by Ann Gimpel
“That’s settled then.” Katya nodded brusquely. “The four of us shall remain.”
“Food will not be a problem with so few,” Johan murmured.
Konstantin focused intently on his mate and raised one brow in an unspoken question. He wanted her to stay with him… Wanted was a vast understatement. He would have moved worlds to coax her to stay, but if she wished to wait for him on a borderworld, he would respect her choice.
“If you’re here,” Erin said to Konstantin, “then I will be too. Plenty of reading material in the library. By the time we’re out of quarantine, my magic should be in tiptop shape.”
Johan nudged her. “Quarantine?”
“Eh, slip of the tongue. It’s how we medical types view enforced isolation.”
“Thank you,” Kon told her. The words didn’t do his thoughts justice. He was delighted and vastly relieved she didn’t want to be apart from him.
“I never was into long-distance relationships.” Erin paused. “Or relationships at all. You’ve accomplished the impossible, Sir Dragon. I’d think you’d want to keep me as close as you could.”
“Oh, I do. Believe me.”
Before they got sidetracked cooing endearments, Konstantin bolted up the next three sets of risers and out into the open area between the entrance to his home and the nearest lake. His eyes widened. Hundreds of shifters had gathered. Presumably, Anubis, Bast, and Thoth had put out the call to their people.
Ylon trotted over. Keeping his voice low, he said, “Nice to have all this help, but we scarcely need them to cast the spell Y Ddraigh Goch outlined.”
“Maybe we do.” Kon mouthed the words. Shifters had exceptionally keen hearing, and it wouldn’t do to offend anyone. He scanned the assemblage and located Y Ddraigh Goch. The dragon god stood with the other deities. Heads together, they were clearly deep in discussion.
Katya grabbed his upper arm. “What’s that?” she hissed. Nostrils flaring widely, she tipped her head this way and that, scenting the air.
He started to tell her it was simply the blend of so many magics that had caught her attention, but Earth shrieked into his mind. “We are under attack. Under attack, I tell you. I cannot keep them out.”
“Who?”
“I do not know,” she wailed.
“What’s going on?” Erin shook herself as talons shot through where her fingers had been. “My beast wants out.”
Kon’s dragon made a strong bid for ascendency too. “You need me,” he bugled.
Ever so faint, the reek of rotting flesh threaded through the other smells surrounding him. “Serpents?” He stared at Ylon, incredulous. How had the unholy bastards found this place?
“Smells like it,” the dinosaur growled.
Konstantin trumpeted to get everyone’s attention. “We are under attack,” he shouted. “Look to your strongest magic. The serpents are mortal as humans.”
“Hell, Dragon, we can kill anything,” Gwydion whooped. His glowing staff turned into a battle axe, and he swung it in a circle above his head. A lance and a long blade whistled through the air to where Andraste stood. She caught both handily. Poseidon hefted his staff, and it turned into a deadly trident.
Beside him, Katya’s golden dragon took shape. Erin’s red beast and Johan’s green one were almost fully formed. His bondmate uttered a string of blistering rebukes and dragged control into his talons. In record time, black scales and wings took shape, and he was swooping through the air. Riotous air fed by the North Wind.
Other dragons, the ones from the Fleisher borderworlds, joined him, along with Katya, Johan, and Erin.
“We should send our mate inside,” his beast said, its protectiveness in full bloom.
“She wouldn’t go,” Konstantin countered. He scanned nooks, crannies, and shadows but didn’t see a single serpent. Why could he smell them? Where were they coming from?
“Beneath your wings,” Earth answered his unspoken questions. At least it proved she’d joined with him. Mu had done much the same. Kon craned his neck, peering beneath him, but saw nothing. The serpents’ stench had intensified, though.
Wherever they were, they were nearer than they’d been.
Ceridwen and Y Ddraigh Goch were gathering a company of mixed shifters. The other gods were doing much the same. No one tagged the five of them, so Kon formed his own troop. Yle joined them, rounding it out to six. All of them were airborne except for Ylon. His dinosaur bulk spread next to the first lake, and power fanned around him.
