by Tanya Huff
“They’ve been sent to find the sorcerer,” Allie interjected before the argument really got going. “They’re supposed to clear him out of the way before his enemy comes through. This suggests they’re running out of time and getting desperate.”
“Desperate dragons,” Roland began.
“… just what we need,” Charlie finished in complete agreement.
Allie scrolled down and tapped a fingernail on the bottom entry. “This is where they’ll be tonight. Wizards Of Electrostatic Painting, Beaconsfield Crescent NW. And I’ll be there waiting for them.”
“Why? They’re not burning down family businesses,” Roland continued when Allie swiveled around to face him. “This has nothing to do with us. My advice is for you is to call the aunties and have them shut the whole thing down-dragons, sorcerer, gate to the UnderRealm.”
“Didn’t she tell you?” Charlie asked.
“Tell me what?”
“Charlie!”
“Allie’s trying to work with this sorcerer, to interject a little gray into the way the aunties think about them.”
“Why?”
“For David.”
Roland frowned, pleating his forehead. Allie could feel Charlie coming up with a comment referencing hamsters and wheels, but before she could spit it out, Roland said, “You think David’s going darkside and that this will help?”
“No, I don’t think David’s going darkside!” She turned to Charlie. “That’s why I didn’t tell him. I knew he’d think that! It’s complicated,” she added turning back to Roland again.
“You think?” Roland muttered.
“It gets better,” Charlie sighed. “Not only does she think this’ll help David, but she’s screwing the sorcerer’s apprentice.”
“Assassin!” Allie snapped.
“Oh, that makes it so much better.” Roland rummaged in a side pocket of his backpack and pulled out his phone.
“What are you doing?”
“This isn’t dealing with things, Allie. I’m calling the aunties.”
“No.”
Charlie’s eyes widened as Roland’s thumb froze over the number pad.
“What?”
Allie took a deep breath and stood. “You haven’t chosen, and I’m telling you no.”
He frowned and stared at her like he’d never seen her before. After a long moment, he closed the phone. “I’m going on record as saying I don’t like this.”
The situation. Not that she’d stopped him. She was within his seven-year break and, in the end, Gale boys knew where they stood. “You don’t have to like it, but it’s my decision. And when the dragon-or dragons-make their move tonight, I’ll be there waiting for them.”
“Why?”
Not Roland that time. Charlie. Who shrugged when Allie turned toward her.
“It’s a valid question, sweetie. I’m beside you all the way on the new look at sorcerers thing-David deserves a better shot than he’ll get from the aunties, and Graham obviously pushes your buttons. So yeah, do what you have to, to keep him from being collateral damage-but this?” She sighed and shook her head. “Neither the dragons nor the businesses they’re burning have anything to do with the family.You’d be putting yourself at risk for no good reason. Besides, if they are getting desperate, and not just bored out of their scaly skulls, then it’ll all be over soon anyway. Big bad arrives.” One finger on her right hand flicked up. “The sorcerer deals with it.” A second finger. “Your boy deals with the dragons.” A third finger. “David’s there as backup, so there’s never any actual danger.” A fourth finger. “And when told the story, the aunties admit sorcerers might be useful for something besides extremely high-grade fertilizer even though it was his screw up that started this in the first place.” She stared at her fingers. Waggled them. And said, “I’m seeing a flaw in your plan.”
“Two,” Roland sighed. “The aunties assume that exposing David to a sorcerer is enough to give him ideas, and you’ve actually made the situation worse.”
Charlie folded all but one finger down and flipped it at Roland.
Allie held up a hand and cut off his response. “I’m going out to meet the dragons because I don’t want any more of this city to burn down. And when David is exposed to the sorcerer and doesn’t fall, then the aunties will have to admit he isn’t going to. It’s as simple as that.”
“Simple?” Roland asked, his tone suggesting it was anything but.
“Simple enough,” Allie told him. “I’m living here, and I don’t want the city burning down around my ears.”
“You’re living here for now.”
“It’s burning now!”
“Admit it, Allie, this is just you not coping well with living so far from home!”
“All righty, then,” Charlie broke in before the argument could escalate. “They toasted the first building at midnight last night, so do we assume they’re adding symbolism to their dumbass idea to flush the wizard and meet them at twelve?”
“We’re not…”
“Yes, we are.” When Allie started a second protest, Charlie smacked the back of her head. “This isn’t like the sorcerer. Discretion doesn’t really apply to giant, flying, fire-breathing lizards who very nearly removed my fucking eyebrows, so I’m going with you. In fact, if we’re going to stop them don’t you think you should be calling your boy with the big gun?”
“We’re not stopping them like that.” Allie offered the pronoun as surrender. In all honesty, she’d rather have Charlie with her when facing giant, flying, fire-breathing lizards.
“Okay, how are we stopping them?”
“You’ll have my back; I’m going to talk to them.”
“They talk?”
Allie reached out and pointed at her laptop. “They read the Yellow Pages. On-line.”
The dragons’ next target was as far north as the airport and tucked up close to Nose Hill Natural Environment Park.
