Dragon's Heart (6 page)

“I wasn’t sure he would have me,” Mick admitted as he buried his face in the crook of Lester’s neck to hide his embarrassment.

“Are you kidding? Lester was so ga-ga over you I was stunned he didn’t beg you to come along,” Nicholas added his two cents.

“I didn’t think he would come with me,” Les said as he smoothed his hand down Mick’s back in a loving gesture.

“Oh, damn. They’re going to be like Duncan and Trent now,” Nicholas groused. “All handsy and stuff.”

“What’s wrong with that?” Trent asked with a grin.

“Nothing other than the fact that it gets annoying after, oh, about two minutes.”

Trent pointed at Nicholas. “You just wait until the day you meet your mate. Then things will be different.”

Nicholas rolled his eyes. “That’s never going to happen. I’m not in the mood to settle down any time soon.”

“We’ll see about that,” Trent said ominously.

Nicolas narrowed his eyes at his brother-in-law. “Is that some kind of sorcerer mumbo-jumbo crap you’re playing on me?”

Trent spun around and began walking towards the table. “Now, Nicholas, you know I would never do that to you. I promised never to work my magic on your tiny brain.”

“Darn straight you did,” Nicholas retorted, before he thought a moment. “Hey, did you just call me stupid?”

“Kind of.”

The banter went on that way for the rest of the meal. Soon Mick and Lester joined in and it was just like a family meal should be. Mick couldn’t remember a time when he’d been more content and happy, even though he knew they still had a lot of hard work ahead of them getting Lester ready to face his many enemies.

Chapter Six

The next couple of weeks seemed to fly by. In the mornings, Lester would be stuck reading through the old, dry books. Which at times were a bit interesting, although he’d yet to reach the Elvish ones. They continued to linger at the bottom, calling to him—like a kind of challenge that he wanted to get to, yet at the same time dreaded for some odd reason.

In the afternoons, he would work with Mick. While Lester had been unable to call forth his dragon so far, he could feel it lingering beneath the surface, just scratching to get out. Instead of encouraging him, that only frustrated him all the more. He felt like he was sooooooo close, yet he kept failing at the last moment.

One particular afternoon, Lester lost his cool and punched a nearby tree, bruising his knuckles in the process. Mick reached out, took his hand and kissed away the pain.

“Getting angry isn’t going to help anything. Your dragon will know when it’s the right time to come out.”

“What if that never happens?” Lester rasped, finally giving voice to his biggest fear.

Still holding onto Lester’s hand, Mick gave it another kiss. “It will. Sometimes when we’re fucking, I can see flashes of him in your eyes. He’s just dying to come out.”

Lester let out a dry chuckle. “Well, let’s hope if he does, you’re on top. If not, it might be a tad uncomfortable for you.”

Mick let out a snort of laughter as he hit Lester on the chest. “Don’t even joke about that. It gives me the shudders just thinking about it.”

Lester picked him up and spun him around. “Like I could ever hurt my mate like that. I treasure that ass too much.”

“Just the ass, huh?”

Letting Mick slide down his body, Lester planted a heated kiss on Mick’s lips. “No, I treasure every inch of you, Mick. You know that.”

* * * *

Lester let out a sigh as he thought back to that wonderful day. It was kind of hard, now that he was once again cooped up with all of Trent’s old books. Was it Lester’s imagination, or were the damn things multiplying? If he didn’t know better, he’d swear the young sorcerer was sneaking in at night and adding more, just to extend Lester’s torture.

Lester finished off one about Albert the Not So Laudable and how he’d lost the great battle of Dark Waters to the dragons because of his over-inflated ego. Personally, Lester thought it was just because the guy was a jerk who didn’t know his ass from his elbow. But hey, who was he to talk? He was just a half-breed bastard. What did he know?

It wasn’t until he had pulled the next book onto the table in front of him that Lester realised that it was the first of the Elvish ones. His breath hitched in his chest and his heart began to pound so hard that he could physically hear it.

With shaking hands, he opened it. He didn’t know what to expect, but something deep down told him that it would be tremendous and that his life would never be the same again. A tiny, cowardly part of him wanted to call out for Trent, so he could be with him during this moment, but Lester had an inkling that the sorcerer was already close by and watching.

