Serpent's Kiss: A Dragonfire Novel (23 page)

“You don’t look so good, T,” he said with some sympathy.

Thorolf didn’t want sympathy. He bared his teeth and snarled at the other
Pyr
, which seemed to startle him. The only thing Thorolf wanted to do was shred them all.

They deserved no less for abducting him like this.

He would make them pay.

Especially if anything happened to Chandra.

* * *

In Chicago, Erik Sorensson sighed and turned off his laptop. His partner Eileen watched him from the other side of the room.

“That bad?” she asked, but he could only shake his head.

“I need to think,” he said, hearing the strain in his own voice. Erik felt the absence of Sloane and Rafferty keenly, although he didn’t know what else he could have said to convince them to stay away from Thorolf. They’d departed immediately in a blue glimmer of light, Rafferty carrying the two
Pyr
and his own mate to Bangkok.

He’d spoken to Niall and knew that Niall had taken Rox and the boys directly to Bangkok instead of coming to Chicago. Quinn said Sara had a prophecy, but Marco had claimed it and they didn’t remember it all. Something about a
Pyr
union destroying Chen.

Erik was out of the loop. Given that the situation was of his own choosing, he was surprised by how vehemently he disliked it. It wasn’t natural for a
Pyr
to stand back or step aside.

Even if he had been trying to protect his own kind.

Erik supposed he should be honored that Rafferty and Melissa had left Isabelle in his care and under his protection.

Instead he felt the weight of his many years.

It had been painfully quiet and now there was this new video of Thorolf.

Eileen watched him, then nodded in understanding. “You should sleep,” she said softly. “Everything always looks worse when we’re tired.” Her acceptance of his responsibilities and his nature made his heart swell with love.

He stopped to kiss her, drawing strength from her touch, then pushed back the hair from her cheek. “I’ll be with my hoard.”

Eileen pursed her lips, her gaze assessing. She knew him too well. “You already quit. You don’t have to plan any more.”

“I still have responsibilities.”

“How about taking care of yourself?”

Erik nodded, letting his fingers trail down her throat. “You’re right. But I do need to apologize to an old friend first.”

Her expression turned questioning.

“I let him down. I didn’t keep my promise.”

Eileen smiled and laid her hand against his face. “If you didn’t keep your promise, that was because you couldn’t. And if you couldn’t do it, it couldn’t be done.”

Erik smiled, appreciating her faith in him. “But still, it should have been done.” He planted a kiss in her palm, then retreated to their bedroom.

In the back of the walk-in closet was a hidden door, one that opened into a secret room. Here Erik stored the treasures he’d gathered over the centuries of his life. The room was defended with locks and dragonsmoke, secured against both men and curious
Pyr
, even though the most precious prizes were not to be found in this small room.

Erik knew that Eileen and his daughter Zöe were the true gems in his hoard.

Still, there was enough in the small space to make him feel his life hadn’t been wasted. There were piles of gold and silver coins, most old enough to be worth more as relics than for the weight of precious metal in them. There were gems and jewels, swords and blades, armor for both men and dragons. The room wasn’t small, but it was so packed with riches that there was only a small place to stand in the middle.

He considered the broken Dragon’s Egg, the large obsidian scrying stone that had been destroyed in the loss of the Wyvern, Sophie. He ran a fingertip along one jagged edge, remembering its discovery and knowing this loss had been another of his failures as leader of the
Pyr
. To lose both the stone and the Wyvern had been a serious blow to his kind.

But on this day, he’d come to apologize, not to brood. He moved coins and small chests aside, revealing a long box that had been hidden at the back of the hoard. He could almost feel the presence of Thorvald as he opened the case to reveal the gleaming sword within.

The Avenger of the Aesir.

Lost, broken, found and repaired.

But still not where it should be.

Chapter Nine

The Avenger of the Aesir was a long and heavy sword, so massive that only a man of Thorolf’s large stature could wield it. The blade was forged true and etched with runes to bless and protect whoever carried it. The hilt was bronze, simply designed, for it stole no attention from the pommel. That disk had been impressed with the most powerful rune known to Erik and his kind, the Helm of Awe.

The Helm of Awe was an insigil, a composite of individual runes resulting in an amulet. The Helm of Awe was a circle, with eight lines inside it, two intersecting crosses. In that, it looked like the points of a compass. Each arm terminated in a fork, and each had three crossbars halfway down its length. Erik found his fingertip tracing the incised line of the insigil, as if to draw protection and strength from it himself.

There was a dent in the pommel and several deep scratches in the hilt. They were all the evidence that remained of Thorolf’s rejection of this duty. They’d been buffed out by a master swordsmith but had been impossible to completely remove. Erik supposed the blade had to carry the mark of Thorolf’s refusal to be his father’s son. He hadn’t been surprised that after Thorolf and Thorvald parted, Thorvald had hunted the world for the missing blade.

He certainly wasn’t surprised that Thorvald had found it.

Although Erik had taken the blade in trust, and though he’d known the location of Thorolf for centuries, he’d never thought Thorolf ready for the responsibility of this blade and its burden. In a way it made sense that Thorolf had refused the task: he seemed incapable of fulfilling it, and no
Pyr
courted failure. Even when Thorolf had reappeared during Erik’s own firestorm, Erik had been disappointed by the other
Pyr
’s state. In fact, he’d been annoyed that Thorolf could have wasted so many centuries so frivolously, but Thorolf had shown little sign of changing his ways.

Or learning much of anything. Niall had tried and made some progress, but there was always another party—or another woman—to distract Thorolf from any serious study.

