Me and My Shadow

  “You were there?” I asked.

  “Not at the coronation, no, but I did help the mortals fight many times.”

  “I was there. It was nothing exciting,” Cyrene said, giving Fiat a hostile glare. He frowned at her in response. “London was very dirty then, and the people were very rude, always throwing rotten vegetables. I much preferred Paris.”

  “Why would you want to help the mortals fight?” I asked Baltic, momentarily distracted by the idea of a dragon interfering with human issues.

  He smiled. “Have you never beheld the sight of a battlefield, a sword gripped tightly in one hand, your shield in the other, a blood-enraged destrier between your legs? Have you not breathed deeply of the scent of blood and bowels and earth as mortals slaughtered each other? Have you never felt the battle lust grip your being, your heart pounding so loud it almost drowns out the screams of men, your arm burning with the strain of hacking and hewing, slashing first to the left to take down a pikeman, then to the right to cut the legs out from under an attacking infantryman?”

  “No,” I said, feeling faintly sick at the picture that rose in my mind.

  He shrugged. “Then you would not understand. Fiat, you may leave.”

  The penny dropped then. “This is your house?” I asked, feeling slightly sick at the thought of such a magnificent structure in his possession. It should be mine, a little voice in my head demanded.

  “Yes.” He flicked a glance my way. “I had it built as a gift for my mate.”

  “Ysolde?” The thought that the house was Ysolde’s made me feel a smidgen better, although I couldn’t quite decide why. For all I knew, she could have been just as destructive as Baltic, although I suspected not.

  His gaze shifted from me to the paneled wall, but I doubted he was really seeing it. For a moment, for a tiny little moment in time, Baltic’s expression softened, his eyes going from a hard, glittering obsidian to something with shadows, like a shaft of sunlight piercing a deep pond. His voice changed, as well, losing some of its clipped cadence, the words striking a richer tone, more Slavic in flavor. “She helped me design the house, but she would have no other hand working on the gardens, so she laid them out herself. She loved flowers, wanted them blooming year-round. I told her this wasn’t the climate for that, but she had been born here, and would not hear of living anywhere else.”

  “What I saw of them looked exquisite,” I said, meaning every word. I was filled with a strange sense of kinship, of sharing a great love with this man, but that was insane. It didn’t make sense. I shook my head, trying to disperse the odd feeling.

  “She wanted to have the acceptance ceremony in the garden, surrounded by honeysuckle and lime trees,” he said, still looking inward at the memories. “She said it was fitting that she should formally become my mate here, in the house I built for her.”

  “You did an outstanding job with the house. It’s almost beyond description; it’s so perfect. I don’t know why, but it seems almost to speak to me. It’s as if . . . I don’t know. It’s hard to put into words. It’s just . . . perfect.”

  “Yes, it is.” He turned back to me with a half smile on his lips, and suddenly, I was in his arms, caught up in the memories he had shared, in the emotions that the house stirred within me.

  “You loved her,” I said, my breath on his lips.

  “More than life itself,” he answered, his mouth brushing mine.

  “Whoa! I didn’t see that one coming!” I heard Jim say just as Baltic’s arms tightened around me. The sense of kinship grew, accompanied by a rightness that filled me with vague shadow memories, images that danced on the edge of my awareness.

  “May? Goodness—May?” Cyrene’s voice drifted through a red haze of fierce need in me, but I could no more attend to it than I could stop the rush of emotion inside me.

  Until Baltic kissed me.

  The second his lips possessed mine, a cold wave of dislike squelched the fires the dragon shard wanted so desperately to fan.

  “Ysolde,” he murmured against my mouth.

  I put both hands on his chest and shoved him back hard, catching the fleeting expression of surprise in his eyes before it turned to calculating anger.

  “I am not Ysolde,” I said simply.

  “May, what are you doing?” Cyrene tugged at my arm, giving Baltic a wary look. “I know you are jealous of all the women who are no doubt trying to seduce Gabriel, but this is not the answer! You must trust me on this—I have much more experience with men than you do, and I can assure you that trying to make a man jealous by toying with another one is not the way to go. It just ends up very poorly, usually with one man dead.”

