Just as Sabrina made that mental connection, the prisoner took advantage of the unfolding drama to turn ever so slightly sideways so her face was visible to the captain but not to Gunnar. Now? Steph mouthed.
Now or never, Sabrina agreed, nodding as she rose to her feet in one graceful movement. Immediately, Steph shrieked at the top of her lungs and fell to her knees, pulling Donald down beside her. And in response, Sabrina opened her own mouth to pull up a breeze even as she flung her sword like a lance toward the greatest danger in their midst.
The effort of summoning air magic yet again so soon after overextending herself rocked Sabrina back on her heels. But that didn’t matter. Because Gunnar sensed the danger just as she thought he would, turning toward her while the muddle of female dragon and traitorous sailor bumped into his knees. The shifter’s eyes widened as his arm rose instinctively...and exactly one second too late.
Guided by helpful breezes, the sword twisted at the last moment, bypassing Gunnar’s protective maneuver with ease. Then the blade slid into the soft skin between two ribs on the left side of the shifter’s chest, sinking hilt-deep into a man who had repeatedly raped a defenseless female dragon then followed her for hundreds of miles when she had the temerity to try to escape.
Take that, you bastard.
At long last, Sabrina inhaled her first deep breath in what felt like a century. She watched the light leave Gunnar’s eyes as Steph skittered backwards to safety, and she waited for her soul to darken in response to ending a human life. But her chest actually tightened with pleasure, her faith in the Fairweather name taking its first step toward redemption.
Closing her eyes for a split second, the captain could see the next few weeks of her life laid out like chess pieces on a playing board. It was time to do more than merely flee from her father’s darkness. Instead, Sabrina would actively hunt down the women who’d been sold into slavery to profit the Fairweather ship. She’d release those prisoners from captivity and help them step into a new life just as Steph was gradually growing into the woman she was meant to be.
A mission that would be far more realistic with a dragon by her side. Please be safe, Nicholas, Sabrina thought, hoping her plea had sufficient power to save one absent and likely waterlogged dragon.
Then heat and light burst against the outside of her eyelids, forcing them open in time to take in the fireball of escaping magic that encompassed the space where Gunnar had once stood. The captain had never before seen a shifter killed by human hand, so she hadn’t realized that every ounce of energy meant to fuel decades of life would implode all at once. Now she watched in terrified awe as waves of heat incinerated the traitor kneeling by Gunnar’s side then reached beyond to send bystanders stumbling backwards with hands raised to shield their bleary eyes.
In the end, it appeared that Gunnar was far more dangerous in death than he had been in life. Because the fire flaring upward from where he’d once stood was so intense that tendrils didn’t merely tease at the flame-retardant surface of the balloon. This time around, the inferno licked up three sides of the bulbous mass, crackling merrily as it dug closer and closer to the explosive hydrogen heart.
Looks like I made a mistake after all, Sabrina thought, taking a step backward as the regret she’d expected to feel earlier flooded her body in a knee-weakening rush. Because while she’d dealt with their enemy in the most final method possible, Gunnar had ensured that his own passing would be immediately avenged.
The Intrepid was unquenchably alight. And this time around there was nothing Sabrina could do to slow the spread of voracious flames.
Chapter 34
Twenty minutes earlier, when Walter had remotely opened the hatch above his prisoners’ heads, water gushed into the honeymoon pod so rapidly its descent was less of a waterfall and more of a raging torrent of death. And Nicholas didn’t bother to fight the flow. Didn’t try to face down the pressure of ocean water rushing in to fill a space that had formerly belonged to air.
Instead, the shifter ignored Sabrina’s rapidly receding figure and dove sideways off the stairs, racing perilous water to the bottom of the room. Because the pod didn’t possess an escape hatch...but it did boast a fireplace designed to be independently ventilated even when thoroughly submerged beneath the surface of the sea. Using that system in an attempt to aerate the entire pod was a recipe for failure, but Nicholas’s calculations suggested the auxiliary air-exchangers might be sufficient to keep one shifter alive when closed into the tiny space.
