Soul of the Dragon (35 page)

But he was more than exhausted. His stores of energy had dissipated, and he had not the strength to summon more. It had come down to hand-to-hand, not one of Tarsuinn’s strengths.
 

Finally, at the end, Ryc had backed Tars to the wall. “You are a fool,” he said quietly just before backhanding Mark away from him. The assistant had tried to sneak up on Ryc and hit him with a shield, but he was no match for the man who was still clearly the powerful son of a lord.
 

“Perhaps,” Tars had replied. “I don’t know another way.”
 

“You haven’t looked for it,” Ryc said savagely. Tars looked into his nemesis’s eyes and suddenly longed for the days when they had still been friends. Ryc’s hand tightened on his throat. “Centuries of agony you have caused, for petty jealousy. I could kill you now.”
 

Tars did not know what mercy Ryc had found that caused him to release the mage. He had made one last attempt to remove the obstacle from his path. A small stream of atmospheric energy drifted past. Tars caught it and used it to knock the brazier into Ryc’s legs. But Ryc did not fall. He did not even look back as he left the tower.
 

Mark had offered to go after him, naïve zeal in his eyes as he rubbed the butt of a gun under his thumb. Tars had stopped him, told him to gather his things and go back to the States. He was resigned to loss—bequeathing his battle to another would be folly.
 

Tars was afraid, now, that sending Mark away so cavalierly had been a mistake. One of many, but what good came of comparing one against the other? Soon, he would have to go to that cabin in the forest. He would end the war, but not before a final battle. Another’s battle, but one for which he was responsible.
 

He had been foolish to trust his assistant, to give him so much power. The idiot had apparently decided he deserved more than the commission on the sale of a multi-billion-dollar company. Though what he thought he would gain by his actions, Tarsuinn did not know.
 

Mark had revealed some of his intentions before he’d run out the door behind Ryc Dreugan. He’d said something about the women, though Tars did not know to which women he referred. He’d sneered a lot, and made some threats, then fled. Fled, no doubt, to act out a scene
from a low-quality gangster movie, or some such nonsense. Tars had to accept the blame. Mark was his protégé. He’d learned greed from a master.
 

He meditated a few moments longer, trying to clear his mind and relax his body. It was difficult. His heart fought his head. It sought the familiar rage and yearning, but Tars finally knew that allowing them control over reason was not the way to end this. That had proven true too many times. He should have learned much, much earlier. Perhaps a thousand years earlier.
 

He sighed and rose. Without bothering to light the brazier, he circled the room, gathering his things. He didn’t know where he would go, or what would come of his sanity without the quest for Alexa’s heart. But he did know he would never return.
 

Alexa had circled the cabin six times and caught herself nodding three more when she finally heard the
whoosh
overhead. Cyrgyn uncloaked as he drifted to earth, then immediately shrank and transformed in the blink of an eye into the man she loved.
 

Before he’d finished turning toward her, Alexa was off the porch and in his face.
 

“You bastard,” she growled, following that with a roundhouse punch to his jaw. Ryc stumbled back and raised his hands, but she didn’t hit him again. “That’s enough,” she said. “But you have a lot to say to me.”
 

“That’s for sure.” Ryc winced as he shifted his jaw. “Good hit.” He motioned to the porch. “Can we sit there?”
 

“If we’re quiet.” Alexa led him to the step, shifting away when he sat too close.
 

“Where do we start?” he asked.
 

“Let’s begin with why. Why did you lie to me?”
 

Ryc sighed. Of course she’d start with the hard one. He looked at her and it was all he could do not to take her into his arms, plunder her mouth, plunge into her and forget all that had happened today. But he’d known this moment would come, and he had to face the consequences.
 

“Cyrgyn and I are two halves of a whole,” he explained. “About a hundred years ago I figured out I could shift back to my human form.”
 

“How?” Alexa interrupted.
 

