Skydance

by Katherine Rhodes

  Dracen was there and rolled Niko onto his front, whacking his back to force him to expel the water he had just swallowed. It worked. Niko vomited whatever had gotten into his lungs and curled in on himself. Henry stood next to them, his boxers back in place.

  “Good thinking,” he said.

  Max stared at Niko, sputtering and gasping for air. “What the hell happened?”

  Through his coughing, Niko explained, “It felt like my magic just left. Just wasn’t there anymore. There was no more dragon, no ability to swim through the water like I usually do. No fire, nothing. It was all just gone, and I was completely and totally human.”

  “That’s not good,” Dracen mumbled.

  “It just happened to me too,” Max said. “When I got up and out of the water, as I went to land the magic disappeared and we dropped to the rocks. Thank God I wasn’t too high up.”

  “You both lost your power?” Henry gaped at them. Max watched as the earth dragon walked to the soil at the side of the rocks and scooped out a good size hole for his foot. Once he put his foot down in the hole, he plowed the dirt back over it.

  Nothing happened.

  They watched as he wiggled his foot and leg and still nothing happened.

  Dracen walked over and stared down at Henry’s dirt covered foot. “What the hell?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t feel the dragon. I don’t feel like he’s gone, but that it’s just not there.”

  Niko stared at the two men by the edge of the rock. “What is going on?”

  Frightening everyone—including Henry—his dragon burst forth, towering over them in his emerald green form. But there was no hiding the worry in his eyes.

  Max shook his head. “This is not good. Not good at all.”

  Mid-September

  Blowing Rock

  “Hello?”

  Amy jerked her head up and found Carl standing at her desk, arms folded, smirking.

  “Oh, hi. What?”

  He laughed. “Amy, you’ve been daydreaming for weeks. What is going on with you?”

  She slumped slightly and looked at the files on her desk. “I’m sorry. I’ll try to be more attentive. I know we missed that piece of evidence in the Gillmore case, but I don’t think anyone would have seen it if they weren’t specifically looking for it. I’ll get the O’Shaunessy file to you in just a little while. I have—”

  “Stop.” Carl held up his hand. “That’s not what I wanted to hear.” He sat on the edge of her desk. “I asked what’s going on with you, not the cases.”

  “It’s not law related.”

  “Amy, you’re my best assistant. You’re one of the best damn lawyers I’ve ever met and you’re completely distracted in ways I’ve never seen you before. What’s going on?”

  Pursing her lips, she dropped her hands to the desk. “Max thinks I’m his mate.”

  Carl’s eyebrows nearly hit his hairline. “Come on. Conference room.” He motioned her to follow him into the small conference room they had in the tiny office they worked out of with nine other lawyers.

  Amy had always loved the little office. They had mini offices—cubicles that had tall walls to the ceilings, with a door and enough room for a bookcase, two comfy chairs, a four-draw filing cabinet, and a desk. There were ten of them. Carl had always kept a small office with them, never taking the big office so they could have a second conference room.

  That corner office was where he waited for her to enter, so he could close the door. Amy sat in her usual chair and expected her boss to do the same. Instead, he hopped up on the table next to her and started swinging his legs like a kid.

  “So, you’re a dragon’s mate?”

  “I don’t know. That’s what Max says. He hasn’t brought it up since the first time he was out here for the wedding, but I can tell he’s always thinking about it when he visits.”

  “Are you sleeping with him?”

  “Carl!”

  “Pfft. I’m your boss, not your dad. I’m as straight as an arrow, but you’d be fool not to hit that.”

  Amy dropped her head in her hands and let out a groan. “Oh, God.”

  “Okay, so I’m going to assume that you are hitting that and go from there. How do you two feel when you’re together?”

  “Like everything will be just fine. That with the two of us, we can conquer anything. I get all depressed when he goes back to Pine Valley and won’t even talk about maybe moving here.”

  Cocking his head, Carl let out sigh. “And how much do you consider moving out there?”

