Sparks Fly: A Novel of the Light Dragons (11 page)

“I thought we’d been through this already,” I said as I entered the room, pausing to glance around it. “Back when you were having the plans for the new Dauva drawn up. Where’s Brom?”

“That design had too many faults,” Baltic said, holding out his hand for me. “I want it redesigned.”

“Two days before we’re due to start clearing the land.” The builder, whose name was Murphy, stabbed his fingers through his hair. “This is why I don’t like working with dragons! You’re always expecting me to work miracles.”

“Where’s Brom?” I asked again as Baltic’s fingers wrapped around mine.

“Upstairs in his room. Mate, do you not think that four towers—”

“No, he’s not upstairs. I was just up there. Brom?” I released Baltic’s hand and went out into the corridor that ran between the main section of the pub and the side rooms, quickly checking the rooms for signs of him. Seeing that they were empty sent a chill down my spine, my belly suddenly feeling as if it had been gripped with a clammy hand. I ran to the main room of the pub, hurrying over to the bar. “Angela, have you seen Brom?”

“Not since this morning, luv,” the short, round woman said, wiping off a tap before handing over a pint of dark ale. “Oh, but someone left a letter for you. Let me see, where did I…Ah, here it is.”

She handed me an envelope before turning to the next customer.

Baltic appeared in the door to the pub, a frown pulling down his dark chocolate eyebrows. “Did you find him?”

“He’s not here. Baltic—” A wave of fear crashed over me, making my skin crawl. “You don’t think Thala—”

“No. She would not,” he said with absolute conviction, but that did little to ease the panic that clutched me. I ran past him to the door of the pub, quickly searching the parking lot and the street for signs of Brom.

“Where has he gone?” I wailed to Baltic, spinning around, unsure of what to do, or where to look for him. “He doesn’t just wander off like this, not when he knows how worried I am!”

Baltic had his cell phone to his ear, his eyes darting around the street. “He does not answer his phone. Where’s the tutor?”

“Gone off to deal with some family situation.” I reached toward my pocket to yank out my own phone, but the letter Angela had given me was still in my hand.

“What is that?” Baltic asked, frowning.

“I don’t know. Angela said someone left it for me—” I froze, my horror-filled gaze meeting Baltic’s for a moment
before I shredded the envelope in my attempt to get the letter out. My hands were shaking so badly, Baltic had to pull the paper from the envelope.

My stomach turned over as I read the words.

It was signed with one word:
Gareth
.

For a moment, the world swam around me in a sickening fashion. I clutched Baltic’s shirt, trying to keep from vomiting or passing out, both of which were likely at that moment. Baltic’s arms were warm around me, holding me tight and keeping me safe as he murmured words of reassurance in my ear.

“Do not swoon,
chérie
. I cannot find my son if you need my attention, too.”

“Brom,” I said, choking on the word. Tears streamed down my face as I grabbed his arms. “He’s taken my baby!”

“Our son is not a baby,” Baltic said firmly, giving me a little shake before turning me toward the pub. “He is smart, and clever, and he will not be frightened by insignificant beings like the one who spawned him. He will know that we will not tolerate this abduction and will reclaim him immediately. Come, mate.”

Oddly enough, what Baltic said made me feel a tiny bit better. In part, the knowledge that Brom was everything Baltic said reassured me, but mostly it was the fire I felt raging inside him. Baltic was beyond furious, his
dragon fire threatening to slip his control, and I knew to the depths of my soul that he would move heaven and earth to get Brom back.

That didn’t stop me from pacing the floor in Baltic’s workroom an hour later, however, as he made several phone calls, attempting to locate Gareth. Pavel, with his friend Holland in tow, arrived to say that they’d thoroughly searched the pub and immediate area, and no one remembered seeing Brom or anyone resembling Gareth.

“If he so much as touches one hair on Brom’s adorable head,” I swore, “if he harms him in any way, I will take his scrotum and pull it over the top of his head.”

“If you’re talking about me, I’m leaving,” a male voice said from the doorway. I spun around to see Baltic who, moving so fast he was a blur, was smashing a tall, angular man against the wall.

