Kiss of Fate

by Deborah Cooke

  What if his situation ensured that he never got the restorative sip that he needed?

  He struggled with new desperation at that possibility and only managed to tear the wound wider.

  “I’ll bet that hurts,” Jorge murmured in old-speak.

  Magnus looked around wildly and found the most promising of his assistants staring up at him from the ground. Jorge was in human form, the wind lifting the fair blond of his hair. His gaze was steady and as cold as ice, his arms folded across his chest.

  “Help me!” Magnus cried aloud.

  Jorge smiled and didn’t move. “Why should I?”

  Magnus glared at the younger Slayer. He’d always appreciated that Jorge was a good negotiator but didn’t like the view from the other side of the transaction as much. Jorge held all the proverbial cards, and Magnus wouldn’t have to guess twice at what the younger Slayer wanted in exchange for his aid.

  “It might kill you,” he advised, knowing that Jorge wouldn’t heed the warning any more than the others ever did.

  Jorge’s smile broadened. “I’ll take my chances.”

  No surprise there.

  Magnus found himself smiling at the perfection of the solution. If Jorge died in drinking the Elixir, then Magnus would be rid of Jorge’s troublesome ambition. If he survived that sip, Magnus would have a faithful ally.

  Jorge’s alliance would be guaranteed, because he would need regular access to the Elixir, which Magnus controlled.

  One sip was never enough.

  One sip was simply the first sip.

  Sooner or later, the survivors all realized that one sip made them beholden to Magnus forever. Magnus didn’t see any reason to advertise that particular slice of reality.

  “Hurry, then,” Magnus advised. “Our task is yet unfinished.”

  Jorge’s eyes flashed; then he changed shape with lightning speed. He broke the iron spire from its base with a single swing of his tail. He snatched up the length of it that skewered Magnus and breathed dragonfire to heat the metal. Magnus winced at the heat of the iron and the fire, but knew it wouldn’t kill him.

  He roared with pain when Jorge snapped the spire in half. It fell from Magnus’s body, the rough edges tearing his body raw. Magnus fell to the ground, gasping.

  It had been a long time since he had felt such agony.

  Fortunately, he didn’t have to endure it long.

  He caught his breath, gritted his teeth, and moved. He took flight outside the gates of the cemetery, charting a course to the sanctuary, where the Elixir was secured.

  He didn’t glance back. He knew Jorge would follow.

  Mallory and Balthasar could look after themselves for the moment. Magnus would find them later, once he was restored to health. He felt the lack of blood in his body and the weakness stealing over him, and didn’t like it one bit.

  He had to have a sip of that potent nectar, immediately.

  Not only could Sigmund’s dragonfire turn Eileen into toast, it made it impossible for her to feel the lure of the firestorm. She had no idea how to find Erik.

  She heard Sigmund land heavily on the roof of the car and tried not to panic. There was a road on the right that looked like an overgrown lane—more important, tree boughs grew low over it. It must have looked like a good option because of the trick Erik had played on Magnus earlier.

  Either way, Eileen was going for it. She rocked the car on its shocks when she turned hard. Snowy branches struck the windshield, and the spewing snow obscured Eileen’s vision.

  She drove under a dark, low bough and heard a thwack. There was a scratch and a shout and Eileen smiled, knowing that there wasn’t a dragon on the car’s roof anymore. A peek in the rearview mirror showed a large green and silver lump on the road. She turned on the wipers and didn’t slow down, taking the curves of the lane with reckless speed.

  She wondered where she was going. The lane looked as if it hadn’t been used in a long time. There was bracken growing in the middle of it and brambles scratched along the car doors.

  The rental company wouldn’t be pleased, but then the scorched roof pretty much condemned Erik’s deposit. The road twisted and wound, ascending constantly. Eileen knew she should have been concerned about its destination, but it felt almost familiar to her. She was sure she’d never been on this road before, but she had a strange sense of homecoming.

