Vampire Dragon

by Annette Blair

  “No, we’re one, but sometimes I act more like an old man than a boy, like after you and Bronte shared a bath. I wanted to punch out your lights.”

  “Punch out—I have no lights. Explain.”

  “Beat the crap out of you.”

  “Oh, well, I can see why you would have the need to hurt anyone who hurt Bronte, but I would protect you both with my life. This I promise. Or you can punch out my lights, if you wish. I would let you. How long have you two been running from Sanguedolce?”

  “When I was ten, I went digging around in the attic for the evidence my old soul hid. I knew it was there somewhere, and I got caught by Sanguedolce, though once again the evidence stayed hidden. For all I know, it’s still there.”

  “You would be dead, if he saw it, yes?”

  “Yes. At some point, he started asking dangerous questions, and once he started, Sanguedolce was always full of curiosity about me. Meanwhile, a rival family planned to take over the Sanguedolce family, and Bronte caught wind of it. I told her who to call in the RCMP—I remembered old Zachary’s contact—and a group of special agents whipped us out of there and got us across the border to the U.S., then they washed their hands of us.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Whatever Bronte told me to. She took it from there. She got us here on her wits and the money she stole from Sanguedolce.”

  THIRTY-TWO

  Bronte stole money. Darkwyn smiled. She stole from killers to save her nephew. Bless the resourceful Vampiress; he adored his gutsy bride. “Tell me more about the old ess; he adored his gutsy bride. ”Tell me more about the old man inside you.”

  “He’s an ancient soul, I suspect, a mystical traveler, through no fault of my own, and I mean that literally. Despite the fact he and I share this body, I’m comfortable in my skin, and tend to mock my double-minded self. Because of him, I’m well aware that I’m a fly speck in a universe too vast to imagine. I have clear priorities, specific intentions, and strong motives—staying alive, and keeping Bronte alive as well. Oddly enough, I seem to be growing older and younger at the same time, which can be confusing as well as exhilarating.”

  “You handle it well. I’m not sure I could.”

  “If you’re telling the truth, dragon man, I should think that you’d understand me better than anyone.”

  “You’re right. I could and I do handle pretty much the same. I went from being a centuries-old dragon to being a man in his, I don’t know, late twenties/early thirties?”

  Zachary examined him and then raised both shoulders. “Beats me. I’m only a kid, but speaking for the old man in me, life is a roller coaster. I feel happy and guilty to be alive, but horrendously sorry that my memories got Bronte in this kind of trouble. I wish I’d shut up as a kid, like she told me, but hey, I didn’t know better.”

  “I can relate.”

  “Earlier I was especially sorry because my actions forced her into marrying you to save us, but I’m rethinking that. Don’t get cocky, now. I haven’t decided yet whether to be glad or sad about this turn of events.”

  “Just know, I’ll do my best to keep you both alive, so you can be glad we got married.”

  One nod. “Appreciate it.”

  “It occurs to me,” Darkwyn said, “that both our memories got Bronte in trouble.”

  Zachary seemed taken aback. “Ah, you’re right. So they did. Are we somehow karmically related, do you think?”

  Darkwyn ruffled the boy’s hair. “Not unless I reincarnated from your centuries-old, hundred-or-more-great-grandfather.”

  “Not bloody likely. Though, the Sanguedolce family is basically from Rome, way back, I wasn’t related to them.” Zachary looked down at the view. “I love seeing the world change from up here. If it weren’t for my quizzical nature and thirst for knowledge, I’d probably have lost my mind by now. I’m incurably nosy, philosophically inclined, and I value intelligence more than most.”

  Zachary gave him a bold eye to eye. “Which is one of the reasons I grudgingly like you, by the way. I haven’t had such a great sparring partner in years.”

  “Your irreverence amuses me,” Darkwyn said. “And it is new for me, sparring with words. In my first life as a human, when I sparred, I used weapons.”

  “Well, I prefer words over weapons, wisdom with wit, and constancy above all. If I didn’t think you intended to give Bronte your fidelity, you’d have the stepgrandson of a mobster to answer to. And I mean in every bloody brutal implication you can imagine.”

