God of the Abyss (40 page)

I started to reach for her, because that was the only
way I knew to comfort her, but I hesitated a second before and let my hand
fall. A shudder ran through her, as if she also felt the space between us like
a windy canyon.

“I would have married you,” I said. It was no secret;
we had talked about it before.

“The saddest words: what might have been? You wanted
kids. You love Divina much more than you ever loved me. Take Sammy. He’s the
best thing that ever happened to me, but he belongs with you.”

I suddenly remembered the dozens of times my mother
told me I was the worst thing that ever happened to her. “Sammy will always be
a son to me, and to Divina,” I said. “Why wouldn’t you even look at him? Why
didn’t you ask him if he was happy? Or ask him what he wanted?”

“Neither of us are good parents. We love him, but
Nano and I are having problems right now. Taking him back would be unfair to
him, and I can’t keep saying goodbye. I want to be with him. If I spoke to him,
if I hugged him like I wanted to… Hell, I wanted to ask him what was going on
in his life. I just couldn’t stand to hear…”

“You were afraid that if he was happy without you, it
would break your heart. And if he was miserable without you, it was your fault.
I get that. Everyone has problems. We keep them away from our kids, we don’t
leave our kids.”

“All of the Guardians have a story. All of them have
a reason for being who they are.”

I loved Vivian. When I left Vivian and fell in love
with Divina, I was very confused. At first, I thought I was just selfish, but
then I thought I really didn’t love Vivian at all. Unfortunately, love is very
complicated. I did love Vivian, it just wasn’t the same kind of love as I had
for anyone else.

This woman was my best friend on Earth, who I would
have happily married and spent my life with. However, I always knew something
was missing, and that was why we never got any further than we did. It wasn’t
until right then that I realized what prevented us from working together. I had
been playing house while she was trying to escape responsibility.

This is where we were, and there was no backtracking.
Before I could say anything, there was a banging on the door.

“Enough talking, Dylan! We need you out here!” I
heard Nano yell. “Give me back my mate!”

Vivian laughed and I opened the door, letting her go
to the Guardian. I went out on the porch to find every Guardian standing around
in some state of distress. Ghidorah had a sick expression on his face like his
skin was trying to crawl off. Everyone else looked like they had just seen a
terrible accident that they couldn’t really believe.

“Why has the magic stopped?” Shiloh asked. Everyone
turned to me.

“The gates to Duran have opened. This happened on
Dios and there was an earthquake a moment later.” I raised my hand when Nano
went to speak. “Nila, Edward, and I have already taken care of the people we
could. It only lasted a few hours before the wave hit again and magic was
returned. The thing is, we were several years in the past. How do you not know
about it?”

“There have been major quakes in the past, but maybe
it has something to do with the power of the gates. Or maybe it was during a
vacation.”

“You have to get the magic back,” Ghidorah growled,
approaching the porch. He stopped about six meters in front of me when Hobble
jumped between us to hiss at him. “I use only nominal energy and it is very
dangerous for others when I am without magic.”

“What are you?” I asked. I felt something like a
presence over him, or more particularly, behind him. It felt like when you are
alone in your house and you think you see something move out of the corner of
your eyes. When you pass a mirror and for an instant you think you saw
something that wasn’t supposed to be there.

“I tried to show you before. Now I am trying to hold
back. You can feel it, right?” he asked. I nodded. “You have to get the magic
back.”

“Xul!”
I yelled in my head, sending out my
energy to amplify my thought across the worlds to reach him. None of the other
Guardians gave a sign of having heard me, because without their magic, they
couldn’t read my mind.

He appeared before me instantly, right between
Ghidorah and me. “You need me already, master?” he asked. His sincerity fell
flat.

“The magic here was cut off by the gate. I know it’s
only temporary, but these grown men here are having hissy fits. Is there
anything you can do?” I asked.

