by Ann Gimpel
Breath rattled from him. Not a dragon. A sea-serpent, but before the dragon god, Y Ddraigh Goch, stripped them of their wings. So this scene was from antiquity.
Fascinating. Even then, serpents hadn’t spent much time with their dragon kin. There were no dragons in this group. He’d assumed the seeds of rebellion began when a few serpents plotted against the dragon god’s children, but maybe its roots reached far earlier.
Katya’s breathing was ragged. Her knuckles were white where she gripped the glass. The dark-haired man, who’d shifted into a gray sea-serpent, had turned and faced squarely into the mirror. His eyes whirled hypnotically, just like dragon eyes, except they were dark.
“I see you spying on us,” he sneered. “Dragons always were dim-witted, but thanks for the channel through time.” Around him, the others jumped up. Teleport magic glistened around them.
“Katya. End the spell,” Kon managed despite a tongue that wasn’t overly cooperative.
“Can’t.” Her mind voice was shockingly weak.
He tried to pry the mirror out of her hands, but she held it in a death grip. Blood flowed where the frame cut into her hands. Damn! Her blood would grease the skids, make it even easier for the serpents to jump through time.
The last thing they needed was more serpents, especially the original variety before Y Ddraigh Goch had divested them of wings and some of their magic.
Kon struggled to cut off her access to his magic. It should have been immediate, but precious seconds ticked by before he untangled his magic from hers. An abrupt surge in his ability told him she couldn’t have been the only magical entity bleeding him.
His twin was crying silently. Tears formed gemstones as they hit the stone floor, pattering around her. In full command of his power again, he wrenched the glass from Katya’s hands. A quick glance told him the serpents were crafting travel spells.
Why the hell hadn’t the vision abated. His twin would probably have his head, but he crashed the mirror down on the stone floor. It took three tries, and a hefty shot of magic, before it shattered. With its demise, he felt Katya’s spell curl into itself and die. Outraged shrieks battered him, but they perished damned fast.
At first, he assumed Katya was giving him hell, but when he looked at her, she was staring at her lacerated hands and still crying. They’d had an incredibly close call since the serpents had been near enough for him to hear them. He hoped he’d stranded them in some in-between spot, one with no air where they’d drift forever.
He scooted nearer his twin and grasped her hands in his, sending healing magic into the torn places. “It’s all right. They’re gone.”
She regarded him through eyes swimming with unshed tears. “Because of you. I waited too long. If my dragon had been here, she’d never have let me make that mistake.”
“I’m not sure about too long. I didn’t know what they were.”
“Me, either. By the time I figured out they weren’t dragons, they had me. I have no idea how they reached through my casting. It’s not supposed to work that way.” She shook her head and extracted a hand to brush tears from her cheeks.
“Once we all had the same magic,” Konstantin reminded her. “It’s why they were so quick to recognize you, and why it was so easy for them to…” He stopped, not wanting to criticize Katya. Not now when she was so distraught. She recognized she’d made a mistake. He didn’t need to rub it in.
“Hornswoggle me?” she supplied, her voice bitter.
No reason to agree, so he changed topics. “I’m sorry about your mirror.”
Katya shook her head. “It was the only way to sever the connection. Besides, I have others, but I may never want to use them again.”
He tightened his grip on the hand he still held. “We learned a lot today. It was worth some inconvenience.”
“Christ, Kon. I nearly added ten serpents to the ones already here. Except these were the original variety. They might have—”
“Hush. They’re not here. Nor are they likely to be.” He stood and drew his twin to her feet. “Time to leave. How are your hands.”
“Better.” She scooped up the piles of gems from her tears.
Good. He’d have been truly concerned about a dragon who left potential hoard material behind. Before they departed, he raised his mind voice to his bondmate.
“We need you back here now!”
His lesson from today was not for his twin to stop scrying, but to never attempt it again when her dragon wasn’t present.
Katya
Feeling like a failure, Katya trudged up a couple of flights of stairs after her brother’s retreating form. The mix of gemstones clutched in her hands both soothed her and reminded her how closely they’d skirted disaster.
No wonder Y Ddraigh Goch had banished the serpents. They might have once been indistinguishable from dragons in form, but dragons were good and pure and principled. Judging from today’s flight backward in time, sea-serpents had always been a devious bunch.
It was also clear the time they’d been caught bedeviling Y Ddraigh Goch’s children was scarcely their first fall from grace, merely the first time they were apprehended.
Her dragon collided with her, clicking into place as if she’d never been gone. A few moments later, hissing filled her and fury shot from her mouth as fire mixed with ash.
“Did you know?” she asked her bondmate, not bothering with telepathy since her magical reservoir was running on fumes.
“Know what?”
The dragon’s question seemed overly cautious, particularly since she rarely answered a question with one of her own. Normally, if she wasn’t going to answer, she said nothing.
“What did you think I was referring to?”
More smoke huffed through her mouth. “I certainly had no way of knowing you were going to go mucking about in time travel. You had no business doing that without me.”
Katya stopped dead, planting her feet right outside the stone doors that marked the building entry point. Konstantin was a short distance ahead of her, but she’d catch up.
