Dragon Spells

by Melinda Kucsera

  [Earlier in the Gray Between]

  At the edge of the world, two fronts clashed. Black clouds mushroomed out of those dueling weather systems, and the wind whipped the sea into a foaming frenzy. Lightning struck and for a fraction of a second, it coruscated on the Mortal Veil. It was an ancient, magical shield shining softly, and an interesting sight to watch while she whiled away the centuries.

  Darkness fell beyond her shrinking island, but not over the frozen woman staring into that distant storm. Luminous metal wings arched out of her back. They blushed pink as a sunset before fading to an orangey-gold at the tips, casting a soft glow on her metal face. Waves beat against the rock she perched on, eroding it a little more each year. She was a forgotten relic of an age long past left to rust or be reclaimed by the relentless sea, whichever came first.

  The constant barrage of wind and weather had tarnished her rose-gold skin and in places, her metal shell had cracked revealing her clockwork interior. A key protruded from a heart-shaped hole in her back, but it hadn’t turned in a long time. Only a little energy remained, and she used it to keep watching a distant shore.

  The Agents of Chaos were coming. She felt them scuttling around in between worlds. But that wasn’t her fight anymore.

  “Changes come in threes. Yes, in threes. So, come and see—what changes are upon the sea,” she sang softly, but the wind snatched her warning and threw it away as a sleigh pulled by eight miniature dragons flew toward her. Who the hell was this?

  The dragons flapped their wings backward to slow their descent until the open sleigh hovered just above the crashing waves. A woman alighted onto the black rails of her conveyance and leaped onto the rocky island next to the unimpressed Clockwork Angel. Dysteria had always been ostentatious, but this was a little much even for a showoff like her.

  Spikes extended from this wannabe queen’s train that matched the twisted iron spikes on her crown. When her black-on-black eyes settled on the Clockwork Angel, Dysteria crooked her fingers, displaying the curling black talons she sported. Her power closed its fist around the key in the Clockwork Angel’s back and turned it, giving her fading mental gears a jolt.

  “Do you know who I am?” Dysteria shaded her eyes. Behind her back, that distant storm raged, but she faced into the sunlight breaking on a distant city of purple spires and the enormous gates that blocked its harbor.

  “The lady of spikes and bad fashion choices?” the Clockwork Angel said, not that she cared. Nor did she have enough power to think much about anything except her enemies—the Agents of Chaos. But she did enjoy the annoyed look her comment earned from that self-important woman.

  Spots of red flared in Dysteria’s corpse-pale cheeks. “You’ll pay for that insult.”

  “Go ahead and hit me if that makes you feel better. You can’t hurt me. Nothing can.” That’s why they’d left her here to rust. It was the easiest option, and the most convenient.

  “I was going to wind you up because you leave so much destruction in your wake, and I do love to watch you destroy things, but I’m not feeling that generous anymore, not after you insulted me.” Dysteria turned and leaped back onto the rail of her hovering sleigh.

  The Clockwork Angel’s power was running dangerously low again, causing her mental gears to slow. But she refused to apologize. This wasn’t a social call. Dysteria had come for something. It would be better if she left as empty-handed as she’d arrived. “I’m not your ally, and I’m not using that pretentious title you insist on using.”

  “Ah, but that’s the beauty of entropy. It makes allies of us all in the end.” Dysteria seemed to flow back into the sleigh as it lifted off.

  “Perhaps. Or perhaps I’ll just sit here and rust.” Her sight was darkening. That conversation had taken all the Clockwork Angel’s remaining energy.

  “I doubt that,” Dysteria said before she flew into the storm and vanished from sight.

  How long the Clockwork Angel sat there with her mind dark and drifting; she didn’t know. But the first turn of the key in her back woke her right up. Whoever you are, keep winding me up. Indeed, the key kept turning, sending sparks arcing through her gears. But it wasn’t enough to bring her back to life. The Clockwork Angel remained, crouched on a rock, her chin propped on her pitted fist.

  “Come on, wake up. Do what you were made to do,” Shonofar said as she turned the key again and again and again. What was that angel doing here?

