Up In Smoke

by Katie MacAlister

  “I may not be a dragon, but I am a dragon’s mate,” I yelled, and gathered to myself not only the shadows that were so much a part of me, but Gabriel’s fire. I let both build within me, clutching the phylactery tightly with both hands as I started to channel the shadows and fire through it.

  The man hesitated for a moment, a curious expression passing over his face. “No,” he simply said, as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

  “Oh, yes,” I said, then released the phylactery.

  It hung in the air in front of me for a moment, suspended in time and space, then exploded in a nova of fire that made the very earth tremble. The explosion knocked me back several feet, the room filling with a giant fireball that, in my last few seconds of consciousness, seemed to consume everything in it. I sank down into the conflagration, giving myself up to it, becoming one with the dragon fire.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Are you sure this is the right road?”

  Cyrene consulted the map we’d purchased in Faro before setting off west along the coastline to the small town of Sagres. “It’s the only road, so it has to be the correct one.”

  “I just hope we don’t end up lost. I don’t have a lot of time to deal with this situation of yours.” I slowed the car as the road shot around a hairpin curve, perched high on a rocky cliff overlooking the pounding surf. Judging by the intensity of the waves crashing into the cliff side, I wasn’t surprised people came to Portugal for surfing.

  Cyrene slid me a coy glance. “Are you going to tell me about that?”

  “About what?” I asked, knowing perfectly well what she was talking about. I still hadn’t decided what to tell her about the conversation Gabriel and I had had with Jian the previous day.

  “You know perfectly well that you’re hiding something from me. It’s written all over your face.”

  “Nonsense,” I said, wishing for something like the five thousandth time that I could see my reflection. “I have a perfect poker face.”

  “If that’s the case, then you’ve got a full house and you’re trying to make me think you’ve only got a pair, so spill.”

  I drove silently for a few minutes, trying to decide if I could trust her with the details. I’d never kept secrets from Cyrene, not big ones, and I was fairly uncomfortable with holding back information that I knew would interest her . . . and likely impact her, if she continued her fling with a certain black dragon. But I had promised to protect Gabriel and his dragons, and if that meant keeping things from my twin, then that’s what I must do.

  It was just all so confusing.

  “It’s something to do with Kostya, isn’t it?” she asked, watching me avidly.

  I schooled my face to the same blank expression I wore around Magoth. “Not really, no. It has to do with another dragon sept.”

  “Oh? Which one?”

  “Red,” I said reluctantly, torn with conflicting desires.

  “Mayling, I’m your twin, your creator,” she said, patting me on the arm. “You can trust me.”

  I slid her a quick glance, shifting the car into a lower gear as we tackled a long incline. “What about Kostya?”

  “What about him?”

  “You were pretty insistent at the sárkány that you were his mate. That implies you’d feel honor bound to tell him about anything related to dragon politics.”

  She examined a perfectly buffed and polished fingernail. “He was just as insistent that I was not his mate.”

  I pulled the car off the road into a narrow overlook intended for tourists, turning to face her in the small rental car. “What are you going to do about that?”

  “About Kostya, you mean?”

  I nodded.

  She made a little face. “Nothing. He’s just in denial right now, Mayling. I told you he was suffering from some emotional issues that had to do with him being held prisoner. He’s confused about our relationship; that’s all. Once he gets his feet back under him, he’ll see that we were meant to be together.”

  Her words struck a sore spot. Gabriel and I belonged together—even without the dragon shard prompting me to exhibit dragonish tendencies, I knew that we were fated to be together, to share our lives. Perhaps Cyrene felt the same thing about Kostya? Stranger things had happened.

  “All right, then; let’s say you are Kostya’s mate. That doesn’t give me a lot of confidence about revealing things that I’d rather not have him know right now.”

  The look she gave me was filled with injured dignity. “If you told me something in confidence, I would never repeat it!”

  “Cy, you’ve blabbed just about every secret I’ve ever told you, including a few that weren’t even true.”