Ryc shook his head. “I’m not sure. I hadn’t been with you for a century, and I was getting desperate, knowing this would be our last chance. I think I just wished it, and concentrated hard enough to make it happen. It only lasted a minute, but I was so happy to have something to focus on I spent entire weeks working on it, not eating or sleeping until I was ready to drop.”
 

He shifted his legs. God, he was tired. He’d had a surge of adrenaline in that last fight with Tarsuinn, but even warding off the ineffective attack by the weasely assistant had taken a toll.
 

“There are problems with the transformation,” he continued. “I don’t have much control and can’t maintain it forever. Sometimes for a few hours, sometimes for a few days.”
 

“Which explains why you had to leave the church so suddenly, yet you could fly cross-country with me without switching back.”
 

“Right. The more energy I expend, especially doing magic, the quicker I switch back.”
 

“But why the lies?” She sounded wearier than she did angry, so maybe she’d accept his explanation. His very strange, very incomplete, explanation.
 

“As Ryc, I can remember everything. Every event—every minute, really, of Cyrgyn’s life, as well as my own. But when I’m Cyrgyn, I can’t consciously remember what happened when I was Ryc. So it’s like being two separate entities.”
 

“But Cyrgyn knows things he had to have learned as you.”
 

“I communicated with him. Long messages on paper left in his cave. Or hangar.” She didn’t return his attempt at a smile. “He can read, of course, and somehow retain some
knowledge that I gain, but as far as my consciousness goes, he’s locked out.”
 

Alexa bounced her clenched fists off her knees, frustration evident in her gritted teeth and furrowed brow. “But that doesn’t explain why you didn’t tell me. Either of you.”
 

Ryc sucked in a deep breath, then blew it out. She wasn’t going to like his answer, he knew that without trying. He cringed as he said, “Cyrgyn thought it was better that way.”
 

“Cyrgyn is you!” she shouted immediately.
 

“Not to you. You knew him as the dragon in your previous lives. I didn’t have the ability to hold this form for long until the past five years or so, so
he
came to you in reality and in dreams. Then he thought it would confuse the issue, or diffuse the urgency, if you knew about me.”
 

Alexa’s hair flew as she shook her head vigorously. “Why couldn’t you just override what Cyrgyn thought? For that matter, why do you talk as if you didn’t agree but had to comply, anyway?”
 

How to explain something Ryc didn’t understand, himself? “I tried, once. The pain was horrific and I didn’t try again.” He rubbed his jaw where she’d hit him. “It’s the curse. The creature has control. I don’t know if my ability to manifest is due to dragon mythology or if it’s part of the curse. It’s your last life. The purpose of my existence could be to intensify the pain for both of us.” It surged in him then, new and strong…and
physical
. What was happening?
 

“Cyrgyn hates me,” he went on. “He hates that I am partly responsible for his existence. And I hate him. I hate that he took over my life and kept us apart. We really are not the same, Alexa.”
 

“I guess that makes a weird kind of sense,” she admitted. The last remnants of anger had left her posture and her voice. She sat hunched over, her arms folded tightly against her. “So, last night…”
 

Ryc tugged her hand free and waited until she looked at him. “That was both of us,” he said. “All of me. I held nothing back.”
 

“And?”
 

He rested his forehead against hers. “And I—”
 

She jerked back from him and looked toward the cabin. An instant later the door opened and he became aware of a high-pitched tone hardly more than a ringing in his ears.
 

Rock reached out and grabbed their sleeves. “Get in here. We’ve got a trigger.”
 

They scrambled inside and shut the door.
 

“Can you tell where?” Alexa asked, pushing her hair back as she studied a box with a flashing red light.
 

“No,” Rock said and would have continued, but Ryc interrupted.
 

“It’s Tarsuinn. He’s behind the cabin, but he’ll be at the door in a second. He’s not hostile.”
 

The others looked at Alexa, who nodded thoughtfully. “I can feel him, too,” she said. “He’s putting out signals. I don’t think they’re deceptive.”
 

