Marco soared into the sky, thinking furiously of what he should do. He heard the crowd roaring behind him, and he heard Melissa’s cry of anguish.
He was shaken to his very marrow that the darkfire could have betrayed him like this and unable to even think straight.
Rafferty was injured, perhaps fatally so. His guardian, mentor and friend might die, because of his mistake.
It was up to Marco to make this mistake come right.
Marco closed his eyes, exhaled and used the treacherous darkfire to journey immediately to the home of the Apothecary of the Pyr.
* * *
“It’s Mum!” Isabelle shouted, racing through the loft apartment in Chicago. She flung herself onto one of the leather couches in the main space and Zoë was right behind her. The younger girl snatched up the remote and turned on the television, and Eileen heard Melissa’s measured tones.
“I’m Melissa Smith and we’re here on Easter Island. There was a sighting last week of dragons taking flight from the island, early one morning.”
Eileen came out of the kitchen and perched on the end of the couch with the girls. The familiar pictures were now being displayed as Melissa spoke. She made no mention of Maeve O’Neill and Eileen didn’t blame her.
“Do you know them?” Zoë asked Erik as he joined them. He folded his arms across his chest and didn’t answer, his gaze locked on the television. He was still pale and even more forbidding than usual.
Zoë studied her father for a moment, then took his mood in stride, turning back to the television.
“These images were taken by a tourist, who has joined me here on the island again today. Welcome, Peg McKay. Can you tell us what it was like that morning? What did you see first, and how did you feel about it?”
“Well, as I told Maeve O’Neill, we were terrified, of course…”
As Peg repeated her story, obviously reveling in the attention, the camera widened the view. In the distance could be seen an opal and gold dragon, flying closer with leisurely speed. The sunlight glinted on his scales and he looked so majestic that Eileen found herself smiling in admiration.
“Dad!” Isabelle said with delight. “Rock it, Dad!” She and Zoë bumped fists then turned to watch again.
“Why do we even have a Covenant?’ Erik muttered with irritation. “How many videos does this make now? The two of Thorolf, the one of Rafferty and Thorolf battling Magnus during Rafferty’s firestorm, the one of these new Slayers consuming one of their own, the one of Drake trying to rescue his mate with the Dragon Legion but being fought by Jorge and the Slayers…”
“The one of you and the Slayers from last week, Dad,” Zoë contributed. “Don’t forget that one.”
Her father’s gaze simmered. “Rafferty in London during his firestorm,” he added, trying to hide his annoyance that the girls were recalling that he had been filmed as well. Eileen knew it annoyed him.
“Plus the one of you, Sloane and Brandt closing the Thames Barrier during Dad’s firestorm,” Isabelle added.
“Melissa’s first television special,” Erik continued.
“You know Rafferty won’t shift on camera,” she chided. “He’s supporting his spouse, defending the Pyr and keeping the Covenant.”
Erik gave her a dark look for that. “I still don’t like it.”
“You never do.” Eileen gestured to the television. “If he makes the distinction clear between Pyr and Slayer, it wouldn’t hurt your PR. Maeve sure isn’t doing you any favors.” The camera panned the crowd, many of whom had placards calling for the Pyr to die.
Too late, Eileen wished the girls hadn’t seen that.
“They won’t listen,” Erik replied and scowled at the television. “Humans have an infuriating ability to see only what they want to see.”
Eileen propped a hand on her hip. “And we can’t say that about the Pyr, can we?” she demanded and might have said more, but there was a commotion on the screen. She pivoted in time to see blue-green light crackling all around Rafferty’s body, even as he twitched convulsively. He lost the rhythm of his flight and his body started to fall. Melissa cried out, even as Isabella and Zoë did. The girls fell on their knees in front of the television, transfixed. Erik was on his feet, shimmering on the cusp of change.
A dark dragon swooped in from off-camera, a familiar crystal clutched in his claw.
“The stolen darkfire crystal,” Erik whispered. “It’s alight again.”
“Is that Marco?” Eileen asked and felt her partner’s nod as much as she saw it.
