by Tanya Huff
With Charlotte Gale settled in the bottom of the cart, he climbed in beside Eineen. He couldn’t lift a body wrapped in rock, but he could help brace it.
“We were meant to have a life as close to normal as I could make it,” Eineen murmured as Jack pushed the cart into the tunnels.
“We were meant to have a life together,” Paul told her, taking her hand and placing a kiss in her palm. “As long as I have you, I don’t care about the rest.”
“Trolls and Goblins and Boggarts and Dragon Princes . . .”
“And Amelia Carlson and Carlson Oil and thousand-dollar suits.” Another kiss. “They don’t matter. We do.” He was almost surprised to find he meant it. Something had changed over the last few hours—or maybe it was him who’d changed on a deep and basic level. He was done with the job and what he was expected to do in order to keep it. Monday morning, he’d walk into the office and say . . . “This isn’t the tunnel we went down before!”
The only light came from the headlamps he and Eineen were still wearing. There were no magical lights on the tunnel walls.
“This is the tunnel the Boggarts went down,” Jack told him, his breathing level and unlabored as he pushed the cart at a full run. “Little cowards were heading straight for the gate.”
“The Goblins?”
Jack snorted out a cloud of smoke. “They won’t come near when I’m around. I’ll fry their asses.”
It sounded like teenage bragging. In a way, Paul supposed it was, but that didn’t make it any less true.
It seemed the Goblins knew that because there was no sign of them as they moved farther and farther into the mine. As near as Paul could determine without the schematics, the tunnel they were in followed the line of the bay to the southwest. He watched Charlotte Gale breathe because it was less disconcerting than watching the tunnel walls speed by.
“We’re close,” Eineen said as Jack dug in his heels and slowed the cart.
Braced against the rusting steel, Paul checked his watch. It was 2:37 AM.
“It’s that side tunnel,” Jack grunted. “The next one.”
As far as Paul was concerned, the next side tunnel looked no different than any of the others they’d passed. And they were going to pass this one, too. Bare feet and a teenage boy, no matter what else he was, couldn’t stop the forward momentum of steel and rock and two adults, no, three adults and . . .
The cart stopped with the front edge about six centimeters beyond the tunnel in question, the rear edge buckled under Jack’s grip, the steel hot to the touch.
Jack and Eineen reversed positions to get Charlotte Gale out of the cart. Nostrils streaming smoke, Jack lifted her over the edge, and with Eineen steadying her, tipped her carefully onto feet—or the rock over her feet. Eineen kept her upright until Jack jumped out and took possession.
“You can carry her like that?” Paul asked. “As a person?”
“I’m always a person, dude!” Jack glared over a stone shoulder, his eyes flashing gold. “But yeah, for a little ways. Long enough to carry her through . . .” He shuffled forward three steps and vanished. Not into the darkness.
Not there.
Paul shone his headlamp down the tunnel. It looked like a tunnel, no different than any other they’d passed. He stepped forward and a grip on his belt jerked him back, Eineen suddenly between him and the tunnel.
“You don’t want to do that,” she said, wrapping her arms around his waist and laying her head on his shoulder. “It’s dark and bloody on the other side.”
“It’s where you come from . . .” Her hair smelled like the wind coming down the eastern passage carrying the scent of the sea and the knowledge that the world was wide and wonderful. And a little like fish. “. . . so it can’t be all bad.”
He felt her smile. “We were the best, and we left centuries ago.”
“Jack . . .”
“Isn’t like the other Dragon Lords.”
“I gathered. He’s . . .”
Claws skittered against rock. The sound was between them and the way out.
“They won’t come near when I’m around . . .”
Jack flew low, following the contours of the land. It was harder work, but he hoped that by staying close to the ground his uncles would miss his return. The last thing he needed—the last thing Charlie needed—was for him to have to play their stupid power games. Actually, the last thing he really needed was for his mother to notice he was back in the UnderRealm.
It smelled wrong.