Finally, Erik had hoped to provoke the other
Pyr
into becoming the dragon his father would have wanted him to be. He’d rejected Thorolf and dismissed him. He’d hoped that the other
Pyr
’s newfound connection with his fellows and his hatred of Chen would have motivated him to work for a reconciliation. He had hoped that if nothing else, Thorolf’s firestorm would have prepared him for this duty.

Instead, Erik’s tough love had made the other
Pyr
vulnerable. Thorolf had been trapped and enchanted by Chen, turned against his kind when the
Pyr
hadn’t been there to defend him. Now, Erik’s promise to Thorvald could never be fulfilled.

Worse, the prophecy would never be fulfilled.

And the
Pyr
would be exterminated.

Erik had failed spectacularly.

“You never showed me that one before,” Eileen murmured from behind him. Erik barely glanced over his shoulder. She shouldn’t have entered his hoard without express invitation, but he supposed none of those old rules mattered much any more.

He lifted the sword from the case, struck again by its incredible weight. He had to support the blade on his palm to hold it horizontally when he turned to face Eileen. At his gesture, she stepped into the hoard, glancing about herself before bending over the blade. She lifted a finger as if to touch it, but her hand hovered over it. “These are runes carved into the blade.” She glanced up. “Can you read them?”

“Blessings and protection spells,” he said with a shrug, his gaze falling upon the Helm of Awe.

Eileen followed his glance. “But this one in the pommel is important.”

“The
Aegishjalmur
is the old name for it,” Erik said. “The Helm of Awe.”

Eileen looked at him, hard. “That’s in a story.”

Erik watched her with a smile, loving to see her mind at work. Eileen’s specialty was comparative mythology and she knew thousands of stories. He waited while she sought the right one.

It didn’t take long. She shook a finger at him. “Sigurd,” she said with satisfaction. “The dragon slayer.”

“He killed the dragon Fafnir to claim the Helm of Awe,” Erik said. He nodded. “Fafnir, the first dragon shifter.”

“A man turned to dragon to defend the golden treasure that was more important to him than anything else in the world,” Eileen said. She touched the pommel. “And Sigurd fought for this sigil because it gives power in battle, making the bearer invincible.”

“Giving the bearer the power to conquer with both physical and psychic force,” Erik agreed, eyeing the sword.

“And you have this, why?” Eileen asked. “Because you
Pyr
took it back?”

“A
Pyr
had this blade forged and used this ancient symbol to imbue it with power.”

“Who?”

“Thorkel.”

“Father of Thorolf?” Eileen guessed.

“Father of Thorvald, father of Thorolf,” Erik corrected. “At Thorolf’s birth, Thorvald was told that the
Pyr
would need to be saved, and that his son would be the one to save us, with this blade.”

“I’m guessing there’s a reason why you have it and not Thorolf.” Eileen’s fingertips fell to the dent in the pommel, and Erik wasn’t surprised that she’d noticed it, much less that she’d guessed the blade and its burden had been rejected.

“The story is not mine to tell,” Erik admitted.

“Thorolf must have had a good reason to turn his back on all of you,” Eileen mused.

“Thorvald died estranged from Thorolf,” Erik said, not really answering her. “I think it broke his old warrior’s heart to lose his only son. He entrusted the blade to me on his deathbed.”

Eileen folded her arms across her chest and studied him. “And now that you think Thorolf is lost, you figure you’ve failed to keep some promise to his dad.”

“Clearly.”

“Maybe he’s not completely lost yet,” Eileen suggested. Erik shook his head, but she continued. “Maybe this is his test, and your faith in his survival is necessary to his triumph.”

Erik stared at her in dismay as he realized her implication. “I can’t take the blade to him! I can’t imperil it!” Eileen held his gaze, untroubled. “If I refuse to put the
Pyr
in danger, why would you imagine I would sacrifice this blade, too? It’s our last hope.”

Eileen watched him with care. “But if the final battle is lost, you’ll all be exterminated right? And if Thorolf is the one who’s supposed to avenge you, that seems unlikely to happen with the blade locked away here. You could end up being the reason he fails.”

Erik didn’t like the sound of that. He turned to put the sword back in its case. “I don’t think you understand,” he protested. “We could lose everything.”

“No.” Eileen interrupted him firmly. “I don’t think you’re seeing the situation clearly. It looks to me like you’ve got nothing left to lose.”

It was shocking to hear his worst fear given voice, and given voice by his mate. Erik looked at the blade, his gaze lingering on the Helm of Awe, then at his love and partner. “Losing it could make things worse.”

“Nothing could be worse than losing the
Pyr
,” Eileen argued with conviction. “You’re the basis for a thousand human stories. You’re the truth that our myths have their toes in. We are human because of our stories. If we lose our stories and their roots, the human race you’ve vowed to defend will be lost, as well.”

Erik had never thought of it that way before.

“If you act as if you believe you’ll win, then you will triumph.” Eileen reached up and touched her lips to his, her gaze searching his. “It’s a case of making the future you want. Think of this as the darkness before the dawn.”

“You think we’ll survive.”

“I have complete faith,” she said, smiling so that Erik believed her. “Every good story includes a test, and a moment when it looks as if good can’t possibly prevail.”

“Unless those in the story believe in their success.”

“Exactly.” She smiled as she unfolded a sheet of paper, then turned it for him to read the text. “This fax came for you earlier, from Lorenzo.”

“I thought the fax was for you.”

Eileen shrugged. “Oops. I guess I thought the moment wasn’t right.”

“A union of five will tip the scale

When the moon aligns in Dragon’s Tail;

This
Pyr
alliance can defeat the scheme

And cheat the
Slayer
of his dream.

Fulfilling a pledge long been made

Will put darkness in its grave.

Know
Pyr
and
Slayer
can share one curse: