by Eve A Hunt
“It’s technically a wyvern,” Lucus said.
Right. Like the ones on the Mage Duke’s heraldry above the castle door. It all made sense. His magic, twisted by Lucus and me, had turned into the beast his family viewed as their mascot. “This wyvern has a glamour that only some of us can see through,” I said.
“Aurelio might see through it because he’s fae like you,” Hekla said to Lucus.
“True,” he agreed.
“Is it good or bad that no one can see what we’re actually dealing with? I mean, don’t they need to know what’s up? Searching for gas leaks ain’t going to take down a dragon.”
“Wyvern,” Hekla added.
I waved her off. “Yeah. Whatevs. Franklin needs an armed helicopter and a tank.”
Hekla pursed her lips. “I don’t think we have those.”
“We could though. If we asked the right people.”
“How is that going to go exactly, Coren?” she asked. “‘Hey, policeperson. There is actually an invisible dragon doing this damage, and he might eat some of us unless you ask the government for war stuff,’” she said, using a fake deep voice that sounded like Titus when he had a cold.
That reminded me that I needed to check in with my friend. He’d been so busy with new students at his MMA school that he hadn’t even come by the bakery like he usually did.
“Coren?” Concern pulled at Lucus’s features.
“Sorry. I was just thinking about our friend, Titus. I feel the urge to keep tabs on all the people I really like, seeing as there is now a dragon to add into the evil fae brother and rogue vampire mix of danger we’ve got going on here in this delightful boutique town. Okay, listen. First things first. Is there any way we can find out where the dragon is hanging out? It would be good to keep a keen eye on him.”
“The trees will tell me,” Lucus said matter-of-factly.
I shook my head. “Of course they will. Where can we go to get you to enough trees to do the trick?”
Hekla raised a hand like I was her high school English teacher. “Ooo, I know! Pinkerton.”
Pinkerton Park was just past the square and the railroad tracks. There were some big trees by the river. “Perfect. Can you keep the bakery going while we do some supernatural snooping on the demon?”
Hekla sighed. “That sentence. I can’t…”
I shook her gently. “Hey. We’ve got this.”
Her eyes opened to show their dark depths. They almost seemed to shift in color, and I belatedly realized they’d always looked that way, light then dark, depending on the illumination in the room, maybe?
She put her hands over mine. “We do.”
We bumped fists like we did before climbing and returned to Sweet Touch.
Lucus set a hand on the small of my back as we slipped through the bakery, hurrying so we didn’t get stopped by anyone.
As we got on my motorcycle, I wondered if we’d ever have more than three days of peace again. I was beginning to think peace was a big joke and my life was the punch line.
3 Hekla
After hanging her apron on its hook, Hekla pulled Ami into the kitchen. “You’re in charge. I’m going to look for Titus.”
“Got it, boss lady.” Ami popped her gum without her normal pep.
“It’s going to be okay.”
“You sure?” Ami coughed. She’d accidentally swallowed her gum. “That explosion was so close to us.”
“No sense in worrying about it. Not unless someone tells us to, right?”
“I suppose. How long will you be gone?”
“It depends.”
“On what?”
“Uh. A lot of things. I’ll text you.”
Hekla gave Ami a quick hug, then left her with Aurelio, who was trying to learn a knock-knock joke from a policewoman who’d come in to question them on what they’d seen. As usual, the fae looker had charmed her into asking decidedly fewer questions than she’d most likely had planned. Good thing, because reporting a wyvern dragon probably wouldn’t make Nancy Striffer less curious about their new friends.
Hekla patted her Volvo lovingly as she headed toward Titus’s gym. “That woman is trouble. Mark my words.”
As she walked down the side street behind the strip of stores and restaurants, Kaippa’s face drifted through her mind. Her stomach lifted like she’d rappelled off those Ashland City cliffs. Well, it made sense her body was freaked out. There was a freaking dragon.
