To Love a Highland Dragon (19 page)

Me and my big mouth.
Maggie stared at the dragon. She heard herself hyperventilating. Knowing Lachlan was bound to a dragon and actually seeing that dragon were two very different things. To buy herself time to think, she walked around Kheladin, reaching to touch his coppery scales with tentative fingers. The dragon stood at least eight feet from the ground to the top of his head. Leathery wings folded over his back. A sinuous tail wound around his back feet, much like a cat’s might have done. Long, amber talons graced all four feet. They were curved and looked sharp as knives.

Smoke curled lazily from the dragon’s mouth. His jaws split in what might have been a smile, displaying double rows of razor sharp teeth.
“What think ye, witch?”

“You’re beautiful. I understand why Lachlan wanted to bond with you.”

Kheladin nodded his great head, as if he agreed with her assessment. Maggie tried to dredge everything she knew about dragons from her subconscious and came up dry. “So, my, uh, choices are to either stay here while you all go, or ride Kheladin and come with you?”

“Aye, lass,” Arawn answered. “Ye must decide quickly. If we tarry, the plane will idle through its fuel and plummet to the bottom of the Atlantic.”

Of course I’ll stay here
.

It would be foolhardy to do anything else
.

Those were the same instincts, Maggie noted, that had kept her away from her magical heritage. “To hell with it,”
she snapped.
“I’m going. Gran’s in trouble. Lachlan is my husband, er, mate. I should be by his side if there’s danger.”

Besides, I couldn’t bear the waiting. It would tear my heart out.

Jaw set in a tense line, she strode to Kheladin’s folded rear leg. “How do I get on? It’s a long way up there.”

Ceridwen tossed an appraising glance her way. “Ye have mettle, lass. More than I would have guessed when ye cringed away from joining your body with Lachlan’s in front of me.”

“Step on my knee,”
Kheladin instructed, tapping his bent back leg.
“Once ye are there, I shall lift you.”

Within the space of three heartbeats, she sat astride the dragon. Maggie had done plenty of horseback riding, but horses didn’t fly. No saddle here. No bridles. If she fell off a horse, she might break a leg; falling off Kheladin, she’d break every bone in her body and then some. She wound her arms around Kheladin’s neck; it was so huge, she barely spanned a small part of it.

“Nice, lass. Ye can hug me any time ye want.”

Maggie laid her cheek against Kheladin’s scaled neck. The coppery rounds were warm.
Maybe this won’t be as impossible as I fear.
Her heart pounded so hard she was afraid she might pass out; a headache bloomed behind her right temple.
“Could we sort of do a quick practice flight before we leave?”

“I doona see why not. Draw magic to shield us from humans who might look to the skies,”
the dragon commanded.

“Consider it done,”
Gwydion said.

Maggie forced herself to keep breathing as Kheladin furled his wings. They beat the air, once, twice. On the third downward stroke, they were airborne. She squeezed her eyes shut. Maybe if she didn’t look down, it wouldn’t be so bad. She thought about Lachlan—and Kheladin. It was curious Lachlan treated the Celts like the gods they were, and Kheladin didn’t hesitate to order them about as if they were his lackeys.

And they complied,
she realized with a start.

“Of course they did. Dragons are special,”
Kheladin informed her smugly.
“Open your eyes, Maggie. See my world.”

Compulsion flowed beneath the dragon’s suggestion, and Maggie’s eyes snapped open. They were about fifty feet above the ground. Kheladin inscribed long, looping circles in the still air. She loosened her death grip around his neck, didn’t feel she was in danger of plummeting to Earth, and folded her hands in front of her. There was something soothing about the air racing by them.

“I think I’m good with this,”
Maggie sent, aware of time slipping past.
“We can leave anytime.”

“No matter what,”
Kheladin cautioned,
“doona leave my back until we are back here, or I tell you ’tis safe.”

“Why would I want to?”

“Rhukon can be most persuasive. He can conjure images of almost anything. If ye saw your kinswoman lying in a pool of blood, ye’d be sore tempted to go to her.”

There’s so much I don’t know.
Maggie cursed herself again for being such a short-sighted fool. She wondered why Mary Elma hadn’t taken a harder tack with her—forced her to learn magic, whether she wished it or not.

