Fuck. Arthur eyed Edge’s broad crimson back with its seared magical scars. Somehow, he had to buy some time. If he could only distract the bastard….
“Just for curiosity’s sake, what exactly are you doing, Richard?” With an effort, he made his voice sound level and politely interested rather than furious and pissed off.
The chanting fell silent. Hooves clicked slowly closer, giving Arthur time to wonder if he’d just made a tactical error. “Preparing to work the spell Geirolf should have worked to begin with. I told him from the start he should have sacrificed you in that spell—I even suggested using Excalibur as the sacrificial knife. But Geirolf thought you’d be too closely guarded. He decided he could use a Magekind couple as a substitute. If he’d listened to me, he wouldn’t be dead.” Edge smiled in a chilling expanse of razored teeth. “But hey, looks like it’s all going to work out in the end.” He leaned over Arthur, his breath smelling of death. “I’m going to wrap this spell around that sword of yours, Artie. And then I’m going to drop it right through your heart.”
Gawain watched Bors draw back the sword. This was going to hurt. He clenched his fists and braced himself.
With a grunt of effort, Bors thrust the sword with his full weight behind it. Gawain sucked in a gasp at the pain of ribs cracking under the impact. The point of the sword shot through his heart.
Fire exploded in Gawain’s chest. Lark’s scream echoed his. Bors jerked the blade free as Gawain fell to one knee, cold racing over his body as his dying heart struggled to beat. Lark grabbed for him as he toppled to the grass on his back. The pain bled rapidly away as his body began to go numb and distant. Staring up at the spinning stars, he struggled to draw breath.
Gawain! Lark flooded his consciousness, so warm with life she almost burned. I’ve got you! Hang on…
But above them, the stars were exploding, spilling down a river of light that poured over his cold, bleeding body. He felt himself start to float…
No! Fiercely, Lark wrapped herself around him, anchoring him in place, holding him inside his body. No! You have to stay. We have to save Arthur! Gawain, please!
He wanted to. God, he wanted to. Yet the pull of the light was so gentle—and so incredibly powerful, dragging him from her desperate arms as it sung sweetly of peace….
No! Lark would die if he died. He jolted, trying to fight the light, trying to fight the pull that threatened to kill the woman he loved.
Lark tightened her grip, holding on with everything she had against the seductive pull of the shining warmth.
The strong, bright warmth that breathed offers of an end to battle, an end to the fight that never ended…Despite herself, she looked up into the light.
Gawain’s eyes flared open. No. His voice rang in her mind, and he was fully with her again, his consciousness locking onto hers. You’re not going to die.
He was back! Quickly, she reached for the Mageverse, trying to call the magic, restart his stopped heart.
Nothing happened.
Oh, God. She’d waited too long. She’d gone too far. She couldn’t reach her power….
I said you’re not dying! His iron will poured into hers, extending her reach, strengthening her until the power flooded in again, sweet and life-giving. Desperately, she dragged it deep and sent it spinning into his body, repairing his damaged heart, forcing it to beat.
Thud.
Silence.
Grimly, she dragged in more power, sent more magic into his healing heart.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
And the singing light winked out.
Gawain sucked in an agonized breath as Lark did the same, her body instinctively echoing his. His heart began beating hard now, uneven thuds that settled quickly into strong rhythmic thumps.
Green eyes opened and met her dazed stare. Slowly, painfully, he smiled.
A tall, handsome man loomed over him, his hair a long fall of silken blue around his face. He smiled, the light catching the faint blue shimmer across his cheekbones. “You back now?”
Belatedly, Gawain recognized the face he hadn’t seen in sixteen hundred years. “Kel?” His chest ached, and his voice sounded faint.
Lark, sprawled next to them in the grass, asked the question for both of them. “Why aren’t you a dragon?”
Kel looked up at her with a faint smile. “I feared I might need a man’s hands to help him.”
“Arthur.” Gawain remembered. He sat up with a grunt of effort. “We’ve got to get to him now.”
