by Ann Gimpel
“I’m sorry,” my dragon mumbled just before a wave of pain shot through us. Everything was first hot, then cold, then stabbed by knives. It reminded me of my first shift, minus the broken bones. I hadn’t realized I could experience agony in the dragon’s form, but it was just as mind-blowingly horrible as when I was human. I’d thought it might be more tolerable—because of knowing we were immortal.
Didn’t make a bit of difference.
Except the negatives of immortality raced to the fore. I could be tortured forever. Like Sisyphus and the rock or any other of the gods’ punishments. Plucked at by crows, eaten by piranhas, stung by wasps, with my flesh reconstituting itself to experience agony all over again. The dragon gnashed its double rows of teeth until our jaws squealed in protest. To his credit, he didn’t yelp.
I would have, but then I’m coming to view male stoicism as badly overrated.
“It is done,” Konstantin intoned.
My dragon scrambled to his feet and bowed so low our chin scraped the ice. “Thank you, my liege. But there is one more spot.” Still doubled over, my dragon bit a chunk off the side of one of our back feet and spat it on the ice in front of us.
I stared through my layered dragon vision in horror at a cell not unlike the ones we’d destroyed. A cell with a mini-Mantis already starting to develop. Katya sent a jet of magic, and the cell imploded, leaving nothing but an ashy scar. I’d missed her shifting, but she was human again.
I wasn’t ashamed to admit I wanted out of my dragon. I needed to be human. Wanted my tongue so I could sort what had happened. Not that I couldn’t use dragonspeak and telepathy to accomplish the same thing, but I craved normal. It would take more than a handful of hours to become used to sharing my hide with a bondmate.
The way things had unfolded so far, it was hard not to believe I’d made a mistake. Erin appeared to get along fine with her new sidekick, but dragons had personalities—just like people. Perhaps she was better suited to her bondmate than I was to mine.
Or maybe it was gender-linked. Men have always loved to engage in pissing contests. My dragon had been absorbed in a game of one-upsmanship ever since we bonded.
“Bondmate.”
Fearing the worst—because of course the dragon was tuned in to my thoughts—I said, “I’m here. Where else would I go?”
“I truly am sorry. I heard Konstantin and chose to ignore him. I had no idea my actions would produce such far-reaching consequences. I promise I will do better. I nearly caused unfathomable harm to us both.”
Konstantin planted himself in front of us. “Give me your foreleg,” he ordered.
My dragon squatted and extended a taloned foreleg. Konstantin’s form shimmered until his jaws elongated. He didn’t fully shift, but he used those dragon jaws—and teeth—to bite hard enough to draw blood, which he sucked and swallowed.
“I am bound by my blood to keep my word,” my dragon said, his tone formal as he employed the dragons’ language.
“Indeed, you are.” Konstantin abandoned his partial transformation.
“Shift,” my bondmate suggested. “I will help.”
Taking a breath, I visualized my human part and fell into it. This time, I remained standing instead of sprawling into an undignified heap. I shook my head from side to side to clear it.
“That thing.” I pointed at the ashy place where Katya had destroyed the last bit my dragon excised. “It looked like the nests we destroyed.”
“It was,” Katya said.
“When your dragon plucked the mantis head from Katya, all would have been well if he’d spit it out. LIKE I TOLD HIM,” Konstantin thundered.
“When he ate it, he began the process that would have transformed your body into a breeding ground for the monsters,” Erin said, adding, “I know it’s foreign and runs counter to everything we understand about genetics and physiology.”
“This world has different rules,” I mumbled. I was starting to shiver and remembered Erin’s instructions about drawing heat upward to warm myself. Once I had the basics of a spell underway, I asked, “All those nests Katya and I destroyed, were they once dragons?”
At Konstantin’s terse nod, I asked, “How did they become trapped?”
“I have no idea,” the dragon shifter replied, “but I intend to find out. Sea-serpents were here. Whether they were the mastermind behind this unconscionable act remains to be seen. But they’re far more intelligent than those creatures we killed.”
