Me and My Shadow

  “It is, but not everyone supports sweet, adorable Kostya.” Her eyes narrowed into little sapphire slits as she looked at Gabriel.

  “Sweet, adorable Kostya has tried to kill Gabriel more than once and, until the last month, has been hell-bent on destroying the silver dragons by forcing them to join his sept, so you’ll have to forgive us if we’re a bit jaded,” I pointed out.

  Cyrene waved away the survival of the silver dragons as trivial. “Oh, that’s all in the past. He’s been the model of dragonhood since you came back from Abaddon.”

  “That, I’m afraid, has less to do with the fact that he’s seen reason, and more because he realized he is going to need friends should Baltic take it into his head to reclaim his sept.”

  “That is not Baltic,” Kostya said loudly, interrupting his mother. I had forgotten for a moment how good dragons’ hearing was.

  “Hello, Kostya,” I said politely, summoning up a brief smile.

  To my surprise, he bowed. The dragons, I’d found, habitually used what I thought of as old-world manners, including being able to make bows that, on them, escaped looking silly and just looked elegant and courtly. Even Gabriel, whose manners were more open and casual than the other wyverns’, could summon up a really world-class bow when he felt the need. I wondered for a moment if it was something genetic in dragons. “I beg your pardon. I am remiss in greeting you in my haste to speak with my mother. You look well, May.”

  I wanted to goggle at his change in attitude.

  “Thank you,” I said, a little stunned. By this point, I expected Kostya to be screaming for vengeance, or ranting about the past as he was wont to do.

  “I trust the shard is not giving you any grief?” he inquired politely.

  My eyes widened as I glanced toward Gabriel. He grinned at me and winked.

  “Er . . . not unduly so, no. Thank you for asking.” I was prompted by the knowledge that formalities must be preserved even in informal situations to add, “You are well?”

  “I am,” he said, inclining his head. “Cyrene and I took a little trip to my homeland. It is most pleasant at this time of year.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, finding the whole conversation too bizarre to let pass without comment. “Are you chitchat-ting with me?”

  “Yes, he is. Isn’t he doing it wonderfully?” Cyrene asked, blowing him a kiss.

  Gabriel laughed and moved over to stand next to me, his arm loosely around my waist. “It is quite amazing, is it not?”

  Kostya smiled at Cyrene, and for a second, I was aware on a primal level of the charm that had attracted her to him. But although my acquaintance with Kostya had not been of a lengthy nature, it had been violent enough to leave me wary of such a benign appearance, even despite the dragon shard’s interest.

  “Incredibly so,” I said, knowing my twin would completely miss the sarcasm in my voice.

  Jim didn’t. The demon choked. I eyed it, about to forbid it to speak if it looked like it was going to say anything inappropriate. Catalina leaned toward her el dest son, whispering furiously as she gestured an elegant hand toward me. He looked at her for a minute before turning an astonished gaze on me.

  “I am not mentally deficient,” I announced, just in case he believed his mother.

  Jim snorted again and opened its mouth to speak.

  I pulled out my dagger and spun it around my fingers before flinging it to the floor about half an inch in front of Jim’s toes. It leaped backwards. “All right, all right, I get the point! Man! I’m telling Ash you’re pulling weapons on me!”

  “Do not say anything about it,” Catalina finished speaking to Kostya in what she no doubt imagined was a whisper. “It is best if you do not dwell on the sad situation. Her kind gets so upset.”

  I smiled and slipped just a smidgen the normally tight rein I held on the dragon shard. It purred with satisfaction, sending silver scales shimmering up my arms, my fingers lengthening and turning crimson at the claws. I waggled them at Kostya. “Your mother has sage advice. And speaking of people who were resurrected, why do you think Baltic isn’t really Baltic?”

  “He could not be,” Kostya said with a familiar stubborn set to his jaw. “Dragons are not easily resurrected.”

  “Gabriel said that, as well, but his mom seems to think otherwise.”

  “She’s never tried to resurrect a dragon,” Kostya replied with a glance at his mother.

  “It is true, what my darling Kostya says,” Catalina said with a dramatic sigh. “I tried to have Toldi resurrected, but alas, he came back . . . less.”