Kel lifted him easily to his feet as Bors moved to help Lark to hers. She braced her feet apart, feeling battered, and reached for the Mageverse. To her relief, she sensed it shimmering on the edge of her consciousness.
Just like Gawain. He almost glowed, strong and warm and so wonderfully alive. She wanted to kiss him, wrap herself in his body, but there wasn’t time.
Instead she called the magic and clothed them all in armor.
But when she tried to call out to Morgana, she slammed into the same magical wall that had blocked them before. “Dammit!” She looked at Kel. “Should one of us go for reinforcements?”
“By the time Morgana gathers the army, Arthur would be dead.”
“What about Gwen?” Lark glanced through the trees, worried. “She’s still lying under that street lamp, out cold.”
“We can’t take her with us, Lark,” Gawain pointed out. “And there’s nothing in Avalon that can or would hurt her.”
“Yeah, but I hate leaving her like that.” Lark flung a quick protection spell at Gwen just to be sure.
Turning, she saw Kel striding away through the trees. She started to follow him, but Gawain grabbed her arm and pulled her to a stop. “Give him room. He’ll need it.”
Reaching a clearing, the dragon man stopped and threw back his head. Blue black hair flew around his face as he lifted his voice in a shout.
His voice deepened, simultaneously growing louder and louder as magic boiled out of the center of his chest, so bright Lark had to jerk her eyes away.
When she looked back again, a dragon filled the clearing, big as a passenger jet, its great wings spreading wide as its tail whipped, crashing into a small bush that ripped free of the ground and went flying.
Lark gaped at it in frozen astonishment. She’d never seen one up close before, never realized how huge they were.
The massive skull swung toward them, enormous ruby eyes narrowing. “What are you waiting for?” Kel’s familiar voice demanded, though it rumbled far deeper and louder than it ever had before. “Climb on.”
“Jesu,” Bors muttered before the three of them sprinted toward the huge creature. Gawain was the first to climb on, planting a foot on the dragon’s elbow and vaulting atop the broad, muscular neck. Bors caught Lark around the waist and lifted her up until Gawain could slide an arm around her and settle her into place astride Kel’s neck. Bors scrambled up behind him.
“Hold on,” the dragon rumbled, coiling his massive body.
Oh, God, Lark thought desperately, grabbing for one of the spines that protruded from his powerful neck, I’m not ready for this!
I’ve got you, Gawain told her through the Truebond. His strong arms tightened comfortingly around her waist.
And then the great beast leaped skyward with a roar.
Gritting her teeth shut against an instinctive scream, Lark clung to Gawain’s arms and clamped her armored legs around the dragon’s huge neck.
“Try calling Morgana now—we’re beyond the range of Edge’s spell,” Kel called over the heavy beat of his wings. “I’ve got to generate a gate to take us to the Dragon Lands.”
“Why not just gate directly there?” Bors asked.
“The wards are still blocking me. They’re similar to a combination lock, and the Dragonkind changed the combination on me. But once we’re close enough, I should be able to find a way to break through.”
Lark certainly hoped so. Trying to ignore the sight of the ground dropping rapidly away—taking her stomach wi
th it—she closed her eyes and reached for Morgana.
It was not a conversation she was looking forward to.
Kel soared through the dimensional gate. Ahead of him, for the first time in centuries, he could see the Dragon Lands lying spread under the moon.
Despite the grim situation, despite the rage burning in his heart, he couldn’t help but glory in the sight. Finally, after all these years, he was free again.
Then he frowned, realizing that the thought of seeing his people again held far less pleasure for him. All his fellow dragons had done was give him pain, from his own imprisonment to the shattering loss of his mother centuries ago.
No, his true people now were those who rode his back—Gawain, Lark, and Bors, not to mention all those back in Avalon who were in such deadly danger. He was damned if he’d fail them, especially since Gawain had finally found a woman he could be happy with.