  “Not at all. Mom is here, you’re here. My job is here, and the Sectorum is headquartered here. I can’t move to Minnesota.”

  Stroking his jaw, her boss stared at her for a moment. “Let’s take all of that away for a moment. Let’s say that you didn’t have this job, or the Sectorum, and your mother was willing to go with you. Would you move out there?”

  “I mean, I guess? What is it about Pine Valley that he can’t move here?”

  Walking to a bookcase, Carl pulled it away from the wall, revealing another case tucked into the wall behind it. Amy was shocked—she had no idea that was there. The Gray Eminence smiled at her and pulled a book out. “I’d be a fool to keep all our resources in one spot. These are some of our most valuable volumes that I don’t want at the house.”

  Standing next to her, he placed the ancient tome on the table. “Now. This is about dragon shifters. How they work, how they act, how they are beholden to their dragon and its needs.” Flipping through, he landed on a page with a magnificent dragon in gold on the page and pointed to a paragraph.

  Amy leaned forward and read where his finger sat.

  While it is true that a dragon may live wherever they choose, there are restrictions on certain distances that they may reside in relation to their hoard. A dragon’s hoard dictates his position in the world. It is perfectly possible for a dragon to travel, and even temporarily live away from the hoard, as long as their most precious object—their talisman—is with them. But eventually, they must return to life near the hoard.

  Moving a hoard is a momentous task for anyone, and in our day and age it is the cost of moving it that becomes the burden. Most dragons do not wish to spend their hoard to move their hoard, and land and sea transportation are really the only logical means. Weight restrictions on airplanes can become burdensome to the wallet and the plane. Creating a new means of storage can also be a tremendous drain. It is not logical to leave a hoard in a basement or carriage house while a new, secure location is created. The vulnerability of the objects can cause the dragon to manifest and be unwilling to release the form to their human. A dragon sitting on their gold is not a sight anyone wishes to encounter—this chronicler has a scar to prove it.

  It becomes necessary to choose wisely when placing or moving the hoard. A dragon is always beholden to his gold. There is no exception.

  Handwritten in the margin was a note:

  **while the weight and size of the hoard is less a problem now in the 1990s, the logistics of moving hundreds of millions of dollars of gold, silver, and durable goods has become nearly impossible with advent of security measures that allow airport and FCC personnel to open and inspect all bags and packages. Moving boxes of diamonds that have no GIA numbers and papers will get you arrested.

  Amy rand a hand down her face. “Hoard?”

  Carl nodded. “Hoard. Dragons are naturally drawn to valuables and they like to collect and protect them. Anything of value. Gems, jewels, gold, silver, platinum, silk, rugs…whatever. If someone can place a high price on it, they’ll want it and keep it. Hundreds of millions of dollars, Amy. Diamonds the size of baseballs. Ancient wealth.”

  “Betsy didn’t say anything about this.”

  Carl pursed his lips and sat on the table again. “I don’t expect that she would. Hoards are delicate subjects among the dragons and their mates. If you tried to get close, you could be eaten or burned by a dragon. They don’t care to have strangers there, and so
they keep their existence quiet. And, Amy, whether you want to believe this or not, my daughter is now a dragonmate. She will defend that hoard just as much as Niko will. It would be terrifying to see the two of them in full rage. Nikomedes comes from a very wealthy dragon family, and his hoard would be extensive.”

  “So you’re trying to tell me that Max doesn’t want to move here because it would involve moving his hoard?”

  “Yes. Even as poor as his family is compared to the other dragon families, I’m sure it’s quite insanely large.”

  Wrinkling her brow, Amy studied him. “Max isn’t poor.”

  “Compared to Raissa, he may as well be living in a tin shack.” Her confusion must have leapt onto her face, because Carl laughed and explained. “Raissa’s family is the oldest known dragon family. She can trace her ancestry back to the Babylonians. Far older than the pharaohs, though there are a few of those in there as well. They have been building their hoards since Hammurabi, and it’s beyond comprehension. Max, on the other hand, comes from what is basically a peasant family. It’s still a hoard, but not like the others. He still wouldn’t want to have and try to move it.” He put a hand on her shoulder. “Which is why I suspect he won’t discuss moving out here.”

