Firestorm Forever: A Dragonfire Novel (6 page)

Where could Boris have gotten more? Was there another hidden stash of it somewhere in the world? Had Jorge made more? Erik couldn’t imagine that Jorge would share any Elixir he made or found.

But how could Boris even be alive?

The
Slayer
laughed and lunged at Erik again. He ripped that wound in Erik’s chest so that it gaped wider, and Erik’s red blood flowed. He was feeling faint, but couldn’t surrender. Boris seemed intent on making that one injury as bad as possible.

Again, Erik let himself fall, caught his breath and breathed dragonsmoke at his foe. This time, Boris anticipated the trick and was already raging dragonfire when Erik turned. The flames caught Erik across the face, singing his scales and feeding his fury.

As they grappled, Erik managed to tear off Boris’s wing fully and cast it to the ground. Boris howled in pain, but simply beat the other wing harder to stay aloft. Erik felt his strength fading and knew that if he didn’t triumph in the next few minutes, he might lose.

Boris seemed to understand the same thing. His eyes glittered as he charged at Erik once more, but Erik flew suddenly sideways so that the
Slayer
raced past him. Erik spun neatly and landed on Boris’s back, sinking his talons in deeply. He thought of Eileen and Zoë and buried his claws even more deeply into the
Slayer
’s hide.

Then Erik bent and bit at the root of Boris’s other wing. Boris tasted of
Slayer
blood, of old rot and mold, and the wound emitted a vile stench. It was a disgusting smell and taste but Erik had to finish his foe.

They had exchanged challenge coins, after all, and though that had been long ago, the tradition still stood: only one of them could survive a blood duel.

No matter how many times Boris returned from the dead to fight it again.

Boris thrashed and spun, but was unable to dislodge Erik. He kicked and squirmed, but couldn’t free himself, and no matter how he raged dragonfire, he couldn’t do more than singe the end of Erik’s tail. He must have been too agitated to breathe dragonsmoke. Boris spun through the air, but Erik held fast. He slammed his back into the brick wall of a tall building, but Erik didn’t let go. Boris swore then, as thoroughly as only a
Slayer
who speaks four languages can swear, and Erik had to laugh.

Then he tore deeply into the
Slayer
with his teeth, even as the black blood burned his mouth. He shredded the second wing as Boris struggled, ripping it free of the
Slayer
’s back as Boris screamed in frustration. Erik flung it away and spat after it, wanting only to remove the taste.

Boris howled, flailing as he bled.

Erik gripped his burden and flew toward the gleaming darkness of Lake Michigan, flying far from shore were the water was cold and deep. He felt Boris breathing slowly and knew the
Slayer
was summoning his dragonsmoke. Erik flew more quickly and dropped low over the water. Boris exhaled and the first tendril of his dragonsmoke locked around Erik’s tail.

Erik caught his breath at the burning pain and felt his strength being sapped. Boris was draining him quickly, but he flew on with determination.

To his shock, a second stream of dragonsmoke locked around his other ankle. Erik spun to look, only to find a second uninjured Boris Vassily flying leisurely beside him, breathing a long thick stream of dragonsmoke.

How could this be?

The wounded Boris in his grip began to laugh, and Erik felt his own strength fading. He realized with horror that they meant to suck him dry, and that with two of them, they might well succeed. He spun and swung the wounded Boris at the second one, breaking the dragonsmoke conduit with the
Slayer
’s body. His move sent a spray of black blood flinging into the air, and it fell into the lake with a hiss.

“And you thought there were no new tricks,”
the two
Slayers
said in unison, their words echoing in Erik’s mind. Erik used the momentum of the swing to fling the wounded Boris through the air. He then flew in the opposite direction, racing back toward Chicago, hoping the healthy
Slayer
would save the injured one.

It was impossible to know for certain whether a
Slayer
would help anyone, even a fellow
Slayer
. He heard the splash of the wounded Boris landing in the lake, then a cry of frustration. Could he swim? Erik didn’t care.