Extending his magical awareness, Kel could sense the complex energies of the Dragon Land’s wards ahead of him. They’d defeated him repeatedly over the past days as he’d tried to search for Edge, but he was a hell of a lot more powerful now that he was back in dragon form again. More, he had the experience of centuries of magical combat at Gawain’s side.
If Tegid expected him to have been weakened by his imprisonment, his uncle was in for a very nasty surprise.
Kel reached out his consciousness, exploring the pattern of forces, looking for the counter spell that would open them.
There. He spotted it and sent a wave of magic into the barrier. If he’d still been trapped in the sword, he wouldn’t have had the power to do it. But as it was now…
The wards silently gaped wide.
With a rumble of victory, Kel flew through, arched toward his uncle’s caverns and began to beat his wings harder.
Here I come, you egg-sucking son of a bitch.
Arthur bucked and fought, but it did him no good as Edge’s spell lowered him onto the pentagram-shaped altar the monster had created in the center of the cavern.
His armor had vanished, melted away by Edge’s spell. Beneath his back, the runes cut into the stone seemed to burn his flesh. In his mind, he howled his wife’s name with every ounce of his strength, trying to break through the magic that held her. If he could only reach Gwen, she could mobilize the Magekind for a rescue. Otherwise his people were lost.
The prospect of his own death had long since lost its fear for Arthur, but the destruction of his people did terrify him. Worse, if the Magekind fell, humankind would lose its most powerful protector. Protection Earth desperately needed now that the forces of hate and bigotry were coupled with the potential of planetary destruction.
Gritting his teeth, he strained to reach his wife’s mind. And touched only silence.
“You’re wasting your energy, Arthur,” Edge told him. “Nothing’s getting through my shield spell, no matter how loudly you scream.”
“You bastard!” Arthur snarled. “Bors should have strangled you in your cradle!”
A flash of razored fangs. “Yeah, but he didn’t, so I got him first. Felt good goring him, too. I just wish I could see his face when this spell kills you all.” Cruel black eyes scanned his expression. “Though yours is almost as satisfying.”
“Go to hell, coward.” He bared his teeth.
Rage flared in those inhuman eyes. “If I’d been a coward, I would have contented myself with the miserable mortal life you and my loving father consigned me to. Instead I did this.” He spread his massive arms, displaying the black runes seared into his flesh. “I could have easily burned like all the others, but I endured, and I won. Now you’re the ones who’ll burn.”
As Arthur watched in helpless fury, Edge gestured. Excalibur floated into the air and positioned itself point down over Arthur’s bare chest.
Edge began to chant again. Growling in helpless rage, Arthur fought his bonds.
Around them, malevolent energies began to rise, swirling and stinking of death like the wind from a tomb.
EIGHTEEN
Rage. A great wave of it, headed straight for Tegid’s chambers.
He jerked his head off his forelegs in horror, realizing at once what had happened. Bolting to his feet, he dove off the second level and hit the cavern floor, racing for the entrance. “Kel’s free of the sword! He’s coming!”
The ape didn’t stop his chanting, but his mental voice rang magically. Stop him. I need another three minutes to finish this.
For once, Tegid didn’t quibble about taking orders from the ape. He galloped to the entrance and threw himself into the air, wings beating desperately toward his foe.
Lark gasped as the red dragon shot out of the cavern like a cannon shell, headed straight for them.
“Can you fly?” Kel shouted.
“I don’t know!” she yelled back, her heart stuffing its way into her throat. She knew it was possible, she’d even seen Morgana do it. But she wasn’t Morgana. “I’ve never done it before.”
The red dragon opened its mouth. Lark knew whatever came out was not going to be good.
“You’d better learn!”
Flame roared toward them, only to splash off Kel’s shields. Struggling to compose the spell, she watched the red dragon fly closer and closer, about to slam into them all like an eighteen wheeler hitting a school bus.
“Jump!” Gawain roared. He didn’t wait for her to obey, instead tightening his grip around her waist as he threw both of them off Kel’s back. Bors did the same. All three of them fell like bricks. The cliffs rushed toward them….
