by Chant, Zoe
That I have been asleep.
Whatever of Scarlet wasn’t pain was now fear and she would have flung herself away if she had possessed a body to control.
The wyrm’s voice filled the rock around her as both heads spoke. I have watched, and I have waited, and I have learned, and I have stolen, and the world shall fall before me and know my wrath and I will not rest until I have cleansed the surface of the blight of man and taken back my kingdom.
Mal will end you, Scarlet cried desperately. Above the ground or below, he will stop you.
He cannot end me, I am immortal! No one can best me. The wyrm sound more amused than intimidated.
Immortal is not infallible. You’ve been caged before, Scarlet pointed out. You can be caged again!
The wyrm grinned with both of its dire mouths.
But I won’t be. The song will end, the tree will fall, and I will be free at last...
Scarlet could hear the desperation in Saina’s distant song, the strength bleeding from it as she sang her heart out.
Saina, no...
The music trailed off.
You are alone now, the wyrm told her with hissing satisfaction. You are powerless and I am all but free and the world will fall before me.
But he was wrong—at least about one thing.
She wasn’t alone. She was never truly alone, even in her greatest loneliness.
Trees didn’t speak in words.
They spoke in slow impressions of sunlight and rain, in memories of cool earth and whispers of wind. Their words were bright flowers and dark shadows and deep roots and tall, grasping branches.
Scarlet knew them, like humans knew the steady thrum of their own heartbeats and the regular breaths of their own lungs.
If the wyrm had been made of anger and false promise, her trees were made of trust and selfless love.
And as she had devoted herself to them, they repaid it now, giving their own life energy to purge the last of the poison from her tree and reinstate her there.
The wyrm snarled, trying to keep her as her rainforest pulled her gently back.
But it was not in its element, and her trees were patient and strong.
The stone dragon does not have enough power to stop me without you! the wyrm hissed, releasing her contemptuously. I have still won!
Scarlet had an impression of a great force, coiling to strike, and then she was standing in a rain of her own petals.
Chapter 25
Mal raged helplessly. “What is the siren doing?” he demanded of no one in particular. He could feel the pull of Saina’s magic song, but couldn’t figure out what was happening, and it made him feel useless and on edge. It wasn’t like his own healing spells, and Scarlet’s tree looked worse than ever.
“She’s drawing the poison from the tree,” Bastian said, watching her almost as anxiously as Mal was. “She did this with me once, with goldshot, and with Wrench, after a snakebite. But this... it’s more than she’s ever tried to do before.”
The dying leaves were starting to shimmer and, after a moment of alarm, Mal realized that they were covered in crystals. Confusion resolved into understanding: they were crystals of salt that Saina was pulling out of the tree through the leaves.
“We’re losing her!” Mal said in despair.
“I don’t understand,” Amber said, shaking her head. Tony had his arms around her. “I don’t understand how it could happen so fast. This soil was just disturbed, but it can take weeks for a tree to leech salt up from its roots. It shouldn’t have hurt her so badly so quickly.”
Graham grunted what Mal assumed was an agreement.
Mal stared at the tree, which was starting to look frosted in the salt crystals, like a great, gorgeous chandelier. It was possible that Scarlet’s magic just moved at a faster pace than a normal tree... but the storm had arrived much faster than it ought to as well; the air was already thick with moisture and pressure and the wind was making the crystalized leaves chime together. Red petals were swirling through the air.
When there were problems with time, he knew where to look.
In three swift steps, he closed the distance to Gizelle and took her face in his hand. “What did you do?” he snarled. “What did you do to her?”
Gizelle gave a wordless cry of fear and despair. Mal saw Conall gather himself to attack and locked the Irish elk shifter into stasis with a few quick words and a gesture.
His focus was still on Gizelle. “You salted her! You tried to kill her! Why would you do this?”
The rest of the staff started to surge forward to protect her but Mal froze them all with a flick of his wrist.
“You told me we had to!” Gizelle wailed. “Your dragon said, She is our treasure. We must get her off the island!”
