Firestorm Forever: A Dragonfire Novel (38 page)

He brought Rafferty to me,
Sloane admitted and Erik’s relief was almost tangible. Sloane was glad he didn’t have the power to hear all of his fellows, because the thunder would have been deafening.

His cell phone rang and he answered it, guessing it would be Erik.

But it was Eileen. “Rafferty’s there with you, then?” she asked. “How is he?”

“It’s bad,” Sloane said. “I’m not sure what to do for him. The darkfire is so unpredictable, and it seems to be beneath his scales.”

She obviously repeated this to Erik who growled a reply.

“Marco brought him to me and left. He was pretty shaken up.”

“He should be!” Erik fumed, his words audible even though he wasn’t holding the phone.

“He’s not healing quickly,” Eileen whispered and Sloane understood why she’d called.

“I’m healing,” Erik protested and Sloane shook his head. There was no creature so stubborn as a dragon who needed to rest when there were battles to be fought.

Sloane became authoritative, because as Apothecary he knew best.

“Can you call Melissa? She must be worried sick. I expect she’ll come here,” he said. “If not, could you suggest that to her? I need to keep singing but Rafferty’s bond with her is so strong that her presence might help.” He thought of how their firestorm had been tinged by darkfire and wondered if having her here might help in other ways.

“Of course. And we should bring Isabelle, too,” Eileen said, clearly understanding his plan. “We’ll rent a van and head out as soon as possible.”

“I can fly!”

Eileen covered the phone, but Sloane still heard her reply to her partner. “You’re not flying all of us, not in your condition. And you’re not getting on a commercial airliner with those wounds still healing.”

Erik grumbled but conceded the point.

Eileen spoke to Sloane again. “Your song might help Erik’s wounds to heal faster, too. If we drive straight through, we should be there in two days.”

“Thorolf will be there sooner,” Erik contributed, speaking closer to the phone. “He and Chandra are on their way.”

“And Quinn should be arriving any time,” Sloane noted. The Smith had left a message while Sloane was in New York. He and Sara weren’t rushing their journey, because Sara was finding the travel tiring.

It looked as if Sloane was going to have a house full of
Pyr
. There wasn’t nearly enough to eat, but Thorolf could fix that when he arrived.

Sloane needed to focus all of his energy on Rafferty.

* * *

For someone who was supposedly so private, Sloane was having a ton of company.

Sam couldn’t help but notice the lime green Mustang, because it raced down Sloane’s driveway as if it was on the freeway. It stopped in a cloud of dust and two people got out in a hurry, as if they were racing to put out a fire.

She watched, wondering whether something was wrong. The guy, who had been driving, was tall with long blond hair. He looked like a body builder. The woman was almost as tall as him and had long ebony hair. She moved with such speed that Sam was surprised to see that she was visibly pregnant.

A navy sedan came down the driveway almost immediately after that, and the newly arrived pair glanced back when they were almost at the door. This car was driven more sedately, and a woman got out of it alone. She was dressed more conservatively, and her appearance contrasted with that of the other two. She was in a hurry, too, though. The three embraced warmly, evidence that they knew each other, then walked straight into Sloane’s house.

Without even knocking.

Sam had to guess that they were Sloane’s friends.

While she, evidently, was not. That burned after the intimacy they’d shared, but she had to hope that Sloane would have been more welcoming if she’d gone to his door now. She was giving the idea serious consideration, even though he had company and she might be interrupting, when her phone rang.

To Sam’s relief, she saw that it was Jac. She answered immediately, Sloane’s guests forgotten. “Where are you?” she demanded by way of greeting. “And where exactly is this retreat? I’ve left you a hundred messages!”

“Well, that’s the thing,” Jac said. “I’m not at a retreat.”

“No kidding.” Sam saw no reason to beat around the bush. “Was that really your voice on the news video from Easter Island? Are you really in
Chile
?”

“You heard me?” Jac sounded ridiculously pleased by this, which only made Sam angrier.

