Serpent's Kiss

NINETEEN

Carling said, “You have to give us sanctuary if we ask for it. Let us in.”

The woman’s weary hazel eyes narrowed. “You’re going to pull that card on my ass right now? Really?”

Rune said, “We can go and come back in a few hours.”

Carling glanced at him. His face was white, his lips bloodless. His eyes looked bruised. She shook her head stubbornly. “Do you know who I am?” she asked the Oracle.

The human’s face tightened. “I recognize you,” she said. “At least I know who you and the sentinel are. I don’t know who he is.” She jerked her chin toward Khalil.

“Rune is injured,” she said to the Oracle. “I need to attend to him. As soon as I do that, I can help your boy. If you know who I am, then you know I can do this.”

The Oracle took a second, closer look at Rune, and her expression changed to one of reluctant compassion. She pushed the door open wide and stood back.

Carling didn’t wait for more. She strode into the house, straight over to the armchair to shift the basket of laundry to the floor. “Come on,” she said gently to Rune. “Sit and let me have a look at you.”

Rune walked over to the chair and eased into it. His movements were stiff, without any of his usual grace. Behind them, Khalil strolled into the house. Carling couldn’t begin to figure out what was going through the Djinn’s mind as he looked around the living room with a speculative gaze, nor did she know why he hadn’t yet disappeared. Perhaps he was waiting for his chance to finalize the details of the favor she now owed him.

In any case, she didn’t have the energy to waste on mulling over Khalil’s odd behavior. Instead she knelt in front of Rune and touched his cheek as she whispered a spell that would numb his injury. Immediately the tight lines in his face eased. He gave her a nod in thanks. “I can wait now,” he told her. “Go put the poor kid out of his misery.”

“All right.” She stood again and turned to the Oracle and the sobbing baby. “What’s his name?”

Carling’s mild question opened a floodgate in response. The Oracle said anxiously, “His name’s Max. I think he’s got an ear infection. He was fussy earlier in the evening and didn’t want his supper. Then he woke up crying a couple of hours ago, and he has a fever and he just threw up, and he keeps pulling at his right ear like it hurts. I was just trying to decide if I should take him to an urgent care unit, but his sister Chloe’s sound asleep and it’s just the three of us here and I’d have to either call someone for backup, or set him down to wake Chloe up and get her in the car too—”

Carling shook her head, a little disoriented. In just under ten minutes, they had gone from facing almost certain death in battle to this. She put a hand to the back of Max’s head and numbed his pain as well. The baby’s crying died away. He hiccupped and shuddered, lifting his head from the Oracle’s shoulder to look around in bleary confusion.

“Okay, little man,” Carling murmured. “It’s going to get better now.” She asked the Oracle, “What is your name?”

“Grace,” the Oracle said. “Grace Andreas.”

“The Andreas family has gone through difficult times these last thirty years,” Carling said. A string of ill health and bad luck had decimated what had once been a large, thriving clan. “I was sorry to hear that Petra and her husband died in that car crash. What relation was she to you—was she your aunt?”

“She was my older sister,” Grace said, her hazel eyes reddening. “Chloe and Max are my niece and nephew. We’re the only ones left.”

Carling nodded. She had scanned Max as she and Grace had talked. She said, “You’re right, he has an ear infection. It’s easily taken care of with a simple healing spell, but he’ll be very tired over the next few days.”

Grace nodded, the exhaustion in her expression lightening with relief. “That’s fine, as long as it takes care of the infection. It’s not like he’s got to drive or go to work or anything.”

In spite of the seriousness of her own issues, Carling had to smile. “No, he doesn’t, does he? With your permission, I’ll cast that spell for him now.”

“Please.”

Carling did so and as Grace took the sleepy baby away, she turned her attention back to Rune. He was resting quietly in the armchair, watching her. She knelt in front of him again, glad to see that some color had returned to his complexion.

He gave her a small smile, his eyelids lowered, and said telepathically, I can’t decide which sight of you was more hot, the one where you were getting ready to throw down some kind of Armageddon spell on Julian’s ass, or the one where you just healed that little boy.

She gave a ghost of a chuckle that faded away almost immediately. They had almost died. He had almost died. She closed her eyes and gripped his hand, and his long, strong fingers closed around hers hard.

Time was shoving them faster and faster into a strange, unknown place. The colors may be sharper and truer, and the song notes more piercing, but damn, that fall had been horrific.

“No regrets?” she whispered.

