He sent a sideways glance outside, a quick evil look, then flung the flaming cloth with enough force that it slapped a nearby Goblin in the face.
“Two birds, one stone.” He shrugged when Pia stared at him. He watched with interest as the screaming started.
The Goblin ran in erratic circles, slapping at his flaming face and howling. The fire refused to die. Instead, fueled by his Power, the magic of the land and whatever was in her blood, it spread to the leather armor. Pia turned away from the gruesome sight. She covered her ears and buried her face in his chest. He cupped the back of her head and watched as the Goblin fell down and died.
Payback was a beautiful bitch. She was also a good friend of his, and they were just getting started.
There were twenty Goblins left after the two Dragos had killed. Before long they were joined by another dozen. The newcomers switched places with the ones that had been hauling the flatbed. The pace picked up.
After Dragos pushed the distorted car out in a few more carefully chosen places, they could move around a little more inside and make themselves more or less comfortable. Then he focused his attention on what was going on outside.
She had watched with wide eyes as he had bent the jagged ends of metal around her legs so she didn’t cut herself again when she moved. That was some kind of scary strength he had. She fished around in the cramped, alien area at her feet and managed to find a battered bottle of water that hadn’t been punctured. They shared half of it in sips; then she capped the rest for later.
She had no doubt that Dragos had saved her life in more ways than one. She was grateful he had been able to stop her bleeding by sealing her cuts. He told her it was a form of cauterization except he was able to keep her from feeling the pain. It was too bad that was the extent of his healing skills, because her body ached all over.
She peeked out now and then, staring around in awe at the landscape that was so like and yet unlike the part of Earth she knew. The fluid roll of hills, burgeoning blue-green foliage, shards of sunlight sparking off crystal veins in granite boulders, the scenes they passed veiled some invisible truth that was so essential, so palpable, she could swear she could almost scoop it out of the air with both hands. Some long-denied, starved part of her soul unfurled and wailed with the need to drink from it.
Was it the magic of the Other land that called to her? Was it the ancient canny wildness of forest that had seen no woodsman’s axe, no farmer’s plow, that reminded her of her deepest self, the wild creature that lived trapped within the inadequate cage of her weak, half-breed flesh?
She wanted to cut at herself to let the poor creature out. The upsurge of desperate emotion was so violent, so uncontained, the part of her that was civilized with language and culture shrank away from it. An impulse ghosted through her to try to tell Dragos about the frenzy teeming inside, but civilization and language failed her in the end. She did not understand what she felt and so she remained silent.
As powerfully as the land called to her, the Goblins freaked her out, so she didn’t look outside too often. She chose instead to lie back in her broken seat and stare in thought at the mangled roof as she tried to explore the mysterious landscape she found inside herself. She became convinced the Goblins were the source of the dread that clung to her. The feeling crawled along her skin like baby spiders.
There were other layers to the mélange of contradicting, complicated emotions. Shock from the crash lingered. Fear clung, along with anxiety about what would happen next. Excitement welled that she was actually in an Other place.
Dragos existed at the center of all of it. He was her one point of stable reference, her compass point, true north.
His dark bronze skin seemed more intense, his inky hair more glossy, the gold of his eyes more burnished than it had been before. She wondered if it was an effect of the magic-saturated land, or if it was a side effect of the Elven poison working its way out of his system. Perhaps both.
She studied his dangerous face as he reclined on one shoulder and watched what happened outside. His gold eyes were calculating, and he kept the Goblin sword he had captured ready against his side.
She weighed the odds. On one hand, thirty or forty armed Goblins, give or take. On the other hand, one seriously pissed-off dragon. She thought of the enormous strength in those hands as he reshaped the metal near her legs. Maybe she was biased, but those Goblins were toast.
The trick would be how and when he was going to toast them.
“The problem is me,” she said, pitching her voice low like he’d told her to.
“What are you talking about,” he said in a soft voice, only half paying attention to her.
“Just like it was when the Elves had you surrounded. You wouldn’t fight them because I was in the way.” That got his full attention. She felt calm and clear. “I bet you could have gotten yourself out of the wreck probably well before we crossed over.”
“Speculation like that is useless,” he told her, frowning.
“Maybe you could have gotten free of the wreck before the Goblins even got the car onto the flatbed, right?” she persisted. “You didn’t, though, because of me. I’m holding you back.”
“Let’s be clear on something,” he said. “I don’t know what the hell you are. We’re adding that to a growing list of things for that conversation we’re going have when we get out of here. But one thing you’re not is a problem. Let’s say you are a tactical consideration.”
“Tactical consideration,” she huffed. “What does that mean?”
“It means you factor into the decisions I make. Stop fretting.” He flicked her nose with a forefinger. “Looks like we’re coming to our destination.”
She propped herself up on her elbows and looked out. They had been traveling for a long time. She wasn’t sure how long, because she had heard time moved at a different pace in Other lands. The sun had lowered until it looked like late afternoon or early evening, but if she went with what her body clock was telling her, it felt like they had been trapped into that awful wreck for an entire day.