“What were the things we killed?” Erin asked.
“Don’t look at me,” Katya replied. “I’ve never seen them before.”
Fire billowed from Konstantin. “It’s not so much that these beasts have a name. I’ve seen conjoined species like these in other places. They are always the work of dark, insidious magic. In this instance, the perfidy did double duty. It borrowed dragon energy to create this particular blend of mantises and raptors. In doing so, it eroded the dragons.”
“What would have happened once the rest of them hatched?” I almost didn’t want to know, but it was a logical question. Having hundreds of the mantis-bird monsters stuck on this borderworld would only pose a problem for people like us. Ones who had the bad luck to end up here.
“Whoever created them would have moved them to where they were needed,” Katya growled.
“If the serpents did this”—Erin chewed her lower lip—“do you suppose the mantis things are part of their master plan to take over Earth?”
“We do not know enough to make such suppositions,” I said, aiming to herd the conversation back to what we actually knew rather than what we imagined might be true.
“Come up with an explanation of your own, if you don’t care for mine.” Erin narrowed her eyes at me.
“For chrissakes, Erin. You are reacting. Understandable, but not useful. We do not even know for certain what the serpents’ intentions are.”
“Yes, we do,” Konstantin broke in. “We overheard them strategizing.”
Oops. I winced. I’d forgotten that part, probably because I didn’t fancy the idea of an all-out war. For once, my dragon didn’t rebuke me. Maybe he was still feeling guilty for almost getting us turned into a brood farm.
“We need to get moving,” Kon said. “But first, I must see if those poor dragons encased in the ice can be salvaged. Once that’s done, we shall check all the worlds in this group.”
“Are there other borderworlds to try if these do not pan out?” I asked.
“Of course, but the farther we travel from Earth, the longer it will take to return.” Katya aimed her words my way. They were a good reminder just how thin a margin we had to work with. Even now, the serpents could have fixed the fault that rendered them vulnerable as humans.
“What was that?” Erin whipped her head around.
I did my best to free up some extra magic—beyond what I was using to stay warm—to search for what had alerted her. It wasn’t easy. The strands of my workings kept tangling together until I couldn’t tell one spell from the other.
Konstantin ran lightly toward a set of cliffs where most of the ice had chipped away. A ragged looking man emerged from behind a boulder. Rust-colored hair fell past his shoulders. He was unusually tall and quite gaunt, almost emaciated. His eyes shone golden with deep-green centers. A robe fashioned from tawny striped animal skins hung from his shoulders, not doing much beyond providing decoration.
Judging from his eyes, he had to be another dragon shifter, but one who looked as if he’d been hiding out here for years.
“Nikolai!” Konstantin swept the other shifter into a hug and thumped him across the shoulder blades.
Katya waited until her brother let go, and then she embraced Nicolai too.
I hurried toward them with Erin right next to me.
“I shall pay homage to Y Ddraigh Goch for the rest of my days,” Nikolai was saying. “You have delivered us.”
“Us? How many are you?” Kon asked.
“Eleven, including me.”
/> “Why did you not leave this place?” I asked.
“Because we couldn’t give up on the ones who’d been turned into brood mares.” He turned his whirling eyes on me. A confused expression marred his craggy face. “Who are you?”
I stuck out a hand. “Johan Petris.” Nikolai didn’t grasp my hand, so I let it fall to my side.
“Erin Ryan.” Having learned from my example, she didn’t offer to shake hands.
“But you’re both dragon shifters, and I do not know you,” Nikolai sputtered. “How is this possible?” He drew back a few paces, confusion yielding to suspicion as his gaze jumped from me to Erin and back again.
“We were human until quite recently,” I spoke up, hoping to set him at his ease.
My words had the opposite effect. He raised a hand, and magic scored me from head to toe, as if he were testing me for evil. Or to see if I was real. I shook myself to dispel what had felt like a moderate electrical shock. “Christ, mate. No need to get violent,” I said.
