by R. L. King
“Spheres of influence?” Stone narrowed his eyes. “That sounds…Machiavellian. You really are the Illuminati puppet masters pulling the strings behind the scenes, aren’t you? How many of you lot are there, anyway?”
“Not many,” Madame Huan said. “Fewer than a score, spread all over the globe. And Stefan might not have spoken precisely when he said ‘spheres of influence.’ We have indeed sought to improve our own fortunes—an easy thing to do when you think in millennia rather than decades—but we also have agreements in place between us.”
“What kind of agreements?”
“We do not involve ourselves in human affairs, except as another human might,” Kolinsky said. “Mainly, we observe. We collect knowledge, we amass material wealth and items of power, but we do not interfere. For the most part, we remain outside human society.”
Stone glared. “Right. Because playing games with human pawns is absolutely not interfering, is it?”
“That,” Madame Huan said, looking rueful, “was part of the reason these agreements were put into effect in the first place. Those were dark times.”
“Right. Okay.” Stone didn’t even try to keep the skepticism from his voice. “So, human affairs. Does that mean all humans? Or just mundanes?”
“To us, there is little difference.”
Stone wasn’t sure whether he’d just been insulted, but let it go for now. “So…that’s what you meant when you had such trouble deciding what to tell me. About the rifts, and now about this. Some of you thought telling me would be interfering. It would violate this…agreement between you.”
“Yes,” Kolinsky said. “But some of us—including those present tonight—believe allowing you to continue your investigations without full knowledge could result in a greater harm than sharing the information with you.”
Stone snorted. “So immensely powerful dragons consider me a threat. I suppose I should be flattered. But wait a minute. We’ve moved away from my original question. You keep calling me ‘scion.’ And when I asked you what I was supposed to be scion of, you said ‘us.’” A jolt of ice-cold energy formed in his core. “Wait. Oh, bloody hell…”
The others waited patiently, watching him with the sort of interest a scientist might show a promising experiment.
“Are you telling me I’m…a dragon too?” The ice didn’t recede. The idea hit him like a solid wall of brain static. As crazy as it sounded, it could explain a lot of things.
“No,” Kolinsky said. “You are not a dragon.”
He couldn’t decide whether to be relieved or disappointed. “Well, damn. I’ve always had a fondness for rare steaks, so I thought that might be a clue.”
Thalassa Nera glared at him. Clearly, despite her agreement to be part of this little group, she still didn’t think much of him.
“So what’s a scion, then, and how is it that I’m one of them?”
“As we mentioned,” Madame Huan said, “there are not many of us. When we took human form, some of us saw no reason not to…embrace the pleasures available to humans.”
Ah. That made sense—and further cemented Stone’s idea that perhaps these extradimensional dragons weren’t so different from humans after all. “Carnal pleasures, you mean.”
“Among others. Many felt if they were forced to live here, there was no reason not to become fully human.”
“So that didn’t count as interfering.”
“They did not believe so, no. And no one contested them.”
“Okay. So the dragons and the humans started shagging, and—” The light began to dawn. He jerked his head up. “And…when you say you took human form, you meant it. In every sense of the word.”
Madame Huan nodded. “Yes. If you are asking if it is possible for the dragons in human form to reproduce with humans, it is indeed. But only with certain humans.”
Stone was about to ask which ones, but the answer was obvious. “Mages.”
“Yes,” Kolinsky said. “Mages of a certain power level, specifically. When the dragons discovered this, they sought out these humans, and their offspring almost always possessed greater magical talent than any but the most powerful human mages. Nowhere near our level, of course, but those who indulged took this as a justification for their actions. They felt that, by producing magically talented children, they were providing improvements to the human species without technically interfering.”
Stone was thoroughly fascinated by this discussion now. He still wasn’t certain he believed it, but he had to admit it did answer a lot of questions.