  Her parents’ house had been a tract home perched on a suburban street among its fellows, not a cottage at the end of a winding, vegetation-clogged lane. Eileen had time to wonder what tricks her mind was playing on her; then she emerged into a clearing.

  It was a dead end.

  There was no other road, no way out except the one she’d taken in. And Sigmund was back there, winded if not wounded. It was unlikely that he’d be friendly. The sky overhead was empty and Eileen felt no firestorm heat.

  Her heart lodged in her throat and hammered. She turned the car around as quickly as she could, knowing that she had to go back as she had come and face Sigmund. There must have been a house in the clearing at some time, or several buildings, but only blackened foundation stones remained. There must have been a fire.

  Eileen shivered, remembering Sigmund’s blast at the car. She drove around the ruins, then headed back to the lane.

  A man stood there, smiling coldly at her. It wasn’t Sigmund. His arms were folded across his chest and his gaze was fixed upon her. He looked pale and purposeful and highly unfriendly.

  The edges of his body were shimmering against the snow, and Eileen guessed that he was also a Slayer.

  Eileen’s suspicions were confirmed when a green and silver dragon alighted beside the man and immediately shifted shape. Sigmund wasn’t surprised to see this man, so they were clearly allies.

  That wasn’t the best news Eileen had heard all day.

  She decided to ram right through them and make a run for it. She gunned the car and headed straight for them, expecting them to leap out of the way.

  Instead they shifted shape in unison.

  And the big red dragon lunged directly at the windshield of the car, his eyes blazing. He raged fire directly at her, and all she could see were brilliant flames. Eileen screamed and closed her eyes, but didn’t take her foot off the gas.

  She hoped for the best.

  No luck. The car hit a tree with force and the radiator began to hiss and steam. The air bag deployed and Eileen was utterly disoriented.

  That only got worse when someone opened the door and seized her elbow.

  “And so we meet,” the fair man said with a faint Russian accent. He hauled Eileen out of the car with more strength than he should have had for his size. “Charmed, I’m sure.”

  “Excuse me.” Eileen tried to push away from him. “I have to go.”

  “Oh, I don’t think you have anywhere to go,” he said smoothly. “After all, we have much to discuss, Erik’s mate.”

  Eileen glanced up in surprise.

  And then it was too late.

  She made the mistake of looking into his eyes, which were so pale that they could have been made of water.

  Or smoke.

  Ice.

  He smiled a reptilian smile and flames lit in the depths of his eyes. Just like Frenchie at the train station. Eileen realized that the new arrival was trying to influence her thoughts.

  Not surrendering the Dragon’s Teeth immediately seemed like a much less clever strategy than it had just the day before.

  Being without Erik when two Slayers had her cornered was even less clever.

  Eileen fought to look away from those dancing flames, but she couldn’t even blink. Her intuition screamed but she was snared. There was nothing she could do to save herself.

  Except panic. She had that option covered.

  For once in all his days and nights, Boris wasn’t irritated. He could even forgive Sigmund for almost losing track of Erik’s mate, given that she had found her way to this site.

  Boris loved when events came full circle.
He’d intended to bring Erik’s mate here, to lure Erik to this potent site for his own destruction, bringing a kind of poetic closure to their old antagonism.

  Boris planned to kill Erik precisely where Erik’s father had killed Boris’s father. But Erik’s mate had come here of her own volition.

  It was just too perfect.

  Boris regarded the agitated mate with a certain tenderness. She was making him look good.

  Maybe he would kill her a little more quickly.

  Maybe he would explain everything more clearly to her.

  She deserved a reward of some kind, after all.

  Boris decided what her present would be. He would remove the risks, eliminate her chances of escape, and loose her from the spell of his beguiling.

  So Erik’s mate could appreciate his brilliance before she died.

  “Destroy the car,” he commanded Sigmund in old-speak, not breaking his gaze upon Erik’s mate.

  “You said you’d leave this to me,” Sigmund began to argue, his tone petulant and his manner making Boris impatient.