Lester looked down at the open pages, fully expecting to see nothing but gibberish, but to his utter amazement, the letters began to glow. Not just a normal light, either, but a bright golden hue that covered the entire room.

At the same time, the letters reformed themselves into a language that Lester understood. He found his lips moving quickly as he spoke the words, not because he wanted to get them out, but because he
had
to get them out. It was as if he had been waiting all his life to speak them, and now that the time had come, he couldn’t get the incantation out quickly enough.

A hand came down on his shoulder and Trent’s voice came close to Lester’s ear. “You’re doing great. Just slow down a bit.”

So Lester took a deep breath and forced himself to speak more slowly, taking time to enunciate each word carefully. A wind picked up in the room, swirling loose papers every which way. The golden light began to whip around as well, making it so they were in the middle of some great magical vortex. It should have been scary as hell, but for some reason, Lester found it quite beautiful.

Once Lester reached the end of the spell, everything calmed down. The golden light faded away, the papers settled down to the ground and the wind died down.

Lester turned to Trent, who was grinning like a loon, and asked, “What in the hell was that?”

“You just managed your first spell.”

Lester took in a shaky breath. “Did it ever occur to you to give a guy some warning?”

“I couldn’t. It doesn’t work that way.”

Nicholas, Brian, Duncan and Mick came rushing into the room, all of them with their swords out.

“What in the hell is going on here?” Brian roared.

Trent gave them a dismissive wave. “Oh nothing big. Lester did his first spell.”

Mick ran over and gave Lester a big hug. “I’m so proud of you.”

Trent started to bounce on the balls of his feet. “This is much bigger than you guys think. It means we can go get one of the Black Scrying Bowls.”

“What are those?” Duncan asked. “And why haven’t you mentioned them before?”

“Because it takes two sorcerers to use them and I didn’t want to get everyone’s hopes up if we couldn’t. If I can get my hands on one and use my powers combined with Lester’s, we may be able to track down where all the captured Dragon’s Eyes are. It will be like a map.”

“Why didn’t you tell us sooner?” Brian repeated. “We could have kidnapped a sorcerer and forced him to help us.”

“Like I said, I didn’t want to get everyone’s hopes up. Plus, the other sorcerer has to be willing.”

“We could have made him willing,” Nicholas scoffed.

“Willing enough to climb a small mountain that is protected by a nest of Harpies? Because that’s where the scrying bowl is. It has to be retrieved by two sorcerers, too. One won’t do the trick.”

“And since I can’t change into my dragon form yet, we’ll have to climb it,” Lester said dully.

Duncan came up behind him and put a heavy hand on Lester’s shoulder. “Don’t worry. We’ll be there, helping all the way. We can take care of some Harpies.”

“Yeah,” Nicholas added, “piece of cake. They won’t know what hit them.”

Trent shrugged. “They do have a point. The last thing the Harpies will be expecting will be for dragons and sorcerers to be working together. It may just set them off enough for us to be able to get to the scrying bowl with our asses intact.”

“That makes me feel so much better,” Lester said with a nervous laugh.

Mick came up from behind Lester and gave him a hug. “
It’ll be all right, babe, I’ll be there protecting you the entire time.”

Somehow, his reassurance made Lester feel better than all the others combined. He sank back into Mick’s embrace, taking comfort in his mate’s touch.

“I’ve never even seen a Harpy before. How bad are they?” Lester asked.

Trent gave him a droll look. “Think of your worst nightmare then multiply it times ten. That should get you close to how ugly and mean they are.”

Nicholas let out a shudder. “I ran into one in a dark alley once and I still have nightmares about it.”

“Why? Did she try to attack you?” Lester asked.

“No, worse. She wanted to have sex with me. There’s not enough beer in the world that could make me do that…thing.” Nicholas gave another shudder.

“Serves you right for hanging out in dives like that in the first place,” Brian admonished him.

Nicholas gave a wicked grin. “Ah, come on. A guy has to get his fun somewhere. I hate to break it to you, but it can be as boring as hell around here at times.”

