Tropical Dragon's Destiny

by Chant, Zoe

  His thoughts took him into the back entrance of the bar, where he was startled to find exactly the staff he’d been pondering quietly sitting in a loose circle around a cluster of tables.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, realizing he was disrupting a private moment. “I can get something from the kitchen.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Graham was looming behind him.

  Mal gave him an amused look. “Do you have to get to the point of fisticuffs with everyone, Grant?”

  Lydia stood to pull up another chair, and she gave Graham a chiding look. “Please join us,” she invited gently. “We all have a lot of questions.”

  The audience he faced would have intimidated greater men than Mal but he squared his shoulders and took the seat Lydia indicated.

  Laura looked like she had been crying, her mouth a firm line in her face. Amber had clearly not forgiven him for the news he had delivered the night before and Tony looked like he would have gleefully crossed the table that separated them to claw his eyes out. Mary’s expression was thoughtful, Alice looked like she’d just had a bad cup of coffee. Neal was frowning at Graham as he took a seat at the fringe of the group and Wrench looked like he was trying to figure out how to switch chairs with Lydia, who was patting Mal on the knee.

  “This has come as quite a shock to everyone,” Lydia said in a smashing understatement.

  “Whatever you’ve done to Scarlet, we’re not going to let you get away with it.” That was Travis, crossing his arms and glaring at Mal suspiciously.

  “Graham says there’s a battle coming,” Alice said, sitting forward to lean on the table towards him. “Did you mean a legal battle?”

  “Was the evacuation really necessary?” Magnolia and Chef were even there, sitting close together in creaking chairs. Chef had clearly been cooking and there was a platter of miscellaneous leftovers that no one seemed to have touched.

  The sound of a throat clearing drew them all up short and Scarlet was coming in through the back entrance to the bar, Jenny at her side with a pile of papers. Mal had to make himself scowl not to smile foolishly at her and it took him a moment to realize why she looked so different.

  Her hair was down, loose over her shoulders and in thick waves down her back. Mal dearly wanted to bury his fingers in that mane, to kiss her neck... he wrenched himself back to the moment with effort.

  To Mal she said, “They deserve to know the whole story. This was their home, too.”

  She walked into the bar like she owned it, which... she almost did. “I’m not enspelled,” she assured the rest of them as she picked up a tray and began to gather abandoned glassware; everyone had undoubtedly been busy with the evacuation the night before. “I’m not being blackmailed, I’m not being paid off, Mal hasn’t hypnotized me, and this isn’t his fault. It’s an unfortunate set of circumstances, and there are no fingers to be pointed.”

  “It’s not because of the storms,” Graham growled.

  “No one believes that for a moment,” Travis agreed.

  “If there’s some way we can help...” Lydia offered.

  “Anything, darling,” Magnolia added.

  “Anything,” Chef agreed firmly.

  Scarlet gave a warm smile around the room and Mal half-expected flowers to start sprouting out from between the tiles. How had he ever thought of her as chilly?

  “You have been good friends,” Scarlet said. “Like family to me in all the best meanings of the word,”—Darla chuckled wryly—“and I have been touched and honored by your trust in me over the years, and your loyalty and your generosity.”

  Her voice became firm. “But this is not your fight. Beneath the island is a monster, a sleeping wyrm from prehistory. The storms that are coming are a sign that he is waking, and if he does, he will break free and destroy everything he can reach.”

  “The resort?” Tex asked.

  “The resort,” Mal interjected. “The island. The mainland towns. The nearby cities, the farms, every ship on the ocean. He is destructive and strong, and if I fail to cage him, I don’t know who or what could stop him, but I know that the death toll would be unconscionable.”

  Graham gave him a suspicious look. “And you think you can cage him? By yourself.”

  “I know I can,” Mal said confidentially. “This has always been my destiny: to fight him and win.”

  “What kind of monster is it?” Laura asked.

  “How are you going to fight it?” Saina demanded.

