Hidden Dragons (33 page)

Verdi let out a cheep that sounded like an objection.

“Don’t join the fight,” she insisted. “I don’t want the bad faeries to get angry and hurt you. You three are very important.”

She added an urge to hurry. To her relief, the green dragon heeded her. He nudged Scarlet and Auric with his snout, and the trio flapped off—nearly silently—to another stall farther in. The horse they’d joined whuffled and then fell quiet.

Cass gazed at Nate. He was seriously out. He hadn’t moved while she chivvied the dragons. Without a body, she couldn’t slap him and couldn’t yell. Hinges creaked. The outside door to the stables was swinging open. The glittery radiance that shot through the gap warned her the queen was approaching.

Crap
, she thought, and then:
Here goes nothing
.

She willed her astral
into
Nate’s physical form.

He jerked as if he’d been jolted with a taser.
Wake up!
she thought as loudly as she could.

“Jesus,” he muttered, which she perceived both as a sound and a thought inside her mind. “Ergh,” he added, so she guessed he didn’t like the sensation of her consciousness inside his.

Stay awake
, she ordered.
Ceallach is still alive. He and the queen spelled everyone to sleep. Joscela is at the door. Ready your weapon to hold her off. I’m going to wake Rick
.

“Where . . . dragons?” he wondered sleepily.

Ruthless, Cass pumped more energy into him.

Nate’s eyes flew open. He sat up straight and grabbed the gun. Acting on reflexes too quick for her to follow, he had it braced on his shoulder with his finger on the trigger.

“Time to take a trip,” Joscela cooed halfway between the outer door and the stall. Nate sighted down the thick barrel.

Go
, he thought more or less at Cass.

She couldn’t afford to stay and see what happened. Nate’s gun seemed like it could cut through anything, but she knew how powerful the faeries were and how good at recovering from attacks. Nate needed Rick to back him up. She forced her focus to return to the house. Her astral moved sluggishly. She’d given Nate a lot of juice to help him stay awake. She couldn’t shift from place to place lightning fast anymore.

Rick
, she thought, concentrating harder.

She wished he were there to say a prayer. God help them all if she didn’t reach him in time.

~

Something—or someone—nudged at the borders of Rick’s awareness. He put up his guards automatically. He was Adam’s second, a power in his own right. People weren’t allowed to hop into his dreams whenever they wanted to.

“Oh for God’s sake,” he heard the would-be intruder huff. “I’m not trying to glamour you, only wake you up. The flirt let me do it. Why do you have to be stubborn?”

That was Cass’s voice. What was she doing here?

“Rick,” she pleaded. “The dragons need your help. No matter what you think of me, try to wake up for them. Wake up for Nate. Your pack mate is defending them all alone.”

He was awake. He was listening, wasn’t he?

“Damn it.” Hands grabbed the sword he’d strapped to his back, two sets of fingers wrapping the electrum hilt. Instinctively, he knew she planned to use it as a magical conduit to him.

Hey
, he thought a second before what felt like a bazillion amps of electricity zapped his spinal cord.

“Aughh!” he cried out aloud. He sat up and rubbed his twitching back muscles. Okay, now he really was awake, instead of dreaming that he was. He looked around, but the only other person in the room was Adam, and the alpha was sound asleep. “Cass?”

Here
, she said.
I’m on the astral
.

He saw a shimmery shape that resembled her. His heart thumped hard and he lost his breath. “Tell me you’re not a ghost.”

No
, she said.
But I should try to get back into my body. Joscela and Ceallach want to abduct me
.

“Ceallach!” Rick struggled to his feet and swayed.

He’s alive. Sort of. You should behead him all the way this time. He spelled everyone in the house to sleep. Please don’t let Nate accidentally shoot you. And Joscela was disguised as Jin, but I don’t think she looks like her anymore
.

Cass’s voice sounded funny, even allowing for it being inside his head. Actually, it sounded like she was about to cry. Had he hurt her that badly when he walked out on her earlier? The thought made his throat feel tight. “Cass—”

Go
, she urged.
I’ll follow as soon as I catch my breath
.

