He sighed and squeezed my shoulders. “Hattie Jenkins, is what I’m saying making sense to you right now?”
It was, and I hated him for it. I felt so powerless that all I wanted to do was tear around and find more clues, more evidence that would point us on the right track to deter the Warlock threat. Something that would lead us to the Cathedral governor. Shields.
But I was spent. Worn out from pointing the finger at someone who deserved better chances in life. Exhausted from sucking up Summer Eve’s pain and her lifelong fear of abandonment. David was right. I wanted to go home. I wanted to be with my beloved cats.
“I’m going home,” I confessed, finally.
“Sleep well,” he said, rubbing the back of my neck. “I’ll see you at Portia’s tomorrow.”
I was already walking away. My feet heavy with longing for the comfort and safety of The Angel.
CHAPTER 18
Even though the cats knew they were about to see their fairy cousin, Hinrika, their demeanor was subdued on the ride to the Gorthlands. The news about Eve had upset them, and they were dealing with their own emotions over the woman’s fate.
Jet had come along for this ride too, being that a Custodians meeting was on the cards for the day. I wondered briefly if the brotherhood would let me sit in on the meeting as they had the last time. I felt close to their cause, and I knew I was contributing some good work too. I had no desire to really be in the society, I had no intention of practicing magic as a matter of course, but neither did I want to be elbowed out into a place where I wasn’t considered an integral part of the cause.
The sky was already a deepening shade of violet. I could see even deeper vermillion bands of light as the sky descended into the horizon.
Verdantia and David were standing on Portia’s driveway. They were deep in conversation. David looked simultaneously shocked, then delighted, as Verdantia shared her gem. I brought the broom down just in front of them.
“Hattie,” Vee said, already gliding over to embrace me. I kissed her cheek. “Vee, always lovely to see you,” I said.
David’s expression still looked bemused. “What’s going on with you?” I asked, half laughing at my friend’s amusing face.
“Vee just told me … well, you tell her, Vee,” David said, waving a finger at our fairy friend.
“Oh, heavens, yes,” Verdantia said, raising her fists to the sky and doing a dainty little jig. “Dilwyn Werelamb just came into a whole whack load of money, Hattie!” Vee punched the air again, and David clapped and laughed.
“Can you believe that, Hattie? Dilwyn’s going to complete that merman pool, after all. That old coot …” David shook his head and laughed.
I swooned.
“Hat?” My friend ran over to me. “Have you caught my illness?” He joked. But, the chief took my face in his hands and studied my eyes. “You okay?”
I blinked.
Then I laughed like a freaking maniac. I fell on my back, rolled over, held my stomach and laughed like a hyena with rabies. I think I may have even frothed at the mouth a little. Dilwyn Werelamb came into money! My prosperity ward had unfurled magic I didn’t know existed within me.
My eyes caught David and Verdantia standing over me, looking down at me and murmuring between themselves.
“I’m okay, guys,” I said, finally sitting up. David reached for my arm. “No, really, I’m okay. I know that looked psychotic, but I’ll explain later, all right?”
“Oookaaaay,” David said.
I bounced to my feet and crunched along the gravel drive toward Gaunt Manor. Hinrika, in a beautiful silk number, spun in circles on the porch, laughing while the Infiniti clung onto her expensive fabric.
Portia Fearwyn and Orville walked out of the front door. They were carrying … things. Stone bowls, torches, an old leather-bound book. Arms full, they walked past the twirling Hinrika and down the stairs to greet us.
“For once, you’re on time and you’ve caught us a little behind with our duties,” the Witch Fearwyn snipped, as she brushed past me with her strange cargo. Orville came behind her flowing cape. “Hi, Hattie, good for you for coming. I wasn’t sure you would. But Portia said you would, so I --”
“Orville!” The Witch Fearwyn shouted. “Come on son, I don’t have all day!” She pointed to a spot on a very rare patch of dry ground. “Here will be perfectly adequate.”
