Light My Fire (18 page)

“Wise?” Her voice had a Spanish accent that became more noticeable as she shrieked. I had a few moments of
trouble with the fact that she didn’t look any older than
Drake—or me, for that matter—but pushed that aside to
cope with the important things happening before me.
“You are as insolent as your father was! If I had known
you would shame me in this way, I would never have al
lowed them to rip you from my belly!”

Pal and Istvan sidled toward the door.

“I think I’ll just take Paco for a walk,” Nora said qui
etly, following the two men. She slid me a sympathetic
glance as she left. I gave her a feeble smile and wished
like the dickens I could escape with her.

“And you are being deliberately insulting,” Drake answered as the door closed behind Nora. “If you are
finished—”

“I have not yet begun to express myself,” she snarled,
storming toward me, her black eyes lit with an unholy
glint.

Jim stood up, the hackles between its shoulders stand
ing on end as it gave a low-pitched warning growl. I
stared in surprise at Jim for a second. It had never
growled before, not even when various people were try
ing to kill me.

Catalina stopped, waves of hostility rolling off her. I
wondered what I had done that set her so against me.
“The mortal has a demon. How fitting.”

My
hackles rose at the tone in her voice. I sat up
straighter, aware that Drake moved closer until his leg was pressed against my arm. “Do not, Mother,” Drake
said, the note of warning back in his voice.

Her eyes narrowed on him. She spat out something that had me flinching, even though I didn’t understand it. “You dare to criticize me? You made this choice,
Drake. You cannot blame me or anyone else for having this response to your slap in the face of dragon tradition.”

‘Tradition has been broken in the past and survived,”
he said somewhat cryptically.

“Cabron!”

I pursed my lips. I knew from watching Spanish-
speaking TV that Drake’s mother had just called him a
bastard.

“A backhanded insult if ever there was one,” he
replied, releasing my shoulder to walk over to her. She
was a tall woman, both taller and bigger than me, but not as tall as Drake. He loomed over her in a menacing fash
ion. “Are you finished, or is there a bit more bile you wish
to work out?”

“You are as abominable as your father,” she snarled, her face tight with fury. “The day I was cursed with you
both I fell to my knees and begged the Virgin to take me!
I would have rather had my heart ripped out from my
chest than know that my son, flesh of my flesh, bone of
my bone, would shame me in this way!”

Drake had evidently had enough. His face was almost
as dark as his eyes. “For Christ’s sake, Mother! I have
mated with a mortal woman, not a goat! There is no dis
grace in Aisling being human.”

“Tradition—”

“Can go to hell as far as I’m concerned,” Drake bel
lowed, startling everyone in the room.

It had an interesting effect on his mother. She stood
still for a moment, then suddenly smiled, satisfaction positively dripping off her. “There is more of me in you than
of your accursed father.”

I watched in utter surprise as she leaned forward and
kissed Drake on the cheek. She gave me a narrow-eyed
look that was downright frightening, then turned on her heel and left the room without another word.

The silence that filled her absence was almost deaf
ening.

Drake looked at me. “You are no doubt expecting an
explanation.”

“Oh, yes. About a whole lot of things, but foremost why
your mother took such an instant and all-encompassing
dislike to me. What did I do wrong?”

“Nothing. She has a volatile temper and is happiest
when raging about something or other. She evidently de
cided to pick a minor point in dragon dogma to use as an
outlet for her latest tantrum.”

I allowed him to pull me to my feet. My legs were still
a bit boneless after our romp in bed, the fire inside me
banked but not quenched. I leaned up against him, inhal
ing the wonderfully Drake scent that never failed to make
me shiver with delight. “You’re talking about that thing
where wyverns have one human parent, right? So she’s upset that rather than take a dragon mate so one of your
kids will be a wyvern, you picked me?”

“I didn’t exactly pick you,” he said, escorting me
through the hall to a side passage. “It just turned out that
way.”

“Well, you know—” I started to say but stopped when
my name was called. I hurried back into the main hall.
Nora raced down the stairs from the upper floor, her bag
of Guardian things in her hand.

“Pal, would you watch Paco for me? Normally I take
him with me, but this time he might be considered a
snack. Aisling—oh, there you are. Come quickly; there
are blight hounds in the tube station.”

“Blight hounds? Oh. Sure. Gotcha.” I grabbed my
purse and started after her. “Jim, heel!”

“I really hate it when you do that,” my demon gram
bled, shambling after me. “I may look like a fabulously handsome and intelligent dog, but that doesn’t mean I’m
going to act like one!”

“Pal will accompany you,” Drake said in a bossy
voice, standing in the middle of the hall with his hands on
his hips.

Nora paused and sent me a curious look. I stopped at
the door and looked back at Drake. Here we were just
settled back together, and already the terms of our rela
tionship were being tested. “Thank you, but we’ll be fine.”

“I would be happier if Pal—”

I interrupted him before he could continue. “This is
our business, remember?”

“Yes, it is. However, you just agreed to allow me to
protect you in situations where you might be in danger.”

