Holy Smokes (23 page)

“You
challenge
me in front of my people?” he asked, stepping closer so that we stood toe-to-toe, the threat very evident in his voice and body language.

“No, I do not challenge you,” I said, trying to keep a hold on my temper. That was a lie, of course—I wanted nothing more than to smite him where he stood.

Oh, a smiting. I haven’t done that in a long, long time. You know, it really is your duty to protect those weaker than you. You owe it to this poor, innocent woman to teach Fiat a lesson.

“I don’t want to belittle you in front of your dragons, but I will not stand by while you beat up someone who can’t strike back,” I said as evenly as possible.

“Do not mistake my tolerance of your past insolence as a given,” he answered, leaning forward, his voice low and so mean it raised the hairs on the back of my neck.

I took a step closer. “As long as we’re into the warnings, let me remind you who I am and what I control. I may look like a squishy little Guardian, but I assure you I am as badass as they come.”

“Oui,”
Rene said, taking up a position on my left. “As am I.”

“I’m not bad…er…ass, but like Aisling, I will not stand by and watch someone being abused by you,” Nora said, moving into a flanking position on my right.

My heart warmed with the show of support.

Oh, give me a break!

“It’s a weak man who has to prey on those weaker than himself,” Uncle Damian said as he emerged from the shadowed hallway that led to the bathrooms. He took up a position behind me. I flashed him a grateful smile.

“You mess with Team Aisling, you’re going to be kissing the pavement,” Jim snarled, showing its teeth as it marched over to stand in front of me.

“You dare? No one threatens me!” Fiat yelled, causing me to stumble backwards into my uncle. He righted me, keeping a warning hand on my arm.

He didn’t need to hold me back—Fiat’s face was suffused with anger, his eyes blazing as he suddenly leaped to the top of the bar. “You will not speak to me in such a manner! I am wyvern here, and you will show respect to me at all times! Kneel before me, Aisling Grey.”

“Oh, that is so not happening,” I told him, my arms crossed as I tried to decide if I needed to call in Drake or not. On the whole, I thought not. Uncle Damian and Rene were pretty intimidating.

“Still bullying women, eh, Fiat? I see you haven’t changed, not that I had any hope you would,” a voice said from the door. Fiat’s head snapped around, his shock at seeing the man standing there apparent for a fraction of a second before he turned to me and yelled something extremely unflattering.

“
Cazzo!
You did this!” he screamed. “You will pay for such treachery!”

A fireball hot enough to melt steel blasted me. Rene yelped and leaped to the side. Nora screamed as the fire engulfed her where she stood next to me. I hurled myself on her, throwing her to the ground and covering her with my body in order to protect her from Fiat’s fury.

“Stop it!” Bastian bellowed, marching into the room with three dragons in close formation behind him, pulling Fiat’s attention to himself. “This will stop now! Aisling is not to blame—it was inevitable that I face you again.”

The conflagration eased up on me, but judging by the sound of breaking glass, I suspected Bastian’s ploy at invoking Fiat’s wrath had worked.

“I am the wyvern here. You do not give me orders!” Fiat shrieked before erupting into violent Italian. The dragons in the bar were apparently frozen at the scene being enacted before them, all of them watching with shocked faces.

Clearly, there wasn’t going to be any help from them. “Uncle Damian, call an aid unit,” I yelled as I slid off Nora, hurriedly checking her over for injuries.

“I’m all right, I’m not hurt,” she said quickly, crawling backwards as the flames burning the floor crept toward us. “Just a little singed around the edges.”

“Are you sure?” I asked, helping her up. Uncle Damian, thankfully protected by being behind me, had escaped any injury. He checked Nora over quickly before giving a curt nod.

“No injuries, although that coat won’t be the same. Don’t these places have fire sprinklers?”

Fiat leaped off the bar and stormed over to Bastian, still blasting him with fire and Italian. He stopped long enough to call for his henchmen, pulling a gun from his jacket, which he leveled at Bastian.

“Most dragon establishments are heavily fireproofed,” I told my uncle. “They don’t need sprinklers.”

“Renaldo and Stephano won’t answer your call,” Bastian told his nephew. “They have been…
detained.
”

Fiat screamed even louder.