The land had gotten rockier and wilder since she’d last peered out. Ahead against the bottom of a bluff was a grim-looking stone . . . fortress? Wow, she’d never seen a fortress before. A couple Goblins broke off and jogged ahead of the main group. Anxiety got the upper hand of all the other emotions in her mélange. Her stomach clenched.
Dragos’s hand settled on her shoulder in a firm, steady grip. “You listen to me,” he whispered. “You are going to do as I say. Do you understand? Now is not the time to argue or disobey me. I am the expert here. Got it?”
She nodded. She focused on regulating her breathing as her gaze clung to his.
“Here’s what you’re not going to do,” he whispered, looking deep into her eyes. “Do not draw any attention to yourself whatsoever. Do not give them a reason to believe you’re anything but incidental. Do not look them in the eyes. To a Goblin, that’s a sign of aggression. Do not speak to them. Do not struggle. Do you understand?”
“I think so,” she whispered back. That galloping horse was back in her chest. The way things had gone this last week, she’d lost ten years off her life from stress.
“Here’s what I think is going to happen. They’re going to separate us. They might hurt you.” His grip tightened to the point of pain. “They won’t kill you. They’ll have seen I was tending to you in some way, so they’ll want to use you as leverage to control me. Goblins have no interest in human women. They won’t rape you.”
A spasm of trembling hit her, and then it was gone again and she was calm. “It’s all right,” she told him. “I’m all right. I’m glad you’re telling me this.”
“That’s my good brave girl.” He let go of her shoulder and brushed his knuckles against her cheek.
“That’s pretty patronizing,” she said, refusing to acknowledge how her idiotic heart had swelled at his words. It seemed pretty clear by now she had no sense or good taste.
He gave he
r an impatient shrug. “So?”
Just like that she cracked up. His raptor’s gaze narrowed. She clapped both hands over her mouth to muffle the noise and sobered fast. “This is still about that penny, isn’t it?” she said into her palms.
“This is about the fucking penny,” he agreed. “I think it was used to put a tracking spell on me, much like the one we used on you. I don’t sense any real Power here yet, but I bet our orchestrator of events is on his way. It’s all the more reason you must not draw attention to yourself.”
“I won’t.”
He looked out. “Almost there now. If they’re thinking what I hope they are, they don’t know I could have gotten out. From their point of view, it must have looked like I’ve been trying to get free. I’m hoping they have underestimated me.”
Another wave of adrenaline hit. Her system was so overloaded it was starting to make her feel high. She thought back over what had happened and nodded.
“That’s it. You keep your head down, keep quiet and survive.” His gaze was fierce. “I will come after you.”
They started to slow. She couldn’t bring herself to look out. “How close do you think you are to throwing off the last of the poison?” She forced the question out of throat muscles that had locked up.
“It might take a day, maybe two. It helps we crossed over and the land magic is so abundant here.”
A day or two. In some ways not long at all. In other ways, a lifetime.
All of this was about her. She stole the penny, she was the one he came after, and she was the one who got him shot by the Elves. He held himself back from escaping from the wreckage to help her. He still wasn’t going to fight when they stopped, because she was around.
He has to wait until I’m out of the way. It’s so I don’t get killed. Maybe now we’ve come so far he’s got to wait until he’s healed. It’s going to be a race, between how fast he can get free and how fast the Power that arranged his capture can get here.
The emotion that welled at that was indescribable.
“I think you’re my hero,” she said. Only half kidding.
He stared at her, the picture of incredulity. “Most people,” he said, “think I am a very bad man.”
She studied his eyes to try to find out if that bothered him. He didn’t seem bothered by it. He seemed discomfited by her. “Well,” she said at last, “maybe you’re a very good dragon.”
The flatbed stopped. Showtime.
She kept crouched down as she peered out the wreckage. A Goblin had stepped out of a black metal gate. She had seen pictures of Goblins before but the drawings and sketches hadn’t managed to capture their robust vigor. The real ones were not only hideous but powerfully built. The language they spoke to one another was choppy, guttural and harsh. As a few came closer, she realized how bad they stank.
Still, there was something different about this Goblin, an air of authority. He held ropes of black chains with manacles. He strode closer to them but stopped a prudent distance away. He stank too.
They were altogether repulsive, and somehow she was supposed to let them put their hands on her. Another convulsive shiver hit. In a move unseen by the Goblins, below their line of sight, Dragos put a hand on her knee. She covered it with hers.
“Buck up,” she whispered to him. “Don’t be such a wuss.”
His hand clenched and his shoulders shuddered. She hoped she made him laugh again.
The Goblin that had approached said something to them. Chop chop chop. Dragos answered him in the same awful language. Chop chop.
They went back and forth a few more times. Then the Goblin stepped closer and threw the shackles. Dragos reached outside and caught them. He pulled them into the wreck. They made a lot more sense to him than they did to her because he sorted them deftly.
The dread had become so strong it was nauseating. Some of it was coming from the chains. They reeked of some kind of horrible magic.
Dragos bent and locked a manacle to one of his ankles. She hissed, “Stop! What are you doing? Don’t put those on!”