Orville smiled at me sheepishly and wandered over to fulfill his duties.
I shook my head. Maybe they were setting up some kind of lawn game?
I wandered back over to David and Verdantia. They didn’t hear me coming, though.
“...just don’t know if she’s ready,” David said.
“She is ready,” Vee said calmly.
“Ready for what?” I stared at them.
Hinrika and the cling-on cats moved behind Vee and David. Portia and Orville joined them.
“No,” I said, already turning away from them. “Nope, no way.”
“Seraphim Joyvive, you will stop right there!” Portia’s bellow halted me in my tracks. I spun around. “I’m not joining the Custodians. So, you can all stop with …” I flicked a finger toward the spot where Portia and Orville had been working. “....building your ritual, ceremonial, sacrificial altar, or whatever.”
“Hat, we need you,” David said, holding his arms out slightly at his sides. “We need you.”
“You all know why I don’t like magic, and I’m already using it too much as it is. I don’t want to get sucked into witchcraft to the point where I think it … might … actually …” I broke off.
“Save someone’s life?” Onyx sat on my foot and looked up at me. “Are you still holding yourself responsible for your parents death?” He said. “Dearest, Hattie, not one person in the magical kingdom could have saved your mom and dad. Believe this and know it to be true.”
I shook my head.
“It was balefire!” Portia blared. “You know that you couldn’t have saved your parents, even though you desperately wanted to. It was Fae trickery. Or, who knows, maybe the Warlocks were behind it. But, whatever the case, the magic in those flames was impenetrable, so it’s time you stopped blaming yourself for it!”
The Witch Fearwyn’s shoulders hunched forward, and her neck sprang outward like a turtle. Her eyes tore through me, showing no mercy for my attempt to hide behind personal historical events and excuses.
A movement in the sky behind Portia’s shoulders caught my eye.
“What the heck is that?” I said, pointing to the lurching object that rose and fell in the sky behind the Custodians.
“Is it a bird?” David asked.
“Is it a plane?” Orville said.
“No, it’s Artemus Caves …. And … well, two other people,” Portia said, putting a hand up to her eyes and squinting up at the awkwardly maneuvering spectacle.
I saw a pair of thin white arms jut from the side of Artemus, who was ‘driving’ the broom. Carpathia waved her hands dramatically, while an arm belonging to someone else made an appearance. Gabrielle’s dusty, clay-like skin was hard to miss. The former golem offered a polite, short wave.
“They’ve uncovered it,” David said, rushing forward to meet them at the crash-landing site.
The anomaly in the bell! They’ve got it!
Me and my kitties rushed over to greet our friends.
“We came straight away,” Artemus said. If Artemus’ voice was shaking, his hands were convulsing as he gave David the document recovered from the bell. The artifact that the lawyer, the late Morag Devlin, had planted there just before Barnabus Kramp murdered her.
David scanned the letter. My friend had been fairly pale the last little while, but now his face drained of so much blood, he almost looked translucent. He shook his head and pinched the bridge of his nose. And then the chief looked back to the document.
“For Goddess’ sakes, man!” Portia barked. “Are you going to make us wait all day? What does the darned thing say?”
; “Coles notes version?” David said. “The Warlocks have their dragon.” The chief handed over the artifact to Portia, and turned to look at me. “They were right, Hat. The Warlocks were right. We’re too late.”
I scrambled to join the others behind the Witch Fearwyn’s shoulders., and shuddered as I read the chilling words there.
A top secret document, branded with Gideon Shields’ gold, embossed letterhead.
The two ‘players’ in the transcript were Morag Devlin and Gideon Shields. It was noted that no other cabinet member was to know of the devastating secret the woman was harboring for the Warlock governor.
Morag,
The dragon lives. He is whole, and will only need another six weeks before he is mature enough to be taken to the Tiamat. Only then will my baby; my magnificent beast, breathe flames. It will be a breath of fire that acts upon the orders of the Warlocks only. It is OUR time now, Morag. The battle we’ve waited so long for … the end of the supernatural’s pathos, the human’s sentimentality, the Custodian’s stupidity, even!