  “Those were your own fault,” she said, ruffling up just a little. “Telling me you were a lesbian just so I’d stop trying to fix you up . . . Honestly, May!”

  “We’ve moved past that misunderstanding,” I said, not wanting to open up that particular can of worms again. “What I want to know is whether or not you’ll go running to Kostya with everything I tell you.”

  Her nose wrinkled up as she thought about that for a moment. “Probably I will.”

  I sighed and took the steering wheel again.

  “Unless you tell me specifically not to, that is. Despite what you think, I can keep a secret. But I don’t want to be in a position where I have to make a choice between you and Kostya. I love you, Mayling. You’re my twin! But I love Kostya, too, and I don’t want to have to pick one of you over the other.”

  “Fair enough,” I said, pulling the car back onto the road, noting a sign that indicated that the small town where a local surfing competition was being held was only a few kilometers away. “What I have to say doesn’t concern Kostya directly. However, I don’t want you to repeat any of this to him.”

  “Grace of the naiads,” she swore, drawing a symbol representative of water elementals over her heart.

  I took a deep breath, relieved that we’d come to an understanding. Cyrene may not be the wisest or most savvy person on the earth, but I knew her heart was good, and if she swore by the grace of her kind not to tell, then she wouldn’t. “You remember the red dragon named Jian?”

  “The good-looking one?” She nodded. “Kostya said he was the son of the previous wyvern.”

  “That’s him. Well, he came to see us yesterday, asking for our help.”

  “To overthrow that witchy wyvern? I don’t blame him one bit. I didn’t like her at all. But what do the silver dragons have to do with the red ones? I thought all of the septs were fairly insular.”

  “It’s a bit more complicated than that. It concerns me being the phylactery for the dragon shard.”

  “Oh! Speaking of that, where is it?”

  The road was particularly twisty as it followed the ragged coastline, but I chanced taking my eyes off the road for a moment to shoot a surprised look her way. “Where is the shard?”

  “Yes. Is it inside you, like a tumor or something? Can you feel it? Does it hurt?”

  “I believe it’s inside me, yes. There’s a small mark below my rib cage that wasn’t there before the Lindorm Phylactery exploded. But it doesn’t hurt.”

  “So you don’t even know it’s there?” She blew out a relieved breath. “That’s good.”

  I didn’t correct her. The fact that I was slowly losing myself to the dragon-heart shard would become apparent in time; until then, I wouldn’t mention it.

  “What do Jian and his mother have to do with the shard inside you?”

  “A few months ago Aisling banished his mother, Chuan Ren, to Abaddon.”

  She nodded. “I heard that. That’s some kind of awesome, huh?”

  “Impressive, yes. Jian wants us to get her back. Specifically, he wants me to get her back.”

  “You?” Her forehead wrinkled. “But you didn’t cast Chuan Ren into Abaddon, Aisling did. Why isn’t he asking Aisling to bring her back?”

  “That’s where the complicated part comes in. I gues
s he tried, and Drake wouldn’t consider the request. It’s understandable given how delicate Aisling is right now.”

  “I suppose, although she doesn’t strike me as particularly delicate.”

  I grinned at her. “To be honest, I agree, but I do understand Drake not wanting her to get involved. Chuan Ren must be absolutely furious with her.”

  “So that’s where you come in? Gabriel is doing this as a favor to Drake?”

  I hesitated for a moment, using a tricky turn as cover for my silence. “Jian asked me if I could use my connection to Abaddon to locate and free his mother. In exchange, he offered us the use of the dragon-heart shard that the red wyvern holds.”

  “Why do you need that?” she asked, still wearing a puzzled expression.

  I explained briefly about the dragon heart.

  “So, the red dragons will hand over their piece, and that will give you two of the five?”

  “Temporarily hand over, yes. It’ll be returned to them.”

  “Two isn’t going to do you much good,” she pointed out. “Not if you need all five shards.”

  “Gabriel has that worked out. Drake will loan us his piece in exchange for helping Jian.”

  “Why would he want to help Jian . . . ? Oh. To end the war?”