Shaking off the feeling, she crossed the road, then rounded the side of the brick building that held the MMA gym. This place had once been a frozen yogurt store with the cutest displays in the windows. It was funny how it had gone from adorable to tough in a matter of weeks.
The shades were drawn over the windows, and the front door showed no lights and none of those new students Coren had thought were keeping Titus busy. Hekla eyed the schedule stuck above the door handle. He should’ve been open right now.
Hekla looked over her shoulder at the flashing lights and the crowd. Maybe when the dragon had started all the chaos going on currently over there, Titus had locked up and left.
Checking to be sure no one was paying her any attention, she took her lock picking tools from her sling purse. Not even Coren knew that Hekla had once been a petty thief. It wasn’t something she was proud of. It had been a way for her to get spare change and a snack once in a while as a teen. Things at home had been…not fabulous. Her cold older brother had been the same then as he was now—in and out of town without a word to Hekla. She never got anything out of him, and she preferred to ignore the fact that he existed. Her dad had been drunk every minute he hadn’t been at the factory, and her mom had hardly been home. Weeks would go by when neither one of her parents remembered to get groceries, so Hekla had been hungry. A lot.
With the length of metal inside the lock and a good bump, the tumblers turned, and Hekla was inside. The air was stale, like Titus hadn’t been here in ages to spray his favorite brand of Febreze. And it was too quiet. Stacks of targets lined the wall leading into Titus’s office. She flipped on the light to see his laptop there. Still open.
“I do not like this.”
Closing the laptop, she peered around the ancient printer and the highlighted list of current students where Titus marked who had paid for what and when. Normally when he visited the bakery to demolish a tray of Napoleons or cinnamon scones, he had this list on his clipboard. Would he have left work without his laptop and the student sheet too? It was weird. No doubt.
She pulled her phone out to text him again, worry creeping over her shoulders to put clinging hands around her throat. The screen flashed Low Battery.
Answer me right now, dude, she texted. Or I’m calling the police.
Three dots appeared.
“Oh, thank everything.”
The dots just kept blinking. Hekla’s thumbs flew over the phone.
Answer me right the hell now. I’m damn serious.
Stop worrying, gorgeous. You should go home and take a long, hot bath and relax. And by relax, I mean, relax.
Ew. “Titus, what is your story? That’s creepy, man.” Her phone gave up warning her about its low battery and shut down. “Damn it.”
She slid her phone back into her purse beside her lock picking tools and left the office. Light spilled onto the mats and turned the hanging punching bags into dark forms like hulking men. Swallowing, Hekla hurried out of the building and turned the lock before shutting the door.
When she returned to the back of the bakery, she climbed into her Volvo and plugged her phone into the dash charger.
“It’s that Suzy chick making him act weird, I bet.” she said to the car as she started toward the bank to make a deposit. “I don’t trust anyone that gives up sugar.”
But Titus hadn’t dated Suzy in a while, so was she really to blame for that weird text and Titus’s distant behavior?
At the bank’s drive through, Hekla put her window down and tucked the money from the bakery’s register
and the week’s deposit slip into the tube. “Thanks!” she said to the teller.
If Titus didn’t text again normally by tonight, she was going on a full search. Dragon or no dragon.
4 Coren
A strange fog crept into the streets as we made our way toward Pinkerton Park so Lucus could get info from the many trees there. The silvery plumes of mist settled into storm drains, draped along the eaves of Civil War era houses, and turned everyone’s cute, front porch jack o’lanterns into creeptastic décor that reminded me of the nobles at Arleigh’s unseelie court.
Taking the back way to Pinkerton Park—because of the damage the demon dragon had done to the square—gave me a little time to think. Lucus was quiet behind me, his distress humming almost as loudly as the Yew Bow tucked between us had at Arleigh’s feast.
