Love in the Time of Dragons (16 page)

“Nevertheless, I must know. So I ask you a third time—do you love me?”

He looked around wildly before leaning in. “There are others here, woman!”

“I know.”

“You expect me to say it right out in front of them?”

“Constantine did,” I said, nodding toward him. Constantine straightened up and looked noble. “He didn’t have any problem saying it.”

Baltic growled deep in his chest, rolling his eyes heavenward for a moment before he said in a low and ugly voice, “Fine! I love you. Now get the hell out of my way so I can kill your mate.”

I don’t know what I would have done had Constantine not attacked Baltic at that moment—probably tried to reason with them, although hindsight tells me they wouldn’t have listened. It is moot speculation, regardless, because the second the words left Baltic’s lips, Constantine’s body shifted, stretching and growing and elongating into the form of a silver-scaled dragon with scarlet claws. He flung himself at Baltic with a snarl that left my blood cold.

Baltic shifted as well, but his form, slightly smaller and less bulky, was ebony colored, with curving translucent white claws that flashed in the air as he lunged at Constantine.

Teodore, one of Constantine’s guards, tried to restrain me, but I shook him off and stalked forward to where the two dragons were rolling around on the ground, blood arcing in the air as one of them struck true.

“Stop it!” I yelled, my hands fisted in impotence. I wanted to strike both of them back into their senses. “I will not have th—”

Constantine’s tail lashed out as he threw himself forward onto Baltic, who just barely rolled out of the way in time. I screamed as I was knocked backwards several yards. Instantly Constantine was there, in human form, leaning over me and cradling my head. “Ysolde! My dove, my cherished one—have I harmed you?”

Baltic shifted back into human form as well, jerking Constantine off me and onto his back, the glittering silver point of a sword digging into his neck.

“You have lost your mate, your sept,” Baltic said, panting, “and now your life.”

“No!” I yelled, leaping up as he raised his sword overhead, clearly about to cleave Constantine’s head from his body. I threw myself forward over him, looking up at Baltic. “Do not kill him.”

Baltic’s eyes narrowed on me. “You have a change of heart?”

“No. I will be your mate. My life is bound to yours from this moment forward. But only if you spare Constantine.”

His jaw worked, and for a moment, I thought he would refuse. But slowly he lowered his sword, grabbing my arm and pulling me to my feet. “By the grace of my mate, I will let you live,” he told Constantine. “But only because she desires it.”

The sight of Constantine’s face haunted me as Baltic led me away.

“A
fter it’s dehydrated, I take out the natron that is in the inside, and put cloth soaked in resin and more natron inside the body. Then I get to paint the whole thing with resin. That takes, like, three weeks to dry, so I want to get started right away. I think I have enough resin to do the whole fox.”

“Whether or not you do is moot. I think you’ve spent enough time with your unnatural hobby. I’d like you to make yourself sociable today so May and Gabriel don’t think you’re a ghoulish little boy who is obsessed with dead things.”

“Dead things are interesting,” he protested.

“Regardless, I think you can leave your experiments alone for one day and socialize instead. How much?”

I paid off the taxi driver when he stopped in front of Gabriel’s house. A strange man was at the front door, about to ring the buzzer as Brom and I got out.

“Hullo,” the man said.

“Hello.” I gathered up the bags of shopping from the floor of the taxi, eyeing the man as I did so. He had a long face that I thought of as typically English—not too long, but sort of ruggedly handsome—with dark blond hair and bluish grey eyes.

He examined me just as obviously. “You wouldn’t happen to be Ysolde de Bouchier, would you?”

I took a deep breath. “My name is Tully Sullivan.”

“That was going to be my other guess,” he said, laughing. It was a nice laugh. He looked like a nice man, with a bit of a roguish twinkle to his eye, but still, nice.

“Your husband sent me,” he said, taking me completely by surprise. “Name’s Savian Bartholomew.”

Nice? He was the devil incarnate!

“Gareth sent you?” Brom asked. “How come?”

“You must be Brom. It seems he wants you and your mother kept safe from some very bad dragons until he can come and get you,” Savian said.

“Eek! Go away!” I said, shoving him toward the taxi.