  “Yes. That’ll be part of the deal Chuan Ren is going to have to agree to in order to be freed. Assuming I can free her, that is.”

  “You’re going to need Magoth for that, I bet,” Cyrene said with surprising prescience. “Do you know where he is now?”

  “Oddly enough, he’s been keeping a low profile. Gabriel has had people watching for him, but as far as we know, Magoth and Sally are holed up in his house in Paris.”

  “Hmm. I’d have thought Magoth would have been raising hell by now. Ha. Hell.”

  I couldn’t help but smile. “I’m sure he would if he could, but I think he’s finding out just how limited he is without any powers.”

  “Is he going to be able to help you with Jian, then?” Cy asked.

  “He should be able to, but whether or not he will remains to be seen.” I skimmed over the horror that thought brought me. I truly did not want to think of what I’d have to do in order to get Chuan Ren released.

  “That still leaves you two shards short of a complete dragon heart.”

  “One. The blue wyvern has a shard, as well.”

  “Oh. So who has the fifth one? Gabriel?”

  “No.” I was silent for a moment. “We think the dragon I saw in the shadow world has the fifth shard.”

  Her eyes widened. “Baltic, you mean?”

  “Yes.”

  She whistled. “That’s going to be a hard one to get.”

  “It will indeed. The hope is that the other four shards together will give us the ability to get the fifth.”

  “Hmm.” Cyrene thought for a few minutes. “I bet that Bao is going to have a thing or two to say about all of this.”

  “I’m sure she will, but that’s no affair of ours. Jian insists that Bao is not what she seems, and she has no right to bear the title of wyvern. We really have no reason not to believe him.”

  “You don’t really have a reason to believe him, either, but I guess that point is moot. Oh! That’s it, over there,” Cyrene said, pointing to a stretch of beach and sapphire water that was glimpsed between starkly white stone buildings.

  It took a few minutes to find a spot to park, so popular was the surfing event, but at last we tucked the car away in the shade of a church and walked the length of the town to the beach, where a large crowd was gathered around a couple of rickety tables. Surfboards lay glistening in the sun up and down the beach, their owners standing negligently beside them, or bent over them waxing the colorful boards with gentle caresses.

  “Which one is Neptune?” I asked, allowing myself a moment to admire all the eye candy. Most of the surfers were shirtless, wearing standard knee-length cargo shorts, or brightly colored wet suits, all of them showing off physiques honed by years of swimming and surfing. There were surprisingly few women included, although the ones who were there were as buff as the men.

  “I think that’s him, down there,” Cyrene answered after scanning the people. She pointed to the far end of the beach, where two men were emerging from the foaming surf, water glistening on their wet suits, their boards slung to their sides. A third man stood with his board balanced on his head, clearly about to go into the water.

  “Which one?” I asked as we set off toward them.

  “The one who looks like Neptune, of course,” she said with an exasperated roll of her eyes.

  The two men stopped in front of the third, shaking water from their hair as they set their boards down.

  “Brah!” the dry man said to one of the two guys. “That was sick air! Epic, totally epic! It’s just too bad that frickin’ Grom snaked you and knocked your stick. You’d have that tail slide otherwise.”

  “Snakes suck,” the taller and blonder of the two surfers agreed. “It was a perfect barrel, too. The big mama is fully macking some sick grinders. For a couple of groats I’d shove a tin of surf wax up that snake’s . . . whoa, femmes.”

  “Er . . . hello,” I said as the taller man noticed us. The other two men turned to look at us. “I’m sorry, this is completely random, but snakes? In the ocean?”

  All three men looked at me as if I was the crazy one.

  “You didn’t actually mean snake snakes, did you?” I asked the largest of the men. He had an air of relaxed command that I took to mean he was the head of all the water elementals.

  “Dude, a snake is someone who drops in out of turn.”

  “Not epic,” the dry man said, shaking his head. “Totally.”

  “No, of course not,” I agreed, not having the slightest clue what they were talking about, but deciding to leave the surfer lingo alone. I turned back to the large man. “Are you by any chance Neptune?”