Konstantin closed a hand around Nikolai’s upper arm. “By the grace of the god, we have two new dragon shifters.”
He tried to turn away, but Kon held firm. “What did you find when you scanned Johan?”
“He appears to be like us,” Nikolai said in stiff, sullen tones.
“Because he is.” Konstantin’s voice brooked no possibility of disagreement. “Summon the other dragons. I have a message for all of you.”
Nikolai rocked from foot to foot, but he stood tall. “If it truly is you, Konstantin, you will have every right to banish me forever for this request. Nonetheless, I will not put my kinsmen at risk until I’m sure. Shift, so I may see your dragon form.”
I’m not sure what I expected, but at the least I assumed Kon would toss fire around, be angry, and order Nikolai to get on with things. Instead, his golden eyes softened.
“Your distrust saddens me, yet I understand its source.” Magic glistened, and the black dragon took shape. Its eyes spun as it folded its wings across its back.
Before Nikolai said a word, men and women streamed from the same break in the cliff face he’d appeared from. They threw themselves on their knees in a circle around Konstantin’s dragon, murmuring thanks and prayers in dragonspeak.
Their actions moved me. Konstantin was their prince, and they now viewed him as their savior. Somehow, they’d escaped the fate of the other dragons, and now they sought safe harbor.
I waited for him to tell them there was no such thing, that war was upon us, but he gestured them closer and wove magic through the group, healing their wounded spirits and binding them to him. They surrendered to his will, trusted him to make the right choice for them all.
It blew the independent streak I’d always valued right out of the water.
And made me ashamed.
Once men had looked to other men to lead them. Those days were long gone, and we were worse off for their passing. I’d agreed to become a dragon shifter out of necessity and gratitude to Konstantin and his twin. For the first time, I genuinely welcomed my transformation.
Viewed it as an improvement over who I’d been and the life I’d led. When I looked at Erin, her eyes had sheened with tears. She and I would talk, but I’d have bet nearly anything she felt the same way I did.
Steam puffed from between my jaws. Approval from my bondmate. Would this be a turning point built on something stronger than his guilt? It would if I let it. I turned my voice inward, infusing it with frank gratitude. “Thank you for taking a chance on me.”
I’d said it before, but this time I meant it with all my heart.
“Thank you for not holding my error against me. You would be justified being angry for centuries.”
“We humans have a saying. Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.”
More steam puffed through my mouth until soft clouds surrounded me. Olive branch extended and accepted.
I turned my attention to the group around Konstantin. He was human again, and voices rose in a rush as everyone raced to tell him what had happened.
Chapter 8
Katya listened as the dragon shifters’ stories spewed out. Her heart squeezed in pain for the brave dragons who’d remained on this borderworld. Despite moving well past the point of holding hope for their trapped kin, they kept on trying to rescue them. They hadn’t been scrabbling about for a solution for all that long. Not more than two annums or so. Until the first batch of monsters hatched, they hadn’t been certain just what was incubating.
And the first hatch was only a few days old.
Good thing. The bastards were just getting the feel of their power. It was why they hadn’t fought back in any kind of organized fashion.
“The serpents caught us by surprise, my liege,” a woman with flowing silvery hair said. “None of us had seen a sea-serpent in ages.”
A lumbering dark-haired man with shorn curls added, “Hell, most of us have never laid eyes on a serpent. The schism betwixt our peoples occurred so long ago, it wasn’t much more than a myth.”
“Had any of you had dealings with sea-serpents before this borderworld?” Konstantin asked.
“Me, but it was fleeting,” Nikolai answered. “I ran across two on a distant world long ago. Once I realized what they were, I left before they noticed me.” Fire blasted from his mouth; he batted it away. “My dragon isn’t any happier about my decision now than he was at the time it occurred. He wished to stay and fight.”
“Is there water here?” Katya asked. “As in large bodies of it?”
