The Fire Eater and Her Dragon: A Dragon Rider Urban Fantasy Novel (Setting Fires with Dragons Book 3)

by S. W. Clarke

  “And what will you do with him?”

  She stared at Nikolaj through my eyes, contemplating the trembling chin, the tremor in his uplifted hand. “He does not want to die tonight, just as he did not want to die that day in the forest.”

  “Please,” Nikolaj said.

  “Then why is he begging?” I asked.

  “Because he is a man in a burning building. He does not want to jump from the building, but he would rather die by falling than be consumed by flames.”

  “I don’t know precisely what you’re talking about.”

  “He has never known happiness,” Mariana whispered. “He hates this life, but he sees no way out of it except a piece of thin metal to the heart.”

  “And is there another way out?”

  “Of course,” she said. “But I have not been present to give it to him.”

  I didn’t like where this was going. “Well, I can relay whatever message you have for him.”

  “No,” she said. “I must talk to him directly.”

  I did the equivalent of folding my arms inside my head. I already didn’t like the way she and I were becoming one—our thoughts, our memories, our voices. “I’m going to have to veto that one.”

  She exhaled softly. “If you do not allow me to speak to him, he will kill us.”

  My eyes widened on Nikolaj. He still bore that half-crazed look, all right. “How do you know?” I asked anyway. “I thought his life was yours.”

  “It is,” Mariana said. “But that does not mean our life cannot be his.”

  Now my adrenaline was going. “Maybe I ought to take that knife from him just to get it out of his hands.”

  “Please, just let me handle this.”

  Mariana and I regarded one another from across the expanse of my mind, neither of us speaking.

  She had one point in her favor: she was asking, not telling.

  That only left about five hundred points not in her favor. And most all of them stemmed from one fact … she was the light, and I was the darkness.

  She got to stay, and I had to leave.

  “Tell me what you want to say to Nikolaj,” I ground out.

  “Patience, please.” Mariana was finally—ironically—losing her patience with me. “I knew him for seventy years. He knows the difference, and the Law of Gifting does not apply to you.”

  “Doesn’t it?” I tilted my head … inside my head. “Seems to me you and I are one soul who inhabit the same body. That strikes me as very much a straightforward thing.”

  Her hands finally unclasped. “I see. This is not about Nikolaj.”

  “No, it’s damn well not.”

  “So what will you accomplish here, Patience? We are at an impasse—a man stands before us with a blade, and you want to set your feet in the dirt.”

  “Isn’t the first time a man’s stood before me with a blade and I got stubborn. It probably won’t be the last.”

  She didn’t speak. She waited for me to answer her question.

  “If I let you have control, how do I know you’ll relinquish it?”

  The nice thing about her being me: I had a pretty good sense of her body language. She was different, but not wholly dissimilar. And when I saw her fingers fold at her sides, I knew one thing for certain.

  Deep down, no matter what she’d said or hadn’t said so far, Mariana wanted her soul back.

  Seleema was right—it was this or oblivion. And “this” included Valdis. It included Ariadne. It included another sixty-something years of life with the two of them.

  “I will relinquish it,” she said, “because I cannot face the demon. And if you do not face it, we will both die.”

  The demon. I had almost forgotten about that big beauty.

  “What is it?” I asked. “Seleema told me it was me.”

  “It comes from you, Patience,” she said. “That much I know. It does not have eyes for me, nor does it hunt me. The demon is your consciousness feeding on itself, a tumor killing its own host to grow.”

  My chin lowered. “You calling me a tumor?”

  “More or less.”

  “Listen, bitch.” I pointed a finger. “I could go traipsing around through your memories. How about the children at the fishing village? What’s that about?”

  Pain flashed across her face. “I’ve made my peace with that memory.”

  “Like hell you have.”

  One hand rose, palm up. “No demon chases me.”

  Well, she had a point. But my blood was up, and I sensed each of us contending, lightness and dark, for dominance right at this very moment.

  After this point, one of us would outgrow the other.

  Chapter 6

  I sent my mind back—back into the deep catalogue of Mariana’s life. I traced right to the night in question, the moment Valdis and Nikolaj and Mariana walked into that fishing village. She was only sixteen.

  “What are you doing?” Mariana whispered.

  “I’m watching a highlight reel of your shame,” I shot back.

  And so I did. I stood nearby and watched them walk into the village. It was early night, and the villagers sat around a fire with their fish cooking. When they saw Valdis, the terror of the coast, the women and children ran.

  The men fought. Or tried to.

  They picked up their fishing spears and ran at him.

  Valdis killed them in one stroke per man—a severed carotid here, a leg shorn there. They fell where they stood, their blood spraying wide.

  Why? Why had he gone to this village just to slaughter these people? And why had he brought Mariana and Nikolaj?

  For her part, Mariana called out for Valdis to stop. She cried and begged and dropped to her knees, but it made no difference.

  When the village’s men lay in a heap around him, Valdis addressed the women and children hiding in their huts. “I have not come for this,” Valdis called out. “I would not have killed these men if they did not attack me first.”

