Firestorm Forever: A Dragonfire Novel (18 page)

Quinn shook his head. “I didn’t want you to worry before the baby was born. I’ve been making preparations for my trip, though.” He forced a smile and raised his voice. “Maybe since the baby came a bit early, you will be able to come along.”

Fortunately, Quinn was an artisan blacksmith and traveled often to show his work at art shows. They’d first met at one in Ann Arbor. They’d planned to use his business as a cover story if it was necessary to join the
Pyr
during the last months of the Dragon’s Tail War. They’d agreed to travel to Sloane’s home in California, following Route 66 from Chicago, and stopping to show Quinn’s work at shows along the way. Sloane knew about their plan, and Sara preferred the idea of being at his farm than in a city like Chicago, where Erik had his lair.

“Of course, I will,” Sara said in a louder voice, assuming that the nurses would overhear. “It’s like this one knew to come a bit early, so we could attend those shows on the west coast as a family. Next year, Garrett will be too busy in school to go to fall art shows and it will be good for the boys to see more of the country.”

Quinn smiled with obvious relief. “Route 66, here we come.” He stroked his son’s cheek, then gave Sara an intent look. “With Garrett, Ewan, Thierry and…”

“Michael,” Sara said. She watched Quinn catch his breath, having anticipated that naming their son after his brother would touch him. She worried for a moment that it was too soon, since Michel had returned as a shadow dragon and Quinn had been compelled to kill him.

But Quinn nodded once, his approval clear, and Sara was relieved about one thing, at least.

* * *

Niall Talbot, the Dreamwalker of the
Pyr
, was seeking Drake’s mate.

It didn’t help that Drake was pacing the living room of the apartment Niall shared with Rox, which was located over her tattoo shop in Manhattan. Relaxation was key to dreamwalking, after all. Theo, the leader of the Dragon Legion who seemed to have appointed himself as Drake’s second, was standing guard outside the front door of the shop, on the street below, while another of his warriors guarded the back. Two more, whose names Niall hadn’t caught, were on the roof, watching for trouble. They were still and intense, these
Pyr
, and Niall was glad to have their protection for his own mate and sons. They breathed dragonsmoke, all of them, weaving it together artfully as they kept a vigilant watch. They were accustomed to working together.

The twins, Kyle and Nolan, were asleep and Rox had stayed with Drake. Niall knew she intended to keep him from being disturbed, as much as she could, but Niall found it hard to ignore Drake’s agitation.

The situation made Niall think of possibilities, dire ones. Rox had been snatched during their firestorm, and Niall had been equally agitated, even during those few moments that her safety had been out of his control. Veronica had been abducted by
Slayers
two days before. There were dozens of possibilities of what could have happened to her—or been done to her—in that time, not a one of which helped Niall relax.

That Rox was pregnant again made Niall only more protective than he usually was. That didn’t help him relax either. He had to concentrate.

Niall compelled himself to close his eyes and tried to enter the necessary mental state. He felt the bed beneath him and smelled Rox’s scent on the sheets. He hovered on the cusp of change, knowing it would sharpen his senses even further. He savored the trickle of power in his body, the faint glow of blue light, and let his mind float wider.

He heard the breathing of his sons, so deep in slumber, and sensed their awareness of each other. He and his twin Phelan had shared that bond once. He listened to Rox, as she offered Drake something to eat or drink, her presence in his lair both familiar and exciting. He heard the low rumble of Drake’s voice, then his query to his fellows in old-speak, followed by Theo’s low response.

All clear.

Niall felt the sparkle of the dragonsmoke they breathed, seeing it as frost in his current state and hearing it chime as another circuit was closed around the apartment. He returned to Drake’s presence and inhaled deeply of the other
Pyr
’s scent. It was faint, more faint than that of modern
Pyr
and less distinctive. When the remainder of the Dragon’s Tooth Warriors had been in these times, it had been hard to distinguish their scents. Now that only Drake remained of that company, his scent was still more elusive than Niall would have preferred.

