Since the news of another inscription could have been fabricated to bring him out of hiding, he wasn’t about to walk back into the military’s hands—at least not without investigating first. He hadn’t forgotten the fire or being shot out of the sky or the attack from Brennon’s men in the market.
Cael braided her hair and clipped the end, a look that emphasized her gorgeous bone structure. “If you still want to meet in secret with Rion, he’s willing.”
Interesting. Was Rion working with Cael and Lucan, or against them? Or was the astrophysicist suspicious of his superiors, too? Lucan wouldn’t know for certain until he talked to Rion, but arranging a meeting created all kinds of complications.
“Rion’s allegiance is still an unknown,” Lucan began. “While he saved our lives in Langor and warned us about Elder Selick, meeting with him, still, may not be safe. The military could be watching him, hoping he’ll lead them to us. Is there anything else you haven’t told me?”
“Nisco thinks we’re all being watched and warned me not to return to Avalon. I’d love to know what’s so damn important in those papers Trelan stole from Brennon that we may all be in danger.”
He hoped Cael would stay holed up in the mountains, but she was no longer including him in her planning. He tried to flex the tension out of his neck.
“Are you meeting Nisco at the residence?” he asked.
She shrugged.
“You need to stay hidden. It’s too risky for you to meet Nisco.”
She glared at him. “I didn’t ask your permission.”
He threaded his hand through his hair, knowing he owed her some kind of explanation. “I thought you’d be safer in the mountains than with me.”
“That was not your decision to make.”
Sweat trickled down his neck and, with the back of his hand, he angrily wiped it away. Cael’s eyes widened and she gasped.
“What?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”
“Your hand.”
He glanced at his hand but saw nothing to cause alarm.
“The other side.”
Son of a bitch. Purple scales had grown on the inside of his wrist. Dragon scales. No wonder his limbs had been tingling. His cells were mutating.
Dropping to his knees beside the stream, he dipped his hand into the water. The scales didn’t wash away. He picked up a handful of gravel to scour the purple scales, scrubbed until his flesh bled. But the scales remained.
Horror seethed through him. “I’m becoming—”
“A male dragon.” She whispered the words, awed and shocked.
This couldn’t be happening. Not now. But denial wouldn’t make the scales vanish. He forced himself to ask, “How long until the transformation’s complete?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is there a way to slow or reverse the process?”
“I have no idea. In all our history, only once has there even been a male dragon.”
“Tell me about him.” He had to know what he was up against.
“According to the Elders, long ago we had a king who was born with the marks. Legend says he journeyed with his brothers to a foreign realm to make war upon the Tribes.”
He jerked up his head, and his voice was sharper than he intended. “Did your king ever return?”
“The myth says he came back to place the Grail inside Avalon, then died in another realm.” She shot him a puzzled frown. “That’s why we believe the Grail’s inside the obelisk.”
He asked one last question. “The legendary king. What was his name?”
“Pendragon. His name was Arthur Pendragon—but it’s only a legend. We never found any archeological evidence that he existed.”
Electric excitement simmered through his veins, and he had to refrain from pumping his fist and tamp down his emotions before Cael realized he was on to something he couldn’t explain.
Lucan peered at the bloody scales at his wrists. Cael had told him she must dragonshape at least ten times a year to satisfy her biology. And if he, too, had to periodically change into a dragon, it would take him more than a lifetime to fly home. His ship was too small to hold his dragon form. If his new DNA forced him to shift into a dragon every cycle, it would add incalculable time to his journey.
Damn it. If he had to dragonshape on a regular basis, he’d never be able to fly home in time to help Marisa. Maybe not even in time to save humanity.
“There has to be a way to reverse this process, to take back the dragonblood.”
“Why don’t you want to be a dragon?” Her voice was filled with pain and disappointment.
“To lose my intellect… even part of the time…” He raised his head, still unwilling to reveal his mission. “How do you…”
“Cope?” She closed her eyes, as if looking inward, then opened them. “I have no choice. But I don’t mind the loss of intellect, since there are so many compensations. The gift of flight is awesome.”
“But you don’t like the isolation,” he countered.
“I don’t mind being different. But I don’t like being treated differently.”
Her words hit him like a knockout blow. Lucan had been her first lover, and he’d walked away.
He’d hurt her with his selfish need to preserve himself. For the sake of his mission.
And, God forgive him, he couldn’t stop his growing suspicion that being with her somehow acted as a catalyst for the changes happening to him. The way her scent affected him wasn’t normal. Neither was the way his body reacted to her touch. And the tingling up the insides of his arms after their lovemaking, tingling in the same places she had scales, and where he now had scales, caused him to question if being close to her was changing him… and he couldn’t afford to change.
He had to give her up—not just for her sake, but his own. “What else haven’t you told me?”
“Excuse me?”
“About legendary male dragons? About being a dragonshaper?” He tried to keep his voice level, but he knew his anxiety was getting the better of him.
“Let me get this straight.” She stood and began removing her clothing, placing it in her backpack. “You paired with me several times but have no intention of ever seeing me again, and you expect me to educate you?”
