by Zoe Chant
"Message?" His anger began to die, replaced by confusion.
The creature held out its hand, slowly opening its fingers. There was a folded piece of paper in its palm. "Message," it repeated.
Darius strode forward, within reach of its claws. "Be careful!" Anjelica said behind him, but he ignored her. He took the paper from its hand.
"Message delivered," the creature rasped out, and then it crumbled. Cracks spread through its stone surface, and with the rattling sound of a small avalanche, it collapsed into a heap of sand and pebbles, its duty accomplished.
Darius prodded at the sand with the toe of his shoe to see if any other surprises were lurking there. Finding none, he unfolded the paper.
It was a printed photo of Ben, similar to the one he'd received on his phone, but from a different angle, perhaps taken at a different time. As in the other photo, Ben was slumped in a dark place, his shirt torn open to reveal claw marks and bruises on his torso; his dark hair was flattened and matted with blood. He had definitely put up a fight, and Darius found himself grimacing with fierce pride despite his worry. Dragon and panther ... his son came from two strong fighting lineages.
There was writing scribbled across the top of the picture. RIVER PLAZA PARK, NOON TODAY. COME ALONE OR HE DIES.
Kill you, Darius thought, feeling oddly calm; perhaps it was only that he could not possibly get angrier. I'll be there, all right. And I will kill you.
"What do you want us to do?" Anjelica asked quietly. She was close behind him; she'd been reading over his shoulder.
Come alone. It was obviously a trap. And a very public place; he couldn't shift without compromising his very existence. Perhaps Sharpe had no such qualms about gargoyles, or perhaps he had something different in mind. But it was certainly a trap.
Darius looked back at the photo. There was something about it. Something nagging at him.
"Just a moment." Sharpe's deadline was still an hour away; they had a little time to plan. And Darius hadn't gotten this far in his life by rushing into things. He opened up his phone and looked at the other picture, then the printout. They were definitely taken in the same place. It was impossible to make out details, just the shackles on Ben's wrists and some kind of rock behind him. It could be anywhere. And yet ...
And yet, he knew this place.
Darius frowned at the shackles around his son's wrists. Dark iron, crusted with rust. They were easier to see on the photo than on the phone's tiny screen. And the rocks behind him ...
He knew those shackles. He knew those rocks.
And then suddenly, it all clicked into place. He knew exactly where Ben was.
"That son of a bitch," Darius muttered, the hot coal of rage in his chest flaring into a flame.
Sharpe was holding Ben in Darius's mountains. Not in the mansion—that was gone, he reminded himself. But nearby. There were caves all throughout the mountains, some of which Darius had once, in a past he wasn't proud of, used for imprisoning enemies himself. Somehow Sharpe had found one of those old prisons and he'd put Ben in it.
Somehow? No. A lot of things were coming clear all of a sudden. Sharpe was a gargoyle; stone was his home. He'd been in those mountains for a long time, watching, learning. A shudder crawled down Darius's spine. How long had Sharpe been watching him, spying on him, learning all there was to know about Darius and his family?
Tell Darius he's going to learn the meaning of pain and loss ...
Oh, there will be lessons learned, Sharpe. But I won't be playing the game by your rules.
Shoving his emotions aside as best he could, he tucked the phone into his pocket. Revenge, he thought, was a dish best served cold, and Sharpe had a whole world of revenge coming to him. "I know where we must go next. And it isn't to the city."
***
He explained the plan in a few quick words, and now, as he swept on dragon's wings toward the mountains he'd called home for a century and a half, with Heikon's dragons behind him, he fought not to be nervous.
It was not just the fear for his son, not just the worry about being wrong. It was also that he was dreading the sight of the destroyed mansion by daylight.
The other dragons veered off, soaring out of sight behind the mountain peaks as per Darius's instructions. They would circle around and prepare for a surprise attack from behind, while Darius went in alone from the front.
