by C. I. Black
Both Capri and Ryan had mentioned something about their magic changing when they’d met, how their powers had become — and still were — difficult to control.
“Wonderful. So now I’m going to accidentally show everyone everything.” With his inability to forget anything, he had a lot of secrets, not to mention a lot of other people’s secrets.
A shiver swept cold down his spine. If he was in the wrong company, he could accidentally reveal Nero’s puzur to the wrong drake.
This was bad. So very bad, and it didn’t matter, not until he got Ivy back.
Something rustled out in the hall and a hint of wind whispered across Grey’s cheeks. Brilliant white light shimmered at the hall’s end, growing brighter until Anaea stormed around the corner. Her magical wind whipped around her, tugging at her shirt and rattling the single small sky painting on the wall.
Her gaze landed on him, freezing him in place, and she bared her teeth in a dragon’s show of aggression. “Stop being an idiot.”
“Holy Mother,” Diablo hissed.
Grey squared his shoulders and met Anaea’s glare. “You’re an empath now. You tell me if I can stop.”
Her wind snapped with a sharp slice against his cheek, making his headache pound. The heat of blood welled against his skin, then oozed down to his jaw.
“Tell me I can stop,” he growled.
“Hunter can’t lose you.” Her wind faltered and her aura flickered. “I can’t lose you.”
“And I can’t lose Ivy. You can feel how I feel. I know you can.” Mother, he didn’t want to hurt Hunter and Anaea or anyone. But the need to find Ivy, to know she was safe, protect her, avenge her, die with her if it came to that, clawed through his chest, made his insides squirm, and snapped through every cell in his body. He couldn’t stop if he tried, and they were running out of time. “Catching Servius and Jet at the Handmaiden’s secret residence is the best plan, but I have to go now.”
“It’s no plan.” Her aura flared and her wind snapped around him, a howling tornado that wrenched him to his knees.
“It’s the only plan,” he roared into her storm, willing her to sense his need and desperation. “And you know it.”
The wind slammed him back against the wall then vanished. “I won’t let you go alone.”
Grey snorted, unable to stop himself. What he wouldn’t give to have Anaea at his side. “Hunter will kill me if I put you in danger. And your powers are still unreliable. What happens if something sets off your empathy or you suddenly develop another kind of earth magic during the fight?”
“Hunter can meet you there,” she said.
The pressure in Grey’s chest twisted. “Is he answering your telepathic calls?” He knew the answer. It explained Anaea’s unpredictable magic.
“He’s not. He’s still afraid if he answers, he’ll put his search for the Handmaiden on hold for too long.”
“Because being inamorated is a fucking mental illness,” Diablo growled.
Anaea glared at him.
“Tell me it isn’t,” Diablo said. “Hunter refuses to even spend his nights with you because he’s afraid he won’t be able to leave in the morning. You can barely get Capri to do her job, and you—” He glared at Grey. “You’re going to commit suicide.”
“I’m not going to commit suicide, but I am going to take two dragon souls and send them into the universal ether.”
Diablo flashed his teeth and growled. “They deserve it.”
“But how many drakes think that? We were predators. Killing is in our nature, but every soul we kill now takes us one step closer to extinction. How long before there aren’t any of us left?”
“So you’re not saying they deserve it?” Diablo cocked an eyebrow.
“I didn’t say that. Besides, you said you’re coming with me.” Grey stood and opened the closet door, revealing a gun safe that took up the entire closet with an electronic keypad on its face. He typed in the code and opened the heavy steel door. Inside were swords, knives, daggers, a crossbow, handguns, and two sniper rifles. “And I have an arsenal. I’d hardly say that’s suicide.”
“Fine.” A hint of Anaea’s wind whipped through the room. She growled and it vanished, proving Grey’s point that she didn’t have control of her magic. “If I can’t go with you, take this.” She unhooked the chain that held the brass rebirth medallion around her neck and held it out to Grey.
God, how he wanted to take it. Having it meant he could stop Jet and Servius and save their souls, but it was also a huge risk. “If Servius gets his hands on this, he’ll have everything he needs. He won’t have to go to Court to pull the medallion from the arena.”
