by Ann Gimpel
I feel for Erin, but I admire her spirit. She’s having a much rougher time than me absorbing the idea of magic being anything other than an abstract construct. Too nervous to remain seated, she’s pacing around the room asking questions. Blonde hair is billowing around her tall, spare body, and her blue eyes hold a worried cast.
I’m not sure why accepting magic is real hasn’t been harder for me, but people are different that way. I have half an ear on Konstantin, one of the dragon shifters, describing several iterations of magic wielders. Only half, though. The rest of my mind is busy—reeling might be more accurate—with information about other worlds. Lots of them.
Apparently, we’re headed toward a constellation of borderworlds to secure assistance from other magic wielders. Sea-serpents, a distant relative of the dragons, have invaded Earth. We’re the only ones who know about them, so presumably, we have to act as the first line of defense—
A brilliant flash I’ve come to associate with dragon shifter magic made me squinch my eyes tight. When I opened them, Konstantin had crossed the kitchen and grabbed Erin. She was writhing in his grasp trying to get away.
I wasn’t anxious to confront him. Richly muscled, he probably stood six feet six with shiny dark hair cascading around his shoulders. But I couldn’t just sit there and let him manhandle Erin, either. She’d been my shipmate on an Antarctic research expedition. It’s how we ended up in the Southern Ocean.
The dragons’ cozy kitchen stretched around us. Carved out of earth, its walls sported rich veins of gold, silver, and other precious metals. Longer than it was wide, most of its contents were tucked behind magical panels. We’d been sitting around a large table, one that could easily seat twenty, before Erin jumped up and began pacing.
I hustled to where she and Konstantin stood and asked, “Is that really necessary?”
“I won’t hurt her,” Konstantin growled.
I’m certain he meant to dissuade me, but I didn’t back down.
While I was considering what to say next, Katya, Konstantin’s twin, and another dragon shifter materialized next to me and hooked an arm beneath mine. “Come with me. We shall talk. Erin is safe with my brother.”
Katya is stunning. About the same height as Erin, she has masses of copper-colored curls. Most of the time, she’s naked, which is a huge distraction. I admit I’m weak, but I’m a man, and we tend to be diverted by bare breasts and acres of leg. Both she and her brother have golden eyes with deep green centers. In dragon form—she’s golden, and he’s black—their eyes spin, casting a hypnotic net.
I felt power spilling from her, but I was helpless to do anything except acquiesce. It was a damned uncomfortable spot to be in. I value my free will, and it’s been in short supply lately. My mouth opened, seemingly of its own accord, and I murmured, “Of course. Where would you like us to sit?”
“Can’t you see what Konstantin’s doing?” Erin squawked. “Whatever he left out, we all need to hear it. Together. In the same room.”
I heard Erin, but her voice was coming from a long way away. Her complaint seemed petty, unimportant. Katya’s warmth, pressing the length of my side, was paramount.
Somehow, we ended up one flight up sitting on one of the pallets scattered through a number of sleeping areas. She seized a length of fuzzy fabric and wound it around herself, almost as if she divined how much trouble her nudity created.
Whatever she’d done to get me to follow her upstairs dissipated. Worry for Erin filled me. “Where has Konstantin taken Erin? And for what purpose?” I asked without preamble. I tried for a stern enough tone Katya wouldn’t blow me off.
Or muffle me with magic again.
She nodded. “It’s understandable you’d be concerned, but my brother would never harm her.”
I folded my legs beneath me and said, “Konstantin said the same thing. That he would not hurt her, but you did not answer either of my questions.”
“No. I did not.”
“Why? I still know nothing about his intentions.”
Katya curved her fingers and raked them through her thick, unruly hair. The motion stretched the fabric tight across her breasts. I forced my gaze upward with firm instructions to keep my eyes on her face, not on the outline of her nipples.
After a pause, one that dragged out so long I was crafting what to say next to encourage her to talk, she said, “We’re in a precarious predicament. Nor do we have time to waste.”
I opened my mouth, but she shook her head. “Hear me out. We cannot leave you here in our home while we travel to various borderworlds seeking allies. If something unexpected happened, and we were unable to return, you and Erin would be stuck down here. There is no way to reach the surface without magic.”
She spread her hands in front of her. “My twin is correct. It’s far too dangerous to stumble around the universe with two humans in tow. For you and for us. We might end up fighting for your survival instead of lobbying for the help we so desperately need. Absent aid, Earth will be lost to the serpents.”
“How can you know?” I asked, startled by the adamant tone of her statement.
“Because they’re like us. It means I understand how they think, how they operate.” She cast a sidelong glance my way.
“All right. You ruled out several options. What is left?”
She traded looking askance at me for raking me with an astute gaze that probably missed very little. “Only two options. We leave you on the surface—where you would be vulnerable to both the sea-serpents and the elements if we were gone overlong.”
“Or?”
“Or we make a bid for each of you to become a dragon shifter.” Her golden eyes never left my face.
“What? But neither of you are even certain such a thing is possible.” I felt as if a mule had backed up and kicked me in the guts with both its rear hooves.
