“Sure,” said Nathaniel.
We went out behind the house and sat on some plastic lawn furniture that Lachlan had dug out of the barn for the boys to try to climb on. I set the baby monitor that I’d been carrying with me down on the plastic table. The sky was growing purple in the west.
“He was so smart, you know,” said Nathaniel. “Really smart. Smarter than me.”
“Who was?” I said.
“Lachlan, of course,” said Nathaniel. “I never did quite know how to relate to a boy like that. I got frustrated with him, but it wasn’t ever his fault, it was mine. In reality, I was frustrated with myself.”
“Because you couldn’t relate to him?” I wasn’t quite sure what he was saying.
“Exactly that,” he said. “I always thought that if I had a son, we’d be throwing the football around and going hunting together and doing all the things that boys do with their fathers. The things that I did with my father. And then Lachlan came along and… well, he didn’t want to do any of those things. And dang it, I was so young when he was born. I didn’t know what I was doing, not with him, not with his mother. I know I made a lot of mistakes.”
I gave him a smile. “I appreciate what you’re saying, Nathaniel, but I don’t think I’m the person you need to be saying it to.”
“I know that.” He sighed. “Do you think he’ll talk to me?”
I honestly wasn’t sure.
“Please,” he said, “if there’s any way you can help me sit down with my boy, I’d appreciate it.”
I hesitated. I wasn’t sure what I should do in this situation, but I did think that Lachlan needed to give his father another chance. However, I couldn’t force him to do anything. Lachlan was his own person. “Listen, I’ll do what I can, but I can’t make any promises,” I said.
And then the baby monitor lit up and a wail emanated from it.
“Oh, sounds like someone’s unhappy,” said Nathaniel.
I stood up. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“Take your time,” he said.
I headed back into the house, and I ran into Vivica, whose monitor must have also gone off. The boys were in the same room now, after all.
“Hey,” she said, “you want me to take care of it?”
“Let’s see which one’s crying,” I said.
“Well, they probably woke each other up now,” she said, sighing.
“Sorry,” I said. “Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to have them in the same room after all.”
But when we pushed open the door, Jackson was still sound asleep, and Wyatt was standing up in his pack and play wailing. I scooped him up and took him out of the room. He quieted.
“I can take him,” said Vivica. “You’ve got someone here.”
“No,” I said, “I think maybe it’s a good thing Wyatt’s awake. Maybe there’s someone out there who wants to meet him.” Holding my little toddler in my arms, I went back out to the back porch, where I found Nathaniel watching the dragons in the sky. There were so many of them now. When he heard me come out, he turned. Then he saw Wyatt, and his face lit up.
I smiled at him.
He shook his head, his eyes shining. “Is this…?”
“Yes,” I said. “This is Wyatt.”
“Hey there, little fella,” said Nathaniel. “I’m your grandpa.”
Wyatt sniffled. Then he reached out chubby arms for Nathaniel.
Stunned, Nathaniel put out his own arms. “Is it okay?”
I handed the little guy over. “He knows what he wants.”
Nathaniel held onto Wyatt, looking into his face and smiling.
Wyatt smiled back. He let out one of his wonderful giggles.
“Oh, my,” said Nathaniel. “He does look a lot like Lachlan at this age.”
“Does he?” I said, grinning. “I’ve never seen any of Lachlan’s baby pictures. You don’t have any of them still, do you?”
“I think there may be some in this house,” said Nathaniel.
“Ooh, where?” I said.
“Well,” said Nathaniel, turning towards the door, “if you want, I could show you.”
Suddenly, dragons rushed down from the sky in a V formation—the red dragon that was Lachlan leading the pack. They all alighted on the lawn directly in front of us. The wind they generated as they swooped down ruffled our hair.
Lachlan shifted back into human form in one fluid movement, his dragon self melting into flesh. He stalked across the lawn, completely naked.
I hurried over to intercept him. “Lachlan, please,” I said, putting my hand on his bare chest. “He wants to apologize.”
Lachlan looked over my shoulder at his father. “That true?” he said. “After you’ve seen what I am, do you still want to apologize?”
“Yes,” said Nathaniel, though his voice was shaky. “I’ve done a lot of things I’m not proud of, son, but I love you. I always have. No matter what you shift into.”
Lachlan sighed. “Let me get dressed.” He went into the house.
When he came back out, Nathaniel handed Wyatt back over to me—the little boy was looking pretty sleepy again, anyway—and Lachlan and his father walked off into the summer night to talk.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“Well,” Lachlan said as he climbed onto the bed with me, “I’m not saying things are peaches and cream between the two of us. I don’t know if I’ll ever forgive him for every nasty thing he’s said to me over the years. And I’m not sure he’s really changed. But I agreed that he could be part of Wyatt’s life.”
“And yours too?” I said.
“Yeah.” He nodded. Then he squinted at the TV, which was a news program chugging along with no sound. I’d muted it when Lachlan had come in. “What are you watching?”
“I don’t know if we should change the subject so fast,” I said. “What did your father say to you?”
“He groveled a lot,” said Lachlan. “Seriously, what’s that headline there? Something about problems on the coast of Texas?”
