by Ann Gimpel
Good, it saved hunting them down.
Erin faced them, hands on her hips and the pile of her clothing laid across one end of the table. “I’m happy to cook, but we couldn’t find anything in here to eat.” Strain carved lines into the skin around her eyes, but she was trying.
Katya waved an arm to one side. Cupboards that had been hidden with magic shimmered into view. “Let’s look together, shall we?” she invited Erin. “That way we will all be happy with the result.”
Erin joined her, appearing skittish but pointing out items in response to Katya’s queries.
Johan’s eyes had widened at the casual display of power that made edibles appear. He swallowed visibly and dropped his armful of clothing next to Erin’s. “We appreciate your hospitality,” he began, “but we do not belong here.”
Katya angled a pointed glance his way; Konstantin nodded to let her know he’d handle this. “You’re absolutely correct,” he told Johan. “But in the time since you chose to violate one of our gateways, things up there”—he waved a hand above his head—“have changed radically.”
“How?” Johan asked. Before Konstantin could answer, he charged on. “We have accepted the loss of our ship, of our research project. All we require is transport to the Polish research station, and then you will be rid of us.”
Konstantin nodded and speared Johan with his unwavering gaze so the man would see truth hovering behind his eyes. If humans could even sense such things. “I had come to the same conclusion—that it was a mistake for us to reveal ourselves to you, although you made things damned difficult when you forced your way into our world.”
“We did not know,” Johan protested.
“If we had—” Erin began.
Konstantin waved both of them to silence. “Many things happened that were beyond your control, and your choices sprang from not having any others. I understand that. Unfortunately, now something has occurred that is beyond my control, and if we can’t figure out how to deal with it, I fear your precious Earth will turn into something unrecognizable.”
“You’re just saying that,” Erin pronounced defiantly.
Foodstuffs clattered from Katya’s hands, and she rounded on Erin. “My brother does not lie. Apologize. Immediately.”
Erin stared long and hard at his sister before dropping her gaze and mumbling, “I’m sorry.”
“Tell him, not me.” Katya’s tone was implacable.
“It’s not necessary,” Konstantin cut in. “How long before a meal is ready?”
Rather than answering, Katya snarled accompanied by a few plumes of fire.
Konstantin walked to a chest in a far corner and withdrew a flask. It contained lake water he’d coaxed into a fermented blend that was mildly alcoholic.
“Sit,” he invited and took his customary place at the head of the table. “We shall share a drink, and you will listen.”
“To what?” Erin asked.
“Sit.” Johan pushed her gently toward the table and settled her into a chair, taking one across from her.
Rattling platters told Konstantin that Katya had risen above her ire and was once again working on a meal. “It is impossible to impart every detail,” he began, “but I will tell you something of dragon shifters. Listen carefully. This information will be critical as you evaluate the options available to you.”
“Thank you,” Johan said.
“For what?” Konstantin inquired. “I haven’t said anything yet.”
“As you pointed out, our last choices went badly,” Johan clarified. “I appreciate you offering us an opportunity so perhaps our next ones will work out better.”
“Me too,” Erin said and sounded as if she meant it.
Konstantin took a long drink from the flask and handed it to Johan. Even though these two seemed naïve and childlike, underestimating them was a mistake. After Johan offered the drink to Erin, Konstantin had decided where to begin.
“You may view Earth as the only inhabited world, yet many, many others exist both within this solar system and others. Dragon shifters are far from the only magical creatures, yet we are one of the more ancient ones…”
Chapter 8
We passed the flask around as Konstantin recounted a tale that belonged in a children’s story, except it had a bloody aspect. Maybe more like Grimm’s Fairytales in the original Germanic version. I’d suffered through it during one of my many attempts to master something beyond English.
Not unlike most of my med school classes, there was too much information flowing from Konstantin to absorb and process, so I focused on the highlights. Other worlds. Other races, mostly with magical underpinnings. The bit that was hardest for me to wrap my head around was that supernatural beings—not unlike the ones on Supernatural and Grimm and other television series I’d sucked in for diversion, were real.
Theoretically.
Apparently.
Impossibly.
“So how long have the two of you been here by yourselves?” Johan asked. He wore an expression I’d come to recognize from our days aboard the Darya. I’d privately dubbed it his “scientist look,” because his body was angled toward the speaker, eyebrows slightly raised, and the corners of his eyes scrunched the tiniest bit.
We’d been inside long enough for our hair to have mostly dried. Somewhere along the way, Katya had plopped a couple of tureens on the table with spoons. The expectation was we’d all eat out of a common bowl. It got my medical ire up, but I didn’t want to risk alienating Katya any further than I already had by fishing where we shouldn’t have.
And by suggesting her brother had twisted the truth to suit his fancy.
Still listening to a very different version of history than I’d ever heard before, I picked up a spoon, set it down, and grabbed it again. Tugging the nearest dish closer, I took a tiny mouthful, surprised when a pleasing mixture of flavors exploded on my tongue.
Even that small amount reminded me how famished I was, how long it had been since my last meal aboard the Darya. Three days, give or take a few hours. After a laughably brief struggle, hunger won out. I overlooked all the ways food can kill you and dug in.