“No. We’re not,” she agreed. “Konstantin intuited Erin would be a harder sell than you. Fear lives in that one, although she covers it well. It’s why he took her to a more private location. He will lay out her options, and then she will choose.”
“What happens if she says no to becoming a dragon shifter?” It was an easier question to ask than one about me because it was a step removed from my own fate. But I bet the answer would be the same.
I ground my teeth in irritation at my cowardice. I didn’t usually avoid tackling difficult situations, but this one was so bizarre I didn’t have a place to slot it.
“Konstantin will probably deliver her to that Polish research base the two of you have mentioned.”
Understanding flooded me, right along with guilty relief. Erin would never opt to be a dragon shifter. Not in this world or any other. “We are here until she decides, right? Because both of us have to make the same choice.”
“No. We’re here for two reasons. To move us out of the way and for you to think about what you want to do.”
I frowned, remembering an earlier conversation, one of the first we’d had with the dragon shifter twins. “But Erin and I are ruled by a single fate, correct?”
Katya shook her head. “No longer true.” She offered me a soft smile. “For a transformation to have a ghost of a chance of success, you must want it with everything in you. The same is true of Erin. Neither of you can ride on the other’s coattails.”
I turned the information over, considering it. “If I demur, you will see I end up at Arctowski, the Polish base?”
“Yes. It will be a death sentence. The nearest humans will be the first targeted by the sea-serpents.”
“Mmph. So I would be better served having you leave me in Europe?”
“You would, indeed.” She paused long enough to take a measured breath. “I would erase your memories. While I would be as careful as possible, you would lose some that are bound up with your time with us.”
“I understand. Some of my memories of Erin would be at risk.”
Katya nodded solemnly. “Would that be a problem?”
Her tone was
studiedly neutral, so I couldn’t read what might lay behind it. Part of me hoped she might be a tiny bit jealous, but I was being ridiculous. “Not a problem so much as it pokes my control freak buttons,” I mumbled.
“What exactly are they?”
I chuckled. “Humans are an odd lot. We nurture the illusion we are masters of our own ships.” I took a breath and blew it out, my amusement fading. “Every time you or your brother uses magic to force an outcome, I resent the hell out of it. I am used to living in a world where people make requests, and I am free to accept or decline.”
She knitted her coppery brows together. “Does that mean you never have to do things that bother you? Or that you disagree with?”
“Of course not.” I stopped before blindly blundering forward. Perhaps the freedom I’d cherished wasn’t anything beyond a carefully constructed illusion.
“So you’re not truly free?” she pressed.
“I guess not, but…” My voice faltered. How could I explain the nexus between manners and social expectations and outcomes?
“Never mind. It’s not important. You know your choices. What is your decision?”
“Just like that?” Time shrank around me until I felt physical pressure compressing my chest like a steel band.
“Yes. Just like that. I’m happy to answer questions, but when we leave this room, it will either be to travel to the place between worlds where we shall petition Y Ddraigh Goch for a dragon of your own. Or to a spot on earth of your choosing. Which shall it be?”
She’d said she welcomed questions, and they bombarded me from all sides. “What if I try and cannot, uh, transform into something like you?”
“Then we retreat to Plan B and I deliver you somewhere on Earth.”
“Minus my memories.”
Katya nodded. “Of course.” She tilted her head to one side, and I couldn’t look away. No one had a right to be as beautiful as she was. Her skin glowed golden, almost begging me to reach out and stroke my fingertips over its surface.
She dropped a hand on top of my thigh. The heat from her traveled through my thick, polar outerwear and prickled the skin beneath. “I’m not being cruel. Humans are a fragile lot. Your minds can only absorb so much. Holding memories of a failed attempt to bond with a dragon would eventually drive you mad. You would replay it again and again. You would blame yourself. You would want to try again, but once shut, that gate will never reopen.”
“So either way, I would lose my memories? If I fail at a transformation, or if I do not try at all?”
Katya nodded.
“I understand.” It was the prudent response, although privately I wasn’t certain she knew what she was talking about. How could she? From what she and her brother had said, they’d spent almost zero time with humans. Perhaps she was underestimating me. I rolled my mental eyes. Over-confidence had nearly been my undoing more than once.
It was how I’d ended up chucked in the chromium dig site with my femur broken. Erin set it, but Katya had healed me with magic. At the time, I’d had no idea how I’d recovered so fast, but I hadn’t questioned my fortune, either.
“Questions?” Katya pressed.
I wrenched my mind back to the ones uppermost in my mind. “This transformation. If it works, won’t it take really a long time for me to learn to control my magic?”
“Your dragon would help with that. The main problem will be maintaining control over the dragon.” Breath rattled through her teeth. “They’re an independent bunch. When they’re not in your mind—or in their dragon form wherever you happen to live—they’re free to travel where they will.”
“But we have only one body?” I clarified. “Either the man or the dragon.”
“Yes and no.” She tossed an errant clump of hair back over a shoulder. “The dragons have their own world. I suspect they’re corporeal in their own place.”
“Why would you not know that?”
“It’s a good question.” Katya’s nostrils flared. “Even though we’re bonded, the relationship is lopsided. My dragon knows everything about me, but the only things I know about it are what it wants me to know.”
