Blazing the Trail (31 page)

The intruder walked around my tail. I felt him looking at it, as if he’d never seen the like. He wasn’t afraid—his pulse was too slow for that. He was more curious. But wary. He walked slowly around my back as I remained motionless, feigning sleep. I could practically feel the weight of his gaze as he studied my folded wings. I felt the air move as he lifted a hand, then dropped it again, deciding against an exploratory touch.

He smelled like wood smoke and the outdoors. Was he a vagrant or a street person? How had he gotten into the loft without setting off the alarm system that deterred human invaders? He could have passed through the dragonsmoke barrier easily—it didn’t trouble humans—but there was no door or window open.

He took another step, coming around my left shoulder. I tingled with the awareness that he was checking me out and braced myself for whatever he might do. I was prepared to roar to life, to pivot and fry him to cinders, no questions asked. He had invaded my parents’ home and my father’s lair.

We dragons have no sense of humor about uninvited visitors.

My dad’s hoard was here and I was in charge, left to defend our earthly possessions and personal security.

I was ready.

He took another step, and I saw his silhouette in my peripheral vision.

I smelled blood. Old blood. Dried blood. It awakened something primal within me. Who knew what this guy had done? Who knew what he planned to do next? I was ready to defend everything I cared about.

I held my breath, waiting on that next step that would bring him more clearly into my range. One more step. One leap and breath of dragonfire. There was no explanation he could give to justify his presence, nothing he could say to save himself.

He took that step, he crouched down to look into my eyes, and he whispered the one thing that evidently could stop me cold. “
Unktehila
, we need your help.”

There was only one person who called me by that name, by the name the Thunderbirds had given to the dragon shifters. Kohana called me that, but Kohana was dead.

I raised my head and looked at him. It was the
Wakiya
elder from my dream, the one who had dropped his cigarette on the rug. His dark eyes glinted as he watched me, and I guessed that he had known all along that I wasn’t really asleep.

And I should have known that this was another Wyvern vision of the possibilities. Both real and not real. Okay.

“I told you to hurry,” he said. “And Kohana gave you the clue you need.”

“It doesn’t help if I don’t understand it.”

Derek kept reading as if I hadn’t spoken.

The elder reached into the pocket of his jeans. With one hand, he withdrew a stone.

It was a piece of red rock, rounded and small enough to hold in one hand. I knew it had a rune scratched on one side and a circle etched on the other.

How had he gotten it?

How long had he been creeping around the loft?

“Hey, that’s my rune stone!”

“And it holds the answer.” He lifted it up so that the circle was facing me and gave me a hard look. Then he sang the same note Kohana had sung. He tugged his other hand out of his pocket and tossed a handful of what looked like snow into the air. It glistened and glittered—maybe it was a handful of starlight—and then aligned briefly into a musical staff.

I was reminded of what Meagan had drawn at lunch.

The circle on the stone looked like a note.

I still didn’t get it. Meagan had already theorized that Kohana had given us the first note in a harmonic sequence, but the harmony she’d come up with hadn’t made any difference to anything. “We tried that already,” I said, but the elder smiled.

He tossed the rune stone in the air and caught it again. By the time I followed the trajectory of the stone and looked back at him, we were standing on the red rock that I’d visited before, snow swirling all around us.

“Here the earth speaks her secrets. Here the truth of the riddle is revealed.” He bent and brushed the snow away from a section of the rock that was covered in carvings. He touched one of a bird, a figure that repeated over and over on the rock face.

“Wakiya,”
I said, remembering that this red rock was a place sacred to the Thunderbirds.
Wakiya
was the name they used for themselves and this was a drawing of one.

The elder nodded, then tipped back his head to sing. He sang that note, letting it ululate in the back of his throat. Other men stepped out of the flying snow, forming a circle around him and creating a chorus. They were ghostly, there
but not there, their voices the most material sign of their presence.

It was potent, that singing. It made my body tense and my pulse quicken. It was summoning a kind of energy.

The dead elder who had brought me here stopped singing, letting his fellows carry the note as he turned to me. “Four kinds left,” he said. “Four notes.”