He’d gotten used to the smell of people and engines and industry.
Wings spread, he bent his head and sniffed at Charlie, cradled safely in the claws of his right foot. He’d gotten used to the smell of family.
She was still alive.
He’d get her home and Allie would keep her alive.
If he could find the other gate.
He couldn’t feel a blood link to his father anywhere. I’m so stupid! He should’ve known there wouldn’t be a blood link to the gate in Fort Calgary, or his mother would’ve gone through it and not followed his blood over the weirdly twisty path he’d had to take to get to the MidRealm.
He could take that path again; at least he thought he could. He’d done it once and then his mother had done it and Allie had sent his mother and his uncles back along it and that many dragons marked a route. If they hadn’t destroyed the path completely.
Didn’t matter. Charlie didn’t have time for him to go that way.
Charlie needed him to get her home.
Hit with a sudden wave of homesickness, his stroke wavered and he ended up a lot closer to the ground than he’d intended. He knocked something over with his tail, heard it crash, and struggled to gain altitude without looking back.
He wanted Allie to tell him everything would be all right.
He wanted Graham to explain how.
He wanted Joe to translate the explanation.
He wanted Auntie Gwen to roll her eyes and then fix things.
He wanted Charlie to . . . to do anything. Open her eyes. Sit up. Survive.
He was too old to cry.
He missed his room. He missed his stuff. He missed pie. He missed . . .
The landscape in front of him had shifted.
If he flew straight and true, he’d make it home. The gate in Fort Calgary had left a weak spot in the border within the territory the Gales claimed, and he could feel home through it.
Easy.
He flew a little higher. A little faster.
“Home again, home again, jiggedy jog.” The red Dragon Lord came out of the sun and matched Jack’s pace. Uncle Viktor was the only one of his uncles who could still keep up to him at his full speed. He couldn’t do it for long, but he made the most of every opportunity. “I can’t remember if it ends with them eating a hog or a dog and don’t care. We missed you around here, Nephew.”
“Piss off.”
“Well, they didn’t teach you manners, your squishy relatives.” His voice faded and Jack thought he’d outflown the older dragon but a sudden sharp pain in his left wing membrane told him where his uncle had gone. Given their difference in size, it was the one place he could do significant damage. He always went for the wing membrane. Jack knew that, but the need to get Charlie home had distracted him.
“Running away again? Running away like you’re just out of the egg and your scales are soft and you’re too scared to fight. What’s that you’re carrying? Is it precious?” Viktor sneered. “Can I make you drop it?”
Jack whipped his neck out to the side and snapped.
Uncle Viktor laughed. He knew how close he could fly to Jack and remain safe.
But Jack had grown while he was gone.
Blood hot in his mouth, Jack spat out the wing. Let it flutter to the ground. They were flying low enough Uncle Viktor might survive both the injury and the impact with the ground. He didn’t care either way.
And he was still too old to cry.
By the time he could sense the we
ak spot in the border between two trees up ahead, his wing sent ripples of pain up into his back and through his whole body with every downstroke. He’d never flown so fast for so long
When he landed, he had to drop forward and brace himself on his hands. Fortunately, the grass was too damp to burn. His foot had cramped holding Charlie for so long. Breathing heavily, shaking his head to clear the smoke, he forced it open, his claws dragging trenches through the dirt so Charlie could be set directly onto the ground. He had to change in order to fit through the gate, but he didn’t have the energy for clothes no matter what Allie said about clothes inside the city limits.
If anyone other than his Uncle Viktor had noticed he was home and had gotten ahead of him, this was when they’d attack. He wasn’t worried about someone finding Uncle Viktor and coming after him—at the speed he’d been moving, they’d still be eating. Slipping and sliding, he managed to get his arms around Charlie and tip her carefully up onto her feet.
She was still breathing. There was fresh blood on the dried blood covering her lips, so she had to still be breathing. Right?
