by Gwynn White
Solon closed his hand around Grayson’s fist, iron claws emerging from the ends of his metal encased fingers. The gauntlet was identical to the hand that was already made of metal.
“She’s an innocent.” Grayson sounded like he was speaking through clenched teeth. “If she is ferra, she doesn’t know it.”
Briar frowned. Ferra?
Solon looked over at her, and she noticed that the whites no longer showed in his eyes. Either they had darkened to the same gray of his irises or the iris now stretched from lid to lid. His eyes looked like those of an animal.
A chill crawled up her spine. He looked so alien, yet there was still something human about the way he studied her.
She took a step back.
“Leave her be!” Eli shouted down at them, wiggling on the hook that held him like a large fish.
Solon didn’t even glance at him.
“She’s mine, Leon,” Grayson said.
Any other situation, and she’d have a few words to say to that. But in this case, she knew Grayson was trying to draw away Solon’s attention.
“Yours?” Solon smiled, his dark eyes returning to Grayson. “Then prove it. Fight me for her.”
He released Grayson’s fist with a shove, and Grayson stumbled back several steps before regaining his balance.
“Mr. Owens,” Solon continued. “Please hold the prize while I give the young dragon a lesson.”
Owens laughed and started toward her.
She turned to run and took two strides before he caught her by her braid.
She cried out at the pain of being jerked to a stop by her hair. She reached back and gripped the braid close to her scalp in an effort to relieve the pain.
“Do something, Grayson,” Eli shouted down at them, surprising Briar with the request. She wouldn’t have thought Eli would ask Grayson for anything.
Grayson didn’t acknowledge him, his attention on Mr. Owens. “Get your hands off her, you soulless vermin, or next time, I’ll remove your head instead of your heart.”
Briar blinked her watering eyes. Grayson’s visor covered his features, but there was something in his cold tone that chilled her as deeply as Solon’s gaze. What had Solon done to him? He seemed changed.
“That’ll do,” Solon cut in. “My toy will hold yours until this is decided.”
“Listen, metal ass,” she spoke up. “I’m no one’s toy. Got it?”
Solon studied her a moment before turning to Grayson. “She lacks the manners, but she certainly has the ferra condescension down.”
“Did you take a ferromancer for a lover, girl?” Mr. Owens whispered, close to her ear.
“What? No.” Why would he think—
“As hot as he is for you, I think you lie. Not that I blame him.” He reached around from behind and gave her breast a hard squeeze.
Briar cried out as much from surprise as pain.
“I warned you.” Grayson held out a hand to his side, then flicked his fingers.
Briar didn’t understand the meaning of his gesture. Suddenly, a slender metal pole was streaking toward them. It missed her by a fraction of an inch and slammed into Owens’s chest. The force lifted him from his feet, and the pole rammed into the side of the building, hitting hard enough to drive it into a thick wooden support timber. The impaled Mr. Owens dangled a good foot off the ground.
“Briar, run,” Grayson said.
She just stared at him, her mouth too dry to speak and her muscles unresponsive.
“Now, now,” Solon chided. “This isn’t over.” He made a gesture very similar to Grayson’s.
She flinched and looked around for a pole flying her way. Then she heard a rattle on the floor near her feet. A coil of chain had unwound and now slithered toward her.
The sight finally broke her paralysis, and she turned to take Grayson’s advice. Suddenly, the chain shot out and wrapped around her ankle. As it crossed over itself, the links fused, forming a permanent loop.
“Now where were we?” Solon asked, paying no heed to Mr. Owens’s struggles.
“Here,” Grayson answered. He held out his hand, palm toward Solon and curled his fingers.
Solon gasped, and with a frantic flick of the wrist, sent an iron bar from a nearby pile flying at Grayson.
Grayson stopped whatever he was doing and raised both hands. The bar seemed to slow, but it still smashed into him with enough force to send him flying.
