Wicked Circle

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Zoltan, no!” I shouted, pushing on the screen door. Creepy blocked it with his foot, but I was too late anyway. The dragon’s tongue had licked over Creepy’s hand, and the odd seeds were gone.

Mountain scrambled forward even as Zoltan crunched and swallowed. His big arms circled the dragon’s body. “No! Spit it out!” He squeezed, as if doing the Heimlich maneuver, but who knew exactly how high or low a dragon’s stomach was? Suddenly Zoltan was choking. I couldn’t be sure if it was the seeds or Mountain’s actions, but I was betting it was the former. Zoltan flopped to the ground, pinning Mountain. Behind me, I heard a window open. I saw Zhan’s foot as she slipped out.

“Bastard.” Creepy didn’t even bother to acknowledge me, captivated by the creature’s spasms. I smacked the door angrily. He wasn’t going to let me out, so I tore a hole in my just-fixed screen and shoved the gun through, whacking his still-solid head with the handle.

The sound it caused made me smile.

At least until he glared at me and his irises flashed red. “That. Hurt.”

I withdrew my arm from the mangled screen. “He’s in pain because of you!” I glanced at the writhing, eel-like dragon. Zhan had helped Mountain get free, and he had scooted a few feet away.

When I spied Creepy again, he wasn’t solid. He was halfway through my door. “Hey!” I retreated, mad at myself. Creating a distraction was a standard bad-guy tactic, and this arrogant ass had told us what he’d do.

Ivanka made an awkward grab for his leg. While her broken arm was held tight to her chest, her uninjured arm swung through him. She kicked to no avail.

“In the fey world the dragon had no access to such trees,” Creepy said. His voice was ethereal at first but changed as he solidified. “Dragons crave bitter tastes, bitter like those seeds, for a reason.” He kept coming toward me. “The seeds stimulate his spinal cord.”

“He’s convulsing!” I kept retreating. This hall led to the kitchen. There were knives and things to throw in there.

“Yes. He will have violent convulsions.”

I spun and ran for the kitchen, hoping to find something that would make a more useful weapon than a gun I had no intention of firing. Maybe salt. Maybe the silver-plated holiday turkey-carving set. As I arrived in the kitchen, though, I saw Creepy was already there. In fact, I ran right into his solid arms. “Do not fear,” he said, wrapping me in his embrace. “It is no different than a wærewolf’s transformation.”

I struggled; he released me. His words sank in.

“There is so much I want to tell you,” he whispered.

A roar trumpeted outside, so loud and so strong that the dishes in my cupboards rattled. I stood there blinking, stunned that he’d let me go, and stunned by that sound, until I noticed movement in my yard.

The rest of the dragons were slithering across the rear lawn.

I ran for the front, where Ivanka was getting to her feet. I shoved the screen door open. On the porch, however, my gait slowed, and I arrived in the yard flabbergasted at the not-so-small dragon. Zoltan’s smooth skin now rippled with scales. He had a gleaming spinal ridge and a crown of ebony horns upon his head. He sat on his haunches, his tail wrapped around him. His neck was curled down, his snout snuffling his new claws. “No wings,” I said.

“Five claws,” Zhan mumbled beside me, adjusting her robe. “He has five claws!”

“Does that mean something?” Mountain asked.

“In Chinese legend, the five-clawed dragon is the symbol of an emperor. Being a black dragon, he is a king of deep, numinous waters.” Her teeth were chattering. Mountain put an arm around her and pulled her to him.

The other dragons slithered around Zoltan and released cheerful bellows.

From directly behind me, Creepy whispered, “I can help you, Persephone. More than you can imagine.” He then advanced on Zoltan. Reaching up, he boldly seized the rhinolike horn that had sprouted from the dragon’s snout. “I charge you with the safety of this estate and the woman Persephone. Your life will be forfeit to me if she is harmed during the hours that Menessos is absent. Do you agree to this, dragon?”

“Wait a minute,” I tromped off the porch. “We don’t even know who the hell you are!”

Creepy released Zoltan and spun toward me, laughing. “You dubbed me Creepy. That is who I am.”

“There will be no deal-making—”

Zoltan lunged forward and shoved his head between me and Creepy. Using his long neck like a restraining arm, Zoltan kept me back as he nodded at Creepy and warbled.

“No!” I protested, ducking under Zoltan’s neck and coming up right into Creepy’s hands.

