Dragon Game (Reclaiming the Fire Book 3)

by Alicia Wolfe

No one was coming to the door. I knocked again. Davril nudged me, indicating something behind us. I turned but didn’t see anything, just various people coming and going down the street. Typical New York. Only … wait … not everyone was coming and going, were they? Some were stopped, just standing there on the sidewalks, their faces pointed toward the guild building. Most were rough types, like bikers, but there were some fancifully dressed men and women that might be mages.

  I swore. “Angela’s army.”

  “Looks like she’s readying her forces to strike,” Davril agreed.

  “Great.”

  “All the more reason to finish this quickly,” Walsh said. Looking annoyed, he said, “Well, since they’re answering your summons …”

  He stretched out a fist and smashed it on the huge doors. A great BOOM rolled outward, startling me and everyone in the vicinity. Ruby stuck a finger in her ear.

  “Damn,” I said. “Give us a heads up next time you’re going to do that.”

  “I did.”

  It worked. The grand doors swung inward, revealing the grandiose foyer with its broad tile floor and curling staircase. Cautiously, we stepped across the threshold. The door slammed shut behind us, making me jump once more. I was really on edge.

  Dark figures rose up around us, oozing up out of the floor like liquid smoke. Their eyes burned, and their long gangly arms ended in wicked claws. The things weren’t shadowmen, but they were similar, and they stank like rancid oil. I gasped and yanked out my crossbow, one of my backups that I’d retrieved from the apartment. Davril’s sword slashed the air, and he cried out, “Come no closer!” Ruby crouched, her hands raised, ready to cast some spell. Only Walsh looked unperturbed. He stood, calm and cool as a statue. The man was a reptile.

  The dark figures parted, and a slim, dapper figure stepped forward.

  “Gavin!” I said. My crossbow centered on his chest.

  “Manners, manners,” he said. His red goatee quivered as he spoke.

  Reluctantly, I lowered the crossbow. I spared a nervous glance at the shadow-things, then jerked my gaze back to Gavin.

  “What the hell?” I said.

  “You and Ruby are welcome here, Jade. But you are not permitted to bring friends with you. Especially not a Fae Knight and a … whatever you are.” He said this last scowling at Walsh.

  Walsh’s lips curved up, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes. They were as cold and remote as ever. “I am a mage.”

  There’s the simplification of a lifetime, I thought.

  To Gavin, I said, “Sorry about that, G-man. But you’re going to be glad I brought them. The witch called Mistress Angela is gathering an army outside, and I’m afraid she’s going to strike at any moment.” I made go-away motions at the shadow-monsters. “Can you get them to back the hell off?”

  Gavin was hardly listening to this last part. “An army? What for?”

  I gestured again at the shadows. “Them first.”

  He sighed and clapped his hands. The shadows retreated, but they didn’t fade. At least I and the others had a little room to breathe.

  “You’re the Minister of the Guild?” Davril said.

  “That’s right. And I don’t appreciate self-righteous Fae Lords entering my place of business. But I must see if what you say is true …”

  Without another word, he stalked toward the staircase, and his shadows were swept up in his wake. Ruby and I glanced at each other, shrugged and followed. Davril, then Walsh trailed behind us. Davril looked to either side and up and down with every step, clearly certain that something terrible was about to pounce on us at any moment. And it probably was. Walsh, the murderous horror, feared nothing. Except, evidently, the Shadow. Which was very interesting.

  Gavin marched up the stairs and then around the landing to a bank of high windows overlooking the street. Careful to keep our distance from his shadow warriors, the others and I massed at the window, too. Sure enough, more of Angela’s goons had joined those already there. Grim, hard faces peered up from the street, staring straight at us. Malice and determination showed in them. Just seeing them made me feel cold.

  Gavin muttered something under his breath and stood straighter, as if forcing himself to be brave. His expression was troubled.

  “We’re under siege,” he said.

  Chapter 20

  “Don’t worry,” Davril told Gavin. “My people are gathering even now to fend Angela’s soldiers off.”

  Gavin sniffed. “You think I want your help?”

  Davril narrowed his eyes. “Don’t think that I want to give it, but it is our duty, to defend even the likes of you.”