If it hadn’t been so silent, if everyone and everything that lived near the gate hadn’t hidden at his approach, he’d have never heard the wings.
He ducked behind Charlie and nearly dropped her in the backwash from the black dragon’s dive.
“Knew you’d be heading here, Nephew.” Uncle Adam sounded amused. “But the gate is closed. What do you intend to do now?”
Open it. He intended to open it, but he wasn’t about to tell his Uncle Adam that. Of all his uncles, Adam seemed to want him dead the least, but wanting him dead the least didn’t mean wanting him alive. Dragging Charlie between the trees, Jack put his hand against the weak spot and pushed.
It gave. Not enough. He didn’t break through.
Jack had no idea of how to open a gate. He just knew he had to.
“You’re not your father, Nephew.” The ground shook when Uncle Adam landed. And that was just showing off because Jack was twice his size and the ground hadn’t shook when he’d landed.
He pushed against the weak spot again as Adam furled his wings.
“What have you got there? It smells like blood. Like . . .”
Jack didn’t turn to look but he knew Uncle Adam was frowning.
“Like Gale blood. Familiar . . . Well, if it isn’t the Wild One. What have you done, Nephew?”
“I haven’t done anything. I’m taking her home!”
“Are you?”
He could feel home. So close he should be able to touch it.
“No, I don’t think so.”
Uncle Adam had moved closer and if he got hold of Charlie, Jack didn’t doubt for a moment he’d use her. And she’d die from it.
“Still trying, Jack? I admire that I suppose, but there’s no gate there now. Alysha Gale slammed it out of existence, and you can’t make something from nothing.”
Yeah. He could. He slapped his hand again the space again and screamed, “Be a GATE!”
The only thing that got him and Charlie through was that Uncle Adam clearly didn’t believe he could do it and was still just far enough away.
He fell with Charlie through the gateway into Fort Calgary, softening her impact with the ground as much as he could. She made a sound that hurt his heart as he twisted and yelled, “Stop being a gate!” before his Uncle Adam decided to follow.
He could hear the water and the traffic and smell people and engines and he was so close, but he couldn’t pick Charlie up. He just couldn’t. He was so tired and the rock was so heavy . . .
Inside the rock, Charlie’s phone rang.
And rang.
And rang.
He found enough energy for claws and dug the rock away above the sound then ripped Charlie’s pocket getting the phone out.
“Allie?”
“Jack?”
“Help . . .”
Turned out he wasn’t too old to cry after all.
The fiddler in her head was playing “Homeward Bound.” Charlie’d had enough fiddle music to last her a while so, in an effort to get it to shut the hell up, she opened her eyes.
“Her eyes are black!”
Allie.
“Don’t worry, Catherine’s used to go black off and on for years before the change.”
Auntie Bea.
“That’s not reassuring!”
Allie again. She sounded upset. Charlie wanted to say something reassuring, but she just didn’t have it in her. The fiddler had stopped, though. Taking advantage of the silence while it lasted, she drifted off to sleep.
Next time she opened her eyes, Auntie Gwen seemed to be wiping her face with a warm cloth. Seemed to be. It was always best not to take the aunties for granted, especially when laid out flat feeling like overcooked pasta.
“So, you’re back with us, are you? Don’t answer that,” she added as Charlie scraped a dry tongue over cracked lips. “Let me get you some water first.”
The water, in a sippy cup shaped like an elephant, was room temperature and the best thing Charlie could ever remember drinking. “What happened?” she managed after half a dozen careful swallows.
“You took out a Troll, the Troll nearly reciprocated, and Jack brought you home through the UnderRealm having remade the Troll into a kind of a cast. He saved your life. We laid you out on the hill, called a ritual, and put your pieces back together. Allie insisted on you returning to the apartment, so Jack gave up his room although you’d hardly know it since he’s been in here most of the time. Congratulations on accepting the responsibilities of a Wild Power, and don’t ever do anything like that again.” Auntie Gwen’s dark eyes glistened. She brushed angrily at the single tear that rolled down her cheek and added, “Call your mother. She nearly broke the second circle apart trying to get to you and, apparently, your sisters are displacing their teenage angst by hunting vampires in the catacombs under Paris.”