“Each one is characteristic!” I said with excitement. “Each of us has to provide our note to destroy the NightBlade.”

He smiled and stood, extending his hand to me. “Let us defeat the threat together.”

I shifted shape and stepped forward in human form to shake his hand. His skin was papery, just like Sigmund’s. Was it progress to be shaking hands with more dead people as well as talking to them? I really didn’t have time to think about it.

“You have to help,” I said to him. “I can’t do this alone.”

“I have just offered my assistance.”

I knew instinctively that this wasn’t enough. “No, you have to come with me. We have to defeat them all together. You have to sing the note, live and in person, to do the
Wakiya
part, since Kohana can’t.”

“I am not alive, though.”

“You can still sing.”

He frowned and shook his head, looking back at his ghostly fellows. “My time in your world is done. I have done what I can, but I cannot go back there again. The portal is secured against me.”

“Then I’ll just take you with me,” I said with a confidence I didn’t quite feel. “I’ll make a portal.” He looked surprised, but I gripped his hand and smiled. “Here we go.”

Worst case: he’d be right and it wouldn’t work.

Best case: I’d have the fourth surviving kind of shifter present and accounted for.

You know which option I was hoping for.

I took one last look at the red rock in the snow, not at all sure I’d ever see it again. It was tranquil and powerful, a wonderful place but not one necessarily for me. It had been an intersection for our kinds to negotiate our differences, but I had a feeling that now that was achieved, the
Wakiya
would secure it for themselves.

Which meant I had to make this work.

I closed my eyes, holding fast to the elder’s hand. Spontaneously manifesting out of a dream—instead of just waking up—felt like the right answer, but I wasn’t at all sure it could be done. I couldn’t think of another way to take the elder with me, though, and I was going to trust my gut.

I wished with all my heart and soul to be back in my parents’ loft, back opposite Derek, and hoped I’d be in dragon form. I felt the tingle that always accompanied my attempts to spontaneously manifest elsewhere, felt my body begin to make the transformation, and tightened my grip on his hand.

Holy hoard. It worked.

W
HEN
I
MANIFESTED IN THE
loft, I gave a hoot of joy. I was in my dragon form, exactly the way I wanted to be. And—bonus—the elder was still with me, clutching my talon. I had time to see that he was as impressed as I was; then Derek shouted in surprise.

He sat up, his eyes wide. “Zoë, what are you doing?”

“Solving the riddle!” I cried, triumphant, and shifted to my human form in a glorious tide of shimmering blue light. The elder nodded approval. “And bringing help.”

Derek looked pointedly around the loft. “What help?”

“Him.” I gestured to the elder, who seemed mightily amused.

“Uh, there’s no one else here, Zoë.”

“Don’t worry about it. Trust me.” I hauled out my messenger and checked the time. It was eight thirty already. “We’ve got to get to the dance.”

Derek was looking at me like I’d completely lost it. “I thought you didn’t want to go anymore.”

“We have to go. The ShadowEaters will be there. They’ll have the NightBlade and will try to take out at least one wildcard. We’re all supposed to be there, and the school is already filled with spell light.” I was hauling on my boots as I talked, grabbing my keys and my backpack. Excellent—I still had Skuld’s shears. “If Jessica’s there, she’s in trouble already. Let’s go!”

I bolted out the door, and Derek came after me. I ran down the stairs to the parking garage, trusting the ghostly elder to keep up. Meanwhile, I messaged Meagan, my fingers flying. She’d gone to Isabelle’s place with Jessica, so I told them all to come to the school together and meet us there.

I was through the door to the parking garage when she called. I quickly explained the issue, then remarked, “You said there were four parts to the harmony.”

“Soprano, alto, tenor, and bass,” she agreed.

“Which one was that note of Kohana’s?”

“Tenor.”

I got into my car, scrolling through the recorded notes stored on my messenger. Derek got in the passenger’s seat, looking a bit shaken. Like he’d been startled awake to find the world shifting hard. I smiled at him and delegated a task. “I need a sound, characteristic of the Neuroi, that matches one of these notes. A powerful sound for you, or a ceremonial sound.”