  “Hey,” I said. “Gavin and I have more than a few things in common.”

  Davril didn’t apologize. At least he didn’t keep going with his tirade. Gavin and I had that in common, too: Fae righteousness could really get on your nerves.

  Speaking in clipped words, the Guild Minister said, “What are they here for, the soldiers? What is this all about?”

  “The wardrobe,” Walsh said. “They seek the wardrobe.”

  “Wardrobe? I know of no wardrobe … not that would hold special significance, anyway.”

  “So you do know of a wardrobe?” Ruby said.

  “Well … yes …” Gavin ran his hands down his velvet suit. “I need something to keep my attire in, don’t I?”

  Ruby smiled. “I knew it! There are clothes.” Her face fell. “Too bad they’re a guy’s clothes.”

  “A stylish guy,” I amended, and she nodded.

  “Yeah. Gavin is a clotheshorse, isn’t he?”

  “Show us the wardrobe,” Davril said, all business.

  Gavin shrugged and led the way through high dark halls toward what might be his bedchamber. The air was cool, but my blood burned hot. His shadow warriors faded as we went, so at least there was that. Gavin had decided that we weren’t the real threat.

  “By the way, Jade,” he said. “What happened on the job I sent you on? I never heard back from either Hela or the client, but I have heard from the others in your crew requesting payment.”

  That was a load off. Hela hadn’t bothered informing on me before lighting out for Shadowpark.

  I hitched my thumb at Walsh. “Gavin, meet the asshat we stole the item from.”

  Gavin looked stricken. “What?” For a moment he wavered, but he managed to keep going.

  “Tell him,” I told Walsh. “Did we steal the item from you or not?”

  Walsh patted a pocket, where he must have tucked the knob away. “You did indeed.”

  “There!” I told Gavin. “You better pay up.”

  “But I got it back,” Walsh added.

  “Maybe with a penalty,” I told Gavin. “Like, you pay eighty percent or something.”

  Gavin’s brows drew together. “I won’t pay out unless you completed the job and handed the item off to the client.”

  “Ah, well we did that, too. Only this asshat showed up later.”

  “Stop calling me that,” Walsh growled.

  “I’m sorry, but unless the client gives me the okay, I can’t pay out,” Gavin said.

  “That’s what I get for joining things,” I said. “Bureaucracy and red tape.”

  We passed rooms and side halls, and occasionally people, too. Gavin wasn’t the sole inhabitant of this place. Some were dressed in suits and dresses, some in leather and sequins. Probably some were employees or functionaries of the Guild, while others were fellow thieves. I looked for Walsh’s vampires but didn’t see them. Not that he needed any help. Bastard could turn into a gigantic red dragon anytime he wanted. At last Gavin led us to a large oaken door. He waved his hands over some runes and muttered words I couldn’t make out, and the door swung open.

  “I don’t normally let strangers into my private rooms,” he said. “But I’ll put this down as a special occasion.”

  He ushered us into his lavish suite, with expensive carpets, elaborately wrought candelabras blazing purple lights, and mirrors hanging from
nearly every wall.

  “Damn,” Ruby said. “You sure do like to look at yourself, don’t you?”

  Gavin glanced at himself in a mirror we were passing, seemed to see something amiss and dusted off some imaginary lint. “Well, I do have an image to maintain.”

  “Enough conversation,” Davril said. “Where’s the wardrobe?”

  Gavin showed us into a huge, sumptuous bedroom. A massive four-poster bed dominated it. A mirror hung on the ceiling above—big surprise. The room was gigantic, and it had room for not just the bed and other trappings, like the couch and chairs and incense holders, but also a grandiose wardrobe against the wall opposite the bed. Huge and dark, with curlicues at the edges and clawed feet holding it up, the thing loomed gigantically. And sure enough, the knob on its left door, if you looked very closely, was a slightly different color than the other one. You really had to squint to see it, but that’s the first thing my eyes went to, and I could tell the difference. A casual observer wouldn’t have even known to look, though, and I doubted it had ever given Gavin pause.

  “That’s it,” Walsh said immediately. He was staring with reptilian intensity at the item of furniture.