“I know you’ve been holding back in your fights. I’ve felt how much it frustrated you when you gated into Nero’s house with your back full of shrapnel.” Anaea strode into the room and pressed the amulet into Grey’s hands. “Take the bitch’s soul. Take this Servius’s soul, too, and get Ivy back.”
CHAPTER 37
Grey hugged close to the inside of the tunnel at the edge of the shadows and peered along the sight of Hunter’s M1903 Springfield rifle — a match to the one Grey had used in the humans’ First and Second World Wars. Everything beyond the tunnel in the Handmaiden’s frozen garden was still. Even the wind. Cold stung his skin, his breath misted around his face, leaving freezing damp trails along his cheeks, and bright sunlight sparkled in the ice sculptures.
A shiver swept over him, and he fought to keep still and not tense up. In only the T-shirt and jeans and with his slow healing, he felt the cold more than most drakes. And while the medallion was ever so slightly too warm for the brass to be heated by just his body, it wasn’t enough to stave off the chill. But none of Hunter’s old jackets had been snuck out of Court and even if they had, Grey was just that much broader across the shoulders that the thick fabric might have impeded his movements. Which meant he was just going to have to suck it up and concentrate past the cold, as well as past the still-present pounding in his skull.
“Do you see anything?” Diablo asked from behind Grey, his voice low, his hand on the hilt of the short sword he’d borrowed from Hunter’s arsenal.
With the gatelock preventing anyone from gating outside the residence’s radius, Diablo was at a disadvantage in a fight. His usual fighting style of keeping his opponent off balance by rapid free gating was out and while Grey knew the black drake was good in a fight, he didn’t know how much losing that ability would throw him off.
With luck, it wouldn’t come down to that. The goals were fast and aggressive. Get to Ivy… or avenge her. Stop Servius from joining the coin pieces.
Diablo had insisted that while having the medallion was great, if there wasn’t an easy opportunity to use it, they were sacrificing any and all souls necessary to stay alive.
Grey couldn’t have agreed more. He was tired of pussyfooting around his fights with Jet. She’d tried to kill him more than once and this whole mess had yet to take up a twenty-four hour period. Saving her soul or Servius’s wasn’t worth risking his or Diablo’s souls, and it certainly wasn’t worth risking Ivy’s.
Grey drew in a steadying breath then slowly exhaled and concentrated along the rifle’s sight into the ice garden while trying — and failing — to ignore the howl of his soul to find Ivy. Now. Now. She had to be alive. She couldn’t be dead. She just couldn’t be.
Soon. Soon. It was the best he was going to get. And the first step was to determine if Jet was outside guarding the Handmaiden’s door and then shooting her.
He drew in another breath and fought to pull just a hint of his memories of the frozen garden forward and not let them overwhelm him.
Rain rattled against a windowpane and the reek of rotting food swept around him.
Shit.
He shoved that memory aside, but the flicker of memory fog flooded over his vision again and the thwump of cannon fire roared in the distance. Grey stared down the sight of his M1903. Somewhere a man screamed.
Shit shit
shit.
He’d hoped sharing his memory with Ivy and sealing the bond between their souls would have fixed his problem, if not permanently then at least longer than a quarter of a day. He hadn’t noticed anything back in the hotel room or Hunter’s house. But adrenaline hadn’t been pumping through him, and the howling need to find Ivy was only growing stronger in his head.
Now. Now. Still his thoughts. Calm his pulse. Use what he remembered. But the shadowy threat of his memories was stronger than ever.
“Grey?” Diablo asked. “What’s going on?”
Grey gritted his teeth. He had to do this to save Ivy. The alternative, that she was dead, was not an option. Mother, she had to be alive. He didn’t know what he’d do if she was dead. He could barely breathe just thinking about it. “Nothing,” he said between gritted teeth.
“Are you going to be able to hold your shit together long enough for a fight?”
“My shit is fine.” Besides, the only way to fix his problem was to get close enough to Ivy and her memory-soothing aura.
