by Ann Gimpel
“Brother! Where are you?” Katya’s voice reverberated through his chest.
“Close to home. Why?”
“Meet us in the library. We found…something.”
“Even I heard that,” Erin said. “Let’s find out what it is.”
“I shall sit in,” Ylon announced.
Konstantin muffled an urge to tell the dinosaur to wait elsewhere. But either they were allies. Or not. You didn’t bar your partners from key bits of information from the source. He walked faster.
What the hell had his sister unearthed? Whatever it was, he’d bet his last farthing—if he still had a use for coins—his bondmate already knew what it was. The beast had been uncharacteristically quiet, hovering on the edge of not being there at all.
Clearly, he wanted an escape hatch in case Kon peppered him with questions he didn’t want to answer.
Dragon Time
Hello again! Konstantin’s dragon here. I won’t take up much of your time, but we have a MATE! I can’t believe it. In truth, I won’t believe it until the deed is actually done, but Erin is a woman of her word.
She said she would be ours, and I believe her.
I feel a little bit bad—not much, mind you, since dragons rarely retreat or apologize—for all the times I told my bondmate he was a bloody coward for not picking a partner for us.
I paraded any number of potential dragons in front of him through the years. Naturally, they were females who appealed to me. I may even have sampled the wares a time or two. Just a wee bit of dabbling, mind you, nothing that would have committed Konstantin and me. None of the females were paired with humans yet, but that’s the easy part. Or it used to be. I still haven’t quite gotten over how difficult Erin’s transition to dragon shifter was. I’ve made a couple of trips back to my world since then and spoken with others.
Dragons older even than me. They listened carefully as I described the events surrounding both Erin and Johan’s transformations, asking for clarification several times.
The consensus was that magic has been dying out of all the worlds for a very long time. We didn’t notice because the shift was gradual. And because the idea of magic vanishing was so farfetched, we discarded it out of hand. Hindsight is a great leveler, though, and all of us feel really stupid. Not that we could have done much to stem the tide, even if we had been paying closer attention.
Or perhaps we could have at least slowed the loss down. It’s one of those things where after you pass a certain point, all you can do is stand back and watch and hope to hell it’s not as bad as you fear.
I’ve considered talking with Konstantin, but he has a lot on his mind. He already recognizes worlds are dying at an unprecedented pace, but I don’t believe he’s connected the dots. By that I mean, he hasn’t assigned a lack of magic as the primary reason worlds have been giving up.
He’s a smart man. Eventually, he’ll see the connection. I haven’t pushed it because, as I said, there’s not much we can do to alter the downhill slide.
Not that dragons will vanish. At least I hope we don’t. Before, I’d always assumed we’d retreat to some other world. One where magic was fresher. We could still do that, but it will only stave off the inevitable.
And now, I’m being uncharacteristically pessimistic. I don’t know what the future holds, not with any greater degree of clarity than any other dragon. Katya’s beast is a seer, much like her. I’ve done a bit of subtle digging, feeding her the odd question here and there. Just to see if she knows more than me.
Either she’s been purposefully obtuse, or there’s nothing to tell.
Like everything else, magic ebbs and flows. We might simply be at one of the lower points, and things will turn around. After one of our recent discussions back home on our world, a trio of dragons approached Y Ddraigh Goch. They had to track him down on a distant borderworld, and he wasn’t pleased to be disturbed. Turns out it was the place he’d sequestered his children who were maimed by sea serpents. Anyway, he left off doctoring his spawn long enough to tell our contingent to leave.
If our god knows anything—and it’s difficult to believe he doesn’t understand more than we do—he’s not in a sharing mood. I’m certain he blames himself for the havoc the serpents are causing. And he must be beside himself that dragons—a few, not many—have joined ranks with the exiled monsters.
Interesting I felt the need to put that caveat in. The one about only a few dragons signing on with our sorcerous kinsmen. It makes me feel better, but even a single dragon defector would stick in our god’s craw like a cancer.