“You’ve never traveled to the dragons’ world?”
“No. None of us have. It’s barred to everyone but dragons.”
My forehead scrunched into a mass of lines. Obviously, we didn’t have hours and hours for me to quiz Katya. What could I ask that would cut through several layers of my ambivalence?
If Erin had asked me if I wanted to be a dragon shifter even a few hours before, I’d have answered with a hearty affirmation. But now that the choice actually lay before me, I was of so many minds it was disconcerting.
“What are the advantages of this…lopsided relationship?” I focused on Katya wanting to pick up on her nonverbal cues as well as her words. For once, I wasn’t half-aroused by her curves.
Probably because I was focused on the most critical decision of my life.
She met my straightforward gaze unflinchingly. “It’s a hard question to answer. Since I was born with a dual nature, my dragon has been part of me forever.” She closed her teeth over her lower lip. “It’s like having a beloved companion. One who knows all of you, the good and the bad, and holds your feet to the fire when you’ve done something wrong.
“My dragon has been my closest friend—and my worst enemy. I hated her when she abandoned me after I refused to leave Earth. In retrospect, if I’d listened to her, Kon and I would be better off.”
It seemed she had more to say, so I waited.
“When my dragon left, first I was angry, but then I was desolate. I missed her terribly. It was as if someone had cut off my right hand. Not the greatest metaphor, but I felt a critical part of me was missing.”
“Did you ask her to come back?”
Katya’s golden eyes skittered away. “Not for a very long time.”
“What stopped you?”
She still didn’t look at me. “Pride. The dragon left me. I figured she could find her own way back. Truth was I thought she owed me an apology.” Bitter laughter bubbled. “Doesn’t work that way.”
“How did she find her way back to you?” I was curious to hear what had finally turned the tide.
“Kon’s dragon did something. I have no idea what, but she returned as abruptly as she’d left. And we took off running as if we’d never been apart.” Katya stole a glance my way. “It’s good to have her back. I’m whole again.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose between a thumb and forefinger. Nothing Katya had said made me want a dragon of my own. I was fiercely independent, and the thought of another being telling me what to do—or even weighing in with an opinion—made my skin crawl.
But the specter of being dropped off in the Netherlands—if I chose to go home—didn’t hold much appeal, either. Right now, I had knowledge of a serious threat to all life on Earth. Once Katya got done with me, I wouldn’t remember any of it.
Fat, dumb, and happy, I’d molder on the sidelines, fiddling while Rome burned. Maybe not quite that bad, but I had an uncomfortable premonition about the serpents. “Once the sea-serpents develop momentum,” I asked Katya, “roughly how long will it take them to establish control of Earth?”
“Not long at all. Men have nothing at their disposal that will make the slightest dent in a magical war. They’ll fall by the wayside in less than a single generation. Perhaps less. Depends how many serpents their leader, Surek, imports from wherever they came from.”
Her response didn’t surprise me, but nor did it make my choice any simpler. If I had her return me to my human kin—and that could happen even if I made a bid for a dragon and failed—I’d find out about the threat to Earth along with everyone else. We’d mount what defense we could, and fail.
Not how I’d envisioned myself ending up. Taking the coward’s way out.
I was in a position where I could make a difference. If I pulled my head out of my rump and acted like a man.
I stumbled to me feet and st
ood as tall as I could, vertebrae cracking as I pushed my shoulders back. “I wish to become a dragon shifter.”
Katya rolled to her feet and regarded me. Magic prickled where she jabbed me with it, no doubt testing my words. My resolve.
“Not quite good enough,” she said. At least she had the grace to sound disappointed, but she didn’t mitigate her words.
“What do you mean?” I sputtered. “Of course I harbor doubts. I would be a right fool not to have them, but—”
She made a chopping motion. “You must want this with every fiber of your being, or you’re wasting both of our time. The dragon will sense your hesitation”—she blew out a tight breath—“if we even got that far. Our first stop is Y Ddraigh Goch. If the dragon god is not convinced of your purity of heart, he’ll send us packing.”
I turned my hands palms up. “I will offer the best within me.”
Her harsh expression softened, but not by much. “I’m sure you will. For now, take a walk outside. Perhaps down by the lake. I will confer with my dragon, and I want to visit the surface to keep an eye on the serpents. In roughly one turn of the glass, I shall return, and we will see which direction opens before us.”
Before I could protest I was as certain as I was likely to get, the air around her turned glistening and liquid, and she was gone.
I blinked stupidly at the place she’d stood before turning and trudging up another set of risers to the large stone door that led outside. Taking a walk was a good idea. It was easier to problem solve when I was on the move. Somehow, she’d known that about me.
As the heavy door swung shut behind me, I thought about Erin. Should I try to find her? I shook my head. I couldn’t help her any more than she could help me. Determined to find a way to mute my concerns, I set off through an unusual underground paradise carved deep beneath Antarctica’s ice cap. It was warm down here. I’d mapped the string of subterranean lakes from my lab on the Darya, the research vessel I’d been dragged away from by Russians intent on stealing what they could of Antarctica’s mineral wealth.