  “Less than what?” I asked, curious about the odd tone in her voice.

  She cast me a sympathetic glance, nodding slightly toward me. “Just . . . less. It was a kindness to put him out of the way. Again. Which I did, naturally, because I was nothing if not a good mate.”

  An odd sort of choking noise emerged from Jim. I picked up my dagger, noting that the demon’s eyes widened as I twirled it around my fingers. “ ‘Again’ as in you killed him before?”

  “Oh yes. He was not a nice man, Toldi. He murdered most of my family, you know, in order to get me to accept him as mate. Which I did, but only because I knew I would be able to destroy him easily when I chose.” Catalina picked an invisible bit of fluff off Kostya’s arm, speaking with a nonchalance that would have been more at home in a psychopath.

  I slid a quick look at Gabriel. One of his dimples appeared.

  Drake sighed and gestured toward the sitting room, having cast a quick glance up the stairs. “If you insist on having this discussion, brother, perhaps you will do so out of Aisling’s hearing. If she thinks we are having a counsel regarding Baltic, she will want to be present, and it is her rest time.”

  Jim made a whipcrack noise as it passed Drake on the way into the sitting room. I said nothing as Drake glanced at the dog, setting its tail on fire for a good ten seconds before the demon noticed. By that time, we’d all trooped back into the sitting room.

  “So you killed him twice?” I asked Catalina, ignoring Jim’s hysterics as it ran around the room yelling at the top of its lungs until Drake put out the fire.

  “Fires of Abaddon, Drake! I mean, literally fires of Abaddon!” it bellowed, pungent smoke trailing behind it as it marched over to where we sat.

  “Sit down and be quiet unless you have something helpful to say,” I ordered it.

  “Such a very odd demon,” Catalina remarked, watching as Jim obeyed my orders albeit with ill grace and no little amount of glaring. “And yes, my dear, I had to kill Toldi a second time. I couldn’t leave him . . .” She paused and gave me yet another pitying look that had me grinding my teeth. “But we have agreed not to speak of such unfortunate things. I just hope that Gabriel has the strength to do what is necessary when the time comes.”

  She brushed off my look of utter disbelief with a smile at Gabriel before taking Kostya’s arm. “Come, my darling Kostya. Tell Mama what you have been doing these last one hundred and thirty years.”

  “I have no time for talk, Mother,” Kostya said with a glance at his watch. “I have a sept meeting in less than an hour. I simply wished to tell Drake . . .” He hesitated a second, very pointedly not looking at either Gabriel or me. “. . . tell Drake that our trip was fruitful.”

  Catalina demanded to see him at the first opportunity, and went off to oversee the unpacking of her luggage.

  “You found the lair, then?” Gabriel asked after she left.

  Kostya stared at him for a second, then sharpened his gaze into a glare and pointed it at his brother. “You told them where I was going?”

  Drake shrugged one shoulder. “It concerns them.”

  “They are not black dragons! The location of Baltic’s lair does not concern them!”

  Kostya shook off Cyrene’s hand on his arm, and stormed over to his brother, clearly about to launch into yet another diatribe, but he remembered in time that he was watching his p’s and q’s. With an effort, he bit back what he was about t
o say, forcing a smile to his lips as he looked at Gabriel and me.

  “It’s killing you to be nice to us, isn’t it?” I asked, leaning into Gabriel.

  “Yes.”

  Cyrene punched him in the arm.

  His strained smile grew larger until I could see each and every one of his teeth. “No, of course it isn’t. I have realized the error of my intention to re-form the sept to its original glory, and have resigned myself to the fact that the si-silv—that you are happy on your own.”

  “He can’t say it,” Jim said to me in a volume that was not at all sotto voce. “He was practicing last week, and he couldn’t actually get the words out.”

  “Sil-ver,” Cyrene coached Kostya, giving his arm a squeeze. “Come on, punky, you said it on the plane. You can say it now. Sil-ver dragons.”

  A shudder shook his body.

  Gabriel rolled his eyes. “If the comedy hour is over, perhaps Kostya could give us a few minutes to discuss the issue of the Modana Phylactery.”