Isabelle started to cry and Eileen reached to reassure her. Erik caught his breath as Rafferty began to shimmer with blue light. Eileen knew Erik feared that Rafferty’s human identity would be revealed. Marco flew directly for Rafferty and blocked him from view, either by accident or design. He then flew straight up and away from the island, Rafferty in his grasp.
He glittered with the blue-green light of darkfire against the morning sky, then disappeared, as surely as if he’d never been.
“Just like the other ones!” Peg cried, and Erik turned off the sound.
Isabelle screamed and threw herself at the television. Melissa was talking quickly, her agitation apparent as she tried to end the broadcast. She was holding her ear and looking distressed, the conflict in her posture telling Eileen that her producer was demanding that she not stop broadcasting.
Even though she’d seen her husband shot.
Erik sat down heavily, his shock clear. “Marco’s abducted Rafferty,” he whispered, his gaze lifting to Eileen. She could see how badly shaken he was. “Who could have anticipated such a betrayal?”
Eileen hugged Isabelle close and worried. If Marco and the darkfire had turned against the Pyr, were they doomed to lose the war?
* * *
Thorolf was running his regular class in Bangkok, teaching kids and women how to defend themselves with simple physical moves. He liked showing the people in his neighborhood how to keep themselves safe. He’d done it in New York and he continued doing it here. There were some in his informal class who had been abused in intimate relationships, and he liked watching their confidence grow in steady increments.
His lessons had started organically, when the little lady who lived below them had been robbed and had come to the door asking for help. Thorolf had thought she had wanted the perpetrator hunted down and injured, but she wanted to make sure it didn’t happen again.
Chandra had taught her some moves—and Thorolf had hunted down the perpetrator—and slowly word had gotten around. As Chandra had become more visibly pregnant, Thorolf had taken over the classes. As the number of students grew, they’d rented a hall from a martial arts school to hold the classes. Cops were sending people to them now, because Chandra and Thorolf taught for free. It had cemented their relationship with their human neighbors and Thorolf found it incredibly rewarding.
The regular class also helped him to keep from fussing over Chandra, who didn’t always welcome his protectiveness. He was terrified by her pregnancy, not only because it was the result of their firestorm and her condition was thus his fault, but because he couldn’t imagine being without her. That Chandra wasn’t inclined to take it easy didn’t help. He didn’t want to argue with her when she was pregnant, but she seemed to forget that she wasn’t an immortal goddess anymore, never mind one who had been able to do pretty much anything imaginable.
On this day, there were three kids in the back who weren’t paying attention. They were huddled around a cell phone, whispering and distracting the class.
“Hey, if you don’t want to practice today, take it outside,” Thorolf said.
One of the kids pointed the cell phone at him, as if he’d fire it like a weapon.
Thorolf stopped cold, remembering how Marco had fired the darkfire crystal, just like that. “What are you watching?”
“A dragon getting his ass kicked,” the biggest kid said.
Unfortunately, they were also learning English from Thorolf and he res
olved—again—to clean up his language.
The video didn’t help.
“Can I see, please?” he asked.
The kid came to Thorolf and proudly displayed the screen. The video played again, and Thorolf’s heart sank to his toes. Rafferty had been shot down by the darkfire crystal, and on camera! It wasn’t clear who had shot the crystal, but when Marco appeared, he had it in one claw. He snatched up Rafferty, soared high into the air, and disappeared.
“What the fuck,” Thorolf whispered and the kids immediately began to echo his words.
“Poof,” said the kid with the phone “He’s taking him somewhere else to kick his sorry dragon ass.”
Where was Marco taking Rafferty?
Had he really shot him?
There was no one else who could shoot a darkfire crystal, well, except Liz.
Had she done it? Thorolf couldn’t believe it.
He pivoted to find the class watching him. “Hey, we’ve got to cut it short today,” he said, then repeated that in Thai. He held his stomach. “I’m sorry. I don’t feel well.”
“Too much kim chee,” accused his neighbor with a smile.