  “Get up. Damn you. I can’t leave my post.” A click sounded then the key stuck fast and refused to turn. Shonofar jiggled it. “Oh, no you don’t. I’m going to fire you up, and you’re going to help my friend whether you like it or not.”

  But no matter how hard Shonofar tried, the key refused to budge. What a pity, the Clockwork Angel thought with the fading power left in her gears. Your last resort is broken. So sad, too bad. And the Clockwork Angel was having a hard time caring. Long had she knelt here frozen by a loss of power because no one would wind her up until now, not even that creepy Dysteria. This angel was only here now because she needed something.

  “No. no, no, turn damn it!” Shonofar slammed her fist into the key, but nothing happened. It was stuck fast.

  “Don’t hit it. We’ll find another way to help,” Korontis said from behind the Clockwork Angel’s back.

  Was Shonofar holding a party back there? Why couldn’t they leave her in peace? The Clockwork Angel drifted for a moment as her internal gears slowed. She was no longer a sentinel in the Order. They’d taken her purpose, her name—everything she was and left her here like scrap metal to rust. Just leave me be. I’m a waste of parts. Something struck her back—a foot maybe?

  “Wake up!” Shonofar screamed.

  That chanteuse had one hell of a kick. There was a brief scuffle as Korontis tried to restrain the angry angel. Thankfully, someone had realized that kicking a metal creature when she was down was a horrible idea. I might just kick back if you ever manage to power me up.

  “Stop that,” Korontis said, confirming her guess.

  “I can’t. We need her.” Shonofar strode to the water’s edge, and he followed. She was dark, and he was pale. Their white robes billowed in the wind. They had a purple stripe at the hem and the edge of the sleeves, marking them as archangels. But Shonofar had always been the more striking of the two with her dark skin against her dazzling white robes.

  Korontis captured Shonofar’s dark hands in his pale ones to keep her from hitting anything. “We’ll figure something out.”

  “How? We can’t keep leaving our posts.” Shonofar spun, pulling free of his grasp, and screamed in frustration, “we need Metalara!”

  That name slammed into the Clockwork Angel as if she was some sort of tuning fork, and its vibrations bounced through her gears, turning them. Power hummed through her. Metalara—that was her name. It had been lost now it was found, and so was she. Her rose-crystal eyes lit from within as Metalara turned her head to regard the two archangels.

  Shonofar pointed at the storm hovering over the island in the middle of the Mortal Veil, where the Gray Between life and death dwelled. Its winds pulled at her braids, turning them into dozens of thin whips. “Your enemy is over there.”

  “My enemy?” Metalara creaked as she rose, but every part of her still worked so far.

  “The Agents of Chaos. They’re in the Gray Between. They’ll overrun it if they’re not stopped, and he who controls the crossroads between worlds—” Shonofar’s arm shook as she stabbed her index finger into those distant thunderheads.

  “Controls the worlds it leads to.” Metalara tilted her head to one side until she heard a soft crack then she repeated that on the other side to loosen the stiff joints in her neck. It was the same old story.

  Both angels looked grim. But they couldn’t join that fight. Their place was here, defending Heaven and the ways to reach it.

  “Go. Do what you were made to do. This is all the help I can give you.” Shonofar shoved Metalara off the rock using her angelic strength a
nd threw her halfway across the sea. “Hang on, Sovvan. Help’s on the way. Try not to piss it off,” Shonofar shouted into the wind after her.

  Who the hell is Sovvan? Metalara wondered as she angled her body, so her wings could catch an updraft, but not all of her was in working order. Her left-wing joint froze, locking into the right position to send her into a tailspin, and Metalara plummeted toward the fog bank below. Four sets of liquid eyes peered out of it at her, but none made any move to help her.

  Shocking the Scribe

  [Westchester, NY]

  Oof. I landed on several strategically placed throw pillows, and Papa landed next to me, but the couch wasn’t large enough to accommodate him, so it tipped and might have gone over if his magic hadn’t grabbed its wooden base and plunked it back down where it belonged.

  “Thank you, Papa.” I crawled over and flopped onto his solidly muscled chest.