He held my face tenderly in his palms as he said, “It is difficult for me to find time to be away from home . . . so much to do, you know, but I have provided you with protection as I said I would. Now I must go.” Creepy strolled away, toward the grove where the ley line crossed my property.

I crossed my arms and glared after him. Maybe he could feel it; he put his hood up.

Letting my arms fall loose at my sides, I asked the dragon, “What have you done?”

He blinked big green eyes at me and flicked the gill fins at his throat.

“Get inside before you freeze,” I said to Zhan.

“I have to check the perimeter guards first.”

Mountain led the dragons back to the barn. The eel-ones slithered readily away. Zoltan walked. I couldn’t help laughing as he tried to figure out in which order his legs were supposed to lift. He tried one at a time. He tried front two, stretch, back two. He tried left side, right side. By the time he made it to the barn he’d figured out that right front and left rear, followed by left front and right rear, worked best.

I found Ivanka sitting at the dinette in a cold sweat and murmuring about “vahnting votka.” She had splinted her own arm with wooden cooking spoons and duct tape. I didn’t have any vodka, so I found the ibuprofen and sat four pills and a glass of water in front of her. “Double dose.”

She frowned at the little pills. “Votka better.”

“Probably,” I agreed.

She jostled the pills into a pile in her cupped palm. “Bullet not much bigger.”

“Ivanka.”

“I pulled trigger.” Still staring at the pills, she shook her head. “I shot him.”

“You did the right thing.”

“I know,” she said unremittingly. “But I miss.”

After she swallowed the ibuprofen I said, “You need to go to the hospital.”

“Da.”

Heading upstairs, Zhan called out, “The perimeter guards were unconscious but are waking up and appear unhurt.”

“Could have been much worse,” Ivanka murmured.

Minutes later, as Zhan came downstairs dressed in her usual casual suiting, Mountain entered, too. He said, “Zoltan now fills up what spare room the dragon barn had to offer—which wasn’t much.”

Zhan added, “That man better not feed any other animals on this property or we’ll need more barns.”

“If he comes back and even so much as tries to feed one of the animals,” Mountain said, “I’m tackling him. Ghost thing or no.”

“What was he?” Zhan directed her question at me.

“I don’t know.” I wasn’t going to mention the red flash. “But Ivanka needs to get to the hospital.”

“Da,” she repeated. “Sooner is good.”

“After what just happened, I’m not leaving you,” Zhan declared. She told Mountain, “You take her,” then asked me, “would you like me to call Celia and tell her all is well?”

“Yes, please.” Zhan was as good a sentinel as I could hope for. Better, even. She felt like a friend. That made what I knew I had to do even harder. “I need you to stay here.”

“Menessos gave direct orders that you were not to go anywhere unescorted.”

“They could be at the ER a long time. I don’t want the elementals to be here alone.”

“The perimeter guards—”

“The animals don’t know them. They know you.”

Zhan unhappily capitulated. Mountain backed slowly away, saying, “I’ll get my truck.”

“Guardians of the element of water, I consecrate these items.”

Standing before my bedroom altar, I dipped a pine sprig into a bowl of hallowed water and let my trembling hand shake drops from the leaves over the items I’d been given this morning at Wolfsbane and Absinthe. I’d already said the verses for earth, air and fire. “Banish the energies of previous owners or those who have made or touched these items. Purify them with your fluid force. Charge them with your liquid energy that these tools may now be sacred.”

Some items were best blessed under certain moons, but since Johnny wanted me to do the spell in about an hour and a half, the current waxing moon phase would have to do. Palms hovering above the items on my altar, I added, “May all astrological correspondences be correct for this working.”

I thanked Hecate and the elements, and then extinguished the candles.

In ritual, concentration is key. Being in full control of the conscious mind and silencing the random thoughts, the doubts and worries, is essential for successful magic. Not surprisingly, self-discipline is one of a witch’s best assets. I’m usually pretty good at maintaining concentration. Today, however, that proved a struggle. I’d paused and put a barrier up with my ritual circle to help keep anxiety out of the magic working. As I released the circle, all my worries flooded back into the forefront of my mind.

The shabbubitum will be here in a few hours.

I have to do the forced-change spell on the roof of the den and get Beau’s half-formed son back to normal.

Menessos sent Creepy here, and now Zoltan is a five-clawed emperor dragon.

I was eager for Menessos to rise so I could interrogate him, but there was a whole lot of magic to be done between now and then.

My satellite phone rang. I checked the display. It was my mother calling.