Lark grabbed for the Mageverse and sent a wave of energy shooting out in all directions, forming a great golden bubble around them. Their collective weight hit the bottom of it…
And she felt it give.
“Shit!” Frantically, she poured more magic into the barrier until the bubble solidified.
“Let’s go!” Bors shouted. “We’ve got to get into that cave.”
Lark eyed its glowing green mouth and thought about casting a gate, then realized she wouldn’t be able to do that and keep them airborne at the same time. Gritting her teeth with the effort, she sent the bubble soaring skyward.
Between the three of them and all their armor, they probably weighed more than eight hundred pounds.
Don’t think about it, Gawain growled in the Truebond. Just do it.
What are you, a Nike commercial? Clenching her teeth harder, she drove the bubble faster. Behind them, they could hear the furious sounds of the two dragons fighting—massive, meaty sounds of impact, ear-splitting roars of fury, and the hiss and boom of magic.
Through the Truebond, Lark heard Gawain say a prayer for his friend. Grimly, she concentrated on keeping the bubble moving.
Kel sank his fanged jaws into his uncle’s shoulder and bit down, tasting the sweet hot rush of dragon blood. Tegid’s roar of pain sounded like music. The older dragon jerked away, wings beating as he retreated. Kel flew after him, lost in the hot madness of the duel.
Finally—finally, after all these centuries! Freedom and revenge, the two things he’d dreamed of endlessly, trapped in that tiny shell of metal.
Distantly, he was aware of other dragons swooping around them in a frenzy of agitation, but he didn’t care.
After all, they’d never cared about him.
“What are you doing, Kel?” It was Soren, flying close as he chased Tegid over the cliffs.
Kel bared his teeth. It was all so devastatingly clear now. “Tegid trapped me in that sword, and he plotted with a spawn of one of the Dark Ones. And I’m going to kill him for it!”
A hissing murmur rose from the watching dragons.
Tegid looked around at them, his eyes going wide with fear and fury. “He’s mad! Being trapped in that sword has driven him insane!”
Wheeling in the air, he flung himself at Kel. The impact tore them both from the sky, and they fell together, tearing at one anther with claws and teeth as they dropped.
Sweating, driven by an increasin
g mental drumbeat of urgency, Lark drove her improvised bubble faster, conscious of the dragons circling above her. With Kel battling his uncle, anything magical was her responsibility.
The thought made her stomach knot.
You can do it, Lark. It wasn’t so much the words that touched her as the certainty she could feel in Gawain’s mind. He believed in her.
Her eyes narrowed, and she flung the bubble forward even faster, shooting it right for the opening of the cavern.
It blasted through the hole like a cannonball. In the center of a huge central cavern, Arthur lay nude on a star-shaped altar. A huge horned creature stood over him, Excalibur hanging point down directly over his chest.
With a wordless snarl, she flung the bubble toward them.
The horned thing whirled at their entry. It had to be Edge. He flung beefy arms up in the start of a gesture, and she realized he was going to drop the sword on Arthur. A spell hung swirling around the altar, just waiting for the Magus’s death to power it.
Lark dissolved the bubble. She, Gawain, and Bors crashed to the floor.
Even as she hit, Lark flung every bit of the Mageverse she had in a concentrated blast of force, aimed right at Edge. He tried to fling up a shield, and she poured more power into her blast.
Excalibur plunged downward.
The instant before it hit, her spell shattered Edge’s shield with the full power of her desperation. The wave of force blew the sword, Edge, and Arthur across the cavern like leaves in a hurricane. Still bound and paralyzed, Arthur hit the rear wall of the cave and collapsed in a heap. The sword rattled to the floor, unbloodied.
“That’s my girl!” Gawain crowed. He and Bors raced toward the demon.
Edge roared in rage and lunged to his feet, armor appearing around him, twin blades filling his hands. He charged them like a bull.
Lark took one teetering step forward before her knees gave, dumping her in a sweating, panting heap.
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