  “That’s the rub,” Mal explained. “The battle... there’s going to be a lot of collateral damage. It could level the resort. Or even the whole island.” He nodded at Bastian. “You’ve witnessed dragon battles. They banned them in Europe because of the damage they could cause. Now take that and amplify it by a creature ten times the size, with powers of water and wind and no care at all for bystanders. I cannot promise that anyone—or anything—on this island will be standing at the end of it.”

  Graham froze. “You can’t do that.”

  “Oh,” Lydia said with a sigh. “How terrible. The whole resort?”

  “We could rebuild,” Travis suggested. “On another island if this one was too wrecked up.”

  “The sale hasn’t been accepted yet,” Jenny said, eyeing Mal. “We’ve still got all that money we raised...”

  “What about Scarlet?” Graham demanded.

  “What about Scarlet?” Lydia asked. “She’s evacuating too, aren’t you, Scarlet? We’re all leaving.”

  There was a moment of silence and everyone craned around to look at Scarlet where she was piling her tray full of glasses.

  “I can’t leave the island,” Scarlet said with a wry little smile. “It’s impossible for me to evacuate with you. I’m—”

  A sudden keen and the sound of slapping footsteps preceded Gizelle’s headlong race up the stairs and into the bar. She skidded to a barefooted stop at the edge of the tables. “Sweet One!” she said in alarm. “I can’t find Sweet One! We can’t leave without her! I won’t go!” She rubbed her head and moaned. “I can’t go. I haven’t gone. It’s my fault.”

  Conall followed at a brisk pace. “The jet’s coming in an hour and we can’t find the kitten,” he explained patiently, trying to comfort her. “Has anyone seen her? Gizelle, why are your hands dirty, sweetheart?”

  Scarlet offered, “Tyrant was sleeping on my bed earlier, perhaps she’s there?” She gave a curious expression of concentration which faded to confusion. “I... I can’t...” She lifted the tray of glassware and abruptly dropped it. Glasses and bottles shattered around her.

  “Scarlet...” Mal surged to his feet in alarm. Several of the others stood as well and there was a murmur of surprise and speculation.

  “It was... heavy,” she said in astonishment, staring down at the broken glass around her. “I can’t remember the last time something was heavy...”

  Then she raised her eyes to Mal and he watched shock and fear fill her face and felt his heart stop in his chest. “Something is wrong,” she whispered. “Something is very, very wrong.”

  She vanished.

  Gizelle gave a shriek and everyone else gasped.

  “Scarlet!” Mal roared. “Graham, what’s happened?”

  Graham was already in motion. “Amber! Amber, I’m going to need your help! Now!”

  Chaos ensued as he bolted for the tool shed behind the bar.

  “What do you need Amber for?” Tony demanded protectively as Amber stood in confusion.

  “What is going on?” “Where did she go?” “What is happening?” “Is it the monster?”

  Gizelle sobbed, “It’s my fault, it’s all my fault,” and Conall tried to comfort her.

  Mal blistered the air and ripped a portal through to Scarlet’s clearing without a second thought for protecting her secret.

  A gasp went through the staff, but Mal didn’t wait to watch their reactions before he was bolting through the glimmering doorway.

  Mal was no expert on trees, but
he could recognize a dying plant when he saw one.

  Already, more than half of the flowers had fallen off, and the leaves were limp and curled, with alarming brown, burnt tips. The moss was carpeted in red petals.

  Scarlet stood at the base of the tree, arms around the trunk. “No...” she moaned. “No...”

  Mal went to her, but when he tried to take her into his arms, there was nothing to her. The sensation of her power was notably missing. “Scarlet...?”

  She sank to her knees, forehead pressed against the bark, and Mal couldn’t touch her to lift her up. “Scarlet!”

  Red petals fell around them like rain.

  “Grant Lyons, get your ass over here!” he shouted back through the portal. Half the staff had already come through, blinking around at the jungle glade in wonder and alarm.