Her sister was in the middle of the Pacific and had never told anyone where she was going! It was classic Jac—impulsive and irresponsible.

“You recognized my voice?”

“That
was
you! You’re the one who shot that dragon shifter!”

“Yes! Wasn’t it cool?” Jac was clearly proud of herself. “I don’t know if he died or not, but…”

“Are you out of your mind?” Sam demanded. “What were you even doing there? And what makes you imagine that hurting someone else changes anything?” She took a deep breath. “Nathaniel is dead. He’s going to stay dead, no matter how you try to avenge him.”

“Well, at least you finally said his name,” Jac replied. “I was starting to feel as if you’d forgotten you ever had a son.”

Sam bristled at her sister’s unexpected censure. “It’s not up to you to tell me how to mourn…”

“And it’s not up to you to tell me how to deal with my grief, either,” Jac retorted. “Honestly, Sam, you’re such an icicle. Did you even care that Nathaniel died?”

“Of course I cared!”

“And that’s why you spent so much time with him as he died,” Jac said bitterly. “As always, you chose work over family.”

“I was trying to find a cure…”

“You were ducking any display of emotion,” Jac replied. “Just like you always do.” Her voice wobbled a bit. “Why do you get everything so easily when you don’t even want it?”

Sam exhaled and rubbed a brow, not wanting to fight with the very last surviving member of her family. She tried to sound calm. “I thought you’d plant a tree to mourn him, or something like that.” She winced, having heard the bitterness in that last sentence.

“Not this time,” Jac said grimly. “This time, I want to
do
something. I want to make a difference, and I have.”

“You could have died,” Sam said.

“It would totally have been worth it.” Jac’s voice turned bitter again. “Besides, who would have missed me?”

Sam realized they weren’t getting anywhere and she thought of her exchange with Sloane. Something was bothering Jac, because Sam had never heard her so irritable. She loved her sister, even though they’d fought all their lives. Would it hurt to admit her feelings out loud?

“It would have mattered to
me
.” Her voice softened as she dared to admit the real reason for her concern to her sister. “They’re dragons, Jac, not bunnies,” she continued, finding that the confessions got easier to make. “You could have been killed, and then where would I be? What would I do without you?”

There was silence between them then, a silence punctuated only by the crackle of a bad connection. When Jac spoke, her voice was hoarse. “You’ve never said anything like that to me. I always figured you’d be glad to be rid of me. The new baby stealing your spotlight and all that.”

“Well, there has been some truth in that.” Sam tried to make a joke. “It would be cheaper to be without you,” she teased, and they laughed together for the first time in a long time. “You could go crazy and get a paying job, you know. How did you afford to go to Easter Island anyway?”

“Well, that’s just it,” Jac said with some hesitation, and Sam rolled her eyes in anticipation of the inevitable request. “I bought a one-way ticket because that was all I could afford.”

Sam shook her head and bit back the comment she would usually have made. She and Jac only had each other, so it was time they improved their relationship. Sam wasn’t afraid to make the first move.

Not any more.

She figured she wasn’t going to see much of Sloane since he had all that company and it was time she and her sister mended some bridges. “How about this? I’ll send you the money, if you stop here on your way back to Seattle. It’s time we talked.”

“About Nathaniel?”

Sam knew that the death of her son, and his infection while he was in Jac’s care, was only the tip of the iceberg. “About everything.”

“Deal,” Jac said, her enthusiasm encouraging Sam that she wasn’t the only one who wanted to make a fresh start.

* * *

Sloane was singing the Apothecary’s song for the umpteenth time when he heard Thorolf, Chandra and Melissa arrive. He’d already changed the permissions on his dragonsmoke and got up to unlock the front door before returning to his song.
“It’s open,”
he told Thorolf in old-speak even as he knelt beside Rafferty again.

He scanned the
Pyr
, seeing no visible improvement in his condition. The light within the crystal was brighter, though, and the glow beneath Rafferty’s scales seemed to have diminished. But Sloane was so tired that he might have been seeing things.