  “I lied,” Boris conceded mildly. “Destroy the car.”

  “But—”

  “Now!”

  Sigmund muttered something uncomplimentary under his breath but Boris didn’t care about his minion’s attitude. Sigmund was proving to be not just annoying and incompetent but disposable. Boris would have to find another acolyte to train, but perhaps he would find a better one.

  Immortality was somewhat tedious in terms of finding good help.

  Meanwhile, Sigmund shifted shape and kicked the car over onto its roof. He blasted it with dragonfire and the upholstery started to burn. Boris led Erik’s mate away, assuming that the gas tank would explode.

  It did, sending a satisfying array of flames into the sky.

  The snow fell thickly all around them, dusting the burned edges of the old foundation stones with white. “You remember this place,” he said to Erik’s mate.

  “I remember this place,” she echoed dutifully, and he knew his beguiling was working against him. He listened, but heard nothing. There was a distant scent of Pyr, which simply meant that Erik would arrive more or less on cue.

  Boris let the flames die in his eyes and the woman quickly averted her gaze. She caught her breath and took a trio of steps backward, clutching her satchel as she stared around the clearing. Her gaze lingered on the burning wreck of the car, then flicked to Sigmund and back to Boris.

  “Who are you?” she demanded.

  “Boris Vassily, leader of the Slayers.” He bowed slightly.

  Her eyes narrowed. “I thought Magnus led the Slayers.”

  Boris inhaled sharply. “Magnus is an insurgent who will be put in his place.”

  “I see.” She nodded, and he wondered what she was thinking. “So, Erik’s son works for you, then, not for Magnus?”

  Boris was startled that she knew Sigmund’s identity, but smiled all the same. “We fight on the same side, as we have done for so long. In fact it was here, on this very site, that I first recruited Sigmund.”

  She surveyed the clearing, then met Boris’s gaze with suspicion. “It’s kind of austere.”

  “There was a regrettable accident, one that you must recall.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know anything about this place. In fact, I’m wondering what this has to do with me.”

  “Everything.” Boris considered her, skeptical that she had forgotten the past. “You don’t think it was a coincidence that you were drawn to take refuge here, in a location you knew so well?”

  She glanced around again, a measure of doubt in her expression. “I’ve never been here before.”

  “Not in this life,” Boris said softly, and her eyes flashed.

  Maybe she did remember.

  “Hello, Shadow,” he murmured, and she paled.

  Erik’s mate took a step backward, her eyes wide and her face pale. She held her satchel in front of herself like a shield, but she couldn’t have anything in there to defend herself against Boris. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, but there was a lack of conviction in her tone.

  “Don’t you remember how your father was obsessed with the secrets of alchemy, with the promise of turning dross into gold?”

  She frowned and glanced to the most distant collection of foundation stones. They were the blackest and the most burned. “In the lab,” she whispered. “In his workshop.”

  “Yes,” Boris agreed. “I knew you could remember if you tried.”

  Her mouth worked in shock and dismay, so he gave her a minute to catch up. Humans could be so intellectually slow, and so physically feeble. He had the time to wait.

  “What are you talking about?” Sigmund showed a regrettable tendency to fill a silence and shatter a mood. “This place has nothing to do with Erik’s mate.”

  “You can call me Eileen instead of Erik’s mate,” she said tartly. “Or maybe Dr. Grosvenor would be better.”

  “Mate,” Boris repeated, ignoring Eileen as he faced Sigmund. He bit out his words. “She is Erik’s mate.” Sigmund stared at him, uncomprehending, and Boris exhaled in exasperation. “And I thought you were bright.”

  “Just because Erik’s last mate was my mother—” Sigmund began, and Boris couldn’t stand his stupidity any longer.

  “How do you imagine that Erik has had two firestorms?” he shouted, fed up once and for all with incompetence. “There is only one way! There is only one possibility!” He jabbed a finger through the air at Eileen. “She is the reincarnation of your mother, Louisa!” He spit at the ground and the spittle hissed through the snow. “You moron!”