  “You have a cynical streak that I find admirable, and frightening,” Darkwyn admitted. “I may be ancient but my mind is fertile, and my love for Bronte is genuine and deep.”

  “Hurt her, and I know a guy,” Zachary said with brutal honesty. “Vile, but I was brought up to think that way. Is it my choice? No. Is Bronte my life? Yes.”

  “Was that a threat? My earth vocabulary covers only about two-thirds of everything you said.”

  “I think you underestimate yourself. But you’ll look it all up tonight. Well, maybe not tonight, because you have a honeymoon to look forward to.”

  Darkwyn’s elation over the prospect was short-lived. He suddenly sat forward, unease washing over him. “Is that Raven Shadow talking to Bronte?”

  “Yeah, looks like she’s congratulating her.”

  “Black smoke!” Darkwyn tried to stand in the moving coffin wheel, but he was locked down. “Bronte,” he shouted. “Bronte!”

  She waved and so did Raven Shadow.

  “What’s wrong?” Zachary asked.

  “Raven Shadow is dangerous. Jagidy is smoke testing her and the smoke is black. See the way Bronte is edging away? She sees the smoke and knows its meaning: danger.”

  “Raven Shadow could be one of Sanguedolce’s mobsters.”

  Darkwyn pushed back the crash bar, their coffin seat swaying precariously.

  “Are you going to jump? I mean, I hear you have a leap, but we’re ninety feet above the ground.”

  In his anger and panic, Darkwyn began to morph into a dragon faster than he anticipated, and if he didn’t get off this ride soon, he would crush it beneath his weight.

  He lifted Zachary like a babe in arms and leapt to the roof of the Phoenix. That distracted the people down below, even Raven Shadow. “Zachary,” Darkwyn said, setting the boy down. “I’m about to lose my ability to speak, so watch me for signals. As soon as I’m a dragon, I want you to get on my neck and latch on to a horn, or whatever you can, even if it’s a hunk of skin or a handful of scales. I won’t talk, but I will fly, so keep your head down and stay close to my body. You won’t hurt me and I won’t hurt you. I’m going to get you and your aunt out of here.”

  “No news vans out front for the first time today,” Zachary said. “Luck might be on our side, because you’d make a hell of a news item.”

  Darkwyn nodded. His voice was going, but Jagidy’s smoke had paled, which meant that Raven was no longer focused on evil. Good, that would buy him time. He leapt, again, carrying Zachary to the far end of the roof, away from the watching crowd. He crouched low as his final transformation was about to take place.

  Pain shot through him, his wings stabbing through their muscle sacs, his hands growing nubby and clawlike.

  “Whoa,” Zachary said, backing up almost too far.

  Darkwyn swiped the teetering boy off the edge of the roof and gave him a little shake for his carelessness.

  “R-ride you, right,” Zachary said. “Boy, I’m glad I got to see this.” He scrambled around to try and climb on.

  Darkwyn laid down a wing like a ramp, his scales steps for Zachary to climb to his neck. When he felt the boy grab hold, Darkwyn swooped from the roof, down in Bronte’s direction, and just as he did, Raven buried a knife to the hilt in Bronte’s chest.

  THIRTY-THREE

  Bronte’s pain seared Darkwyn like a fire in his chest, the shock to her system a shock to his, and her need to call out to him like an emotional hit with a double-barreled shotgun.
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br />   Jagidy had already taken to healing Bronte, a ray of hope, however small.

  The width and breadth of Darkwyn’s wings made everyone duck, except for Bronte, who understood his purpose. He performed a perfect dip so his wing claw slashed Raven Shadow from navel to neck.

  “Long live Sanguedolce,” Raven Shadow said, as her knees folded beneath her, the last words she would ever speak.

  Zachary’s triumphant shout was lost as Bronte, herself, began to crumple. Without a thought, Darkwyn scooped her into his dragon arms and flew up and over Cat Cove and beyond until, high above the clouds, he leveled off.

  Jagidy, still in Bronte’s arms, continued trying to heal her, but his small hands were no match for the width and depth of the gash in her chest, nor the blood spiraling and spreading down her violet corset.