But Drake had been the last to see Veronica.

Niall released his awareness of the physical realm, for it wouldn’t help him at this task. He had to be intuitive and impulsive. He had to trust his instincts and follow scents and dreams wherever they led. They might take him to real places, or to imagined ones, but mapping the path of the dreamwalk to the real world was impossible. He might recognize locations, but he was more likely to find truths, to provoke change, to spark reactions, any of which might be more readily pursued in the real world than dreams.

He hoped for clues more than answers, but they were better than nothing at all.

In search of a dream, Niall followed Drake’s scent, out into the world and far beyond the island of Manhattan. He felt as he did when he was flying, but it was effortless. There was no wind, although the stars shone high overhead. There was only the conduit of scent, glinting like a moonlit river, guiding him over Drake’s recent path.

The scent crossed the streets of a small town in Virginia, over and over again, detailing Drake’s obsessive search for some sign of his missing mate. Niall felt his anguish and sympathized, compelling himself to focus on the goal rather than wasting time in empathy. Finding Veronica as quickly as possible would be the best solution.

He concentrated on the location that Drake returned to time and again, the place that ultimately Theo had visited repeatedly. Beneath the scents of the
Pyr
tracking Veronica, there was a faint whiff of
Slayer
, a residue that smelled just like Boris Vassily. He’d been dead for years, but Niall remembered his scent. The scent of Boris was incredibly strong, too, as if had been emitted in triplicate. Three
Slayers
had attacked Veronica’s home who looked just like Boris. That they smelled just like him no matter how deeply Niall explored the scent meant that they
were
Boris, which made no sense at all. Still the evidence couldn’t be denied.

Nor could Niall deny that the scent led nowhere. It just stopped cold right at that intersection, about fifty feet above the ground. Niall didn’t like the only possible explanation for that. Veronica had been seized by
Slayers
with the power to spontaneously manifest elsewhere.

Slayers
who had drunk the Elixir and were identical to Boris, but returned to life. Niall thought of his own battles during his firestorm with the shadow dragons that had been brought back to life with the Elixir—including his dead twin brother—and shuddered inwardly at this development.

The
Pyr
had learned how to ensure that these
Slayers
and shadow dragons stayed dead. Boris’s body had been dismembered, incinerated and exposed to all four elements. He should have stayed dead forever. Niall didn’t understand how Boris could be returned, never mind multiple times, but he knew enough to dread the implications of this change.

And to fear it. His awareness of the alternate realm slipped, shaken loose by his emotional reaction, and he had to concentrate again, breathing deeply and retracing his path.

Niall followed Drake’s trail back to Veronica’s home, identifying that trail by the scent of smoke and fire. The townhouse was burned to the ground, as was so often the case with a building exposed to dragonfire, and the burned-out wreckage of a vehicle parked in front of it revealed that her car had also been destroyed by the
Slayers
.

Niall fought a sense that they had wanted to take her alive and was revolted by the possibilities that created.

Drake’s scent came out of the townhouse and Niall smelled the
Pyr
’s blood on the pavement. Again, he marveled that Drake hadn’t been killed. Was Drake that powerful of a foe, or did the
Slayers
have a more complicated plan? Boris’s scent erupted from three different points of the wreckage, meaning that the versions of him had departed the building in different ways.

Their trails led toward the point of abduction, just as Niall anticipated, and one was redolent with the scent of
Slayer
blood. Niall remembered that Drake had wounded one badly, by ripping off his arm.

He wished he knew where
Slayers
had gone.

Niall floated around the site again, dissatisfied with what he’d learned. Fearing that he had failed and Veronica would be lost, he sought some hint he’d missed. That was when he caught it.

The tendril of a dream. It was faint, almost faded to nothing, so insubstantial that he’d nearly overlooked it.

