Moonlight Dragon Collection: Urban Fantasy

by Tricia Owens

  "A passive defense exists: nine seals that keep it locked shut. That, however, is the problem. Vagasso must think he has a play on the seals, a way to break them or neutralize them. I'm not sure. I'm as clueless as you are."

  "Except that you're not," I pointed out. "From what your brother said, you've known about Vagasso for a while. In fact, it almost sounds like you originally came here to fight him."

  It would make more sense, actually. A lot of coincidences had lined up that I was beginning to doubt.

  "Moody..." Vale walked up to me and cupped my shoulders. "I came here for you. That was my mission originally. But before I could tell you anything, I made a mistake: I stopped first to visit a friend, someone who was trying to keep tabs on Vagasso."

  I thought hard. "You don't have any friends except mine." I cocked my head. "Christian?"

  "Yes, I'd had no idea that he was moving against Vagasso. It was purely bad timing."

  "Moving against Vagasso? But the way he described what happened with the demon possession made it sound like you getting cursed was a big mistake. An accident. Before then, he'd never had contact with Vagasso."

  "Only one part of what happened was an accident, Moody. Diana sabotaging the demon summoning ritual and trying to send it into an inert object was a very deliberate act." Vale rubbed my arms. "He and Diana have been following Vagasso ever since he killed Christian's father in Antarctica."

  I blinked. "I thought he was accidentally killed by fishermen in Argentina."

  "I said that because at the time I didn't know how much I could tell you. I'm telling you the truth now: the two of them have vowed to hunt down Vagasso and punish him for murdering Christian's father. When they learned he was in Vegas, they came, too. Diana infiltrated his group so she could stop whatever he was planning."

  That made more sense than Christian choosing Vegas just because it was remote. He was a water fey. This should be, and probably was, his last choice of cities to live in.

  "Diana's not a superhero, she's a spy," I said, impressed even more by her.

  "Christian's father had been guarding a powerful relic that was buried beneath the ice in Antarctica. Vagasso killed him and stole it. That was why Diana knew exactly how to modify Vagasso's ritual so the demon would be under her temporary control. She was familiar with the relic because of her husband. Once the demon was under her control, she tried to cast it into the mirror in the hall, which Christian would have immediately smashed with a mallet. But then I walked in and you know how that ended up."

  I was amazed. What I thought had been a comedy of errors had been planned up until Vale's untimely entrance.

  "You said you originally came here for me," I reminded him. "Why? I had nothing to do with Vagasso at that time. I didn't even know he existed."

  Vale turned his head, looking out the front windows of Moonlight. "Will you go somewhere with me? It'll help explain things better than I could."

  Though I wanted him to spell it all out, right then and there, I couldn't help being intrigued. And maybe a part of me was testing Vale, wanting to see if he would try to snow me again by distracting me with something instead of telling me the truth.

  "Alright. Color me curious," I told him.