“Savian! Baltic, no, that’s Savian Bartholomew, the thief-taker I told you about.”

Baltic snarled something rude in Zilant, an archaic language once used by the dragons in the weyr, but he released Savian, who gasped and clutched a nearby chair as he tried to get air back into his lungs.

“I have no use for a thief-taker until we find that bastard who forced himself on you to spawn my son,” Baltic snarled.

“Are you all right, Savian? Here, sit down. Let me get you a glass of water. And no, Baltic, I didn’t mean we needed a thief-taker; Savian is also a renowned tracker. I was going to hire him to find something, but now that’s…” A little wave of dragon fire danced down my body as the words that just left my lips sparked something in my brain.

“Not another one who can’t control the fire,” Savian said, accepting the glass of water I held out and moving his feet so my fire, now dancing around my feet, didn’t reach him. “What is with you mates?”

My gaze met Baltic’s again. “Savian is a
tracker
,” I told him again, emphasizing the word “tracker.”

“Not just a tracker—I’m the best there is.”

Baltic was on him in a flash, pulling him to his feet, although this time without choking him. “You will find my son.”

“Who?” Savian squawked.

“Our son, Brom. Do you remember him?” I said hurriedly, my hands clutching each other as I stood before him. “Gareth—he’s my ex-husband, the one who hired you to rescue me from Gabriel—he’s kidnapped Brom and taken him somewhere, and we can’t find any trace of him. We don’t even know where he is, or if he’s all right, and I wouldn’t put it past Gareth to harm Brom!”

“His own son?” Savian asked, his face a mask of disbelief.

“Brom is
my
son; the usurper is nothing to him. Although I myself will see to it that Gareth will die in the most heinous manner if he inflicts hurt upon Brom,” Baltic said simply. Savian, with a sidelong look at the hard expression on Baltic’s face, edged away.

“That’s none of my business, but if you want me to help you find your son, I am at your service,” Savian said, finally getting himself out of Baltic’s grip enough to make us both a little bow. “You’ll find no better tracker than me, if I do say so myself. Now, tell me what you know, and we’ll see what we can see.”

While Baltic and the others filled Savian in with the details, I paced the long room, feeling itchy with the need to be doing something,
anything
to rescue Brom, little pools of fire trailing my footsteps until I smothered them on the following pass through the room.

The horrible words of Gareth’s note kept dancing through my head, making me rage at the same time my stomach turned over with worry.
I’ll call his phone tomorrow at noon with instructions,
the note said. His
phone…the two words reverberated in my head. Gareth’s phone! Or rather, his phone number. I still had Gareth’s phone number programmed into my phone!

I pulled it out and stared somewhat dazedly at the entry for him. It couldn’t be this easy, could it? Could I just call him and demand that he release Brom? I hit the
DIAL
button and held the phone up to my ear, half expecting to hear a recorded voice tell me the number had been disconnected.

“Yes?”

The voice was so familiar, it took my breath away. Well, the fury that followed that one word took my breath away—it took me a good two seconds before I was able to speak.

“Who is this?” Gareth’s slightly nasal, annoyed voice filled my ear.

“If you treat Brom with anything but the utmost care, I will do things to you that you cannot even imagine,” someone said in a low, ugly voice, and to my surprise, I realized it was me.

Baltic spun around at my words, frowning as Gareth sputtered, “Sullivan? How the hell did you—dammit, Ruth, I told you we should have gotten a new phone!”

“Where’s Brom?” I asked, and then repeated it, screaming, “Where have you taken my son?”

Baltic was at my side, one arm around me, trying to take the phone, while behind him, Savian made gestures at me and said something about keeping Gareth on the phone as long as possible. He pulled out his own cell phone and turned his back on us as he made a call.

“He’s right here, and he’s all right, although he’s not going to remain that way if you don’t do as I tell you,” Gareth said.

I closed my eyes for a moment, visualizing roasting Gareth alive. “Let me talk to him.”

“No. There’s no reason for you to speak with him.”

“By the rood, Gareth! He’s my son! I’m out of my mind with worry! I have to know he’s all right!”