“Do you remember nothing I taught you?” Solon asked as Grayson climbed slowly to his feet. “You cannot stand against a ferromancer of the final casting, Drake. And you certainly can’t reduct a soul.”
“Then why were you afraid?” Grayson had regained his feet.
“Because dragons are as unpredictable as they are rare.”
Briar’s heart pounded a hollow beat in her ears as she watched the two men face off once more. Men, no. Ferromancers. She had been right all along. Mr. Martel, Grayson, was a ferromancer.
“I won’t be your rallying figure, Leon, whatever comes of this. And certainly not if you’re going to use an innocent against me.” Grayson waved a hand in her direction, though he continued walking toward Solon.
“So if I let her go, you’ll embrace your true nature and join us?”
Grayson stopped in front of him, but didn’t immediately respond.
“Hey,” Briar spoke into the silence, and both men turned their heads to look at her. “I don’t understand a fraction of what you just said, but I won’t be anyone’s bargaining chip. Do we understand each other?”
“You know,” Solon said to Grayson, “the first thing I’d recast is that tongue.”
Without warning, Grayson lunged forward and pressed his hand to the center of Solon’s chest. The armor rippled, the wave radiating from around Grayson’s hand.
Solon cried out and threw both arms wide.
A clang came from the ceiling and Briar looked up. The beam of an overhead crane came loose at one end and swung downward—fortunately, not the crane Eli hung from.
“Grayson!” she shouted.
He released Solon, who staggered away, and turned to face this new threat. He got an arm up, but whatever his ability, he didn’t get a chance to use it.
The beam hit him square in the chest and sent him flying. Briar flinched at the crunch of impact—then she saw where he would land.
“No!” she screamed, hearing Solon echo her.
Grayson landed in the vat of molten iron, sending a splash of the glowing liquid into the air. It settled with a thick plop an instant later.
If he had tried to scream, it never escaped his throat.
17
Briar pressed both hands to her mouth, trying to hold in the whimper that wanted to escape. Grayson had lied to her, about a lot of things. Perhaps he’d had a good reason. Whatever he was, he certainly didn’t deserve to die like that.
She noticed another sound and realized that Solon was cursing, his armored hands curled at his sides.
Abruptly, he stopped and smacked a hand to his chest. The armor split along the center of his chest as if it were a shirt being opened. The metal rolled back over his shoulders, around his ribs, and up his arms and legs, disappearing behind him. An instant later, a silver sphere dropped to the ground behind him, then morphed into the lion.
Solon gave his waistcoat a tug, then straightened his coat. Finally, he turned to face her.
Briar wanted to shrink back into the shadows under the force of that angry stare, but she stood her ground.
A clank sounded overhead: Eli, still trying to get free.
“What did you do to him?” Solon demanded.
“Me? You’re the one who launched him into—” Her voice cut out so she waved a hand at the vat that was now Grayson’s tomb. She couldn’t decide if she wanted to cry or scream.
“You bent him to your will ferra witch.”
“I met him five days ago, and about half that time he spent tied to the stable wall.”
Solon frowned. “Why
?”
“I was going to prove that the railroad had hired a ferromancer. I was trying to save the canals.” Her voice rose and sounded a bit hysterical to her own ears. She took a breath and tried to regain control. “What’s a ferra?”
“Not what, who.”
“All right. Who?” She lifted her brows, waiting for him to answer.
He sighed. “They are the female half of my race. More descriptively, a pack of smothering, self-righteous shrews.”
Ferromancers were their own race? And there were females?
Solon captured her wrist in the grip of his iron hand.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
A flick of the fingers of his other hand, and the chain fell away from her ankles.
“You commanded a construct,” he said.
“So?”
Solon just smiled.
“She’s got a great ass, master,” Owens said from his place on the wall.
“Shut your mouth, scum,” Eli shouted at him.
“The big man has a point,” Solon said. “Don’t be crude, Mr. Owens. Besides, I can observe these things for myself.”