“Then find Jet and shoot her.” Diablo shifted. “I really need to hit something and I’d rather it not be you.”
“But you would if you had to?” Grey wasn’t sure he wanted to hear the answer.
“Now that I know how slow you heal, I’d try to find an alternative.”
“You’d try? Gee, how kind of you.”
“For the love of— Find Jet. She’s out there and bored out of her mind. I just can’t pinpoint her.”
Grey glanced at Diablo. Had he just confessed to having more earth magic than only rapid free gating? Admitting that wasn’t like the black drake at all.
Diablo’s eyes narrowed, and he huffed. “It’s an Asar Nergal thing. Just—” He jerked his thumb toward the tunnel’s mouth. “Hold your shit together and let’s get this party started.”
Party wasn’t the word Grey would have picked, but the sentiment was right. If the spell to join the coin pieces wasn’t complete by now, it would be soon. He just needed, as Diablo put it, to hold his shit together long enough to get to Ivy. He could do that. For her, he could do anything.
He focused along the rifle’s sight again and concentrated on the wall beside the door. He hadn’t been to the Handmaiden’s secret residence often. But that didn’t matter. The only thing that did was keeping control of his magic.
The reek of garbage wafted around him.
Focus on the wall.
Someone screamed and sunlight flickered on water.
The. Wall.
The memory of the wall flashed into sight with only a hint of shadow in the crevasses, indicating the sun was in a different location than what he had just been staring at. He drew up the wall in the present, underlying it beneath the memory.
No sign of Jet or her magic.
Grey shifted his attention over, still on the double walls but closer to the ice-bush Ivy had hidden behind.
The memory of her jumping out with her hands and fingers curved like claws rushed across his vision.
“Stay focus,” Diablo hissed. He sounded far away, his voice tight with strain, but over what Grey didn’t know.
For a second Grey fought to cling to the memory of Ivy. Panic tightened his chest, but the fog of his memory vanished.
Now. Now.
Find Jet and the problem would be solved.
He shoved the memory of Ivy aside and concentrated on the memory of the wall. He needed to just remember the wall. A quick comparison. A—
Light shimmered beside the ice-bush.
Grey squinted, a part of him worried it was a remembered flash of water on sunlight, not the tell-tale shimmer of Jet’s camouflage magic.
The shimmer shuddered. Cannon fire thudded behind him. Sunlight did flash on water and a woman sobbed. A crowd roared then a voice hissed, “How fast can you heal?”
Not fast enough. It was never fast enough.
Fuck. No. Hold it together. For Ivy.
His thoughts jumped back to her, her soothing green aura, the feel of her body pressed against his, and how calm and crisp everything became when she was near.
A shimmering halo materialized around a figure crouching near the stone wall and half hidden by the ice shrub. The halo’s lines were so sharp he could make out the figure’s body and his memory filled in the rest, revealing Jet. She faced the tunnel’s mouth, but he couldn’t tell if she’d seen him or not.
“Got you,” he hissed, and lined up a shot at her chest — he wasn’t going to risk missing by being overly ambitious and going for a headshot. One quick inhalation, and on the exhale, he squeezed the trigger.
The bang cracked through the quiet garden, and the shimmering aura wrenched back. Jet’s camouflage magic vanished. She screamed and clutched her chest, just above her heart.
As planned, Grey shoved the rifle into Diablo’s hand and stormed out of the tunnel’s mouth. Without rapid free gating, a blitz attack wasn’t Diablo’s strength, but he also couldn’t have made the first shot on Jet.
Grey roared, keeping the memory of Ivy’s soothing aura tight in his mind, and drew his broadsword. The need to find her, offer his teeth and claws for her defense, and bring her meat and shinies surged through him as he raced toward Jet.
She staggered to her feet, and another bang shattered the garden’s quiet. Jet’s shoulder jerked back and she dropped to one knee. Another bang. She dropped to her other knee and sagged forward.
Grey swept his blade toward her head. She leapt to the side, barely dodging the attack but managing to draw a sidearm from a hip holster with the movement. His sword sliced the air beside her head. She rolled out of the way.
Another crack roared through the garden and a bullet slammed into the rock beside Jet’s head.
