by Ann Gimpel
“Why didn’t he?”
“By then, the remainder of our flight was intent on leaving. Kon was outraged, but neither would he beg them to remain. We are a free people, and we do not force our will on anyone.”
“This group of dragon shifters were quick to call him liege,” I pointed out.
“Because they went seriously astray on their own.” She shifted to telepathy, ostensibly not to hurt anyone’s feelings. Probably wise since Nikolai had already flayed himself raw.
I didn’t dare risk a reply in mind speech since I’d already demonstrated my clumsiness.
Katya’s head snapped up. “Konstantin is returning.”
“Is anyone with him?”
I felt the flicker of Katya’s magic swirling around her. Baked clay, musk, cloves, and vanilla filled my nostrils, enticing and calming by turns. “Yes, but not dragons.”
Before I could mine for more details, she took off at a brisk trot for where the other shifters had broken into small groups, chatting amongst themselves. As we approached, the conversations halted abruptly and everyone stared upward, scanning the cloud-filled skies.
Katya hadn’t exactly answered my questions about the finer points of being linked to various worlds. It appeared it took a long time before the land trusted a person enough to open up to them, but I was thinking in human terms. It was the only frame of reference I had.
Brilliance flashed so starkly, I shut my eyes. When I opened them, Konstantin and several unfamiliar people were passing through a gateway not unlike the one Surek had opened to the serpents’ world, except this one didn’t feel menacing. Unlike the dragons, this batch of folk wore clothing, mostly made from leather and animal skins. And high, lace-up boots that encased their lower legs and reminded me of medieval footwear.
“No dragons on the sixth world,” Konstantin said, “but these bird shifters volunteered for our cause.”
Cheers rang out interspersed with “thank-yous.”
Was I the only one who wondered if they were truly bird shifters or some kind of insidious serpent trap? Did Konstantin know them? Had he asked them to shift the same way Nikolai had challenged him?
Could I even ask any of those questions without pissing him off?
Erin had edged off to one side. I tried to make eye contact, but she either didn’t notice or was avoiding me.
Katya made a point of hugging her brother. I felt power flare between them. Was she checking to make certain nothing had happened to him on the other world?
Maybe so because she smiled at the eight men and women who’d journeyed with her twin and said. “Please don’t take my request amiss, but some of you are strangers to me. If you could be so kind, shift. Let me see your birds.”
My eyes widened, but I cloaked my surprise fast. Along with her words came a compulsion spell. Thick as molten lava, it flowed around the newcomers, capturing them in its folds.
“Perhaps we shall rethink our generosity,” a short, brown-haired man mumbled.
Around him, the others stripped off their clothing. The air surrounding them flickered, glistened, and sparkled. Feathers in a plethora of colors rained down as eagles, crows, and two cormorants took to the air. Apparently, they were immune to Katya’s spell. Or maybe it wasn’t aimed at them.
The only one left was the brown-haired man. Katya’s shimmery net, visible to my third eye, tightened around him until I saw the serpent nestled within his illusion. Black-edged magic hovered around him but couldn’t punch through thanks to Katya’s casting.
“Do not let him leave,” I shouted.
“We have no intention of doing so,” Konstantin snarled.
Something about his words told me he’d known about the traitor all along but had lured him here with a purpose in mind. I glanced at the birds circling overhead. One by one, they landed on their erstwhile companion and began pecking at him, grabbing bits of flesh and swallowing them whole.
The old Hitchcock movie, The Birds, flashed through my mind. Maybe Alfred knew more than we gave the old guy credit for.
Chapter 10
A Few Moments Before
Katya sensed her twin returning, but without a single dragon in tow. Granted their circumstances were desperate, but dragon shifters stuck together. For Kon to be bringing someone other than their own kind along meant something had gone sideways. She craved more time with Johan—a lot more. He’d actually held her close. Not for very long, but being in his arms had felt incredible.
