Sparks Fly: A Novel of the Light Dragons (17 page)

“I’m not big. I’m statuesque,” I corrected, staring down at myself, unable to keep from twitching my tail experimentally. It felt strong, as if I could take down a tree with it. “Male dragons are intimidating when in
dragon form. Females are statuesque while still retaining femininity. What do you think of my tail? I rather like it.”

He glanced thoughtfully over his shoulder. “It’s nice. Doesn’t have pointy things on it like the pictures Nico and I saw in a museum. He said mortals don’t understand dragon form at all, and that they were always giving them wings and horse heads and things like that.” He was silent for a few moments. “Your head isn’t like a horse.”

“Of course not.” I took a deep breath, enjoying the sensation of power that seemed to flow through me.

“You’ve got small front arms, though, compared to your back ones,” he continued, then frowned. “Or are they all legs, like on a dog?”

I held out my free arm. It was perfectly normal in length. I stopped and bent over to look at my legs. They were dragon legs, true dragon legs, not at all human looking, strong and powerful, and covered in white scales that shimmered in the morning sun. I looked back at my arm. “Oh, great, I have tiny little ineffectual T. rex arms!”

“I don’t think they’re that bad—” Brom started to say, but I cut him off by bellowing Baltic’s name as we approached the stairs to the curtain wall.

“What is it?” came his answer.

I stomped up the stairs, taking a perverse satisfaction in the little tremor shocks that accompanied each step. “You never told me I was going to be a mutant dragon!”

He and Pavel both had their backs to us, the curtain walk around them covered in metal bodies interspersed with blood and gore and the remains of negrets that had been dispatched when they were conserving their dragon fire.

“What are you talking about?” Baltic asked, turning around to ask, an irritated look on his face that only grew more irritated when I gestured toward myself.

“I have tiny little arms! They aren’t at all like yours!
They’re minuscule! They’re like baby arms or something! I cannot tell you how disconcerting this is!”

Pavel, who had also turned to look, took a step back in surprise, tripped over a negret corpse, and fell off the wall to the ground below.

“You see?” I gestured toward Pavel as he picked himself up off the ground. “Pavel is so horrified by my puny little arms that he would rather leap off the wall than stay on it with them,” I declared, knowing it was untrue, but unable to keep from expressing my unhappiness.

“You choose
now
to find your dragon form?” Baltic snarled, backhanding a couple of negrets off the wall down onto their brethren. “You couldn’t wait for a time where I might guide you? You had to do it now? I am
busy
, mate!”

“It just happened! I thought I was going to explode, and instead, this happened.” I stared at him for a moment, unable to put into words what I most feared.

“You don’t know how to change back, do you?” he asked.

I slumped a little, relief filling me that he was there with me. “No. Behind you.”

He spat fire over his shoulder, sighing heavily as he walked over to us, pausing at the sight of Brom’s bloody face. “You are hurt?”

“Just my hair.”

“Ah. Good. Mate, look at me.”

“I don’t like my arms,” I said, releasing my death grip on Brom to wave them at him. “They’re really, really disappointing. I thought I was going to be big and beefy like you. You have powerful arms. You have arms that make people respect you. You don’t have widdle runty arms like me.”

His mouth twitched, but he managed to keep his expression sober as he pulled me against him, shifting as he
did so back into human form. “You are female. Your arms are suited to your form. Nothing more, nothing less.”

“I don’t like them,” I repeated petulantly, letting a little of my fire caress his chest.

“Then change your form. It is simply a matter of controlling your will,
chérie
. Will yourself to your other form, and it will be so.”

I kissed his neck, breathing deeply of his scent, now overlaid with the metallic smell of blood. I thought of myself as I normally appeared, of how my body fit so well against his, of the pleasure I took in our embraces, of my true inner self, of who and what I was, and when I reached up to pull his head down to mine, it was a normal human hand that brushed back a strand of his hair. “I love you,” I told him.

“I know,” he answered, kissed me swiftly, gave my butt a squeeze, and released me to take care of the next batch of negrets that forced themselves through the window. Pavel limped past us, giving me a crooked smile as he picked up his sword.

“Will you be mad if I said I like you better when you look like a normal person?” Brom asked as we trotted down the stairs to see how the others were doing.

