by Ann Gimpel
“We have visitors.” Nikolai’s mind voice held an unreadable note.
“Who?” Kon shot back.
“Come and see for yourself.”
Annoyed at being interrupted before he had a firm plan—and backups—well in hand, he reopened the gateway he’d just stepped through and rode it upward. Visitors presumed someone with magic—besides dragons—knew where to find them.
If Nikolai had said “a visitor,” rather than “visitors,” he’d have assumed Y Ddraigh Goch had paid them a call. Konstantin nodded to himself. That had to be it. Last time he’d seen the dragon god, he’d had minions with him.
Excellent. They could use aid, and assistance from Y Ddraigh Goch was as valuable as help got. Who’d traveled with the god? Would it be the same red and blue dragons he’d met on the seventh world in the Fleisher system?
He blew out a tense breath but then reminded himself he had good news. Earth had deigned to talk with him. Not the most auspicious of starts, but at least it was an improvement over her continued silence.
Erin
I admit I was pretty spun out about the fellow with hemorrhagic fever. In the first place, where the hell had he come down with it? Judging from his garb, he was part of the ship’s crew. Maybe he was new and had replaced someone else? I wasn’t sure how many days the ship had been at sea, but probably not long enough to wait out the far end of the incubation period.
During his time aboard, he might have infected everyone he came into contact with. Others too since the virus can live for hours on hard surfaces. I did my damnedest to clear my mind, but all I could think about were those poor people. There are far easier ways to die than leaking blood out of every vessel and orifice.
What surprised me most, though, was what happened after I staked my claim to an undeserved moral high ground about essentially murdering the sick man. Somehow my bondmate knew I’d euthanized patients before. Not just a couple, either. Probably more like two dozen over the years I’d practiced medicine.
She was quick as lightning to remind me of that niggling fact.
Among other things, it meant she not only read my current thoughts, but had access to my memories as well. I sure as fuck wasn’t thinking about those other men and women I’d eased out of this life, but the dragon knew, anyway.
Katya must have blown a few minds when she spirited us out of that plane with a blast of magic bright enough to wake the dead. Where would the passengers pigeonhole what they’d seen? They’d have to put it somewhere, and none of them had a mental locker labeled “Supernatural Phenomena.”
It was wise of Katya to let us hash our crap out privately, well away from the other shifters. It didn’t take long before I came to my senses. Whether we’d teleported out of the plane while it was still in the air or done the same thing to escape an interminable quarantine period after we’d landed didn’t matter. The end result would have been the same.
Humans would have been exposed to magic.
I understood it was forbidden, and it didn’t take too much of an imagination to figure out why. Men were real dicks about mobilizing to obliterate what they didn’t understand. Since it wasn’t a war they could possibly win, all it would yield was a string of human casualties.
Dragons and others with magic would feel bad, but not for long. In their minds, they’d have done what was necessary. No more and no less. The unvarnished truth was I had no idea how the phalanx of infectious disease specialists, who would have converged on the quarantined plane, would have felt about us tossing sparkling streamers about.
They’d probably have pitched a fit, stuffed us into hazmat suits, and carted us off to the local looney bin as soon as everyone else was dead.
“We’d have left long before then,” my bondmate observed.
“Yes, we would have,” I replied. It made our abrupt exit from the plane somewhat more palatable.
Leave now… Leave later…
Katya’s spell spat us out a few yards away from the other shifters, who’d packed up into a snug circle with Ylon and Nikolai toward the center. Katya kept a ward around us while she splashed magic about, testing the headlands for intruders.
“Whew! No serpents nearby,” she muttered and barked a few words in Gaelic. Her spell dispersed. Actually, both of them did. Teleport and warding.
The others noticed us immediately. I’m certain they felt the bite of Katya’s magic. Welcoming calls warmed me. I’d always avoided human entanglements, which translated into no real friends who weren’t professional colleagues. We’d gone out for the occasional dinner, but more often we saw one another at medical conventions where we’d smile, wave, and retreat to our own bubbles.