  “It was the shard,” I said, still feeling it thrum inside me, and shaken to my very core by what had happened. When the shard reacted to Magoth, I knew it for what it was—an attempt to seek power. But this was different—this was tied up to the faintest shadows of Ysolde. She had loved Baltic, I realized at that moment. She had loved him desperately, absolutely, beyond all reason. And he had built a house for her, just to please her, because he, too, loved with an all-consuming passion. I could only guess at the depth of the pain he felt at losing her . . . but it did not excuse his actions. I lifted my chin and gave him a long, level look. “The shard is what’s making me react to the house . . . to you.”

  Baltic looked bored. “You bear the shard my mate once possessed. I have no doubt she imprinted something of herself upon it. All the more reason for me to have it.” He turned to leave and saw Fiat. He frowned. “What are you still doing here? I told you that I had no further need of you. You may leave.”

  A parade of emotions passed over Fiat’s too-handsome face; disbelief was quickly followed by anger, which settled into a deep fury. I’ll say this for him—he kept his emotions in check, the only hint of his feelings visible in the glint to his eyes.

  “Take them below,” Baltic said, waving toward Cyrene and me as he turned to leave the room.

  Two dragons emerged from the shadows, one of whom was the man who’d accompanied him to Gabriel’s house.

  “Below where?” Jim asked somewhat nervously, pressing into me. “Below as in a comfortable suite with digital TV and a hot tub?”

  Baltic paused at the door and smiled again. It wasn’t a nice smile. “It pains me to be clichéd, but I believe in keeping a dungeon traditional in its accoutrements. You might not find the torture devices as entertaining as digital television, but I certainly will.”

  “No,” I said simply.

  Baltic gave me a disbelieving look. “You will not defy me, mate.”

  “I think I just did,” I said calmly, hoping my usual placid expression was hiding the fact that my heart was beating wildly, my palms suddenly sweaty. “I will not move one foot from this spot until you tell us why you’ve had Fiat kidnap us.”

  “I don’t have to explain anything to you,” he said, his brows lowering. He took a menacing step toward me. I raised my chin a smidgen and gave him my blandest look.

  “It can’t be the dragon shard. You wouldn’t kidnap Cyrene and Jim to get that—you’d just lop off my head and take the shard. Therefore, you must want us all for a specific purpose, and the only one I can think of is that it’s a trap of some sort, and we’re the bait.”

  “Clever little witch,” he said, moving close enough to me that I could feel his breath on me. I felt something else, too, something familiar, some sense of déjà vu that I couldn’t pinpoint. “Too clever for your own good, as the saying goes.”

  “Gabriel isn’t stupid,” I told him, clamping down on the sense of familiarity. I didn’t want to be familiar with Baltic. I didn’t want a repeat of that kiss or, more important, of the sense of kinship that I had felt with him when he talked about the house and Ysolde. I didn’t want her memories of him; I wanted him at arm’s length, back to the status of an evil, despised foe, not of a man who loved a woman so much he was willing to give her everything he had. “He’s not going to walk blindly into any trap you se
t, no matter if you use me as bait or not.”

  Baltic looked at me long and hard, as if he could see my thoughts. At length he merely asked, “What makes you think I want Gabriel?”

  I stared at him in incomprehension. If he didn’t want to trap Gabriel, why kidnap me?

  Fiat’s bodyguards staggered into the house with Magoth. Baltic, once again on his way out of the room, hesitated as he looked at the demon lord, then spun around to give me a questioning look.

  “Surely you know by now that I never travel anywhere without my little posse,” I said, nodding toward Magoth.

  He didn’t appreciate my joke, which was fine, as I didn’t appreciate his kidnapping us.

  “Let us see if you are still laughing tomorrow,” was all he said before leaving the room.

  “Tomorrow? You never answered me about what you have planned for us. Baltic! Damn him.” I called after him, moving toward the door to follow him. His men blocked my way, both of them large enough that it gave me pause. I eyed them for a second, trying to decide if I could take them both on in dragon form, and what repercussions such an act might have, when Fiat exploded.

  “Che cazzo stai dicendo?” he snarled, making me glad for a moment I didn’t speak the language. He pushed past me to fling open the side door that Baltic had just used to leave, and screamed after the other dragon, “Nessuno me lo ficca in culo!”

