by to pick up Brom later, and tried to reach Baltic three more times, I greatly feared that the dark turn of my suspicions would turn out to be only too valid.
As I pulled up at our house to find the lights ablaze, semicircles of light from the windows piercing the night, all doubt was erased.
“Can anyone join this party, or is it by invitation only?” I asked as I set the Larry stone on a table near the door in Baltic’s library.
At the sound of the door opening, two of the three occupants of the room turned to look at me.
I squatted next to where Pavel lay on the floor, feeling for his pulse. It was a little erratic, but present, and he didn’t seem to be bleeding anywhere.
“Will the day never come that you will do as I ask, mate?” Baltic asked, his face filled with irritation.
I gestured toward the woman in front of him. “You’re the only man I know who can be annoyed at his mate while someone else holds a sword to your neck. What exactly do you intend to do to Baltic, Thala? You can’t mean to kill him; you’re the one who brought him back to life.”
She ground her teeth while Baltic answered in just the arrogant tone I was expecting. “Ysolde, you will leave the house. This is between Thala and me.”
“I don’t think it is—not anymore.” I stepped over Pavel’s form, skirting the two of them in their locked tableau. “Not since Thala ordered her Three Stooges to kill me in Latvia.”
Baltic’s gaze shifted back to Thala. His eyes glowed with ebony fury. “You tried to kill my mate? Who are these dragons you command?”
“Clever, aren’t you?” Thala taunted me, her eyes nervously switching from Baltic to me. “Did that little half- dragon bitch Maura talk?”
“Half-dragon . . .” I shook my head, moving behind Baltic to the far side until I stood behind a couch, resting my hands on the back of it. “She’s the same as you, Thala. You both have dragon fathers . . . red dragon fathers. Was your father killed by Chuan Ren as well? Is that why you’re not a member of the sept?”
She spat out a word that I didn’t recognize, but I knew it was not particularly polite. Baltic stood apparently relaxed, his hands open, but I could feel the dragon fire inside of him, demanding that he act. He was waiting to see what Thala would do. Neither of us believed she would hurt him, not after she’d gone to significant trouble to resurrect him.
“My father couldn’t be bothered to recognize me, and the sept refused to allow me in because they said my mother’s blood tainted the precious dragon blood, diffused it into something impure. So, yes, I formed my own tribe, just as Baltic did when I brought him back. Only we have no intention of living quietly while our usurpers reign supreme.”
Baltic eyed her with speculation. “You raised your own tribe? Then it was you who acted against me.”
She smiled. “You were so busy thinking of nothing but re-forming the dragon heart, I’m surprised you noticed anything else was going on.”
“You gave Kostya my shard.” His eyes narrowed. “You did not wish for me to re-form the heart!”
“Of course I didn’t, you stupid man,” she snapped, the sword waving in the air as she gesticulated. “Ysolde! Ysolde! That’s all you could think of—Ysolde! ‘We must re-form the heart, Thala. We must get the shards from the other wyverns so we can invoke the First Dragon, Thala. Your plans and desires must wait—it must all circle around bloody precious Ysolde!’ I bit my tongue for
“But why . . . ? I don’t understand,” I said, sliding my hands down behind the couch so I could start sketching a few wards and begin to gather a ball of arcane power.
“She wanted the dragon heart for herself,” Baltic answered, his face impassive. The fire raged within him, however.
“Why? What could it do . . . ? Oh. I suppose if you had the most powerful relic of all dragondom, you could do pretty much anything, couldn’t you? Even bringing your mother out of the beyond.”
To my surprise, she dropped the sword tip from Baltic’s throat and made a gesture of annoyance with her free hand. “Do you really think I’m going to stand here explaining myself to you as if I were a villain at the end of a movie? I am not so foolish, nor do I have the time to waste on your inanities.”
She flung down the sword and spread wide her hands, a horrible noise coming from her mouth, part wail, part spell.
Baltic shouted and lunged toward me, knocking me down behind the couch, covering me with his body. For a moment, it seemed as if time itself stopped, the air inside the house gathering itself; then it was released in a shock wave of fury that exploded outward, taking with it everything in its path.
I opened my eyes to find a blurry face just a few inches from mine. I screamed and tried to sit up, clunking my head against something rock hard. “Ack!”
“Ow! Oh, man, you broke my head!”
I blinked rapidly, and my vision cleared enough for me to see that the face belonged to a furry black dog, who was now rubbing the top of its head along the edge of the mattress upon which I was lying. “Jim! What the devil were you trying to do?”
“See if you were still breathing. You were making funny little grunting noises.” It lifted its head and bellowed, “She’s awake!”
I realized at that moment that I wasn’t alone in the bed. The familiar warm, solid form who lay next to me was too still, however. I pulled myself up again as I bent over Baltic, who was lying on his stomach, and I noted signs of serious wounds in the process of healing. “Saints of the apocalypse, what happened to his back?”
Aisling bustled into the room, May on her heels. “Oh, good, you are awake. How do you feel?”
“Confused. What’s happened to Baltic?”
“Dirge at point-blank range,” Jim said, peering over the bed to look at the bruised and battered back. “He takes a licking but keeps on ticking, doesn’t he?”
“Dirge . . .” Memory returned to me. “Thala!”
“I’m so glad you told us where you were going, or we wouldn’t have arrived just as she brought the house down on you,” Aisling said, fetching a soft robe from a wardrobe. Absently, I put it on over the nightgown in which I’d been dressed.
“Baltic took the brunt of it, but Gabriel and Tipene worked over him and Pavel all night.” May’s blue eyes considered me with a frankness that drove home the debt we owed them. “You weren’t hurt badly, but the others . . . well, I’m just glad that Aisling and Drake brought you to us in time.”
“I will move heaven and earth to repay all of you,” I swore, tears swimming in my eyes as I gently touched the marks on Baltic’s back. He moaned into the pillow, moving restlessly. I couldn’t keep from bending down to kiss his cheek, whispering, “It’s all right, my love. You sleep. I’m right here.”
He murmured my name, his body relaxing again as I stroked his shoulder.
“If you can stand a visitor, I know of someone who’s anxious to see you. Jim, stop touching Ysolde with your nose. It’s unhygienic,” Aisling scolded, shooing him toward the door.
“Sheesh, you yell at me for not wanting to see her when she’s all bloody and gooey, and now you’re yelling because I’m just checking that she’s OK. Inconsistent much, Ash?”
“Sullivan?” Brom appeared in the door, his face anxious. I slipped out of the bed and met him halfway, hugging him as tightly as I could without cutting off his oxygen. “Nico said you’d be OK, but you didn’t look like it when they carried you in.”
“I’m absolutely OK,” I said, giving him one last squeeze before he started casting glances at the others in the room. “So is Baltic. I’m sorry if we frightened you.”
“I wasn’t scared,” he said with all the insouciance of a nine-year-old. He glanced again at Baltic, then gave a little twitch of his shoulders. “Not much. I’m glad you’re back, though. Jim says Thala went postal and exploded the house. Is the basement blown up as well?”
I smiled, relieved that the strained expression had faded to one of purely mercenary interest. “I’m sure it was. We’ll have to get you some new equipment for your ghastly experiments, all right?”
“OK. Nico says he’ll go with us the next time Maata and I go to the British Museum. He says he knows