  He searched my eyes and whatever he saw there made him smile sadly. "You don't trust me, but I'll do my best to change that."

  ~~~~~

  I expected a trip across the city, but Vale only walked me across the street. To the art gallery which sat beside Tomes. The same gallery which my uncle had marked with an asterisk in his guide of friendly magickal businesses.

  "Someone lost a hand in there," I told Vale as we reached the sidewalk in front of the place.

  "I did hear about the incident with the hand," he told me. "I think we'll be okay."

  Unlike most of the businesses in this neighborhood, the gallery no longer resembled the house it had once been. The original structure had been demolished and a square, squat building constructed in its place. Its clean, sharp, geometric lines made it stand out amidst the aging, sagging houses surrounding it. There were no windows that I could see, making the building more reminiscent of a small museum. Its yard had been replaced with poured concrete.

  Vale led the way to the tall, burgundy front door. "Just make sure not to touch anything," he teased.

  He pushed in the door without knocking and motioned for me to precede him inside. I entered cautiously and immediately felt the buzz of magick as I crossed the threshold. Some kind of ward, apparently. Did it prevent non-magickals from entering or was there another demographic denied entrance?

  "While we're admiring art," I whispered to Vale, "what's your brother going to be up to?"

  "He'll hole up somewhere. I won't be surprised if I find him on the Stratosphere. It will draw him just as it draws me."

  "He'll just hang out? He's come all this way, crossed an ocean and the entire U.S., just to admire the view of the city?"

  "He'll be watching," Vale muttered, and there were multiple layers in that response that I was dying to peel back.

  The room we'd entered was ivory. Ivory walls, ivory marble tiles, an ivory ceiling studded with a dozen or more pot lights, and two long ivory leather benches. The only art in the room consisted of four plaster casts set in the wall weirdly at waist level. One was the face of the Sphinx, another was a half bust of Julius Caesar. The third cast was of Medusa and the fourth was a bearded guy that, if pressed, I'd guess was Blackbeard the pirate.

  "Greetings."

  I startled at the voice and spun around to find a small being standing beside me. The top of his white-haired head came to my hip. He smiled a rather gnarly smile at me from within the sea of soft, puffy wrinkles that made his face sag like a peeled apple that had sat on the counter for too long. It was a pretty typical look for a goblin.

  "Welcome to Gallery Veritatis. I am the proprietor, Echinacious."

  He was dressed in a three-piece coffee brown suit with a burnt orange tie. I liked his leather, curly-toed boots. Melanie would've been all over them.

  Vale introduced us and added, "Anne runs Moonlight Pawn."

  Echinacious tapped the side of his droopy, crooked nose. His face made me think that parts of it were slowly sliding off. In twenty years he might be only a pair of eyeballs.

  "Good neighbor discount, eh?" he said with a soft, friendly chuckle.

  "We're paying full price," Vale told him. "We're interested in two pieces."

  "Shifter portraits?" Echinacious looked us both over. "I think only one of you is a shifter, and even then, I wouldn't bet any money on it."

  "So you paint portraits?" I motioned at the blank room. "Why aren't there any on display?"

  "Because they're not meant for casual viewing, Anne. For some, the act of transformation can be very intimate. It's a vulnerable moment. However, I do have some examples for you to enjoy if you'd like."

  I nodded and watched the goblin touch the nose of the Sphinx cast. A panel along the opposite wall slid aside, much like the one that had allowed admittance to the Keyhole. This panel hid a room that was much smaller, maybe ten by ten. It was as dark as the main room of the gallery was light. Inside, two portraits sat on metal easels. Each was illuminated by its own spotlight.

  Echinacious didn't need to explain a thing. I murmured in awe as I approached the two paintings. They were magickal: two distinctly different images appearing on each canvas, much like lenticular photos that you tilted in order to see a second image. These portraits, however, shifted on their own, no need for tilting. The one on the left was a portrait of a plain-looking middle-aged woman, smiling kindly. Her eyes were green with a brown spot touching the pupil of the left eye. As I watched, the image dissolved and coalesced into the image of a long-haired cat with eyes that were identical to the woman's.

  In the painting on the right, a pair of toddlers, siblings by the look of them, grinned widely at us. They then shifted into a pair of fluffy lop-eared bunnies. It was all I could do not to coo w
ith delight.

  "If I was a shifter, I think I would love one of these," I admitted.

  "They're quite popular," Echinacious said proudly. "Family portraits are in particular demand, as well as the opposite spectrum: slow-motion, full transformations. Those are exceedingly intimate and very powerful to watch."