Mine too.
When the group of dragons I was chewing the fat with back on our world got through being annoyed our god was so closemouthed, we spoke of other things. And came up with a few facts I’m pretty sure are true. Remember what I said about magic growing weaker? Well, we believe it’s why the serpents have lost their immortality in their human bodies.
Konstantin thought someone was angry and had punished the serpents, but it’s probably not as much of a reprisal as he believes. After Y Ddraigh Goch stripped our cousins of their wings, he also diluted their magic. Because of that, they’re more susceptible to a generalized decrease in the magic flowing through all worlds. Less juice to tap into means their depleted power would be even weaker.
It’s also why Faery is fading. Oberon is convinced the land is holding out on him, doling out power in dribs and drabs, but she may not have any more to give than what he’s tapping into. Since all of Faery is rooted in the Dreaming, and it’s encased in Earth’s force field, everything is woven together. I hope the Celtic gods understand what’s happening. They hold an enormous amount of power. If they could get it pointed in the same direction, they might make a difference…
But I digress. This is about dragons, something I know a lot about. Not about the faeries, where the sum total of my knowledge is conjecture.
The other problem my small group of dragons tackled was why the hell any dragon in his—or her—right mind would have anything to do with our slimy, deceitful, erstwhile kin. That question was a whole lot harder than why serpents had lost their immortality.
We came up with a few possibilities. The leading candidate was that there’s a synergistic aspect to blending magics. Such has always been true. The dragons who linked their magical reservoirs to serpent power would have become stronger. I can see where stronger would have an appeal.
I can’t be the only dragon to have a sneaky hunch about our future not being as bright as the past. Maybe those traitors are hedging their bets. They might not view the serpents as anything beyond added fuel to line their tanks.
The other reason we came up with was resentment. Dragons are masters at nurturing antipathy. Over eons it turns to bitterness. And anger. Many of my kin believed Y Ddraigh Goch overreacted when he stripped the sea-serpents of their wings and exiled them. While they would have supported banishment for the group who’d actually tortured the god’s children, assigning the sins of a few to the many was seen as Draconian and overkill. As our god taking the crime far too personally. Because of Konstantin’s close association with Y Ddraigh Goch, he was painted with the same brush.
When he led a flight to Earth, it lacked the cohesion needed to flourish. I probably should have spoken up, shared my observations with my bondmate, but I kept hoping I was wrong. We’d gotten a new start on a new world. Surely, the malcontents would put their ill will behind them.
Never happened.
Always strained, interactions among the flight grew gradually worse. I was relieved when the other dragons left because I assumed we’d be right behind them. I’ve always hated Earth. Eh, perhaps hate is too strong a term. Dragons need a spot we can fly free without creating havoc. Earth was never an optimal choice for us, but it worsened over time. During the era when we arrived, men were wonderfully superstitious and still clung to their belief in magic.
When a lot of humans hold magic dear, it strengthens us.
You know what happ
ened. Magic faded from the minds of men, replaced by one scientific theory after another. Science and magic are incompatible. As I think on it, perhaps humankind’s headlong leap into science is responsible for magic’s decline.
It’s hard to tell which came first with these things. Nor does it matter. We have about as much chance of force-feeding humans magic as we have of winning the sea-serpent war without outside help.
There. I said it. It’s the last item I want to touch on, and then I’ll turn this back over to Konstantin and the others. They’re far more capable of sharing their story than I am.
We won our first real battle because the Sidhe fought next to us. Conjoined magics are strongest, and between dragon and faery power, we killed serpents. A lot of them. Without the necessity of luring them into their human forms. The battle cost the Sidhe dearly. Oberon was doing his damnedest to save face, but he and his warriors didn’t have another skirmish in them. Not without a good long time sucking tit in the Dreaming to replenish themselves. Which circles back to a big unknown: does the Dreaming contain enough magic to restore all those Sidhe?