Every muscle he had protested leaving her. Should he tell her to wake Adam, or would that take too long? He didn’t like the idea of her physical body being vulnerable, but he didn’t like sending her consciousness into the line of fire either.

Make up your mind
, he ordered himself.

“Be careful,” he told her glowing form.

Then he was off at werewolf speed. He descended a set of stairs in two bounds, his shoulder bumping the wall as his balance recovered from his involuntary nap. A long corridor blurred by, the carpet runner buckling slightly behind his feet.

As he ran, he tried to think with the same swiftness. He wished he knew a way to approach unseen, but the back grounds didn’t offer much cover. Whipping out his sword and hoping for the best hardly seemed like a surefire plan.

The
brup-brup-brup
of a submachine gun sounded outside. That was good. Probably. As long as Nate was wielding it. Maybe Rick should have found Carmine and grabbed his firearm. A sword
and
a gun would have improved his odds.

It was too late for that. He’d almost reached the doors to the rear terrace. The gun barked again. Suddenly the air flared bright and made a whumping sound. Rick heard a canine yelp.
Shit
. That was Nate. One of the faeries must have forced him into wolf form. Nate wouldn’t like that. The last time that was done to him had been nightmarish.

More motivated than ever, Rick burst into the open with his sword drawn.

Rather than make himself a stationary target, he accelerated and overleaped the three combatants. His eyes had to work fast as he vaulted them. He saw a slender female faerie with Nate crouched snarling on his paws before her, both of them near the stable door. Rick landed and rebounded off the grass, striking the earth again closer to Ceallach.

The electrum neck brace the faerie wore startled him. Even so, he calculated the angle needed to lop off his head beneath it. He swung, all his power behind the long sword’s hopefully fatal strike.

Then he saw what Ceallach had in his arms: Cass’s body, limp and helpless without her soul in it. Rick had to check his swing, in case the faerie decided to use her as a shield. Ceallach smiled, not as brightly as before but bright enough. His muscles gathered, and he threw Cass at Rick.

This he wasn’t expecting. Rick caught her awkwardly with one arm. Her weight made him stumble, and her skull hit the grass. Fortunately, her spirit had jumped back in.

“I’m okay.” She pushed upward on unsteady legs, shaking her head to clear sleep from it. “I’ll help Nate with the queen.”

He had to let her. He couldn’t take on both fae himself.

Ceallach saw his dilemma and grinned wider. He drew his sword with a metallic hiss. “The halfling is mincemeat,” he promised, “whichever way this goes.”

~

Cass was probably lucky she didn’t have time to be afraid. Nate was circling Joscela, hackles lifted and ears laid back. Could wolf’s teeth rip off a faerie’s head? Nate certainly seemed game to try if given an opening. The queen was on her feet, staggering in her now-holey sundress but still dangerous. Nate had shot her many times. From each bullet wound, light radiated—her pureblood power healing them. If Cass could retrieve the gun, which Nate no longer had hands to shoot, maybe she could weaken her further.

As she scrambled forward to grab it off the lawn, an odd thing happened. At the exact same second, Nate leaped at the queen with a horrible growl. He hadn’t looked around, and Cass hadn’t tried to reach him mentally. He’d simply intuited what she intended and provided a distraction.

He was behaving as if
she
were his pack member.

Predictably, the queen’s magic threw Nate off before he could get to her, smashing him into the stone stable with a nasty crack. As worrisome as that was, Cass now had the chance she needed to squeeze off a line of shots without hitting him. She braced herself for the gun to buck, and got a good hold around the grip. The magazine held a lot of rounds. She pulled the trigger and kept it down, refusing to lose her nerve as Joscela strode through the hail toward her. The royal waved most of the bullets off but not all. Those that didn’t come near her head, she simply let hit her. Cass did her best not to waver. She meant to keep shooting until she ran out. This wasn’t about killing Joscela. This was about forcing her to use her power for something other than attacking them.

At least it was until Joscela snatched the gun by the barrel and tossed it behind her like a toy. Its strong recoil had knocked Cass onto her butt. Though the queen wasn’t big, per se, she stood over Cass like a giantess.