“Rafferty!” Melissa cried and flung herself at her husband and mate. Sloane noted a slight increase in Rafferty’s pulse and was glad she had come. She ran her hands over his scales, then froze when she found the main burn on his belly. It looked as awful as it was.

“Will he live?” she asked Sloane and he wished he knew the answer.

“I’ll hunt Marco down and finish him off,” Thorolf said as he dropped to his knees beside Rafferty, his concern clear. “What can I do here?”

“I’m getting tired,” Sloane admitted. “Help me with the healing chant.”

“Even though he’s tone deaf,” Chandra teased. Her worry was clear despite her manner and her eyes narrowed as she reached out a hand to Rafferty. She, too, ran a hand over his scales. Thorolf grabbed her a chair and pulled it closer so that she could sit down. Sloane saw that she was tired, undoubtedly because of the long air journey when she was seven months pregnant. He didn’t want to think of how these two had convinced an airline to let her on board. Thorolf’s beguiling must have improved.

“Marco was here,” Sloane said. “He brought Rafferty to me. He was really upset.”

“And so he should be,” Thorolf said.

“He said he’d trusted the darkfire but that it had betrayed him.”

“What does that mean?” Chandra asked.

Sloane shrugged. “The most important thing is that he refused to try to sing the Cantor’s songs, which control the darkfire, because he no longer trusted the darkfire.”

“And Rafferty is the only other one who knows them,” Melissa said, biting her lip as she considered her fallen mate. There was tenderness in her caress and fear in her eyes.

“I’m trying to remember,” Sloane said. “I was there when Marco was awakened. Rafferty sang the Cantor’s songs to do it.”

“Who else was there?” Chandra asked.

Melissa bit her lip as she recalled. “Erik, Eileen, Zoë, Isabelle, and Brandt.”

“Erik and Eileen are on their way with the girls,” Sloane told them and Melissa wagged a finger at him.

“Erik could see Pwyll that day,” she reminded him. “He said that the darkfire had opened the conduit for him to talk to the dead. Rafferty was able to remember some of the Cantor’s song, but Erik prompted him as to how to use it.”

“With Pwyll’s advice,” Sloane agreed, remembering. “Maybe he’ll be able to talk to Pwyll when he gets here.”

“In the meantime, what can we do?” Thorolf asked. “Who fired the crystal? Was it Marco?”

“I don’t know,” Melissa said. “Of course, we have tons of footage of Rafferty falling and Marco carrying him away, but no one turned a camera on the crowd.”

“I might have to go there,” Thorolf said.

“Isn’t Brandt in Australia?” Chandra asked and Sloane nodded.

“Why?”

She frowned. “I feel something there. Like a ripple in Myth. It must be strong because I’m not as sensitive as I was, and I don’t have the power to visit anymore.”

“What kind of ripple?” Melissa asked.

“Words.” Chandra shrugged, then recited something. “‘Once there were twin boys, each indistinguishable from the other, except that pearls dropped from the lips of one whenever he spoke and snakes leapt from the mouth of the other whenever he spoke.’” Chandra shook her head. “I keep dreaming of Australia and hearing those words.”

“Anywhere particular in Australia?” Melissa asked.

Chandra bit her lip. “The dream is always red. Like the world is on fire.”

“Kim chee,” Thorolf muttered. “The volumes you’ve been eating would give me bad dreams. Great blazing red ones.” He shook his head. “Our neighbor does make it hot.”

Chandra poked him. “But I’m dreaming it, not you. And this is new.”

“The red could mean a firestorm,” Melissa suggested, but no one else had other suggestions to make. Sloane was too tired to think about it.

“Erik should be here tomorrow,” he said. “He might know more. For the moment, maybe you could all help me with the Apothecary’s song.” He shifted shape, hoping that the song would be more powerful in his dragon form. He remembered his father doing that on occasion.