“Eh?” he asked, looking confused as he clutched the side of the taxi in order to keep from being pushed inside.

“The gent want to go somewhere?” the taxi driver asked.

“Yes! He wants to go far, far away,” I said.

“I do not! Stop shoving me, or I will be forced to subdue you!” Savian said, struggling when I tried to force his head down so I could push him into the cab.

“Sullivan, I don’t think that man wants to go anywhere,” Brom commented from his location on the sidewalk.

“Yes, yes, what the lad said!” Savian squawked as I grabbed his ear and managed to get his head inside. “Help! I’m being kidnapped!”

“Just the opposite, actually,” I grumbled, grunting as I gave a mighty heave that forced his shoulders in. “Just go already!”

“Never! Why are you doing this?” he yelled, somewhat muffled since I blocked most of the door with my body in an attempt to get rid of him.

“Can’t you take a hint, you annoying man? Shoo! I don’t want you!”

“But your husband—”

“Is a complete idiot! Now go away before I lose my temper and turn your eyebrows into warts!”

“The lady is crazy,” I heard him tell the cabdriver in response to his inquiry about what was going on. “I think she fancies me.”

“I’m a great and . . . urgh . . . powerful mage . . . unph! . . . and I will . . . dammit, let go of the door! . . . I will smite you with all sorts of unpleasant spells.”

“Help!” Savian said to the taxi driver.

The man watched him impassively. “I would, mate, but I don’t like the sound of that smiting.”

“She’s not a mage!” Savian said, yelping when, desperate to release his hold on the car door, I bit his arm. “Where’s your male empathy? Go pull her off me! I’d do it for you!”

“Stop inciting innocent people to help you, or I’ll turn your testicles into turnips!” I yelled, head butting Savian’s back. “Now get the hell into the cab!”

“I will die before I submit to your brutal ways!”

“Argh!” I bellowed, and was just mentally thumbing through the list of spells I knew that might possibly help me, when the front door opened.

“I thought I heard voices—Ysolde! Who is that you’re trying to bend in half . . .
agathos daimon
! Savian? What are you doing here? Don’t tell me you’ve come to work for Gabriel again. I thought that, after the last time, you swore you’d never take another job from a dragon.”

“Er . . .” I paused, suddenly wary as May rushed out onto the sidewalk.

“Save me, May! This madwoman is trying to bend me into all sorts of unnatural positions! I think she’s already broken my liver and quite possibly one or both intestines,” Savian called from the cab.

“You big baby,” I said, releasing him as I gave May a feeble smile. “I barely laid a finger on him, honest.”

“She didn’t even turn his testicles to turnips, like she said she might,” Brom offered helpfully. “I would have liked to have seen that.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. He grinned back.

“Turnips?” May asked, looking from me to Savian as he unfolded himself from the car, clutching his sides.

“It was all just a little bit of fun,” I said, putting my arm around Savian. “Wasn’t it, old friend?”

He whimpered and clutched his sides. “My liver! Don’t hurt my liver again!”

“You know Savian, too?” May asked.

“Ow! My neck!”

“Too? You . . . uh . . . know him?” I countered, releasing the pincer hold I had on the back of his neck.

“May and I are old friends. She’s never tried to hurt me,” he said, shooting me a belligerent glare as he shuffled away from me and over to her.

“Oh. Uh . . .” I coughed and tried to think of an excuse to get the man alone for a few minutes. “Isn’t that a coincidence. We’ve known each other for . . . oh, forever.”

“I’ve never seen her before in my life,” Savian told May. “Don’t leave me alone with her. She’s vicious. I think she was trying the Vulcan neck pinch on me.”

“Hmm,” May said. “Why don’t we all go into the house?”

I trailed behind them as they entered the house, thinking furiously.

“So what are you doing here?” May asked Savian as I closed the door behind me.

“Savian!” I said, interrupting the man as he was about to answer. I smiled brightly and took his arm, dragging him toward the room I knew to be a small, unused study. “We have so much to talk about! Why don’t we go in here and have a cozy little chat, just the two of us, all nice and private-like.”

“Help! She’s going to smite my testicles!” Savian shrieked.

“You can bet I will if you keep up all that whining,” I said through gritted teeth as he fought me. “Stop struggling and you won’t get hurt.”