“The period of loss of nominal energy is a reflex of
the gates opening. I can only speed it along.” He turned to glance behind him
and when he saw Ghidorah, he screamed. The demon actually screamed. Then he
ducked behind me like I could shield him from the grouchy man. “Keep him away
from me!” he begged.

Ghidorah rolled his eyes and crossed his arms. “I will
not reserve judgment just because you serve Dylan.”

“You can’t do anything to me without your magic!” the
demon yelled, panic making his voice shake.

Ghidorah grinned like a mobster. The kind that had
trained snipers on someone. “You misunderstand. I cannot stop myself without my
magic.” The sense of a spectral presence grew until the demon vanished.

“What did you do?” I asked.

“Nothing, he just disappeared. If he does as he said
and speeds the process to recover the magic, I may actually spare him.”

“If he does what I told him to, you will leave him
alone.”

“You wish to atone for his crimes?”

“Never. I will make him expiate for them himself.”

“I will be the judge of his penitence. If I feel he
has not fully paid for his crimes, I will execute his punishment.”

“Then you and I may have a problem with each other,”
I said. His eyes widened as if he couldn’t believe I would oppose him. Without
another word, I flashed back home.

Edward and the boys were sitting at the table with
his cards and Edward was trying to teach the boys the rules to his favorite
card game. Honestly, Edward taught me how to play snapdragon, and there were no
rules. The win of the hand depended on the weather, the time of day, the time
of month, the season, the color of the room, the seating position, the number
of people playing, the number of hands played… and the list goes on. Sometimes
they would give up and flip a coin to find a winner of the hand. The games
could last a few minutes or a week.

Once, Divina was so determined to win that she would
stop the game repeatedly to wait for changes in time, drag other people in,
change seats, and anything else she could think of to play the cards she wanted
to the way she wanted to. When it was clear that Edward had won that game, he forfeit;
he told her she won. She was very gracious about it and that was the end of it.

“Why did the demons attack right when we were there?
It was the same on Malta. Are they after us?” I asked.
If so, Mordon could
be in danger.

He set down his cards and regarded me with a resigned
solemnity. “I think the demons are being drawn to the objects. Unfortunately,
that means that history will change. The gates to Dios were opened, and I can
only assume that history will collapse in on itself. It could be happening now,
it could have been happening for years, or it may not happen until all the
gates are open. All I know is that it sounds like the gods are frightened of
it. I think there is only one thing that can stop the gates now.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“You,” he said. There was no sarcasm or disbelief in
him, only honest faith.

“I’m going to get Mordon. Do you want to stay here or
return to your place?” I asked.

Edward returned his focus to his game. “Are you
kidding? There are eight old Guardians there, all having mental breakdowns. Why
in the world would I want to be there with them? I don’t even want to be around
them when they’re calm.”

I sighed. “Is this council going to work? Is there
any way that Shiloh can keep everyone in contact? That the Guardians will ask
for help when they need it?”

He considered me for a moment, shuffling his cards
blindly. “If a Guardian needs help, he will first deny it. Then he will turn to
his god. When his god turns suspicion on him, he will try to hide. If you want
to change that, you’ll have to train it out of them. Shiloh’s concept is a good
one, it’s just that we are all really thick-skulled and set in our ways. Some
of us, like Emrys, are more open to change because we’re not all there to begin
with. For some, like Ghidorah, you will have to shove change down their throat
and demand they like it.”

Both of the boys stared at Edward like he just told
me to murder everyone. “On that note, I’ll be gone,” I said, flashing to
Mordon. I felt perfectly safe leaving my young, impressionable sons in the
hands of my not-all-there uncle-father.

Mordon

I landed to find Dylan sitting
upon a pile of rubble. Unlike Emiko and Krayer, I was a proper-sized dragon; I
towered over my friend. “Took you long enough. I took the liberty of healing
the injured. I hope you don’t mind. And I locked your traitor in the dungeons,
since the castle held up pretty well.” He studied me for a moment. I couldn’t
even manage to be surprised that he knew it was me. “Shift back, Mordon.” His
tone was gentle, as if he knew he would have to convince me.