“Man, I haven’t heard language like that since Amaymon kicked me out of his legion. Fiat’s got quite the mouth on him,” Jim said, watching the dragons from behind the safety of my legs. “Go, Bastian! I never did like those two.”

“Do you think I am afraid of you?” Bastian laughed outright in Fiat’s face, causing the latter to turn an interesting shade of crimson.

“Bastian gets points for style, but boy howdy, I don’t think I could stand in front of a raving lunatic armed with a deadly weapon and mock him,” I said quietly as I helped Nora take off her still-smoking coat.

“And yet that’s pretty much just what you’re planning on doing,” Jim said. “Ash, I know you’re immortal and all, but I’m thinking you may want to get out of the line of fire until we see what shakes down.”

“I’m in complete agreement,” Uncle Damian said, taking me by the arm and pulling me over to a spot behind the bar. “Stay here.”

I would have protested being hustled out of the area, but given my present circumstances, I stood half-hidden by the wall and watched as Bastian and Fiat duked it out. The dragons in the bar had finally come to life at the appearance of Fiat waving the gun at Bastian. They formed a loose circle around the men, Bastian and his three buddies facing Fiat alone.

“The sept is mine, old man. Mine!” Fiat snarled. “And I do not allow disrespect in the sept, much less mutiny! You and Aisling may have thought you could get rid of me, but I assure you, I am in full control. And now you both will die for your treachery.”

“We are leaving,” Uncle Damian said, moving quickly to grab me and haul me toward the back rooms.

“No,” I said, grabbing onto the doorjamb and holding tight. “I can’t leave, uncle. Not until I see if Bastian is going to take down Fiat.”

“It’s too dangerous. That idiot dragon just threatened to kill you.”

Jim’s laughter was more a bark than a laugh. “Death threats are old hat to Ash.”

“They really are, you know,” I told my uncle, giving his arm a little squeeze. “People have been trying to kill me from day one, and I’ve survived, so really, a few wild threats from Fiat aren’t going to scare—”

The sound of gunfire exploded in the close confines of the pub. Uncle Damian knocked me against a wall, shielding me the way I’d shielded Nora.

“I’m all right, save her,” I yelled into his chest, pushing him back in order to make sure my friends weren’t being slaughtered.

Nora was crouched down behind the bar, peering over it with Rene.

I squeezed out to see what was happening. Two of Bastian’s company were on the floor, one male, rolling in obvious pain as blood stained the floor around him, the other a woman who was sobbing as she tried to rip off the man’s shirt to see how badly he’d been injured.

Fiat slammed Bastian up against the wall, holding him off the floor in an impressive display of one-handed strength. Another dragon stooped and picked up the gun from where Bastian had evidently knocked it from Fiat’s grasp. He looked unsure of what to do with it, holding it as if it were a toad about to spit warts.

Uncle Damian jetted past me, snatching the gun from the dragon before the latter knew what was happening.

“Uncle, don’t—” I started to say as Uncle Damian pointed the gun at Fiat.

“I believe I’ve seen enough,” he said, but before I could stop him, several of the surrounding dragons jumped him. He went down in a flurry of fists.

“Stop this right now!”
I bellowed, leaping forward, drawing wards as fast as I could. Nora saw what I was doing and jumped into the fray, her hands flying as she bound the dragons to the floor, leaving them unable to move.

Rene jumped on top of the dragons who had piled onto my uncle, flinging them off until he was down to the Uncle Damian–flavored center.

“I have had enough!” I continued, turning a glare that warned of serious consequences on the couple of remaining unbound dragons. They backed off, with the exception of the woman named Marta. She snarled something and leaped at me with hands curved into claws. Jim broadsided her and knocked her backwards into a table. She went down with a clatter of chairs. I quickly bound her to the floor, then slapped an additional silencing ward on her to stop her stream of abuse.

I turned back to where Fiat was spitting Italian at his uncle, his fingers digging deep into the flesh of Bastian’s neck.

“You wanted me as a mate, well, fine, I’m your friggin’ mate, and I’m telling you to stop right now!” I yelled at Fiat, marching over to him.

“Aisling, stay away!” my uncle shouted.

Nora hastily drew a protection ward on me, hitting all four sides, the wards shimmering golden in the air for a moment.