“Famous last words!” he said, trying to pry my fingers off his arm. “Damn, lady, you have a grip like a . . . like a . . .”

“Dragon?” May asked.

“Yeah, like a . . .” He stopped struggling and gave me a long look, squinting at me slightly. “Hey. She doesn’t look like a dragon.”

“That’s because I’m not one,” I said, flinging open the door. “Now let’s have a little chat about this business.”

“What business? Have you hired Savian to do something?” May asked, standing in the doorway.

“Not Sullivan, Gareth,” Brom piped up from the hall, unloading the books he had purchased from the book-shop where we’d spent the last hour. “He’s trying to save us from some bad dragons.”

“Go and play with your mummies!” I ordered, pointing toward the back of the house.

“You said I couldn’t!”

“Don’t do as I said—do as I say!”

He rolled his eyes and mumbled something about people not making any sense, but he duly trotted away toward the depths of the basement.

“Maybe we’d all better have a little chat,” May said, giving me a long look as she entered the room. “I’d like to hear about the bad dragons.”

“Who is bad?” Gabriel asked, following her in. “Savian! What brings you to our humble abode?”

I sighed and slumped into a heavy leather chair. “Well, I tried.”

“Yes, you did. Despite your best attempts at mutilation, my liver will live another day,” Savian said, groaning pitifully as he eased himself onto a long, low leather couch.

Gabriel looked at May. “What’s wrong with him?”

“Evidently Ysolde was trying to turn his testicles into warts.”

“Eyebrows to warts, testicles to turnips,” I corrected wearily. I lifted a languid hand toward Savian. “Go ahead. Tell them. Ruin what remains of my life.”

He ignored me, speaking to Gabriel. “I was sent to rescue a fair maiden and her small bundle of boyish joy from the clutches of a gang of murderous dragons. No one told me that the maiden had the strength of a dragon, and an unnatural interest in my balls.”

“I have no interest in your balls. I never had an interest in your balls, other than wanting them to go away, preferably with you attached.”

“Our clutches?” May said, looking appalled.

“It’s not like it sounds,” I said hurriedly, before she and Gabriel were insulted.

“Who hired you?” May asked Savian.

“Man by the name of Gareth Hunt.”

I glared at him, and his hand moved protectively over his crotch.

“Why would your husband feel you needed rescuing?” Gabriel asked in a soft, completely misleading voice. The air positively crackled with anger.

“You see what you’ve done? Are you happy now? Everyone is mad at me,” I told Savian.

“When you go around threatening to smite people’s balls, I don’t blame them!”

“Ysolde?” Gabriel asked, clearly expecting some sort of an explanation.

“I’m going to remember you,” I told Savian before I turned to Gabriel. “Gareth called me a few days ago, and warned me that I was in danger if I continued to stay with you. I told him that you had been nothing but generous and attentive in your care of me while I was asleep, and even brought Brom to me, but he . . . well, Gareth is very single-minded. Once he gets an idea, he clings to it with the tenacity of a terrier with lockjaw. I assure you that I have absolutely no complaints about your hospitality, and I do not intend to be stolen away. That’s what I was doing when May found us. I was trying to get rid of this annoying man.”

“I am roguishly charming, and not at all annoying!” Savian protested.

May and Gabriel exchanged a loaded glance.

“Fine, you’re the most charming man I’ve ever met. Now please consider yourself unemployed. You can keep whatever my husband paid you—he deserves to lose the money for doing something like this against my wishes.”

“Since you are at a loose end,” Gabriel said to him, opening the door and gesturing, “perhaps I could speak to you about doing a little job for us. Ysolde believes she’s seen Baltic in town, and I’d like for you to find him.”

“I’m not going to get my head bashed in again, am I?” Savian asked, grunting as he rolled off the couch and onto his feet. He slid me a glance as he followed Gabriel out of the room. “Or my liver ruptured?”

The door closed quietly behind him.

I looked at May. “You think he can find Baltic?”

“He works as a thief taker for the L’au-dela,” she answered with a wry little twist to her lips. “That’s how I met him. But sometimes he freelances, and he’s a very good tracker. If anyone can find Baltic, Savian can. Are you going to be ready to go in an hour?”