  "It almost sounds erotic," I said with an apologetic smile at the goblin.

  He only chuckled. "Often that is the reasoning behind requests for them. They are the shapeshifter version of a boudoir photo."

  "We're not here for a shifter portrait," Vale reminded me quietly, though the low burr of his voice made me want to own a portrait of him. To Echinacious, he said, "I'd like two memory stains, using my memory and Anne's sorcery to power them."

  "Power them?" I questioned as Echinacious led us back to the main gallery.

  "Memory stains are only available to witches and warlocks, sorcerers and sorceresses. I had not realized you were a sorceress, Anne."

  Here we go. "I'm descended from dragons."

  The goblin only shrugged. "All this time I had no idea such power existed across the street from me. I would have felt so much safer had I known."

  His nonchalant attitude threw me for a loop.

  "Most people react negatively when they learn my familiar is a dragon," I told him with disbelief.

  Echinacious rolled his beady little eyes. "What could you do to me? Make me short? Make me ugly? Too late for either of those things, I'm afraid."

  "I could end your life," I said softly, feeling Vale grow tense beside me.

  The goblin waved a stubby hand carelessly. "It takes a lot to bury a goblin, Anne. We're a tough species. I've heard us referred to as the cockroaches of the magickal community. That isn't an unfair comparison, actually." He glanced back at me and winked. "I'm not afraid of you. To me, you're just another potential customer."

  I wanted to hug the little guy. It was a shame I hadn't known how awesome he was before now. I would have sent him all the business I could. I'd definitely be sending Celestina and Lev over here. They were the perfect candidates for a shifter portrait since Lev loved being a wolf so much. This way Celestina could refer to the portrait when she forgot what her boyfriend looked like in his human form.

  Echinacious touched the nose of the cast that I thought of as Blackbeard. The new room that the goblin led us into was as dark as the shifter portrait room had been. This time, though, the metal easel in the center of the room held a blank canvas that was encased in an ornate, gold-gilded frame. Standing before the easel was what appeared to me to be one of those garden gazing balls on a stand. It was iridescent, leaning toward blues and purples, and seemed to emit a subtle glow.

  "Here is where we transfer a memory of your choosing to the canvas," Echinacious explained. "The memory can be of anything, but the stain will consist of only a single scene. One second in time, so please make certain to concentrate only on that particular second so as to ensure you stain the correct one."

  I turned to Vale, confused. "Why do we need this?"

  "Because I want you to see two memories of mine. They're important to what we're doing."

  Since I had no idea what we were doing in the first place, I let myself be guided to stand beside Vale in front of the gazing ball thing.

  "Place one hand on the focus, please."

  Assuming the focus was the ball, I set my palm on it. It was surprisingly warm, like a mug of tea. Vale's pinky finger rested alongside mine.

  Echinacious said from the side of the room, "Vale, please concentrate on the memory you wish to stain. One second only, please. Anne, I need you to will your sorcery into the ball. Since you are a dragon sorceress, that doesn't mean bring up your familiar. Send only your sorcery."

  Send only my sorcery. That wasn't something I ever did. I used Lucky for everything. But I understood what the goblin was asking me to do.

  I considered the rumbly place in my chest where my awareness of Lucky existed. He didn't actually live behind my breastbone, of course, but that was where my magickal core was. I pulled from there now, but gently, like I was reaching into a barrel of cotton candy and trying to extract just a few strands of the wispy material without crushing or melting it. I didn't envision Lucky's form in any way. That kept my sorcery amorphous, a mere cloud of energy. I could feel it transferring through my fingertips and into the ball that Echinacious had called the focus.

  "Please be sure not to remove your hands from the focus," the goblin added, almost as an afterthought. Maybe he'd forgotten once, which led to the infamous story of someone losing their hand here.

  Beside me, Vale closed his eyes. I allowed my gaze to float over his features, trying to find a reason not to trust him and push him away. He'd been by my side through the worst of it, and it sounded like he intended to be there when it became hairy once again. But what if his secrecy was increasing the danger for both of us? And why wouldn't he just come out and tell me what he and Xaran wanted me to do?

  "It's beginning," Echinacious said in a hushed voice.