“How’s he going to be part of our lives? Is he going to come visit us in Sea City? Are we going to come see him here?”
“I guess,” said Lachlan. “Maybe both. Hell, I’ll bring you home for a Texas Christmas one year. Sometimes we even get snow.”
“That actually sounds nice,” I said. “Don’t get me wrong, I love our friends, and we’re all closer than family, but there’s something really nice about the idea of Wyatt having a grandfather. I’m glad you talked to your dad.”
Lachlan was still staring at the TV screen. “Penny, put the sound back on.”
I sighed. And then I did.
We watched without speaking for several minutes. The news reporter was reporting on a freak hurricane-like wave in Corpus Christi, Texas. It had caused several drownings, and no one could understand where it had come from.
But it sounded all too familiar to Lachlan and me. It was the Green King and his children. They knew where we were, and they were showing us what they could do.
“Look, that’s only a couple hours’ drive down the highway,” said Lachlan.
“You think we should get in a car, drive down there and… do what?”
“I’m not saying we go off half-cocked,” he said, “but I do think we have to respond.”
I reached over to the night table and picked up a little box that contained the ring that Dasher had given me. “Well, maybe we should start by testing this.”
“No, too dangerous,” said Lachlan. “Imagine if we go off the rails. Then the world’s got us as a problem and the Green King.”
“I agree,” I said, “but I’m beginning to wonder if we’ll stand a chance without it.”
“I’m a dragon now,” said Lachlan. “I breathe fire—hot, hot fire, hotter than any other dragon we know of. I control an army of dragons. And I feel more dragons, Penny. Out on the periphery, I can feel them, and I can draw them into me. I could have hundreds of them.”
“Are there even hundreds of r
ogues on earth?” I said.
He considered. “I could have them all. However many there are.”
“Look, I’m not arguing with you,” I said. “We do need to do something. But I’m not sure what. We still don’t know.”
“Penny, how are we going to know?” he said. “There’s no way to gather more information about this. There aren’t websites that are going to give us video tutorials into how to stop this guy. We’ve just got to try.”
“Well,” I said, “I think I’d feel better if we had a plan. And maybe some backup.”
“Call in the cavalry, then,” said Lachlan.
* * *
So, the next day, I called Felicity and Connor, and I asked them to both fly out. I considered asking Ophelia as well, but I’d never asked her to help with the really dangerous things. I knew that this was an all-hands-on-deck sort of problem, but I also didn’t feel comfortable asking her to put her life on the line. So, I didn’t call her.
I did call Clarke Gannon, though. I figured she was someone I could ask to help out, since she lived such a dangerous life. Besides, we’d all hung out with her and her boyfriends or whatever they were. I called her pretty early in the morning, because I called her right after Connor, and I’d been trying to catch Connor before he turned to stone for the day. As the phone rang, I cringed. I was going to wake her up.
But she answered, and she sounded wide awake. When I asked her to come, she was in. She was bringing Naelen Spencer, too, who was another dragon. The gargoyle, Logan Gray, wasn’t coming though. I wasn’t sure what was up with that, but I figured it was none of my business.
I told everyone to go straight to Corpus Christi, and that we would meet them there.
Felicity and Connor couldn’t fly out until that night, so we’d see them the next day. Clarke and Naelen had a private plane, so they’d probably be there earlier. I still felt a little like we were doing something stupid, because we were flying so blind, but I also felt as though we’d waited long enough to deal with this problem.
In some ways, waiting had been a good thing. It had allowed Lachlan’s powers to grow. If we had gone after the Green King the day after the attack on the Purple Dolphin, then he would have had no idea that he could breathe fire or shift.
In other ways, it had been a bad thing, because the Green King was now terrorizing innocent people on the Texas coastline. That was on us. And between Lachlan and me together, there were too many lives that were on our heads. We had to save the world, if only to atone.
But even with all the promise in the air of battle and danger, the day went on in a rather normal way. The boys wanted pancakes for breakfast, and I ran out of eggs and decided to just make them without eggs. I always made pancakes from scratch anyway. When I had learned that I could essentially make pancakes with flour, salt, eggs, and baking powder, I had wondered how much time the mix really saved anyone. I mean, I already had to get a measuring cup out to measure out the mix. How much harder was it to measure out a couple other things?
Anyway, I could have sent Lachlan out for eggs or even Vivica. But I didn’t, because I remembered watching this documentary where some baker guy was talking about wheat gluten and how it was really stretchy. It stretched and stretched and didn’t break. That was why bread had all the little holes in it. They were pockets of air where the gluten had stretched and then been cooked in place. This made me think that quite possibly the pancakes would stay together without any eggs at all. Generally eggs were used as binding in baking recipes anyway.
So, I tried it. It worked.
But.
We were all hungry two hours later because there was no protein in the pancakes—or very little, anyway. I understand that there is some protein in flour. I always used the white whole wheat kind which the boys liked but also was healthier. Anyway, not enough protein.
So, then I ended up making this sort of second breakfast of toast and peanut butter, and all of us gobbled it down, because we’d already burned off all the pancake energy by then.