Not all of them, though. “So…” he said slowly, “the scions are descendants of the children of human mages and dragons? But if this started happening thousands of years ago, then there must be loads of them out there. Especially if the dragons are still doing this now. How many of these scions are there?”
“Vanishingly few,” Kolinsky said. “Especially when you speak of the most powerful among them.”
“Why is that?”
“For the same reason mages of any type are not plentiful. Although children born to a dragon and a highly magical human almost always possess significant magical power, that does not remain true for subsequent generations.”
Stone narrowed his eyes. “So…it’s the thing about magic not breeding true. Like how even two mages can’t be guaranteed their children will inherit the Talent.”
“Just so. It is no longer common for dragons to couple with humans—it is frowned upon these days—but even if it occurs, the lower magic level results in significantly decreased magical potential.”
“And the potential is diluted as the scions bred with other humans—magical or otherwise.”
“Yes,” Madame Huan said. “For the most part, anyway. But those you speak of are not included among those we call scions.”
Stone tilted his head in question. “Then…who is? Does this have to do with why there are so few of them?”
“Yes,” Kolinsky said. “Scions are rare because magic does not breed true through the generations. But in the rare cases that it does so, each successive generation builds on the power of the previous one.”
“Wait.” A flutter ran up Stone’s back. “So you’re saying…the more generations that breed true, the greater the power potential. And only mages with an unbroken line back to the original human-dragon pairing are considered scions.”
Madame Huan smiled. “Yes.”
“Bloody hell…” he murmured. “And my line goes back six generations…at least. The records before that were lost.”
“You are a rarity, Alastair.” She chuckled. “At the risk of giving you a ‘big head.’”
“More of a rarity than you might believe,” Kolinsky said. “That is part of why we have decided to reveal the truth to you.”
“Oh? How so?” Stone thought he knew, but he wasn’t going to say it. He was still reeling from what they’d told him. It was a lot to process in a short time.
“Your power levels are…intriguing. If all had progressed as expected, your son should eclipse you, just as you did your own father. But that does not seem to be the case—and it is not due to any deficiency in him, but rather to an unexplained surplus in you.”
Stone shrugged. “What can I say? I had an advantaged childhood.”
Kolinsky, Thalassa, and Morathi all shot him disapproving glances, while Madame Huan merely remained unreadable.
“Listen,” he said. “We’re not here to talk about me. You brought me here to give me this information. You’ve got my attention. I’ll be honest—I don’t want to believe you. This whole thing seems like something out of a fantasy story. But…it does explain a lot.” A sudden thought struck him—almost literally struck him, rocking him back in his chair. “Wait. Hold on.”
Their disapproval turned to question.
Stone took several deep breaths. “Wait just a minute. You say I’m a scion. I can trace my magical ancestry back six generations. That means, if what you say is true…oh, bloody hell. No.” He sagged. “No…”
“What is it, Alastair?” Madame Huan asked softly.
He didn’t want to say it. Something deep within him felt that saying it would acknowledge it, believe it…accept it. And he didn’t want to accept it.
“I… That means I’ve got one of you lot as an ancestor. And I think I know who it is.”
Kolinsky inclined his head gravely. “Yes.”
Stone stared at his lap, taking several more deep breaths. Images swirled in his mind.
A sealed chamber beneath his home in Surrey…
A tense confrontation with Kolinsky at Caventhorne…
An entry in James Brathwaite’s journal, referring to a ‘fiend…’
“Aldwyn,” he said in a dull tone.
“Yes.” Madame Huan’s voice was soft, kind, understanding.
“Aldwyn’s not just a human monster. He’s one of you. That’s how he survived being sealed in a chamber for two hundred years.”
When none of them answered, he looked up. All four wore grim expressions. “I take it…he’s not popular among you.”
“Let us say,” Kolinsky said, “that none of us felt any regret when he disappeared. We had no idea what might have befallen him, but no one made any effort to discover it.”
Stone felt as if he was on autopilot, speaking by rote. “What…why did you feel that way? It sounds like you lot do what you like, human opinion or laws be damned. Why was he any different?”