“Not a single one,” he said back, quietly steady. “I will miss my friends, but that does not mean I have any regrets. Now heal my arm and shoulder, so we can get on with what we need to do.”

She set about doing just that, but healing his injuries wasn’t as quick or easy a fix as throwing the healing spell on a sick baby. She had to set the breaks first, and while she had already numbed Rune’s pain, getting the bones into alignment was still intensely uncomfortable for him. He braced himself against it, his teeth gritted. The broken edges of bone in his arm grated as they came together. The sensation made her feel ill.

She was wrung out by the time she was able to throw a healing spell on him. He sighed as the spell sank into his body. He looked as tired as she felt. Then he leaned forward to enfold her in both good arms, and a warm kernel of rightness found its way into her cold, stressed soul. She put her head on his shoulder and they held each other.

“What I want to know is, what kind of trouble did you bring to my doorstep?” asked Grace, who had returned from putting Max to sleep in his crib. Carling lifted her head to look at the other woman. Grace stood just inside the living room. The human was staring at all of Rune’s weaponry. The relief from Max’s healing had disappeared, and fear had taken its place. “And how much danger have you just put my niece and nephew in?”

At that Khalil stirred. The Djinn had moved to one corner of the room to watch everything that happened with his arms crossed. His long raven hair was pulled back severely from his face, and he wore a high-necked black tunic and trousers. He said to Grace, “I cannot speak to what the other two may have brought here. But I will see to it personally that the small ones are not in any danger. You have my word.”

Carling narrowed her eyes on Khalil. That was why he had stayed, instead of blowing off as soon as he had dropped her and Rune on the Oracle’s doorstep. He had heard the baby crying. Oh, Khalil.

Grace gave Khalil a leery glance. “Is that supposed to mean something to me, like your word is somehow supposed to be reassuring? Because it’s not. I might be new to this Oracle gig and I might have a lot to learn, but at least I’ve figured out that you’re a Djinn, which in and of itself is not reassuring in the slightest. And I still don’t know who the hell you are.”

Carling said to her, “Khalil is one of the oldest and strongest of the Demonkind, and if he promises to keep your children safe, he will keep them safe.”

“You’re telling me my kids now have a demon bodyguard?” Grace muttered. “Are you telling me my kids might need a demon bodyguard? That’s just freaking great. That’s the best news I’ve heard all week. All month.”

Khalil raised an eyebrow. Other than that, he looked supremely indifferent to the human’s opinion.

Rune said, “No one will intentionally bring any harm to your children. No matter what our conflicts are, children are precious to us. We don’t put them in harm’s way.”

“I have a problem with the ‘intentional’ part of your statement,” Grace said. “So excuse me if I’m still not reassured. Why are you here?”

“We need to consult with the Oracle, of course,” said Carling.

After that, there was no stopping Grace. She dug out a notebook to consult an on-call roster of phone numbers from the local community of witches. Carling knew that the witches provided help to the Oracle whenever she was called to act in the capacity of her office. It was part of the witches’ tithe to community service, but apparently the help was not enthusiastically given.

“I know it’s not even five in the morning, Janice,” said Grace. “But this is an emergency, you’re next on the roster and you know I need somebody to stay with the children whenever I have to do this.”

The unhappy witch on the other end of the line promised to come right over, and Grace hung up. She said to them, “We can do this as soon as Janice gets here, in about fifteen to twenty minutes.”

Rune said, “We could have waited until morning.”

Grace shook her head. “The laws of sanctuary that are supposed to protect this place only work on those creatures that are law-abiding. How many weapons do you have strapped to your body? After the two guns and the sword on your back, I lost count. The sooner we do this, the sooner you leave and take your trouble with you, and that means the safer we’ll be. Janice is unhappy I got her out of bed. She’ll get over it.”

Khalil scowled. “I could have sat on the children.”

“Sat with the children,” Carling murmured, as she fought the sudden urge to laugh. “With, not on.” She set their two bags at Rune’s feet and shifted toys and a college calculus book to sit on the end of the couch closest to the armchair he occupied.

The others ignored her. Grace said to the Djinn, “Do you have a list of references for all the times you have babysat very small, fragile human children?” She waited a heartbeat. Khalil’s scowl darkened but he remained silent. She continued, “No, I thought not. They didn’t start out as my babies but they’re mine now, and you’re not looking after them.” She paused again as if reconsidering what she had said, then added, “Ever.”

As Khalil spat out an angry comment and Grace snapped back, Rune and Carling looked at each other. “She’s right,” Rune said. “The sooner we leave, the better.”