He reached out to take her hand. With pain and fury in her eyes, Cael jerked back.
She dragonshaped. And then she was gone.
There is a farther unknown world, a world beyond Avalon.
—ANONYMOUS
14
For two days Lucan followed the stream that led him to civilization. He’d tapped into his credit and rented a skimmer. With the military searching for him, he’d be foolhardy to travel straight back to Avalon. Instead, he headed for the remote site where he’d left his spacecraft.
Finally reaching the beach, he walked out to the sea and plunged into the surf. He swam out three hundred strokes, grabbed a deep breath of air, and dived straight down. His spaceship blended with the sea bottom, but since he’d triangulated the position with landmarks, it wasn’t hard to spot the craft beside a fan-shaped white coral formation.
He palmed a lock that responded only to his handprint, and the sealed hatch opened. After swimming into the air lock, he pulled a handle and resealed the outer portal.
Water siphoned out, air cycled in, and heat blasted him dry, and Lucan headed straight to the communication center, a circular bridge with giant windows. He keyed in a request for his messages from home.
Since he hadn’t been back to the ship in almost a month, he had video messages from both parents waiting for him. As always, they sent their love, but as he compared the new videos to the pictures of his family on the console, he noticed that worry had added wrinkles to the corners of his parents’ eyes.
His sister demanded that he return home immediately, that he was on a fool’s mission. Maybe he was. He had yet to enter Avalon, and apparently there were still more inscriptions to decipher to obtain the Grail.
Vivianne Blackstone, CEO
of the Vesta Corporation and the woman who’d built this spaceship, had also sent a message. No babies had been born during the last few years. No babies anywhere on Earth.
Lucan used the computer’s extensive data bank to bring up Layamon’s Brut poem. Just as he’d remembered, many of the lines were similar to those he’d found on the cave wall. The computer couldn’t translate the second carving, but it did recognize the language was from the Tribes—Arthur’s ancient enemy. And when he logged in the type of rock, the elevation, and the depth of the rune carvings, the computer estimated both of the inscriptions had been made about fifteen hundred years ago—possibly during King Arthur’s lifetime.
The legend that Arthur had left the Grail in Avalon before his death seemed even more likely. Now Lucan had to find a way to get back to Avalon and find it.
He had to decide whether he could trust Quentin’s offer to intercede with the prosecutor on his behalf in exchange for Lucan’s expertise in reading the runes, but first he needed to head for the medical bay. With any luck one of the computer-run diagnostic tools could strain out the dragonshaping blood and restore him to his normal self.
Swinging onto the table, Lucan pulled the diagnostic device over his body. “Full medical scan.”
“Processing,” the computer answered.
The procedure would take several hours. Lucan should be using those hours to sleep. But he kept wondering about Cael. Had she found her sister? Would she try to meet Rion on her own? Would she return to Avalon?
The computer whirred, then beeped. “Your blood has altered,” the male voice spoke in a methodical tone.
“Change me back to normal.”
“Processing.”
Lucan closed his eyes and tried to let the machine work, but his heart raced as he waited for the results.
He tried to distract himself with work. The King Arthur Pendragon story Cael had told him was yet another fascinating piece of the puzzle. He’d already found abundant proof that there had been contact between their two worlds. And while Arthur had fought under the banner of a dragon and his name meant “master of dragons,” Lucan had never believed the dragon to be a genuine being. However, Arthur being a dragonshaper could account for the shapeshifters in old Earth legends.
“I’m detecting an abnormality in your heartbeat.”
Considering his thoughts, an elevated pulse was to be expected. “I’m anxious.”
“You’re growing a second heart.”
A second heart? “Reverse the process.”
“If I remove your second heart, you won’t survive.”
“Explain.”
“You’ve always had the genetic ability to grow a second heart. Each cell—”
“Just fix me.” Lucan ran his hand through his hair. He understood the theory that in early development any cell could develop into a more specialized one—like a heart.
“I can’t. A blood transfusion served as a catalyst, and the process—”
“A catalyst? What do you mean?”
“The blood transfusion speeded up a process that might have happened anyway.”
Stunned, he shook his head as if to clear it. “Let me get this straight. You’re saying that if Cael had never given me her blood, I’d still be growing a second heart?”
“Possibly.”
Lucan snorted. “Have you blown a circuit?”
“Self-diagnostic says that I’m in perfect running order. More than can be said about you.”
Lucan rolled his eyes. The computer was wrong. He’d never heard of anyone mutating into a dragon. And dragons were big. Kind of hard to hide. “Look. No one in my family has ever been a dragon.”
“This is evolution at work.”
“Evolution takes millions of years. It doesn’t happen in a week.” Lucan held out his hand to the scanner. “These scales weren’t on my arms last week.”
“But you’ve always been telepathic—which is tied to the dragon genes.”
Lucan swore under his breath. “Are you saying I’ve always had dragon genes? That Cael and I have a genetic link? But we come from different worlds.”
“It’s not that rare an occurrence. Many people on Earth share—”
“What’s the common denominator among the people on Earth who have this dragon mutation?”
