Flight of Dragons

by Elianne Adams, Sadie Haller, Zoe York, Shelley Munro, Zara Keane, LC Alleyne, Skye Jones, Evanne Lorraine, Ann Gimpel

  Ceridwen, who’d been chanting softly, cut the flow of her magic. The cauldron turned into a bubbling mass once again. “You may speak. No need to keep touching me.”

  Maggie pulled her hand away and gazed at her palm. “Not exactly first degree burns,” she muttered, “but close.” She narrowed her eyes in speculation. “Your body temperature must push a hundred fifteen degrees or better.”

  “I’m not human. What did ye expect? Nay, lass.” She held up a hand. “Doona answer. What I want to know is what ye saw in the pool.”

  “The airplane is trapped behind some sort of shielding. I recognized Rhukon, because I’ve seen him. I assume the huge crow was the Morrigan, and the other man was the red wyvern.”

  “Excellent powers of observation.” The goddess’ sharp gaze settled on Lachlan. “Do ye have aught to add?”

  “Nay. The binding is extraordinarily complex. I was trying to trace it when ye cut the sending.”

  “May I ask a question?”

  The goddess traded him for Maggie in her gun sights. “If ’tis relevant.”

  “Is the plane still in the air somewhere? And if it is, will it crash once it runs out of fuel?”

  Lachlan shrugged helplessly and turned to Ceridwen. “I’m out of my depth here.”

  “I doona know for certain,” Ceridwen replied. “What I think is this. The airship is so large and heavy and alien, Rhukon and the others were unable to move it out of this world. ’Twas likely their original plan, because it would’ve lured us away from Earth to a less favorable environment.”

  Understanding dawned, and Lachlan murmured, “Since they couldna do that, they erected a barrier and are waiting us out. They will engage us in battle if we come to them, but the odds on our side are not good. First, we would need to defeat all three, and then there would still be the problem of neutralizing their casting.”

  “In the meantime, Gran’s plane will crash if we do nothing.” Maggie blew out a defeated-sounding breath. “It might crash anyway. All those things you outlined will take time—too much time.”

  “Aye, lass, ’tis about the size of things,” Ceridwen concurred. “We need assistance.”

  “Could Gwydion and Arawn help?” Lachlan asked, still working on integrating what he knew about the modern world and magic to address their current problem.

  “I already summoned them.”

  The air on the far side of the kettle took on a numinous glow. The Celts emerged as the glimmering faded. Arawn’s dark hair hung loose. He wore old-fashioned battle leathers that clung to his broad-shouldered form like a second skin. Gwydion’s blond hair was braided in many small rows. Mage robes, deep blue, belted with cream, flapped around him.

  “Thank you for extending aid to myself and my mate.” Lachlan inclined his head formally. No matter Gwydion and Arawn felt like old friends, they were still gods and worthy of deep and abiding respect.

  “Och aye, and when ye described the lass, ye dinna do her justice.” Gwydion winked broadly and loped to Maggie’s side where he balanced his staff against his body. Laying his hands on her shoulders, he stared at her. “What a beauty ye are.”

  Lachlan snorted. Apparently the Celt wasn’t going to mention spying on them. “Och, so my description was lacking, eh?”

  Gwydion waved him to silence and kissed Maggie on both cheeks. “Blessings on your nuptials, witch. May ye live long and produce many bairns.”

  “I second those wishes.” Arawn tossed his unbound hair back from his face and leapt nimbly to Maggie, pushing Gwydion aside. He took one of her hands and kissed it.

  “Thank you. Both of you.” Maggie’s voice sounded strained. Lachlan imagined it was shock at coming face-to-face with mythical figures she’d probably read about but never guessed were real.

  “Enough of this.” Ceridwen’s voice rang out. “Lachlan, we need Kheladin. He is better able to maneuver in the air than any of us. Plus, as a dragon, he’s more likely to recognize the casting we must defeat.”

  Lachlan felt his bondmate stir. The dragon was more than ready to come out. He’d been close to the surface since their narrow escape from his cave. “Before I loose him, what’s our plan?”

  A savage smile split Gwydion’s face and was mirrored on Arawn’s and Ceridwen’s. In that moment, they looked like the three ancients they were. It didn’t take much of an imagination to see blood dripping from their mouths and fingers. Rhukon’s blood.