The four exchanged glances, and finally Madame Huan spoke. “Alastair…it will do you no good to know these things.”
He glared at her. “He’s my ancestor, Madame Huan. My blood. But he’s not some abstract idea of a horrible person I can read about in old journals or history books and be grateful things were different back then. He’s here. He’s alive in the world today. I’ve got a right to know.”
She dropped her gaze, then faced him again. “Aldwyn…” she said slowly, choosing her words with care, “was never entirely stable. He had significant power, and he was a valuable ally during the days before we were exiled. But he never dealt well with the exile. He believed he would find a way for us to resume our natural forms, to return to our home or to find another place where we could once again rule as he felt was our right. As the years passed and he failed to do it, he…changed. It was a slow and gradual change—everything with us is slow and gradual, as we rarely make hasty decisions—but eventually the rest of us began to notice his odd behavior. Some tried to help him, to warn him, but he drove them off. He decided if he was to be forced to live as a human, he would do it on his own terms.”
“What did the rest of you do?” Stone wasn’t sure he wanted the answer.
“We left him alone,” Kolinsky said. “There was little else we could do. None of us had the taste for killing one of our own, and as long as he did not reveal our true nature to the humans, he was not technically breaking our agreements.”
“Eventually, as the levels of magical power here waned further,” Madame Huan said, “he seemed to settle down and accept his fate. He settled in Europe and…” She stopped, and her dark, liquid eyes met Stone’s.
“And what?”
“Alastair…”
“Tell me,” he insisted. He still felt as if someone else was inside his head, running the controls, making him speak when he didn’t want to. “What did he do?”
“He sought out powerful female mages and…coerced them into producing children with him.” She didn’t look at him as she said it.
Stone’s insides turned to icewater. “He…raped them?”
“No,” Kolinsky said. “But as you might guess, he could be very persuasive.”
“In the modern vernacular,” Madame Huan said, “he ‘made them offers they could not refuse.’ And, to be fair, he was a powerful, wealthy man with many advantages. In those days many women, even mages, had few options.”
“So…he created his own little army of scions, with different women all over Europe.”
“Yes.”
“And where are they now? Are any of them still alive?”
She didn’t answer.
He looked at Kolinsky. “I’m the only one who made it this far, aren’t I?”
He inclined his head. “As far as we are aware, yes. In the other cases, the line either died out, or the magic did not persist through subsequent generations.”
Stone thought about his ancestors. Up until his own father, they had been every bit the monsters Aldwyn had—but yet Aldwyn’s own son Cyrus had conspired with Brathwaite and the other Ordo members against him. How truly terrible must the man have been to provoke that kind of hatred in his own child? Had Cyrus known what he was?
“I…don’t know what to say,” he muttered. “I still halfway feel like this whole evening has been an elaborate dream, and I’ll wake up needing a stiff drink.”
“I’m sorry, Alastair,” Madame Huan said gently.
Stone shook his head hard, as if to clear it. “Okay. Okay. So, to recap for the students in the back: my ancestor is even worse than I thought he was, he’s some kind of extradimensional dragon stuck in human form, he’s still running around in the modern day, and I’m his only living descendent. Brilliant. Just brilliant. Really. I’m sure that would fuel a whole load of therapy sessions, if I were the type to indulge in that sort of thing. But right now, I’ve got more questions for you. If you’ve brought me here to tell me things, I’ve got some things I want to know. Will you answer?”
The four exchanged glances again, and Stone wondered, not for the first time, if they were sharing some secret mental communication.
“We will try to answer your questions,” Kolinsky said at last. “But we make no guarantees.”
“Believe me, I’ve given up expecting guarantees of anything these days.” He took a deep breath and gathered his thoughts. “Why are you telling me all this now, after all these years? Is it because of the rifts?”
“Partially.”
“What does that mean? Is what you told me about them true?”