“That’s one big park,” Allie murmured as they got out of the car around the corner from the targeted building. So much wilderness in the midst of so many people was an obvious oasis even in the dark-she could feel the weight of all that nothing pressing against her.
Charlie glanced across the median and then across four lanes of 14th Street at the silhouette of the hill against the night sky. “Sacred place on the top,” she said as she settled her guitar strap over her shoulders and tossed the gig bag back in the car.
“Yeah, I got that.” Awareness of the site lapped at the back of her neck, lifting her hair. It was old, used for centuries and abandoned for less than a hundred years; undisturbed by development, it was like a big pushpin keeping the city connected to the UnderRealm. No wonder things were happening here.
“I wonder why the Courts didn’t open the gate up there.”
“Easier to put a gate where there’s already a gate on this side. Nothing up there but, well, a whole lot of nothing.” Allie bounced the car keys on her palm for a moment as she stared into the darkness, then dropped them in her bag and headed for the curb, tossing off a casual, “You, me, and Roland should maybe pay the top of the hill a visit sometime.”
“A visit?” Charlie’s tone evoked bare skin and friction. “We going to be around that long?”
No. Maybe.
Hands shoved in her jacket pockets, Allie stepped over a crack in the sidewalk. Roland could suck a rope. She was coping fine, but she still wasn’t staying one moment longer than it took her to figure out what had happened to Gran. Or until the whole sorcerer beats the greater evil impresses aunties takes the pressure off David thing went down should the Gran question be unexpectedly answered. Well, maybe long enough to finish cataloging the contents of the store and find a cousin willing to take it over. She wasn’t like Charlie, always roaming; she needed family around her, not thousands of miles back east, the distance a constant pull against her heart.
Except she’d given Joe a place.
And she heard herself say, “You just joined a band,” like
it was the one thing that mattered.
In step beside her, Charlie shrugged. “And Rol’s just here to dot the legal i’s and cross the legal t’s.”
“Gran used the toss it in a box filing method. He’ll be here for a while.”
“David’ll be here day after tomorrow. I’d be more than happy to visit the hill with him.”
The thought of David’s power opened up on that hill made her snort. “That’ll be the plan in case the dragons don’t show tonight. Take a bottle of steak sauce with you.”
“Aren’t you supposed to use virgins as dragon bait?”
“That’s unicorns.”
“I kind of miss unicorns.”
“Really?”
“No.”
They followed the curve in the road around to the east as an eerie howl from the park vibrated through bone and blood and whipped neighborhood dogs into a frenzy.
“I bet the people around here…” Charlie’s gesture took in the houses they were passing, the blue flicker of televisions showing around the edges of curtains in the few living rooms where the residents were still awake. “… think that’s a coyote.”
Allie nodded in the direction of the nearest hysterically barking dog. “She doesn’t.”
Tucked back from the corner where Beaconsfield Road met Beaconsfield Crescent, Wizards of Electrostatic Painting was set up in a converted garage. It looked like the kind of business that had been built up out of hard work and a dream, and Allie wasn’t going to let it burn. She’d been hoping she could use the parking lot, but as that turned out to be only a narrow strip of pavement along the east side of the building, she frowned out at the t-junction and stepped into the intersection. “You think this’ll be enough room?”
Charlie glanced up at the night sky where nothing blotted out the stars. Yet. “If it isn’t, this is-if possible-an even stupider idea than I thought. What are you going to do about traffic?”
“These houses all have back lanes,” Allie told her returning to the sidewalk and dropping her bag on the narrow strip of dormant grass. “And given the way the roads around here twist and turn, I don’t imagine there’s much through traffic during business hours, let alone at nearly midnight.”
“Good. Because I’m imagining you getting run over by a guy with bad skin and an ugly jacket delivering pizza.”
“Well, stop.”
Hidden by the angle of the roof, Graham peered through the scope and swore under his breath. After they’d cleared the air about fire-breathing not having been mentioned…
“I have no idea what their range is. When it comes to it, you’ll just have to shoot them before they open their mouths.”
… Kalynchuk had insisted nothing about the more mundane fires would draw Allie’s attention. The destruction had occurred nowhere near the one business the Gale family owned in Calgary.
“Even if she hears about the fires,” he snorted, “she’d have no reason to think my enemies are involved and therefore no reason to work out the pattern.”
Something had clearly given her a reason.
Given that, and also given that Allie had walked blithely into the sanctuary of a man she knew would order deadly force to protect himself, he couldn’t say he was surprised to see her here.
He was more than a little curious about what the hell she thought she was going to do.
Allie rubbed some warmth back into her fingers. In spite of sunny days, nights in early May were not exactly balmy and the radio weather forecaster had laughed, kind of high-pitched and guilty sounding, as he mentioned snow. With finger flexibility restored, she dug out the box of only slightly used sidewalk chalk she’d found that afternoon in the store, and pulled out a fat, white cylinder.
“Isn’t that a little big?” Charlie asked as she bent down and started to draw the first of the three charms.
“No.” With the piece of chalk laid on its side, the lines for the charm were about six centimeters wide. “I want them to see it before they burn the building down.”