Mal went as rigid as the frozen staff as he recognized his dragon’s exact words.
“My friend told me I had to free her from the tree so she wouldn’t get hurt!” Gizelle buried her face in her hands. “So many voices, so many places! One of them said this was the only way! Over and over, this was the only way, and there are so many voices and it’s all my fault!”
“What voice told you this?” Mal demanded in icy suspicion. “This specifically, with the salt and the shovel. What did it sound like?”
“So many voices...” Gizelle moaned. “Gathered up at the end like a sonic wave.”
“The voice that told you to put salt on Scarlet,” Mal roared at her. “What did it sound like?”
Gizelle looked at him with terror and misery in her eyes. “Rustling feathers...”
Conall, somehow, furiously, was fighting his way forward as if he was moving through honey, his mate-bond overcoming even Mal’s spell.
Mal released the spell with a sweep of his hand and let go of the woman. Conall went not for Mal, but for Gizelle, sweeping her into his arms protectively. The rest of the staff staggered in place, not sure what to do with their new freedom and new information.
“So many voices,” Gizelle wept hysterically into Conall’s shoulder, trembling violently. “Too many! I don’t understand how to make sense of it! I want them to end!”
“You gave me sound, beloved,” he murmured gently, cradling her close. “Let me give you silence.” He closed his eyes and concentrated.
Relief spread over Gizelle’s face like a sunrise and she went limp in his arms. “It is quiet at the end, past the wave where voices can’t reach,” she said, exhausted and she touched her mouth in wonder. Mal guessed she couldn’t hear her own spoken words.
He met Conall’s angry gaze over Gizelle’s head. “If she’s been hearing the wyrm...”
A gasp made him turn, just in time to see Saina crumple into Bastian’s arms... and Scarlet was suddenly standing among them.
She was solid again, but she was not the Scarlet that Mal knew. Gone were the heels and the timeless business clothes. Her bright hair was loose and wild around her, and her bare feet were a few inches above the moss. She stood for a moment like this, her eyes like feral emeralds, and Mal climbed to his feet.
“Scarlet,” he said helplessly. His dragon seized his heart in careless claws and squeezed the breath from him.
She lives.
Mal knew that he could never lose her again, that he would trade the entire world to save her if that’s what it took, and his chest felt like it would crack from the conflict he faced.
She looked at him, her gaze like a million miles, then blinked. She took a breath—her first—and bent her head with great effort, stepping out of the air and back to the earth. As she took that small step, she was somehow smaller, more Scarlet and less elemental. Her hair twisted itself back and she was dressed again, with short heels and a narrow skirt.
The effort it took was palpable and the Scarlet that remained looked tired and weak. Mal did not need to cast power sight to know that her energy had been drained to almost nothing.
“I didn’t do that,” Saina said hoarsely from Bastian’s arms. “I was losing her. I tried, but I
couldn’t save her. There was... something else.”
For a moment, the only sound was the wind, and the chime of salt-heavy leaves falling; Scarlet’s tree was nearly bare and the jungle was weirdly still.
“My forest,” Scarlet said, swaying in place. “My forest gave itself... there’s almost nothing left.”
“Scarlet...” Mal was at her side, catching her desperately into his embrace.
She was alarmingly frail in his grasp, a shadow of her former self as she clung to his arms. “Mal,” she whispered. “Mal, it’s awake. It’s been awake. You have to stop it, now. This is your chance. I can’t help you.”
Mal’s stomach clenched. “If I go down to fight him now, everyone here on the surface dies.”
He had to shout, because the wind was suddenly howling. Scarlet winced as there was a crash in the jungle and one of the huge trees toppled slowly towards into the clearing. It ripped branches from its neighbors and Mal thought the tearing sounds as it fell seemed like screams.
The ground trembled at its fall, though it came down well away from Scarlet’s tree. Everyone clung to each other, staring with wide eyes, but the earth didn’t stop its growling and shaking as the tree settled.