“You
dare
,” she said, power gusting from her like wind. “A mongrel like you cannot be my equal. You couldn’t get a lowly wolf to love you without glamour.”

She put magic behind those words, twisting Cass’s worst fear into what felt like truth. But so what if Rick didn’t love her? So what if no one did?
She
knew how to love. As long as she did, she’d never give up fighting for what she cared about.

“You’re one to talk,” she panted. “You’re the one who’s forcing your lover to serve you against his will.”

She’d scored a point with that. Anger glowed in Joscela’s lilac eyes.

And then her attention split. Ceallach cried out in pain. Rick must have wounded him. Joscela sent her power to him in an arc like a solar flare. The sending stretched higher than the stables and was intense enough that Nate also perceived it.

He’d limped back from where the queen had thrown him. He looked at Cass, his eyes beast wild and human determined. He jerked his wolf head toward Rick and Ceallach’s fight. She thought she understood what he was saying. Ceallach was Joscela’s Achilles heel. No amount of electrum ammo could weaken her like him.

Cass had no time for indecision. Joscela and Ceallach were the superior force. Though capable of moving faster than wolves or halflings, they’d grown used to thinking in terms of decades for achieving victories. Split-second actions could work against them—if they were the right ones.

Cass sped to Rick so fast she knew she’d called on magic to get her there. He had Ceallach on the ground. The male fae had lost his sword somehow, and the pair was wrestling for control of Rick’s. Rick’s blade zapped Ceallach with buzzing blue bolts of power, but the fae was ignoring the discomfort. Royals really must have high pain thresholds. Cass reached through their straining arms and took a death grip on his collar.

Doubting she could snap it, she didn’t try. She’d honed one particular skill when she lived Outside: drawing power from sources that didn’t naturally give it up. She drew Ceallach’s energy through the conduit of the neck brace faster than the queen could replenish it, faster in fact than her half human body was designed to absorb it. Ceallach felt her draining him. White began to show around his eyes, his breath panting from him in distress. Rick hadn’t allowed himself to react when she appeared at his side. This, however, caused him to glance at her.

“
No
,” Ceallach said, trying to compel her with his glamour.

Cass clenched her jaw and pulled harder. Nate was attacking the queen again, giving Cass precious seconds to build up momentum. Already the stolen power was altering her perceptions. Some sense she hadn’t known she had could see in every direction without turning. When Joscela hurled Nate into the stable wall again, Cass threw him power for healing.

As she did, the queen sent more to Ceallach. Cass sucked that up as well. Ceallach moaned, caught in the tug of war. His face resembled a death’s head, his skin sinking inward toward his skull. Cass knew this was a terrible thing she did, but as his energy overfilled her, the strongest emotion she experienced was exhilaration. She’d been half a power all her life. Finally, she knew what it meant to be whole.

Her skin started shooting sparks like a pureblood’s.

Joscela swore in high fae and tried to attack her and Rick with raw magic.

Cass grabbed that power too before it could harm them.

“Careful,” Rick said.

He put his hand over hers where it gripped the collar. Anger rose quick and hot. Who was he to drag her back to smallness? She’d had more than enough of that. Then she saw what his eyes were saying. That he loved her. That he trusted all she needed to return to herself was a single word of caution.

This was a faith she couldn’t disappoint. She spun the magic she couldn’t hold into a protective bubble around them. Ironically, that gave her room to draw up more.

“Stop!” Joscela screamed, beating the barrier with her fists. The power she continued to try to feed to Ceallach streamed over its surface like water.

“Please,” Ceallach gasped, his veins standing out in ropes.

Cass read the struggle in him: that he wasn’t certain what he was begging for. He’d stopped fighting Rick, his body splayed helpless beneath the two of them.

“You want to let go,” she said, knowing she spoke the truth. “You want to be released.”

“I don’t . . . want to leave her alone.”

“You’ll leave her alone if you stay. She can only heal your body. Your spirit will be dead. How will you love her once that happens?”

Ceallach closed tortured eyes, and a single tear rolled out. “Will you kill her?”

Cass wasn’t sure how to answer, but Rick squeezed the fae’s shoulder. “I’m pretty sure Death isn’t the horror immortals fear it is.”