by Ann Gimpel
A quick scan told her many of the burning mantises were dead. Good. The bastards didn’t deserve to live. Erin and Kon had teamed up, wielding the equivalent of a one-two punch. She stopped the mantises in their tracks, and Kon doused them with dragonfire. Johan’s green dragon was tossing fire around, opening divots in the ice. When she looked closer, she saw what might have been cocoons. Immature mantises staggered out of them. Small and inept, they stumbled as if they were blind.
The green dragon picked them off easily as he opened one cell after the next. Katya beat back a mixture of horror at the breeding ground this borderworld had turned into and delight Johan had discovered the mantis nests.
“You open. I’ll kill,” she told him.
He banked in what looked like acquiescence, blasted another hole in the ice, and waited long enough for her to mete death to the young mantises that poked their antenna-waving heads out. Annoyance kindled. The green, a newly bonded dragon, should have absolute trust in her beast. Instead, he was waiting to make certain she killed the hatchlings.
Some arguments were scarcely worth the energy, though. The green dragon only checked her intent once. Satisfied he could trust her, he opened hole after hole, uncovering partially formed mantises for her to dispatch.
They wouldn’t stop until they were done. Until every single mantis pupa or larva or whatever the hell they were called, were dead. She dusted mental talons together. One less scourge to plague them. At the rate they were going, though, by the time they returned to Earth, the serpents would have taken over.
They’d no longer be vulnerable in their human forms, and the only reasonable next steps would be to gather up their hoards and leave. The thought of her gold and gemstones pleased her. Only another dragon truly understood the feral possessiveness that attached dragonkind to their hoards. She’d collected every single element in hers over the long years of her life, adding to her treasure as regularly as she could.
She’d been selective, though. Not just any old piece of gold or precious stone would do. The energy had to be just right. Had to complement the items she already had. She and Konstantin had worked out an arrangement. Whoever found a potential hoard item had first dibs. If they didn’t want it, they told the other, offering it to them.
Now that there were four of them, she wasn’t quite sure how things would work. When fifty of them had shared the same space, everyone’s hoard was an intensely private matter. She hadn’t been nearly as picky then. Everything she found went into her stash, no matter if the emanations weren’t quite correct.
The green dragon was flying in a zigzag pattern, clearly hunting for more nests. She sent magic arcing all around her, trying for efficiency. No reason to squander power unnecessarily.
“We got them all,” she told the green dragon.
“I’m not done checking,” he informed her with a flick of his long tail.
Konstantin and Erin had settled on a patch of frozen ground and were in the midst of shifting.
Katya regarded Johan’s dragon. Would it blow a fuse if she corrected it? Who was in control of their partnership? Had the dragon jerked the reins out of Johan’s control again?
“Johan?” She opted for telepathy.
“What?” He sounded beleaguered, but at least he answered her.
“Shall we join Kon and Erin?” She angled a wingtip their way.
Fire splatted from his jaws, followed by a rain of smoky ash. She decided perhaps the best path was non-confrontational. Johan had enough to deal with without her stoking his dragon’s dominance issues.
She banked, intent on circling to land and then shifting and removing the goddess-be-damned jaws that still burned like a bitch in her side. The green dragon wheeled too. At first, Katya assumed her gambit had worked.
The green dragon, no longer having to defend an unpopular decision, would quietly land, and that would be the end of things. They’d move on to the next borderworld in the Fleisher chain, and hopefully locate a dragon or two.
Because she was riding on assumptions, not paying close attention, she didn’t absorb that the green dragon was flying right at her until he was only a meter or so away. Shocked, her dragon bugled a challenge. Instead of bugling back, the green dragon closed his jaws over the mantis head, clearly intent on removing it from her side.
His transformation complete, Konstantin leapt to his feet. “Noooooo!” rang from his mouth followed by, “Drop it. Now.”