“Sorry, master. A little help?” Owens gestured at the pole through his chest.
With a sigh and another finger flick, the iron pole came free from the wall and Owens dropped to the ground. He pulled the pole from his chest, then examined the slightly bloody hole in his clothes.
Solon turned away, attempting to pull her with him.
Briar dug in her heels. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“Perhaps you don’t realize, but you really have no choice.”
“Why take me?”
He stopped and faced her, leaning in so that his eyes—human once more—were on level with her own. “Because you just cost me the opportunity of a lifetime.”
“Grayson,” she whispered.
“He had a talent that only comes along once in a millennium. He had the potential to change the world.”
And he hadn’t wanted to, she realized, remembering all his talk about being free. Free to make his own choices. And she had unwittingly taken that from him, yet he’d died trying to free her.
A tear slipped down her cheek, and her hand drifted to her pocket for comfort. Her pocket was empty. “Oh, Lock,” she whispered. Coming here, she’d damned him, too.
Solon glared at her, then turned, pulling her after him with an iron grip she couldn’t defeat. Eli renewed his struggles overhead.
“At least let Eli go,” she said, stumbling along after Solon. Even if Eli managed to get himself off that hook, he would likely break a leg falling that far.
A reverberating crack echoed around the room. If she couldn’t still see Eli above them, she would have believed her fears had come true.
Solon stopped. A frown creased his brow, and the iron lion beside him growled softly.
Another crack, this one louder than the last, was followed by a heavy thump.
Solon spun toward the sound, pulling her with him.
She was trying to locate the source of the sound when the concrete vat exploded.
Solon released her to throw an arm up, smacking away a large chunk of concrete that had flown their way. Fortunately, she had been standing a little behind him, but she still dropped to her haunches, throwing her arms over her head.
It sounded as if someone had upended a wheelbarrow of rocks on the concrete floor as the broken chunks of the vat settled.
“Jesus,” Owens whispered.
“Holy hell,” Eli muttered.
Solon started to laugh.
Briar lifted her head and abruptly fell on her butt. Lock’s name rose to her lips until she realized that what she saw was much bigger than Lock.
He knelt in the remains of the vat, his head bowed. Horns just like Lock’s sprouted from his head, and the raised plates along his spine were tipped in gold. Taking an audible breath, he rose to his feet, a man.
“Grayson,” she whispered.
He lifted his head to display a helmet more like Solon’s with the open lower face and sculptured lines.
She pulled in a breath as his eyes met hers. His eyes were the same blue-gray they’d always been, but like Solon, the whites were no longer visible. An animal’s eyes.
“To me,” Solon muttered.
His lion tensed to spring.
Grayson lifted a hand, now encased in a bright silver gauntlet. “I wouldn’t.”
He curled his fingers, and the lion made a soft whine.
“Very well.” Solon raised his hands, palms out.
Grayson didn’t lower his arm. “I’m going to let you live, Leon, but test me again and you won’t like the results.”
Solon fisted his iron hand, pressed it to his heart, then bowed at the waist. When he straightened, he was smiling. With a nod, he turned and walked away, his lion pacing beside him.
Mr. Owens glanced between them, then scurried after Solon.
Briar watched them go. “That’s it?” she asked. “Hell, I at least hoped to knee him.”
When Grayson didn’t answer, she turned to face him. She expected a smile at her crudeness, but he was still staring after Solon.
“Grayson?”
He made no move.
“You still in there?” She took a step closer, reaching out a hand.
A clatter sounded behind her and she turned with a gasp, expecting that Solon had launched a new attack. Instead, the crane holding Eli had released, lowering him to the floor. The moment his feet touched, the bent metal pole that held his upper body unwound and fell away.
Briar turned back to Grayson. “Did you—”
Without warning, he fell to his knees. His eyes closed and he swayed.