“Probably for the best; emergency vehicles are a big-ass distraction.You know,” she continued as though imparting the wisdom of the ages, “there’s no actual reason they should listen to you. Please, stop burning the city down. Bite me. Well, okay, then.”
Shuffling backward, Allie dragged the chalk line out into the middle of the road.
“I’ll be convincing.”
“There’s no actual reason why they shouldn’t eat you.”
“Which is why you’re here.”
Over supper, all three Gales and Michael had agreed that being bounced randomly around the globe by a shadowy antagonist beat being dragon chow.
“There’s no proof you can even get into the Wood,” Roland pointed out. “Given the way the shadow stopped you from getting to Allie, it’s entirely possible it won’t let you enter in Allie’s company.”
Michael wrapped his hand around Allie’s wrist as though he could hold her in place.“Charlie?”
“Little Mary Sunshine there doesn’t travel the Wood,” Charlie told him soothingly as Roland snorted around a mouthful of pie.“I do. And I guarantee I can get us both in. After that, who the hell knows, but since the other option is emerging digested from a dragon’s ass, I’m good with a random destination. Allie?”
Allie had admitted that wasn’t really an observation she could disagree with and had spent the rest of the meal ignoring the way Roland’s gaze had kept tracking back to her. At least once, she was certain he’d reached for his phone but brought his hand empty out of his pocket.
“Michael wanted to see the dragons,” Allie said as she finished the last charm.
“Is that what you two were talking about? How’d you convince him not to come?”
Michael was not a Gale boy to be told no and have it stick.
“I reminded him that they flew over the store every morning and all he had to do was go outside and look.”
“And?”
“And then I reminded him of the size of the car and that he’d have to sit in the backseat.”
“Smart. Maybe even smart enough to… Allie.”
“I hear it.”
Wet sheets, flapping in the wind.
Allie scrambled up onto the sidewalk and stood at Charlie’s right, first two fingers of her left hand tucked behind the waistband of her cousin’s jeans. There had to be contact if they were going to go into the Wood together. Although, given what was dropping down into the intersection, the heavy beat of wings stirring up enough wind to snap small branches off the bracketing trees and slam against her like openhanded blows from a giant hand, comfort may have also been a factor.
Son of a fucking bitch, it was landing! They’d never landed in the city before!
Pressing his body down into the asphalt tiles, he slipped his finger through the trigger guard.
It was one thing to know that dragons were big, in the same sort of way space was big, secure in the knowledge it was unlikely the entirety of either would ever have to be faced, and it was another thing entirely to stand and watch a dragon drop out of the night sky. Around fifteen meters from branching horns to the tip of a lashing tail, this particular dragon was ebony and gold, iridescent and beautiful in the way of very, very dangerous things where admiration and terror became easy reactions to confuse.
Sitting up on its haunches, talons gouging the pavement, large enough to completely cover all three charms, it folded its wings with a sound like thunder and stared at the two Gales with enormous dark eyes.
“Holy fuck,” Charlie muttered.
“Yeah.” Allie pushed disheveled hair off her face as she stepped forward.
Jumped back as the dragon burst into flame.
The heat should have melted the asphalt, ignited the trees.
Ignited them.
NO!
He literally, actually, impossibly felt the world stop as Allie disappeared in the inferno.
Charlie spun away, protecting the wood of her guitar with slightly less f
lammable flesh.
Holding her breath, hand thrown up to protect her eyes, Allie searched the roaring flames. Trying to see through the fire to the dragon. Trying to…
Between one heartbeat and the next, the flames fell into their own center. Wrapped around themselves. Solidified.
Became a man.
A man?
Not a dragon! It was suddenly very hard to breathe. Not a dragon; a Dragon Lord! The son-of-a-bitch sorcerer could have mentioned that!
A line of white light flashed through the place where the dragon’s head had been and slammed into the side of a house, the impact loud enough to rouse the inhabitants from sleep.
The Dragon Lord raised dark brows over familiar eyes.
An audience, Allie realized, was just what they didn’t need.
Well, not just-but among the top ten.
“Charlie!”
“I know! Hang on…” Her left hand worked the tuning pegs. “… heat’s pulled everything sharp.”
A curtain twitched in a second-floor window.
“Now, Charlie!”
As lullabies went, it wasn’t so much close your eyes and dream sweetly as it was if you kids don’t go to sleep immediately, I will come up there and you will be sorry. By the time the last note faded, there wasn’t so much as a squirrel awake within a five-block radius; the lullaby had bludgeoned every living creature to sleep.
Breath still fast and shallow, Allie peered at the dark starburst against the previously pristine siding, then turned her full attention back to the man in the center of the intersection. “What was that?”
“A Blessed round.” The Dragon Lord’s voice was unsurprisingly deep.
And suddenly it became impossible to breathe at all. She had no idea how much of what raced through her head showed on her face, but the Dragon Lord smiled.
“You’re surprised,” he said. “The one who fired the weapon is not here with you, then. This pleases me. Attempting to lure us into a trap would have been fatally rude.”