  Papa had always been strong, but whatever his masters had him doing every night for the last two years had put some serious muscle on him. But it was the lean kind. He’d never be one of those barrel-chested, sword-swinging warriors with tree stumps for legs, and that was okay because I didn’t want to look that way when I reached my twenties.

  “Are you okay?” Papa slung an arm around my shoulders and held me tight as he stared at the ceiling, too tired to move.

  “I’m okay. Are you?” I raised my head from the comfy pillow his chest made and regarded him.

  Since tech ruled this place instead of magic, his eyes glowed a soft green in the electric lights that flipped on. Papa just nodded, but he didn’t say the words that would have reassured me because he couldn’t. Papa couldn’t lie, not in words. If he didn’t want me to know something, then he had to keep quiet like he was doing now.

  Oh no. That meant he wasn’t okay. I blinked, but a tear escaped before I could stop it. Papa had a condition, but no one would tell me what it was or why he sometimes had seizures.

  “Did I miss something?” Melinda asked.

  I turned my head, hiding that lone tear to look for her and found her standing in the doorway holding a bunch of envelopes. “Excuse us, but did a dragon just come through there?” I pointed to the purple-glowing portal floating above us.

  Melinda stared at me for a moment as she processed that. “You’re not joking, are you?”

  “No, ma’am. We’re deadly serious.” I pushed myself up, but Papa stopped me long enough to give me one last squeeze before letting go. That hug reassured me a little as I scooted to the edge of the couch closest to my bewildered Scribe.

  “You’re telling me a real dragon came through there? That’s impossible.” Melinda waved to the portal, and her blue coat rustled in the wind sweeping in from the outer door at the top of the stairs that led to her apartment.

  “We’re impossible too, but we’re here.” I gave her a one-shouldered shrug.

  “Yeah, but you’ve been showing up since people started reading the stories I write about you and your father. Before that, there was no portal.” Melinda leaned against the door jamb and gave the portal a baleful glare for bringing a dragon here. “This is crazy. There can’t be a dragon here. I don’t write about dragons for that reason.”

  “But you do have stories with dragons in them.”

  “Just the newsletter you took over. No one’s read my other dragon stories because I don’t want them to visit me.” Melinda put the letters she was holding on a small table by the door, but they slid off the small mountain of gloves, hats, scarves, and other cold-weather gear already occupying the table.

  There was more mail scattered across one of the couch cushions under Papa. I guess they weren’t important because Melinda didn’t even glance at them.

  “But I didn’t create that dragon,” also known as my nemesis. “I can’t do that because I’m not a Scribe. Only Scribes can create characters, so you created her.” I kicked my feet, and my heels drummed against the couch’s frame until magic wrapped around my boots and stilled them.

  “Don’t do that. It’s not polite,” Papa said around a yawn.

  “You sound like you need a nap.” Melinda tossed a pillow at Papa, and that gave me an idea.

  Papa caught the pillow and put it behind his head. He was taller than the couch was long, so his legs hung off the end, and his booted feet rested on the floor.

  I crawled over until I was level with his head. All the better to see his face since Melinda had switched off the overhead lights. We didn’t need them anyway. Between the portal’s purple glow, the afternoon sunlight streaming through the windows, and Papa’s glowing-green eyes, we had plenty of illumination. “Why don’t you rest while Melinda and I look for the dragon?”

  Papa looked at me like I’d lost my mind. It was a look he often gave me right before he said the one word I disliked most, “no.”

  “Why not? I’ll be safe with Melinda.” I leaned in close because Papa had lost some hearing in one ear, and I wanted to make sure he didn’t miss a word of my brilliant reasoning. “She’s got scribal powers. If we get into trouble, she’ll just write us out of it.”

  “No, if you’re going to look for a dragon, then I’m coming with you.” Papa sat up and pulled me into a tight embrace before I could escape.

  I’d forgotten how fast he could move. Nor did I like the sound of that ‘if.’ It implied we had a choice about finding that dragon when we didn’t. We couldn’t leave that dragon to rampage in the real world. She might endanger our readers or kidnap our Scribe. The possibilities were endless and equally bad. “We have to find her,” I said in case Papa was still thinking we had a choice in the matter.