“Really? A sniper? That’s hardly fair.” She glanced toward the tunnel. “Guns aren’t a sanctioned weapon.”
He jerked his chin toward her gun. “You should talk. Oh, and yeah, you tried to blow me up with a grenade.”
“How did you survive that?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know.” Grey swung again, and she dove under the strike, aiming her sidearm at his chest. He twisted and lunged in as she fired. The bullet skimmed his biceps with a whisper of pain but his adrenaline consumed any agony. He grabbed the top of the gun and rammed his pommel against her hand. With a yelp, she released the weapon, hopped back, and drew her saber.
Her eyes narrowed and a deadly chill settled across her expression. This was the dragon others feared, the cold-blooded bounty hunter who thrived on hunting down humans.
“You should have just minded your own business,” she hissed, her breath misting around her face as if she were a fire drake and not a water drake trapped in a human vessel.
“And you should have left things alone.” He tossed the sidearm behind him into the snow, unable to secure it on his person without risking that Jet would take it back. “The Handmaiden hid those coin pieces for a reason.”
“If I hadn’t taken the job, someone else would have.” She shifted, widening her stance.
“But the coins are found, the job is done, and you’re still here.” He wanted to scream at her. Just hand over Ivy. But that would reveal what she meant to him, and that could put her in more danger.
“The job isn’t done until Servius is emperor.” She lunged forward and slashed at his sword arm.
He blocked the attack and bashed her lighter weapon to the side, but she hopped clear of his reach before he could swing again.
Another crack from the rifle. Jet screamed and a line of blood welled along her cheek.
“Too bad he missed,” Grey growled.
“Are your ears still ringing from the headshot?” Jet flashed her teeth at Grey. “I shouldn’t have assumed that hatchling Bolo could finish the job.”
Grey lunged in. Jet sidestepped the attack, but Grey swept his sword up, slicing at her arm. She wrenched her saber up to block, and he bashed it aside. He swung again, pressing his advantage. No way was he g
oing to let up. She wasn’t as strong as him and didn’t have the reach. She yanked her sword up with another block that barely kept his weapon from striking her before she sidestepped out of the way.
Another swing, this time for her neck. Another block. His sword ground against her blade before she jerked down, letting his weapon swipe the air above her head.
With a growl, she lunged in. He twisted and swept his blade down as the tip of her saber nicked his ribs. A kiss of fiery pain licked his skin, but he heaved forward and rammed into her, shoving her back. Her foot hit an icy patch and she fell backwards as another crack from the rifle roared around them. The bullet hit the Handmaiden’s gray door where her head would have been.
Behind him, Grey could hear Diablo’s fast footsteps as he raced toward them. The rifle only had five shots before needing to be reloaded, and while the black drake could reload or draw one of the sidearms they’d taken from Hunter’s arsenal if he wanted to stay in the fight, he needed to close his distance.
Jet’s gaze jumped behind him and her expression darkened. “I see you brought the devil with you.” Her sneer deepened. “Didn’t think you’d make that kind of a deal.”
“Why don’t you set your saber down and surrender.” Grey slashed down. She rolled to the side and swiped at his ankles, forcing him to hop back, then with a roar, she lunged at him.
He leapt back and blocked her jab, but she shifted and sliced his forearm with a knife in her offhand. His fingers went numb — she’d severed the tendons — and the sword fell from his hand.
Fog swarmed across his vision and someone hissed, “How fast can you heal?”
Shit. He mentally clawed for the memory of Ivy’s aura.
The garden snapped into sharp focus as Jet swept in with another slice from her saber. He heaved to the side and shoved her off balance before she could jab him in the ribs with the knife. She stumbled and her back hit against the door to the Handmaiden’s residence. With a hiss, Jet threw her knife into the snow by the door, said the power words to unlock it, and wrenched it open.
Grey lunged at her. She sidestepped and rammed the door into his shoulder. His foot hit the icy patch she’d slipped on before, and she snapped her foot out with a sidekick that toppled him backwards. His butt hit the ice and he slid back into a solid ice shrub.