My off-the-talon guess is it doesn’t. Earth would need to cooperate, and from what I’ve seen of the land lately, she’s like a sulky bitch in heat who discovered having sex won’t soothe the ache in her soul.
The Sidhe are gone. I have no idea if they’ll return. A good big bunch of the shifters left too, under the guise of needing to hunt. I believe they’re hungry, but I have no idea if they’ll show back up here. Konstantin gave them an out. And it’s an honest one. This isn’t their war. Not on the surface. If you scratch down a bit, though, it’s everyone’s war. If we have to abandon Earth, the serpents will set up shop here.
They’ll strengthen themselves on human carnage and engineer a plan to capture what magic is left in the net binding all worlds together. They could live for a long time if they kept all the magic for themselves.
A very long time. While the rest of us gradually—or not so gradually—died out.
So there it is. We must find a way to win. For that, we will require divine aid. Our god. Other shifter gods. The Celts. Historically, none of them have lifted wing, finger, claw, or tail to intervene in what they consider mortal affairs. And by that, I don’t mean human. To our gods, we’re the mortals in their equations.
The bright spot, of course, is Konstantin and I finally have a mate. But if we can’t get on top of our other problems, we won’t have untold millennia to fly with her. Usually, I spare him my thoughts and opinions. It’s how our bond is constructed. I know everything in his mind but am careful about what I share of my own thoughts.
No more.
Particularly after the land made a ham-handed bid to harm Erin, I owe my bondmate honesty. I shall talk with him and hold nothing back. Perhaps something I say will help as he decides what to do next.
You’ll see me once more at the very end. As I’ve said before, we dragons like to have the last word. Let us hope I bear better news then. For all our sakes.
Erin
The spot where the pendant hung against my breastbone throbbed warmly, almost as if the likeness of Arianrhod were alive. And she approved of my choice. Anything was possible. The necklace had been part of Konstantin’s hoard for a long while. Perhaps his magic had imbued all his treasures with dragon enchantment.
I still couldn’t quite believe I’d said I’d become his mate. But the unsettled place that had dogged me ever since his initial request had quieted. I wouldn’t exactly say anything as schmaltzy as a sense of peace descended, but the internal push-and-pull about what I was going to do was gone.
I chalk my reticence up to my lifelong avoidance of commitments. I never wanted a husband. Or children. I had such a crap childhood, I didn’t want to chance screwing up the next generation with my nonexistent parenting skills. You learn those things by example, right?
Well, I never had any. Scratch that. I had a shit ton of parenting examples, all of them bad.
It’s kind of tough to shelve a twenty-year history of pushing men who wanted to get closer aside. Konstantin was persistent. I guess I assumed once we were having more-or-less-regular sex—minus intercourse—he’d back off. Sex is what men want, and sex without strings seems to satisfy a whole lot of them. Not him, though.
I figured the moment I said I’d marry him—mate with him, whatever—he’d be all over me. I was ready. Oral sex and digital penetration only go so far. I’d had some pretty graphic fantasies about that lovely appendage of his sunk inside me. Instead, he treated me like a precious jewel and took me to his hoard.
If my beast hadn’t told me, I’d never have known how unusual that is. Even for mates, dragons often draw the line at hoard sharing. Perhaps once I’ve begun collecting my own stash, I’ll understand more. But my bondmate made it abundantly clear Konstantin had offered us an almost unprecedented honor.
I’d selected a gorgeous piece of jewelry—or maybe it selected me. Once it was securely around my neck, I was looking forward to screwing Konstantin’s brains out. Best laid plans, and all that.
Despite drowning in unslaked lust, I admit to curiosity about whatever Katya and Johan had unearthed. Maybe it will be something that will actually help us put the serpent hassles behind us.
I’m used to human wars. The ones with bombs and planes and people dying on all sides. Usually, there are clear-cut winners, but not always. I was certain we’d won a definitive victory saving all those people on that cruise ship. Until I discovered one was infected with hemorrhagic fever, a disease that will likely wipe out all of them with even more efficiency than the serpents would have.