“You know damn good and well I wasn’t time traveling.”
“Amounts to the same thing. You ended up at least a millennium removed from now.”
Katya gritted her teeth. “Did you know how corrupt the sea-serpents were? While we’re at it, did you know their original magic was stronger than ours?”
The flood of smoke issuing from her jaws turned to fire. Great. Her bondmate was pissed, although probably not at her. She might have taken exception to the magical comparison, though.
“Many of us suspected they were immoral. We petitioned Y Ddraigh Goch to do something about them for a long time before he finally did.”
“Even before the serpents tortured his children?”
“Pfft.” More fire. “Long before, but we were not of one mind. Some dragons took the other tack, that we could coexist with our serpent kinsmen. When Y Ddraigh Goch finally moved against them, he provoked serious discord.”
“For what?”
“Some dragons believed were it not for the strike against his children, he’d never have done anything.”
“So they viewed it as personal, not for the good of dragonkind?”
“Precisely.”
Katya waited. The dragon hadn’t responded to her second question, the one about whose magic was most potent. Nagging wouldn’t move things along any faster. And it might mean her bondmate would end up not answering at all.
“I never believed their magic was stronger,” the dragon said slowly. “You were a fool. You ventured too near and waited too long. They wove their magic together and nearly bested you. Ten against one is poor odds.”
A wry grin wanted out. Convenient her bondmate didn’t require explanations about what had happened. “Kon was there too,” she said.
“Not from a position of strength, he wasn’t. Whatever were the two of you thinking?”
Konstantin had stopped moving and stood a few meters ahead, but he wasn’t
looking her way. Was his dragon reading him the riot act as well?
“At least we learned a few things. And my scrying magic is still intact.” She did her best to ignore defensiveness rolling through her and an irrational desire to chide her bondmate for leaving at an inopportune time.
No way either one of them could have guessed what would happen. Besides, casting blame was pointless. All it did was lead to anger.
“I’m not going anywhere until this is over,” her dragon announced.
Katya shook her head unsure whether to be touched by her bondmate’s love or annoyed the dragon didn’t view her as capable of taking care of herself. She hurried to Konstantin.
“Did your bondmate have a few choice words?”
“You might say that.” Her twin speared her with an exasperated look. “I wonder how many other tidbits we don’t know about the serpents.”
“Probably quite a few. Shall we see how everyone else is doing?”
“Everyone else as in our mates or the other shifters?”
Katya smiled. “Both.” It alarmed her when Kon referred to Erin as his mate. And made her scared for him. If Erin ended up turning him down—and she might—it would crush him.
Katya had been surprised when Johan accepted the mate bond so readily.
She’d reminded him about the “no divorce” rule, but he’d been so sunk in lust at the time, he’d probably have signed a pact with the devil. Men were different creatures. Not that she didn’t see herself as having a sexual nature, but things were different when you had a cock. Something that responded to almost every passing erotic event, no matter how trivial.
She didn’t doubt Johan loved her, but men operated on a fairly simplistic plane. Erin held secrets—and fears. Now that she was bonded with a dragon of her own, it was entirely possible the beast would fulfill all her emotional needs. Sex play with Konstantin would make her life complete, and she’d have no need to shackle herself to a mate.
“What are you thinking?”
Kon’s question jerked her out of her musings; relief filled her he hadn’t just helped himself to her thoughts. “Nothing much,” she said brightly. Maybe her response was too cheerful, so she hurried to add, “I’m still recovering from back there.” She looked over a shoulder at the door to the building they’d recently exited.
“I understand. My bondmate gave me grief over our scrying effort. He reminded me in no uncertain terms I wasn’t blessed with that gift. But then, I reminded him if I hadn’t been there, you’d have been unwittingly coopted into holding a gateway through time open. With disastrous results, I might add.”
Breath whistled through Katya’s gritted teeth. “I’ll admit I wasn’t very smart about things. When I first saw people around a fire, I assumed it was the first batch of humans—or close to the first batch—here on Earth. It wasn’t until I moved nearer, I sensed dragon magic. Made no sense, though. We never sat around fires since we carry fire within us.”
“The serpents used to produce fire as well,” Kon reminded her. “No need for them to sit around one warming themselves.”
She licked at dry lips. “I was putting it together when that apelike fellow with all the black hair shifted. By then, it was too late. I was trapped.”
Konstantin offered her a crooked smile. “You were quicker on the uptake than me. When he shifted, I assumed he was a dragon, and I was trying to see who since I know virtually all our kin.”
“Thanks.”
“For what?”
“I’m not feeling quite as incompetent,” she replied. “Maybe we could not tell the others?”
“I was about to suggest the same thing,” Konstantin murmured. “We will share what knowledge we gained but skip the part about our near miss with tragedy.”
She gave him a quick hug. “You’re the best.”
“What are twins for?”
A cavalcade of all the tricks they’d played on each other marched through her mind.
“Those too.” Kon grinned, and she blessed all her lucky stars he hadn’t chosen an earlier moment to skim her thoughts. Mind-reading was one of his strengths. She needed to do better concealing her fears about Erin never becoming his mate.