This is too easy, Darius thought with the human part of his mind, even as his dragon filled him with the triumphant thrill of victory. Not a single sign of gargoyles yet. Surely if Ben was being held here, he'd be guarded? Or perhaps Sharpe simply hadn't expected him to recognize the vague, blurry surroundings in the photo. It would, after all, require an intimate familiarity with every rock, cave, and hole in the many square miles of land surrounding the mansion. But there was plenty of time in a two-hundred-year lifespan to learn the lay of the land.
Chill gray clouds draped the mountains, the recent interval of sunshine sweeping out with another storm behind it. In the fog and a light, drizzling rain, the cliffside where the mansion used to stand looked so strange he hardly recognized it at first.
Darius circled over the rubble strewn down the side of the mountain. This was Maddox's tomb. He would have to build some kind of monument when all this was over, he thought. And rebuild the mansion, of course ... but it was strange how unenthusiastic he felt about that.
Hard to concentrate on such thoughts when his son's life was in danger, perhaps ...
He flew down the valley, banked and turned into a narrow canyon that adjoined the main valley across from the road. Back here, there were some old caves and mines—including the one where he was fairly sure Ben was being held.
He thought of Loretta, also in a place of caves and stone, then forcibly shoved those thoughts aside, locking them up in the hidden spaces of his soul. If Heikon's dragons couldn't protect her, then nowhere would be safe. It wasn't like she'd be any safer hiding out in a motel. The only way he could protect her was by taking out their enemies first. Wasn't it?
He turned a corner in the canyon and came upon a cluster of old mine buildings. When he'd bought these mountains, he'd hired humans to work some of the mines for awhile, but most of them—like this one—had been laying empty since the turn of the century. The buildings were falling down, the old mine shafts collapsing.
Darius glided in for a landing, difficult in the narrow confines of the canyon; he had to fold his wings and drop the last few yards, shifting as he landed so he could catch himself with human feet, human hands. Taking off was going to be tricky.
He checked his phone and found a text from Anjelica. In position.
So handy, these modern conveniences. The phone also told him the time was 11:28. Half an hour to Sharpe's deadline.
If he'd gambled wrong, he was gambling Ben's life away. But he didn't think he was wrong.
He walked quietly through the abandoned buildings, old log cabins and frame houses with the roofs falling in. It was raining now; water soaked his jacket and dripped off sagging rooflines. Once, these buildings had been bunkhouses and cookhouses and warehouses for storing equipment. Now they were wreckage—like the life he'd rebuilt for himself.
Except it wasn't. Not really. Sharpe had taken his money, but as long as he had his family, he could rebuild.
This should be bothering me more, he thought, coming to a halt between two of the buildings. Losing their hoard was the worst thing that could happen to a dragon. He should be going ballistic with fury. And he'd reacted with scorching anger when he'd first learned that Sharpe had drained his accounts. But that anger was just a ghost now. He hadn't truly gone mad with rage until Sharpe had taken Ben ...
And then he knew, in that instant, that he'd made a terrible, terrible mistake.
Loretta, in her naivety about dragons, had actually known more than he had. He should have listened to her skepticism when he'd told her he was the Heart of his own hoard. He'd thought that he had made himself self-sufficient. But he had
forgotten that a dragon's hoard was liable to take on a life of its own over the years, invested as it was with all of its owner's regard and magic and (some said) a little piece of the dragon's soul.
For many dragons, the Heart of the Hoard had been known to choose itself. It was the most treasured item in the hoard, the most valuable, the most loved.
And Darius had never, in all his long life, been able to love himself.
The Heart of my hoard isn't me, he thought, as doubt shivered through him, fracturing all his certainties.
It was Ben.
And not just Ben. Melody, Skye, Tessa ... and probably Loretta by now, too. Probably Loretta more than anyone else. And even that damn cat. And Maddox too, he thought with another shiver through his soul.
Dragons hoarded what they loved. Esme, a musician, had a hoard of musical recordings; Melody hoarded books. Darius valued gold and jewels and money, but he didn't love it, not as a dragon should.