True to the selfish nature of
Slayers
, the second version of Boris abandoned his drowning fellow. He flew in pursuit of Erik, breathing fire that scorched Erik’s tail. This one was fresh and strong, as well as gaining fast. His own wound was deep. Erik eyed the distance to the shore, wondering whether he would make it.

Then he felt a hail of ice pellets, conjured out of a clear sky and smiled.

The
Slayer
faltered in his surprise and glanced up, just as Donovan, the Warrior of the
Pyr
, descended out of the sky in lapis lazuli and gold glory. Donovan roared and flung open his claws, revealing the sharp steel talons that the Smith had forged for him. He fell on the surprised
Slayer
, who snarled and breathed fire in his own defense, but Donovan slashed him in a dozen places with those knife-like claws. Black blood flowed over the
Slayer
’s ruby and brass scales, and Erik felt the battle turn back in favor of the
Pyr
again.

Erik left Donovan to finish off the
Slayer
and concentrated on getting to shore. He’d lost a lost of blood from that chest wound, plus he was burned on his tail and his face. He felt his vision dimming as his strength faded.

He smelled
Pyr
as another dragon swooped low over him and seized him from above. Delaney! The emerald and copper
Pyr
escorted Erik to shore, supporting the older
Pyr
’s weight.

“Hit me with some dragonsmoke,” Delaney invited. “I can take the drain and you need the power.”

In gratitude, Erik closed his eyes and did as instructed, knowing the energy from the dragonsmoke would help him to recover more quickly. He breathed slowly and deeply, creating a conduit between himself and Delaney. He began to feel restored as Delaney’s vigor flowed through the dragonsmoke, and he understood how tempting it might be to drink so deeply that the other dragon shifter died. The incoming flux of power felt so good that a
Slayer
wouldn’t want to stop.

But Erik wouldn’t be a parasite. He took what he needed to survive and no more, then snapped the dragonsmoke with his own claw. He could already feel that the blood was flowing less easily from his wound, and knew he would heal in time. He also could make it to the shore. He and Delaney flew the last increment together. The pair of them shifted shape as they landed on the docks, then turned back in unison to look over the lake.

Donovan was flying toward them, but there was no sign of either Boris.

“They disappeared,”
Donovan said in old-speak. He landed beside them and shifted shape smoothly, shoving a hand through his hair as he frowned into the darkness. “One minute, I had him,” he said aloud. “And the next, he was gone.”

“The other one?” Delaney asked.

Donovan snapped his fingers. “Vanished, as if he’d never been there.”

“Spontaneous manifestation elsewhere,” Delaney said, no less grim than his brother. “I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that the Elixir doesn’t really fade.”

There was more than that in the wind. The Elixir didn’t fully explain Boris’s return from the dead, or his appearance in duplicate. Erik sensed a new peril but didn’t have nearly enough answers. Did this incident have anything to do with his dream? He held his clawed chest and acknowledged that he was shaken by the strength of Boris’s attack. He lifted a glance to the buildings around them and the few lights that were on. “We need to beguile any human witnesses,” he said, not truly knowing whether he had the strength to do it.

“We’ll take care of it,” Donovan said. “Then we’ll meet you at your place.”

Erik extended his hand to first one brother, then the other. “Thank you. I don’t know why you’re here, but I’m very glad you are.”

“I had a feeling,” Donovan said with a grin. “Even though you’re supposed to be the one with foresight.”

Erik frowned at that. Was he losing his abilities?

How much change would the end of the Dragon’s Tail Wars bring to the
Pyr
, even if they survived? Erik couldn’t see that future and felt a new concern that his kind might
not
survive.

Who would defend the earth and its treasures then?

* * *

Marco was playing with fire, and he knew it.