At least Erin flew near him. It was as much of a concession as he was likely to get to keep her safe.
A deep, malevolent booming throbbed around him. The rocky wall forming a border to the right of the lake fell in. Serpents swarmed through the break. Dragons flew above them, bugling commands.
Kon swallowed his horror and antipathy at what appeared to be a mass defection by his own kind. “Keep an eye on each dragon,” he roared in dragonspeak. “Make certain you tag them for destruction.”
Ceridwen and Y Ddraigh Goch raced toward one side of the pulsing hole that was disgorging evil. Gwydion and his troop took the other side. A bow materialized in Ceridwen’s hands. Gwydion tossed his war axe. It cleaved through a dragon’s neck and returned to him, much like a boomerang might have. The headless dragon pinwheeled out of the air, blood geysering everywhere.
For each dragon or serpent that fell, two more barged through. Konstantin stopped counting at fifty. While his attention had been diverted, serpents flowed in a thick tide of destruction. They headed for the lake, and he heard the land moaning piteously. A quick glance through her eyes showed black cancerous sores forming all along her body.
Unlike the projection she’d hidden behind, the land had parts of herself spread throughout all layers and levels of her world. The sores filled with orangish pus that burst and scarred everything the liquid came into contact with.
“Do something,” she begged.
“You heard the spell along with the rest of us,” he told her. “Once they’re all in the lake, freeze them in place.” Konstantin waited, but the land didn’t answer.
Katya had organized Johan, Erin, Ylon, and Yle into a one-two punch. She and Johan dragged the human out of the serpent. Erin and Ylon stomped it into oblivion with Yle’s help. It wasn’t efficient, but they’d killed three. The dirt beneath them ran red with blood.
A large copper dragon shot fire along Konstantin’s back. He roared his outrage and turned to face his enemy. Of course, he knew the dragon, but he had to shelve that part deep. Whoever these dragons had been once upon a time, they’d renounced everything it meant to be a dragon shifter when they’d embraced sorcerous power.
Fire streamed from the copper dragon’s open mouth. Kon blasted him with flames of his own. It was stupid. Neither of them would win this battle. All it would do was drain power Kon could better employ elsewhere. Feinting to the side, he rolled out on top of the copper and flattened his body atop the other dragon, driving him downward.
He’d employed this move on a borderworld, and it worked so long as he held the element of surprise. By the time the copper dragon recovered and tried to fight his way out from beneath Kon’s bulk, he was nearly to Ylon’s waiting clutches. Yle swooped in from the side and impaled the dragon’s eyes with his sharp beak.
The copper bellowed in pain and outrage. He could regrow his lost sight with magic, but he’d be dead long before then. Ylon and Yle had things under control. Konstantin flapped hard to gain altitude and hunted for his next victim. Three dragons later, he was panting, but what they were doing wasn’t making much of a dent.
In anything.
While he’d been focused on dragons, enough serpents had filed through to fill the lake with their dull-colored scales. The same shades as dragons, their coloration was muted, muddy. He took a deep breath to clear his mind and wished he hadn’t.
Not much was left of the clean, fresh scents of shifter magic or Celtic enchantment. The sickish-sweet rot of serpents left its sl
imy trail all over everything they touched.
Y Ddraigh Goch bugled at a dragon who’d taken him on. Below him, every square meter of dirt contained hardscrabble fighting. When magic wasn’t doing the trick, shifters were grappling with sea-serpents, trying to bite through their thick hides.
“Do not let them drag you into the water,” Kon trumpeted. The Earth moaned again deep in his mind. He wanted to say something comforting, but comfort was a lie. This part of her domain would never be the same, or not for a very long time.
Y Ddraigh Goch’s adversary had closed on the dragon god and had his talons dug into the god’s shoulders. Konstantin flew close and shouted, “Kill him!”
The dragon god glanced past the red dragon and met Kon’s gaze. His spinning eyes were filled with anguish. He could kill the dragon, but the beast was his child. His creation. He wanted to do something less destructive but recognized he had no time for elegant solutions like wiping his mind.