  “I really don’t see what the big deal is,” Ruby said. “And it’s waaaay too gothic. I mean, tone it down a notch, right? Whatever happened to subtlety?”

  I turned to Davril. “Can you sense anything?”

  “You mean, like the Shadow?” he said. “No, but I can feel great power. Great … potential.”

  Wearing a perplexed expression, Gavin approached the wardrobe and flung it open.

  “No!” Ruby said, and coiled for battle.

  But instead of a swirling, howling darkness, only a rack of clothes and some drawers greeted us. The clothes were spiffy, though.

  “Nice,” I told Gavin.

  He preened. “I do try.”

  Davril turned to Walsh. “Do it.”

  Walsh raised his eyebrows, either questioning Davril’s meaning or questioning Davril’s right to command him.

  “Burn it,” Davril clarified.

  “Don’t presume to give me orders,” Walsh said. “But very well, that time has come, and there’s no use delaying.”

  “Burn it?” Gavin said. Panicked, he threw his arms wide, shielding the wardrobe with his body. “You know what I paid for this thing? Well,” he amended, “okay, technically I didn’t pay anything. It was stolen by an associate some years ago from a wizard’s manse, and I liked it so much I kept it for myself. But I could have sold it and made a tidy sum, and I didn’t. I think that counts as paying for it.” He cleared his throat and made his voice as commanding as he could. “You are not destroying my damned wardrobe.”

  “Out of the way,” Walsh said.

  “Hang on,” Ruby said. “At least let him get his clothes out.”

  “This is an outrage!” Gavin said. “Jade, if you let this happen I will expel you from the Guild! How dare you!”

  I let out a breath. “I know, Gav. It sucks. But you saw that army out there? They want this wardrobe, and they’ve got bad plans for it. And I don’t mean disco.”

  His face fell. “Fine. I see you mean to do it whether I agree or not.” With obvious reluctance, he stepped aside …

  ... and two dark figures materialized behind him. At first I thought they were his shadow warriors, but then I saw the long ratty hair on each one, the shapeless gray robes and the empty eye sockets that were really black wells plunging into endless darkness.

  “Angela’s witches!” I said.

  One grabbed Gavin around the torso with one arm and stuck a gleaming dagger against his throat with her free hand. The other raised a gnarled wand at the rest of us.

  “W-where did you come from?” Gavin demanded. “The wards on the Guild House are impenetrable!”

  The eyeless witches hissed and screeched. I resisted the urge to fling my hands over my ears.

  “We followed them in,” hissed the one holding her wand up, indicating us.

  “Fuck a duck,” said Ruby.

  “Language,” I said, but my mind was spinning. This was all going terribly wrong.

  “We will take the wardrobe,” said the other eyeless witch. “You will all stand aside or suffer.”

  Instead of standing aside, Walsh stepped toward them. He opened his mouth and fire gushed out, shooting through the air toward the witches—and Gavin. He obviously didn’t care if he roasted the Minister.

  The witch holding the wand simply flicked her wrist. An energy shield shimmered into being in front of them. The flame hit it, bounced back, and rushed directly toward Walsh and the rest of us.

  Ruby dove one way, and Davril and I dove the other. When I hit the ground and glanced up, the column of flame was passing right through the spot where we’d just been. Walsh, indomitable, stood his ground. The fire passed all around him without harming a hair on his head. That was one good thing about being a dragon—it made you very resistant to fire. Sadly he’d taken that ability from me.

  His clothes weren’t so lucky, though. Smoke rising from him where his clothes had been eaten away, Walsh stalked forward, murder in his eyes. He raised his hand to perform some surely devastating magical attack, but the eyeless witch with the wand merely cackled, twitched her wand again, and a portal opened at his feet.

  He fell through without a sound, vanishing from sight, and the portal closed up behind him.

  I stared at the floor where the portal had been, then to the witch, then to Ruby. Her eyes were wide.

  “Whoa,” she said. “That’s some mojo.”

  “Indeed,” said the witch. “Now the rest of you stand aside. That trap will hold your friend for awhile, but I’d rather not be here when he returns.”