“There’s vampires under Paris?”
Auntie Gwen sniffed. “Not for much longer if your mother is to be believed.”
“How long?” Charlie asked. Nothing hurt, but the sheet seemed to weigh a hundred kilos, holding her flat.
“Since Jack brought you home?” Auntie Gwen helped her sit up, jerking the pillows up with her as support. “Nine days.”
“Nine days! I’ve got to call Mark! Wait . . .” Her mistake; frowning hurt. “He has my number, why hasn’t he called me?”
“Jack crushed your phone.”
“He what? Why?”
“The poor boy was a bit upset. Did you miss the part about nearly dying, Charlotte?” She stepped back and folded her arms. “You’ll just have to write off your little festival group in exchange for being alive. The injuries you had don’t heal overnight. Wouldn’t have healed overnight even if we’d allowed Jane to bully us into sending you back to Ontario. This is where . . .”
“Charlie!”
That Allie stopped her charge before she threw herself into Charlie’s arms told Charlie more about how badly she’d been hurt than anything Auntie Gwen had said. Up to and including nine days and nearly dying. She opened her arms. “It’s okay, Allie-kitten.”
Well, relatively okay, Charlie thought as Allie clung to her and cried. But breathing was highly overrated anyway.
Allie had said Jack could go in first, but Jack liked Graham too much to put him through that. The poor guy’d been cried on pretty much twenty-four/ seven from the moment Charlie’d been brought from the hill. Allie’d held it together until then, but the moment Charlie’d been moved into his room, she’d stopped being the Gale who led the second circle, who anchored the family in Calgary, who’d kicked his mother’s tail—and the rest of her—back to the UnderRealm, and became kind of impressively weepy. Her and that seal-girl back east could have a weep off.
Allie’d wanted Charlie in the big bedroom with her and Graham, so Jack offered his before the aunties could move her out of the apartment altogether. There was more room and more fam
ily at his father’s old house, but Allie moving in would have shifted the power dynamics and who could get better with all that going on?
It was weird that Allie knew Charlie was going to be all right, but still couldn’t stop crying. Jack had totally stopped worrying the moment the ritual was over. He let the aunties fuss over him, scrubbing down his scales and fixing his wing and then, once Charlie was settled, he’d changed, flown north, snatched up a buffalo from a ranch herd, and carried it into the mountains to eat. Then he’d slept for three days.
When he got home and Charlie was still asleep, he still didn’t worry. An injured Dragon Lord found a safe place to hole up and sleep until he recovered, and Gales were almost as hard to kill as dragons.
No one could get to Charlie, but they could get to him and, for the first time, there was no question he was a Gale boy with all the indulgences that entailed.
Now that Charlie was awake, he was a little worried about how long Allie was staying in there with the door closed after Auntie Gwen had left. If they were having sex in his bed, that would be just too creepy. When the door finally opened, he breathed a sigh of relief and turned to Graham who seemed likely to pace his way through the floor. “You go. I can wait.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’ve got things to do.” Jack used his fork to gesture at the line of pies on the kitchen counter. Seemed like every member of the family in Calgary had shown up with two or three every day since Charlie’d come home. The charms were pretty basic—get better, don’t be sad, we’re in all in this together. The Gales who’d baked then may have called the charms something else, but that’s how Jack read them. Aunt Judith had been making meat pies, figuring that even Gales couldn’t live indefinitely on lemon meringue. Aunt Judith was currently Jack’s favorite aunt. And given all the pie he’d been eating, he felt great. Very reassured.
Even David had been in and out, although he hadn’t brought pie. He had the changes mostly under control now. Jack liked to think he’d helped with that.
When Graham went into the bedroom, he left the door open.