  Sigmund blanched.

  Eileen ran.

  Erik spiraled out of the sky like an ebony spear.

  And Boris laughed, gleeful that his plan was coming together so very well.

  Let the mate run: His battle was with Erik Sorensson.

  The blood duel was yet unfinished between them.

  Louisa!

  Sigmund was appalled that he’d missed something so obvious. There was no other way for his father to have a second firestorm than for his mother, Louisa, to be reborn.

  But if Eileen was the reincarnation of Louisa, he couldn’t let Boris kill her. As much as Sigmund blamed his father for the sorry events of his life, his mother had loved him without qualification.

  And he had loved her in return. There was proof: The only scale Sigmund had ever lost was the one he’d lost over his mother’s death. Her suicide had devastated him, and he had hated his father even more for driving her to that decision. He ran after Eileen, closing the distance between them with long strides as she bolted into the woods.

  He caught her satchel and she spun to face him. She backed into a tree, her eyes wide, and tugged her satchel back into her own grip. Her hair was loose and her face was pale. She looked small and vulnerable to him, fragile as only humans could look.

  Then she lifted her chin and her eyes flashed. He watched her lips set and glimpsed a toughness that he didn’t remember at all.

  “Go ahead, then,” Eileen said with quiet fury. “Fry me.”

  Sigmund couldn’t do it.

  There was hatred in her eyes, loathing and fear mingled together, and that look shredded his conviction. He halted and saw her flinch in anticipation of his assault. He heard Boris and Erik battling in the clearing behind them, knew logically that he should want to thwart Erik’s firestorm, but couldn’t confirm Eileen’s assessment of him.

  He let himself shift shape, taking human form once again.

  She eyed him warily. “Changing your mind? Or do you just have a nastier plan?”

  He shoved his hands into his pockets, remembering a hundred incidents that she had forgotten, all the times he’d come home as a boy with a confession to make, all the times she’d soothed his injuries, all the times that she had pushed the shadow away from his sun. His heart swelled with remembered affection, given and received, and the wound of that final b
reak hurt all the more.

  He hadn’t made his choice in isolation.

  “You have to remember.”

  She caught her breath and averted her gaze. “Reincarnation is flaky stuff.”

  “Does that mean it can’t be true?” Sigmund asked quietly. She met his gaze, her own filled with questions. “Dragon shape shifters could be said to be flaky stuff, too.”

  She smiled a little and his heart clenched at the glimpse of Louisa in her smile. “If one myth comes to life, why can’t the others do the same?” she asked, then nodded. He sensed that she was pulling thoughts and impressions together, making sense of them.

  There was more she had to face than his reality.

  “You blame me for turning Slayer,” he said softly. “You don’t approve of what I am, just the way you didn’t approve of my visiting my grandfather without you.”

  “I’m at a disadvantage here,” she said, taking a quick breath as she glanced toward the clearing. “I remember only bits and ends, and what I do remember is so vague that I’m not sure it really is my memory.”

  “But you came here today.”

  She bit her lip. “It felt right. And there weren’t a lot of choices.”

  “No,” Sigmund said flatly. “It’s more than that. You remember and you know you remember.” Her breath hitched and he watched her hand spread against the bark of the tree. It was as if she sought reassurance of what was real, what was tangible, what could be relied upon.

  But Sigmund knew that his own memory was real.

  “You saw the fire,” he said, sparing a glance over his shoulder. “You saw that last fight, the explosion that destroyed the lab and the dragonfire that claimed the house. But I was here first. I saw my grandfathers die.”

  “Louisa’s father?”

  “And Erik’s father, too. Both of them died here, both at Erik’s own hand.”

  She inhaled sharply. “I have only your word on that.”

  “He’ll probably tell you if you ask him.” Sigmund shook his head. “He never had a problem admitting the truth, no matter how painful it was. Don’t you remember?”

  Her fingers clenched as she watched him.