  Had the knife pierced her heart?

  His heart said yes with the pain of a thousand knives.

  Darkwyn put down on a small island, so small it could disappear in a wave, similar, but smaller than the Island of Stars, except that he could leave here and not die from flying over an endless lava sea until he dropped and burned to a crisp. This, however, was more a matter of life and death than ever. This was about saving Bronte, please! Every moment counted.

  Her gash was so deep, he saw her heart, its beat slow, slower, becoming irregular . . . beat, stop, beat, stop longer, beat, full stop . . .

  He retracted the claws on his right hand, fired it free of germs, and reached for Bronte’s heart.

  “No, Darkwyn, don’t,” Zachary shouted.

  With the back of a wing, Darkwyn swept the boy softly aside to give him an opportunity to heal Bronte, sorry he ever studied biology and germs. Saving her only to have her die of an infection worried him as much as the possibility of not saving her at all.

  Agony met ecstasy. He willed her to live. He roared to the heavens his dragon demand that she survive. Her blood bathed his burn, warm and pulsing, and exacerbated his own chest pain as he hand-pumped her heart while he worked his finest dragon magick, healing, as he attempted, beyond rational hope, to bring her back to life.

  A healer’s mind played as much a role in the process as did his hands, so killing the germs from the knife or any foreign object, including his dragon hand, was as important as healing the bloody cut he finally noticed in her heart.

  As long as it beat on its own, he carried hope of healing that specific cut. He would have time, later, he believed, to heal the slice in her chest, so wide it bled more profusely now that he separated it to reach her heart.

  When the organ beneath his hand seemed to take over, he continued to hold and heal, to catch a beat if she dropped it, and while he waited, and healed her, the organ became bolder in its pulsing, more steady.

  How long to wait for steady? How steady was steady enough?

  After what seemed an eternity, at the point where Killian’s lightning claw teased and electrified the water around them, one zap after another, and as the charged water got closer, Darkwyn removed his hand from Bronte’s chest.

  She sighed and went limp.

  Darkwyn roared his fury to the universe.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  “It’s beating,” Zachary said. “Darkwyn!” he shouted. “Bronte’s heart is beating.”

  Darkwyn caught himself midroar and burned his tongue with the aborted back draft, but that did not matter. In his arms, his wife breathed on her own. Her heart, nestled in her chest, beat on its own. Blood no longer trickled from that organ, though she was losing plenty via the gash in her chest.

  They were not out of harm’s way yet.

  He repositioned Bronte in his arms so as to close the gash.

  Zachary stood firm and quiet beside him, the boy’s tight white fists relaxing at the sight of Bronte’s even breathing.

  Darkwyn lowered his wing for the boy to use as a ramp, once again.

  Jagidy, Darkwyn said telepathically, while I fly us to safety, lay your body over the wound, hold tight to keep it closed, and put everything you have into healing Bronte. I’ll finish when we find safe haven.

  Again, Darkwyn rose to the heavens, thanking every blessed god or goddess known to dragon and man for strengthening Bronte’s heartbeat, and asking for her wellbeing, please, to last.

  He cursed the lightning that caught up with them, likewise the hailstones that followed as the claw of light faded. A wink of hope, Killian had given him, then, snuff. The evil goddess kept up with them, pelting them with the knowledge of her presence as certainly as she pelted them with hail.

  For a few minutes, Puck flew beside him, but then the bird hung back and joined Zachary. Darkwyn felt exactly where Puck’s claws dug into him. “Meander,” Puck squawked, and Darkwyn with his dragon hearing missed not a word despite the hail. “To proceed sinuously and aimlessly.”

  Smart-ass bird was right. He did not know where he was going, and the hailstones blinded him. Killian kept them small to form a curtain. Larger stones, while more painful, would have allowed areas of better vision.

  Meanwhile, the pain in his burned hand barely compared to Bronte’s chest pain, which stabbed at his chest mercilessly even as her blood loss weakened him.

  Zachary must have surmised the navigation problem, because the boy began shouting directions, and in the event the brilliant inventor knew where they should go, Darkwyn followed, until he circled a mountain capped with snow.