“As far as we are aware, yes.”
“What’s the rest of the reason?”
“We will answer that in time. Ask your questions first.”
Stone narrowed his eyes, wondering what ‘in time’ meant. Tonight? Next week? Next century? “Okay. What’s this thing about you lot not being able to attack scions?”
“It is part of the agreement we have made between us.”
“So then, why did that blond bloke try to kill me?”
They looked at each other again, and made no attempt to hide their surprise.
“What are you talking about, Alastair?” Madame Huan asked.
He looked at Kolinsky. “You genuinely don’t know, do you?”
“Apparently we do not.”
“The rift in Colorado. You know it’s been closed, right?”
“Yes.” His tone was grim. “I had planned to ask you if you had anything to do with that, after—”
“We closed it because it wasn’t the type I agreed not to close. It didn’t result from two dimensions drifting into proximity. It was deliberately created.”
Kolinsky tensed. “Indeed.”
“Yes, and that’s all I’m going to say about that, so don’t ask. You’re not the only one who can keep secrets. But your man—I don’t know his name, but I’m guessing he was one of you because he kept calling me ‘scion’—tried to kill me to keep me from closing it. And made a bloody good go at it, too. If I hadn’t had my shield up, he’d have destroyed me. I thought that wasn’t allowed.”
“It is not.” Kolinsky looked even grimmer now, and so did the others.
Another sudden thought struck Stone. “Oh, and it gets worse. He knew it wasn’t that kind of rift. He was well aware it was a gateway to another plane, and it was stable. He wanted to study it. That’s why he tried to kill me—to keep me from shutting it down before he could find out where it pointed.” He glared at them. “What do you think of that?”
The silence hung
in the air. Finally, Madame Huan said, “If that is true, it is a significant transgression.”
“Has anybody seen him? Talked to him recently? We hit him pretty hard. You said you were hard to kill—is that still true? You said you weren’t immortal, but it seems you might as well be.”
“I do not think he is dead,” Kolinsky said. “We will investigate, and if necessary, enact punishment. As Madame Huan says, attempted murder of a scion is a serious breach of our agreement.”
“Is that right?” Stone shot a glare at Thalassa. “Then why does Ms. Nera get a pass? She tried to kill me too.”
Her expression grew colder than ever, and he sensed he was on dangerous footing. “You attempted to steal from me, Dr. Stone. I did not attack you directly. If you had not broken into my home, my automated defenses would not have been an issue. If you died that night, it would not have been by my hand.”
“Oh, is that how it works?” Stone looked at Kolinsky for confirmation.
“It is,” he said. “We are not permitted under our agreement to directly harm a scion unprovoked. But indirect means, such as security measures or magical protections, are not considered part of the agreement.”
Stone pondered, narrowing his eyes. It seemed to be hair-splitting to him, but Kolinsky and his bunch had always been inexplicable, even before he’d known they were millennia-old dragons from another dimension. “Okay. Fair enough. I’ll stay out of your home, Ms. Nera, and you leave me alone. Done and done.”
Thalassa gave him a curt nod.
He glared around at them. “But that doesn’t mean I’m letting that blond bastard get away with what he did. Maybe last time it wasn’t so cut and dried, since technically I did hit him first. But this time, there was no ambiguity. He wanted that portal open so he could study it, and wasn’t planning to let me get in his way. He could easily have killed me.”
As far as you know, anyway.
“Alastair,” Kolinsky said, the faint edges of a warning in his tone. “As I said, we will deal with him. Protocols must be followed.”
Sudden rage bubbled up inside Stone. He snorted. “Protocols. Of course. You’ll take care of it—slowly and carefully. Because none of you do anything quickly. You said so yourself. So maybe he’ll get what’s coming to him in—what—a couple hundred years? Sorry, but that’s unacceptable. I’ve had just about enough of him, and I’ve got no desire to have him pop up sometime in the future when I’m not expecting him. I want to have this out now.”