Firestorm Forever: A Dragonfire Novel (36 page)

“Hey, if you don’t want to practice today, take it outside,” Thorolf said.

One of the kids pointed the cell phone at him, as if he’d fire it like a weapon.

Thorolf stopped cold, remembering how Marco had fired the darkfire crystal, just like that. “What are you watching?”

“A dragon getting his ass kicked,” the biggest kid said.

Unfortunately, they were also learning English from Thorolf and he resolved—again—to clean up his language.

The video didn’t help.

“Can I see, please?” he asked.

The kid came to Thorolf and proudly displayed the screen. The video played again, and Thorolf’s heart sank to his toes. Rafferty had been shot down by the darkfire crystal, and on camera! It wasn’t clear who had shot the crystal, but when Marco appeared, he had it in one claw. He snatched up Rafferty, soared high into the air, and disappeared.

“What the fuck,” Thorolf whispered and the kids immediately began to echo his words.

“Poof,” said the kid with the phone “He’s taking him somewhere else to kick his sorry dragon ass.”

Where was Marco taking Rafferty?

Had he really shot him?

There was no one else who could shoot a darkfire crystal, well, except Liz.

Had she done it? Thorolf couldn’t believe it.

He pivoted to find the class watching him. “Hey, we’ve got to cut it short today,” he said, then repeated that in Thai. He held his stomach. “I’m sorry. I don’t feel well.”

“Too much kim chee,” accused his neighbor with a smile.

Thorolf nodded and bowed. “I think so.” The truth was that Chandra couldn’t get enough of the stuff since she’d become pregnant. She was going through their neighbor’s homemade kim chee like nobody’s business. He never even got a bite. It was an excuse but he’d take it.

The truth was that he did feel sick.

He had to get back to the States and find out what was going on.

He had no idea how he was going to convince Chandra not to go with him—because at six months along, she shouldn’t really be flying so far—much less how he’d persuade her to be careful while he was gone.

There had to be a way.

* * *

Sam awakened with one thought resonating in her mind: she could confide in Sloane. She was alone in bed, although she could hear Sloane leaving the bathroom.

Confiding in him was both a terrifying prospect and one that felt right. She knew he’d be kind and compassionate, and she suspected she’d feel better just by saying the words aloud. Maybe it would hurt less if she admitted to missing Nathaniel, if she said out loud that she’d failed her son as a mother and as a doctor, if she admitted that she’d thought she had everything right when really she’d had a lot of it wrong.

It sure as hell couldn’t hurt as much as keeping it all inside.

Sam rose from bed with purpose and looked out the window. The night sky was filled with stars and Sloane was checking out something on his phone on the patio. She studied him with a smile, knowing his gentle persistence had helped her to start talking.

His confession about his father had cracked some resistance inside her, making her see that it was possible to embrace the vulnerability of love and its scars, yet still be strong. There was no doubt in her mind that Sloane was like a rock, but he also had such tenderness. Her smile broadened as she remembered their conversation the night before and she knew she wasn’t going to be able to keep her emotions out of this for much longer.

It might already be too late.

Was it possible that there was a man in this world who had it all?

If so, he was on her patio.

Even if Sloane didn’t have it all, he had plenty to suit Sam.

She joined him under the stars, running an appreciative fingertip across his bare back, then lit candles on the patio. “We could go for a swim at your place,” she said, glancing up at the clear sky overhead. She could tell him there, where they’d started, after they made love.

Or maybe before.

Sloane made a noncommittal noise and kept tapping at his cell phone.

“Oh, put it away, please,” she urged, unable to remember when she’d last bothered to look at the news. “It’s been such a good evening. Who needs the world and all its troubles?”

Sloane frowned. “Sorry.” He cast her an apologetic smile. Sam heard thunder in the distance, but more importantly, she knew that she’d lost Sloane’s attention. “I’ve got to go,” he said, his smile not quite reaching his eyes.