I scanned the group for Konstantin, but he wasn’t among them.
Where was he?
“Is he all right?” I asked my dragon. Surely, if anyone would know, she would. She already considered him—and his dragon—our mates.
“Yes.”
I waited for her to add details, but she didn’t say anything more. We reached the others and were ushered through them to where Ylon and Nikolai stood. I’d already begun coaxing warmth upward. The dragon shifters’ method of warming ourselves was becoming second nature.
I hoped all the other bits and pieces would fall into line soon. I wasn’t particularly proud of my performance on the airplane. I’d been an angstrom away from telling Katya and Johan to leave. That I’d figure things out as I went, but I’d been assessing the problem through my human filters.
The ones where doctors dropped everything when faced with medical crises.
“Report.” Ylon snapped off the word.
I opened my mouth but shut it fast. I’d defer to Katya, wait and see which parts she highlighted and what she left out.
“We were successful diverting the ship,” Johan said.
Him grabbing the point surprised me. I’d assumed Katya—the one who’d been magical millennia longer than us—would be our group voice.
“Excellent!” Nikolai actually smiled. In the short time I’d known him, this was perhaps only the second smile I’d witnessed. The other had been when five of his ensorcelled dragons were rescued from their icy crypts. Unkempt, rust-colored hair hung around his shoulders, and his golden eyes with their deep green centers glowed with delight. A robe fashioned from tawny-striped animal skins hung from his shoulders. The cloak was more decorative than anything, and he’d been wearing it since the first time I laid eyes on him.
“Did you run into any serpents?” Ylon narrowed his silver eyes.
Katya shook her head. “I sensed they’d passed quite near the research base but hadn’t actually set foot on that particular patch of ground.”
“What about the ship?” Ylon pressed.
“We did not go aboard,” Johan explained.
“We were in close proximity to about a hundred passengers and crew, though,” Katya said. “None of them felt contaminated by sea-serpent spoor.”
I waited, but she didn’t elucidate that the people aboard that ship had been plenty contaminated—by something else. Probably, in the grand scheme of the magical world, human viruses didn’t warrant so much as a nod.
“We reached them in time, then.” Ylon sounded relieved.
I couldn’t in good conscience let him believe all was as sanguine as he believed. “Um, not exactly,” I said.
His unsettling gaze poked right through me. “What does that mean?”
“They were infected with a serious human disease, one that kills 95 percent of whomever contracts it.”
Ylon turned to his seer. “Have you any idea what this means?”
I knew he’d asked Yle, but I felt compelled to add, “It might not mean a thing. Diseases have run rampant through human populations since we crawled out of the primordial slime.”
He ignored me, didn’t even twitch an eyelash in my direction. It annoyed me, but I bit my tongue. All around me, shifters were nodding to one another with knowing looks stamped on their faces. No one asked a
thing about the fate of the infected humans. Clearly, that aspect was deemed of scant import.
Johan leaned across me and nudged Katya. “What do we not know?”
She held up a hand and tilted her chin at Yle, the dinosaurs’ seer. Silver hair fell past shoulder level. A gunmetal shade, it was lighter than his eyes. All the dinosaurs looked like indigenous tribesmen from South America with high cheekbones, broad, flat noses, and well-formed foreheads. Or they would have looked like Native people if the natives had been seven feet tall with heavily muscled shoulders, arms, and legs.
They were naked just like the dragon shifters.
“It might be a sign this world’s latter days are closing fast,” Yle said. “Or, as Erin mentioned, it could mean nothing at all.”
I’d been keeping my eyes open for Konstantin. While I sensed traces of him, he’d clearly left a while ago. No one appeared worried, but I wanted to know where he was.
Steam puffed through my mouth. Obviously, my beast approved of me being concerned about his whereabouts.
Nikolai clapped his hands to direct attention back to himself and Ylon. “We have finessed two victories. We cancelled the damage the serpents were in the midst of dishing out to that ship. And we made certain the ship will not put itself back in harm’s way.”