Thorolf nodded and bowed. “I think so.” The truth was that Chandra couldn’t get enough of the stuff since she’d become pregnant. She was going through their neighbor’s homemade kim chee like nobody’s business. He never even got a bite. It was an excuse but he’d take it.
The truth was that he did feel sick.
He had to get back to the States and find out what was going on.
He had no idea how he was going to convince Chandra not to go with him—because at six months along, she shouldn’t really be flying so far—much less how he’d persuade her to be careful while he was gone.
There had to be a way.
* * *
Sam awakened with one thought resonating in her mind: she could confide in Sloane. She was alone in bed, although she could hear Sloane leaving the bathroom.
Confiding in him was both a terrifying prospect and one that felt right. She knew he’d be kind and compassionate, and she suspected she’d feel better just by saying the words aloud. Maybe it would hurt less if she admitted to missing Nathaniel, if she said out loud that she’d failed her son as a mother and as a doctor, if she admitted that she’d thought she had everything right when really she’d had a lot of it wrong.
It sure as hell couldn’t hurt as much as keeping it all inside.
Sam rose from bed with purpose and looked out the window. The night sky was filled with stars and Sloane was checking out something on his phone on the patio. She studied him with a smile, knowing his gentle persistence had helped her to start talking.
His confession about his father had cracked some resistance inside her, making her see that it was possible to embrace the vulnerability of love and its scars, yet still be strong. There was no doubt in her mind that Sloane was like a rock, but he also had such tenderness. Her smile broadened as she remembered their conversation the night before and she knew she wasn’t going to be able to keep her emotions out of this for much longer.
It might already be too late.
Was it possible that there was a man in this world who had it all?
If so, he was on her patio.
Even if Sloane didn’t have it all, he had plenty to suit Sam.
She joined him under the stars, running an appreciative fingertip across his bare back, then lit candles on the patio. “We could go for a swim at your place,” she said, glancing up at the clear sky overhead. She could tell him there, where they’d started, after they made love.
Or maybe before.
Sloane made a noncommittal noise and kept tapping at his cell phone.
“Oh, put it away, please,” she urged, unable to remember when she’d last bothered to look at the news. “It’s been such a good evening. Who needs the world and all its troubles?”
Sloane frowned. “Sorry.” He cast her an apologetic smile. Sam heard thunder in the distance, but more importantly, she knew that she’d lost Sloane’s attention. “I’ve got to go,” he said, his smile not quite reaching his eyes.
“What’s happened? Is something wrong?”
“No, I got a message from a friend who needs a hand,” he said, and she had an awful feeling that he was lying. “Occupational hazard.”
“Of running an herb farm?”
Sloane looked disconcerted at that, and Sam saw color rising on the back of his neck. What wasn’t he telling her?
“Or of whatever else you do that compels you to fly out suddenly?”
Sloane frowned. “I was just distracted by this video that’s going viral.”
“It seems that the only videos that go viral are the ones featuring those dragons.” Sam didn’t say any more. She knew better than to vent about dragons in front of Sloane again, because she wasn’t going to mess with a good thing. Let him believe what he needed to.
She knew dragons were evil.
“So was this one,” Sloane said with visible impatience. “They appeared in the middle of Melissa Smith’s broadcast from Easter Island.”
“Easter Island?”
“There were eggs there, that hatched into dragons.”
Sam shuddered. “I’m glad I haven’t looked at the news.” Sloane didn’t reply, just tapped away on his phone. “Doesn’t she get tired of insisting on the goodness of dragons all the time? Maeve O’Neill makes a lot more sense.” Sam might have said more but Sloane gave her a look that she took as a warning. She thought of his tattoo and forced a smile. “What’s the video?”
Sloane came to stand beside her. Sam watched the image on the small screen, feeling the heat of his arm against her own. He smelled good, too. She didn’t much care about Melissa Smith’s latest dragon broadcast, or the opal and gold dragon appearing on the display. She’d seen him in these videos before and was about to say as much when a woman shouted off-screen.