Isn’t it marvelous? We have, in our hands, the most powerful weapon known to any race of being. Once he’s activated, he will be under our control. We will share this with no one. And, Morag, let’s not forget our plan of sealing off Burning Peak! Our opponent Wyrmrig, will either not gain access to the Peak, or he will, and we will be there waiting for him! Can you imagine? Two dragons at our beck and call? It all seems wickedly impossible. Once we get to this stage … once we get to seal off the Peak, we can finally close the Portal to Mag Mell. We can bring our fire-breather through the portal, and into the safety of the mountain. We won’t be needing any Unseelie assistance from this point forward. I trust you can handle these matters with our Fae relations? They’ve been so very ….. ‘handy,’ wouldn’t you say?
Morag, I’m beyond delighted. Truthfully, I am brought to my knees in gratitude.
Finally, we get to rid the world of the flotsam and jetsam of humanity.
Finally, it will be a Warlock led world.
A world where only the most powerful families will prosper.
I know you are as excited as I with this profoundly encouraging news.
Apologies for sending this the old fashioned way, but there are far too many bugs in electronic devices for my liking these days.
Burn immediately after reading.
None of this letter is to be seen or referenced by anyone other than you.
My devoted servant, I will speak to you on the ‘other’ side.
G.S
And, we thought that the hematite was the Warlock Weapon? We had been bluffed and bluffed again. The Warlocks had us running first to Burning Peak, to take the focus away from the last preparations of the hematite stones ruse. And then we ran around the hematite leads, and while we had been wasting precious time, Shields had been making the best of it. He had had the leisurely luxury of bringing his dragon to maturity.
We’d been played like a fiddle.
The world swam before my eyes.
“Oh, my Goddess,” Orville said, tugging at his hair. “They have their dragon. Oh, my Goddess.”
“Calm down at once, boy! It’ll do us no good to --”
“It will do us no good to have no Dragon Steel ready!” Nugget roared. “We have nothing! We can’t get into the Glimmers, we don’t know who the Wyrmrig is or who he will be. Shields has a dragon for Goddess’ sakes’! A dragon! We have nothing!”
“Okay, kid, you’re freaking me out a bit,” Midnight mumbled from his spot under a shrub.
I stepped forward. “You do have one thing,” I said.
All eyes turned to me.
“You have one more Custodian.”
EPILOGUE
Summer Eve Fernacre awaits trial for the murder of her estranged father, Barnabus Kramp. David pulled some strings to get Eve’s remand period to play out at GIPPD station. Steeltrap penitentiary would get her in the end, but the chief wanted to give her an easy entry into criminal incarceration.
Maude Dulgrey confirmed that Eve’s darts had indeed been tipped with Whitesnake Root. ‘Enough to drop an ox,’ our resident coroner had advised me. Maude also shared the results on the pills I found in Eve’s potting shed. They were the same drugs that Kramp had been taking.
Eve still has no regrets about taking Kramp’s life. I wondered if she could see that she had let her father win in the end. She had lost her freedom.
Ulrich Darkmore, Zinnie Kramp, and Gideon Shields were still at large. We couldn’t use the evidence we had photographed from Darkmore’s accountant, and by the time David’s department got a warrant, all operations; every single bit of proof of hematite storage, production and shipments had disappeared from their respective residences. Shields had his scapegoats taking the heat, of course.
The seven Warlocks that had been brought into GIPPD were swiftly convicted of arms dealing. The number of hematite grenades they had in their possession was enough to sentence them each to twenty-five years of imprisonment. The stashes found on their properties added another fifty to the sentence.
The Custodians knew that these Warlocks were used as pawns. They were there to divert our attention away from the Glimmer Mountains, and from Burning Peak.
