Sparks Fly: A Novel of the Light Dragons (18 page)

“You are right, I know, but…” He snapped off the word, his jaw tightening until a muscle twitched. “You are right. We will go. There will be other opportunities to find her—ones that do not pose such hazard.”

“If I weren’t already head over heels in love with you, I would be now,” I told him as we hurried through the rocks and scrubby plants to the area where we’d left our cars, praying as we did so that we could get Brom away safely.

“I
’ve never truly felt like a red shirt before, but I sure do now.” Holland sucked in his breath and winced when I dabbed antiseptic liquid over the six-inch slash across the right side of his chest.

“Sorry,” I murmured. “I know it stings, but it’s the best I can do until we get you to a healer.”

“Red shirt?” Baltic asked, stalking into the portal company’s waiting room, his hand held out to me. “Are you done with my phone?”

“Yes, I just had to make one call. Here it is.”

He accepted the phone, immediately punching in a text message.

“It’s a
Star Trek
reference,” Maura answered Baltic in a resigned voice. “It means the disposable guy who gets killed. Which is basically what I’m going to be unless you let me go.”

“My mate wishes for you to remain with us,” Baltic said with a dismissive glance at her, still texting.

“Well, it’s not so much that as Savian can’t get the
handcuff off you until we get home. Besides, I know your mother and grandfather are worried sick about you, Maura, and would welcome the chance to talk with you.” I wrapped a length of gauze around Holland’s chest before tying it off. “Not that I owe Dr. Kostich anything, but still, I’m sure he’s worried. And you’re far from a red shirt, Holland. We very much appreciate your helping us. Are you absolutely sure your arm isn’t hurting you?”

We both looked down to where I had, with Baltic’s assistance, bound Holland’s severed arm to his shoulder, trying our best to line it up properly.

“Not since Pavel found that morphine, no,” he answered, his voice slower now. “With luck, the flesh will start regenerating by the time we get to England.”

“I’m afraid your ear is going to suffer for the experience, though,” I said, giving the healing remains of his ear a sorrowful glance. “I’m so sorry about that, Holland.”

Baltic turned his back to us, speaking softly into the phone.

“It’s all right,” Holland said with a weak smile. “It was an adventure. Wouldn’t have missed it for anything.”

His eyes closed as he spoke. I looked across him as Brom returned from visiting the portalling company’s bathroom, Pavel dogging his heels. “I feel just terrible about everything, Pavel. I hope you can forgive us for putting your friend in so much danger, and for letting the negrets chomp on him.”

Pavel looked surprised. “You did not put us in danger, Ysolde. Thala did that. Or those under her command. We do not hold you to blame for anything.”

“Nonetheless, I feel terrible about it.”

“Are we going home now, or is Baltic going to draw and quarter Gareth?” Brom asked, tugging at my sleeve.

“No one is going to draw and quarter anyone. Besides,
Gareth and Ruth hightailed it out of there after calling up all those wretched negrets.”

“Yeah, but he said he was going to kill them just as soon as he was done killing the dragons.”

“He what?” I took a deep breath and pulled Brom aside. He obviously needed a little reassurance. “Brom, I know this has been a horrible day for you, what with Gareth and Ruth, and the ouroboros dragons, and then the negrets attacking us, but you know that Baltic and I will never let anything bad happen to you.”

“I know that,” he said with all the insouciance of a nine-year-old. “Baltic told me he’d kill the dragons, though. The bad ones, I mean. Not Maura, because she’s nice, but the others, and then he said he’d draw and quarter Gareth for what he put you through.”

A horrible suspicion struck me. What if the ouroboros dragons who had been in the keep hadn’t run away, as I assumed they had done once Baltic had bested them. What if…I eyed the dragon of my dreams suspiciously, moving over to where he stood, quickly assessing his hurts, and deciding after a few seconds that he was, as he had claimed, not in any danger of expiring on the spot. That didn’t mean others hadn’t done so, however. “Is there something you want to tell me?” I asked, nudging Baltic’s arm when he ended his call and began to dial another number.

“About what?”

“About killing people?”

He looked up from his phone, frowning. “Negrets aren’t people, mate.”

“Not them. The others.” I waited, but his gaze dropped, and he refused to meet my eyes. “Baltic?”

