How the hell was I going to get him back through the portal?
∞
I insisted that Drake sit in the bed of the pickup truck, which was open rather than canopied. I was worried his magic would fry the iPad, then the truck’s engine. Driving on the left side of the road was discombobulating enough, I didn’t need the distraction of the truck breaking down.
I didn’t manage to shake the witch either. I needed to work on my solo intimidation factor. No one wanted to hang around when I was flanked by a vampire and a werewolf. Well, no one aware of their own mortality … so that would have excluded Drake. Yeah, I missed Kandy and — as odd as it was to admit — Kett. Last time I’d managed to check in, Kandy was in Portland leading the pack hunt for Sienna, who’d escaped the Sea Lion Caves with Mory in tow. Mory was still missing, presumed dead by anyone who’d known Sienna for more than half a minute. We didn’t talk about it though, and I — as always and forever — held out hope for the necromancer’s safety. I had no idea where Kett was and no way to contact him. The portal magic fried cellular phones. And Desmond? Well, I hadn’t tried to contact the alpha of the West Coast North American pack, and I thought it was best left that way.
Drake didn’t mind being in the open air, though I had to pull over and berate him for jumping in and out of the truck while we were moving. This maneuver had startled Amber so badly that she actually shrieked, then wept a little when the adrenaline surge wore off.
I felt sorry for the witch, even though she’d forced herself on me. She claimed she’d have to walk over an hour to get home if I didn’t drive her, and that she would therefore freeze to death.
The urge to scream, then cry when around crazily high-powered Adepts doing crazily high-powered feats didn’t ease over time. I’d just always had cupcakes, chocolate — and now — dogged focus with which to smother my terror.
Amber twisted her fingers through the ties of the drawstring bag in which she’d collected her ancestral stones. Earthy, sweet magic thrummed underneath her hands.
“The stones are unique,” I said. “Are they passed down through generations of your family?”
“No,” Amber replied. “When it is time, we walk the land. If the stones speak to us, then we collect them.”
“When it’s time? Like a rite of passage?”
“If you like.” Amber shrugged, not looking up from her entwined fingers. She was embarrassed, perhaps by her reaction to Drake’s maneuver.
“So the stones are natural to the land? Specifically around the grid point?”
“Yes.”
“But they taste of your base magic. The magic you must share with your family.”
Amber looked up at me. Yeah, even in the old country — as Gran called anywhere overseas — tasting magic was a rare ability. “They do? Like what?”
“Brown sugar toffee, with a hint of something floral, maybe.”
“Thistle?” Amber asked.
“I don’t know if I’ve ever smelled thistle before. Why that?”
“It’s the family emblem. For austerity.”
“That makes sense,” I said. “Can you cast without the stones?”
“Of course,” Amber replied. Her nose went out of joint at the suggestion, which informed me that her magic was at its strongest when tied to the stones.
It was fascinating. I’d spent dozens of hours in the dragon library soaking in as much magical theory as I could in between training sessions. Yet, still there was something new to learn from a witch family that was generationally tied to the magic of Scotland and the Loch More grid point. Six months ago, I had no real idea about the magical world I’d been sheltered from — or rather, denied, according to Sienna.
“How much farther?” I asked.
“The Cameron lands stretch from and through Loch More,” the red-haired witch replied proudly. She gestured to either side of the still empty but now paved single-lane road. Green hills and more green hills — some spotted with seemingly spray-painted sheep — stretched as far as my eyes could see. I didn’t ask about the sheep. I was having a hard enough time maintaining control of the situation without admitting ignorance as it was.
“Would you prefer to walk?” I asked sweetly, not even remotely interested in managing a junior witch who was breaking the rules of etiquette all over the place. Things like cell phones and cars couldn’t pass through a portal — the intense concentration of magic fried electronics — so dragons had contacts who facilitated their movement through the human world when necessary. Though I understood it was rare that actual guardians ever needed such things.
“Ten more minutes,” Amber answered.
Silence fell between us. I’d been away from humanity for over three and a half months, but I had no real interest in chatting. I just wanted to get to Blackwell, and … well … move forward from there.
I also wanted to get my hands on the iPad to check what time it was in Vancouver. It had been at least two weeks since I’d spoken to Gran or my mom, Scarlett. And I thought … well, I hoped there was some tiny chance that Mory was home safe and sound, exactly where she would have been if I’d turned her away from my apartment. She’d come to me seeking information about her brother’s murder. Her brother, Rusty, had been magically drained and killed by my sister. Yeah, it was a sordid tale. I desperately wanted the fledgling necromancer safe and sound, and not in the clutches of my evil foster sister — cue dramatic music — and not possibly dead. Possibly? Hell, most likely dead.
“Is he going to do that again?” Amber asked, meaning Drake jumping in and out of a moving vehicle. She’d seen the stunt in the side-view mirror the first time, and she kept nervously glancing there now.
“Probably,” I answered. “He’s still distracted by the fudge. He’s never had it before.” I’d had to give up the fudge in order to placate the fledgling. Life was all about compromises these days.