She stepped forward and caught him against her, noting the odd warmth of his armor.
“Grayson?” She touched his cheek and found it like ice. “My God, you’re freezing.”
“Briar?” he mumbled her name.
“Yes, I’m here.” He had practically collapsed against her, and damn, he was heavy. She helped him lie down, though he had to lie on his side due to the metal plates along his back.
“Briar, I’m ready to tell you who I am.”
She smiled, about to tell him that wasn’t necessary, but when he turned his head to gaze up at her with those alien eyes, she didn’t. “Who are you?” she whispered.
“I’m Grayson Martel.” He took a breath. “Ferromancer.”
“Nice to finally meet you, Mr. Martel. Now, how do we get this armor off?” He’d be easier to move without it, and they definitely needed to move.
“It’s not armor,” he muttered.
She waited, but he didn’t elaborate. “Grayson?”
“Call him to you,” he answered.
“Lock?” She paused, but when Grayson said nothing, she continued. “Lock, come here.”
The armor that wasn’t armor rolled back off Grayson’s skin, collecting into a silver sphere on the floor beside him. A moment, and the ball morphed into the familiar dragon. Well, not entirely familiar. He was a little bigger and gold now accented his scales.
“Lock,” she whispered.
A whirr of happiness, and he sprang up on her shoulder.
She brushed him under his chin and turned back to Grayson. Without the armor, he was once again clad in only his pants. The scar down the center of his chest was a livid red against his extremely pale skin.
“Grayson?” She reached out and touched his shoulder. God, he was so cold. “Are you still with me?”
Nothing.
She rose up on her knees, intending to push him over onto his back and gasped. Along his spine, the plates were still visible. They weren’t part of his armor; they protruded from his skin as if each vertebra had grown a silver dorsal fin. Each fin-shaped plate was perhaps an inch long at the base and tapered to a wicked-looking point. Blood oozed from the base of each one where it must have torn through his skin.
“Lock, did you forget something?” she as
ked.
He moaned and rubbed against the side of her neck. She took that as a no.
“Dear God, what happened to him?” Eli whispered from above her. She hadn’t heard him walk over.
Not wanting to look, but unable to deny her curiosity, she lifted one of Grayson’s eyelids. The eye had rolled back, but she could see enough of his iris to verify that his eyes were human once more.
Leaning back, she rested her hands on her thighs. “He’s out cold.” She looked up at Eli. He was frowning at Grayson. “We can’t leave him here.” Not with those metal fins growing out of his back. “Can you carry him?”
He didn’t answer.
“Eli?”
“He’s a ferromancer.”
“Yes.” She was still coming to terms with that herself.
Eli turned his frown on her. “Did you know?”
“Of course not.” She pushed herself to her feet. “Did you? Is that why you’ve disliked him all along?” She very much doubted that Eli knew, but at least it would be some explanation for his dislike.
“No. I just…” Eli turned his frown on Grayson once more. “I never trusted him. I knew he wasn’t telling us everything.”
“We took him captive. He hardly had a reason to be honest with us.”
Eli maintained his silence.
“Are you going to help me with him or not?” she asked.
Eli’s shoulders slumped. “I can’t carry him through the streets with those spikes sticking out of his back.”
“True.” She rubbed her chin to hide her smile. Eli would help her. “I wonder what Solon did with his coat.”
Lock jumped from her shoulder and flew across the foundry.
“Lock?” she called in a loud whisper, afraid to raise her voice. Solon may not be out of earshot.
Lock didn’t fly far before landing on the other side of the busted vat. He returned a moment later, carrying Grayson’s black coat in his talons.
“Thank you,” she said as Lock dropped the coat into her hands. She lifted her gaze to Eli’s. “Can you still manage with those metal fins? They look sharp.”
He sighed, clearly not pleased. “As long as he don’t have nothing down his front.”
“He doesn’t.” She stepped to the side, giving Eli plenty of room.