“What’s happened? Is something wrong?”

“No, I got a message from a friend who needs a hand,” he said, and she had an awful feeling that he was lying. “Occupational hazard.”

“Of running an herb farm?”

Sloane looked disconcerted at that, and Sam saw color rising on the back of his neck. What wasn’t he telling her?

“Or of whatever else you do that compels you to fly out suddenly?”

Sloane frowned. “I was just distracted by this video that’s going viral.”

“It seems that the only videos that go viral are the ones featuring those dragons.” Sam didn’t say any more. She knew better than to vent about dragons in front of Sloane again, because she wasn’t going to mess with a good thing. Let him believe what he needed to.

She knew dragons were evil.

“So was this one,” Sloane said with visible impatience. “They appeared in the middle of Melissa Smith’s broadcast from Easter Island.”

“Easter Island?”

“There were eggs there, that hatched into dragons.”

Sam shuddered. “I’m glad I haven’t looked at the news.” Sloane didn’t reply, just tapped away on his phone. “Doesn’t she get tired of insisting on the goodness of dragons all the time? Maeve O’Neill makes a lot more sense.” Sam might have said more but Sloane gave her a look that she took as a warning. She thought of his tattoo and forced a smile. “What’s the video?”

Sloane came to stand beside her. Sam watched the image on the small screen, feeling the heat of his arm against her own. He smelled good, too. She didn’t much care about Melissa Smith’s latest dragon broadcast, or the opal and gold dragon appearing on the display. She’d seen him in these videos before and was about to say as much when a woman shouted off-screen.

“This is for Nathaniel!” that woman cried just before the blue-green lightning was shot at the dragon.

Sam caught her breath.

What the hell was Jac doing on Easter Island?

It couldn’t be her sister. Sam had to be wrong. Her amorous mood was completely shattered, all the same. Sam dug in her purse for her own phone, then listened again to Jac’s message on her voice mail.

A retreat? Had Jac lied to her?

Had she gone to Easter Island in search of dragons?

If she had, Sam had a lecture for her baby sister about risk that would take a while…

Sam heard the gate in her backyard fence clang and looked up to realize that Sloane was striding home. He looked, actually, as if he had broken into a run.

And to Sam’s surprise, there were lights on in his house. They hadn’t been on before.

Maybe he
had
installed timers. It seemed like a reasonable explanation, but Sam couldn’t help thinking that both Sloane and her sister weren’t telling everything they knew.

* * *

Sloane burst through the door of his house, halfway afraid Sam would follow him. She hadn’t, but he locked the door behind himself and pulled down the blinds. He tossed his keys on the kitchen counter and strode into the great room.

“Great Wyvern,” he whispered when he saw Rafferty sprawled on his floor.

The older
Pyr
was on his back, his eyes closed. His gut was badly burned and Sloane found it telling that he’d only managed to pull on one leg of his jeans when he’d shifted shape from dragon form.

Marco was crouched beside Rafferty, shaking his head. “I didn’t mean for it to happen. I didn’t know she’d do it.”

Sloane had never seen the Sleeper agitated about anything.

Not that it was going the help Rafferty any.

“What happened?” Sloane demanded. He bent over Rafferty and listened to the
Pyr
’s breathing, put his hand on his chest to feel the beating of his heart. The beat was faint, too faint for Sloane’s taste, and the burns were extensive. They seemed to be crackling with blue-green light before his eyes, as if the darkfire had slipped beneath Rafferty’s skin and continued to burn.

“I listened to the darkfire,” Marco confessed. “I trusted its counsel.” He raised his gaze to Sloane. “But the darkfire lied.”

“Rafferty was hit with darkfire,” Sloane said, recalling the blue-green light in the video. “Where did it come from?”

“From the crystal that had been extinguished. It lit again.” Marco put the crystal on the floor beside Rafferty, his hand shaking. The flame within it had died to a tiny point of blue-green light, as if its power had been transmitted to Rafferty. Sloane didn’t understand darkfire well, none of the
Pyr
did except Marco, and he felt out of his depth.