  On the canvas, colors began to appear like they'd been dropped there from the tip of a brush. Gradually, they blended together to assume shapes. It was like watching a watercolor being painted by an invisible brush, images appearing as if magickally. My smile formed without conscious thought. I was in awe of what was occurring on the canvas. This was coming from Vale? With a boost from me? Together we could create beautiful art?

  Seconds rushed past with more color appearing on the canvas, combining and separating, growing darker around the edges and then darker within the center of the image, too. In fact, it was becoming clear that this memory was one which had occurred at night, which made sense since that was when Vale was conscious. When I saw the storm clouds forming and then two beams of light shooting up into the sky, I realized what scene he had chosen to recall.

  It was the night my parents were run off the road. I could make out their car, a crumpled silver Honda at the base of a vertiginous cliff, its front end pointing up at the sky with the headlights illuminating the clouds. There was a dark mass over the bulk of the car, sort of like a fog, but blurrier. It made it impossible for me to make out any details of what sat behind it. Vale had told me something had veiled his vision of the accident, so this was all he had been able to see that night. Though I was disappointed that I couldn't see inside the car, I was awestruck by what I could see.

  A golden dragon reared above that concealing blur. It was as magnificent as Lucky, a real bearded Chinese dragon, with fins flared for maximum intimidation. I searched the canvas eagerly, hoping to see my mother, but I couldn't find her. She must have still been in the wreckage and concealed from view. She and my father. This memory showed how she had tried to protect them both despite whatever injuries she had suffered from the crash. She had been a warrior to the end.

  My eyes burned with tears of pride and sorrow. I wish I could have told her how awesome I thought she was. I wish I could have seen her dragon in the flesh, just once.

  "It is complete." Echinacious stepped up to the canvas to admire it. "A significant moment, I believe."

  It was an understatement and a half. There in a gilded frame sat a precious second before my parents were murdered.

  Vale turned to me, his dark eyes like bottomless wells of empathy. "I wanted you to see what I saw that night. I wanted you to know what she was like."

  "Thank you," I whispered, my voice ragged. I wiped at the moisture on my face and then repeated, "Thank you." I threw my arms around his shoulders.

  He held me against him and rubbed my back. He might have a problem with keeping too many secrets, but I would forgive him a lot for having done this. Only someone who truly cared would have bothered. Only someone who loved me.

  "Your mother was magnificent, Moody, and so are you. I need you to believe that. I need you to understand that. Vagasso was afraid of your mother and he's afraid of you, too. You and Lucky are a force to be reckoned with."

  I
didn't care about being a "force to be reckoned with" but it was apparent that Vale wanted me to believe that. He had an agenda here, but I didn't resent him for it. I wanted to know what it was.

  I pulled away from him and dashed away the last of my tears. "What other memory did you want me to see?"

  Echinacious removed the completed memory and set it carefully against a wall. He then placed another blank, framed canvas on the easel.

  "This is another memory I carry of your mother." Vale's brow creased, as though he wasn't as sure about the value or rightness of showing me this particular scene. "It will surprise you, but it is the truth as I saw it."

  "You've got me worried," I quipped weakly.

  "It will be alright." Vale's dark eyes compelled me to trust him.

  We placed our hands side by side on the focus again. I pulled my sorcery and fed it through my fingertips. As colors began to appear on the canvas, my palms grew moist. Why did Vale think this would affect me? Was it a bad memory? Would it make me grow angry with my mother, or worse, disappointed?

  This time it took a lot longer for me to identify what I saw. I didn't recognize the setting, for one thing. It appeared to be indoors, for I could see walls covered with green striped wallpaper. I didn't know of any place with walls like that. Shapes began to emerge that materialized into animals: cats, dogs, a mountain lion and a pair of wolves. They were shifters, but there were people there as well in human form. All in all, it appeared to be a gathering of a couple dozen shifters in various forms of transformation, much like Melanie and I had encountered in the Keyhole. But this wasn't the Keyhole and there was another significant difference. The focus of this memory was a woman.

  A woman who looked just like my mom.

  She was smiling and shaking the hand of a man who looked like Kleure in his human form. Kleure was grinning his dog grin, and he looked genuinely happy. They both did, as though they were meeting for the first time.

  "This was the night your mother agreed to join forces with Kleure," Vale said quietly. "Their plan was to overthrow the Oddsmakers."