“Of course not.” I put my arm around him, rubbing his back, relieved to be in my human form once again. “I liked my tail in the dragon form, but I prefer this body, too.”

“You have normal arms now,” he pointed out.

“Yes.” I frowned as we approached Nico, who squatted next to Holland. The latter, I was pleased to see, was still alive, although mostly unconscious, and missing one arm and part of an ear. Maura had helped Savian to his feet, his shirt and pants covered in blood and dirt. He weaved as he staggered against her, gesturing toward us. “And don’t you think I won’t have a thing or two to say
to the First Dragon about those puny dragon arms when I see him next.”

“Are you all right?” Savian called.

“We’re fine. The negrets got in through the crypt, though. We need to block it off again in case more try to come through that way.”

Nico and I did most of the work since Savian just wasn’t up to it, and Maura was still firmly attached to him. We left them to watch Holland and the door while we swung the tomb back into place, and we wedged the base with a bit of broken wood from a window shutter.

“Let’s hope that holds. Nico, are you all right to come with me?”

“Yes. Just a bit worn out,” he said, trying to put a brave face on what I knew were some pretty grievous injuries.

“Good. Savian, you and Maura stay here with Holland.”

“If he would just unlock me, I could help you,” Maura complained, shooting a potent glare at Savian.

He lifted a feeble hand at her. “I would if I could, princess, but I told you that somehow, in all of the excitement, the key fell out of my pocket.”

“Great, just great.” Maura huffed to herself as she plopped down on the ground next to him. “This is so how I wanted this day to go.”

“At least you can heal yourself,” Savian said with a soft moan as she jogged his arm.

“If Holland recovers consciousness, tell him we’ll get him to a healer just as soon as we can,” I told them. “You may not want to let him see his arm lying there, though. That’s an awfully startling thing to see when you just come to your senses. You’re sure the bleeding has stopped?”

“His, yes. He’s a corporeal spirit. Me, I’m human,” Savian said, leaning back against the sun-warmed stone wall with a groan of pain.

“We’ll get you and Maura a healer, as well,” I promised, hesitating when my gaze landed on Brom.

“Can I come with you?” he asked, and I saw fear in his eyes that I knew he would never acknowledge.

“You would be a big help.” He smiled in relief as the three of us went to pick up the Molotov cocktails that Brom had managed to make before the negrets had burst in on them.

I yelled up to Baltic my intentions, receiving in return a warning to be careful. We hurried over to the other side of the wall, which fortunately none of the negrets had managed to breach.

“With luck, they’ve either run out or realized we’re just going to toast them into extinction,” I said as I hurled a lit bottle down on the small cluster of negrets.

“You wouldn’t think there was an endless supply of them, would you?” Nico asked as he—taller than me—tossed a bottle over the wall.

“I sure hope not.” I bent down to drop another bottle, but movement to the far right side caught my eye. “What now?”

“
What
what?” Brom asked, handing me a bottle.

I handed it back to him. “You supply Nico for a minute, lovey. I want to see what’s going on over at the far side. If the negrets have found a weak spot, we need to know about it.”

“Don’t leave the curtain walk,” Nico called after me as I hurried down the narrow walkway.

The movement that had caught my peripheral vision was around the north side of the fortress, where the wall melted into the heavy stone mountain that rose above our heads. I peered down through the branches of a half dozen lemon trees that ringed a low stone wall that formed a drunken oval outside the bailey. The ground inside the oval was much less rocky than the surrounding
area, although a few large flat stones were scattered around. My eyes narrowed as I focused on one of those stones. It looked like a headstone. I turned to look behind me, into the bailey. The chapel was directly below me with Maura, Savian, and Holland propped up against the wall.

“Must be the fortress graveyard for people not buried in the crypt,” I said to myself, turning back to the area and searching it for signs of life.

A little flash of red through the green leaves had me gasping in surprise and shock, followed swiftly by terror. The sight of bodies forming out of nothing sent me running back along the wall. I didn’t stop to explain when I got to Brom and Nico; I grabbed my son’s arm and dragged him after me as I raced down the stairs and across the bailey.