The green dragon was well past her. Hot blood sheeted down her side, staining her scales red, but the wound would heal. Getting rid of the mantis head was an enormous relief. She hadn’t realized how badly it hurt until it was finally no longer there.
“Thank you!” she bugled at the green dragon.
He didn’t reply. Had he dropped the head like Konstantin ordered? Or was Johan’s dragon still into being a “my way or the highway” stubborn ass?
Rather than tracking a straight line, the green dragon flew erratically. Was it showing off, or was something desperately wrong? Before she came up with an answer, the beast plummeted from the sky and landed with a spat on an expanse of ice.
Konstantin and Erin ran for the dragon, but the expression on Konstantin’s face iced her bones. “What happened?” she asked her bondmate. It was ancient. Maybe it would know something.
“Stupid fool. He chewed and swallowed the head.”
Katya waited, but it made no sense. “I don’t understand,” she mumbled.
“These things, they’re—” she rattled off a long name in dragonspeak. “It’s what happened to the dragons here. They got drafted as breeding vessels for the mantises.”
“But we’re immortal,” Katya protested, swallowing back disbelief.
“More or less,” her beast agreed. “This was an indirect method of borrowing dragon essence—until naught was left.”
“How could we have been so stupid as to let ourselves be trapped?”
The dragon didn’t answer, but she hadn’t expected it would.
Katya landed and lumbered next to Johan’s dragon. Splayed on the ice, it appeared to be unconscious. Kon chanted furiously, hands placed on the dragon’s belly. Erin had opened a channel to her fledgling power, and Kon drew from it as if it were bottomless. She was already panting and swaying on her feet.
“Hurry, Katya.” He tossed a glance her way.
“I’m stronger as a dragon,” she said in dragonspeak. No need to waste any power at all on telepathy.
She felt him pushing at her magical center and gave him full access. “You’ve seen these things before?”
“Ask me later,” he grunted through clenched teeth.
That he was working as hard as he could told her how precarious the situation was. As if she needed corroboration. The comatose dragon spread before her said it all. She didn’t recognize the incantation, but the words were clear enough. Her twin was intent on chasing out the mantis embryos, not letting them gain a toehold.
“Johan!” Katya shouted. “Help us.”
“How?” His voice sounded strained but determined.
Thank the fucking gods he’s still in there…
“Identify mantis parts and destroy them from within. Your dragon got you into this. He has to help get you out.”
Maybe she shouldn’t have added that last part, but she was furious enough to throttle Johan’s dragon. Arrogance was one thing—if it was based on skill. Arrogance that stemmed from wishful thinking was hazardous.
And stupid.
The green dragon thrashed feebly. A thin thread of fire spilled from its open jaws. Katya took it as a positive sign. Better than the dragon not moving at all. She started to tell him what a sorry excuse he was for a dragon, but her bondmate commanded their vocal chords and vetoed her bid for a voice.
“Not now,” her dragon spoke sternly. “If he recovers, you can excoriate him—right along with me.”
Chapter 7
I wasn’t even aware my dragon had returned until it took exception to some
thing I said to Katya. I’d been trying to figure things out in this brave new world I was suddenly part of and mentioned that perhaps dragons had chosen not to fight as opposed to running away.
At the time, it seemed diplomatic to me. And an explanation for why there were no dragons on the first borderworld we visited. The one with a plethora of prehistoric beast shifters. I recognized a few dinosaurs, but many were new to me. I’ve always suspected our methods of reconstructing species that lived tens of thousands of years ago were badly flawed. Today clinched it for me.
Sheesh. Everyone jumped on me for my offhand remark about dragons not hanging about to kick ass in a fight. Katya shot me a look that would have withered crops in a verdant field. And my bondmate forced a stream of fire out of my mouth.
I asked him how long he’d been back, but he didn’t answer.
Next I asked if he still had his tail out of joint. I probably could have been more tactful, but he was starting to rub me the wrong way. I’d never leave in a huff if I didn’t like the way events were shaping up. My bent is to stay and talk things out, no matter how heated the discussion.