“It doesna work that way, lass. Ye must welcome your power, or your castings will backfire. They might even be the death of you.”

“Oh.”
While it didn’t surprise her that the dragon could pluck thoughts from her mind as easily as Lachlan or the Celts, it was still unsettling to have everyone know exactly what she was thinking.

“Convenient, though.”
A whistling, snorting sound that might have been dragon laughter rustled through her.
“Like getting three wishes and not even having to come up with one idea, because I already know what you want.”

An old Rolling Stones song about needing and wanting passed through her mind. Maggie snorted. Maybe Mick Jagger knew more than he’d let on about trips to fairyland.
“How long until we get where we’re going?”

“Time is…different. ’Twill seem like hours, yet no time at all is passing in the world ye just left. One impression isna any more real than the other.”

“I thought Gwydion—or maybe it was Arawn—said Rhukon couldn’t move the plane away from Earth?”

“Poor choice of words. Earth is a big place.”

“Ye willna understand with your modern mind,”
Lachlan cut in.
“Psychic layers circle the Earth. Rhukon took advantage of one. He wove his barrier into its weft.”

“Aye,”
Kheladin added.
“We must be verra careful not to damage something critical when we attack his binding.”

Maggie didn’t ask what might happen. She didn’t really want to know. Lachlan was right about her twenty-first century brain being in full rebellion. People didn’t ride dragons or go off to fight bad guys who’d shanghaied airplanes—and her grandmother. Look at the World Trade Center. Despite knowing what was about to happen once the planes diverted from their flight plans, the full power of the U.S. Government had been helpless to intervene.

Time, indeed, passed. Warmth rose through the dragon’s scales. It was enough to countermand the wind-chill eddying about her. If her torso got cold, she leaned it against Kheladin’s trunk of a neck. The first time she did it, the dragon made a lewd comment about the feel of her breasts, but Lachlan shut him up.

“Where are Arawn, Gwydion, and Ceridwen?”

“Mayhap already there,”
Lachlan answered.

“Child!”
Mary Elma’s worried voice jangled discordantly in Maggie’s mind.
“No! It’s too dangerous. Go back.”

“Gran? Is it really you?”
Tears threatened to overflow, and Maggie knew she’d unconsciously prepared for the worst: Mary Elma’s death.

“Of course it’s me. What the hell are you doing? Go back. I have things under control here.”

“Whether ye will have us or no, we are coming to assist,”
Lachlan said.

“Look, you young sprout.”
Mary Elma sounded almost as overbearing and bitchy as Chloe.
“You’re the dragon shifter linked to my granddaughter in the prophecies. Your job is to keep her safe. I breathed a sigh of relief when I knew she’d found you—finally. I can take care of myself. Take your dragon and go home. That’s an order.”

“Excuse me. Ye canna talk so to me.”
Lachlan sounded furious.

“Nay, to
us
,”
Kheladin seconded. Smoke streamed from his mouth.

“This is the second reason I walked away from the coven.”
Maggie broke in before a pitched verbal battle unfolded.
“Every single witch thinks she’s hot shit. Gran, Lachlan’s my husband. You have to be nice to him. Ditto on the other side of things. Gran is my closest kin.”

“Child,”
Mary Elma protested,
“you know nothing. You can’t protect yourself.”

“We’ll talk about that later. How are the rest of the people on the airplane?”

“Asleep.”

Maggie’s heart lurched.
“Did the oxygen system fail?”

“Christ! I put them to sleep. They were bellowing about like a bunch of stupid, angry sheep. I knew I’d never be able to figure a way out of things with them screaming and crying and carrying on.”

“We are here, lass.”
Kheladin’s voice held a warning note.
“Keep quiet, I must concentrate.”

Maggie wanted to ask her grandmother if she’d seen Rhukon or the other wyvern or the Morrigan, but she bit back the words. This was not the time to assert herself. That Mary Elma was also quiet spoke volumes. Her grandmother was ancient and powerful in her own right; Maggie had never known her to bow to anyone—magical or not.

She looked about. A fine, white mist filled the air. If she focused hard and used her very rusty and almost untrained third eye, she could just barely perceive the outline of an airliner suspended in the murky ether. Kheladin flew back and forth. From time to time, he directed streams of smoke or fire at something in particular. Sometimes it flared back at him.

“Hang on.”