All this time he'd thought his hoard was his fortune. And for awhile, it probably had been; with his clan gone, he'd had nothing else in the world to love except for money.
But at some point, while he wasn't looking, his hoard—the core of his being—had become his family.
And with that thought, his soul cracked wide open. He could lose anything else. The mansion, the money, all his gold and jewels and expensive paintings—all that was just things. He could replace them. And shouldn't that have been his first clue that something was wrong? A dragon should not feel that way about their hoard. The hoard was everything. The hoard was their soul.
The one thing he truly could not lose was his family.
He sucked in a shuddering breath and looked at his phone again. 11:37. If he was wrong, Sharpe would even now be transporting Ben to the plaza in the city. But Darius was pretty sure Ben was here—somewhere around here, in one of these buildings or mines or caves.
And now he knew exactly how to find him. A dragon could not be separated from their hoard, and particularly not from their hoard's Heart.
Darius closed his eyes and concentrated.
He'd never tried to focus in this way before. Had never thought he needed to. His hoard was invested in himself, he'd believed, and all the rest of it was too spread out to feel. Money was intangible; it existed in bank accounts and stocks. You couldn't draw yourself to it like a compass needle.
Or maybe he had never been able to because it wasn't really what his soul was drawn to, after all.
Find our hoard, he told his dragon. Find our Heart.
And then, then ... suddenly, he could.
It was less like a sudden rearranging of the world, and more like hearing a sound that had been there all the time, but had been drowned out by traffic noise or just by a mind too preoccupied to hear it. All of a sudden, he knew where every member of his family was, and not just that, but how they were doing, too. Melody was somewhere far off, a little bit worried, but mostly content. He even had a vague sense of her mate Gunnar with her. Loretta he felt much more strongly; love and worry came down to him in a powerful rush, making him feel almost as if she was close enough to touch his hand with affectionate concern. And there was Tessa, a more distant sensation, but still in his head with her worry and warmth, and Skye, whose baby mind had no more thoughts right now than contentment at being with her mother.
Even more distantly, he had a vague impression of the direction of his employees from the mansion, a general sense that all was well with them. He could sense Toblerone purring contentedly in someone's lap far away, and much closer—no, that couldn't be right—
But confusion about what he might or might not have felt was swept away by the strong sense of Ben's presence, not too far away. Darius grinned fiercely to himself. He was right; Sharpe had no intention of honoring any kind of hostage deal. Whatever plans Sharpe had for an ambush in the plaza could go on without him, while Darius got his son out of here.
He went swiftly among the old buildings, moving silently through gray curtains of rain. So far he'd seen no sign of a guard, but he didn't doubt they were around here somewhere.
He heard Ben before he saw him, a low moan. Darius slowed and peered around the end of a crumbling building that might have housed mine workers once.
Ben was chained, hand and foot, to the face of the cliff, standing on a ledge halfway up it. The shackles were attached to metal rings driven into the rock that had probably once been used to secure mining equipment or the supports for a tramway. Seeing it, Darius felt the picture snap into focus, the sense of familiarity putting itself together with its surroundings. He'd known it was somewhere around the mine; he just hadn't been sure exactly where. It had been decades since he'd been back here.
Climbing up there as a human would take forever, but there was no room to spread his wings down here. He shifted anyway, wings folded tightly to his back, and scuttled up the cliff with the help of his claws. Like a bat, he used his wings for stability and an extra grip on the cliff, touching lightly with clawed wingtips while his paws found new purchase.
When he reached Ben, Darius arched a wing over him. Ben was slumped in the shackles, dripping rainwater and blood. It was impossible to stand on the narrow ledge as a dragon, so Darius secured his grip on the rock and shifted back.
"Ben," he said, gripping his son's chin in his hand to turn his face toward the light. "Can you hear me?"
Ben blinked rainwater off his lashes and squinted hazily. "... Dad? What ..." He started to lurch forward, but was brought up short by the chains.
"Hold on. I'll have those off you in a minute."