Nikolai nodded. He seemed to have moved beyond his misgivings about Johan and Erin. That Kon had readily acquiesced and shifted clearly went a long way to quell his concerns. “Have you not been here before?” he asked.
“Yes, but all this ice wasn’t here then,” Konstantin replied.
“It wasn’t here before the serpents showed up, either,” the woman with silver hair said bitterly.
“That was our first clue all was not well,” Nikolai clarified. “We sensed others with magic but didn’t worry ourselves overmuch about their presence. After all, no one who didn’t possess power could show up in a place such as this. But then, it grew colder. Much colder.”
“Several of us took our dragon forms and went to investigate,” another woman, this one quite fair with shoulder-length curls, tossed in. “They never returned.”
“We tried to reach them with telepathy,” Nikolai explained, “but they didn’t answer us.” A sigh rattled from him, laced with regret and sorrow at the loss to dragonkind.
The silver-haired woman wove an arm around Nikolai’s shoulders. “We’ve been over this ground. You mustn’t blame yourself.”
“I’m the one who sent my friends, my comrades, on that reconnaissance mission. If it’s not my fault, then whose?”
“You had no way of knowing,” Konstantin said.
“It does not excuse me. I should have gone to look myself.”
“Had you gone as a dragon, you wouldn’t have returned,” the burly man said.
“Better me than them,” Nikolai countered. “I am in charge of our flight, and I performed poorly as your leader.”
“Tell us what happened when you went looking for the dragons,” Katya urged. Listening to Nikolai flay himself raw hurt her soul.
“We didn’t find them right away,” he answered her. “We searched for two days before we came across a gaggle of sea-serpents, rolling about on the newly frozen lake. They greeted us like long-lost friends, and when we asked after our kinsmen, they pretended they hadn’t seen them.”
“Did you test their words with magic?” Konstantin drew his brows together into a thick line.
“Not the first conversation, although I have no idea why I didn’t. They must have ensorcelled me. By the time the next meeting rolled around, I warded myself and was far more cautious.”
“What had changed?” Johan leaned forward, clearly interested.
“Three things. The dragons were still not back.
We couldn’t locate them with magic, and our world was many degrees colder.”
“Go on,” Konstantin urged.
“The second time we approached the serpents, power flowed around them in what appeared to be the beginnings of a teleport spell.” Nikolai thinned his lips into a harsh line. “I asked if they’d be returning, and a grayish-black serpent shrugged. Their spell thickened. Before they vanished, another of them said, ‘Thank you.’ For some reason, the others found it hilarious. I ended up standing there with my thumb up my ass as both laughter and serpents faded from this world.”
He spat a mixture of fire and ash on the ground.
“I’ll take over,” the burly man spoke up. “We searched and searched. By then, we were certain the serpents had something to do with the disappearance of our friends. Months passed, but we didn’t give up.”
“Nay. We grew more determined,” the blonde woman said.
Nikolai held up a hand. “Let me finish the tale. Perhaps because the sea-serpents’ spells eroded the longer they were gone, we finally located one of the missing dragons. Loran was buried in ice. As far as we could tell, he’d moved beyond where any of us could reach him—or his dragon.
“Once we found him, it was simple enough to pinpoint the others. All were in a similar state of stasis. They’d been arranged in two rows, as if the serpents had been planting crops. We cut them from the ice with fire, moved them away from the lake, but the next day their bodies were iced back over.”
Fire mingled with his last words. His dragon must have been frantic about the others. Desperate dragons were dangerous dragons. The more agitated they became, the harder to control. Katya would have complimented the shifters on not ending up with renegade bondmates, but she didn’t want to pour fuel on the dragons’ discontent.
They had every right to be disconsolate. The loss of six dragons was perhaps the worst defeat dragonkind had ever suffered.
“At least your companions are no longer trapped.” Konstantin’s observation carried a tiny flicker of hope.
“Yes,” the dark-haired shifter concurred. “We thank you for delivering them from the wickedness draining their magical essence.”