“Yes, I see. I should take this from you, so you can’t easily sneak up on the magical.” His lip curled. “Assassin.”
I clenched my jaw but didn’t allow myself to otherwise react. I could live without that charm, but what if he took Sindari from me?
At my side, the tiger crouched, his tail rigid as he watched this exchange. He looked like he wanted to attack, but even he would be no match for a dragon.
“But I am not a thief.” Zav lowered his hand. “I am not a criminal.”
“I’m not a criminal either,” I growled. “You can’t bring your laws to this world and expect people here to obey them.”
“Of course I can. I am a dragon, sent by the Dragon Justice Court. That your puny people don’t recognize our rule over the galaxy is laughable. It is only because nobody wishes to deal with your verminous infestation of this world that you’ve been allowed to run amok, breeding like iyarku and suffocating out almost all other life here.” His lids drooped, leaving his violet eyes as mere slits. “You would be wise to respect dragons when they do visit.”
“So sorry I didn’t drag a throne and a red carpet into that cave as soon as you arrived.”
“Someday,” he continued, ignoring my outburst, “a dragon may decide to come and rule over this mess and straighten it out.”
“You, perhaps? Just give me some notice. I’ll put the word out on social media, so anyone who wants to appropriately worship you can show up at the portal.”
“Not me.” He curled his lip again. Maybe that was an involuntary tic. “I will spend no more time in this vile place than I must. I am no cowardly refugee.”
A couple of the guys with guns glanced at each other at this insult, but nobody shifted their weapons from me to Zav. Too bad.
He prowled around behind me again, and my shoulder blades itched. The last thing I wanted was an enemy this powerful at my back.
He came around to my other side. “Because I think it could cut down on the length of time I’m forced to stay here, I am considering using you as bait.”
“What?”
He smiled for the first time, and I decided that Amused Zav wasn’t any more appealing than Pissed Zav. “They hate you, and they come out in droves when you’re nearby. I’ve never had a pack of werewolves stand up to me in my life, but they wanted very badly to kill you, to receive credit among all the magical here for their great victory. Even when I was right before them, they thought that it would be worth it to sacrifice part of their pack to take you down.”
“Nice of you to read their minds. That would be considered a violation of civil liberties here, but whatever. You’ve already said our laws don’t apply to dragons.”
“What liberties do your laws give to the magical?”
None, I admitted, thinking of the therapist. Maybe I’d call Mary later and let her know my acute stressors were at least as much of a problem as the chronic ones.
“I cannot read your mind,” he remarked, watching me. “Which charm of yours protects you from that?”
“If you don’t know, I’m not telling you. A girl doesn’t lift her skirt for just any man.”
He blinked and looked down. I almost laughed, realizing I’d confused him with the expression.
His surprise disappeared quickly, and he lifted his gaze and nodded. “Yes, bait. You could offend the magical with your tongue even if you hadn’t alienated the whole community by slaying hundreds of them.”
“Those weren’t part of a community. They were rogues. And you’re not dragging me off to dangle me above a cliff or whatever you have in mind. I’d kick my own ass before going anywhere with you.”
“I wasn’t going to give you a choice,” he said dryly.
“I’m not being your pawn.” I glared straight into those cocky violet eyes.
He stared back at me, indifferent, as far as I could tell, to my defiance.
“It is not wise to refuse a dragon,” Greemaw said.
“People keep using that word,” I said, “but I assure you it doesn’t apply to me.”
My mother rubbed her face. She had her Glock in hand again, but she didn’t know what to do with it. I had a similar problem. I wanted to bash the pompous dragon on the head with Chopper, but I couldn’t win, not here with all his allies around and probably not alone in a field with him either. Life was unfair.
“You are an honest mongrel,” Zav said, “I’ll grant you that.”
“Thanks so much. You’re not using me.”
“We’ll see.” The violet glow to his eyes brightened, and he smiled again, then turned and walked into the stone wall.
Once again, his aura vanished from my senses far more abruptly than it should have. My legs almost buckled at the cessation of power. Mom came over and gripped my arm.
I wanted to wave her away, to say I was fine, but my muscles were rubbery and unreliable. I took a few deep breaths, refusing to fall or pass out in front of a lava golem and her entire clan of refugees.