I was afraid to shift back
because I didn’t want to be stuck as a sago again. Rojan needed more time. I
roared, since words could not be formed with my dragon tongue.

“I don’t speak dragon,” Dylan
said, then winced as his eyes glowed green for an instant. “Oh, hell, I need to
superglue my mouth shut.”

“I am not ready to shift,”
I said in his mind.

“Now that you have shifted, you
will probably be able to regularly shift back and forth. If you can’t, I will
find a way to make you able to. I promise, Mordon. But you need to come back
now.”

I observed my friend, unsure what
to do.

Shift back,
Rojan said
unexpectedly.
It is better to be stuck a person than a dragon when all of
our family are people. If he says he can help us to shift back and forth, we
should trust him. I think not even the laws of nature can stop Dylan.

I tried to shift, tried to will
myself back to being a person, but my body didn’t change. Rojan’s warning about
being stuck set off a panic until I roared my frustrations to Dylan. He held up
his hands.

“It’s okay. I can help you.
Picture yourself as you were this morning. Picture yourself with flesh and
arms. Think of your blue and purple eyes, your flat teeth, your abnormally
large ears.”

I growled and snorted smoke at
him. He sighed and stepped forward. Rojan wanted to back away because Dylan was
breakable and I didn’t know my strength yet. For all I knew, my scales would
burn him. Even as I retreated, he crept closer until his hand settled on my
muzzle. With his fingers so close to my teeth, he couldn’t have looked less
afraid. Still, it unsettled Rojan and I had to struggle to keep my snout
closed. I opened my wings to take off, but Dylan put both his arms around me in
a hug, so that any sudden movement would certainly hurt him. I settled down on
the ground because to let him do whatever he wanted was better than accidently
hurting my friend.

The image assaulted my mind;
Dylan was picturing me and sending it to me with so much force I could think of
nothing else until I felt the cracking and shifting of my bones. It started out
slow and painful as my bones and body shrank. My wings disappearing into my
back hurt the worst, but by the time I was once again my usual size, my entire
body ached.

Dylan reached out and his eyes
glowed before a blanket flew into his hand. I didn’t bother to wonder where it
had come from. I was exhausted. It wasn’t until Dylan wrapped the blanket
around me that I realized I was covered in sweat and shivering from the cool
morning air. “I read that with werewolves it gets easier after you shift a few
times, so I hope it does with you, too,” he said. Although I was leaning
against him, I was regaining my strength quickly.

Emiko chose that moment to shift.
Unlike me, she did not appear strained from it. Nor did she make a motion to
cover herself.

“Holy shit,” Dylan said. I glared
at him, but he was focused on her. He put his hands over his eyes, then spread
his fingers to peek.

I growled and placed myself
between them. “You’re married.”

He leaned around me to see her.
“And happily so, but it’s like beautiful art. Just because Divina is my Taj
Mahal, doesn’t mean I can’t admire the neighbor’s house. It’s not like I want
to do anything with, or to her.”

I growled again, but Dylan would
never take my warnings seriously. He was the last person in this world that I
would attack. Maybe one day I would learn why.

“What are you doing here?” I
asked. “I thought you were going to wait for me to come back.”

He finally took his eyes off of
Emiko. “We’re running out of time. The gates are opening and the Ancients are
free. We need to get the artifacts. However, I did show up in time to heal
these people. There were only a few sago and dragons left. One of them, I
locked up. While I was healing, I was also scanning their minds for any
malicious thoughts. I’m afraid I found the person responsible for poisoning
your Emiko.”

He picked up the green cloak that
Emiko had lost during shifting and handed it to her. She put it on and though
the cloth failed to cover her entirely, it made it easier to think. Dylan led
us to the dungeon, where one cell was occupied. Inside was the little boy who I
saw with the servant at the ship. I inhaled the boy’s scent and started
sneezing as my eyes watered. Grabbing Emiko’s arm, I pulled us both away, the
shifted my eyes to see that the little boy, no older than Ron, was as rotten as
could be. I never saw a child so young who was so hateful, but he definitely
had the blood of many people and dragons on his hands.

