goals as freeing a silver dragon before he had joined their ranks. Their focus was on dragons being more seriously mistreated than the stable of a wealthy governor.
But that governor’s use of the silver threatened more than the dragon herself. It threatened the stability of Tarakona. Tarakona was made up of independent provinces that provided checks and balances on one another and would not fare well under a single authoritarian ruler.
“Did you know,” Nadia declared, tottering toward him and shaking a finger. “That Victoria refuses to have any male dragons in her stable? All the palace staff are female as well. It’s bonkers. Completely nut-wombled. Everyone knows males are equal to females. We don’t live in a barbarian world.”
“Indeed.” Victoria’s ambitions included a belief that feminine energy was more pure and powerful and that the world should be ruled accordingly. Tarakona had never struggled with the gender disparity of other dimensions; the undeniable talent of female and intersex dragons and wizards counteracted the times their human forms were physically weaker. But for Victoria, tradition held no sway.
She only cared for the future—a future she’d been shaping with her silver dragon. As such, she would be violently inclined to get Nadia back, no matter who it harmed.
“Because of Victoria, I have not known any men.” She halted in front of him and stared up into his face. “I have barely been around any men my entire life.”
He attempted to hearten her. “You haven’t missed much. Similar desires, aspirations, fears, hopes. They are much like women, except for the privy bits.”