She imagined the feel of his mouth on hers. The touch of his hands running the length of her body. Longing filled her. Johan was an extraordinary man, and she yearned for him with a singlemindedness only another dragon could comprehend.
Maybe one of these days, she’d throw caution to the goddess’s four winds and kiss him. He wouldn’t shove her away. She was certain of it. Today, though, wasn’t the time for such pursuits. He’d been right to step away from her and refocus both of them on all the things he needed to learn.
He shared her longing—at least in the lust department. The hot length of him pressing against her belly had provided ample proof of his arousal.
Konstantin was nearly back. She shelved her sensual imagery of Johan’s cock and hurried to the other dragon shifters, ready for damn near anything. Before the newcomers were fully through the gateway, she scanned them with magic to verify their identity. Bird shifters, if she was any judge. She made a show of hugging Konstantin. Touch opened an absolutely private communication channel between them. He said enough in those few seconds to galvanize her into action.
They had a serpent in their midst. If they managed him properly, maybe they could learn something. He’d never talk without prodding, but pain could produce surprising results. Adopting what she hoped was a disarming smile, she asked the birds to shift. A reasonable request given the problems they’d dealt with.
Katya held her power ready. As soon as the real shifters summoned their birds, she launched an immobilization spell at the one remaining man. His disguise was exceptional. Best use of illusion she’d ever run across. If she hadn’t known to pick it apart, she’d have been convinced he was an eagle shifter just like two of the other birds.
That he couldn’t extend the illusion to shifting would be his undoing. She wove power around him, magic that would keep him from teleporting out of there—or summoning any of his kin.
Apparently, the Fleisher group of worlds was riddled with sea-serpent contamination. Had they gotten to the prehistoric beasts? Threatened them with goddess only knew what if they revealed the serpents’ presence.
According to Konstantin, the birds hadn’t realized their companion wasn’t one of them. Fury streamed from them as they plummeted out of the sky and settled on the serpent, plunging their beaks into his flesh. He remained on his feet, shielding his face with his hands. The birds kept right on pecking. Soon, bone showed through shredded flesh.
No way out for the serpent. They’d bind him with magic that would hold him until the end of time. His only choice would be to talk with them. If he did—and told the truth—they’d imprison him on a distant borderworld. A place he’d never leave, but a far more merciful alternative than what the serpents had done to the dragons.
If he opted for silence, he was deader than dead. She, personally, would take the time to torture him. Drag his death out to make up for the misery the dragons encased in ice had suffered. Not that anything she could do to him would make a dent in that particular debt, but she’d give it her absolute best shot.
Fire blew from her mouth. Interesting. She hadn’t noticed her bondmate’s return. The beast must have snuck back quietly. Katya avoided making a snarky comment to her beast. She’d expected the stubborn creature to be gone for at least a few days after their last argument. Maybe her dragon had a run in with Y Ddraigh Goch. The dragon god wasn’t in a mood to tolerate prima donna anythings.
Not with serpents riding roughshod over his dragons and using them as breeding boxes for evil.
&nbs
p; The dragon shifters surged forward, battering the serpent with bolts of magic. Blue. White. Amber. Golden. Taking care to avoid the birds, they hit the serpent—still in his human form, thanks to her binding spell—again and again until blood flowed, staining the snowy ground. Johan was right in there slugging with the rest of them. It pleased her. He’d disabuse himself of his misplaced sensibilities soon. She’d sensed his initial distaste at murdering the hatchlings, but he’d gotten over it.
“Do not kill him,” Konstantin roared to make himself heard.
“He’s immortal,” Nikolai yelled back.
“Not in his human body, he’s not,” Kon corrected him.
Nikolai’s golden eyes widened. “What happened?”
“I don’t know,” Konstantin answered. “I’m sure their lack of invincibility isn’t a fact they want bandied about. If we hadn’t overheard them talking, we’d never have known about it.”
“Ha! A mortal weakness,” Melara crowed. “I love it.”