Friends who’d raised children sometimes pointed out their biggest surprise was how different some of their spawn were from themselves. Not that my bondmate is anything like a child, but we’re going to have to find some common ground, or I’m not seeing how this will ever work out.
I sensed his presence, rolling and writhing within me. He didn’t care much for my last set of thoughts, but if he wouldn’t talk with me, it was my only way to communicate with him.
We were on our third borderworld. The middle one had a preponderance of carbon monoxide. We didn’t remain long. This place might have breathable air, but there was something eerie about it. It looked a lot like Antarctica, minus the Southern Ocean. Everything was crusted over with ice, and it was damnably cold. I couldn’t exactly put my finger on what was bothering me, but I felt edgy. Waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Erin was teaching me how to pull heat from the planet’s core to warm myself when Kon’s sharp command, “Dragons, people. Now,” mobilized everyone. I gave it my best shot, visualized my green beast and tried to drop into his form.
The fucker fought me, like he was trying to prove a point or something.
Finally, I shouted, “I concede. You are stronger than me, but it is not how the shifter bond was conceived.”
Every once in a while, a blind dog wins. The parts of my body that hadn’t yet shifted fell into line, and we were airborne. While we’d been at cross purposes, something like a warped science experiment in genesplicing had flown out of everywhere and nowhere. Never mind, it’s impossible from a genetic perspective, but the things were a cross between birds and insects.
With maybe some dinosaur mixed it. They were enormous. Dinosaurs share common DNA with birds, so perhaps I’m not so far afield as all that. Katya didn’t seem to recognize them, but Konstantin did. He was selectively burning them—and it was working. Because there weren’t all that many, he could take his time and make damn sure each atrocity was well and truly doused in dragonfire.
“Look there!” My dragon’s voice in my head shocked me, but I resisted the urge to snark something like, oh, you’re talking with me again?
I peered through our shared vision and saw indentations in the ice. They formed a pattern, not unlike a bees’ nest or the cave dwellings in the southwestern United States. Within each cell was a miniature version of the things Konstantin was killing.
“Nests? Those things have nests?”
My dragon didn’t reply, just sent a focused jet of fire directly into the heart of one of the depressions. Ice cracked into crystalline shards; two of the insectoid hybrids dragged their way out, using their front legs to grind themselves forward. About the size of a housecat, they didn’t appear at all threatening at this stage.
“What are you waiting for?” My dragon’s scream deafened me.
Before I could reply, fire shot from our mouth, and the two babies burst into mini-pyres. At least they didn’t cry out. Maybe their vocal apparatus hadn’t yet formed. I’m not a wimp, neither am I squeamish, but killing helpless children isn’t anything I’d ever considered before. These would grow into the twisted monstrosities Kon was still setting fire to, though, which made it slightly more acceptable.
Erin didn’t seem to be laboring under my ethical quandary—odd since she was a doctor. Regardless of her reasons, she was helping Konstantin.
Cells stretched as far as I could see. We’d be providing quite the public service ridding this borderworld of the insect-birds, so I set about cracking each cell open and murdering its occupants. After the first few, it didn’t bother me quite so much. I stopped labeling them as young and helpless.
In truth, I stopped considering them at all.
I forgot to mention this, but Katya shielded me with her body while my dragon dragged its heels about shifting. One of the winged atrocities bit her when she was protecting me. Made me feel like a total shit, but I was certain if I blamed my bondmate, he’d wiggle out of it by saying she hadn’t moved fast enough. Anyway, I thought she sloughed the thing off, but a bit of it still clung to her.
Katya flew next to me, helping me kill the young whatever-they-weres. Maybe she sensed what a hard time I was having with the actual killing, so I ended up opening nests. Once they were exposed, she did away with the not-yet-hatched hybrids. We made an efficient team, and I was grateful for her help. Maybe a way to pay her back would be to pluck the insectoid head from her hide. Even though the rest of the bastard was long gone, those teeth must hurt.