  Bastian followed him to Scarlet, threw his first aid kit down beside him and drew his fingers wonderingly through her. As they watched, she slowly vanished, writhing in pain.

  “Scarlet’s... a tree?” Saina was at his heels.

  “A dryad...” Laura breathed.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Oh, Scarlet...” Lydia murmured. “She’s beautiful...”

  Graham was finally there, Amber at his heels. He was holding a bucket of tools and Tony had a shovel that he clearly wasn’t going to let his mate carry.

  “What happened to her?” Mal demanded, just resisting the urge to take Graham by the throat. “What’s wrong with her?”

  “Graham, it’s your missing shovel!” Travis called from the far side of the tree. “And an... empty bag of salt?”

  Mal’s mood changed from panicked to enraged. “What did you do to her?” he hissed at the gardener.

  “I didn’t do anything!” Graham snarled in return. “I should be asking what you’ve done. She was just fine until you got here.”

  “The tree has been salted!” Amber exclaimed. “Someone has dug up the roots and salted them! Oh, Scarlet!”

  “Can you save her?” Mal raged. He didn’t have a spell for this, and didn’t have the tools to face a life without the woman who’d gone from a thorn in his side to the air that he breathed. “You have to. You have to save her.”

  “We can dig out the contaminated soil, but she’s already absorbed so much of it...” Amber fingered a wilted leaf and shook her head. “I... don’t know. This should have taken weeks to happen...”

  “Out of my way,” Mal warned. That was one thing he could do. The soil around Scarlet’s tree boiled like water and rose up in a wave away from the trunk of the tree.

  Not sure how far was far enough, Mal spun a second portal into existence and dumped the contaminated soil out into the ocean.

  Amber stared at him in boggled astonishment. “Well, that’s one way to do it,” she squeaked.

  “What now?” Mal snarled.

  “Fresh dirt,” Graham growled. “If it’s not too late.”

  Amber added, “Water. Lots of water. Flush the poison out of her.”

  It was not too late. It could not be too late.

  The other side of the clearing provided a clean source of earth, and everyone danced a moment as Mal moved the ground beneath their feet and tenderly filled in the holes he’d created.

  Her red flowers continued to fall, carpeting the earth in crimson.

  “It’s like it’s raining blood,” Lydia murmured.

  Gizelle, who had crept through the portal with Conall at her heels, gave a whimper of fear, trembling and weeping.

  Mal barely noticed them, too consumed with anger and fear. He needed water, fresh water, and he was deeply alarmed to find it within easy reach above. The storms that should have been a few days away were already touching the far side of the island and it was a simple matter to pull in a cloud of rain that drenched the new soil and soaked everyone to the skin.

  “You can stop!” Graham finally shouted, when the dirt around Scarlet’s tree was churned to mud. “Stop!”

  Mal released the tendril of cloud with effort and the rain slowed; water was not easy for him to control.

  He staggered over the mud to fall at the base of Scarlet’s tree. He leaned against the trunk of her tree.

  “Scarlet,” he begged. “Scarlet, you have to fight, you can’t give up. I’m nothing without you, I’m no one. I may as well let the wyrm drown the world if I lose you because there will be nothing left for me here. Dammit, Scarlet, you stubborn pain in my ass, if you don’t shake this off, I’ll... I’ll...”

  Mal ran out of words, something that hadn’t happened in recent memory, and he pressed his face into her bark and felt tears prick behind his eyes.

  At first he thought that the song he heard was the ache of his own heart. Then he realized it was a voice, and he looked up to find the mermaid, Saina, standing with her legs planted, singing, and there was an unexpected tickle of magic as her voice soared.

  Chapter 24

  Scarlet was floating.

  Pain was a concept she had never understood. She sympathized with it, saw what it did to humans and shifters, but it had always been an abstract; it was a thing that happened to other people, not to her.

  Now, she was all pain. Pain and poison and darkness. She could feel the salt in her veins, biting into her power, sucking it away.

  She wasn’t floating, she was sinking, sinking through the earth as she had when Mal had taken her into the depths of the island.