For a scant moment, I wondered if the serpents would have fallen ill if we hadn’t intervened when they were busily chomping through passengers. We probably wouldn’t have gotten that lucky. Part of immortal must be immunity from lethal disease. Off on a medical tangent, I thought about vaccines and whether incubating deadly viruses and bacteria with dragon shifter blood could create something that would protect humans from illnesses that had no cure.
We’d reached the double stone doors leading inside. Ylon and Konstantin had been deep in conversation while my mind wandered. Within me, my beast basked contentedly. The way she viewed the world, we now had our first piece for our very own hoard. She assumed I’d prioritize adding to it. Once I staked out a private location.
I let her savor her fantasies and stifled a grin. I dreamed of hot sex. She dreamed of gold. We both hated serpents. Perhaps she and I did, indeed, have the stuff to go the distance.
The doors swung open. No one touched them, so I assume Kon gave them a magical shove. I hadn’t yet gotten to the point where my use of magic was second nature. Especially for simple things like opening doors, my fallback position was to do it the old-fashioned way.
We clattered down several sets of stairs, our bare feet slapping the stone steps as we went. When we got to the great room, I saw that the illusory wall hiding the library was down. Johan and Katya sat next to one another, heads bent over a large book with a cracked and peeling leather binding that had once been a deep brown.
My sensitive dragon nose caught a whiff of fresh sex. I was jealous. Johan and Katya had made time for a quickie. All Kon and I would have needed was an extra half hour or so. Not that it would have been nearly long enough, but it would have been a starting point. We’d done enough necking and petting, we knew each other’s bodies fairly well.
“There you are.” Katya moved the book carefully into Johan’s lap and got to her feet.
I dragged my lust-saturated brain out of the gutter and took a closer look at the book. I could see why she’d been so careful. The pages were cracked vellum. And they looked so fragile, a stray breath might be all it would take to lose half a page of the spidery script penned in faded reddish ink.
Christ! Had the book been scribed in blood? Nostrils flaring, I scented the air for something other than pheromones and didn’t find much. If whoever wrote the book had used his own blood,
it happened too long ago to verify.
Katya brushed dirt out of her twin’s hair and turned to rake her sharp gaze over me. “Why do both of you have muck in your hair?”
“It’s a long story, Sister. Let’s just say the land is throwing a brass balls fit. My guess is the Celts did something to enable the faery court to move the Dreaming.”
“How is that your fault?” Katya arched one copper brow.
“I didn’t say Earth’s reaction was logical. Not all worlds are like Mu. She trusted me, probably because Mu was the dragon shifters’ home world. She knew us, had watched us for countless generations. Earth reminds me of a woman who’s had one too many men take advantage of her. Rather than evaluating each new suitor on his merits, she’s lumping us all together as bastards out to exploit her.”
“Mmph. At least you are unharmed. Not buried beneath tons of dirt.” Johan had laid the book aside and scrambled to his feet as well.
“Yes, that is the most important part,” Ylon chimed in.
“I take it your most recent discussion with Earth did not go well?” Johan asked.
“You mean our non-discussion,” Konstantin corrected him. “No. She refused to talk with me.”
“And then Kon was pretty blunt,” I said.
“Good.” Ylon narrowed his silver eyes. “She needs to hear the truth. Probably many times, but today will be a start.”
Konstantin knelt next to the book Johan and Katya had been pouring over. “Wherever did you find this?” he asked.
“It was the oddest thing”—Katya crouched next to him—“I was looking for source materials on the beginnings of magic through all the worlds, and the book just showed up.”
I did a double take. “What? As in floated through the air, and—?”
Katya shook her head. “I’d been looking through the far bank of shelves along with Johan. When I grew discouraged, I turned around, and the book was sitting on the desk. As if had been there all along, except I knew differently.”