“Is he … is he a dragon, then?” Amber asked.
“Yes.” No point in lying about it. Her family had a history — most likely an actual chronicle — that must have passed down the guardianship of the Loch More portal and detailed who they were guarding it for.
“You called him Drake.”
“That’s his name.”
“Then he is not a guardian? Not one of the nine?”
“Not yet.” Even a witch in the middle of nowhere Scotland knew more about the Adept world than I had six months ago. Or she was just way quicker at putting things together.
“But you … you are a … witch?”
“Sure.”
“But not really?”
“It’s fine then, in Scotland, to ask an Adept about her magic? Not a breach of etiquette?”
Amber lifted her chin defiantly, but looked away from me. “You asked about the stones.”
“You offered the information freely.”
Amber nodded, letting the topic of my magic drop.
The rolling green hills to either side of the road really did seem to go on forever. But then, I wasn’t too sure of the speed limit so I wasn’t driving terribly quickly. Sheep and cows were abundant now, but there was a lack of cars and homes. Or rather farms, I guessed.
“Blackwell …” Amber began to say.
“Also not an acceptable topic of conversation.” I cut the witch off.
“It’s just that the Camerons have an understanding with the sorcerer.”
“Hear no evil? See no evil?”
“Sorry?”
“Nothing,” I answered. “A lot of the Adept seem to have agreements with this particular sorcerer.”
Amber nodded. “He is powerful, and he keeps to himself.”
“I’m not asking you to come with us to Blackness Castle.”
“I’m … I’m offering.” The witch set her hands and eyes on the pouch containing her ancestral stones.
“That would be rather foolhardy of you.”
“But it is my duty. You called upon me a
s your guide —”
“So guide us. Do you know how to work the map app in the iPad?”
“Of course.”
“Your help is greatly appreciated.”
Amber set her jaw but nodded her head in acceptance of my terms. I got that the junior witch wanted to see what was going to happen at Blackness Castle. But I wasn’t going to be responsible for anyone getting hurt ever again. I still had errors and omissions to clear up and correct. I wasn’t adding Amber to the list.
Drake, though. Well, as far as I’d seen, Drake was indestructible.
∞
We dropped the witch at the end of a long driveway leading to a house that looked like a manor. Given the area, I’d been expecting a farmhouse.
I pulled away, leaving the pouting redhead at the front gate as Drake decided to climb into the passenger seat. Yes, while the truck was moving.
Amber’s jaw — seen in my rearview mirror — dropped as Drake opened the door and swung himself into the seat.
I immediately tucked the iPad into the pouch on the driver’s-side door in an attempt to save it from Drake’s magic. “Show-off,” I muttered.
Drake laughed and started digging through the glove box … looking for more food, I imagined.
“Don’t touch that,” I said, as Drake pulled out the cellphone I’d requested from Amber.
“Ah,” Drake said, doing his best Chi Wen impression without actually realizing he was doing an impression. “A cellular phone.”
Suanmi was the fledgling’s actual guardian. His parents had died in some terrible fire, though what fire was capable of killing a dragon, I didn’t want to know. Chi Wen was Drake’s mentor. The fledgling was destined to wear the mantel of the far seer once Chi Wen was ready to shed it, sometime in the next hundred years or so. Yeah, I’d been living it for three and a half months, and it was all still mind-boggling for me.
“I was going to call my mom,” I said with a sigh, holding my hand out for the phone. Drake tossed it to me. Technology held no fascination for the fledgling, probably because nothing actually functioned around him.
I tried turning the phone on. It started to boot up, so maybe I’d gotten lucky —
“Will the witch follow us?” Drake asked. Then he stuffed something in his mouth so quickly that I couldn’t actually identify it as food.
“I hope not,” I answered.
“It is foolish to hope for an outcome you know will not happen.”
“Oh, thank you, sage one.”
Drake grinned. He popped something else in his mouth, chewed, and then swallowed.
Gum. He was eating gum.
“Stop that!” I snapped. “It’s gum. You’re just supposed to chew it.”
Drake frowned. “What good is that?” He ate another piece.
“If you get sick, I’m not carting your ass around.”
“I never get sick,” Drake declared with utter confidence.
“You’re hanging with me, kid,” I said. “ ‘Never’ just went right out the window.”
Drake looked at me seriously for a moment — probably working through the window reference — and then broke into a broad grin. “I hope so, warrior’s daughter. Never is a boring word.”
Jesus. “Suanmi is so going to kick my ass,” I muttered.
“That would not be good,” Drake said, all serious now. “I fear you would not survive such an assault, but the fire breather rarely resorts to physical confrontation.”
“Helpful.”
“You are welcome.”
“I was being sarcastic.”
“I know.” He didn’t. He’d picked up the lying-but-not-really-lying thing from me. It wasn’t as endearing a trait as I would have thought.
“So we meet the sorcerer and then what?” Drake asked. “Are we saving the necromancer?”