  Jim looked shocked.

  “On a profanity scale of one to ten, how bad was what Fiat just said?” I asked the demon softly.

  “Fifteen.”

  “Ouch.” I grabbed Cyrene and pulled her out of the way when Fiat spun around, his face black with anger as he stormed past us. Only he didn’t pass us—he veered off and grabbed me by the arm, instead.

  “I will not tolerate this! You are my prize, not his! If he thinks he can treat me as a minion, he will soon see just what a force I am,” he growled as he half dragged me across the room.

  “Ack!” Cyrene yelled, ducking behind me despite the fact that Fiat wasn’t even touching her. “It’s started! He’s trying to steal me! He thinks you are me!”

  “Fanculo,” Fiat spat at her, backhanding her at the same time, sending her reeling backwards into the wall.

  The dragon shard would have burst into action, but my own temper won out. Before Cyrene even hit the wall, I had my dagger out and was pressing the tip of it into his throat, right where his jugular vein pulsed. “No one,” I said in a voice hoarse with anger, “no one hurts my twin.”

  Fiat shifted, the flesh beneath my blade going from beige to blue in an instant. He swung a heavy scaled arm at my head, but I ducked, instinctively shadowing. The room was well lit, but not so bright that I was entirely obvious when shadowed. “Jim, protect Cy,” I ordered, flattening myself on the floor for a few seconds when Fiat spun around searching for me, his tail whipping over my head by the barest of inches.

  With identical shouts of anger, Fiat’s two bodyguards dropped Magoth’s unconscious body and shifted into dragon form, as well. I scurried out of their way, trying to stick to the less-lit areas of the room, but that idea went to hell in a handbasket when Baltic’s two attendants, who had been ordered to take us downstairs, also shifted. I made a mental note that they were black in color, not white like Baltic.

  “It’s a dragonpalooza,” Jim said, standing guard over Cyrene as she pushed herself up into a sitting position, shaking her head.

  “Mayling?” she called, searching for me, squeaking in horror when one of the black dragon guards lunged toward her. He was heading for Fiat’s men, however, leaping on the back of the one named Renaldo. The two of them went down in a flurry of scales, claws, dragon fire, and screams that echoed down the length of the long hall. The second black dragon tackled the other blue bodyguard when he went to save his buddy, the former yelling something in what I assumed was Zilant.

  The dragon shard demanded I shift and confront Fiat, who was standing in the center of the room, peering around for me. I pressed myself deeper into the shadow cast by a huge sideboard, knowing that he would see me if he spent any time examining the area.

  “Come out here, cara,” he called, his voice almost normal—almost. “I told you what would happen if you were to hide from me.”

  The lights in the room suddenly dimmed. Cyrene stood at a panel near the entrance, punching off a row of lights as fast as she could. Jim was at one of the huge windows, hauling closed heavy dark blue draperies. Bless them, they were trying to give me an even playing ground.

  “And let you take out on me the fact that you’re pissed at your boss?” I called to Fiat as he spun around, starting toward Cyrene. I had to get his attention back on myself. “I’m not that stupid, Fiat.”

  He turned back toward me, lashing out with his tail as Renaldo and one of the black dragons rolled past him, blood staining the floor with smeared, inky streaks. I used the opportunity provided by the distraction to race across to the other side of the room, deep in the shadows now, thanks to Jim.

  “He is not my boss,” Fiat snarled, his head sweeping back and forth as he searched for me. “Open those drapes so I can see her,” he snapped at his men, but they were too involved to do as he commanded.

  “No? You sure take orders from him as if he was. Just what is your connection with him, Fiat? Do you think he’ll help you retake control of the blue dragons?” I inched my way down the long room, away from Cyrene.

  “I have no need for another sept,” Fiat answered, taking the bait. His eyes burned with blue intensity as he searched the shadows for me, slowly following. “I am wyvern of the red dragons.”

  “I think you’ll find Chuan Ren will disagree with that. She’s back, you know. Oh, but you must know—Gabriel said you were hiding from her.” I said the last with deliberation, knowing Fiat would not take such a blow to his ego without revenge.