Y Ddraigh Goch spoke a power word that hurt Kon’s dragon’s soul. The red shrieked once and exploded into a million motes of matter that floated downward. Konstantin started to say something but shut his jaws with a harsh clack.
What could he say? Congratulating the dragon god for moving past his personal demons was inappropriate.
“I know who is behind this,” Y Ddraigh Goch spoke into his mind.
“Let’s find them and fix this,” Konstantin urged.
“Would that it were so easy.”
They hovered next to one another, treading air. Kon waited, but the dragon god didn’t add to his enigmatic comment. “What does that mean?” he finally asked.
“It’s the First Dragon.”
Kon’s beast bellowed with rage before Kon got him under better control. “But you killed him.”
The gold-and-silver dragon shook his huge head sadly. “Not exactly. I was weak, and now all of us are paying the price.”
“I don’t understand. Where has he been all these millennia?”
“I barricaded him into the molten core of a distant world where he would burn and regenerate in perpetuity. I didn’t believe he could escape.”
Konstantin digested the information. Maybe Y Ddraigh Goch was wrong, but what he’d revealed was very much in concert with what Kon knew about him. He might bluster and roar, but he was ruled by compassion. It was a trait that made dragons special among their shifter kin. They were capable of great destruction but also understood full well the negative impact of the full use of their power.
This wasn’t the time for how-could-you-have recriminations.
“Use the power word,” he urged in dragonspeak. “End this.”
“Not so easy,” the god sputtered. “It must be matched to a dragon’s particular energy.”
“Fine. Pick them off one by one. I’ll get everyone else focused on the serpents.” He hesitated. “Do it. Think about it later, my liege. It is either us or them. You no longer have a choice.”
He had no more words. Y Ddraigh Goch would rise to their need. Kon was certain of it. Sticking to his liege’s side like a starving tick wouldn’t accomplish anything. All it would do is convince the dragon god that Kon didn’t trust him.
He flew to where Katya, Johan, and Erin were methodically killing serpents. The pile had grown, and he added his magic to forcing the wyrms back into their human shapes. Below them, Ylon and Yle took care of killing them once they were no longer immortal.
Earth had been busy. The piles of bodies were vanishing as she sucked them into holes that she filled in. She hadn’t done much with the lake yet, but a thin layer of ice had formed across one end. It was a start.
Yle flew back from somewhere, cawing outrage. “We have sustained losses.”
It didn’t surprise Konstantin. How could they engage in a battle as extensive as this one and come out unscathed? The serpents’ poison was deadly if you weren’t careful and inhaled it. Or got it on your skin. “How many?”
“At least a dozen. Wolves. Birds. One dinosaur. One dragon.”
Kon wanted to ask which dragon had fallen, but he’d find out eventually. He could question his beast. The dragons always knew who was missing, but he couldn’t value his kinsman over any other shifter. “I am so sorry. For all our fallen companions,” he told Yle.
Should he tell them about Y Ddraigh Goch’s confession? He dithered back and forth. His bondmate hadn’t blurted the truth, so perhaps he’d decided protecting their god was more important than absolute honesty.
Shrieks and cries had turned into background noise. He paid them little heed. “How are you doing?” he asked the land and turned his focus inward. At least her pitiful moans and squawks had quieted.
“We are holding our own,” she informed him. “I am feeling stronger. Poseidon promised to flood all the low-lying lands. It should displace enough men and create sufficient havoc they will leave off their destructive habits.”
Konstantin had expected a tirade blaming Y Ddraigh Goch. It didn’t come. Earth was apparently moving past her wounded/blaming stage, which had to bode well. The sea god’s help was timely, indeed. Earth had enormous cities that would vanish if the seas rose even a meter. Feeling relieved for the land, he took to the skies again, staring through smoke and murk as he assessed how the various groups were doing. Unbelievably, the portal still disgorged serpents and dragons. Where the fuck were all of them coming from?
If the First Dragon was still alive and well, he must have spent a long time amassing such an impressive army. Gwydion’s war axe cleaved through another dragon neck. This time, the beast vanished in a poof of fiery air.