  “Simple,” Ceridwen said. “We draw magic, travel to the psychic barrier, defeat it, and free the airplane.”

  “All right. Who will do what? And why do ye need Kheladin?” The dragon gave a great, rolling heave inside him. Smoke poured from Lachlan’s mouth. The dragon didn’t give a good goddamn why he was needed, he wanted out. Now.

  “Beast getting away from you, lad?” Arawn inquired archly. Lachlan didn’t answer. It took all his concentration to remain in human form.

  “The weave of the barrier is dragon magic,” Gwydion inserted smoothly. “Kheladin will recognize it and understand how it can be offset.”

  “How do you know it’s not the Morrigan’s work?” Maggie asked.

  “It dinna have the stench of Celtic magic,” Ceridwen replied. “If it had, I could likely have nullified it from here.”

  “Kheladin will be—” Lachlan stumbled over the word helpless, knowing the dragon would react badly. “Uh, unguarded while he works out the barrier’s mysteries.”

  “We will be there,” Arawn said.

  “Aye.” Ceridwen chuckled. “What’s that modern saying? We shall have your back.”

  “What about me?” Maggie’s voice shook a little.

  “Good question.” Gwydion turned his intense blue gaze to stare at her. “Ye could remain here next to the loch.”

  “Probably the best plan,” Lachlan concurred. “By far the safest.” He moved to her side and bent to kiss her, but she sidestepped him.

  “What if I don’t want to stay here?” she demanded. “After all, it’s my grandmother. Maybe she’d be able to help us, if she knew we were there, and we needed some extra magic or something.”

  “Not wise, lass.” Lachlan infused the subtlest spell at his disposal into his words, hoping like hell she wouldn’t notice.

  “Stop it.” She tossed her head like a restless mare and walked a few feet away, keeping a wary eye on Lachlan. “Why couldn’t all of you,” she spread her arms, “just sort of encase me in a spell and bring me with you?”

  “Because then we’d have to watch over you, and it would take our attention away from…other things.” Gwydion sucked in a breath, his nostrils flaring. “We shall be under attack. Ye’d be helpless.”

  Maggie looked from one to the other of them. “There’s something you’re not telling me.”

  “Witch blood runs strong in that one,” Arawn commented.

  “Aye, pity she never developed her magic,” Gwydion concurred.

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake, stop it. I agree with you. I was a fool to walk away from what the coven offered, but I didn’t have a crystal ball when I made that decision.”

  Lachlan hurried to her side and pulled her against him. “Doona speak thus to them—” he began.

  “Why not? It isn’t as if I cursed them or anything.”

  “Because they truly are gods. They only look human.”

  “So?” She pulled away from him and tossed her hands in the air. “They’ve presumably been here all those years you were asleep, which means they’re used to humans being outspoken, and they won’t take offense.”

  Gwydion’s mouth twitched. “Wonder what all that fire looks like when she’s on her back with her legs spread?”

  “Aye, or on top with her breasts bouncing and her hair cascading about her,” Arawn added and winked.

  “Men!” Ceridwen rolled her eyes. “Put your cocks back under your clothes. What they’re not telling you, lass,” she turned to Maggie, “is the only way ye could come is if ye ride Kheladin. The dragon’s magic would prot
ect you.”

  “Excuse me?” Maggie cleared her throat and dissolved into a coughing fit. Gasping and spitting, she straightened. “People only ride dragons in children’s stories.”

  “The topic’s been broached afore,” Lachlan reminded her.

  “Yeah, but it was conceptual then. I need some time to get used to the idea.”

  Lachlan considered telling her time had just run out, but it sounded harsh, so he held his peace while he fought a pitched battle with Kheladin. He glanced at his hands, saw they’d turned to talons, and knew he’d lost. “Wait,” he begged. “Let me get my clothes off.”

  “What the hell?” Maggie switched her gaze from the goddess to Lachlan as he hurriedly stripped off his shirt and shinnied his breeks down his legs.