  “What is there to discuss?” Kostya asked, his eyes narrowing. “I agreed to let your mate use the shard to re-form the dragon heart if you supported my sept within the weyr. That was our agreement. You gave me your word. You cannot change the terms now.”

  “I do not intend to do so. But I am curious as to whether or not you found the phylactery when you found the lair. Do you have it?” Gabriel asked, his lovely voice as smooth as oiled silk.

  Kostya’s gaze slid to his brother for a second. “Not yet. But I will.”

  “Which means you, too, found Dauva.”

  Silence filled the room for a moment as Kostya absorbed Gabriel’s words. Smoke wisped out of Kostya’s nose as he took a step toward us. “I might have known you would try to violate the agreement.”

  “I’ve done nothing of the kind,” Gabriel answered, his expression and voice pleasant, but beneath my hand, his muscles were tense. “I’m simply ensuring that we don’t have to wait years for you to get around to bringing the shard to May.”

  Kostya looked like he was about to burst, but evidently he was more in control of his emotions than he had been in months past. “So you found the lair, as well?” he asked through gritted teeth.

  “We know of its location, yes,” Gabriel said.

  I decided a little defusing wouldn’t hurt the situation. “Gabriel’s agent didn’t enter the lair. He couldn’t. So if you’re worried about us running off with all sorts of black dragon goodies, you can relax. Not that Gabriel would, anyway. I assume there’s some sort of rule about wyverns stealing from other wyverns.”

  Silence filled the room as Gabriel, Drake, and Kostya all looked away.

  “You’re kidding me,” I said, noting that no one bothered to agree with me. “You guys steal from each other?”

  Once again, they avoided my eye.

  I raised an eyebrow at Drake. “Are you telling me that if you had the chance, you would take stuff from Gabriel’s lair?”

  “The green dragons are particularly adept at . . . liberating . . . items,” Drake said, somewhat defensively, I thought.

  I turned to Gabriel. “You’d steal something from Drake?”

  “Drake is one of my oldest friends,” he said smoothly, taking my hand so he could rub his thumb over my knuckles. “Of course I wouldn’t steal from my friend.”

  “Nor would I steal from him,” Drake said quickly, not to be outdone on the altruism front.

  “I value his friendship over anything,” Gabriel said.

  “It is unthinkable to imagine I could steal from him,” Drake agreed.

  “Completely unthinkable.”

  “Utterly out of the question.”

  I eyed the two of them.

  “Unless it was gold,” Drake admitted.

  “Yes, of course. Gold is another thing entirely,” Gabriel said, nodding. The other dragons nodded with him.

  “If you’re willing to steal from your oldest and dearest friends, then how did you get anyone to agree to let us use their dragon shards?” I asked, wondering if I’d ever get used to dragon society.

  “That’s different,” he said with a little shrug. “The dragon heart is the most powerful thing known to dragonkin.”

  “Then shouldn’t it be harder for you to get the shards brought together?” Cyrene asked before I could.

  “It would be suicide to attempt to use the dragon heart,” Drake answered.

  “It is too dangerous,” Gabriel said, nodding. “There is no dragon alive who possesses the ability to wield the heart—for which you should be thankful, little bird, since the use of it would have far-reaching repercussions.”

  “How far-reaching?” I asked.

  Gabriel looked thoughtful for a moment. “Think destruction of at least half of the mortal world.”

  “And a piece of that is inside me?” I said, clearing my throat when my voice came out a squeak.

  Gabriel’s fingers tightened on mine. “Do not fear, May. To use the dragon heart, you must have two things: the power to control it, and its goodwill. Because of that, we do not live in fear of destruction. Wyverns in the past have tried to re-form the heart and use it, but their attempts were disastrous. We have learned from their losses. The only reason the heart will be re-formed is to shard it into proper receptacles.”

  “You might want to tell Baltic that, ’cause I’m willing to bet he’s got other plans,” Jim said, and I had to admit I was thinking the same thing.

  “Baltic would not be so foolish,” Drake said at the same time Kostya frowned and said, “That is not Baltic.”