“Three if you count the serpents lost in Konstantin’s time warp,” Ylon tossed out.
Cheers rang. A few shifters danced a jig in place. Obviously, no one was concerned about the viral hemorrhagic fever. Human deaths were collateral damage—unless said humans provided fodder for serpents. In that case, we’d intervene. My inner dialogue was tinged with bitterness, but I had no reason for such a sour mood.
None at all.
Everything was relative. Shifters viewed humans in much the same way I’d once viewed insects or rodents. Some were loveable. Many were even somewhat necessary, but they weren’t worth much in the way of time or energy.
“How are your battle plans coming?” Katya asked. “And where is my twin?”
“Kon is still working on establishing contact with the land,” Yle replied.
“We have a couple of fledgling strategies hashed out,” Nikolai said. “Pending Kon’s approval, of course.”
“If he secured Earth as an ally, it will help a lot,” Boris, a dark-haired dragon shifter, said.
Relief surged from my toes to the top of my head. I’d been far more worried than I’d acknowledged about where Konstantin was. For all I knew, he’d run off on his own to battle Surek, the serpents’ leader. It was very like something he’d do. So far, he’d been patient with me, but I’d have to give him a firm answer soon.
Yea or nay.
It wasn’t that I hadn’t fallen in love with him. I had. The mating decision was just so bloody permanent. Dragons didn’t get do overs. Whoever they mated was who they sat out eternity with. My gut twisted uncomfortably, and for once it wasn’t my beast wreaking havoc. I’d never been willing to keep seeing any man who started making “let’s live together” noises. Nope. At the first sign of anything that smacked of commitment, I ran like hell.
Technology made it simple. All I needed to do was block a few things, and I could pretend I’d never met Mr. X. Or Dr. X. I rolled my mental eyes. Doctors were the absolute worst. They made the assumption you were lucky they’d blessed you with their time, attention, and interest.
Cringing, I had a moment of insight where I recognized I’d done much the same. Play by my rules, or I’m out of here.
Anyway. Kon was no doctor. And I was confused as fuck about what I might or might not be these days. Clearly, the person I used to be had limited utility in my current situation. That had been amply proven on the airplane.
Johan bent close and put his mouth next to my ear. “Are you okay?”
I shrugged. “More or less. You?”
“It is different for me. Had I been trained as a doctor, leaving a hundred sick people would have been far more difficult.”
“I didn’t just leave them,” I hissed back. “I left them to die.”
“Yes, but what could you have done?”
His stark question brought me zinging back to reality. “Nothing,” I said dully. “Nothing at all.”
“Can you let it go?”
I could have hugged him. Would have if Katya might not have misinterpreted my motives. Dragons were possessive as hell. I’d barely scratched the surface of that, and I already understood it took very little to set them off. I’d been surprised when Konstantin had patted my shoulder and sent me off to Arctowski. It must have cost him, which told me how desperately he wanted me to say yes and become his mate.
A very old phrase from the hippie era blazed through my brain. “If you love someone, set them free.” It was true in an oddball way, the metamessage being you couldn’t force anyone to love you. They either did, or they didn’t.
“Can you?” Johan asked again.
It took me a moment to resurrect our earlier conversation about the doomed passengers. “Yes,” I said, and meant it. “In fact, I already have.”
Just like that, my edgy unrest from earlier dropped away. The mind was incredibly powerful—if you didn’t waste it wallowing in “might-have-beens.”
“Good.” Johan patted my arm. “This is difficult. You and I, we have a foot in two very different worlds—”
“What was that?” Ylon growled. Miniature bolts of golden lightning arced between his raised hands.
The shifters fanned into a single, long row. The air thickened until the earthbound scents of shifter magic, with a strong ozone undernote, sucked every bit of moisture out of my nose and mouth.
Katya stepped in front of Johan and me. I felt the weave of her warding surround us. “Stop that!” Johan struggled to remove the gold-and-silver netting from around his shoulders.