  “And we will, but we have to be smart about this. There’s a big world out there, and we don’t know if she ended up here or somewhere else.”

  “Oh.” That made sense. I leaned into Papa and tried to hide the doubts I’d had. I should have known he wouldn’t let a dragon run amok. “You didn’t see anything?” I glanced at Melinda and hoped she hadn’t just seen me doubt my hero, my Papa. But her understanding brown eyes said she had. Drat. I couldn’t hide anything from her. As long as Papa didn’t know, that was okay.

  “Well, I saw a flash of blue when I opened the door to get the mail but no dragons.” Melinda stuffed her keys into her coat pocket.

  “That was probably the dragon since she’s blue when she’s all-digital. Maybe she hasn’t found a body yet.” That would make finding her harder, and I had no idea how we could catch a creature made of code. But that still begged the question of where she’d gotten a body from before.

  “She could be anywhere then if that’s the case.” Papa leaned his chin on top of my head, but he didn’t release me.

  Nor did I struggle. He owed me some more hugs to make up for being extra late this morning. “So, how do we find her?”

  “Well, she’s digital, so—” Melinda stalked over to a wooden bureau topped by stacks of books with familiar spines: Curse Breaker: Enchanted, Curse Breaker: Darkens, Curse Breaker: Faceted, Curse Breaker: Falls, Curse Breaker: Sundered, Curse Breaker: Books 1-4, His Angelic Keeper, Hunter’s Night, Rogue Night, Relic Hunter, etc.

  The six Curse Breaker ones were our books, with Papa at the helm as the hero and me as his beloved son and sidekick. His Angelic Keeper starred my Aunt Sovvan, but I didn’t recognize Hunter’s Night, and its sequel, Rogue Night, or Relic Hunter. Was our Scribe writing books about other characters?

  I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. I knew the next couple of books she was writing starred Papa, Auntie Sovvan, and me, and she had lots of drafts for more books about us. So, who were those other three books about? Were they expecting more page time too? What if there wasn’t enough page time for all of us?

  I didn’t want to share my page time, my books, or my Scribe. They were mine, and the thought of losing her to another character had me burrowing into Papa’s chest, and he held me tight.

  “What’s wrong?” Papa asked, but I just shook my head.

  I couldn’
t talk about this with him because he didn’t know there were books about us. But I could talk to my uncle. Uncle Miren knew all about them, and so did my Scribe. We’d have a private word about those other books later.

  Melinda reached behind those books and clicked something.

  “What did you do?” I craned my neck, but I couldn’t see what she’d done.

  Melinda waved to the bar of blinking lights. “I turned on the Wi-Fi. It should attract her.”

  “Then we’d better be ready to receive that dragon.” Papa stood up while still holding me.

  Oh no, this was a prelude to another ‘protect the child’ ploy. But it felt so good to be held, I didn’t struggle. “What do we do with her when she comes?”

  Papa and Melinda looked at each other in confusion. Uh-oh, they didn’t have a plan, and I didn’t have any to offer them.

  “We need to send her back to the cyber world where she belongs,” Melinda said finally.

  “How do we do that?” I asked.

  By the Power of Wi-Fi

  [Westchester, NY]

  The Newsletter-Dragon looked from the shadowy hand extended to her seemingly in friendship to her code-created claws. What the hell was she thinking? No, she didn’t want Ran to die. Where would the fun be in that?

  She enjoyed their cat-and-mouse games. “No thank you. I already owe another entity a favor. I’m not looking to wrack up anymore at this time.” Because so far, everything was working out like Dysteria had predicted.

  Before that shadow could say anything, the portal spat the Newsletter-Dragon out into a bright room. Gah! It was too damned bright. She couldn’t see anything as she backed away. Shadows eventually replaced the light, stopping her in her tracks.

  When the Newsletter-Dragon could see again, she was in a large white room full of machines. Now, this was more like it. She wasn’t corporeal anymore, so she didn’t trip the motion-sensor lights, but she didn’t need them since she glowed blue all over. The dragon regarded her much-reduced body and missed the one Dysteria had helped her create, but it had served its purpose: to get her to the real world on the other side of the computer screen, and it was damned nice to be here.