“Shut up,” he snapped. He locked a second manacle to his other ankle.
She grabbed his arm. “Dragos, there’s some kind of bad magic in those!”
He whipped around and snarled at her, eyes blazing.
She flinched and cowered from him. Her thoughts flatlined.
He finished putting the other two manacles on his thick wrists and held them up so that the Goblin could see. The Goblin nodded and shouted to the others who swarmed forward.
When they started prying the ruined doors off the car, she curled into a fetal position and closed her eyes.
EIGHT
What followed next was ugly. She couldn’t say she hadn’t been warned.
They dragged her out of the wreckage first. She kept her gaze trained on the ground as one punched her in the stomach. When she lay curled on the ground trying to breathe, they kicked her. Over and over again hard-toed boots slammed into her, interspersed with harsh Goblin laughter as they taunted Dragos, until she no longer kept silent because it was the smart thing to do. She was silent because she couldn’t get in a deep enough breath to scream.
She caught one blurred glimpse of Dragos standing in the grip of two Goblins every bit as huge as he was. His aggressive, dangerous face was blank, gold eyes as reflective and emotionless as two Greek coins.
A lifetime later, several Goblins with drawn swords walked Dragos through the squat stone fortress. One Goblin grabbed her by the hair and followed behind them. Another brought up the rear, still kicking at her now and then, although without much interest.
The group of Goblins guarding Dragos marched him into a cell. Her Goblins passed it by, down to an intersection in the corridor and to the right. Once they were out of Dragos’s line of sight, their manner became businesslike and uninterested. They took her by the arms and dragged her into another cell. They threw her onto a pile of rancid straw.
One Goblin said something. Chop chop. The other laughed. They left and the grate of a key sounded in the cell door lock. Sounds faded from the corridor.
She lay on the horrid straw for a while. Then she crawled a few feet, then collapsed and lay on chill, dirty flagstones. She may have blacked out. She wasn’t sure. The next thing she became aware of was a blue-black beetle walking across the floor.
She tracked its progress. It fell headlong into a crack and got stuck. She dragged herself over and watched it some more. It managed to get turned around so its little head poked out of the crack. Feelers waved and its front legs worked, but it couldn’t get enough purchase to crawl out.
Her fingers crept across the floor until they found some straw. She took a shallow handful. She wiggled the ends deep into the crack and lifted up. The beetle popped out and waddled on its way.
When it disappeared, she sighed, rolled over onto her back and levered herself into a sitting position. Her thinking came back online.
Do one thing at a time. Take one step.
She crawled to the wall. Step.
She got first one foot underneath her, then the other. Step.
She straightened her shoulders. When she was pretty sure she had her balance back, she opened the locked cell door and walked out.
The dragon lay spread-eagled where they had bound him. He was chained twice, first with the magical black shackles. The second set was attached in four points to the floor. He stared at the ceiling, thoughts weaving in a serpentine path. Every few minutes he would pull at the floor chains. He ignored his bleeding ankles and wrists. He could feel a weakness growing in the chain on his left arm and concentrated on that.
His cell door opened. He turned his head, the serpentine path turning lethal.
A battered, filthy Pia backed into the room, and Dragos became sane.
He began to shake. He watched her listening at the cracked door for a few moments before she pulled the door shut. She turned around. When she caught sight of him, her shoulders sagged.
“Oh,
for crying out loud.” She rolled her eyes. “Two sets of manacles? Now I suppose we need two sets of keys. This day keeps getting better and better.”
“Come here,” he said. He gave the chain anchoring his left arm an enormous wrench. The chain groaned but didn’t break. “Come here. Come here.”
She cocked her head, her weary gaze becoming very sober. She limped across the cell and collapsed to her knees beside him. “They beat you too,” she said. She touched his ribs with a light gentle hand.
His shaking increased. Talking to her before the Goblins took her had been easy. He had explained to her with his usual calm ruthlessness how he thought things might go. Overall she had seemed to take it well. He approached the confrontation as he always did, ready and focused to meet any upcoming challenge.
Then that first Goblin had driven his fist into her stomach, and he had gone bat-shit crazy. Every kick, every blow she suffered was like corrosive acid in his veins. He wanted to howl and rage. The dragon strained to rip their hearts from their chests while they watched.
He had clung to his self-control by the merest thread, by the realization of how much worse it could get for her if they got the reaction out of him they were searching for.
They hurt her. They hurt her, and that hurt him inside somewhere, in a place he had never been hurt before. He had sustained physical injury and pain many times before. It meant little to him. But this new hurt—he was in shock. He had never realized just how invincible he had been until it was ripped away from him.
He studied her with a hungry gaze as she knelt beside him. The brightness of her hair was dulled with dirt. Her tattered T-shirt was now gray, and the shortened capri jeans were no longer blue. Her pallid skin was mottled all over with swollen bruises so deep they were a purple black.
And underneath everything, all of it, was remembering how just before it happened, he had made her cower from him. He had never before hated himself, but he thought he did at that moment.