Maybe.
The trouble was, he didn’t quite fit. For the first time in his life, Nicholas resented his long limbs and excessive height as elbows and knees tangled together in one hasty attempt to cram into the charcoal-encrusted indentation in the pod’s otherwise pristine west wall.
Inhaling deeply to calm his pounding heart, he pushed himself back out to stand in water that had already risen halfway to his knees. Then he forced his brain to calculate angles and options despite the spray licking at his inner fire as a massive bubble of air glopped out of the pod and allowed more liquid to roar inside to take its place.
Unfortunately, there appeared to be no alternative. If Nicholas didn’t fit inside the fireplace—and quickly—all calculations of air flow and oxygen exchangers would be moot. He’d end like Sam, magic quenched and life lost in pursuit of a goal bigger than himself.
The truth was, Nicholas would have willingly accepted that sacrifice if it meant that Sabrina and Steph and Zach and the egg were all saved. But it wouldn’t be fair to saddle his mate with the same soul-sucking guilt he’d battled for half of his lifetime. Wouldn’t be fair to force Sabrina to second guess her own decisions for days or months or years, imagining Nicholas’s last minutes spent strangling on the antithesis of fire.
So I’ll make it work.
Ignoring the scrape of skin against stone, Nicholas shucked off pants, shoes, and shirt far more rapidly than he’d originally put the clothing on. Then, with Sabrina’s subtly smiling face vivid in his mind’s eye, he used that extra millimeter of leeway to cram himself into the tiny indentation in the wall meant to house fire.
The shifter barely had time to grab his ubiquitous tablet before it submerged in the rising water. Still, he wasted two seconds balancing the device on his bent knees—there’d be no rearranging once the door was closed. Then, at long last, he reached around the corner and pressed a button before whipping his limbs the rest of the way inside.
The glass door rose up beside his face just as the pod tilted, air flowing more rapidly than ever out of the hatch while ocean just as quickly rushed in to take its place. Sparks flew as the main room descended into darkness, and the massive flatscreen winked out before Nicholas could catch more than a fleeting glimpse of Sabrina landing on the deck of her streamlined ship.
In the moments that followed, though, he had time to assess the vision that had burned its way into his retinas. Yes, Sabrina had reached the Intrepid safely, but her danger was far from over. Because the long view on the left-hand side of the display showed what the wind witch likely couldn’t see from her precarious perch on Intrepid’s upper deck.
Dragons were no longer swooping and swiping at the airship’s flame-retardant exterior. Instead, the four attackers had banded together to confer and decide upon a plan of action.
Meanwhile, off in the distance, the ocean rippled as a waterspout began to rise.
***
For one agonizingly long second, Sabrina froze, watching flames advance across the face of her beloved ship. Then she sprang into action.
“Steph, I need you ready to shift. Gerry, get your apprentice and our new water-mage passenger up on deck ASAP. Zach, find a way to secure that egg. Charlotte, you have two minutes to fill a sack with non-perishable foodstuff. Dominic...”
“Track down a transportable source of drinking water. You got it, captain,” her bosun’s mate agreed, snapping his fingers to catch George’s attention as they both broke into a flat-out gallop.
&
nbsp; Meanwhile, Sabrina winced as Zach solved the problem of carrying a smooth, slippery egg in a far different fashion than she’d expected. She’d thought her brother might rig some sort of sling, maybe put that contraption he’d previously sheltered the egg within on battery power and hoist it onto Steph’s scaly back. Instead, the teenager punched through hard shell as if he was preparing an oversized omelet, unaccustomed violence disgorging dragonet and fetal fluid all in one sticky lump.
And for an instant, Sabrina thought her brother had forced the hatch too soon. But then the mangled mass of silver scales shook itself, squawked, and began scrabbling tiny claws against the fragments of shell that constrained its lower half. Steph’s baby—the second female shifter Sabrina had ever met—was alive and ready to take on the world.
