Dragon Heat

by Allyson James

  Carol came out after him, her sophisticated clothes a contrast to Lumi's sloppy jeans and shirt, but her eyes were no less worried. "Lisa, what happened? Lumi kept saying you'd been shot, and Grandmother is reaming everyone out, and this tall man with silver eyes has turned up—he's gorgeous, but a little scary—and Grandmother keeps swearing at him in Cantonese."

  Lisa gently put Lumi aside then she hugged the startled Carol. "Everything will be all right. I'll explain."

  Carol didn't relax. "Well, come inside. She's waiting for you." She glanced behind Lisa. "Hi, Caleb. I'm sorry you're not seeing our family at our best."

  Noise prevailed inside the restaurant. There weren't any customers, just Ming Ue standing with her hand on a cane, glaring up at Malcolm who towered over her. Malcolm had pulled his long hair into a tail that flowed like black silk to his hips and wore jeans and a sweatshirt and a leather coat. His swarthy face was square and hard, and at present his black brows were drawn into a fearsome scowl. Ming Ue didn't look the least bit afraid of him.

  Near Malcolm stood Saba, the black dragon's height emphasizing her smallness. Her short dark hair was disheveled, and she looked exhausted, but she lingered near Malcolm as though pulled by the link that bound her to him. Lisa could see the link like silver-black threads glittering under the restaurant's artificial light, a web stretching from him to enclose her. She also sensed that Saba was not entirely unhappy with the bond, and Lisa felt a twinge of pity for her.

  She wondered if similar threads bound her to Caleb and realized with a jolt that his mark on her had lessened. Had the silver dragon done that or had Caleb? Caleb had said that dragons did not take mates like humans did—would the silver dragon want to be free like other dragons in her world, ready to kill the male when she was finished with him?

  I don't want to be the silver dragon. I want to be Lisa and in love with a man who can stay with me. No, that wasn't entirely true. She wanted to be in love with Caleb and wanted him to be able to stay. Which he could not.

  The other witch, Grizelda of the floating black lace, was there as well. Lisa glanced at her in surprise, then understood when Lumi slid his arm around her waist. Malcolm might have used Grizelda to bring Lumi to him, but Grizelda and Lumi were close in age and it was not strange that they, both slightly out of sync with the rest of the world, had found sympathy in each other.

  "Ming Ue," Lisa said loudly, and the din suddenly ceased.

  Ming Ue turned to Lisa. She might be a small elderly woman, but she had power, and not simply because she was a mage. She'd survived things in her youth that most Americans knew only in nightmares and had lived to create her tiny empire in Chinatown and rule it with an iron hand. Lisa couldn't follow Cantonese quickly enough, or Ming Ue's dialect at all for that matter, to understand what she had been saying to Malcolm. But by the cold, silver anger in Malcolm's eyes, he'd understood her all too well.

  "Ming Ue," Lisa said. "I'm really fine and well. And I know."

  The dangerous anger faded from Ming Ue's eyes as she looked Lisa up and down. Then her wrinkled face flushed, and her expression turned guilty. "Li Na made me promise not to tell you until the time was right."

  "But the time is now right." Lisa looked past Malcolm at Saba. "Are you all right? That power was pretty intense."

  Saba nodded. "I'm fine. But I don't really understand what's going on, and no one will tell me anything." She glared up at Malcolm, making it clear who she meant when she said no one.

  "She's Japanese," Ming Ue said, disapproval in her voice.

  "Ming Ue, we are all Americans here," Lisa said. "Or dragons," she amended. "I need to know everything you do about the silver dragon and the dragon orb. I need to understand what I am and what I'm facing. I'm terrified. You and Li Na were thick as thieves, and I know you know what I mean."

  Ming Ue fell silent, looking more guilty than ever. Lumi and Carol stared at their grandmother in astonishment, and behind them Shaiming twisted his lips into a faint smile. None of them had ever seen Ming Ue back down before.

  "And as for you," Lisa pointed her finger at Malcolm.

  "Please," he said in a cultured voice. "I have had all I can take of small women shouting at me."

  Lisa touched her fingers to his chest, the fleece of the black sweatshirt soft. She released a small amount of white-hot silver dragon power that laced its way into his bone and muscles. His eyes widened slightly and a corner of his mouth pulled.