She turned with Ryc to face the door. It opened, and Tarsuinn stood framed in silhouette. A wave of déjà vu, loaded with all the emotions he’d ever felt for the man, flattened Ryc. Love, hate, anger, dismay, respect—all had been held at bay by adrenaline when he’d stormed the tower. Now, they held him immobile.
 

Alexa had no such problem. Anger flowed from her as she strode forward. “What are you
doing here?” she demanded, stopping a foot from Tarsuinn.
 

“I have a lot to say, and not much time in which to say it.” He gently closed the door behind him. A cut on his cheek, about six inches long, still glistened. Ryc had done that. Or rather, Cyrgyn had, when the mage had regained consciousness and tried to throw the dragon across the room.
 

Alexa eyed the mage, knowing they couldn’t trust him. She’d given him a chance before, and he’d reverted to type quite quickly. “You have thirty seconds,” she said. Tars smiled sadly.
 

“I wish that were true.” Before he could say anything more, the alarm sounded again and the red light flashed around them.
 

Kurt crossed the room and picked up the mage by his lapels. “What’s going on?”
 

“It is not me,” Tars said, unperturbed. “At least, not directly. I am afraid I have created a monster.” He glanced at Ryc, then at Alexa. “Another one.”
 

A second later the door banged inward and Tars’ assistant pushed two women into the room ahead of him. Ahead of him and his machine gun.
 

“An Uzi, Mark?” Tars curled his lip. “Didn’t you learn some finesse unde
r my employ?”
 

Mark’s hair was mussed and his trousers ripped, but he looked calm and focused. He held the gun comfortably and aimed it directly at Victoria Chambers. That didn’t put Aunt Ethel out of danger. His other hand held an automatic pistol to the older woman’s head.
 

Alexa was still assessing the situation and planning her move when Peter rushed forward, rage contorting his face. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” He stopped when Mark poked Victoria with the Uzi. The young woman cringed, but despite a few scratches and an air of exhaustion, she seemed unharmed.
 

“Tars forgot a little detail,” Mark taunted. “When he came in here to offer his ‘surrender,’ he didn’t tell you about his little backup plan, did he? Didn’t tell you how his devoted little sister did his bidding and kidnapped poor Aunt Ethel to use as insurance.” He scratched his scalp with the pistol and turned to Tars. “Or was it bait?”
 

In the single second the gun wasn’t on her, Ethel scooted around Alexa and behind the burly men lined up across the room. Alexa allowed some of her tension to decrease now that her aunt wasn’t in immediate danger. The older woman wasn’t stupid.
 

Mark, however, was. He had no idea what he was up against. An FBI agent, a private operative, an angry fiancé/nephew, and three mages. He didn’t have a chance.
 

She had no clue, however, what he was doing or why. She wanted to find out before they drilled him into the dirt, so she tried to figure out how to hold her friends back. Before she thought of anything, she felt a wall of energy divide the room. Judging by the looks on Rock’s and Kurt’s faces, they were aware of it as well. They didn’t like it, but they didn’t show it. Much. She looked at Ryc, who nodded once.
 

Mark didn’t look trigger happy, so Alexa moved closer to Tars to address the important issue. “What did he mean, surrender?”
 

Tars studied his employee. “Apparently, he knows more than I thought he did. But now is not the time.” He looked down at her, and the depth of the sadness in his eyes shocked her. He was giving up.
 

As much as she wanted to pursue that, though, she had to admit he was right. First things first. “And my family?”
 

“I did speak with Victoria,” he admitted, glancing apologetically at his sister, then with harder eyes back at Alexa. “After you manipulated her into alerting me of your arrival, I encouraged her to come here to assist me. I believe bringing Ethel was her own idea.”
 

Victoria’s demeanor suddenly changed. She straightened and tossed her hair over her shoulder. “Well, I do get one occasionally.” She glared at them all, her gaze not softening even when she looked at Peter. “I’m sick of always being on the outside,” she said. “Brave Alexa with her exotic job, sharing secrets with her brother, my
fiancé
,” she spat, “who can’t be
bothered to tell me about his stupid dreams. I have to learn about them by eavesdropping.”