The birds were still pecking merrily away, cawing and squawking as they fed from the serpent. Konstantin barked a few words in the dragons’ tongue. They continued to ignore him. Katya wasn’t surprised when a focused tongue of flames licked at the birds’ taloned feet.
Amid a chorus of outraged squawks, they let go and took to the air, circling like the pack of vultures they were. “Shift!” Kon shouted skyward. “You’ll get ample chance to torture our prisoner.”
The dragons had formed a circle around the faux bird shifter. As the seven birds found first their bodies, and then their garments, the circle pressed closer. Everyone was waiting until the birds joined them.
The serpent remained immobile, head bent, hands still shielding his face. One of the bird shifters pushed through the line of dragons, followed by the others. “We allowed you and your family sanctuary.” A barrel-chested brown-haired man with crystalline green eyes shook a fist at the serpent.
Katya’s ears perked up. Family, eh? “How many arrived with him?” she asked.
“Three,” another bird shifter answered.
“Shit!” Johan muttered.
“Indeed,” Erin cut in. “The others are long gone. Off to warn their serpent buddies.”
“Not necessarily,” Konstantin corrected her and angled his gaze at Katya.
She understood his unspoken question. “My spell was absolute,” she told her twin. “No way he could have communicated through it. Or shifted. Or done anything except stand where he is.”
“My guess,” Konstantin went on, “is this bastard thought to gather information and volunteered to come along. He must have known about the breeding project here, and—”
“What breeding project?” The thick-chested bird shifter unfisted his hand and twisted to look at Kon.
He didn’t flinch beneath the man’s intense scrutiny. “I purposefully didn’t tell you everything. I sensed right away something was amiss with this one”—he jabbed a finger at the serpent—“and crafted my words in such a way to entice him to come with us. If I’d revealed we’d blown up the breeding pool for evil, he’d like as not have waited for you to leave and run to tell his companions. Wherever they might be stationed.”
“Yes, but what were they breeding?” another bird shifter, this one female with cropped straight blonde hair and dark eyes pressed.
“In a nutshell, the serpents immobilized half a dozen dragons, buried them in ice, and were using their magical essence to nurture a clutch of hybrid monsters bred with dark magic,” Katya replied.
Hisses, snarls, smoke, and ash were joined by disgruntled bird caws.
“Be angry later.” Konstantin was back in charge. He elbowed his way until he stood squarely in front of the serpent. “Lower your hands,” he commanded. The serpent didn’t have a choice, not in the face of her twin’s magic.
Slowly and jerkily, he dropped his bleeding, broken hands to his sides. His face was unremarkable, but perhaps that was by design. It wasn’t a face that would be easy to remember. The only feature that stood out were his eyes, and they were so black iris and pupil merged into one.
“You will give us information.” Konstantin still employed compulsion.
The serpent just stared at him like a sleepwalker.
“If you fail to provide anything useful—or worse, lie to us—we will ensure you spend the rest of forever in misery. Do you understand me?”
The serpent still didn’t move.
Katya scanned him with magic, just to make certain she hadn’t broken something inadvertently with her casting. She hadn’t been particularly careful. No reason to be. Her assessment yielded a living creature, though. A shudder ran through her. It was unnerving how similar serpents were to dragons, and she didn’t like it.
They were monsters. Born of night and darkness and evil, they shouldn’t be anything like her.
She dug deeper and found the serpent’s sharp intelligence coiled and waiting. “Konstantin.”
He didn’t turn toward her, but said, “Yes?”
“Reach inward. Establish communication with the serpent. It’s there. The human part has checked out.”
“You must be mistaken,” Nikolai said. “They’re like us—or they used to be. When they wear their human skins, both serpent and man must be within.”
Katya shook her head. “Check for yourself.”
A long, low, sibilant hiss emerged from the serpent’s mouth. Katya tightened her spell. Had acknowledging the serpent empowered it? She wasn’t willing to take that chance.
“We should go back,” the burly bird shifter said.