"Dad, no." Ben shook his head. His eyes were going in and out of focus. "Shouldn't be here ..."
Darius got a secure grip on the first shackle. He let his dragon lend him its strength, half-shifting his arm. His fingers curled into claws and the chain snapped, leaving the shackle dangling loosely around Ben's wrist.
Ben topped forward, swinging from the other chain, and Darius caught him. "I've got you," he murmured as Ben's weight came to rest on him—words he'd never said before, should have said before. "I've got you. I'm going to get you out of here. Let me get the other one off."
"Dad, no," Ben mumbled against his neck. "Dad, it's a ..."
Darius's hand, resting against the rock face, suddenly refused to move. A hand had emerged from the rock and clamped around his wrist.
"... trap ..." Ben gasped.
Darius roared and yanked at the hand with draconic strength, keeping his other arm around Ben. The stone fingers shattered and Darius wrenched his hand free. He took hold of the other chain.
Because time had run out. All around them—above them, below them—stoneskins were erupting from the side of the cliff.
"Dad, get out of here," Ben muttered as Darius wrenched the other chain free.
"Not a chance." That just left the shackles on Ben's feet—but looking down, Darius realized they weren't shackles. They were stone gargoyle hands, frozen in place around Ben's ankles, pinning him to the cliff.
Stone claws swung at them. Darius backhanded the attacking stoneskin with a painful shock to his arm, knocking it off the cliff. He curled his body over Ben, shielding his son as the next one lunged; the claws raked down his back, tearing at his suit coat, leaving trails of fire down his skin.
"Go!" Ben gasped. "Go protect Tessa and Loretta—"
"They're safer than we are!" Darius dragged them both down to a crouch, presenting a smaller target, and tried to tear the stone fingers free of Ben's ankle with his bare hands. It wasn't working; he might have to shift. Or maybe ... "Can you shift out of here?"
Ben shook his head. "They gave me a drug. Can't shift."
Darius shielded his head from another blow. "I'll get these off. Just give me a minute."
"I told you to leave—"
"I've left you enough in my life," Darius told him. "I'm not leaving now. And besides—" He heard a roar from behind him, and grinned. "This time, we've got backup."
Anjelica, a
s a great red-and-green Chinese dragon, swiped a half dozen stoneskins off the cliff as she swooped in, battering them with claws and wings. Her companion warriors were close behind her. It was an awkward place to fight, with the cliff making it difficult for the dragons to hover or get too close. One of the dragons smacked his wings into the cliff and nearly fell, especially when the stoneskins piled onto him in his moment of faltering weakness. The wingless dragons—there were two of them—had an easier time of it, but even they were severely limited in how they could maneuver.
But the cliff was the stoneskins' disadvantage as well. The dragons could swoop in, attack, and fly away before they could be hurt, sending cascades of dislodged stoneskins falling to shatter in the canyon below.
Ben gave a sudden cry of pain. The stone hands around his ankles, which had seemed completely immobile as if they were truly carved from inanimate rock, had begun to tighten, grinding together the bones in his ankles. In a moment his feet would be crushed.
"I'm going to shift," Darius told him, and released his dragon more gently than usual, keeping hold of Ben with one hand as it grew into a vast, clawed paw. His other hand, gripping the cliff, skidded across the wet rock and left gouges in the stone.
"There's no time," Ben panted. "That guy and his ... whatever they are ..."
"Gargoyles." Darius pried carefully at the stone fingers around Ben's ankle. His claws were strong enough to shatter the stoneskins' hands—and Ben's feet along with them. He kept his wings arched over the two of them like a protective cloak, clenching his teeth against the pain as the stoneskins tore with their fangs and claws at the sensitive membranes. The crack of a fragile wingbone shuddered through his body with a sudden, sick agony. He might not be able to fly after this.
"You don't get it," Ben protested, his voice getting stronger. "The ambush isn't here."
"I know." Darius cracked the first stone hand free—Ben jerked his foot clear—and turned his attention to the other. "He set up a trap for me in the city. I've decided not to attend."