“This is for Nathaniel!” that woman cried just before the blue-green lightning was shot at the dragon.
Sam caught her breath.
What the hell was Jac doing on Easter Island?
It couldn’t be her sister. Sam had to be wrong. Her amorous mood was completely shattered, all the same. Sam dug in her purse for her own phone, then listened again to Jac’s message on her voice mail.
A retreat? Had Jac lied to her?
Had she gone to Easter Island in search of dragons?
If she had, Sam had a lecture for her baby sister about risk that would take a while…
Sam heard the gate in her backyard fence clang and looked up to realize that Sloane was striding home. He looked, actually, as if he had broken into a run.
And to Sam’s surprise, there were lights on in his house. They hadn’t been on before.
Maybe he had installed timers. It seemed like a reasonable explanation, but Sam couldn’t help thinking that both Sloane and her sister weren’t telling everything they knew.
* * *
Sloane burst through the door of his house, halfway afraid Sam would follow him. She hadn’t, but he locked the door behind himself and pulled down the blinds. He tossed his keys on the kitchen counter and strode into the great room.
“Great Wyvern,” he whispered when he saw Rafferty sprawled on his floor.
The older Pyr was on his back, his eyes closed. His gut was badly burned and Sloane found it telling that he’d only managed to pull on one leg of his jeans when he’d shifted shape from dragon form.
Marco was crouched beside Rafferty, shaking his head. “I didn’t mean for it to happen. I didn’t know she’d do it.”
Sloane had never seen the Sleeper agitated about anything.
Not that it was going the help Rafferty any.
“What happened?” Sloane demanded. He bent over Rafferty and listened to the Pyr’s breathing, put his hand on his chest to feel the beating of his heart. The beat was faint, too faint for Sloane’s taste, and the burns were extensive. They seemed to be crackling with blue-g
reen light before his eyes, as if the darkfire had slipped beneath Rafferty’s skin and continued to burn.
“I listened to the darkfire,” Marco confessed. “I trusted its counsel.” He raised his gaze to Sloane. “But the darkfire lied.”
“Rafferty was hit with darkfire,” Sloane said, recalling the blue-green light in the video. “Where did it come from?”
“From the crystal that had been extinguished. It lit again.” Marco put the crystal on the floor beside Rafferty, his hand shaking. The flame within it had died to a tiny point of blue-green light, as if its power had been transmitted to Rafferty. Sloane didn’t understand darkfire well, none of the Pyr did except Marco, and he felt out of his depth.
Again.
“It betrayed me,” Marco whispered.
It wasn’t the time for regret, in Sloane’s opinion, but for action. “Do you remember the Cantor’s songs?” he asked urgently. “The ones that harness the darkfire? We might be able conjure the darkfire out of Rafferty’s body, if you taught me the songs that command it.”
Marco got to his feet, his expression horrified as he stared at Rafferty, and Sloane wondered whether the other Pyr had even understood the question. Marco looked shell-shocked. “He only ever did good for me. He saved me from Magnus before I was even born. He guarded my sanctuary at Bardsley Island, and he took custody of the crystal until I could claim it. He awakened me from my slumber, trained me and taught me.” His expression turned bleak. “And now he’s going to die, because of me.”
“Rafferty doesn’t have to die. You can help me,” Sloane appealed. “Help me with the Cantor’s songs!”
But Marco was backing away. “I don’t trust the darkfire any more. I don’t trust it to do any good at all.”
“Wait! Where are you going? I need your help!”
“I’m going back to finish what I started,” Marco said with grim resolve. Then he closed his hands into fists, tipped back his head, and shimmered vivid blue.
“No!” Sloane bellowed, but it was too late. He blinked once, and then Marco was gone.
He had to solve this alone.
Somehow.
Sloane looked down at Rafferty, then flattened his hands against the older Pyr’s chest. He had only the Apothecary’s healing songs at his disposal, and maybe that was best if the darkfire had turned against the Pyr. Darkfire was unpredictable and turned situations upside-down for the Pyr, making improbabilities into reality.