“But we don’t know what’s out there.” Katya flicked her protective shroud back into place.
Johan’s nostrils flared. “I do. This smells the same as that cave in Scotland.”
Katya’s nostrils quivered as she tested his theory. “I’ll be damned. You’re right. The bloody faeries tracked us down. I assumed it was just idle talk. They never leave the British Isles.”
An intriguing flood of emotion marched across Johan’s austere features. I picked out satisfaction, anger, and curiosity before he smoothed his face into its usual, bland expression. One that could mean anything.
“You might have been a tad bit more diplomatic,” he told his mate.
Katya drew her brows together. “About what?”
“Not acting so shocked I figured something out on my own. We men are a tough bunch, but we do have our pride.”
She rolled her eyes. “Sorry, sweetie. I’ll try harder not to wound your sensitive ego.”
“Please.” The corners of his mouth twitched with his usual dry humor. He extended a hand, and she laced her fingers with his.
“Compared with Kon, you’re easy. That one holds grudges. For years.” Katya tugged on their joined hands. “The Sidhes’ portal is forming. Shall we see who decided we were worth a visit?”
I wanted to ask what she meant about Konstantin. Holding onto resentments, letting them smolder into even bigger aggravations, could be a worse problem than his overprotectiveness. Mostly because I sometimes did the same thing. Thirty-five years had passed, and I still hadn’t forgiven my father for being a prime bastard.
More than my worries about the man who wanted to marry me, though, I longed to see the faeries. Wonder filled me such creatures were more than the stuff of myth and legend.
Now that I knew it was there, even I could feel oddball magic—quite different from shifter emanations—filling the headland. I sniffed, picking out goldenseal, rosemary, cloves, and perhaps allspice. The scents were piquant and didn’t carry the soothing quality I was used to from shifter magic.
“Get back here!” Ylon ordered Katya and Johan.
She turned to face the line of grim-faced shifters with power
glistening around them. “It’s the Sidhe. Johan and I ran into them. Possibly by accident. Or not. Given they’re here, I vote for the ‘or not’ option.”
“We didn’t hear that tale,” Nikolai said.
“I’m sure Kon didn’t think it worth the telling,” Katya retorted. “Neither of us believed they’d actually show up.”
“Why not?” Yle frowned. “Doesn’t cost much magic to teleport anywhere on the same world.”
Katya cast a sideways glance at a spot magic brightened the marine air. It didn’t look anything like a gateway to me yet, but I trusted her assessment.
“Because,” she replied, “neither Kon nor I have ever known the Daoine Sidhe to leave the UK. Something about the Dreaming feeds their power. I don’t believe they can travel too far from it, or they will fade.”
“Pfft. You picked that up from one of your lore books,” Ylon said.
Katya nodded affably. “Indeed I did, but I’ve never seen one beyond the British Isles. Have you?”
“No, but we shall find out soon enough,” Yle said and ran lightly toward the shiny place that was growing outward.
I positioned myself next to Johan and Katya. What would the faery folk look like? Would they be tiny? Decked out in precious jewels? Did they have wings?
“Right on one, wrong on one, and the third can go either way,” my bondmate piped up.
“You’ve seen them?”
“Of course. They’re arrogant as hell, not prone to hiding themselves away.”
They sounded exactly like dragons, but I held that thought to myself and buried it deep.
The glistening place morphed from sparkles to a gateway in seconds. Four men and one woman marched through. I realized my mouth was hanging open and shut it fast, hopefully before anyone noticed I was gawking like an idiot.
Dripping with gold, silver, and gemstones, the faeries were so beautiful it was a chore to look at them. More than the eye could take in, actually. Masses of golden hair shot with silver and bronze fluffed around them. The woman’s fell nearly to her feet. Fawn-colored robes sashed in a rainbow of colors covered their tall, regal figures. They were barefoot, but the icy earth didn’t appear to bother them.