Gareth muttered some rude things, saying in a slightly muffled tone, “Get the boy. No, she’s insisting on talking to him. Just warn him not to say anything but that he’s unhurt.”

“Mate, control your fire.”

I opened my eyes again to find the tables surrounding us were alight. I tamped down the flames, staring in mute appeal to Baltic.

“It will not help Brom if you lose control,” he said softly, and tried again to take the phone.

“Sullivan?”

I almost wept with relief at the sound of Brom’s voice. “Are you all right, lovey? Did Gareth or Ruth hurt you?”

“No, I’m fine, although they don’t have any interesting books, and I left my field notebook in my room. There’s a dead sparrow outside my window, but I can’t take notes about it.”

I leaned into Baltic, some of the tension easing as Brom complained. If he was well enough to fret over the loss of a notebook, he wasn’t harmed.

Before I could say any more, Gareth was back. “Happy now?”

“I can’t believe you would kidnap your own child to use against me,” I told him, tightening my fingers on the phone.

“I told you this wasn’t over when you tried to brain me against my own car,” Gareth sneered. “If you think we’re going to roll over and lose all that gold you brought in each year, you’re stupider than I thought.”

“How much do you want?” I asked through clenched teeth. “How much blood money will it take to let Brom go?”

“All we want is what is due to us. All those centuries we took care of you; you owe us, Sullivan.” He named a
figure that didn’t even register in my by now numb brain. I was past the disbelief that Gareth would hold his own child hostage for profit; I just wanted to do whatever it took to get Brom back. “That’ll do for now.”

My gaze met Baltic’s. He nodded, then made a gesture toward his watch. “You’ll get your gold, but it will take Baltic a day to get it from his lair. Where are you?”

Gareth laughed. “Nice try, but we’re the ones calling the shots. I’ll call you tomorrow to see if your dragon has the gold. And Sullivan—he’d better have it. Because any delay is going to make Brom very, very sorry.”

My fire rose around us in a wall of red. Baltic’s arm tightening around me reminded me of the veracity of his words. I had it extinguished by the time I finished saying, “One hair, Gareth. If so much as one hair of Brom’s is harmed in any way, you will regret the day you first drew breath.”

“Just have the gold ready, and save the empty threats. And don’t call here again—I will be the one to call you,” Gareth said, then hung up.

“He will not harm my son,” Baltic said, his breath warm on my forehead as he kissed my hair. “He knows we will destroy him if he does. You will cease worrying.”

I gave a shaky laugh, hugging him for a moment just to soak in his strength. “I’m a mother, Baltic. Worry is my middle name. Gareth may be many things, but he’s always had a strong sense of self-preservation, so I don’t think he’d do anything to endanger himself, and that means Brom is probably going to be left alone. I just…I want him here.”

“I know. We will have him within twenty-four hours.”

“How can you be so sure?” I asked, watching him as he moved over to consult briefly with Pavel before eyeing Savian.

The latter held up a finger as he listened to something
being said in his phone before asking, “What’s the number of your phone, Ysolde?”

I gave it to him. Savian repeated it, listening intently again, a smile suddenly softening the long lines of his face. “Got him. He called from Spain.”

“Spain? We used to live there, but…how did he get Brom to Spain so fast? He’s been gone only two hours.”

“Portal, no doubt,” Savian said, thanking his friend on the phone and tucking it away. “I’ll check the local ones and see if Gareth used any of them.”

“I will come with you,” Baltic said, gesturing to Pavel. “Mate, you will remain here, with Pavel’s friend.”

“If you think I’m going to sit around here worrying myself to death while you big strong men go rescue Brom—”

Baltic cocked an eyebrow. “I had hoped you’d make arrangements, and pack our things, as well as Brom’s, so that we can be ready to leave shortly.”

“Arrangements?” Fear clutched my heart again. “Baltic, I know dragons avoid using portals because it makes you all discombobulated, but time is of the essence. It would take several hours to fly to Spain, even assuming we could either charter a jet or find a commercial flight that was leaving right away.”

The look he gave me sharpened before he marched over and gave me a swift, hard kiss. “You should have more faith in me, mate. We will take the portal to find our son just as soon as we know where he is. See to things here so that we may leave once we have that information.”