When searching for Baccio and Kaippa, I’d found the Mage Duke’s spell book right where I’d left it in the casting chamber. Since then, I’d pored over the recipes—I’d decided that was what spells were to me and I was just going to keep them that way in my head—in every spare moment. I’d learned how to make my voice carry in odd ways, figured out lift, and worked it like a champ with Nora’s help before she’d left. And I’d developed the ability to call up lightning, which I could hold in my palm and chuck at people as needed. I’d tried to use the Yew Bow to shoot arrows made of that bizarre amethyst-colored lightning we mages wielded, but so far, I hadn’t been able to make it work. The lightning bounced away from the Bow and never took on the form of an arrow. I mean, who knew if the Yew Bow even really worked that way? All we had to go on was the legend that Nora had recited back in the unseelie fae kingdom.
I remembered it more clearly than almost any memory, the way her voice had undulated like the legend was more poem than truth, a spell in the raw.
“The first mage, born of lightning, lived beneath the first yew tree in these lands. As the mage’s power matured, so did the tree. They spoke to one another, the mage and the tree, in soft voices and in the spaces between thoughts.
“When the mage had lived one hundred years, a town of humans sprang up like beggar’s grass a stone’s throw from the yew. The humans began to mutter and curse the mage every time a crop died from drought or a baby was lost to the fever rashes. On the first night of the first month of the last quarter of the year, the mage asked the yew for a weapon. The mage feared her magic would not be enough. She had never used it for fighting, for the defense of her body.
“The yew consented to this plan and dropped one long stretch of fine wood, which the mage used to fashion a bow. The mage used not wood nor stone to craft the bow’s arrows, but magic, amethyst bright and drawn from the world’s veins.
“When the humans attacked, the mage fought back and defended the yew. Countless arrows shot into the dark hearts of men. Eyes shut forever, the taste of their fiery hate the last sensation of their short lives. The mage was victorious. But success bred a sadness so deep that the mage’s magic began to fade alongside the bodies of those humans who had seen fit to murder that which they didn’t understand.
“Death touched the mage, but before the end, the mage asked the yew to receive the bow and the magic. The mage begged the yew to keep the weapon protected until another mage, a mage who would wake the world from slumber, came to claim it. The tree asked the mage the name of this claimant. ‘I do not know the name,’ the mage said, ‘but that she will be drawn to your bow and given the title of Yew Queen.’”
No one knew anything beyond what Nora had told us, and there wasn’t a word about it in the spell book. One recipe in that magical tome claimed it would help a mage see a few moments into the future. I hadn’t managed to get that one to work yet, but I wasn’t giving up on the spell or giving up on learning to use the Yew Bow as a weapon. Especially now that I had a damn dragon to fight.
I pulled into a parking space at Pinkerton, and we slid off the bike. The white lines of the lot were nearly invisible in the fog that gathered along the ground. Trees, swings, and playground equipment peeked from the billowing, semi-transparent wisps of white like they were trying to see who would come to a park this early in the morning on a chilly October day so close to Halloween. Sunlight broke over tree branches and scattered into the fog. I led Lucus toward a cluster of oaks beyond the swings as another crazy park-goer pulled into the lot, their car loud in the eerie quiet. Why weren’t the birds singing?
“Does this work for you?” I asked Lucus, pointing to the trees. He hadn’t said a freaking word since we’d left, and I was beginning to worry.
He blinked like he was trying to wake up, then he rubbed a hand through his hair. It had continued to grow and now hung at his shoulders. He said good health was the cause of his longer hair. The limited feeding he’d had during his centuries trapped in the cursed castle had left his hair short as well as his skin pale and his soul suffering. Now he was whole with a warm shade to his skin, color on his high cheekbones, and his body filled out and fully glorious.
“This oak is almost two hundred years old.” He placed a hand on the uneven bark of the trunk and closed his eyes. “It has seen much,” he whispered.
I shivered, the fog curling around my boots. “I bet. What’s it telling you?” So weird. But also cool.
Lucus inhaled and exhaled like he was meditating, so I decided I’d keep my cake hole shut and let him do his thing.
“What a coincidence!” A chirpy voice made me jump.