“More earthquakes?” Jenny said in alarm.
“I don’t think this is an earthquake,” Travis said, with none of his usual light humor.
“If you don’t go down to fight him, far more people die,” Scarlet reminded him. “I’ve met him, Mal. You can’t let him go free.”
“This is just the edge of the storm,” Mal said in despair. “And much worse is to come.”
“Can you make one of those fancy portals to somewhere a little safer?” Breck yelled over the whipping wind.
Mal hesitated. The safe places he was familiar with and could portal to were halfway around the world. He should be conserving his magic for the fight that was galloping down on them, but he couldn’t leave them here to die. He hadn’t realized how much he’d relied on the promise of having Scarlet’s magic to draw on.
“You have to save your strength for the fight,” Scarlet said miserably, guessing his train of thought. “Can you portal them just to the dock? They can escape on the boat...”
Mal hadn’t been to the dock, but he’d been to the pool deck, and he sketched as big a doorway as he dared into the air and brought it to sizzling life. Everyone dashed through, just as a great boom shook the island and Mal felt the cage below the surface explode into shards of broken magic.
They staggered from Scarlet’s clearing to a pool deck that was shaking and buckling, tiles popping out as great cracks appeared. Glass everywhere was shattering, furniture from the pool was picked up by wild winds and smashed to the far walls. As they fought to stand on the swaying ground, against the wind, a storm surge rolled in from the angered ocean and buried the dock and the entire beach in swirling foam and crashing waves.
The boat docked there was flung as if it was a child’s toy, right into the railing of the pool deck, and it broke into chunks. Some of the pieces bounced back into the roiling water and some flew up to skid over the tiles and splash into the churning pool. One of the motors struck a palm tree that gave a shudder and upended.
“Or not!” Travis said wryly, shouting over the wind.
Laura lost her footing on the heaving ground and Tex caught her before she fell. Mates clung to each other. Several shifted to find better steadiness on four paws, including Chef and Magnolia, who sheltered others from the wind behind their massive bears.
For a moment, the earth stilled slightly and the wind was a little less, but Mal knew that it was only a matter of time before the wyrm fought his way to the surface.
“You have to get out of here now,” he said in despair. He couldn’t save Scarlet, but he could save the people who were loyal to her. Scarlet stepped back from him, swaying weakly in place. He started to sketch a new doorway, focusing on his stronghold in New York. It would take a reckless amount of energy, but he knew he had to do it. The earth was starting to rumble again as the wyrm crawled for the surface; they didn’t have more than a few minutes.
“Wait!” It was Graham, stepping forward with Alice’s hand in his own. “You could have beat it with Scarlet’s power, right?”
“I don’t have anything left,” Scarlet said helplessly.
The gardener ignored her, glaring at Mal in challenge. “Corbin... he could use a shifter’s energy to do magic. Could you do that with us?”
Mal stared at him. “Bind you? You’re just...”
“All of us. If you could tap all of our power, would it be enough?” Graham looked aside at Alice, and she set her jaw and stepped closer to him, nodding in agreement.
“I’ve never had a chance to save the world before,” she said merrily.
Mal swept his gaze over the assembled shifters and gestured carefully. They all glowed with power—if not the scope of Scarlet’s single-handed energy, each with their own unique strength—and strongest of all were the mate-bonds between them, a curious glow of magic and love. “I could do that,” he realized in astonishment. Graham and Alice both stood open to him, the simple act of their offer putting their potential in his hands.
This wasn’t magic the way that he had studied it, with spells and structure and study. This was something more elemental, like his innate ability to slip through rock, or Scarlet’s ability to make things grow. “This could work,” he said, with something painfully like hope growing in his gut.
Bastian, just behind Alice, exchanged a look with Saina and moved to stand beside Graham with her. “I’m not Scarlet’s caliber, but I am a dragon,” he said proudly.
Mal hadn’t banished his energy sight and it was as if a veil had fallen away from Bastian’s source.