  That was something, at least. If it was a trap that he could return from, that meant she wouldn’t want to open it again lest he emerge. So the rest of us were probably safe from similar tricks.

  But these hags had more than one trick up their sleeves, obviously.

  The air stank like smoke, and one wall was blackened. I coughed as I picked myself up off the floor, and Davril did the same, drawing his blazing sword. Ruby raised her own wand.

  “We’re not going anywhere,” she told the witches.

  The one holding Gavin flicked her own wrist, cutting Gavin with the knife, and a line of blood trickled down his pale throat to stain his natty threads. He gasped in pain.

  “Then your friend dies,” she said.

  “N-nonsense,” Gavin said. “You need me to open the doors for you. You can’t kill me.”

  “We don’t need anyone. If you won’t open the doors, Mistress Angela will. Her whole army will pour in and we will take this wardrobe by force.”

  “My fellow knights will attack,” Davril said.

  “Yesss,” she hissed, but she spoke to Gavin, not Davril. “There will be fighting, right here in your home. War! Is that what you want? And we will get the wardrobe anyway. But work with us, allow us passage, and you will survive.”

  “This is such bullshit,” I said.

  “Silence!” she shrieked, then jerked Gavin back and forth like a rag doll. “What say you? Will you open the doors or no?”

  “Don’t do it,” Davril said. “Their kind cannot be allowed to possess the wardrobe.”

  Gavin swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing against the blade. Sweat beaded his brow and matted his hair.

  “Stay strong, Gav,” I said. “We’ve got this.”

  The witch with the wand flicked her hand again. It was as if a huge wind lifted me up and hurled be against the wall. I struck it with terrific force, then slid down it to crumple at the bottom.

  “Jade!” Ruby cried.

  Every bone in my body hurt. Groaning, I tried to rise but couldn’t. Davril crouched next to me and helped me stand. Raggedly, I nodded to him, letting him know I was okay, and stood on my own. I didn’t feel okay, though. But I wanted him free.

  “We can destroy you all—” started the wand wit
ch, but she didn’t finish. Enraged by what had happened to me, Ruby fired a pulse of red energy at her out of her wand. The energy flashed straight toward the witch. But like before, a transparent shield shimmered into existence, and the red pulse rebounded, shooting straight for Ruby. She screamed and hit the ground, rolling. When she came to a stop, she aimed her wand at the witch again, but the witch was ready. With another flick of her hand, she fired a green blast at Ruby. There was no way Ruby could evade it in time. Fear and terror welled up inside me.

  Davril lunged forward and intercepted the blast with his blade. The green pulse bounced off it, deflected toward the ceiling, where it exploded in green light. Green smoke filled the air to compete with the black.

  The eyeless witch aimed the wand at Davril, incensed that he would thwart her. I gathered my strength, ripped out my crossbow and aimed it at her heart, not that she had one. Even as I fired, the crossbow exploded in my hands, hurling me backwards. I hit the wall again, but not as hard this time.

  “Enough!” shouted the wand witch. She stabbed her wand at me, and a pink sticky web burst from the end of it and flew toward me, expanding as it went. It struck me, pinning me to the wall. She fired one at Davril, too, even as he was rising from the floor. It pinned him there.

  Ruby was aiming her own wand as the pink web hit her, but the impact threw her aim off and a blast of freezing ice hit a lamp instead of the witch. Ruby was stuck just like the rest of us.

  The other witch shook Gavin again. “Well, Minister? Will you open the door or not?”

  He sighed, watching the three of us struggle futilely. “Fine. I’ll do it. Just don’t cause any more violence in my home.”

  “Excellent.”

  The wand witch waved her instrument and the wardrobe floated off the ground, as weightless as a feather.

  I cursed at Gavin as they dragged him away, but he didn’t bother to meet my eyes, and then he was gone. The wand witch towed the wardrobe behind them by magical means as they went. I heard some shouts and the sounds of fighting. Gavin’s cohorts in the Guild must be coming to his rescue. For a moment hope rose in me, but then I heard screams. They weren’t coming from the witches. Shortly the sounds faded, and I knew all resistance had collapsed.