  He snarled and leaped forward, suddenly not more than a foot away from me, his fingers digging deep into my throat. I gasped and grabbed his hand with both of mine, trying to ease the intense pressure on my throat.

  “If Baltic did not want you alive, I would kill you right here for that insult,” he growled, his tail sliding around my legs to hold them in a vise. I couldn’t reach my dagger, couldn’t get enough of a purchase on the floor to fight him, couldn’t even draw a breath. Spots danced lazily in front of my eyes as I stared silently into his.

  Shift! the dragon shard demanded, and with no other choice, I did so. I tried to shove him off me, tearing desperately at the fingers so deep in the flesh of my neck they must surely be touching, but despite my being in dragon form, his strength was just too much for me.

  “Then again, the pleasure it would give me to kill you would far outweigh Baltic’s displeasure at the act,” Fiat hissed, his face shoved into mine. There was madness in his eyes, madness and a bloodlust that scared me to death. His face was beginning to go gray, to lose focus, and I realized with a shock that he was killing me, cutting off blood and oxygen to my brain, and that I would never see Gabriel again.

  “Love sport without me? This will never do. I must insist on having the premiere role in it, although if you beg nicely, perhaps we’ll allow you to join in, as well.”

  The voice that spoke beyond Fiat was cool, but a bit ragged about the edges. It had the desired effect, however—Fiat jerked his head to see who was behind him, but he wasn’t fast enough. Magoth swung a huge andiron shaped like a peacock in full display at Fiat’s head, connecting with a horrible smashed-melon sound.

  Fiat stared at him in surprise for a moment before he crumpled to the ground, blood spraying in a fine arc on the wood tiles beneath him.

  The last thing my brain registered before the blackness enveloped me was Magoth’s smile.

  Chapter Twelve

  “The shadow world is not really so much a whole different world as it is simply an extension of what we know as reality. It goes by many names, and can be accessed by a number of methods—fae folk are particularly comfortable there
, although they refer to it as the beyond, which, now that I think about it, is a pretty good description of what it is. It is beyond. Nothing more, nothing less.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  The voice that spoke was male, deep, smooth as silk on water, and just hearing it made me smile. It took a few minutes before the meaning of what the voice said filtered through the bemusement that held me so tightly. Slowly, inch by inch, my body ceased floating on an infinitely soft bed of oblivion, and returned to the domain of my mind. I realized with an odd start that the first voice that had spoken was mine.

  My eyes popped open to behold a face leaning over me, watching me with a mixture of amusement, desire, and relief. “Gabriel?”

  “Your wits have returned. I was concerned that you had suffered some trauma.”

  There was a certain translucent quality to the face that had my spirits dropping. “We’re in the shadow world, aren’t we?”

  The amusement left his eyes. “Yes. You were unconscious. What happened?”

  Images flashed in my mind, of a house so perfect, so astoundingly desirable, it left me salivating. “The house. I want the house. Agathos daimon, how I want the house. You’d like it, too, Gabriel. There is a lawn so smooth it could be made of satin, and trees and flowers and what looked like it was a maze where we could run and hide and make love out in the open. We wouldn’t have to swim in the lake if you didn’t want to. But you would like the maze.”

  “Yes,” he agreed solemnly. “I would like a maze. I would like to make love to you outside, with the sun shining down on your lovely flesh. I would allow you to make love to me under the stars, with the cool night air caressing your delicious little breasts as you arched above me, riding me, your hips moving in that way that drives me insane, and when you shadowed with your climax, I would know that you really were my little night bird, my wintiki.”

  “I want to make love to you right now,” I said, my fingers twitching impotently, desperately wanting to touch him, to pull him down onto me. I needed to feel his mouth on mine, to catch his breath as I touched him, to taste him as he entered my body. The need for the house was tangled up somehow with my need for him, but he was only a projection into the shadow world, not really here. “I want to touch you, Gabriel. I want to slide myself across your chest, tasting you, stroking your lovely warm flesh. I want to have foreplay. I want to take you in my mouth like we’ve talked about, but never seem to be able to do because you drive me totally and completely witless the second you touch me. I want you buried so deep inside me, I can feel your heart beat.”