Scarlet put a trembling hand to her mouth, tears shining in her eyes.
“I’m nearly tapped,” Saina said, coming to Bastian’s side. “But what I’ve got, I’d give.” She was a gentle light, even exhausted.
Darla and Breck came forward, hand in hand. “We’re not going to let you have all that fun without us,” Breck called over a gust of wind.
“I got a debt to pay back,” Wrench said to Lydia, and she lifted her chin proudly and met Mal’s gaze with a firm nod.
Magnolia and Chef, still in bear form, bowed their great heads in agreement.
It was Mary who dragged Neal forward. “We’re in.”
Tony gave Scarlet a conflicted look and Amber spoke his concerns aloud. “Could this hurt our child?”
Mal felt like he’d been sideswiped by the offers, his power sight nearly overwhelmed. “I don’t think so,” he said, dazedly. “The data I’ve seen suggests that in vitro exposure to magic may cause children to shift earlier, but I’ve never seen evidence of harm. I would not take enough to hurt any of you.”
“Then I’m in,” Amber said with a lift of her chin.
“Pura vida,” Tony said. Pure life, the Costa Rican motto. Their magic was suddenly at his fingertips.
“Us, too,” Tex and Laura said in unison.
Jenny shifted from the otter form she’d taken shelter in. “Is it a conflict of interest if we have to face each other in the courtroom later?”
“I will preemptively concede every case to you,” Mal said, a hint of a smile at his mouth.
The smile died as the subtle rumble of the earth beneath them intensified.
“We’re with you,” Jenny said swiftly. “Do you need something more than that?”
“You’d all do this?” Mal said in astonishment, looking at the assembled shifters who had gathered forward. “You’d take this risk?”
“Not for you,” Graham growled. “And maybe not for the world. But we’d do it for Scarlet.”
Chapter 26
Scarlet was the only one of the group who wasn’t soaking wet, so nothing could hide the tears tracking down her face. She didn’t try to wipe them away.
She understood the depth of what each of them was offering, she knew the trust it t
ook, and it left her awed and honored.
Conall had been standing back with Gizelle curled in his arms. Scarlet wasn’t sure whether he could hear any of what was happening, or if he understood it, until he stepped forward, glaring at Mal.
“What do you have to do?” he asked.
Gizelle rolled out of his embrace and landed on her feet, nearly falling to her knees on the unsteady tile. “I can’t run,” she said in alarm, looking up at Conall.
“And I won’t run without you,” Conall told her firmly.
“You have us,” Gizelle said to Mal gravely. Then she looked up at Conall. “But I have to do something first!” she said wildly, and she bolted to stand in front of Saina and stare into her eyes for a long moment.
Saina shook her head in confusion and then Gizelle was dashing back to hold onto Conall’s hand and nod at Mal.
Scarlet remembered the wyrm’s cryptic talk: It was undone, somehow. I don’t know when.
Mal closed his eyes and everyone gave a sudden intake of breath. Scarlet, her own power cold and banked inside, could still sense the swell of magic in her mate. It was a muddier magic than her own, or even than Mal’s innate earth dragon magic, but it was as solid.
I can do this, she heard him say in a sudden burst of hope. Then she felt his laughter like a caress. We can do this, he corrected.
It wasn’t any too soon; the long, low growl of the ground beneath them was a crescendo and they were having to dance in place for balance. Gravel rattled and some of the remaining glass shattered in place as the earth began to shake in earnest.
Mal fixed his eyes on the ground and Scarlet touched his arm, knowing he wanted to dive into the earth and stop the monster now, while he still had some advantage. He turned and pulled her into a last, damp embrace.
Whatever you have to do... Scarlet started sincerely, thinking of her helpless tree.
I won’t drain them, Mal said fiercely. I will be able to release them before the end, if it comes to that.
He kissed her once, briefly and hard, then pushed her away. “Take what shelter you can,” he commanded over the sound of the rising wind. “The bar may stand.”