She wasn’t certain if Lachlan or Kheladin had barked the warning, but Maggie clasped her arms around the dragon’s neck not a moment too soon. Kheladin banked and veered. A huge jolt of power missed them by an angstrom. Maggie felt the backlash from it burn every inch of exposed skin. She could only imagine what it would have done if it had actually hit them. The dragon dodged another strike, flew half a figure eight, and blasted something with fire. He rolled, surfaced, and did the same again.

Maggie swallowed her screams. If she clung with her arms and legs, she wouldn’t fall off.
Yeah, right. Just keep telling myself that.
Where the fuck were Arawn, Gwydion, and Ceridwen? They were supposed to provide counter fire so Kheladin could do his work. The stench of burned hair filled her nose. Terror paralyzed her. It took all her concentration to hold tight to Kheladin. She silenced a growing conviction she was going to die in this dark place. Lachlan and the dragon were immortal. She wasn’t.

After another series of rolls and aerial acrobatics, where the bottom dropped out of her stomach, and her head spun crazily, Lachlan screamed at Kheladin that they had to leave, that it was too risky without help. Kheladin rolled again, spewing fire. Maggie’s sweat-slick hands lost their grip. Limbs flailing, she fell for a long, heart-stopping moment before the dragon looped beneath and caught her.

“We are leaving now,”
Lachlan screeched.
“Now. No arguments.”

“But I almost had it afore we were attacked,”
the dragon protested.
“I am certain, with just a bit more—”

“Leave,”
Lachlan bellowed so loud Maggie’s ears ached.
“Ye will kill the lass if ye continue.”

“I— I’m all right. Really.”

“Bullcrap.”

“We can’t leave. We’re the only ones here. Gran will die.”

“That may be true, but if we remain, I fear ye will die…”

Power zapped past them, focused on the barrier. Maggie cringed against Kheladin’s scales and imagined herself invisible to boost her puny warding skills. “Shit,” she muttered. “Now they’re attacking from behind.” More jolts crashed past them, so bright she squeezed her eyes shut.

“Sorry to be late to the hanging,”
Ceridwen said merrily.
“They verra nearly trapped us. Damn that Morrigan, anyway. What a crafty old bitch she is.”

“But we’re here now.”
Arawn zipped past Maggie’s field of view, power blazing from his hands.

The dragon didn’t wait for an invitation. He returned to his slow, methodical assault on the barrier. Power thundered around them, not quite so close as before, but near enough Maggie expected to be tossed from her perch any moment.

If she hadn’t been watching, she would have missed it. One nanosecond, the barrier was in place, and the next, it was gone as if it had been an illusion all along.

“We did it,”
Mary Elma crowed.
“I’ll wake the pilot. Get my granddaughter out of here. I swear, dragon shifter, if she’s harmed, I’ll hunt you through every circle of hell and personally strangle you.”

“’Twas a time I was looking forward to meeting your kinswoman,”
Lachlan muttered.
“Now I am not as sure.”

Maggie considered making excuses, but witches were a bossy, overbearing lot, with limited tolerance for others with magic. No point in making up nice lies only to have Mary Elma blow them out of the water when they picked her up at the airport.

Kheladin wheeled. Arawn, Gwydion, and Ceridwen closed from three sides.
“Doona fight me,”
Gwydion cried.
“I am using a different strategy to return us. I dinna care for what happened on the way here.”

Maggie steeled herself for, well, for just about anything. Projectiles, lights, a rocky ride. None of it happened. Before she had time to settle into her perch, where the dragon’s neck joined his body, they were floating over the grove near her car. Kheladin touched down so gently, she wasn’t certain they were on the ground until he said,
“Let me help you down.”

Though he set her down gently, Maggie’s legs buckled beneath her, and she understood how terrified she’d been.
Maybe not safe forever, but I’m safe for now.
Repeating the phrase in her head, she dragged herself upright and stood in place until her head stopped spinning, and her legs agreed to walk in a straight line. Part of her wanted Lachlan’s arms around her, needed to hear him crooning soothing nothings. She looked around, hoping he was back in human form, and she’d just missed the transformation because she was so out of it. Her gaze lit on Kheladin instead. Mouth open in a wide grin that displayed all his teeth, he looked extraordinarily pleased with himself as he fanned the air with furled wings.