  “But I don’t want to leave you and Mom here. You guys are everything to me. This is all I’ve known.”

  “You need to consider more than just this office. Your mother and I won’t be here forever. You have a chance to be forever. Imagine what you can do with all the time in the universe. All the good you could do in twenty-five, a hundred, three hundred years. And imagine being able to spend that lifetime with someone who wants to add you to their hoard.”

  “I’m not a collectible!”

  “You are precious to him and you would be guarded always.”

  Amy dropped her head into her hands. “I don’t know! I’m twenty-five. What the hell do I know about life!”

  This time, Carl did sit in the chair across from her. “You can’t make that decision right now. You don’t have to. You don’t know Max. He could be the nicest guy in the world, but do you know his favorite color? Do you know what his favorite dinner is? Do you know what his favorite meal was that his mother made? Do you know what color his master bath is? Do you know what his favorite piece is from his hoard? These are things that take time. He’s not asking you to marry him or mate him right this instant. I love you, Amy, you’ve always been the best friend my daughter could have asked for, but…at some point, this isn’t about her, or me, or even your mother. It’s about you. And you finding your place in this world.”

  He stood and tapped his fingers on the surface of the wood. “Think about it, Amy. Dragonmates are rare, and things are happening in this world now. Things are shifting and changing.”

  “What about my job here?”

  “Your job will always be here, Amy. There will always be people who need your help. If you want to go out and see what’s going on out there, spend some real time with Max, do it. I understand the magical world. They work on a different timetable than we do. If you want a justification for going, let’s file it under the Sectorum. We need more information about Pine Valley and the ley lines. That you get to sleep in the same bed as Max is just a happy accident.”

  Staring at her hands, she let out a long, slow breath. “I’ll think about it. Okay? The idea of leaving here forever.”

  “Who said forever? The mountains have been here for millions of years. They have millions more to go.”

  Nodding, Amy stood. “Fair enough. I’ll think about it.”

  He tousled her hair. “Good. Now, you can get me all those reports that you started prattling on about before.”

  The woods behind her mother’s house were wrong.

  Amy didn’t like the feeling that was rolling out of the woods. She might only be a dreamwalker with little to no psychic ability, but she knew when the woods didn’t feel right. She’d lived her whole life here.

  “Mom?”

  “Yeah, Amy?”

  “Has…anything weird been going on around here lately?”

  “You mean aside from having a dragon as a houseguest last weekend? Not really.”

  Chuckling, Amy sat back in the chair. “No, Mom. Not the dragon thing. I mean out here on the property?”

  Patricia walked out with a glass of wine for each of them. “These woods have always been alive with things. But…now that you mention it. There has been an icky, inky feeling out there once the sun goes down.”

  “Inky?”

  “Like it’s darker than it should be. Than it could be naturally. A thick feeling to the air, like before a spring thunderstorm.”

  Amy looked out into the dark and remembered the last thunderstorm she’d watched, with Max behind her, slowly driving in and out of her. She shook her head for a moment to get that out of her mind. Her mother’s smirk and knowing look told her she’d been lost in that thought a little too long. “Sorry. Yeah. There’s something different about the woods tonight and I don’t really like it.”

  “Been a few weeks, actually. You’ve been occupied, but…ever since all the Pine Valley people were here, it’s been getting thicker. Worse. Can’t put my finger on it.” She also stared into the woods. “Should we maybe go inside?”

  Amy sipped her wine and pulled out her phone.

  AimFire: Hey, Keni. The wards you put in place around my mom’s place. How long are they good for?

  The answer took a minute.

  KeniTheWitch: They were gone after the first full moon. Why?

  AimFire: Yah, the woods are alive.

  KeniTheWitch: …with the sound of music?

  AimFire: Go jump off a cliff.