  But this time, she was alone and adrift, without Mal’s wings folded protectively around her, and she wasn’t sure which way was up.

  All around her was laughter and a whisper like silk against silk.

  Mal? she tried to call. He was so far away.

  And someone else answered.

  Ah... the tree.

  There was a malevolence with her: a terrible, powerful presence that had always been safely below, safely slumbering.

  Scarlet could not see, but she could sense great eyes on her, half-lidded. You were one of the ones who could stop me, a silvery voice whispered. The tree and the song. Together with the stone dragon, you could have kept me in my prison, rebuilt my cage around me.

  The song? Scarlet felt like her mind was moving sluggishly, like she was on the verge of understanding something just out of her capability. Everything hurt.

  She could hear... singing.

  Of course! He meant Saina.

  Saina was trying to sing the salt from her... but Scarlet knew it was too late, the damage was too deep and it had already hurt her tree too badly. Even if Saina could draw every crystal from her veins, her tree was dying; Scarlet’s power was already drained.

  She could feel the wyrm grin and suddenly recognized its plan.

  You did this on purpose! You’re trying to get her to exhaust herself saving me! It had neutralized the two of them in one simple move.

  Behind her, there was another set of eyes opening in the darkness.

  I don’t take chances, the feathered wyrm chuckled from its second head.

  This was our third try, the first head admitted. She resisted the first attempt.

  The second snapped, You pushed too far, too fast, promised too much.

  The broken mind should have done her job the second time. The first one whined.

  It’s been undone, somehow. I think the broken mind went back, but we don’t know when, the second speculated.

  The first head growled. It’s too bright between the broken mind and the stag. We can’t always see there.

  Broken mind? Gizelle!

  The second head smirked, hearing Scarlet’s sudden realization. Such a sweet thing, so trusting. And you did most of the work for me, winning her faith and affection, drawing her out of her safe place. All I had to do was give her your own words, push her to the edge, and then tell her exactly how to fix everything.

  A chorus of voices rose like a storm all around Scarlet, drowning out Saina’s far-off song. The dryad would have covered her ears if she’d been able to. It was impossible to pic
k individual phrases from the chaos.

  For you, perhaps, the wyrm scoffed. I have much more sophisticated minds.

  Scarlet could feel its self satisfaction, its pride.

  The broken one merely needed a little direction, a little focus... the wyrm demonstrated, pulling a few of the voices forward, insistent and emotional. Mal’s dragon: She is our treasure. We must get her off this island. Scarlet heard her own voice: It’s all my fault.

  And the wyrm’s voice, thick with kindness and sorrow as its heads circled her: If you kill the tree, Scarlet will be free... she can go to safety with everyone else... release her from the tree. You can fix everything! You can help!

  Scarlet, even knowing what the monster was and the lies it told, was dazzled by the promise in its words.

  I have to be careful when the stag can hear us, one of the heads hissed.

  Fortunately, he is not always there, the other head chuckled.

  But when he is... we do not understand why she stops listening, the things she feels, the first pouted.

  It is too bright, between them, the second agreed.

  How could this all happen so quickly?

  Scarlet hadn’t meant to ask the question out loud, but the wyrm plucked it effortlessly from her mind.

  The broken one can wedge cracks in time. Speed things up, slow them down... It is a curious side effect of her mother’s gift, and because she trusts me, she trusts me to control it for her.

  Scarlet felt anger rise in her throat. Gentle Gizelle, whose trust was so hard to win, had been fooled into believing that this voice was her friend. How long had it been whispering to the poor young woman, feeding her out-of-context voices, convincing her of its friendship, and using her to its own purpose?

  That’s what happened to the cage, she realized. You aged it, using Gizelle’s magic.

  One of the heads—Scarlet had lost track of which was which—laughed triumphantly. The spell that trapped me made two foolish assumptions, it sneered. The first was that time would flow uniformly, that it was an immutable constant.

  The second? Scarlet asked, afraid of its answer.