“How could a child do this?”
Emiko asked.

“You never scented him?”

She shook her head. “I never
bother to suspect children.”

“Dragon culture,” Dylan said,
rubbing his hand down his face. “I wish I could say the same, but humans are
different.”

“Humans?” Emiko asked.

Dylan shrugged. “If she’s going
to be with us much, she’ll find out eventually,” he said. I considered Emiko.
“And
if she has a problem with me being from another world and my wife being a god,
I can wipe her memory of me.”

I looked back at my friend with
shock.
“Since when can you control the mind like that?”

“Side effect of a talk with
Vretial. We can talk about it later.”
“Are you ready to go?” he asked
aloud.

“Wherever you are going, I am
going with you,” Emiko insisted.

“I’m not babysitting,” my friend
warned.

“Your kingdom should be safe now,
Emiko.”

“I was not begging in fear, nor
am I offering. I will go with you. I heard everything you said to the dragon.
You are a mystery, Mordon, and I hate unresolved mysteries.” She glared at me,
but somehow it didn’t make her face any less pretty.

“Your girlfriend looks like a
pissed off kitten,”
Dylan said.

“She is a dragon. Nothing
about her is harmless,”
I told him. “How did a little child get wrapped up
in this? Surely he didn’t act alone.”

“According to his memories, he
was approached by Isera. He hated the life of a servant that he would grow up
to be and resented the dragons for it. He thought he could make a better life
for himself and his father. It seems his father let him do it because he was
too afraid to stop the little kid. That and he didn’t want his son getting
caught trying to poison the queen. Nobody would suspect a child, so it was easy
for him. He could put the poison in food or even just touch someone. He rubbed
the plant into the fibers of his sleeve so that anyone who touched his hand
would be poisoned.”

“Are we still at risk?” I asked.

“Would I let you be at risk?” he
scoffed. “You might feel a little sick breathing the air in here, but it can’t
hurt you and since you’re able to build up a resistance to it, I think it’ll
actually help you.”

“How do you know we can build up
a resistance?”

“Because you already have. So, I
assume the boy wasn’t given all of the poison, so Isera’s pack can still be a
threat. You need an antidote.”

“My family physician, Mokomo, has
created one.” I put my hand on Emiko’s shoulder. “Send your most trusted dragon
to my father’s kingdom for the antidote.”

She glanced from me to Dylan
suspiciously. “Do not leave without me. Wait right here for my return.” She
then turned and walked out of the room.

“Let’s get going,” Dylan said. We
have to get the lotus wand now and I worry where it might be.”

“Why? What’s wrong with the lotus
wand?”

“So far, each of the artifacts
have been predictable; the water cup in the water city, the fire wand with the
dragons… the lotus wand is spirit. I can’t help but worry that the spirit
artifact will be in the spirit world.”

“Are we taking Emiko with us? If
we do, you have to be careful. Emiko is not family. You must treat her like
every other Sago that would have you hung for being of another world.”

“If she goes with us, she will
find out about me. So either we leave her behind or you explain to her who and
what we are. If you trust her. If not, I can wipe her memories. Decide now
because we have to go.”

*          *          *

The bright light cleared to
reveal Dylan’s cabin. Emiko was shaking slightly; however, her outward
expression was unaffected. Ron and Sammy nearly knocked me over with the force
of their hugs. Then they turned as one to Emiko.

“Boys, this is Kaori-mor Emiko.
Emiko, this is Ron and Sammy,” Dylan said.

“Your children?”

“Yes.”

“Do they have demon powers like
you?”

“Daddy, I don’t like her. She
smells like a bad person,” Ron said. Edward stood from his seat at the table
and I pushed Emiko behind me.