  Only silence returned.

  And I knew, because I could hear Mariana’s thoughts, that this was a lie. Valdis would have killed these men anyway … she had seen him do so in other villages.

  There was a reason he had become the terror of the coast.

  “I have come only for one thing,” Valdis went on. “Your strongest boy of no more than twelve years. Send him out to me, and I will leave.”

  This had happened before, too.

  “Why did he bring you?” I asked Mariana in my mind’s eye. “Why would he make you witness this?”

  She didn’t answer. And in the memory, sixteen-year-old Mariana went on weeping. In the village, the fish went on sizzling. The fire went on burning. The villagers remained silent and hidden.

  “Ah.” Valdis took one step toward the huts, then another. “Then I have reason to believe you have no strong children among you.”

  No.

  I couldn’t watch the rest of the memory. I simply couldn’t.

  Back in my mind’s eye, Mariana stood with her head lowered. She truly was ashamed.

  “I still don’t understand why he did that to those villagers,” I said.

  “He was paranoid,” she said, still gazing down. “You saw the sorcerer and his werewolves. Despite Valdis’s power, he feared retribution for the people he killed. And so, from time to time, he went to villages and demanded their strongest boy …”

  “To what end?”

  “To turn.”

  “Into a vampire?”

  She inclined her head farther. “Yes.”

  “And because that fishing village did not send a child forward, he murdered every single one of them?”

  She didn’t answer, because we both knew.

  “And why did he bring you along?” I asked.

  “I think it was … a sort of game. He wanted to see what would affect me. How long it would take me to become desensitized to such pain. When I would stop begging.”

  And here I was beginning to imagine the vampire downstairs wasn�
��t as much of a monster as I’d made him out to be. He’d seemed so protective of Ariadne, so loving toward Mariana.

  Now I had no doubt.

  “And when did you stop begging?” I asked.

  “Never,” she said, lifting her face. “It was I who tempered his impulses. It was I who changed him.”

  And yet he had not changed. Not really. Because after she’d died, he had gone right back to his old ways. Only the GoneGods knew how many people he’d killed over the millennia.

  “You think you went to heaven,” I said. “Do you have any memories of it?”

  She paused to consider my question. Finally, she said, “No.”

  “Because someone like you doesn’t deserve heaven,” I said, cool and low. “I don’t think you ever went there.”

  Her eyes went as wide and empty as a deer’s in light.

  “You gave a ruthless killer a child,” I said simply. “You loved him, you protected him and you stood by his side while he slaughtered hundreds.”

  “He did not,” she objected. “Not after Ariadne.”

  “You know that for certain? How were you, a mortal, to know what your vampiric lover did under the killer moon while you slept?”

  “He changed,” she insisted, but a quavering note had entered her voice. “Because of Ariadne, he changed.”

  “He murdered my family five years ago,” I said. “My sister Thelma was seven years old, and she’s dead because of Valdis. That doesn’t strike me as change.”

  She had nothing to say to this.

  She could have told me she was sorry. She could have gasped. She could have fixed me with a sympathetic eye.

  Mariana did none of those things, and now I knew why I fought for my soul.

  Because, for all Mariana’s good qualities, she wasn’t any better a person than me. She didn’t have any more right to my soul than I did.

  “I’ll deal with Nikolaj,” I said.

  She nodded.

  I lifted my arms in my mind’s eye, indicating my wounds. “And when I come back, you and I are going to deal with the demon. Together.”

  “Yes,” she murmured. “It’s the only way.”

  For once since I’d stepped out of the truck in front of Valdis’s mansion, I felt in control. And I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t missed that feeling something fierce.

  Hardly a moment had passed in the real world. In the moonlight, Nikolaj’s seven-hundred-year-old blade remained extended toward me. His fingers still shook, his eyes still fixed on me.

  I took the grip in my hand, my fingers closing tight around it. “Stand up,” I said. “I’m not going to do this with you kneeling.”

  ↔

  Nikolaj rose.

  Here in this bedroom, with this knife pointed at his chest, he didn’t look like an ex-vampire and a member of the Scarred.

  He just looked human. And afraid.

  I kept the blade level. “Have you killed people, Nikolaj?”

  He didn’t hesitate. “You aren’t Mariana.”

  “No. But Mariana’s given me leave to deal with you, so you should get to answering my question.”

  He paused. Then, “You know I’ve killed people.”

  My heart had quickened. “Did you want to kill them?”

  “No. Not all of them.”

  “But some of them?”

  His Adam’s apple bobbed. “It’s hard to say when you’re a vampire. The world changes. You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Because people become cattle.”

  His eyes, which had been fixed over my head, now found mine. “Yes.”

  “And now you’re one of us. You’re cattle, Nikolaj.”

  He shook his head. “I’m not like you. The memories … the nightmares …” His hands rose to clutch his scalp. “My life is horror.”

  I didn’t move the blade. “Discounting your years as a vampire, how old are you in human years, Nikolaj?”

  He blinked hard. “Why does it matter?”

  “Because I’m asking.”

  “I … guess about twenty-five.”