“I know,” she said quietly. Would Julian pursue their dispute over demesne borders? She would have said no before the confrontation outside of the Fairmont. Now she was no longer sure of anything. “I’m not the one arguing with her.”

Rune worked one-handed to loosen the fastening of one of the armbands. His energy was still roused from what had happened earlier. He appeared calm but felt battle-ready, still burning with an edged anger at both Julian and Dragos. The sensation jumped along Carling’s nerve endings like an ungrounded electrical cord.

He said quietly, “I haven’t had a chance yet to ask you how the examination with Seremela went.”

She held open both empty hands to him, and he offered one forearm to her. “The exam itself wasn’t any surprise,” she told him as she worked to undo the armband fastenings. “The conversation proved useful. She’s really bright. I think she’s a talented pathologist, and you were right about her bringing a unique perspective to the whole thing. We may not find a cure, at least not right away. Our first priority has to be to buy some time.”

“Did you come up with any way how we can?” Rune asked. His head was bent close to hers, his gaze intent on her face.

Carling murmured to him, “I need to try to get in some form of remission. Seremela also took blood to run some tests—”

A sharp staccato knock sounded at the door. Grace threw up her hands in a “We’re done here” gesture at Khalil and turned away from him. Out of the corner of Carling’s eye, she saw Rune put a hand on one of his guns as Grace opened the door to reveal an unhappy, disheveled witch. The woman was middle-aged and comfortably rounded, and wore jeans, sneakers, a hooded University of Kentucky sweatshirt and a sour expression. Grace stood back and let her step into the house. The woman jerked to a halt, her sour expression fading and eyes widening when she took in Rune, Carling and the Djinn.

“You got here in record time,” Grace said to the woman. She sat on the opposite end of the couch from Carling to jam her feet into a battered pair of sneakers. “The kids are in bed where most sane people are right now, and you know how this goes, Janice—it’ll take however long it takes.”

Janice’s fascinated gaze bounced around the room. Then she focused all her attention on Grace. “I’ll make a pot of coffee.”

Khalil crossed his arms and informed Janice, “And we will both sit on the children to make sure they remain safe.”

The older human witch’s eyebrows went up. She stared at Grace, who said, “Pay no attention to anything this Djinn might say to you while we’re gone. I’ve never met him before tonight, and he has no authority to dictate anything here. I don’t think he understands that, so apparently he’s not a very bright one either.”

“And she is an impudent, disrespectful child,” said Khalil between his teeth. “Who does not understand the value of what she has been offered.”

Janice said to Grace with a bright, fixed smile, “In the meantime, you’ll hurry back as fast as you can, right?”

“Right,” Grace said. The bitterness was back in her voice. She turned to Carling and Rune. “Are you ready?”

Rune and Carling exchanged a glance then stood. “Of course,” Carling said. “What do we do now?”

“You come with me.” Grace turned and walked out, leaving the front door open for them to follow.

Rune scooped up their bags and gestured for Carling to precede him. They caught up with Grace, who was waiting for them in the front yard. She led the way around the house and along a well-worn footpath that cut through overgrown grass and a tangled line of trees and undergrowth. After twenty yards or so, the human’s gait turned uneven until she walked with a decided limp.

“How much land do you have?” Rune asked.

“About five acres,” Grace said as she slapped at a mosquito. “The Ohio River runs along the western border of the property. It’s been in the family ever since we came over from Europe in 1856. We couldn’t afford to buy anything like this now. I’m not even sure I’ll be able to pay property taxes when they come due.”

“There is a very old Power here,” Carling said. “Did it come with you to the States?”

Grace sent her a shadowed glance. “Yes,” said the human. She didn’t elaborate further.

She led them across a meadow to an old doorway that had been built into the side of a rocky incline. The sense of an ancient Power grew stronger as she took a small rusted coffee can from the top of the wooden lintel and withdrew a key that she fitted into the weathered wooden door to open it. Rune studied the structure. It looked like the opening to a mine shaft. It must have been constructed when the Andreas family originally settled on the property over a hundred and fifty years ago.

Grace said over her shoulder, “Your weapons are not welcome. You need to leave them here at the doorway.”

“Okay,” Rune said slowly.

Carling had been content to remain silent and study the land during the walk. She could tell by the aggressive spike in Rune’s emotions that he didn’t like the idea of disarming, but he set their two bags by the door then he stripped off his short sword and shoulder holsters with the guns and set them with care on the bags.

“Are we going into a cave?” Carling asked curiously.