And, it worked. Our heads were turned, and Shields’ dragon had grown enough to be nearly at the point to touch the Tiamat Stone. And, we had … well, still nothing.
The resentment I felt for the Chief Warlock was overwhelming. That he had David in some kind of Warlock hex, whose grip was strong enough to make my friend very ill, just made my fury simmer and gain bitter potency.
I don’t even know what to think anymore.
It feels hopeless.
I hope it isn’t hopeless. I really don’t.
Chasing the Dragons
CHAPTER 1
“It’s too big!” Fraidy shrieked, pacing backward on the table. My neurotic cat looked as if he were trying to step out of his own skin. “It’s falling over my eyes. I can’t see! It’s too big!”
“Kitty, I’m not going to ask you again … can you please, for the umpteenth time, stay still so I can see what the problem is?” Orville Nugget implored the most jittery of my eight cats. The young alchemist turned to me. “Can I get a hand here, Hattie?” The teen’s jaw grew taut … Fraidy had been giving him the runaround for the best part of twenty minutes now. I squeezed Orville’s shoulder and reached for my cat. “Sweetie, you have to calm down, okay?” I said. “You need to be still so Orville can find out why the measurements are off.” I picked him up and put his face in front of mine. “You want this to be over with quickly, right?”
“Whether I move about or whether I’m still will NOT change the dimensions of this stupid helmet!” Fraidy’s eyes flashed as he shook his head vigorously from side to side. The too-spacious helmet crashed to the floor. Still in my hands, Fraidy’s eyes darted around the room to take in his seven siblings. They stood, in a row, their newly designed dragon-steel helmets snug to their heads, watching their scaredy-cat brother’s freakout.
“All of their hats fit!” My cat wailed, his voice cresting upward. “Why do they get to be Dragon-proof and not me?! It’s not my fault my head isn’t the size of a basketball!”
“I’ll get it right next time, kitty,” Orville said, reaching for Fraidy’s discarded hardware. “I think I can see the problem around the ears here. Not sure how I calculated this curve, but clearly my math is off.” He looked at my cat from under his lengthy bangs. “Honestly, Fraidy, it’s a piece of cake. I can fix this in under a day most likely.”
Fraidy’s eyes glazed over. He seemed to be on a rapid descent into CATatonia, so I knew I needed to act fast.
“Sweetie, come here.” Pushing his head to the side of my face I turned to kiss him. “I know you’re feeling jittery. We all are. But you need to calm down, okay?” I dug my fingers into the fur of his outer cheek and massaged in slow circular motions. Under his silky coat, I felt Fraidy’s sinewy muscles relax a little.
“Ahem.” My female kitty stepped forward from her neat row of brothers. “If pea-head there has finished with his antics then I’d like to get this tin pot off my head if you don’t mind? I only just washed my hair an hour ago.” Gloom thumped her tail against the floor of Orville Nugget’s alchemy lab. My she-cat isn’t known for her sweet nature. Truth is, Gloom does have a wonderfully big, kind and loving heart. It’s just she’s a class-A jerk too. Still, I love everything about her.
Keeping Fraidy in my arms, Orville liberated the cats from their steel headwear. Dragon Steel.
Dragon Steel helmets formulated, designed and forged by none other than the brilliant teen alchemist, Orville Nugget, himself. I looked at the boy as he unfastened the straps holding the helmets to my kittie’s furry heads. Pale skinned, long hair -- a good chunk of it over his eyes -- gangly frame, and lumbering walk; Orville looked nothing like his father, the late (and also brilliant), Aurel Nugget.
Nugget senior had been murdered by his supposed best friend and badminton partner at the Alchemical Society, Norris Copperhead. Aurel’s death had been a massive loss to the Coven Isles, to Glessie Isle in particular, and even more viscerally felt by the occupants of this room; this underground, top-secret lab where we all now stood.
I watched the cats jabbering and washing their ears, faces, noses, ridding themselves of the metallic odor of the Dragon Steel.
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