“No, there is nothing I wish to tell you.” The fact that he didn’t even look at me spoke volumes.

I sighed and moved around to stand in front of him. “Tell me you didn’t kill any of those ouroboros dragons.”

“I didn’t kill any of the ouroboros dragons.”

I looked into his fathomless eyes and did not like what I saw there. “You’re lying, aren’t you?”

“You just told me to do so.” Irritation flared in those beautiful eyes.

“No, I said—oh, never mind. How many dragons did you kill?”

“Why?” One of his eyebrows rose. “Are you going to locate a priest and pay for indulgences for the deaths of ouroboros dragons, just as you did in the past?”

The second the words left his lips, I felt as if I were caught up in a whirlpool, spun around, and sucked down into dizzying depths…that just as suddenly disappeared, leaving a man’s voice echoing in my ears. “…are responsible for the deaths of dragons you claimed were ouroboros, are you not, Baltic?”

“Whoa,” said a thin voice, and I blinked away the confusion to see Brom standing next to me, watching with wide eyes the scene in front of us. “We’re in another of your visions, aren’t we? This one doesn’t have Gareth and Ruth. I like it better.”

“Why on earth am I having this? My dragon woke up, didn’t it?” I wrapped one arm around Brom and moved over to where Baltic stood with a martyred expression on his face. Pavel, Savian, and Maura stood behind him, all three of them blinking in surprise. Holland appeared to be asleep on the couch.

“We’re in a vision? I’ve never seen anything like this,” Maura said, glancing around. “It’s a vision of the past, I assume. Interesting. Who are those people?”

I leaned into Baltic and watched the two men before us. “The one standing with his arms crossed, and his back to the fireplace is Baltic. I know it doesn’t look like him, but that was his original human form. The other man is…Who is that?”

My Baltic sighed. “It matters not. I grow weary of
your insistence that I relive episodes from the past that are of no interest to anyone, mate. And now you have brought others in, when we have little time to indulge in such matters. End the vision so that we might take that blasted portal out of Spain.”

“Pavel?” I asked, ignoring Baltic’s demands.

“That’s Alexei, the wyvern of the black dragons,” he answered with a little smile.

Baltic shot him an annoyed look.

“Alexei? The wyvern before you?”

“You refuse to answer me?” the man in question demanded of the old Baltic as he stormed past, pacing a path between the long trestle table and a massive fireplace big enough to roast two oxen side by side. Alexei, almost as tall as Baltic, bore a resemblance to the latter, with a similar shape to his jaw and chin, as well as the same dark hair and eyes. Although many black dragons had such coloring, it was obvious even in the dim light that Baltic and Alexei were related.

“Why should I bother to do so?” Baltic asked with a shrug as Alexei paced past him again. “I told you that I would avenge my mother’s death, and I have done so.”

“At the risk of alienating the red dragons, who are already at the verge of war against us because of you!” Alexei said, his hands gesturing wildly in the air.

“I know that can’t be your father, because your father is the—” I glanced beyond my Baltic to where the others stood watching the vision with interest, and bit off the rest of the sentence. I was still coming to grips with the fact that the man I loved with every ounce of my being was the child of a dragon god. “I know Alexei isn’t your father, but it’s obvious you’re related to him somehow.”

“End the vision,” Baltic growled, turning Brom and me to face him.

“I told you before—I don’t know how to end them. What was that bit about avenging your mom?”

“You would have me let the murderers of your own daughter escape without punishment?” the past Baltic snarled. “You may not care that her death be avenged, but I do.”

“She was my only daughter! Of course I care! I feel her loss more than you can possibly know, but that does not give you the right to kill Chuan Ren’s elite guard!” Alexei snarled right back at him. “As if the situation weren’t troublesome enough with your actions threatening the peace of the entire weyr, now you must do this!”

Baltic took me by the arms and gave me a little shake. “Mate, you will cease this immediately!”

I said nothing, unable to look away from the scene between Baltic and…his grandfather?

“I will not be dictated to,” the past Baltic snapped. “Not by you, and not by Chuan Ren.”

Alexei spun around, his expression as black as his hair. “You are not wyvern here, Baltic; I am. And if I choose to dictate to you, then I will do so!”

“Ysolde!” the present-day Baltic demanded, his voice filled with ire.