“So, uh, Greemaw.” I focused on her and tried to pretend nothing had happened, while hoping that Zav had taken off and I would never see him again. “I believe we were negotiating? For your assistance?”
She gripped her broad chin with one massive hand. “Zavryd came to check on us when he learned you were heading here. I have crossed paths with his family before, in another realm, another time.”
“Are they all so delightful?”
She chuckled, the sound like rocks grating together. “He is young for a dragon, with much to prove to his family. Believe it or not, he would be considered polite and reasonable for one of their kind.”
“Reasonable! He wants to dangle me as bait until some villain succeeds in killing me.” I envisioned the black dragon version of Zav flying all over the West Coast with me tethered to one of his legs, hanging upside down thousands of feet in the air as wyverns and harpies and who knew what else flew at me with spears.
“Many dragons kill lesser beings—” Greemaw touched her own chest to include herself in the group, “—or keep them as slaves. Were I not too old for war, I would fight beside his family, to ensure they continue to hold majority power in the Dragon Ruling Council and Justice Court.”
I had a headache and couldn’t articulate how little I cared about dragon courts and councils.
“Even so,” Greemaw said, extending her hand, palm upward, “I will admit it tickles me to see someone stand up to a dragon. That audacity will get you killed, but for today, I will help you if I can. Show me the vial.”
My audacity had helped the situation? There was a first. I laid the vial on her palm, hoping she had a gentler touch than the size of her hand suggested.
“It takes heat to make the sigil visible,” I said.
Mom cleared her throat and held up her lighter in offering.
“Not necessary.” Greemaw focused on her palm, and the gray stone took on the orange color of a hot charcoal ember.
I could feel the heat from a couple of feet in front of her. Rather than trying to manipulate the vial with her large fingers, she used her power to levitate it into the air. It spun slowly, and she paused it to peer through the opening to the bottom. The elegant sigil was once again illuminated.
“I thought it might be elven, but my mother disagreed, and we didn’t find it in any of her language books.”
“That is because—” Greemaw allowed the vial to lower to her palm and extended it to me, “—that is a symbol from the special alchemical language of the dark elves.”
“Dark elves? The ones that used to live underground and war with the light elves—or regular old elves, as we talk about them now—in Norse mythology?”
“They have warred with the sunlight elves for all of eternity and across many worlds,” Greemaw said.
“Haven’t they been gone from Earth for centuries and centuries?” Mom asked.
“As far as I know, that’s the belief.” I pulled out my phone, intending to text Willard and ask if she’d heard differently, but the magic that kept this place hidden also blocked cell signals. “I’ll check with my boss later. If there are dark elves hanging out in Seattle, she would be the one to know.”
But if she did know, wouldn’t she have mentioned it in passing at some point? And would such beings, considered evil by the surface elves, have been able to fly under the radar for centuries?
Maybe it wasn’t dark elves at all but someone who’d gotten ahold of one of the race’s ancient alchemy books and learned to make a vial and a potion to get at Willard. That made more sense to me.
“Seattle,” Greemaw said the name slowly, as if it weren’t familiar. “What was that place called in past times?”
“I’m not sure what it would have been called when the last volcano erupted, if that’s what you mean.” I waved toward Paulina Peak again. “The Duwamish were the natives that occupied the land where the city now is.”
“Ah, yes. It is a newer city, by your definition of that. If dark elves live there, they would have come relatively recently. They cannot stand the sunlight, so they can only be someplace with tunnels or caves.”
“Maybe they were hanging out over in Forks with the vampires.” I meant it as a joke, but Greemaw shook her head.
“Even a rainforest would not be dark enough for them to come out in the daylight. The sun burns them quickly, but they grow ill even under cloud cover. They will come out on a cloudy night, but never when the moon is present in the sky.”
“Thank you for the information.” I doubted I was dealing with real dark elves, but at least I had a starting point now for researching potions that could have hurt Willard. I didn’t know any alchemists back in Seattle, but I was positive there had to be some in a city that big, and I would find them.
12
“When you said your work—your life—is dangerous, I didn’t fully grasp how dangerous.” Mom looked at me from the passenger seat as we drove back to Bend.