Everyone else was eating too. I thought about asking exactly what Katya had used for ingredients but decided I was better off not knowing.
“It has been at least fifty annums since the other dragon shifters, who also lived here, left in search of a more commodious home,” Konstantin was saying.
Katya shook her head. “Closer to a hundred, Brother.”
He shrugged. “It might be as much as that. We have no reason to mark the passage of time.”
I supposed not. If they were immortal—and I was still having a hell of a hard time accepting they were—what were a hundred years on one side or the other of some imaginary line?
“Do either of you have more questions about what you’ve heard so far?” Konstantin asked. He got up, retrieved another flask, drank, and passed it around.
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah. Of course. Who wouldn’t? But probably none of them are more than idle curiosity. Are there things you left out in the interest of expediency that we need to know to understand whatever you plan to tell us next?”
He shook his head.
“I have a question.” Johan sat straighter. “I understand we triggered some kind of gateway that dumped us down here, but if we had not done so, would you have shown up in the crystal-lined cavern?”
“Yes, we would have.”
“I suspected as much,” Johan said. “My next question is, “Why? What did you want with us?”
“It wasn’t you, specifically,” Katya began.
Konstantin held up a hand. “If it is all the same to you, Sister, I would prefer to tell this, since it was my idea.”
I expected Katya to tell her brother to piss up a rope. Instead, she nodded pleasantly. Apparently, dragon shifter females deferred to their male kin.
And why shouldn’t they? It’s the same way humans operated until very recently, I reminded myse
lf.
Johan edged his brows a notch higher, but stopped shy of suggesting Konstantin get on with it. He’d been eating like a starving orphan, just like me, and perhaps having food in our bellies for the first time in days had a modulating effect.
“When we first became aware of you,” Konstantin went on, “Katya’s dragon was not precisely missing, but nor was she present. The dragons hate it here because they can’t fly free whenever the mood strikes them. Her dragon had pressed her to leave long ago. When she refused, it vanished.”
“But that’s terrible,” I murmured and looked at Katya.
“No. It’s understandable,” she corrected me. “But my dragon has returned, and her absence no longer presents a problem.”
“But she was gone when I decided we needed more dragons if we were going to stay here,” Konstantin continued his narrative.
“Why?” Johan asked.
“We do better when we are part of a society. Dragons were not born to live alone,” Katya answered him.
“Yes, and it wasn’t wise to leave without Katya being able to access her dragon’s body because we would have been venturing into the unknown, and she could not fly. Our only other option was to strengthen ourselves, develop our missing community, by creating more dragon shifters.”
“Are you born or made?” I asked. Maybe he’d told us when he was deep into his magical history retelling, but I’d jettisoned a good deal of it in an effort to keep the most important parts straight.
“Both,” Konstantin said.
“We believe both,” Katya spoke up. “Our legends suggest dragon shifters can be created, yet neither of us have ever known such to occur.”
“If the lot of you don’t stop asking questions and engaging in side conversations, I’ll never get through this,” Konstantin groused, sounding as if his patience was wearing thin.
I zipped it and smiled his way.
“As I said before, it wasn’t the two of you specifically,” he went on. “But we needed a way to enhance our numbers. Your genders were convenient, and—”
Forgetting all about my commitment to remain silent—one I’d only made a few seconds before—I blurted, “You planned to have sex with us? Use us as some kind of esoteric breeding stock? How the hell would that even work? She”—I jerked my chin at Katya—“might do fine giving birth to…to whatever your young look like. But I probably wouldn’t. How do you even know my body would be capable of—”
“Silence!” Konstantin was on his feet, towering over me. So close the sheer maleness of him stole my breath and my wits and a whole lot of other things.
I made a grab for the flask and drank so fast I choked, spitting out the alcoholic beverage as I fought to clear my lungs.
“Were you planning to give us a choice?” Johan’s voice, even and neutral, shamed me. I was acting like a teenage drama queen.
“Of course. I would have left you back on the surface if you were not amenable,” Konstantin replied. “What do you take us for? We are not animals that force others to our bidding—or our pleasure.”
“Sorry,” Johan said. “You cannot expect us to understand your thought processes, which is what makes questions so important.” He took a breath and blew it out. “You should welcome questions rather than assumptions.”
“I should, should I?” Konstantin turned his head in time to divert fire that blasted from his mouth.
Katya flowed to her feet and gripped her brother’s arm, dragging him a few feet from the table. “They are not like us. You can’t expect them to react like another dragon shifter. We haven’t spent enough time around humans to understand them any better than they understand us.”
Another blast of fire scored the far wall. I suddenly understood the importance of most of this dwelling being built of rock. Good, old non-flammable stone could withstand a whole lot.
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out, so I took a far more cautious swallow from the flask and tried again. “You said you’d take us back to the surface. I can’t speak for Johan, but I’d like to leave. Whenever is convenient for you, of course,” I added hurriedly. No point in Konstantin and his sister thinking me even ruder than they already did.