The more I thought about it, the better I liked the idea of aiding her.
“We got them all,” Katya said.
“I’m not done checking,” my dragon informed her and flicked our tail.
Konstantin and Erin were already on the ground in the midst of shifting. I considered directing my dragon’s attention to them and mentioning three out of four of us were in agreement the battle was over.
While I thrashed about for a tactful way to deliver my message, Katya’s welcome voice reverberated in my head. “Johan?”
“What?”
“Shall we join Kon and Erin?” She angled a wingtip their way.
Fire splatted from my jaws, followed by a rain of smoky ash. I picked my words cautiously and addressed my dragon. “You did a fantastic job locating those nests.”
“I did, didn’t I?”
“Yes. Let’s help Katya, since she helped us.”
My bondmate understood. No reason for him not to since he was privy to all my thoughts. We angled, flying right next to Katya. Apparently, she wasn’t expecting us to be so close because her dragon bugled a challenge. Before I could explain, mine dipped his head and snatched the offending insect head from her flank. Blood flowed from the wound, but dragons healed fast. Absent the chunk of alien protoplasm we’d snatched, the gash should seal right over.
Konstantin leapt to his feet and shouted, “Noooooo!” followed by, “Drop it. Now.”
Naturally, my dragon ignored him, reminding me of some dogs. When you gave them the “Out” command, they just chewed faster. Our jaws crunched through whatever we’d extracted from Katya, and we swallowed the sharp fragments.
“Thank you!” Katya’s dragon bugled, apparently unaware my dragon had just ignored a direct command from Konstantin.
I wanted to bugle back, but something was wrong. I felt dizzy. Off in a weird way. I was sad Katya’s dragon felt the need to protect herself from me, but that couldn’t be what was amiss.
“What have you done?” I asked my dragon as I struggled to put Konstantin’s warning into perspective.
“I do not know,” he replied, not sounding at all like his normal, damn-the-torpedoes-full-speed-ahead self.
In a distant corner of my mind, I felt our shared body first fall, and then hit an ice sheet hard enough for cracks to radiate out around us.
“Johan!” Katya’s worried voice pene
trated the haze around my brain. “Help us.”
“How?” I thrashed weakly, aware of the cold, slick surface beneath me.
“Identify mantis parts and destroy them from within. Your dragon got you into this. He has to help get you out.”
Her words brought everything back in a rush. The insect head. My dragon eating it. Our precipitous fall out of the sky.
A pitiful stream of fire barely left our jaws. When I reached within, hunting for my bondmate, he wasn’t exactly standing proud. If I hadn’t gotten to know him a little, I might not have recognized his stance as shame for what he’d done, but it was close.
“How do we identify these mantis parts?” I asked my dragon. Katya had intimated he could help us out of this predicament, and now that she’d labeled the insectoid thing as a mantis, I could see the resemblance. I’d missed the connection before because in my world, praying mantises were only a few centimeters long.
Maybe because I’d appealed to the beast’s chivalrous side—assuming it had one—it dragged our shared intelligence through its body, stopping here and there. After the first couple of examples, I got the feel of the wrong places.
How could the insect have had such a rapid effect? I might have been lying facedown longer than I imagined, but surely not long enough for the dragon to digest the head it had eaten.
I called a halt to my thoughts. Once again, I was overlaying my old world atop the new one, and the two had very few points of concordance. As consciousness returned, I felt strong magic poking, prodding, and chopping. My dragon wasn’t fighting back, though.
My mind was still fuzzy, slow to process that the voice chanting over us belonged to Konstantin. He was the one pushing power into my dragon’s body, and my dragon was a whole lot more cooperative than when Konstantin had ordered him not to eat the mantis head.
The spot I stumbled over was why the mantis head was a bad thing, but someone would tell me.
“Brace yourself,” Konstantin said, breathing hard. “This will hurt, but it’s the last of it.”