“Yes,” Grace said. “There are cave systems all over the area, from Bluespring Caverns, Marengo Cave, and Squire Boone Caverns in southern Indiana to the Mammoth Cave system in central Kentucky. This is a very small system by comparison.”

The human stepped inside the doorway and felt along the inside wall. She flipped a switch and a naked light bulb went on over her head. It revealed an area large enough for them all to step into comfortably with two sturdy Rubbermaid storage cabinets, and a roughly hewn tunnel that sloped downward.

Grace opened up one of the cabinets. She drew out two flashlights. She handed one to Carling and kept the other one. “I don’t know if you’ll need this or not,” she said. “Your eyesight is a lot more photosensitive than a human’s. It gets pretty black down there though.”

“We had better take it, just in case,” said Carling.

Grace reached into the cabinet for something else that was wrapped in a protective cloth. “Pull the door shut behind you,” she said to Rune. Then she turned on her flashlight and led the way down the tunnel.

“So much for talking over a cup of coffee,” Rune muttered. He pulled the door shut, and they turned to follow the Oracle.

“Talking over a cup of coffee is not what you asked for,” Grace said over her shoulder. The light from her flashlight bounced off the roughly hewn rock walls and the packed earth floor of the tunnel. The temperature dropped sharply as they went, and the cold air felt faintly damp and smelled of the river. “You wanted to consult with the Oracle. Well, this is how you do it. The Oracle has always spoken from the deep places of the earth. What we channel demands it.”

Carling got the sense of space opening in front of Grace before she saw the tunnel walls widen. She and Rune followed Grace to step into a large cavern. Rune turned in a circle with the flashlight and then he flashed the light upward. The light did not touch the cavern walls, and it only glanced off the nearest part of the ceiling.

“It’s remarkably dry for being so close to the river,” he said. His voice echoed strangely.

“It has the same basic structure as the Mammoth Cave system. There’s a strong solid sandstone caprock layer over limestone. On the far end of the cavern there’s a natural tunnel that leads a bit farther down. The sandstone layer is damaged down there, so there’s some stalactite and stalagmite formation and the river leaks in before the cave system ends. There’s been some falling rock too, so that area’s not safe. That’s why we lock the door, to keep out exploring kids.”

Grace set her flashlight down and unfolded the cloth from the item she had brought with her. She let the cloth drop to the ground and as she turned to them, she held the item up for them to see.

It was a Greek mask. Ancient gold gleamed in the beam of the flashlight. The face was androgynous, beautiful and blank, with holes for the eyes and the mouth.

Carling murmured, “Oh my. That’s stunning.”

“The Oracle has worn this mask for thousands of years,” Grace said. “As you can imagine, there have been many reasons for that and they have fluctuated over time. Sometimes it has been worn with a great deal of ceremony. My grandmother taught my sister and I that we now wear it for two reasons. The first is tradition and honoring our past. The second reason is to remind the petitioner, when you consult with the Oracle you will no longer be talking to me, Grace Andreas.”

“Do you remember what is said?” Carling asked.

“I’ve heard that sometimes we can, but sometimes we just go blank.” Grace’s head was bent. She said quietly, “But I’m no expert. I’ve only been called to do this once since Petra died.” She lifted her head. “Are you ready?”

“Yes,” Rune said.

Grace raised the mask to place it over her face. Something vast stirred the cavern air. The ancient Power that haunted this land began to coalesce. A dry sound scraped at the edge of their hearing, like the sound of scales sliding along the cavern walls. The sound surrounded them as the Power coiled around.

Already unsettled, Rune’s hackles raised. He found himself growling low in his chest. Carling moved near until her shoulder brushed his arm. In the slanted beam of the flashlight, her face was composed but her eyes were wide and wary. Rune turned so that he stood back-to-back with Carling, facing outward.

A voice spoke from behind the golden mask, but it was not Grace’s voice. It was something else, something older and much wilder than a human’s voice.

“There you are, gryphon,” said the old wild Power. “I have looked forward to this conversation we have had.”

Looked forward, to a conversation in the past. Rune shook his head sharply. Yeah, there was that bad dose of LSD again, tripping on his ass like a flashback.

“How you doing?” he said to Python. “You old crazy, dead whack-job, you. Long time no see.”

The Power chuckled, a sound that brushed against their skin. “Have you seen Schrödinger’s Cat yet, gryphon?”