Niall snatched the end of dream and climbed onto it, like a magical carpet that would take him to another realm. He followed the dream, pulling himself along it as if he hauled his mind up a rope of glittering silver. He felt the anxiety of the dreamer, and guessed his identity before the dream unraveled in the upstairs bedroom of a nearby house.

He had no idea where it was, much less how close or far it was from the townhouse. Two boys slept there, each in one of the twin beds. One was dreamless and at ease. The other frowned as he fretted over the fate of someone else.

His mother.

Niall felt a surge of triumph that he’d located Veronica’s son, Timmy. He hovered nearby, waiting and watching, listening to the course of the boy’s subsequent dreams. Timmy dreamed of Drake and recalled his conversation with that
Pyr
. Niall was aware of the relief Timmy had felt in Drake’s presence, and how his fears had grown once Drake had left him. He might have tried to ease the boy’s fears, more out of kindness than anything else, but suddenly he saw a flicker of the dream of another.

It was like a tongue of silver flame in the darkness, a dream wrought of worry but a tentative one, as if the dreamer feared to put a loved one in jeopardy.

Niall made an intuitive leap that it was Veronica, fearing for her son.

Then he made a Dreamwalker leap and seized the flicking tendril of that dream before it disappeared.

* * *

Ronnie had the strangest dream.

She was sleeping fitfully, worried about Drake and Timmy. She’d concluded that Timmy must still be with Dashiell. The Pattersons were responsible people and good friends. They’d take care of her son, she was sure of it.

But what was Timmy thinking? Was he afraid? What had he been told? She could easily imagine how shaken he would have been to have come home to find the townhouse burned, the car trashed and her gone. She knew how Mark’s disappearance had given her son nightmares and made him fear that the world was an uncertain place.

She didn’t want to make any of that worse.

Her conviction of Timmy’s bond with Drake wavered then. If Drake was dead, he wouldn’t be able to defend Timmy. Even if Drake wasn’t dead, what would the Pattersons make of a stranger showing up to talk to Timmy? What if her son was tormented by nightmares again?

It was infuriating to be unable to do anything to protect Timmy or reassure him. Ronnie was sure she’d never sleep, but eventually she did.

Given her thoughts before she fell asleep, she wasn’t surprised that she was restless.

She was surprised that she dreamed of a man she’d never seen before. He was a little taller than her but not as tall as Drake. He was muscular, like the boys she’d known in high school who wrestled, and he seemed to be looking directly at her. It was weird to have a dream like this, and Ronnie frowned, wondering whether her captors had given her some kind of drug.

“I’m a friend of Drake’s,” the man said, his voice low and pleasant.

Ronnie had heard claims like that before. She rolled over and tried to push him out of her mind without success. She felt as if she’d turned her back on a conversation, but that he was still waiting for her to answer him.

There was a blue shimmer at the periphery of her thoughts that was becoming increasingly familiar and Ronnie realized he had to be a dragon shifter. If he was
Slayer
, it would be stupid to ignore whatever he was doing. She granted her attention to him again, only to discover that in his place there was a large amethyst and platinum dragon.

Now that she’d seen a few dragon shifters, she studied him with care. He watched her with the same serene patience as the blond man, and she could see that he was muscled in a similar way.

“Cut yourself,” she demanded in her dream and saw his shock. “
Pyr
bleed red.”

He bared his dragon teeth in what must have been a smile, then drew the edge of his talon across his own belly. A thin crimson line appeared, then a few drops of red blood seeped from the wound.

If there were more divisions between dragon shifters than
Slayer
and
Pyr
, bad and good, then Ronnie knew nothing of them.

Did she dare to trust him?

“Drake is here.” The dragon closed his eyes, and Ronnie wasn’t sure what to expect. She was startled when a vision of an urban apartment filled her mind. A petite woman watched worriedly as Drake paced, his anguish so clear that Ronnie’s heart twisted. She could see that he’d been injured in her defense because he had bruises and he moved more stiffly than he had before.