Chapter Eight
EIGHT
BERRY
“I can’t find a delicate way to ask this, so I’m going to come right out with it.
” The redheaded Becket gave me an apologetic half smile.
Her voice had a tone that was particularly lyrical, making me sigh to myself about my own voice, which a former boyfriend once kindly referred to as smoky.
“Are you with Owain? That is, are you OK with sharing a bedroom? If you aren’t, I’m sure we can bed him down on a couch somewhere. ”
I wanted to say that I would prefer if he slept elsewhere, but the memory of the hours I’d spent the previous night being hyperaware of Owain on the bottom of Savian’s kids’ bunk beds remained high in my mind.
“I don’t want to put you to any more trouble than we are, so it’s fine if he stays in a room with me,” I answered, well aware that it had taken every morsel of self-control that I possessed to turn down a stark naked Owain offering to pleasure me, and I wasn’t sure I could manage it again.
Not while an oddly overwhelming protective surge swamped me at the knowledge that the dragons didn’t give a damn about him ... and I wasn’t overly certain about the two vampires.
“We have only ourselves to rely on,” I murmured to myself as I walked across frozen ground to a barn.
“Really?” The woman introduced as Ysolde stopped about a dozen paces in front of us and turned with a pointed look directed at me.
“Dragons have very good hearing,” Aisling said as she passed by with a demon in dog form, whose presence no one seemed inclined to explain. “Jim, if you have something helpful to impart, you may speak.”
“Hoo, baby,” the demon said, walking next to me. “Heya, Berry, is it? Name’s Jim. Effrijim, really, but no one calls me that but Desi and Parisi. So, you’re a knocker turned thief taker? How’s that working out?”
“Desi as in Desislav?” I asked, wondering what on earth I was doing talking to a demon.
“Yup. He’s my dad. Parisi used to be Sovereign. She’s my mom, although she doesn’t remember that, because she went into the Beyond to keep from dying after I was born, and peeps left her in there for so long, she lost her memory.”
“You’re Desislav’s son?” I asked, horror crawling down my flesh. I shot a desperate glance toward Owain, at the entrance of the barn. He immediately spun around, his eyes narrowing on the demon.
“Yeah, but it’s cool. I live with Ash and Drake and their spawn, and Desi and Parisi promised they won’t try to off them.
Well, unless they don’t give him the blood moon, but I doubt he’s serious about wiping out dragons if we don’t.
” Jim pursed its doggy lips before adding, “Then again, they’ve got their hearts set on taking down the Court, and I don’t see how they’re going to do that without the blood moon. Still, you gotta have hope, right?”
Owain’s eyes went almost black as the pupils dilated, this time with pure, unadulterated rage. He snarled something in what sounded to me like Latin, making an odd symbol in the air, and poof! Suddenly the demon dog was gone.
“Jim!” Aisling spun around, her face frozen for a few seconds before she started toward Owain. “What the hell did you do to it?”
The dragons turned at her words, and I didn’t like their expressions at all. I dropped polite pretense and hurried to Owain’s side, bracing myself for trouble.
“I sent it to the Akasha,” he told Aisling, his demeanor and voice calm, but I could feel anger roiling around inside him. “It is the son of Desislav, and will tell him of our plans. I cannot allow that.”
“What you can’t do is banish my demon without my permission,” Aisling said, looking like she wanted to punch Owain, but her dragon was immediately there, one arm around her as he kept her at his side. “No one abuses Jim! No one!”
I thought of pointing out that the Akasha, while a plane of imprisonment, wasn’t actually a place of torture and abuse, but decided that it was better if the dragons realized they couldn’t mess with Owain without repercussion.
“I have not harmed your demon,” Owain said, and would have said more, but at that moment, Aisling thinned her lips at him and said, “Effrijim, I summon thee.”
The demon appeared, its eyes huge as it looked from her to Owain. “Er ...”
Owain, holding Aisling’s gaze, flicked his fingers, and Jim was gone again.
“Oh!” Aisling said in a near shout, her hands dancing in the air as she threw several wards on Owain.
He looked down at his chest where the wards glowed briefly before dissolving. “Binding wards?” he asked, his eyebrows rising. To my astonishment, he plucked one of the wards off his body, causing it to become visible again, and then with a tightening of his jaw, he crushed the ward into nothing.
Aisling’s eyes widened in shock even as the male dragons drew in around her. “What did—you can’t—did you crush my ward into nothing?”