Derek’s eyes shone with purpose as he took my messenger, scrolling through the audio files as I turned the key in the
ignition. The car sputtered but didn’t start. I tried again as he worked through the three remaining notes.

Nada. The engine was dead.

No, the battery was dead. It should have had enough juice for the week, but I’d taken that extra trip downtown to Jared’s hostel and run it dry. Stupidly, I hadn’t thought to plug it in when I got home. There was no time to charge it up because we had to get to the school before the others were hurt.

I could have shifted shape and flown there in dragon form, carrying Derek. But I was afraid that I would need every crumb of my dragon powers for the fight ahead. Plus I might end up needing to beguile a whole bunch of innocent bystanders who saw me in dragon form (don’t we love the Covenant?) and I just didn’t have time.

But there was another choice.

I slanted a look across the parking garage to the car carefully covered with a tarp and protected for all time. Or at least until its new buyer came to collect it in a week or two. My heart skipped a beat at the boldness of my idea.

The Lamborghini was here.

Its gas tank was full.

And I knew where the keys were.

It seemed that this was the night that some dreams could come true.

“B
E RIGHT BACK
,” I
SAID
to Derek, and raced upstairs. I grabbed the Lamborghini’s keys and was back in the garage in record time, moving practically at the speed of light.

Derek was gone.

My messenger was emitting one of those notes, the sound echoing around the parking garage in a decidedly eerie fashion.

I panicked for a second, certain the ShadowEaters had gotten him.

But no. Derek was in wolf form. I exhaled in relief when I saw him. His paws were braced against the pavement in the space that was usually occupied by my dad’s new sedan. My messenger was on the ground beside him, holding that note.

When he saw me, he tipped back his head and loosed the howl I’d heard the wolf shifters make when we triumphed over the Mages in the fall. It was a sound that made me shiver.

And it perfectly matched the note emanating from my messenger.

The
Wakiya
elder lounged against the fender of my car, nodding approval. “That’s two,” he said, and I laughed.

“Help me get the tarp off,” I said to Derek, snatching up my messenger on the way past him. I saw the blue shimmer of his shifting shape; then he was beside me again. In no time at all, we had the car unwrapped, and we both stopped to stare.

The car was perfect. Utterly black, polished to the gleam of a dark mirror, sleek and powerful, and apparently untouched by human hands.

My heart did a trio of backflips.

Was I out of my mind?

“Pretty much,” Sigmund said, and I could have smacked him.

If I’d been able to see him.

I was not happy that he was adding the disembodied voice to his repertoire of dead-guy tricks. He would choose this moment to change his rules.

“You know, in some cultures, it’s believed that people who see the dead do so because they’ll soon be dead themselves,” Sigmund said conversationally.

I was sure he was referring to my dad’s reaction to me driving the Lamborghini.

“Thank you very much for that,” I said. “I’ll keep it in mind.”

“Keep what in mind?” Derek asked.

“Don’t worry about it.” I forced a smile, feigning confidence, and hit the button to unlock the doors. The car beeped and the lights flashed. I heard the locks disengage.

“You know how to drive this thing?” Derek asked, his uncertainty clear.

“I guess I’ll learn,” I said, and his eyes widened. I opened the driver’s-side door. I was more terrified of damaging this car than I’d been of anything ever in my life.

Which was saying something, given that I lived with dragons and fought ShadowEaters on a regular basis.

On the other hand, I was thrilled.

And I told myself I didn’t have a choice.

There were, of course, really only two seats in the car, the backseat pretty much big enough for just an umbrella or a purse. I realized suddenly that I was the reason my dad had had to set aside his precious automobile.

No room for a baby seat.

I glanced at the elder, who moved his arms to pantomime flying. I gave him a thumbs-up. Derek looked between me and the place where the dead elder stood, with an expression that told me he couldn’t see our companion.

I got in, was swallowed by the leather seat, and was amazed that my dad had given this up for me. It was completely deluxe, and so antique that it could have been from another planet. Slick, though.