I sighed. The thirteen-year-old knew way more about my life than he should. But then, he’d been my constant companion for the last three months, and he asked a lot of questions.
“I hope so.” I glared at the fledgling, daring him to pull out one of his sage sayings. He just smiled back at me, content for the moment. That calm would probably last for another thirty seconds.
“Maybe we’ll have to storm the castle,” Drake said, gleefully.
And the calm was gone.
“At least I have a dragon,” I said, knowing it was wrong to play along with Drake but desperately trying to channel some of his lightness. “You need a dragon to storm a castle, don’t you?”
Drake threw his head back and laughed. It was a mannerism I think he might have adopted from my father, Yazi, but one he embraced with abandon.
The truck engine stalled … then caught … then stalled again. I took my foot off the gas.
“Stop it,” I said to Drake. Yeah, I said that to him a lot. It didn’t seem to have any lasting effect.
He snickered. “We could get there faster on foot.”
The engine caught again.
“You could, maybe. But the swords would be rather obvious out in the human world.”
“What would the humans do if they saw swords?”
“They’d wonder. They’d ask questions.”
“But we need not answer them,” Drake insisted.
“This is why they don’t let you out of the nexus yet,” I said. “You can’t just go blundering around in the world you’re spending your entire life training to protect.”
“You blunder just as much as me!”
“More, probably. But I can’t bulldoze entire mountains in a single breath.”
“Neither can I, though I don’t understand ‘bulldoze.’ I assume it is bad.”
“We’re here to rescue, not to destroy, is what I mean.”
“I don’t destroy.”
“But you don’t create.” The words were out of my mouth before I thought them through.
Drake fell silent. I forgot how young he was, all the time.
“I’m sorry —”
“No, alchemist,” Drake interrupted. “You create. I protect. I understand.”
“Okay.”
“We are careful of the humans.”
“And others.”
“Yes, I will be careful.”
“My version of careful, not yours.”
“Your version?” Drake cried. “You would barely give me permission to breathe, you’re so docile.”
“Did you just call me docile?”
“Yes. Did that anger you? Perhaps we should fight?” the fledgling asked hopefully.
I shut my mouth and clenched the steering wheel. I didn’t like getting my ass handed to me by a thirteen-year-old on the training floor … or off it.
According to the Google Maps route that the witch had plotted, the drive was only supposed to take us two more hours in a fairly straight line. I could make it through two hours, couldn’t I?
If the truck didn’t break down first.
CHAPTER TWO
Blackness Castle was — literally — a castle. As in, built out of stone, with towers and one big wall running the perimeter and everything. I mean, I wasn’t sure what I’d expected — the word ‘castle’ was in the name, after all — but I’d never actually seen a castle in person before. Forgive me; I’m from Canada. I was impressed by the Parliament Buildings in Victoria.
“There’s a freaking gate,” I said.
“It looks like a boat,” Drake said.
I rolled the pickup truck to a stop in the gravel-filled area in front of the wide front lawn that ran the length of the castle. I swiveled to look at the fledgling guardian incredulously.
He was peering up and out of the windshield at the castle. “What? The two towers … north and south look like the stem and stern. It’s long and narrow and it juts out into the water.”
“Yeah,” I muttered. “A really big stone boat.”
Drake shrugged. Freaking dragons were impossible to impress.
&nbs
p; Night had fallen right around the time the fledgling guardian’s tummy had started growling. Drake didn’t complain and I didn’t stop for food. I also pushed the gas tank so much we might have been rolling in on fumes, which was fine because Drake was right. If we really needed to leave in a hurry, we’d probably get away quicker on foot.
The half moon was bright in the dark, clear sky, though it had rained for portions of the drive. A low stone fence branched off from the high castle wall to form a sort of front yard. The castle was set back, looking — as Drake had already said — as if it was floating in the Firth of Forth behind it.
It was impossible to tell from this vantage point if anyone was home. I couldn’t see any lights on in the towers.
“So are we just going to knock on the front door?” Drake asked.
“Yeah. I think it’s behind the castle gate, but that was the short version of the plan.”
“What’s the long version?”
“It was more of a plan B. You know, if he doesn’t answer the door.”
“We break it down.”
“Yeah. Well, I break it down.”
“And now you have me.”
“Great,” I said, casting a long look in Drake’s direction. The fledgling grinned back at me, as if the idea of breaking into the powerful, potentially evil sorcerer’s castle was like ice cream and video games for him. Maybe it was. There didn’t seem to be any other dragons of Drake’s age around the nexus, nor did there seem to be a formal school or anything. Just our trainer Branson, who barked drills at us and let us loose in the library.
“Where are all the other fledgling guardians?” I asked as I opened the truck door and stepped out into the cool night. Nothing like a little friendly banter to lighten our short walk toward the deadly magical onslaught that potentially awaited. I wasn’t underestimating Blackwell … well, not again, at least.
“There aren’t any right now,” Drake said. “Baxia will be the next guardian to choose her successor, and she doesn’t need to do so for another two hundred years or so.”
Treasures, Demons, and Other Black Magic Page 2