“Processing.”
Lucan held his breath and then eased out the air slowly. His own theory was almost too wild to think, never mind say out loud. But if Pendragon and Earth shared a history, perhaps they also shared a blood bond. One that went back over a thousand years.
“Many descendants of Celtic people have some variation of the dragon gene.”
“How early?”
“About 1,550 years ago.”
King Arthur’s time. Coincidence? Lucan no longer believed so.
Lucan almost leapt off the table. The implications were mind-boggling. It was possible, probable even, that King Arthur was his ancestor and a dragonshaper. And somehow his genetic heritage had given him his telepathic ability, as well as an aptitude for dragonshaping. It was even possible that if Lucan and Cael could trace their family trees back far enough, say fifteen or sixteen hundred years, they might share a common ancestor in the distant past.
“So anyone on Earth who also has these genes has the ability to mutate into a dragon?”
“Only Arthur’s descendants have the gene.”
While King Arthur hadn’t had a legitimate child with his queen, Arthur had had a son with the High Priestess of Avalon, the Lady of the Lake. So his genes could have been passed down over the centuries. Arthur likely had thousands of descendants, maybe millions.
For the moment, Lucan put aside his questions about where the dragon mutation had come from and focused on results.
“And what kicked my dragon genes into gear?”
“Your immune system may have reacted to the difference in gravity. Or to something in the air. Or the food. Anything on Pendragon could have brought about the mutation.”
“Alien blood?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. A scent could have triggered the reaction. Or a sound. Or an electromagnetic wave. Or a weapon.”
“Could I have reacted to someone, not some thing?”
“Most certainly. The trigger could be environmental, physical, or even emotional.”
“Emotional?” His feelings when he’d been with other lovers had never been anywhere near as strong as when he’d made love with Cael. Emotions released all kinds of hormones. “Is there a way to slow my physical changes?”
“Not without killing you. And there’s nothing I can do to fix you, because you aren’t broken.”
Lucan left the medical bay much more frustrated than when he’d arrived. He entered the bridge and initiated an investigation. “Search for references to dragonshapers, dragonshifters, and intelligent species of dragons on the worlds we stopped at, as well as Earth.”
On the way to Pendragon, he’d downloaded culture, history, science, geography, and religion of the worlds he’d passed through. The knowledge would be precious to Earth, but what good would all that knowledge do if no one was left to utilize it?
“I have 23,425 references to dragons in my data banks.”
Lucan scratched his head. “Cross-reference the material to scales like the ones on my arms.”
“Do you also have scales on your legs?”
Lucan slid off his pants and swore. Scales ran along the insides of his feet, up his calves and thighs, and over his balls, and joined at the tip of his sex.
“Scales on arms, legs, and genitals verified.” The computer had visually scanned him and come to its own conclusion. “Cross-checking.”
Lucan opened his eyes, pulled his pants back on, and paced the bridge. Outside, water creatures swam by the giant portals, unmindful of the Earth ship that had become part of their landscape.
Finally the computer spoke. “There’s an ancient legend about an alien race seeding the galaxy with dragons. There’s one vague reference to p
urple scales that marked the limbs of the fire-breathers. And there are recent rumors about Honor, an entire planet of dragonshapers enslaved by the Tribes.”
Lucan had difficulty taking in the scope of the dragonshaping myth.
The computer spoke again. “According to the legends, the male dragon’s primary job is to keep the female safe. He’ll dragonshape whenever the female needs protection.”
“Are you saying the transformation’s involuntary?”
“It appears that way, but I’m citing ancient myths.”
“What about the female? Why can’t she protect herself?” He recalled Cael’s fiery breath, her claws, her vicious teeth that ripped through the mountainside.
“There may be limitations on the shapeshifting process. Food, temperature, gravity, atmospheric pressure, hormone fluctuations. It could be anything.” The computer beeped. “My communication network’s picking up a message, and the sender, Rion, is asking for you by name.”
Shit. No one on Pendragon was supposed to know about his ship. “Does Rion know my location?”
“Unknown. His communication’s broadband and set to hit a widespread area.”
“If I respond, can he trace this call?”
“Pendragon doesn’t yet have that technology.”
Lucan opened channels. “How’s the sinkhole?”
Rion hesitated. “That’s not why I called.”
“Tell me,” Lucan demanded.
“You and I still have much to talk about, but to answer your question, the sinkhole’s expanding exponentially.”
Lucan frowned. “Any other good news?”
“There’s a military buildup in Carlane.”
Carlane? Cael lived in Carlane. Had she left the safety of the mountains to search for her sister, after all? Was the military closing in on her? Would they lock her up and try her for murder? At either possibility, Lucan’s pulse raced.
The computer confirmed, “Military satellite feeds are picking up unusual troop movements in Carlane around the High Priestess’s residence.”
Lucan drummed his fingers on the console. “Have you spoken to Cael?”
“That’s why I’m calling.” Rion’s voice was urgent. “I can’t reach her.”
Lucan Page 15