Rune knew of Schrödinger’s Cat. It was a famous physics hypothesis that described the paradox of quantum mechanics. Place a cat in a box with some poison along with some twisty scientific mumbo jumbo. Rune had lost patience with the mental exercise long before he bothered to learn all the physics involved. What he remembered was, the cat was supposed to be both alive and dead in the box, until it was observed to be either alive or dead.

Part of what the hypothesis was supposed to illustrate was, in quantum physics, the observer shapes the reality of what he observes. What did she mean by asking him that question?

Behind him, Carling hissed and bumped into his back. She said in his head, How could she possibly know to refer to Schrödinger’s Cat? That hypothesis wasn’t invented until the 1930s, and she died—if she really did die—thousands of years ago.

He said, I’ve lived a whole long life filled with weirdness. But this is weird even for me. He said aloud, “I’m not nearly drunk enough for this kind of conversation, Python.”

Something rushed up to his face. He jerked back, staring at the pale indistinct lines of a face. The transparent face bore a resemblance to a human female, but only in the same kind of way a chimpanzee or ape might. Its features were too sharp and elongated, with more of a snout than a nose, and it flowed back to a hooded cobra-like flare of a neck before falling into the body of a serpent as thick as a man’s waist.

He steeled himself and passed his hand through the apparition. “You’re a ghost. You’re not really here.”

The woman’s smile revealed a wicked curve of fangs. “I am not here,” she said, “like a dimly seen island overlaid on the ocean. I am not here, so perhaps I am there, lost in some Other land.”

“Are you dead or aren’t you?” he demanded. Cryptic ramblings—gods help him, his head might spontaneously combust.

“Like Schrödinger’s Cat, I am both dead and alive,” said Python, coiling and recoiling her ghostly body through the cavern. “I was alive in the past. I died in the past. Who knows what I will be next?”

Carling gripped Rune’s arm before he could explode. She had turned to face the apparition too. She asked, “Are you traveling through time?”

The ghostly apparition turned to her, and Python’s smile widened. “I have traveled. I am traveling. I will travel.”

“Is that why, even though you have died, you’re not altogether gone?” Carling asked.

“Either that,” said Python, “or I’m just a crazy whack-job ghost.” That feral transparent face drew closer to Carling and softened. “You’re one of mine. My children are so beautiful. I want you to live forever. That is why I gave you my kiss.”

“Your gift has lasted a very long time, and I am grateful,” Carling said. “But now I am dying, unless we can figure out how to stop it. We came to ask for your help.”

“I can’t give you the kiss again,” said Python. “That time is past.” Her coiling and recoiling increased in speed as though she were agitated. “I took away the day but gave you an unending, gorgeous night. What you make of that is not up to me. A mother cannot live life for her children.”

“That’s not what she’s asking you to do,” Rune said. Desperation edged his voice. He hadn’t known what to expect, but he sure had not expected this. To actually be able to talk with Python was more than he could have hoped for, but it might end up being one useless, psychedelic nightmare. “She doesn’t want you to live her life for her. We’re asking you how to keep her from dying.”

“Wait,” said Python. “I’m confused. Hasn’t she died yet?” Her face came around to Rune. “Why have you not gone back to save her?”

Python’s words seared him. She’s crazy, he thought as he stared at her. She’s a crazy ghost. That’s all. He fought to find his voice and said hoarsely, “She hasn’t died, Python, she’s standing right here in front of you. But she is my mate, and she will die if we don’t find a way to stop it. So will you please, just fucking please make some fucking sense for once in your goddamn fucking life!”

The feral ghost looked at him with surprise. “Well, you don’t have to yell at me,” she said in a plaintive voice. “You’re not as far along as I thought you would be by now.”

“Where am I supposed to be?” he asked dully.

“Right here, gryphon,” said Python. “Remember what we are. We are the between creatures, born on the threshold of changing time and space. Time is a passageway, like all the other crossover passages, and we have an affinity for those places. We hold our own, steady against the interminable flow. That’s what I tried to give all of my children. That’s who you are. The Power of it is in your blood.”

“It’s all about the blood,” Carling whispered. “The key is in the blood.”

“The key has always been in the blood,” said Python. “You are perfect for each other. Nature could not have created a more flawless mating. You have everything you need to survive. If you survive.”

Python faded as they watched. The Power that had filled the cavern ebbed away.

Rune threw the flashlight to the ground and dug the heels of his hands into his burning eyes. He felt demented.

“We have everything we need to survive—if we survive?” He roared, “What the hell did that mean, you crazy whack-job bitch!”