  He had flown north, away from the ocean, above the clouds whenever he could, to keep from being seen. One piece of luck: the moon stayed mostly hidden behind the clouds. He might attribute that to Andra.

  At Zachary’s urging, Darkwyn flew downward into the cloaking tree line, but Killian’s lightning followed, splitting trees beside them, forcing him to dodge falling trunks.

  “Well, shiver me timbers,” Puck squawked. “Ack! Look out below.”

  Darkwyn spotted a hostelry. Dark. Deserted. He went in for a landing, and after he stopped, he looked back at Zachary.

  “In late October, nothing’s open on Mount Washington,” the boy shouted.

  This could work in their favor.

  With his dragon strength, Darkwyn removed the hotel’s main door to get them in, then from the inside, he fired it so the metal of the doorway, and the door itself, melted together and remained in place.

  “Hmm,” Zachary muttered. “Door must be made of steel.”

  Whatever, Darkwyn thought. In the high-ceilinged foyer, he set Bronte down beside a fireplace large enough for five humans to stand in. Zachary filled it with the wood and kindling stored in a cupboard beside it. Then Darkwyn fired the raw tinder until an inferno filled the hearth and warmth filled the room.

  Darkwyn lay beside Bronte and wrapped his wings around her, to further warm her while he cupped her wound to heal her. His scorched hand could wait. Bronte’s heart, according to the weakness in his, could not.

  Raven Shadow had been sent by Sanguedolce to kill his wife. The world blurred for Darkwyn, then he felt a warmth on his cheeks.

  How that happened, he did not know, but, dragon tears, he vaguely remembered hearing, carried a powerful magick, so he removed his hand from Bronte’s heart, tucked his head beneath his wings, and let his tears fall on the death slice in her chest.

  By all that is good and holy in the universe, let my tears do their magick.

  If Bronte died, he would never forgive himself for speaking of his past. He should cut out his tongue, but losing her would wither his heart, anyway. He wouldn’t care to have either without her.

  Jagidy, Darkwyn silently told the worried pocket dragon, help Zachary find something to eat, and get him to fix Bronte warm tea or broth.

  As the two left the foyer, Darkwyn willed all his healing powers into Bronte, his hands, his tears, his own life beat. Take mine, he thought. Stop my beat, but not hers.

  Throughout the ordeal, he tried to keep from shifting back into a man so as to keep his wings around her still wet and shivering body. He would send Zachary for b
lankets when the boy got back.

  All electricity in the building had been turned off, so Zachary put a bowl of broth near the fire to warm; then he let tomato juice trickle down Bronte’s throat after capturing it in a straw.

  She remained unconscious.

  That worried Darkwyn.

  Zachary stood. “There are enough canned goods to stay the winter, and I’m going to see if I can turn on the electricity.”

  Blankets first, Darkwyn thought, using his wing to mime covering Bronte for the brilliant young inventor.

  “Right, blankets,” Zachary said. “Right back.”

  Darkwyn watched Zachary leave the room and turned back to Bronte. While her gash healed on the outside, he worried about the depth of it and whether it healed as well on the inside. He tucked his head beneath his wings, and against her chest, again, and he prayed.

  Darkwyn woke, still trying to heal her, and realized he must have fallen asleep, because he had become a man once more. He regretted it; his dragon hands were bigger and covered more of her wound, and his wings had been taken away from warming her, and now she was shivering beneath her blankets.

  He tried to shift back into a dragon, but his heart was too weak, after her blood loss. This has taken a dangerous turn, he thought.

  He had assumed he could shape-shift at will. When Bronte got better, he needed to fly her out of here. But ah, her chest moved more forcefully, just then, did it not? One would think she breathed easier, slept deeper, though her breathing had become shallow.

  That could not be good, unless she did it unconsciously to ease the pain in her chest.

  He listened to his own breathing, tried breathing deeper, and understood he was right. But he felt a slightly renewed vigor in himself, as well, an improvement since their arrival.

  By turns, he tended Bronte and dozed.

  The lights came on about an hour later.

  Zachary took the bowl of broth to the microwave, then they dribbled the warm soup down Bronte’s throat.