“Well, things are about to get more exciting. Round up the troops—we’re about to go play with the Harpies,” Brian said as he left the room.

“Wow, he doesn’t waste any time, does he?” Lester said once Brian was gone.

Duncan shook his head. “Not when it comes to dragons who are captive because their Dragon’s Eyes are being held. Since it happened to me, it’s become personal to him.”

“What should I do to get ready?” Lester asked, as the enormity of the situation came crashing down on him.

They were all counting on him—the bastard. The child who’d been shunned and pushed aside all his life. Now he was going into battle with only a couple of weeks of training crammed into him and Lester honestly didn’t know if he was up to the task at hand. He did know one thing—he couldn’t let them down. Not when they were all counting on him so much.

Trent flipped through the book until he got to one particular page. “You need to memorise this incantation. It’s what we’re going to have to say when we reach the top of the mountain and touch the Black Scrying Bowl. It’s how we’re going to release it into our power. But we have to say it together and can’t mess up or stumble the words at all.”

“No pressure there,” Lester muttered under his breath.

He sat down and began to study the incantation. Of course it couldn’t be a short thing, either—it had to be a mile long and full of more
thous
and
thees
than Shakespeare and the Bible combined. Lester didn’t see how he was ever going to get it memorised in time.

Then he thought about all those poor dragons who were being held captive and how they would be able to help them. He knew he had no choice. He
had
to do this, because bastard or not, he was their only hope. He let out a sardonic laugh. He only wished that his mother-in-law had lived long enough to see this. It would have been good for her to eat some crow for once in her life.

All around Lester, chaos rang out as dragon warriors showed up, getting ready for battle. He did his best to tune them out, so he could concentrate on memorising the spell. It was a damn good thing that his memory was near perfect or else they would be in big trouble. By the time Lester had read it through the tenth time, he was finally getting a grip on it.

“How is it going?” Brian asked as he came up and put a hand on Lester’s shoulder.

“You’re not giving me much time here,” Lester pointed out.

“I know, but we could have dragons dying even as we speak.”

“You really suck when it comes to not pressuring people. You know that, right?” Lester said.

“I’ll try to work on it. Now, do you have that thing memorised or not?”

“How far away is Harpy Valley?” Lester asked, not even sure if it was called that or not.

“About an hour’s drive.”

“Let’s go, I can have it down by then.”

“Are you sure?”

“Do I have any other choice?”

Brian paused and gave him a sad look. “I’m sorry you have all this weighing you down. This isn’t how I wanted your homecoming to be.”

“Yeah, seeing as how I didn’t think there was ever going to be a homecoming in the first place.”

Brian came up and took the chair opposite of Lester. “I want you to know that we have always considered you our equal, despite what Mom or Dad may have said or done. I never have nor will I ever see you as anything other than one of my brothers, just the same as Duncan and Nicholas.”

“But I’m not like them and we both know it,” Lester felt compelled to point out.

Since they were having the deep conversation, might as well lay all the pieces out there. That way they could move on and not have to ever look back again.

“No, you just happen to have some extra spice to you. That’s all,” Brian said with a soft smile. “Look, you didn’t ask to have a sorcerer for a mother, any more than we asked to have a dragon for one, so why should you feel ashamed for it? You’re our brother, our kin, and nothing is ever going to change that. I just wish there had been more that we could have done to protect you when we were kids. If I live to be a thousand years old, that will be my biggest regret.”

Lester was so touched by Brian’s words that he didn’t know how to process them. “Are you telling me all this to boost me up, so I don’t mess up, or because you’re afraid we may not make it back?”

Brian’s lips kicked up into a crooked smile. “I’ll admit, in any battle, there’s always a chance we won’t be coming back. Not only do we have the Harpies to worry about, but I’m pretty certain that the sorcerers are going to guess that we are coming and have the place guarded. So I’m not going to lie and say it’ll be an easy mission. But that’s not why I told you all that stuff. It’s because it was high time you heard it. In fact, I should have said it to you years ago and I’m ashamed that I didn’t.” Brian looked down at the table where his hands were clasped together.