  He knelt to unlace his boots and finished sliding his breeks off. “’Tis the dragon,” he spoke around a mouth that was rapidly changing shape. “He likes the idea of you on his back and—”

  Kheladin took form, obliterating Lachlan’s next words. Wings sprouted, a tail grew. Haunches formed. Scales coated everything. In moments, an immense copper dragon stretched his wings and fanned the air. Spinning green eyes zeroed in on Maggie. “Come astride me, lass. I would take you for a ride.”

  “Lachlan?” Maggie’s mind speech sounded shaky and hesitant. “Are you inside somewhere?”

  “Aye, my love. I’m part of Kheladin, and he is part of me. Doona fear, we shan’t let you fall.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Me and my big mouth.

  Maggie stared at the dragon. She heard herself hyperventilating. Knowing Lachlan was bound to a dragon and actually seeing that dragon were two very different things. To buy herself time to think, she walked around Kheladin, reaching to touch his coppery scales with tentative fingers. The dragon stood at least eight feet from the ground to the top of his head. Leathery wings folded over his back. A sinuous tail wound around his back feet, much like a cat’s might’ve done. Long, amber talons graced all four feet. They were curved and looked sharp as knives.

  Smoke curled lazily from the dragon’s mouth. His jaws split in what might’ve been a smile, displaying double rows of razor sharp teeth. “What think ye, witch?”

  “You’re beautiful. I understand why Lachlan wanted to bond with you.”

  Kheladin nodded his great head, as if he agreed with her assessment. Maggie tried to dredge everything she knew about dragons from her subconscious and came up dry. “So, my, uh, choices are to either stay here while you all go, or ride Kheladin and come with you?”

  “Aye, lass,” Arawn answered. “Ye must decide quickly. If we tarry, the plane will idle through its fuel and plummet to the bottom of the Atlantic.”

  Of course I’ll stay here.

  It would be foolhardy to do anything else.

  Those were the same instincts, Maggie noted, that had kept her away from her magical heritage. “To hell with it,” she snapped. “I’m going. Gran’s in trouble. Lachlan is my husband, er, mate. I should be by his side if there’s danger.”

  Besides, I couldn’t bear the waiting. It would tear my heart out.

  Jaw set in a tense line, she strode to Kheladin’s folded rear leg. “How do I get on? It’s a long way up there.”

  Ceridwen tossed an appraising glance her way. “Ye have mettle, lass. More than I would’ve guessed when ye cringed away from joining your body with Lachlan’s in front of me.”

  “Step on my knee,” Kheladin instructed, tapping his bent back leg. “Once ye are there, I shall lift you.”

  Within the space of three heartbeats, she sat astride the dragon. Maggie had done plenty of horseback riding, but horses didn’t fly. No saddle here. No bridle. If she fell off a horse, she might break a leg. Falling off Kheladin, she’d break every bone in her body and then some. She wound her arms around Kheladin’s neck, but it was so huge, she barely spanned a small part of it.

  “Nice, lass. Ye can hug me any time ye want.”

  Maggie laid her cheek against Kheladin’s scaled neck. The coppery rounds were warm. Maybe this won’t be as impossible as I fear. Her heart pounded so hard she was afraid she might pass out. A headache bloomed behind her right temple. “Could we sort of do a quick practice flight before we leave?”

  “I doona see why not. Draw magic to shield us from humans who might look to the skies,” the dragon commanded.

  “Consider it done,” Gwydion said.

  Maggie forced herself to keep breathing as Kheladin furled his wings. They beat the air, once, twice. On the third downward stroke, they were airborne. She squeezed her eyes shut. Maybe if she didn’t look down, it wouldn’t be so bad. She thought about Lachlan—and Kheladin. It was curious Lachlan treated the Celts like the gods they were, and Kheladin didn’t hesitate to order them about as if they were his lackeys.

  And they complied, she realized with a start.

  “Of course they did. Dragons are special,” Kheladin informed her smugly. “Open your eyes, Maggie. See my world.”

  Compulsion flowed beneath the dragon’s suggestion, and Maggie’s eyes snapped open. They were about fifty feet above the ground. Kheladin inscribed long, looping circles in the still air. She loosened her death grip around his neck, didn’t feel she was in danger of plummeting to Earth, and folded her hands in front of her. There was something soothing about the air racing by them.