“Are you planning to tell Johan?” he asked.
“No. Especially not him. He’d never let me out of his sight again.”
Konstantin made a wry face. “The mate bond possessiveness. Tell me about it.”
Before she could reply, his magic wrapped around her and whisked her to the familiar territory in front of their grotto. Various dinosaur grunts, stomps, and whistles blasted her as the ones that had been grazing near the lake headed their way.
A pterodactyl swooped close, shifting in midair and somersaulting to the ground in front of them. “We were about to hunt for you,” Yle, the dinosaur’s seer, announced almost before his beak had ceded to a mouth. Unlike most of his kind who had coal-black hair, his was silver. All of them had indigenous features with broad, flat foreheads, high cheekbones, and coppery skin. Silver eyes held a luminosity that was unsettling if you looked at them for too long.
His nostrils flared, and he bent closer to Katya. “You stink of scrying magic. What did you find?”
No reason to deny it, although she would have been content to let her twin take the lead and sketch out a few battle plans before they got around to what she’d been doing.
“You know how it is with these endeavors,” she replied. “Nothing is ever certain.”
Yle made circular motions with one hand, as in of course he knew and to get on with it.
Katya inhaled sharply. “It is possible serpents specifically targeted the Darya—”
“What’s that?” Yle asked.
“The ship the new dragon shifters lived on. I saw serpents swimming around it before it was boarded by pirates.”
“Fascinating. What else?” Yle nailed her with his disconcerting eyes.
“Apparently, the serpents escaped Y Ddraigh Goch’s banishment a long time ago. Or a few of them did because we saw them in Germany around 1650 or so. Hard to tack down the time with much accuracy. I’m judging from the appearance of the buildings and carriages.”
“We’ve already established they have a type of hive mind, which allows them to communicate over both time and distance,” Konstantin spoke up.
“Makes sense the first group that escaped your god’s imprisonment would have told the others how they managed it,” Yle muttered.
“I still believe they staked out an acceptable existence for themselves somewhere,” Konstantin said. “Something happened to their world, which is how they ended up here.”
“Is there more?” Yle directed his words at her but halted shy of draping a truth spell over her.
“No.” She stopped there. Yle looked oddly at her, almost as if he suspected she’d withheld something major, but he didn’t press her further. He must have had a vision or two he’d chosen to keep to himself. It was true of all seers.
Around her, dinosaurs were shifting, probably to make it easier to communicate—and to save the magic they’d been husbanding while they ate and rested.
A shifter she recognized from their visit to the Fleisher group of borderworlds said, “You uncovered historical information, but nothing to help us right now.” His black hair hung in many small braids in an approximation of a Celtic warrior pattern.
“Yes. That is true. I’m sorry. Revealing anything about either the past or the future has been difficult for me of late, so I keep my questions general. There was one vision, though, of the headlands above us that was confusing. No ice. No serpents. I couldn’t tell if it was a scene from the past, validation the future will bode well for us, or something else, entirely.”
“It’s time for me to call everyone together,” Konstantin said. “While they’re gathering, Katya and I will make a quick trip to the surface to see if it’s as infested with serpents as it was when we first returned here.”
“One of us should accompany you,” Yle an
nounced. “Mixed magics work best if you’re not as invisible as you hope to be.”
Katya started to ask how he’d feel about riding on a dragon until she remembered he was bonded to a pterodactyl and flew as well as she did. In truth, he was probably more maneuverable since he had less bulk. He lacked fire, of course, but his beak was lined with serrated teeth.
“We’d appreciate your presence,” Kon was saying.
She wondered if she should give Johan a heads up she was leaving, but she’d be back so soon, there was no reason to worry him unnecessarily. Besides, if she told him, he’d probably make a bid to come along, which would get Kon’s dander up.
While Johan recognized Konstantin was in charge, it would take more than a few days as a dragon shifter for what that meant to sink in. Currently, Johan’s understanding was more conceptual than rooted in practicalities. There’d been some gratuitous dick waving as he and Konstantin sparred over who actually made the decisions. She suspected there’d be more.
“Ready, Sister?” Kon was looking her way. From the expression on his face, he seemed to be trying not to laugh. Maybe he’d caught her thoughts about dick waving, and they amused him.
She walked to his side with Yle keeping pace beside her. “We both are.”
Her twin nodded. “My plan is to bring us out so we’re hidden behind a large set of boulders lining the headlands. It’s where I usually start from because I’m hidden from the ocean. Once we see how things are looking, we’ll organize our next steps.”
“How are you planning to communicate?” Yle asked.
“I’m not,” Kon replied, “but that was a good question. If the ice is as pervasive as it was a couple of days ago, we’ll take to the skies and do our damnedest to conceal ourselves behind wards. Serpents are quite sensitive to expended magic—if they’re looking for it.”
“Judging from what we saw on several of Fleisher’s borderworlds, they’re lazy,” Yle said.
“Don’t underestimate them,” Katya spoke up. “I did on the third world, and the bastard nearly had me.”