We took her with us because we
thought it was unfair to leave her without answers. Although we thought a
dragon would be open-minded to the truth about the gods, especially a young
one, neither of us trusted her. I could smell that she was devious and wicked,
yet there was more to her than that. When the dragon breathed ice-fog, it could
have killed me, but she pushed me out of the way. Most people wouldn’t do that,
let alone a dragon.

Even though she was resistant to
the cold, unlike me, she was still as susceptible as a sago. She could have
died.

Dylan was watching me with a deep
and thoughtful expression, as if he was reading my mind and weighing my
feelings against the fears of his sons. Then he nodded to himself, not looking
happy about his decision. “Don’t worry about it, Ron.”

The boys looked at each other.
Whatever it was between Dylan and I, the boys were the same. Dylan and I didn’t
grow up together, so we were still discovering the things we could do, whereas
the boys seemed to know exactly who they were and what they could do together. Like
their father, they always figured out what was going on before anyone else, and
like their mother, they knew when to share and when not to.

I went into Dylan’s room to
borrow some of his clothes. We had given Emiko time to dress, but my clothes
had been torn and there was nothing on the island I could use. I couldn’t fight
with a blanket wrapped around me.

When I returned, Dylan was
rifling over the table, clearing a space for the map and crystal ball. The fire
wand tried to roll off the table, but I caught it. My fire soared as if I was
being attacked and a ball of flames burst from the tip of the wand. I dropped
it, but when Dylan caught it, nothing happened.

“What did you do?” he asked as
Edward frowned thoughtfully at the charred wall.

“Doesn’t Divina have a fireguard
spell over the cabin?” Edward asked.

“Yes. It prevents any unplanned
fires. She’s going to be mad. I’m not covering for you.”

“I didn’t do anything, though. I
just grabbed the wand and my fire reacted. And besides, your wife would kill
me; you can’t tell her I nearly burned her living room. She already wants me to
stay outside.” I examined the wooden wand in his hand closely for the first
time, without touching it.

It looked to be the perfect sized
wand for me, like it would reach from my elbow to my fingertips. There were
four evenly-spaced, gold rings, the first making up the base of the wand.
Between the rings it was bright red with sigils and foreign letters, not
English, written in green paint. The flame-shaped tip was mostly red with a few
twisting, wavy bands of gold. In the gold paint on the flame were the same
letters and sigils. On the very tip of the flame was a very small, flat piece
of metal.

“It was nice knowing you,” he
said. He went the door and opened it. “Now get.”

“Daddy!” Sammy cried with
astonishment. He would understand when he was older that his father just had a
facetious sense of humor.

I went to the door where Dylan
handed me the wand, careful to point it outside. Once again, as wood touched my
hand, my fire burst through it. This time, instead of a ball, it came in the
form on a thin, continuous stream of fire all the way to the trees.

“Can you stop it?” he asked.

I tried to pull back my fire;
however, it wouldn’t stop, and my fingers refused to loosen. My fire was acting
as if to defend me. “I can’t stop it and I can’t let go,” I said. Dylan pried
my hand off the wood and the fire finally settled down.

“Well, we know what that does,
now,” he said. He started for the table when he paused and turned to Emiko. “You
have fire inside you like Mordon does, right?”

“Dragon fire, yes.”

He returned to the door and
waited for a moment. Emiko looked at me as if for assurance, but she knew what
Dylan wanted. I moved out of the doorway and she came forward to take the wand.
Nothing happened.

“Does your fire feel agitated at
all?” I asked.

“No. I feel nothing unusual.”

Dylan took the wand back to the
table. “So it is something specific to Mordon.” He started to sit in the chair,
then turned and leaned against the table instead. “How did you shift?” he
asked.

“Your demon came to me,” I said.
I saw in Dylan’s eyes that he knew exactly what I was talking about. “He said
he made a deal with a devil and I assumed he was talking about you.”

“Yes, about that, maybe a little
deal. Nothing serious. He just might drop in when you need him,” he said.
“His
name is Xul. Be careful to not use it where others can hear.”