“Baltic!” I yelled as both Brom and Nico asked me what was wrong. “Baltic! We have to get out of here. Now!”

“We can’t until it is safe for me to take you and Brom,” he said, appearing at the head of the stairs and tossing a metal negret down onto a stack that sat at the base of the stairs. “There are fewer of them coming now. Another hour or so and we will have depleted their forces enough that I can take you away.”

“We don’t have an hour. We have to go now!” I insisted, starting for the chapel. “We’ll have to go out the bolt-hole and blast with dragon fire any negrets that remain.”

“Ysolde!” Baltic said in his most domineering voice. “I insist that you allow me to decide when it is safe for you and Brom to leave.”

“Thala’s here!” I yelled over my shoulder, pausing long enough to gesture toward the north. “She’s not in Nepal; she’s
here
!”

He froze for an instant, then smiled.

I shivered at the smile.

“Good. We will capture her and take her to the watch.”

“You don’t understand. Oh, for the love of the saints—” I shoved Brom at Nico and marched back to Baltic, taking him by the arm and trying to pull him after me. “She’s not alone!”

“She has ouroboros dragons with her?” He shrugged, refusing to allow me to budge him from where he stood. Pavel slowly came down the stairs, looking curious.

“No, she doesn’t. She’s in the graveyard. And unless I’m way off base, she’s resurrecting the dead people there.”

I’ll say this for Baltic: he may love a battle, and will happily fight when the odds are greatly against him, but he’s not stupid; he knows when the time is upon him to retreat.

That time was now.

He had to see for himself, however. While Nico and I whipped together a makeshift stretcher in which we gently rolled the still-unconscious Holland and his arm (we couldn’t find his ear), he and Pavel went up onto the north wall, returning almost immediately with identical grim expressions.

“Liches,” Baltic said, moving me aside as I threw myself on the tomb, trying to slide it back. “We will leave now.”

“I can’t go with you!”

We all turned to look at the woman who stood in the doorway, Savian next to her. She held up her hand. “Someone has to get this off, because I’m sorry, but I really cannot leave.”

“Look, I know you feel some sort of loyalty to Thala—”

Her face twisted in pain. “No, it’s not that at all. It’s—it’s…Oh, it’s too complicated to go into now. You just have to believe me when I say I can’t leave.”

I turned to Baltic. “She’s been nothing but helpful since we got here. Would you go ahead and break the handcuffs? Savian lost the key to them, so you’re going to have to use brute strength to get her free.”

“He won’t be able to,” Savian said wearily as Baltic started toward Maura.

“Don’t be silly. Baltic is extremely strong, and even stronger in his dragon form.”

Savian shook his head. “These aren’t mortal handcuffs, Ysolde. They’re titanium, spelled, warded, and scribed with not one, but two banes. They are unbreakable, even by a dragon.”

“Oh goddess,” Maura said, moaning as she put one hand to her head. “What am I going to do?”

“I have another set of keys in my flat,” Savian told us. “If we can get back to England, I can unlock them.”

“You’re just going to have to come with us,” I said loudly when Maura vented her spleen on him, telling him in no uncertain—and sometimes anatomically impossible—terms what she thought of his ineptitude. “I know it’s not what you want, but we have no choice, and no time to stand here arguing about it!”

The negrets in the tunnel were taken by surprise when not one, but three dragons all descended upon them, filling the entire passageway with fire. Brom and I carried Holland—over Savian’s protests that he felt fine, really, and the fact that he fainted when he stood up a minute before was just the merest coincidence—while Maura and Savian brought up the rear, the latter in a drunken stagger that owed its existence to a severe loss of blood.

“It’s clear,” Baltic said once he and Pavel returned from reconnoitering the entrance of the bolt-hole. “She has raised only a half-dozen liches thus far. Ysolde, would you—”

“No,” I told him, taking his arm. “I know you want to take her while she’s so close to us, but”—I glanced
toward Brom—“she wouldn’t bat an eyelash over the idea of using him against us.”

He hesitated, torn between the need to take care of the threat Thala posed us and the acknowledgment that Brom was in danger by being so close to her. She was absolutely unscrupulous, and I didn’t doubt for a second that she would use him mercilessly to harm us.