He yanked free from Katya and spun to face me. His eyes glittered dangerously, their deep golden color incredibly hypnotic when paired with the forest-green centers.
“That option is no longer open to us.”
I absorbed his words. Before I could find a subtle way to determine why he’d changed his mind, Johan asked, “Why not?”
“An unexpected scourge materialized. If we moved you to the surface now, it would mean certain death. For you.”
I got heavily to my feet, the meal I’d just eaten sitting in my stomach like a congealed lump of undigestible material. I hoped I wouldn’t puke it back up. No matter how upset I was, I needed calories.
“It’s the Russians, isn’t it?” I asked dully.
Last to stand, Johan moved to my side and draped an arm around my shoulders. “Probably not. You are not thinking. Those two”—he tipped his head toward the dragon shifters—“could kill anything human and not look back.”
“We only kill for good reasons,” Konstantin said stiffly.
“You’re goddess damned fortunate he killed the one in the upper cavern with you.” Katya rounded on me and Johan. “Furthermore.” She took a step nearer to us. “I’m who fixed Johan’s leg.”
“I wondered how that happened,” I mumbled, grateful to have something to glom onto instead of the likelihood of spending the rest of my life miles beneath Antarctica.
“Thank you.” Johan inclined his head.
Konstantin seemed to have recovered his equanimity. At least the fireworks had slowed. “When Katya and I were aboveground just now, we saw both the Russians’ ship and the Darya. We also ran into an old nemesis. Several of them, to be precise. They were killing the men on the Russian ship in droves.”
“Serves them right,” Johan said darkly.
“Killing them, how?” I asked, wondering if Johan and I could manage the Darya on our own. Probably not for a blue-water sail, but I was confident we could guide it around the headlands to the Polish research station on King George Island. Failing that, we could launch a Zodiac—assuming some were left aboard.
“Poison,” Katya said succinctly.
“It is airborne and kills on contact,” Konstantin added
“Um, how come you’re not dead?” I blurted, and then shook my head and mumbled, “Never mind.”
“For once, you asked a decent question,” Konstantin said in a more moderate tone. “We are impervious to their venom because back at the beginnings of time, they were related to us.”
“They still are,” Katya said. “Unfortunately. Them being banished by Y Ddraigh Goch did not sever our familial link.”
“I suppose you’re right,” Konstantin grumbled.
“Who is ydraikgoc?” I bungled the word because I couldn’t visualize it.
“Y Ddraigh Goch is one of several dragon gods,” Johan answered.
I stared at him, open-mouthed. “And you know this, how?”
“I told you. I read a lot of sci fi and fantasy. Mythology too.” He narrowed his eyes and asked Konstantin, “So your god did something to another branch of your family, and now they have arrived to exact revenge?”
“No. Nothing like that,” Katya cut in.
“It’s unlikely they know we’re here,” Konstantin added. “Although that could change very quickly.”
“Our god exacted punishment millennia ago,” Katya said. “Long before Konstantin and I were born. We had no idea any of our…relatives were on Earth.”
“How many of these, erm, kinfolk are there?” I asked.
“Same thing I was wondering,” Johan said. “Any chance we could slip out of here after dark? Maybe if they do not see us, we might get to the Polish base.”
“Now it is you who aren’t thinking.” Katya tossed Johan’s words to me back in his face. “Our
senses are far more acute than yours. The only reason our distant relatives didn’t figure out Kon and I were in the air watching them was because they were intent on killing the sailors aboard that boat.”
“And probably eating them,” Konstantin muttered. “No point letting all that meat go to waste.”
The nausea that had threatened earlier swept over me in a wave. Bile splashed the back of my throat in a burning cascade. I swallowed hard to keep my stomach’s contents where they belonged and not splattered across the stone floor.
Johan tightened his grip on my shoulders. “Steady,” he breathed into my ear.
I inhaled to the bottom of my lungs, blew it out, and did it again. Half a dozen breaths later, I wasn’t on the verge of puking, but it was about all I could lay claim to. I didn’t feel very sanguine anymore. My belief we’d get through this somehow was fading to a dull hopelessness.
Johan let go of me and flexed his fingers in front of him. “You have conveniently avoided naming what it is you saw outside. Am I correct they are like you? Dragons?”
Konstantin pushed his shoulders back as if a heavy weight sat atop them. “No. Not dragons, but sea-serpents. Once we shared a similar form. After Y Ddraigh Goch banished our kin, he stripped them of their wings. They can no longer fly.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose between my thumb and forefinger. Why the hell were they making us drag information out of them? “Why not just tell us?” I asked. “The whole thing. Not dribs and drabs.”
“Probably because we’re still sorting out what it means,” Katya said.
“If you had magic, you would see the truth in our words,” Konstantin spoke up. “As it is, you’ll have to take our word and not presume we’ve made up a tale to hold you here.” Walking forward, he splayed his hands on the tabletop. “We have told you the truth. Certain death lies above. If you still wish me to, I will transport you to the Polish research station and leave you, but everyone there will be dead soon enough.”
“If they aren’t already,” Katya said.
“Why?” The word tore out of me.