Again.

“It betrayed me,” Marco whispered.

It wasn’t the time for regret, in Sloane’s opinion, but for action. “Do you remember the Cantor’s songs?” he asked urgently. “The ones that harness the darkfire? We might be able conjure the darkfire out of Rafferty’s body, if you taught me the songs that command it.”

Marco got to his feet, his expression horrified as he stared at Rafferty, and Sloane wondered whether the other
Pyr
had even understood the question. Marco looked shell-shocked. “He only ever did good for me. He saved me from Magnus before I was even born. He guarded my sanctuary at Bardsley Island, and he took custody of the crystal until I could claim it. He awakened me from my slumber, trained me and taught me.” His expression turned bleak. “And now he’s going to die, because of me.”

“Rafferty doesn’t have to die. You can help me,” Sloane appealed. “Help me with the Cantor’s songs!”

But Marco was backing away. “I don’t trust the darkfire any more. I don’t trust it to do any good at all.”

“Wait! Where are you going? I need your help!”

“I’m going back to finish what I started,” Marco said with grim resolve. Then he closed his hands into fists, tipped back his head, and shimmered vivid blue.

“No!” Sloane bellowed, but it was too late. He blinked once, and then Marco was gone.

He had to solve this alone.

Somehow.

Sloane looked down at Rafferty, then flattened his hands against the older
Pyr
’s chest. He had only the Apothecary’s healing songs at his disposal, and maybe that was best if the darkfire had turned against the
Pyr
. Darkfire was unpredictable and turned situations upside-down for the
Pyr
, making improbabilities into reality.

Maybe Rafferty’s condition counted. Sloane had to think that saving the older
Pyr
was a long shot.

Maybe his songs would be enough. Sloane began to sing softly, putting his heart into his chant because he couldn’t imagine a future without Rafferty Powell in the ranks of the
Pyr
. He could feel a crackle beneath Rafferty’s skin, one that made the hair on his arms stand up and he had a hard time believing it was a good sign.

Sloane had his eyes closed and his focus on his task was so complete that he didn’t see the darkfire flicker and snap in the crystal, burning more steadily as he endeavored to heal the Cantor’s grandson.

* * *

Jorge felt darkfire ripple over his scales and lifted his head to survey the ruined cavern that had once been Chen’s lair. There was no mistaking the sudden appearance of blue-green sparks where the darkfire crystal had been broken by Marco the year before. The Sleeper had used the crystal to free Lee from his brother Chen’s spell. The darkfire bounced around the cavern now, its activity interrupting Jorge’s feast of the fallen clone.

Jorge had a hearty respect for darkfire. It was unpredictable, to be sure, but since first one crystal had been broken by Chen and the second by Marco, he’d been able to make improbable things happen—like animating those thirteen clones of Boris Vassily that Sigmund had left. Although the
Slayer
’s experiment had been left unfinished by his death, and although Jorge knew little of such biological feats, just bringing the eggs to the cave seemed to have helped. Jorge had watched the darkfire slide over the shells until he had dreamed of them hatching, beneath the light of a blood moon.

It couldn’t be a coincidence that the turn of the moon’s node from Dragon’s Tail to Dragon’s Head would be marked by four lunar eclipses in a row that were blood moons. He’d failed to understand the importance of location early enough to take advantage of the first blood moon. He’d moved the thirteen eggs since then and was glad that five had hatched, exactly as he’d planned. He knew the rest would do the same.

But the darkfire’s abrupt activity made him suspicious.

What was happening in the world above? The mate he’d captured was securely imprisoned, and she had little more use to him until her pregnancy was confirmed. The fourth of the Boris Vassily clones hatched in this batch was dozing contentedly after his meal, one eye on Jorge with a wariness that was appropriate.