I didn’t want to pull Fiat’s fire at all, didn’t want to feel it, didn’t want to use it, didn’t want to gain strength from it, since it was tantamount to betrayal of Drake’s fire, but I didn’t have time for the finer points of my feelings. I pulled hard on it and slammed the fire back into Fiat, not causing him any harm, but distracting him enough to release Bastian.

“Maiala,”
he snarled at me, spinning around to face me.

“Yeah, whatever. Bastian, do it.”

Bastian got to his feet with the help of his remaining friend, his face mottled red, his eyes blazing a fury to match Fiat’s. It was almost like seeing some sort of a twin act when they were face-to-face—they really were remarkably similar in appearance, but there, thank god, the similarities ended.

“By the laws governing the illustrious sept of the blue dragons, I, Bastiano de Girardin Blu, wyvern by right of tanistry, do hereby issue a formal challenge of transcendence to Sfiatatoio del Fuoco Blu.”

Fiat laughed, a scary sort of near-hysterical laugh, the kind that screams straitjacket and lifetime supply of happy drugs. “You have tried to take the sept from me three times, old man, and failed. What makes you think you can do it this time?”

Bastian had challenged Fiat before?

“Oh, man, that doesn’t sound good,” Jim muttered.

“Yeah. He didn’t tell me he’d challenged Fiat before and lost.” Doubt entered my mind for the first time since meeting Bastian. I’d been so certain that all he needed was a helping hand to get out of his imprisonment, I’d never considered that perhaps Fiat was just too strong to be overthrown. If the overthrow failed…I shuddered at that unthinkable conclusion. “I do not want to think about what evil sort of punishment Fiat will have his sept work up for me if he beats Bastian.”

“It ain’t gonna be pretty, that’s for sure,” Jim said in a repulsively cheerful voice.

“I will succeed because I must,” Bastian said with much dignity in reply to Fiat’s comment, tugging down his shirt and dusting himself off. “It is true that you have managed to manipulate the circumstances of my challenges in the past, but this time, I am prepared for you.”

To my intense relief, Fiat’s anger had morphed into a wicked sort of amusement, still dangerous, but not explosive…at least for the moment. “You put too much faith in the power of my mate. She cannot help you. Do you not know? She is proscribed, banned by her own people, and far too stupid to understand the power she could wield.”

“Don’t fool yourself,” I started to say, but Jim stomped on my foot in warning. I shut up.

“This is not about your mate, although I understand the lady disputes your right to call her that,” Bastian said evenly. “This is between you and me. You will leave the others out of it.”

Fiat glanced at the three dragons who had accompanied Bastian. The one he’d shot—whether by mistake or intentionally, I wasn’t sure—had evidently recovered from the bulk of the trauma and was sitting in a chair while the woman wiped blood off his stomach. The third man stood warily next to Bastian. “I need no others to aid me. But I have a long memory, a very long memory indeed, and I remember equally those who serve me well, and those who do not.”

The man next to Bastian edged away a smidgen, licking his lips nervously.

“As do I,” Bastian said.

“Name the form the challenge will take.” Fiat crossed his arms and tipped his head to the side, as though he was finding the whole thing highly entertaining.

Bastian smiled.

I fell for that smile just as I was sure Fiat did, for even though his dragon senses were more heightened than mine, he didn’t react when Bastian suddenly lunged forward, a black metallic item in his hand. There was a faint sizzling sound, followed by a crash as Fiat toppled to the floor, his body jerking violently. Bastian lurched over him, holding the black thing to his neck for another few seconds before stepping back.

“Taser,” Uncle Damian said as he took up a position be hind me. His left eye was swollen almost completely closed, blood dribbling from both his nose and lip, a nasty-looking welt seeping more blood from a spot on his forehead. He stood somewhat crooked, as if he couldn’t straighten up. “Effective but not lethal. Good man.”

“This is the challenge,” Bastian growled, jumping back from the still-twitching body on the floor before him. “You lose.”

The silence in the bar was of the stunned quality. I was just as taken by surprise as everyone else, gawking in obvious confusion as Bastian took a long, slow look at everyone in the room. “Make it known to one and all members of the sept that upon this day, I have taken my rightful position as wyvern by defeating Fiat Blu in challenge.”

I opened my mouth to say that that wasn’t quite how I understood challenges to take place, but snapped it shut with out uttering a word. Who was I to complain if Bastian used the same sort of dirty tactics that Fiat had used?