Carling came around to face him. She grabbed his wrists to drag his hands away from his face. Her eyes were shining. “Rune, I think she told us everything we need to know.”

He stared at her, breathing hard. After a moment he was able to speak more or less sanely again. “Well, do you mind explaining it to me?”

“I didn’t get a chance to tell you everything earlier,” Carling said. “Seremela and I had talked about looking for ways to get me into some kind of remission, at the very least try to reach a holding pattern to buy us some time to do more research. She said it was possible that becoming a succubus had been a defense response from my immune system when I could no longer keep down the blood I drank.”

“A defense response,” he said, frowning. “When you frame it that way, the transition would not have been a good thing.” Victims of prolonged starvation ate things out of desperation, often things that had no real nutritive value. Their bodies started to consume themselves until eventually their organs began to shut down.

Carling nodded. “Seremela suggested I try to find some kind of physical nourishment that I could tolerate, in the hope that it might slow down some of the symptoms. I wasn’t looking forward to trying to drink blood again, but I’m willing to do just about anything, so I said I’d think about it. Python just said you hold your own against the flow of time, Rune, and that it’s in your blood. The key is in the blood. Those are the exact words Seremela and I said to each other.”

Gradually he calmed, stroking her hair as he listened to her. “Could you have been starving all this time?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Eventually I stopped feeling hungry, then I began to sense emotions from living creatures and started to feel better whenever I did. From everything I had heard, that sounded like a natural progression of the disease.”

“Well that might be so, but it still sounds a lot like starvation to me,” he said. “Much as I want this, I’m afraid to believe in it. It sounds too good to be true.”

“But it could fit,” she said. “Your blood could have what it takes to put me in remission. This whole strange journey you and I have been on has been as a result of your Wyr attributes coming into contact with my Vampyrism.”

He closed his eyes. “And that has never happened before,” he whispered. A sliver of hope worked its way into his chest, lightening the dull panic that had taken him over when Python had disappeared. He bent his head to kiss her, savoring the soft curve of her lips as she kissed him back. “We need to start trying this.”

“Yes.”

“We’re not going to give up if you hork a couple of times,” he said sternly. He yanked her close to hug her fiercely. “You haven’t eaten for a helluva long damn while. It may take some doing to get your system to accept anything. We’ll keep at it.”

She put her arms around his waist and leaned on him. “Agreed. We can even try giving me blood intravenously if I can’t stomach it.”

Some fifteen feet away, Grace said in a rusty-sounding voice, “I sure hope you got everything you needed from that session, because I’m cooked.”

They turned to find the human on her knees. Carling pulled out of his arms to go over to Grace. “Are you all right?”

“I think so.”

As Carling helped the human to her feet, Rune collected the flashlights and wrapped the gold mask in its protective cloth. He asked, “Do you remember what happened?”

“No. I feel like I’ve been hit over the head with a blunt object.” Grace squinted at them.

Carling said to her, “It was a very Powerful, very strange session, but hopefully we learned what we needed to.”

“Good, because I don’t think I can do that again in a hurry,” said Grace as she pulled away to stand on her own. She moved as if every muscle in her body hurt. “Let’s go.”

They climbed the tunnel, moving more slowly than they would have otherwise in deference to Grace’s halting stride. As they went, questions and doubts began to crowd out Rune’s relief.

Hasn’t she died yet?

His blood began to pound in his ears. What were they missing? What piece of the puzzle had not yet formed? Or had Python just had one of her little diagnostic moments? He managed to keep from growling but he wanted to lash out at something or someone. He wanted to do some damage in the name of something good.

They helped Grace tuck the things back in the Rubbermaid cabinets. Carling pushed open the door to the gray light of a warm, humid summer predawn. She stopped so abruptly Rune ran into her. Then he saw what had brought her to a standstill.

A great bronze dragon the size of a private jet dominated the meadow. His gigantic horned head lay on his paws with the appearance of relaxation, except that his Power was a smoldering volcano and his eyes burned with hot gold.

Dragos had found them.

Rune put his hands on Carling’s shoulders and tried to ease her back inside the tunnel. She dug in her heels and refused to budge, keeping her body between him and the Lord of the Wyr.

A whippet-slender woman with a long blonde, disheveled ponytail leaned back against the dragon’s snout. She wore cargo pants, high-end running shoes, and a cherry red tank top. Her arms were folded across her chest, and she had one foot kicked over the other. At their appearance, the woman met Rune’s gaze and shook her head.

“I’ve got to hand it to you, slick,” the blonde woman said. “You’ve really pissed him off this time.”