Letting out a relieved sigh, the captain returned to the task at hand. She’d given her crew two minutes to prepare for the journey ahead, but even that timeline might have been overly optimistic. Because she could smell the tinge of sweetness in the air as Gunnar’s death pyre worked its way past the balloon’s inflammable envelope and began burning the more amenable fabric lying underneath.
Only one thin skin of canvas now stood between the explosive hydrogen and the fire ready and willing to light her ship’s virtual fuse. Maybe seconds, maybe minutes until the entire dirigible would disintegrate in a pyre of devastation. And Sabrina lacked enough magic in her lungs to do more than jostle the hair lying clammy and cool around her sweat-streaked face.
“Come on, come on,” the captain muttered, begging her breeze to lower oxygen levels around the fire and at least slow its insidious spread. But her voice rasped and her limbs trembled, the wind witch realizing too late that she’d wasted more energy than intended pushing herself toward the Intrepid’s waiting deck. Now, when she needed those powers the most, she was completely tapped out.
Meanwhile, beyond the rigging, another dragon swooped by, tail lashing as it turned around to peer inside. By her count, there should be three enemy shifters still hovering outside her ship, waiting for their leader to accept custody of Steph and the egg. If they realized Gunnar was gone, would the dragons try again to parlay...or would they outright attack?
The egg, Sabrina realized nearly too late, was the only gambit remaining in their arsenal. So, throwing herself between the enemy dragon’s inquiring eye and her brother’s newly hatched charge, she shielded both dragonet and shattered shell with the barrier of her own body.
If they catch sight of the dragonet, there’s no way they’ll fall for an egg as bait....
Luckily, a cloud of swirling smoke helped shield the baby from view. Coughing against the acrid burn, Sabrina was confident the dragon saw no more than a flurry of panicking sailors before it swirled on past. Then wild winds circled the Intrepid and pushed the enemy further out of sight.
And before she’d even finished blinking the final soot-streaked tears out of her own eyes, pounding footsteps thundered up from below. Dominic and George heaved a partially filled water barrel between them, tipping the vessel end over end until it rolled out of the hatch and onto the upper deck. Next came Charlotte, Gerry, Edward, and the apprentice engineer, bags and parcels balanced on shoulders, against hips, and in the crooks of their arms.
Passengers and crew—each and every one was present and accounted for. They were ready to make a desperate bid for escape even though not-so-friendly water mages meant the ocean was currently off limits while aerial fliers turned the sky into a similarly unsafe place to travel.
Then another problem reared its ugly head. Nicholas—please still be alive—never seemed to bat an eyelash when asked to ferry heavy crates of supplies from one Aerie building to the other. But Steph could barely fly. Would eight people plus sufficient sustenance to carry them all ashore be too much for the damaged dragon to handle?
It was a little late to change direction midflight, but Sabrina glanced at the other woman anyway. She half expected the shifter in question to descend into a puddle of terrified tears when asked to be the Intrepid’s savior. After all, this was what Steph had been afraid of all along—her past catching up and attempting to rope her back into the nightmare that used to be her life.
But now that the moment of truth had finally arrived, the victim had found her spine. Perhaps it was watching her tormentor die in front of her, or perhaps she’d possessed a steely inner core all along. Either way, the female shifter cradled her newly hatched dragonet in surprisingly sturdy arms and nodded before Sabrina could even open her mouth to soothe her companion’s fears.
“I can carry this and more,” Steph promised. “Just sing up a wind to point me in the right direction and I’ll make sure we get there in one piece.”
Then, stepping off the side of the ship, the former mouse flared, grew, and turned into the path to freedom for eight waiting humans and one scampering dragonet.
Chapter 35
Back in the Before, hacking into a computer interface would have been a difficult task. Luckily for Nicholas, so few people possessed electronics in this day and age that wireless networks and even entire city systems were generally unsecured. Sure enough, when his tablet latched onto the wavelength that had allowed Walter Atwater to communicate with the pod earlier in the day, the password was easy to guess.