  KeniTheWitch: I’ll leave that to you and Max.

  AimFire: What do I need to do to get more wards up?

  KeniTheWitch: You need a sorcerer or witch. Although. Let me check something.

  “Keni is trying to find something out about warding the house. Meanwhile”—Amy grabbed her glass—“let’s go back in. Since the wards were gone a while ago.”

  Patricia nodded and they scurried back into the enclosed porch at the back of the house. Amy glanced around, and as she hoped, her mother had sage on the table. She grabbed the dried bundle, an odd ashtray at the door, and put it next to the door. She grabbed a lighter and started the bundle smoldering.

  “What’s this?” Patricia asked.

  “Just smudging. It keeps the bad juju away.” Amy looked out into the woods and it seemed like the trees had moved closer. “I’m going to see what I can do about something else at the windows back here. Don’t open any of them. Or the door.”

  She slipped back into the house and found several bunches of wild celery root. She grabbed them and wound them tight with twine, then set one bundle at the front door to smolder and brought the other two to the back porch.

  Patricia was plastered to the back of the house when Amy walked back out. “Mom?”

  “The trees are getting closer,” Patricia managed to whisper.

  “That’s what I was afraid of.” Amy grabbed two more ashtrays and put a bundle in each, lighting them to smoke, and put another in with the sage.

  “Hey, my wild celery!”

  “It’s also called angelica and it helps break curses and keep evil at bay,” Amy said as her phone pinged.

  KeniTheWitch: I was right: You can! Go into your own house in your dream and use a simple spell to ward the house.

  KeniTheWitch: It’s better in the dreamworld because it crosses a veil. More effective.

  AimFire: Seriously? Can you email me a good spell? The trees are closing in.

  KeniTheWitch: Ooh, not good. Let me find one for you.

  Amy took her mother’s arm and pulled her back into the doorway to the kitchen. “I don’t know what’s going on, but Keni says I can totally take care of this with a simple dreamwalk and a spell. So I’m going to have to drop off, but don’t let the sage or the angelica go out until I wake up, okay?”
>
  “Got it. You’re the magic one.”

  “This is Wicca stuff, Mom. Not magic. Slow and careful magic anyone who is inclined can do it. Keni’s a sorceress. She works on a whole other level.”

  “You’re a dreamwalker. I don’t understand how it works, but I leave all the magic up to you.”

  The email alert went off on Amy’s phone and she pulled up the message that Keni had just sent. It was a super simple spell and the sage it required was already burning. She smiled and headed for the chair in the living room. “I’ll be back out in a few minutes, Mom. Don’t go out on that porch except to keep the sage burning.”

  Sitting down in the recliner, Amy pushed back and wound up prone in the chair. She folded her hand at her waist and took a few deep breaths. Her father had started her out with meditation, and then self-hypnosis to relax enough to drop into sleep. Now, all it took was a few deep breaths and she was dropping into the dreamworld.

  The dreamworld was a strange, fuzzy place that was as the real world was, but with no rules. The place always seemed like someone had overexposed the film of life, and everything had taken on a purplish hue. Amy stood from the chair she was in in the living room and walked through the dream haze to the back door. Patricia was standing in the door and Amy brushed by her. She could see ghosts around her mother, double images of things, which she didn’t have time to explore.

  The back porch was filled with the smoke from the sage and it was pressing against the windows, holding back something outside. Steeling herself, she pushed the door open and she could hear the sage spirits screaming as they tried to keep the dark and evil out.

  Holding the door open against the wishes of the sage, Amy stood facing something with inky evil oozing out of it, and blood red eyes staring at her.

  “Hello, Amy,” it said, his voice full of cruelty and desire for power.

  “You are not welcome here.”

  “It does not matter. I am here now.”

  She held up her hands, suddenly holding a bowl of water and a burning stick of dragon’s blood incense. “I bless this place in the name of good. The Lady lives here, in her infinite wisdom and kindness. Your evil is not welcome and I press you back to the hell from whence you came!”