  "You ordered your men to shoot Caleb because you thought I would release my magic to protect him," she said. "You were ready to kill him to get what you wanted. I don't know if I can forgive you for that, but I might let you make recompense." She extended the power a little, and he flinched.

  "Would you like me to fall at your feet and worship you?" Malcolm asked, voice harsh. "Would that make it better?"

  "No." She spread her fingers on his chest. "You have a heart, Malcolm. I feel it inside you. But it is the way of a black dragon to be ruthless and calculating. You use people, because you don't know how to do things differently. And you wouldn't use people if you weren't so desperate."

  His eyes darkened when she said the word desperate. "After eight hundred years, the signs were finally right that maybe I'd escape this captivity. You can't blame me for trying."

  "I can blame you for your methods." Lisa withdrew her hand, and he exhaled in relief. "But you'll escape, Malcolm, I'll make sure of it. Although you know…" She slanted him a smile. "You could have just asked me."

  Caleb watched Lisa chivvy them all to sit around Ming Ue's biggest table, Lumi with Grizelda, Malcolm with Saba, Ming Ue next to Caleb, her mouth flat and unhappy. Shaiming brought tea, still pushing the cart with the squeaky wheel, still thunking cups and pots to the table ungracefully. When he set a cup down in front of Caleb, Shaiming's brown eyes twinkled and a tiny smile hovered around his mouth.

  Lisa slid into the chair next to Caleb, smelling of soap and a little bit of chocolate, which overlaid the faint, lingering scent of lovemaking. She's amazing, he thought, wrapping his thumb and forefinger around the warm, handle-less cup of tea. She'd walked into a room full of argument, discord, fear, and anger, and had easily persuaded everyone, including a black dragon and two witches, to sit down and drink tea together.

  "Everyone has a story to tell," Lisa was saying. "Starting with you." She gave Malcolm a glare. "I am curious to know why you've been exiled here. Who did it, and what did you do to them to make them exact such a vicious revenge?"

  Malcolm turned his cup around on the table. Beside him, Saba tensed, and Caleb sensed that she didn't know his story either. Malcolm had enslaved her but not entrusted her, and the frustration of that poured from her in waves.

  "Witches playing with fire." Malcolm lifted his teacup and took a sip of the hot, black tea. "I burned them."

  Caleb said grimly, "Let me guess. You were minding your own business and they came along and tried to tap into your magic."

  Malcolm nodded and took another sip of tea. At the other end of the table, Carol spoke up. "I'm lost."

  Carol was the only person here not of a magical turn of mind. Having read her before, Caleb knew that Carol liked numbers and figures and business plans, things that lined up neatly on pieces of paper and on computer screens. She liked the figures in the income columns to be higher than those in "expenses," and she preferred black numbers to red. She might belong to the magical family of Ming Ue, but she did not know or care much about magic or witches or stories from the past.

  He explained. "Some witches perform rituals that tap into Dragonspace, seeking dragon magic to enhance their own. Many of these witches aren't powerful enough to actually enter Dragonspace, and they imagine it as some astral plane where dragons sit around waiting for their magic to be needed. They even believe the dragons give up their magic freely to help the witches, but they're wrong. Most dragons prefer to be left alone and can be pretty cranky when bothered."

  "You don't say," Lisa said under her breath.<
br />
  "The witches take whatever magic they can find with their probing and don't give anything in return. Sometimes they'll ruthlessly drain the magic, and the unfortunate dragon caught in their ritual dies."

  Lisa's eyes widened, and Saba's expression mirrored hers. Malcolm set down his teacup. "Eight hundred years ago, they tried to tap into me," he said. "Ten of them from a large coven, pooling their power to pierce Dragonspace and steal the magic of a black dragon."

  Grizelda gasped from her end of the table. "Tapping black dragon magic is extremely dangerous. I tried blue dragon magic once and that hurt me pretty bad. I never did it again."

  "Black dragons are dangerous because they fight back," Malcolm said. "Blues fight, too, instinctively, but black dragons are intelligent and know how to fight very well. I killed the witches. All ten of them."

  Saba jumped. "Goddess, you didn't."