  “Twenty-five. That’s not much older than me, if we’re discounting the age of my soul, that is.”

  His lips hardened. “Stop talking. You’re not saying anything.”

  “Oh, but I am.” My fingers tightened on the knife’s grip. “I watched my entire family die to you and your clan of vampires. You think I don’t know nightmares, but I’m a grand matron of nightmares.”

  He stared at me. “You hate me.”

  “Yeah, you could say I do.” My grip had become sweaty, and I adjusted my fingers. “But then, I hate all vampires. I hate them in the way you’re able to hate any faceless mass. It’s only when you get to know them a little bit that things change, come into clarity.”

  “And what’s come into clarity?”

  My truth was coming to me as I was speaking it, unspooling from my mind onto my tongue. “You’re a vile bastard, Nikolaj. But taking revenge on a footman like you wouldn’t do me any good. My family’s dead.”

  “That’s not why I’m asking you to take my life.”

  I lifted the blade toward his face. “But you know what would do us both good?”

  He shrugged one shoulder.

  “Therapy,” I said.

  His brow furrowed. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about the future, idiot. You’re young, I’m young—and as screwed up as we both may be, we’ve got lives ahead. And I’ll tell you right now, I’m probably facing years of horrendous nightmares. I don’t care—I’m not dying in this house. Not tonight.”

  He didn’t move. He just gazed at me, and slowly, by tiny increments, a certain fatal sadness came into his eyes. It was the kind of emotion one keeps deep down, because if it comes up at all, it won’t be contained.

  I knew that kind of sadness. I’d been holding onto it for years.

  “Please,” he begged. “Just do it.”

  Well, I’d do it all right.

  I took a deep breath, the blade still pointed up at him. “I free you, Nikolaj.”

  His chest caught. “You …”

  “This is what Mariana wants,” I said. “She wants you to be free. And because she doesn’t know what the modern world is like, I’m telling you this: after we get the hell out of this house, get some therapy.”

  He shook his head, and I could have sworn I saw his cheeks glint with tears. “I … don’t …”

  I took a step left, still holding the blade out. “Trust me.”

  He regained focus on me, rubbing the heel of his hand over his eye. “Where are you going?”

  “I’m going to save all our lives,” I said. “As best I can.”

  He didn’t move. “The door’s locked.”

  I kept backing toward it, the knife still held out. “So tell me how to unlock it.”

  A moment of silence fell, elapsed. I wondered if he was going to stalk across this massive bedroom and grab me again. I wondered if, freed, he would do worse things to me than he’d done before.

  Instead, he only said, “There’s a push-in pin beneath the doorknob.”

  Huh. So that was all that had been keeping me here.

  I reached the door, feeling for the pin while keeping my eyes on the ex-vampire. When I found it, the doorknob clicked as I pushed it in.

  “Tara,” he said as my fingers slid over the knob.

  I paused. “Yeah?”

  “She will call to you.”

  “Who will?”

  “Lust,” he whispered. “She’ll promise you things. That’s what happened to the houri’s boyfriend downstairs.”

  Frank. I hadn’t heard Frank’s screams in a while now.

  “How do you know?” I asked.

  “Because she already came into my head.”

  I stayed by the door, my hand on the knob. “You didn’t scream.”

  “No.” He let out a small, broken laugh. “We all react differently, I guess.”

  “What di
d she promise you?”

  His eyes shone in the moonlight. “Freedom from the horror.”

  My breathing came faster. “And what did she want you to do to obtain that freedom?”

  “Bring you into this room,” he whispered, “and kill you, the vessel.”

  “And why didn’t you?” I asked.

  His hands went out. “I meant to. I just … didn’t. Couldn’t. You’re not her—you’re different from Mariana.”

  My fingers tightened around the knife. “Nikolaj …” I began.

  “I won’t do it, for GoneGods’ sake,” he said. “I’m still standing here.”

  I let out my breath. For some reason, I believed him.

  His gaze turned to the window. “But I’m warning you: she will call for you. And her promises are delicious.”

  Chapter 7

  I pushed the bedroom door open, backed out into the hallway.

  Nikolaj remained where he stood, staring at me as I pulled the door shut with a click. And then I was alone, and finally my hands began to shake.

  I fell against the opposite wall, clutching the knife in both hands. Yes, I had been suppressing the pain in my arms to keep my hand steady in that room. Yes, it had been a terribly tense moment.

  But when I pressed the back of my head against the wall and squeezed my eyes shut, it wasn’t because of those things.

  It was more than that.

  Mariana had not gone to heaven.

  That meant our soul had flown elsewhere. She was me, and I was her, and if our soul hadn’t been called down from the sky, that left only one option.

  Below. We had risen from below.

  She had given a child to a creature who for centuries had treated humans like cattle. She had adored that creature, turned her head away from all the times he killed.

  And me?

  I was the darkness.

  When I was a girl, my nickname was Tara—earth—and my sister’s nickname was Aerie—air. She was always leaping, jumping, begging to fly on the trapeze, a fearless climber into every place she shouldn’t be.