Nicholas typed his first attempt, one letter at a time, into the tablet’s touchscreen. P-A-S-S-W-O-R-D. True to form, whoever set up the network hadn’t bothered to change the factory-supplied key, so the guts of Raft City’s computing system sprang instantly to life.
It was hard to focus on the resulting jumble of numbers and letters, though, when water pressed against the glass wall, the nearby ocean itching for revenge. Cold seared into Nicholas’s bare skin and the flames running up and down his arms flickered, all illumination other than the pod’s own emergency lighting abruptly winking out.
Rather than allowing weakness to overcome him, though, Nicholas merely closed his eyes and embraced the darkness. Then he filled his mental landscape with a far more pleasant sight.
For an instant, the shifter could almost feel Sabrina there beside him. Could sense soft skin rather than soot-streaked stone rubbing up against his exposed arms and side. He breathed in the memory of his mate’s ozone-rich scent for a fraction of a second...then he opened his eyes and got back to work.
Because Sabrina wouldn’t have wavered. So—voluminous quantities of water aside—neither would he.
The words streaming across his screen weren’t novice friendly, of course. No graphical user interface, no schematic of how communications systems threaded together or how pods were migrated from spot to spot. But Nicholas had spent a decade building similar code for the Aerie, so he found the subprocesses he was looking for with relative ease.
There, just as Walter Atwater had suggested, were the visual and auditory intake and outtake for the bug on Sabrina’s ship. Elsewhere, subtly more difficult to ferret out but requiring only an extra moment of effort for a hacker of Nicholas’s caliber, were the controls for the water-saturated honeymoon pod.
Danger: Low oxygen, the latter’s sensors read.
“No kidding,” Nicholas muttered, trying not to notice how his lungs heaved within his chest at even that minor expenditure of effort. He’d found momentary safety inside this fireplace hideaway, but the available air wouldn’t last forever.
Of course, if past events were any indication, the Intrepid wouldn’t last forever facing down Gunnar and company either. Nicholas needed to be out there helping the passengers and crew who were his to protect. He needed to ensure that each person’s weakness—each person’s secret—wouldn’t turn the tide and send the others hurdling toward their deaths.
Fingers flicking quickly across the screen, the shifter hunkered down and got to work.
***
It was lucky that most of her crew had originated in the Aerie, Sabrina decided. Otherwise, they might have wasted precious minutes arguing whether it was safe to step onto the undulating bac
k of a hovering dragon. As it was, the assembled people still barely made it aboard their life raft before the enemy sensed something was wrong and settled en masse atop the opposite rail.
The Intrepid’s banister hadn’t been designed to hold up the weight of three gargantuan dragons, though, and the metal bent and shrieked beneath the load. Turning, Sabrina ensured the enemy caught a good eyeful of the hastily reconstructed egg she clutched close to her heaving chest, hoping they failed to notice the tiny dragonet that was currently clinging with needle-sharp claws to her mother’s scaly back.
“Don’t come any closer or I’ll throw this egg overboard!” the captain warned. Then, taking a deep breath, she stepped lightly off Steph’s spine, returning to the metallic deck that was now hot enough to scorch through the soles of her boots.
Once back aboard her ailing ship, though, Sabrina hesitated, uncertain where to turn next. Nicholas was stuck beneath the ocean, the Intrepid was about to blow, and Steph—although floating easily and loaded with sufficient supplies to reach shore—lacked the graceful wings necessary to outpace their enemies.
Balanced on the edge between success and disaster, Sabrina was finally forced to admit that she’d run out of options to tilt them in the proper direction. If she’d been able to call the wind, of course, those issues would all have been moot. Well, not the Intrepid’s demise—the writing was on the wall for her poor, beleaguered ship. But Sabrina could have sped Steph safely along her path then sucked the honeymoon pod back to the surface in time to rescue her own ride home, uncovering the key to the continued operation of her increasingly troubled heart in the process.
Cerulean Magic: A Dragon Mage Novel Page 21