I glanced back to him. “Chuan Ren’s guards killed your mother? Why? Wait—let’s start first with Alexei. He was your grandfather?”

“End this!” he said, his patience frittering away into nothing.

“You keep saying that, but I don’t know how,” I pointed out, wanting to ask him a dozen more questions, but hesitating with the presence of the others.

“Then I will end it for you!” he snapped, and without concern for the fact that I still held Brom close to me, he pulled me against him, his lips claiming mine, his dragon fire spilling out in a spiral around all three of us. Brom squeaked something about being crushed, until I released him and allowed him to pop out from between us, my attention now focused on the man whose kiss dominated
me, demanding a response I was unable to withhold.

“Aww,” I heard Brom say a minute later, when I could catch my breath and rally my thoughts into something other than how badly I wanted to wrestle Baltic to the nearest bed and have my womanly way with him. “It’s gone.”

“It’ll never be gone,” I said without a care for grammar, staring into Baltic’s eyes and reveling in the love I saw in return.

“Never,” he agreed, brushing his thumb along my lower lip.

“That was fascinating,” Maura said thoughtfully. “Not your kiss, the vision. I had no idea one could revisit the past in that way. What causes that, Ysolde? Do you know?”

I stepped back from Baltic, not surprised to see that he had, in fact, ended the vision by the simple method of kissing me senseless. “I used to think it was the frustrated dragon inside me trying to get me to wake it up. But it’s woken now, so that doesn’t make sense anymore.”

“It’s not woken,” Baltic said, brushing back a strand of my hair. “It answered your call when you needed it, but that is all. The dragon inside you still slumbers.”

“How do you know?” I asked, warmed to my toes by the gentle caress of his hand on my cheek.

“I know.” He turned back to his phone, dismissing the rest of us.

“I don’t have a dragon inside me, although Sullivan says when I’m older and I have children, they will be light dragons, and will be able to shift into dragon form,” Brom told Maura. “I wish I could do that. I don’t want to have children, but Sullivan says I probably will later on. How come you turned red when you were a dragon, if you aren’t in a sept?”

“My father was a red dragon, so that is the form I take
when I’m dragonny,” she answered, giving him a little smile that faded almost immediately. “My mother isn’t a dragon, however.”

“You know I’m going to have at least a dozen questions about that whole scene,” I told Baltic as he consulted a text message he had just received.

He sighed a particularly martyred sigh. “I know.”

“I’ll go check to see if the portal is ready yet,” Pavel said, and slipped away.

“I should check the area outside to make sure no pursuing dragons, liches, or negrets are about to descend upon us,” Savian said, groaning out loud when he limped forward. “Come along, princess. You can pick up any of my body parts that happen to fall off.”

“Oh, for the love of the good green earth,” Maura said, snapping the handcuffs in an annoyed manner. “You’re such a big baby! You don’t have nearly the number of wounds that poor knocker has, and you’re making a much bigger fuss about them than he is.”

“You’re going to drive me barking mad until I can get these cuffs off, aren’t you?” Savian asked her as they left the waiting room.

“A girl has to have some fun.”

“Did you get everything in order?” I asked Baltic as he tucked away his phone. “Did you arrange to have a healer standing by when we get back to England? I don’t like the looks of Holland’s injuries, even though he says he can heal that severed arm.”

“We’re not going to England,” Baltic said, taking my arm with one hand, and Brom with the other.

“We’re not?” I asked as he ushered us out of the room and into the portalling chamber. “Where are we going?”

“Home.”

“Home is England, isn’t it?”

“No.”

“Then where are we going?”

“Going? Right, this is where I make my last stand. I absolutely refuse to leave,” Maura said as Savian and she reentered the building. “I have told you people and told you people—I can’t leave. There are things I must do, and I cannot do them if Thala finds me missing. I’ll just have to do them with this giant pain in the ass attached to me.”

“Like hell you will,” Savian growled. “I’m not staying here to be chewed to shreds by that red-haired she-devil. You’re coming with us whether you want to or not.”

“Please, I can’t leave Spain,” she pleaded as Savian, with a grim expression and a loud groan of pain, bent down and hoisted her onto his shoulder. “Dear goddess! What do you think you’re doing? Put me down!”