  “I think I’m good with this,” Maggie sent, aware of time slipping past. “We can leave anytime.”

  “No matter what,” Kheladin cautioned, “doona leave my back until we are back here, or I tell you ’tis safe.”

  “Why would I want to?”

  “Rhukon can be most persuasive. He can conjure images of almost anything. If ye saw your kinswoman lying in a pool of blood, ye’d be sore tempted to go to her.”

  “There’s so much I don’t know.”

  “Good ye realize it.”

  Maggie cursed herself again for being a short-sighted fool. She wondered why Mary Elma hadn’t taken a harder tack with her—forced her to learn magic, whether she wished it or not.

  “It doesna work that way, lass. Ye must welcome your power, or your castings will backfire. They might even be the death of you.”

  “Oh.” While it didn’t surprise her that the dragon could pluck thoughts from her mind as easily as Lachlan or the Celts, it was still unsettling to have everyone know exactly what she was thinking.

  “Convenient, though.” A whistling, snorting sound that might have been dragon laughter rustled through her. “Like getting three wishes and not even having to come up with one idea, because I already know what you want.”

  An old Rolling Stones song about needing and wanting passed through her mind. Maggie snorted. Maybe Mick Jagger knew more than he let on about trips to fairyland. “How long until we get where we’re going?”

  “Time is…different. ’Twill seem like hours, yet no time at all is passing in the world ye just left. One impression isna any more real than the other.”

  “I thought Gwydion—or maybe it was Arawn—said Rhukon couldn’t move the plane away from Earth?”

  “Poor choice of words. Earth is a big place.”

  “Ye willna understand with your modern mind,” Lachlan cut in. “Psychic layers circle the Earth. Rhukon took advantage of one. He wove his barrier into its weft.”

  “Aye,” Kheladin added. “We must be verra careful not to damage something critical when we attack his binding.”

  Maggie didn’t ask what might happen. She didn’t really want to know. Lachlan was right about her twenty-first century brain being in full rebellion. People didn’t ride dragons or go off to fight bad guys who’d shanghaied airplanes—and her grandmother. Look at the World Trade Center. Despite knowing what was about to happen once the planes diverted from their flight plans, the full power of the U.S. Government had been helpless to intervene.

  Time, indeed, passed. Warmth rose through the dragon’s scales. It was enough to countermand the wind-chill eddying about
her. If her torso got cold, she leaned it against Kheladin’s trunk of a neck. The first time she did it, the dragon made a lewd comment about the feel of her breasts, but Lachlan shut him up.

  “Where are Arawn, Gwydion, and Ceridwen?”

  “Mayhap already there,” Lachlan answered.

  “Child!” Mary Elma’s worried voice jangled discordantly in Maggie’s mind. “No! It’s too dangerous. Go back.”

  “Gran? Is it really you?” Tears threatened to overflow, and Maggie knew she’d unconsciously prepared for the worst: Mary Elma’s death.

  “Of course it’s me. What the hell are you doing? Go back. I have things under control here.”

  “Whether ye will have us or no, we are coming to assist,” Lachlan said.

  “Look, you young sprout.” Mary Elma sounded almost as overbearing and bitchy as Chloe. “You’re the dragon shifter linked to my granddaughter in the prophecies. Your job is to keep her safe. I breathed a sigh of relief when I knew she’d found you—finally. I can take care of myself. Take your dragon and go home. That’s an order.”

  “Excuse me. Ye canna talk so to me.” Lachlan sounded furious.

  “Nay, to us,” Kheladin seconded. Smoke streamed from his mouth.

  “This is the second reason I walked away from the coven.” Maggie broke in before a pitched verbal battle unfolded. “Every single witch thinks she’s hot shit. Gran, Lachlan’s my husband. You have to be nice to him. Ditto on the other side of things. Gran is my closest kin.”

  “Child.” Mary Elma protested. “You know nothing. You can’t protect yourself.”

  “We’ll talk about that later. How are the rest of the people on the airplane?”

  “Asleep.”

  Maggie’s heart lurched. “Did the oxygen system fail?”

  “Christ! I put them to sleep. They were bellowing about like a bunch of stupid, angry sheep. I knew I’d never be able to figure a way out of things with them screaming and crying and carrying on.”