“Noooo,” several shouted, followed by variations of, “We want retribution. They lied to us. Used us. If they’re mortal, all of them must die.”
The hissing grew in volume. Someone, maybe Boris, or perhaps Nikolai, shot a tongue of flame down the serpent’s body, close enough his clothing began to smoke and smolder.
Katya gestured to Johan. “Help me hold him.”
“Tell me what to do,” Johan said as he worked his way to her side through the line of dragons and birds.
She extended a hand. “Your dragon will understand. Open your power to me, but watch what I’m doing. In case you need to use this same working on your own someday.”
Johan’s grip was warm and sure. It would have been easy to fall right back into longing and possessiveness for the man by her side. Instead, she made certain he followed the circular steps that kept her spell alive and the serpent trapped within it.
Kon and the birds were engaged in a debate, peppered with people speaking over one another.
“Enough!” the broad-shouldered bird shifter boomed. “I, Gustaf, am your leader. We shall return to the sixth world. Assuming the other three who arrived with our prisoner are still there, we will kill them. Pair up. Two of us against one of them. Use destructive magic set to the highest level. I will oversee each execution and provide additional magic if such is required.”
Katya glanced up from her spellcasting. “What if this one won’t talk? Is it wise to knock off the others? Surely with four of them, there’s bound to be a weak link.”
An ominous rattling added to the sounds issuing from the serpent’s mouth. His bottomless dark eyes were impossible to read, but fury was stamped into his nondescript features. Katya felt him pushing, testing the boundaries of her control.
“What exactly do you wish to know?” Gustaf asked.
“Everything,” Konstantin snapped. “How many serpents have left the worlds Y Ddraigh Goch consigned them to. Where they are now. The bones of their plans.”
Katya shook her head. “We’ll never get all that. We’ll be lucky to find out if any serpents remain where our god put them. My assumption is they all broke free.”
“So if we had a rough idea where all of them were, it would be useful?” Gustaf said.
“It would,” Konstantin concurred.
“If we can get anything out of them before they die, we will.” Gustaf sounded grim and resolute. Power
bubbled around him, and he drew the other six bird shifters off to one side. When the air cleared, they were gone.
“I am not sure how it is happening,” Johan muttered in a strained-sounding voice, “but the serpent is growing stronger.”
Nikolai ran close and added a blast of his own magic to their mix. His golden eyes developed a harsh cast. “I’ll say. Either that, or he was cloaking his ability before.”
“No,” Johan said. “He is definitely stronger.”
Katya picked her way around the perimeter of her spell and groaned. “That slimy fucker. He’s tapping power from my spell. Once Johan’s magic kicked in, he hid behind it to conceal what he was doing.”
She barely got her words out before the world turned into a confusing jumble of madness. Konstantin bugling. Other dragons roaring. Johan shouting curses. Dragonfire flared around her, bright and reassuring, until a burning, clawing sensation tore at her midsection, flattening her.
She fell to her knees, unsure what had unbalanced her. Something was wrong with her vision. The scene in front of her wavered, undulating in waves. Her hearing was truncated, as if sounds came from the bottom of a very deep well.
Johan’s voice ebbed and flowed. So did Konstantin’s.
Nikolai grabbed her shoulders where she knelt and shook her. She opened her mouth to protest, but no sound came out. Her body had escaped her control, and she had no idea why. Fear gripped her, but she couldn’t give in to it. Nikolai lifted her—or maybe it was Konstantin—but the moment they let go, she fell back down. Her teeth began to chatter.
When she reached for her bondmate, the dragon was behind some kind of barrier. She sensed the beast but couldn’t reach it.
What’s happening to me? The words repeated again and again but never made it out of her mouth.
“Do not let the serpent in!” Her twin’s voice rolled through her foggy brain. “Fight him, goddammit. Shift. You’re stronger as a dragon.”
Was that what had happened? Interested in more than subverting her spell, the serpent’s plans included commandeering her body? She’d never heard of magic like that. Her twin must be mistaken.