I took a deep breath and tried to phrase carefully what
I needed to say. “Just as I trust you to not let me screw up
dragon things, I trust Nora to keep me from a situation
with beings I can’t handle. I’ve read about blight hounds, and I’m prepared to help her with them. They aren’t that dangerous, and I’ll have Jim and Nora with me. So thank you for offering Pal’s assistance, thank you for caring
enough to want to shield me, but we’ll be fine on our
own.”

An interesting parade of expressions passed across
Drake’s face.

I ran across the floor to him, putting my hands on his chest as I leaned into him. “Trust goes both ways, Drake.
You have to learn to trust that I know what I’m doing.”

“It’s not your abilities I doubt,” he said slowly, his eyes
dark. “It is not easy to let you go in this manner.”

“I know it’s not. But it’ll get easier. OK?”

The anger on his face faded into annoyance, which did a brief tango with stubbornness, and finally morphed into
resignation.

I gave him a swift kiss. “That was a hell of a battle you
fought, but I appreciate your faith in me.”

“I have always had faith in you,
kincsem.
It is all oth
ers I distrust.” His eyes were like molten emeralds.

I smiled. “We’ll work on that, too. Don’t worry; Nora
and I will be back soon.”

“You had better be,” he grumbled, giving Nora a sig
nificant look.

“I never thought you’d be able to pull that off, but you know, you just may end up getting what you want with
him,” Jim said a few minutes later as we hurried down the
cement steps into the belly of the Underground station lo
cated two blocks from Drake’s house. It was commuter
hour, which meant the station was swarming with people
entering and leaving. The distant rumble of trains echoed
down the long tile corridors, dimmed by the sounds of
commuters.

Before I could answer Jim, in the distance a high-
pitched howl rose above the din, making every hair on the
back of my neck stand on end.

“That doesn’t sound good,” I muttered to myself,
keeping a firm grip on both my purse and Jim’s leash.

‘Tell me what you know of blight hounds,” Nora said
in between apologies scattered left and right as she pushed her way through the crowd.

I rustled around in my memory for the snippets I’d
read about them a few nights past. “They’re small beasts
resembling hyenas, often used as a familiar to cast a curse
on a location or structure. They generally serve demons but can... ow! Pardon me, sir; would you mind moving your paddle? Thank you.” I limped past a man who held
a kayak paddle, rubbing my abused shin.

Nora sped around a corner, leaped a barrier intended to
keep the public out of a transit employees-only area, and
disappeared down a long, unlit hallway. I hurdled the bar
rier after her.

“Go on.” Her voice called back eerily from the darkness.

I ran almost blind, one hand out to keep from smash
ing into something. “They can be summoned by a knowl
edgeable practitioner of the dark powers.”

A dim yellow glow at the end of the disused hallway
showed Nora’s form as she paused in an archway.

I leaped over a pile of disused signs, running the last few feet to her. “They are not generally considered dan
gerous unless found in great numbers, which seldom hap
pens since they tend to fight with each other.”

Nora said nothing as she peered over the railing to
the floor below. I stepped forward to look. We were on
an overpass perched above two disused platforms, dusty
and dirty and evidently now used for storage of miscellaneous office equipment. Over the broken chairs,
scuffed and stained metal desks, and naked metal racks
once used in administrative offices, a good hundred and
fifty
 
or so fox-sized red-and-black forms
 
crawled, snarling and yipping at each other as they milled around. “Oh, dear.”

“This may be a little bit more involved than I originally anticipated,” Nora said slowly, her eyes on the
seething mass of blight hounds.

“You want I should go back and get that guy’s pad
dle?” Jim asked me.

“Huh?”

Its lips pulled back in a smile. “From where I’m sit
ting, we’re up a creek without one.”

“We’ll start on the left side and work right,” Nora said,
trotting across the overpass. “Use your wards to slow
down any of them who rush you. Remember the three
steps of dispatching.”

“Halt, bind, and destroy,” I said, following her.

“Exactly. Stay behind me, but don’t let any stragglers
escape past you.”

“Gotcha. Jim, what’s the policy on a demon attacking
demon minions?”

“We’re go for launch,” it panted as it ran after us.

“Great, so you don’t have any issues with helping me
wipe them out?”

We stopped short of the platform, the nearest blight
hounds about ten feet away. “Not a one. I never liked
blight hounds. They have no sense of humor to speak of.”

“OK, but how will you dispatch them?”

“With lots of slobber?” Jim grinned at me as I drew a protective ward over myself. It gave a mock sigh as I
narrowed my eyes. “They’re demonic, Aisling. If I de
stroy their physical forms, they will be sent back to Abaddon. I’ll just do a little neck snapping, and back they go.”

“Ew. No details; just do it.” I slung my bag over my
back and unsnapped Jim’s leash, freeing up both my
hands to draw wards.

Nora looked at me and cocked an eyebrow.

“Let’s do it,” I told her. “Effrijim, I command thee to
wipe out the blight hounds!”

Jim gave a little battle cry as it ran forward into the
mass of snarling bodies. Nora followed, her voice raised
as she started clearing a path with a couple of high-level
incantations.

The next hour and a half was grueling, exhausting, and
draining on all levels—and I loved every minute of it.