Owain looked at her for a few seconds before saying, “I am a thane. I can crush more than wards.”
Then he did the ultimate in mic drops, and turned on his heel to enter the barn with the vampires.
The dragons, collectively, looked a bit stunned.
“He utterly destroyed my ward,” Aisling said to Drake, obviously hoping for some explanation. “He didn’t break it—he completely obliterated it! No one has ever done that. I didn’t know it was even possible. And how does he have the ability to banish Jim to the Akasha? He’s not a demon lord.”
“Maybe you guys will have a little more respect for Owain,” I told them all, not feeling particularly kindly toward the way they were treating him. “He may not be a demigod dragon, but he’s not a pushover.”
“No,” Yrian said, his gaze on Becket. “He is not. I would suggest keeping the demon away from him, if for no other reason than I believe we will need Owain’s goodwill. Let us have the sporting, and then we will discuss the blood moon again.”
“Fine, but I’m not leaving Jim in the Akasha when it hasn’t done anything wrong,” Aisling said, pulling out her phone. “I’m going to see if Amelie will take it for the day.”
I was about to enter the barn when a voice suddenly assaulted my ears.
“—and left me to travel the whole of the effing Beyond to find him, which is beyond infuriating. Owain! Where are you hiding, you gormless bastard! Oh, great, the knocker is still here. You, Bartleby—”
“It’s Berengaria, but my friends call me Berry.
You, however, can use Berengaria,” I told the raven Orla when she flapped wildly over the house, making a (crooked due to her wonky wing) beeline to me.
To my horror, she landed on my head, the nails of her claws digging through my knit hat and scratching my scalp.
I threw my arms up in an attempt to dislodge her. “Ack! Get off me!”
“I mean ... we had no intention of offending you, and I’m sorry that you feel we aren’t friends—” Aisling started to say, her eyes on Orla.
“No, no, that wasn’t intended for you. Dammit, Orla, get off my head! Owain is inside the barn. Go sit on him, instead.”
“I will, but only because you have appalling taste in hats,” she responded, and, flapping her wings in a manner that made sure they whapped me in the eyes a couple of times, took flight and headed into the building.
“What on earth?” Ysolde asked as she and Aisling looked after Orla.
“She’s tied to Owain,” I explained. “She tried to kill him several times because he wouldn’t sleep with her, which resulted in having to curse her to get her to stop. Somehow, she ended up bound to him, and blights his existence, or at least so he said yesterday.”
“Were you talking to her?” Aisling asked, glancing at her phone when it burbled at her.
“I’m a knocker,” I reminded her. “We can talk to birds.”
“I never knew I wanted to be able to do that, but now I kind of do,” Allie said as she and Ysolde entered the barn.
“Same,” Ysolde said. “I’ve always wondered what birds say to each other.”
“Mostly, they brag a lot,” I told them, then asked Aisling, “I assume your demon is all right?”
“Yes,” she said abruptly, her eyes tinged with ire. “No thanks to your boyfriend. Luckily, I have a friend who I’ve given power over Jim, and she summoned it to her house to spend the night, but I’d really appreciate it if Owain didn’t mess with Jim again.”
“Maybe you should rethink how superior you guys are over Owain,” I told her, my own temper frayed.
I took two steps, then stopped, sighed to myself, and turned back to face her.
“I’m sorry, that came out a lot ruder than I intended.
But you dragons are wrong for insisting Owain has no valid reason for wanting the blood moon in his hands. ”
Aisling opened her mouth to argue, then took me by surprise by bursting into laughter and taking my arm as she steered me toward the barn door.
“You’re right, but not for the reason you think.
Wyverns can be the stubbornest beings alive, but luckily, they’re here with us, the mates, and we bring common sense to all situations.
Why don’t we set aside discussions about Desi and his relic for a bit.
I promise no one will seriously hurt Owain during the beatdown, and he’ll most likely enjoy himself. The vamps do.”
The barn had been decorated with a bunch of Christmas lights, as well as large foam and inflatable Santas, elves, candy canes, and reindeer.
A couple of sturdy center wooden columns held up a loft area, now wrapped in red-and-white-striped padding, topped with a spiral of lights.
In the main part of the barn, a maze of what appeared to be cubicle walls was set up, also decorated.
Owain put Orla on top of a stack of crates, arguing with her that she needed to stay out of his way.
“We are now six,” Yrian said, frowning at the cubicle maze. “Should we clear the floor and have normal sporting, or do you wish for the lights to be turned out so that we can use the maze?”