The Warrior Magician bellowed, “Illusion. That one was illusion.” He barked a string of power words. Different from the one uttered by Y Ddraigh Goch, they still hurt Konstantin’s ears. Each separate clump of syllables hit him like a roundhouse punch to the gut.
The flood of serpents and dragons halted abruptly. At least fifty serpents and ten dragons flamed out, much as the one that had alerted Gwydion had done. Too bad they couldn’t rid themselves of the rest of these bastards so easily.
Arrows flew from Arianrhod’s bow. Ceridwen’s as well. Poseidon’s trident crashed into serpent after serpent. Whatever the gods hit screamed and fell, blood shooting from every orifice. Around them, the wind howled merrily, shoving serpents and dragons to their doom. Konstantin stared at the gateway, not trusting it to remain empty.
“Can you get rid of it?” he asked the land.
“Nay. Do you not think I haven’t tried? ’Tis rooted in a distant place. One I cannot find, let alone have any control over.”
On a hunt for anything, that might help him destroy the blasted portal, Konstantin sent seeking magic through its ragged opening. Something impossibly strong got a grip on his magic. He couldn’t withdraw it, so he cut the flow. What was beyond the breach? His beast headed right for the opening, intent on flying through and engaging whatever lurked there in battle.
Kon held him back. “Bad idea.”
“But we know something’s in there. Something powerful. We must kill it?”
“What makes you think we can?” Kon countered. “Hell, I couldn’t even retrieve my magic.”
A wave of dragon shifter magic so potent it nearly knocked him out of the air rolled from the gateway. “Whatever it is,” he told his beast, “it’s coming out.”
Y Ddraigh Goch flew past him and landed, planting himself in front of the portal. “Come out,” he bellowed. “I command you.”
Konstantin considered landing, but he had better leverage from the air. Katya, Erin, and Johan flew near, joining him. “What’s going on?” Katya asked.
“I don’t know,” he hedged. He had a pretty good idea what was on the far side of the gateway. Only another dragon would have been strong enough to hang onto his magic. Or a god. And from what he could see, all the gods were ranged below him, sucking the life out of serpent after serpent.
The ground in front of the gateway cracked in protest. One huge, scaled
taloned foreleg poked through, followed by a dragon half again the size of Y Ddraigh Goch. Gold and silver like his maker, the First Dragon’s hide bore more scars than scales. Buckled from burns, skin showed through gaps in his scales. Misshapen, warped, he looked like a caricature of a dragon.
No wonder he was furious at the dragon god. Kon lacked details, but he would have bet his last gold doubloon the First Dragon had been plotting revenge ever since Y Ddraigh Goch locked him away.
The Celts ranged themselves on both sides of Y Ddraigh Goch. Ceridwen, Arawn, Poseidon, and Bran on one side. Gwydion, Arianrhod, and Andraste on the other. “Apparently, ye dinna have the stomach to kill him,” Ceridwen said dryly. “We shall deal with that issue later.”
Kon looked for Anubis, Bast, and Thoth, but they were still at the head of their groups dealing with serpents.
“What makes you think you have a later?” the First Dragon inquired. For such a huge monster, his words were deceptively soft, mild even.
Before Ceridwen could answer, he went on. “I have no problems with any of the rest of you. This argument is between him”—he pointed at Y Ddraigh Goch with a taloned foreleg—“and me.”
Konstantin flew nearer. “You would have encouraged the serpents to take over Earth.”
The First Dragon shrugged. Scales that should have rattled tapped dully on the scar tissue crisscrossing his bulk. “Merely a ploy. I knew if I was outrageous enough, dear old Dad would show up.”
Y Ddraigh Goch growled. Smoke and fire flew from his jaws.
“You’re going to have to do better than that,” the First Dragon chortled. “I know all your tricks. And all your magic.”
Ceridwen hummed a note. Gwydion picked up a harmonizing one. Konstantin recognized the beginnings of a spell, but it wasn’t familiar to him.
“This problem is of my making,” Y Ddraigh Goch screeched. “I shall be who deals with it.”
Nodding at one another, the Celts backed off a few paces, offering the dragon god space. Magic sheeted from him as he launched himself at his spawn, shouting a string of power words.