Worse, he believed it was the best possible choice. He was convinced that the
Pyr
could only survive by walking through the flames, so to speak, and confronting their worst nightmare. Erik Sorensson was concerned about the past repeating itself, about the prospect of
Pyr
being hunted by humans as they had been once before. It was already happening. Marco could see it all around him. He heard it in the tone of news reports about the outbreak of the Seattle virus and its insidious spread through the population. Marco heard the fear and he heard the blame. That video of Jorge, willfully scattering infected blood over the crowd, had been shown so many times that it was burned in his memory.

As well as that of everyone else. Just two minutes of any broadcast by Maeve O’Neill made it clear that she not only hated the
Pyr
, but that she had an enthusiastic following. Who knew what those people would do to rid the world of dragon shape shifters, whom they saw as responsible for the Seattle virus?

It would only get worse, unless the
Pyr
revealed themselves and fought fire with fire.

Seattle’s population had dropped to a quarter of its former total, some of the loss by deaths to the illness, but more to people choosing to move. Of course, in relocating to other parts of the country, people had unwittingly spread the virus. It remained untreatable and fatal, but it was now clear that it had a tendency to lurk in the blood of a victim for an unspecified amount of time. Symptoms could appear days after exposure or years. There appeared to be no rhyme or reason to it. There had to be another contributing factor, but no researcher had yet identified it. Worse, there was no test to identify carriers before they began to show symptoms. Isolation wards had been set up in every hospital, but the virus kept spreading.

And killing.

Sloane had explained it all to Marco, when Marco had last visited him.

Marco had listened, then left the Apothecary to his hunt for a cure.

As ever, Marco followed his own intuition and the spark of the darkfire. He’d gone from Sloane to Erik the previous summer and listened to the concerns of the leader of the
Pyr
. He found himself in vehement disagreement with Erik, but didn’t argue with him aloud. Marco couldn’t, after all, articulate why he thought Erik was wrong, and he doubted that Erik’s mind could be changed with discussion anyway.

Marco knew Erik certainly wouldn’t trust the darkfire with the intuitive conviction that he did. The darkfire was in Marco’s blood. It was attuned to his very nature. He felt a stronger link to the darkfire than to any other creature alive, or even to any substance. It was a part of him and he liked to believe that he was a part of it.

Marco wasn’t sure he could survive without the sight—and the feel—of its blue-green spark in his proximity. To deny the impulses it gave him would have been a violation of everything he believed to be true.

Instead of arguing with Erik, he stole Sigmund’s book from that
Pyr
’s hoard, the darkfire urging him on. While in Erik’s hoard, Marco had seen the last of the darkfire crystals, its spark extinguished. He knew that Drake had returned this stone to Erik after the adventures of the Dragon’s Tooth Warriors, and that both Erik and Drake believed the stone’s task to be done. Marco wasn’t so certain. He took the extinguished crystal, as well.

Then he moved to Seattle, drawn by a leyline sparked with darkfire, drawn to this particular apartment. His direction was nothing he could have explained clearly, but Marco knew that this was where he should be, that the one apartment—of all the ones shown to him—was the one he must occupy. He wasn’t sure why he was there or what he was waiting for, but he waited.

When, one night, the darkfire had sparked in that darkened crystal, Marco had believed himself to be on the right track.

To wherever he was going.

That was the night Marco had heard one of Maeve’s broadcasts emanating from the apartment below him. He’d recognized the sound of the video with Jorge and heard Maeve’s call to humans to rise up and destroy the
Pyr
. He knew that the darkfire was right. He’d sauntered down the corridor of the floor beneath his own and passed his neighbor coming out of her apartment. Marco knew that she looked familiar but couldn’t place her.

The darkfire urged him to find out more.

A day of research made everything clear. The woman who lived below him was actually in that video of Jorge. She was part of the crowd spattered by the blood. She was holding the hand of a young boy, who looked up at Jorge in his dragon form with awe and then fear. She ducked and pulled her hood over her head, trying to tuck the boy protectively beneath her. He was fascinated by Jorge, though, staring open-mouthed at the
Slayer
. Marco saw the infectious blood flick from that severed arm into the boy’s mouth and shuddered as the boy cried in pain.