  “Name’s Ned when I’m on the circuit, but you two femmes aren’t heavies, are you?” the man said, flashing me a very white-toothed smile before his gaze slid over to Cyrene. His eyebrows rose a smidgen. “Dude! You must be the naiad with the dirty doppel! Tasty! But weren’t you like totally owned last week?”

  “I don’t suppose any of you speaks actual English?” I asked.

  Cyrene gripped my arm and made a half bow, half curtsy, hissing at me as she did, “May! You don’t speak to Lord Neptune like that!”

  “Groms,” the dry man said with a little shake of his head as he headed out into the surf.

  “I meant no disrespect, I assure you,” I told Neptune as he hoisted up his board and started up the beach. “Maybe we’d better start all over. I’m May Northcott, and this is my twin, Cyrene. What exactly is a Grom?”

  “Grommit,” Neptune said, setting his board down on a blanket. “Wallace and Grommit, you know? Groms are noobs, kinda clueless. What are you two beach bunnies doing here? Yo, dude, I’m starving. Go find us some grindage?”

  “On it,” the other man said, and headed off to where some food vendors had set up.

  Neptune cocked an eyebrow at us, clearly waiting.

  “Lord Neptune,” Cyrene said, making another of her odd little curtsies. “My twin and I have come to explain about the recent unpleasantness with my spring. You see, May is a wvyern’s mate, and also, through a very complicated series of circumstances, bound to Magoth, the demon lord.”

  “Totally gnarl,” Neptune said, nodding. He leaned a hip up against a wooden table that held the surfboard. “But nothing to do with your puddle.”

  “I can see why you would think that, but . . .” Cyrene shot me a pleading glance.

  I took pity on her. “Cyrene helped me avoid banishment to the Akasha. In the process of doing that, she devoted a great deal of time to my welfare and couldn’t attend to her spring as she wished.”

  “That so?” Neptune looked thoughtful as he eyed first me, then Cyrene. “Brah, word on the street is that you’re shackled to a dragon, and t
hat’s why your puddle got barreled.”

  “Er . . .” Cyrene looked as confused as I felt.

  I picked out the words that made sense and drew a few conclusions. “Because of my involvement with the dragons, Cyrene has been drawn into their society as well. But I can assure you that she takes her position very seriously and is totally devoted to the welfare of her spring. If you could see your way clear to reinstating her as a naiad, I’m sure you would have no reason to regret it.”

  “No reason,” Cyrene said hastily. “No reason at all! I’m so into my spring!”

  Neptune pursed his lips and unzipped his wet suit to scratch a spot on his chest while he thought it over. Cyrene clutched my hand in a grip that was almost painful.

  “Sorry, brah, can’t do it,” he said finally. “I hate to bowl you, but there’s rules, you know?”

  Cyrene’s lower lip quivered as she turned large, liquid blue eyes on me. “May, please,” she whispered.

  My heart broke for her. Oh, Cyrene was no end of trouble, but she was my twin, and I knew how much being a naiad meant to her. “What would it take for her to prove to you that she is worthy of the position?”

  Neptune grabbed a couple of cloths and started wiping down his board. “Gonna take some work, dude. Lots of work.”

  “Wait a minute. What sort of work?” Cyrene asked in a suspicious tone.

  I pinched her and said, “She’s not afraid of work and is fully ready to prove herself to you. What exactly does she need to do?”

  Neptune grabbed a can of surfboard wax. “You took from the big mama. That’s not cool, not cool at all. You gotta give the big mama back her own, and then we’ll see.”

  I toyed briefly with the idea of asking for a translation but figured we’d just end up with more snakes and Grommits, and decided the less time Cyrene had to put her foot in it, the better. “We’ll do that. Thank you. And . . . er . . . break a leg, or whatever it is you do out there.”

  The sound of his laughter trailed after us as I hauled Cyrene down the beach. She was prone to argue with me, but I had neither the patience nor the time to tolerate it. That didn’t stop her, however, from unloading her opinion of both Neptune and my high-handed (as she called it) treatment on the way back to Faro.