After that, the rest of the morning stretched out in front of me, and it seemed impossibly long. Despite what Lachlan had said, I wanted nothing more than to settle in with the Internet, and go searching for information about how to stop the Green King. Maybe there wouldn’t be any information about stopping him in particular, but there might be information about something like him. There were websites that had lists and lists of spells that witches used. Lachlan and I had done that protection spell, hadn’t we?
Of course, who knew if that protection spell was really working or anything? There was basically no way to be sure. And anyway, right after that, that monster had come up out of the lake and scared the heck out of us.
Anyway, regardless, a spell might be useful.
At least it would feel like I was doing something.
But I felt guilty about getting on the Internet, because I was home with Wyatt for the first time in days, since Lachlan and I had been working on the case for so long, and I knew that I should be spending time with my son.
To distract myself, I decided to take the boys outside to play. And that was how we all ended up outside in the yard. At first, the boys played in the dirt. As far as Wyatt was concerned, that was just like sand, and digging in it was basically the best thing ever.
I sat down in the plastic lawn chairs we had sitting in the back yard. A little while later, Lachlan came out and sat down too. Vivica sat down with the boys, who were piling dirt all over her jeans. She thought that was funny. Wasn’t the least bit upset about it.
After about twenty minutes of digging, Wyatt spotted the lake. He pointed at it and made some incomprehensible babbles before saying something that sounded remarkably like “wuh.”
“Did you hear that?” said Lachlan to me. “He said water!”
Wyatt took off across the lawn, heading for the lake. “Wuh!” he declared. “Wuh!”
“Penny, he’s talking,” said Lachlan, getting out of his chair and running after Wyatt.
I got up too, feeling excited.
Jackson struggled to get to his feet. He was definitely more unsteady than Wyatt. Vivica got up and offered her finger to her son. The little boy reached up and took it, and the two of them came along too.
So, it looked like this. Wyatt in the lead, running for all it was worth toward the lake. Lachlan behind him, saying, “That’s right, water.” Me behind Lachlan, straining to see if I could hear Wyatt say it again. And Vivica and Jackson lagging behind us.
The water in the lake was serene. The sun shone down on it, reflecting back the sky and the tops of the trees. It was like a mirror, only broken by occasional ripples from landing insects or jumping fish or frogs.
As we moved across the grass, I was getting hot. It was another scorcher of a day, and we weren’t in the shade anymore. Maybe we should go inside, I thought to myself. Once Wyatt went down for his nap, I could hunt things down on the Internet to my heart’s content. Sweat began to break out under my shirt.
Wyatt was closing in on the lake.
“Lachlan,” I called, “don’t let him get in the water.” I only said it because I didn’t want his clothes wet, to be honest. I wasn’t thinking about his safety or anything like that.
And that was when the water suddenly shot skyward, like a geyser.
Foam and spray zoomed into the air, and plumes of liquid like tentacles whirled out in all directions.
One of them hit Wyatt. The tentacle of water burst over my little son’s head, drenching him. He sat down on his butt, coughed, and then began to cry.
“Lachlan!” I yelled.
Lachlan scooped Wyatt up and pivoted. Holding the little boy, he ran in the direction of the house.
Vivica picked up Jackson too, and they ran.
I hurtled for the thing that had come up out of the water.
It was white. It had a head of sorts, something in the center that controlled all its whirling, squirming arms of water. There was no face—no eyes or ears o
r nose—but there was a mouth. A mouth that opened and shut over rows of razor sharp teeth. The inside of the mouth was gray, like something rotting. And there was a putrid smell emanating from the thing.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
I opened my mouth and breathed out a wall of fire.
The flames hit the monster and dissipated, sizzling as they went out.
Lachlan was next to me.
“Where’s Wyatt?” I said.
“With Vivica.”
He opened his mouth and spewed out flame. The fire that came from him was bright red, unnaturally red. It glowed and crackled in the air.
I could feel the heat emanating from it. It singed my skin.
Lachlan’s fire went straight at the monster’s head. There was an eruption of bright white steam, and a screaming noise.
The monster retreated, pulling its tentacles back into the lake.
Lachlan and I panted, gazing at the lake. Now it was still again.
“What was that?” I said.
“No clue,” said Lachlan.
This was the second time in less than a month that Wyatt’s life had been threatened. I stepped closer to the lake. I wanted to peer into its depths, but all I could see was a reflection of the sky. “Is it gone?”
Lachlan came up right next to me, looking down into the water as well. “I think so. I got it pretty good.” He poked at the still water with his toe.
And the thing came splashing up out of the water now, but it was bigger and its mouth was wider and it had more teeth. Its tentacles splashed over us—so icy cold that they hurt our skin.
I shrieked.
Lachlan blew out fire again.
But this time, the monster ducked and dodged, and Lachlan’s flame went over its head. The fire caught one of the tentacles, which went up in a puff of steam before reforming before our eyes. It seemed as though the monster was pulling the water droplets that had evaporated back out of the air and reforming them into its tentacle.
“Damn it,” whispered Lachlan.
And then, I knew what I had to do. “Keep it busy,” I called to Lachlan as I took off sprinting for the house.
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