“Shit! I mean, Nancy… Sorry. You just surprised me.” What the hell was Nancy Striffer doing here? I’d thought she’d be all over the investigation in the square.
Lucus’s eyes had flown open at her arrival. He left his tree pal and came closer.
“Oh, sorry, Coren.” Nancy adjusted the purse hanging from her arm. “Now.” She zeroed in on me and angled her body so that she blocked Lucus as best she could with her smaller body. “Can we talk? Privately?”
“Why?”
She set a hand on my wrist and glanced at Lucus. “I’m worried about you.”
“I’m worried about all of us considering downtown just freaking blew up.”
Nancy nodded. “Yes. Yes. Of course. But,” she said, gently pulling me away from Lucus.
“Coren?” Lucus packed a lot into my name—a warning that Nancy was not giving off friendly vibes and a question about whether or not I wanted him to step in to help me untangle myself from the situation.
I met his concerned gaze. “It’s fine. I’ll be right back.” I’d been dealing with Nancy’s idiosyncrasies for years. I just had to placate her curiosity about whatever she seemed to think I had going on, then she’d hurry away to the real story. She wasn’t stupid, not at all. I would have to play her a bit so that she didn’t take up my entire morning with questions. “What’s up?”
“It’s your new friends.” Her lips bunched. “They’re odd.”
She had no idea. “Yeah, they’re a little different. All Renaissance Faire people are a touch strange. But they’re good folks. They’ve been helping us a ton at the bakery.”
I’d told everyone who asked that they had traveled with the Faire but wanted to hang in Franklin for a while. I claimed they’d been friends of my family from way back. I looked back at where Lucus waited, his body coiled and ready to defend me at a moment’s notice. Though he was fully glamoured, I knew his powerful magic waited at his fingertips, and he could upend this entire park if it meant rescuing me. Not that I needed it, but still, the idea pleased me. My fated mate was such a badass.
I turned back to Nancy to see that she was looking from me to Lucus, a sour twist to her features.
“Coren, honey, you are good people despite your apparel choices.” She eyed the Yew Bow strung across my back. “I don’t want you getting wrapped up in any kind of trouble. I’m not one to be superstitious, but some have mentioned how strange it is that the earthquakes began when your new friends came into town.”
I snorted. “That’s ridiculous and you know it.” She
wasn’t far off though, and her suspicions were making my hands sweat. What would she do if she knew I was responsible for all the bad crap going down? That my own work on the Mage Duke’s curse had turned his dark magic into a demon dragon thing that was causing all the damage to our beloved hometown?
Nancy lifted her eyebrows. “It seems ridiculous, yes, but what if there is a more logical reason for the connection? Have you heard Earl McKinnon’s development plan for Franklin?”
“Isn’t he the one who built the new apartment complex past the museum?”
“That’s the one.” Nancy waved a finger. “He wants to turn Franklin into a little Nashville. He has no respect for the history of this place.” She huffed and shook her head, shaking her styled coif so hard that a dyed lock fell over her cheek. “What if your friends are working with him? How well do you even know them?”
“What do you think Lucus and the rest of them would be doing for Earl McKinnon?” She was really showing her crazy side. This whole earthquake thing had riled her up beyond anything I’d seen in her the whole time I’d known her.
She grinned, looking triumphant. “What if they are tampering with gas lines to push the city into a budget crisis?”
Lord. I had to get this woman under control. If she thought Lucus was a criminal, she’d dog his every step, and we’d never get a chance to track down the wyvern.
I put my hands firmly on Nancy’s shoulders. “Look. My Aunt Viv knew their families. They aren’t the type to do things like that for money. They have money of their own. And they’re nice. They’d never do anything like that.”
“You don’t know that, Coren. You yourself said you’d only just met them. Don’t be fooled by good looks, honey.”
My hands fisted, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw Lucus step closer. “Don’t honey me, Nancy. I’m not an idiot. This little chat is over now. Bye.”