  Malcolm slanted a glance at her, and Caleb sensed his explanation was more directed at Saba than at Lisa or Ming Ue. "They were bent on killing me—they'd caught me in a powerful web, pooling their magic to take mine, so I turned it back on them to save myself. It killed them. The rest of their coven was outraged. The ten had been their most powerful witches and seers, and they'd been trying to make their power even greater by stealing mine. The coven banded together to trap me. They didn't have enough power to kill me, but they had enough power to drag me here and seal the gate. I started out stark naked in a stone circle in Scotland and survived by being ruthless, and yes, by using people."

  Grizelda bit her lip. "But that can't be right. The witches' rede is to harm none."

  "None but dragons," Caleb said, lifting his teacup.

  "You are quoting the Wiccan creed of this century," Malcolm told Grizelda. "In the past, many witches it is true were benevolent healers and seers, but others were bent on raising power no matter who it hurt. They weren't the ones caught by the witch-finders—these witches were much too cunning to be caught. Most of the witches burned or hanged were harmless women who only wanted to help. Humans tend to persecute those who cannot fight back."

  "I think I can send you home, Malcolm," Lisa said quietly, breaking through his words. "And I will."

  Malcolm's expression said he did not trust her, but Lisa did not answer him and turned her attention to Ming Ue.

  "All right, Ming Ue. Spill it."

  "Spill it?" Ming Ue cocked her head, looking confused. "I do not understand what that means."

  Carol snorted. "Yes, you do, Grandmother. Tell us what is going on. How did Lisa survive being shot in the chest, and what is this dragon orb you were screaming at Malcolm about?"

  Lisa fixed Ming Ue with her brown eyes. "Tell me," she said gently.

  Ming Ue sighed. She stared into her teacup, as though she could read the story in it, then said, "Your grandmother, Li Na, was a very wise woman. She knew you would come into your legacy after she was gone, but she said you'd be all right, that you'd be protected by a powerful golden dragon." She flicked a glance at Caleb. "She also said that only great danger and a sacrifice would reveal your true nature, as has happened for all women in her family. When you allowed yourself to be shot, as Lumi told me, you were trying to save Caleb, willing to trade your life for his. And so, your nature as the silver dragon manifested."

  "This happened to my grandmother, too?" Lisa asked.

  Ming Ue nodded, looking pleased that she held the rapt attention of the entire table. "When Li Na was only sixteen, she saved a child who had fallen from a ferry into the bay. She did not know the child, but she instinctively knew she could save him, and she acted without thought for her own life. She grabbed the child and helped lift him to safety, but she was dragged under and the water was so cold. When they pulled her out, all believed her dead, drowned, the brave girl from Chinatown, but later she revived and that day came into her legacy."

  "She became a silver dragon." Lisa clenched her hand on the table, white fingers stretching. "How long has this been happening to women in my family?"

  "Oh, two thousand years, give or take."

  Ming Ue smiled as everyone collectively gaped at her. She liked having an audience, Caleb sensed, liked to tell stories. "It all began with a witch, of course." Ming Ue sipped her tea, relaxing, and the rest of them fell silent and waited for her. "Two thousand years ago, a witch made her way to Dragonspace, with the intent of stealing the magic of the legendary silver dragon."

  "You see?" Caleb said. "You're minding your own business, and a witch decides to mess up your life."

  "This witch was cleverer than most," Ming Ue went on. "Instead of trying to tap into magic without leaving her own plane of existence, she traveled to Dragonspace herself. Because she'd studied silver dragon legends half her life, she was able to track and eventually find one. While the silver dragon slept near a clear lake, the witch stole one of its scales. The witch fashioned this scale into an orb, a perfect silver sphere, and into it she poured her own magic. Then she tried to steal the magic of the silver dragon and put it into the orb as well, but that woke the dragon. Angry, the dragon spit magic at the witch, but the witch was ready, and she caught the magic with the orb. The more magic the dragon tried to use, the more the witch stole it. Finally the silver dragon struck out physically, and the witch fled.

  "But the witch was not as clever as she thought. She'd poured so much of her own magic into the orb in order to both fashion it and trap the dragon magic, that she had little left to cross back to the human world. She managed to get through with the orb, but the crossing drained her of life.