  “Pumpernickel, I think you’re going to have to get into the groove,” Cyrene told him, hugging his arm and pressing a little kiss on his earlobe. “Everyone seems to agree that it’s Baltic. I think we ought to go with the flow here and say it’s Baltic, too.”

  “It can’t be him. I’d know,” Kostya said stubbornly.

  “We shall see, won’t we?” Gabriel said with a smile that didn’t quite go to his eyes. “Now that we know the location of the lair, we can lend our assistance in opening it.”

  Kostya shot Gabriel a suspicious look that was answered by a more genuine smile.

  “We wouldn’t want the phylactery damaged in the process of opening the lair,” Gabriel added.

  “That won’t be necessary. I am perfectly capable of retrieving the Modana Phylactery on my own, without damaging it,” Kostya insisted. “Your presence in Latvia will not be required.”

  “Regardless, I feel for May’s sake it would be prudent to be there.”

  “Latvia?” a voice said from the doorway, a delighted purr that sent cold chills down my back. “We’re going to Latvia? What an excellent idea! I haven’t been there since . . . ooh, since the black plague.”

  Dismay filled my stomach as Magoth sauntered into the room, one of Drake’s bodyguards behind him, gesturing toward the bane of my existence as he said, “He demanded to see May.”

  “I told you to stay put,” I said, frowning at Magoth, who was mouthing what looked to be obscene suggestions to Cyrene.

  His attention immediately switched back to me. “An amusing attempt to be dominant, but as you know, sweet May, I prefer to be the one on top.” He looked around the room with obvious delight. “And just look what I would have missed! A trip to the Baltics. How—you will excuse the expression—divine. I have many fond memories of the area—death and famine and disease so thick it seeped into the land like blood dripping from a dismembered corpse. Now, that was a time to remember. There’s much to be said for the old ways, you know. This trip will be just what I need! When do we leave?”

  Chapter Four

  “I just hope you know what you’re doing.” Cyrene released the tree branch before I could grab it. It smacked me wetly dead center in the face. I rubbed my stinging cheek and glared at the back of the head of my twin, not an easy feat given the thick fog that lay sluggishly over the forest. The faint patter of water sliding off damp leaves to the thick, springy ground belo
w was muffled but constant.

  “Bringing a demon lord out to a dragon’s lair—it’s not the brightest idea you’ve ever had, Mayling.”

  I caught the branch she released that time, mentally uttering retorts to her comments as I plodded after her, my gaze alternating between watching for more face-slapping branches and examining the terrain in an attempt to figure out where we were in relationship to the nearest town.

  “Kostya is not at all happy that he’s here,” Cyrene added, turning to give me a stern look before hopping over a fallen tree. She slid down an embankment, her head disappearing from sight, but her voice still able to reach me. “Not happy at all.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me. Kostya is never happy,” I muttered as I made my way over the log, slipping on the soft earth. Tendrils of damp hair clung to my cheeks.

  Ahead of us, Gabriel, Kostya, and Savian were deep in conversation. Magoth followed them, the four men plowing a path through a murky, forested area that would have been a perfect setting for an atmospheric gothic movie, vines snaking off the densely packed trees, and moist, springy moss clinging to every surface.

  It was oddly quiet, as well, no sounds of civilization managing to penetrate the thick cotton-wool fog that wrapped around us. Only the occasional whine of a mosquito broke the pat-pat-pat of dripping water.

  One of the little bugs landed on the back of Cyrene’s exposed neck. I shuffled forward through earthy-smelling leaf residue, and slapped the back of her neck.

  She spun around, her mouth opened in surprise.

  “Mosquito,” I explained.

  Her eyes narrowed. “Oh, you’d like me to think that, wouldn’t you? But I know the truth—you’re just peeved because Kostya is angry with you because you insist on bringing Magoth, and you’re taking it out on me.”

  I gave her a little shove forward when Magoth, clad in expensive hiking garb that I suspected owed its orgins to my credit card, disappeared behind a clump of scrubby fir trees. “I don’t give a hoot if Kostya is angry. And if you don’t want to end up lost in the wilds of rustic Latvia, I’d advise you to get moving.”