  "Knowing the orb was dangerous, the silver dragon followed the witch to this world, determined to get it back. The dragon emerged deep in a green valley in China, near the Li River, where she found the orb and the witch dead. When the dragon attempted to take the orb back to Dragonspace where she would destroy it, she learned a terrible fact. The orb had absorbed so much magic, both witch and dragon, that fearsome earthquakes and devastation began when she tried to take it through the door the witch had created back to Dragonspace.

  "Understanding she could not take it from the human world, the silver dragon tried to destroy the orb. But the same thing happened—earthquakes and mountains spewing flame. She realized at last that the orb must stay on Earth, untouched, because the power it contained was so great and so unstable that it might unmake the world.

  "Being a curious creature, the silver dragon decided to explore, to discover what sort of people lived in this place that the orb might destroy. She hid the orb in a safe place and began to look around. She found a town full of people and changed her shape to look like one of them, so as not to frighten them. This happened two thousand of our years ago, during the time of the Han. The silver dragon made her way to the cities, trying to blend in with human beings, but she was such a beautiful woman that the emperor himself heard of her and wanted to view this marvel. He had her brought to his court to stand in front of him. What he saw was a lovely, dark-eyed woman with a streak of pure white in her sable hair. The emperor was enchanted with her and wanted to bring her to court. The silver dragon agreed, curious about this man who presumed to rule over all the people. Dragons, Li Na has told me repeatedly, do not have rulers, and the silver dragon found the emperor fascinating.

  "The silver dragon met all kinds of interesting people, learned to make music, and learned how to draw pictures with ink. She soon became the most celebrated woman at court, although she never forgot about the dragon orb and used her magic to keep it hidden, checking on it as often as she could.

  "She had stayed at the court for one human year when she met a man who wrote poetry for the emperor. The emperor instructed this man to teach the silver dragon how to make poetry, and for the first time in her life, the silver dragon fell in love. She used her powers of persuasion, and very likely some magic, to convince the emperor to let her marry the poet, who had likewise fallen in love with her. The emperor, an old man, gave her to the poet with his blessing. From what Li Na told me,
I am certain the silver dragon would have just carried off the poet if she'd wanted to, but she liked to be courteous.

  "By this time, of course, the silver dragon had realized that humans aged and died, meaning her husband would, too, leaving her alone and grieving. So she decided to make a sacrifice. She wanted to stay on Earth to make certain none of these weak humans were hurt by the orb, and she wanted to live as a human with her beloved husband.

  "She decided to break her long dragon lifespan into many lifetimes. When her human body died, she would flow into the youngest female of her human family. In such a fashion, she grew old with her beloved poet and passed her dragon essence to her great-granddaughter, who was only a babe. That child was not the silver dragon, but contained her essence, her spirit. The child grew to be a beautiful woman, and when she was still young she saved a man from certain death by sacrificing her own life, thus awakening the essence of the silver dragon. When she died, the silver dragon passed to the youngest girl-child in her family, and so on.

  "When Li Na's grandfather, who was married to a silver dragon, brought his family to America, the silver dragon unburied the orb from the Li valley and carried it safely here, to San Francisco, to Chinatown. When she died, the dragon essence passed to Li Na, and at Li Na's passing, the silver dragon came to Lisa."

  Ming Ue picked up her tea and sipped it. Her listeners blinked, as though waking from a trance, then all eyes moved from Ming Ue to Lisa.

  Lisa touched the white streak in her hair. "This appeared the day Li Na died."

  Ming Ue smiled, her face wrinkling. "All the silver dragons were beautiful, Li Na said, and all had such a streak in their hair. It was regarded as family luck—the women who had the white streak were lucky and blessed. She told me all this, with instructions to tell you when you were ready. I am fortunate to have been the friend of the silver dragon and to have the safe keeping of the orb."

  As though on cue, Shaiming wheeled the cart over, the wheel giving its usual squeak, squeak, squeak. Actually smiling, he set a small cloisonne bowl that looked much like Grandma Li Na's bowl with the dragon in front of Lisa and lifted the lid. Inside was a silver sphere, perfectly round and shining softly with silver light.