Chapter 22
Twenty-two
Lord and typewriter girl, human and dragon-blooded, Stephen and Mina had at least this much in common: at some point, each of them had learned that keeping busy was the best way to handle trouble.
For once, that lesson had not come down to Stephen from his father, but rather from Campbell, the man who’d herded cattle and done a hundred other odd jobs when Stephen had been a boy.
He couldn’t mend fences now or stack wood. He could still work. Moreover, he could work to hasten the day when Ward was no longer a threat. If that was also the day when Mina left his house, then that was also for the best.
The shard of “John Smith” would help him. He couldn’t do much with it as a man since the human senses didn’t attune themselves very well to magic.
As a dragon, he could see much more.
When he’d sought Mina’s company, he’d taken the shard with him. It was still in his pocket when he left the library, aching in both body and spirit, and strode down the hallway to what had once been a dining room.
The chairs and table were gone these days—the idea of holding a dinner party in this house now had seemed comically insane—and the floor stretched wide and bare beneath Stephen’s feet.
The door was locked and chained, the walls engraved with silver sigils, and silver shutters covered a huge window on the western wall.
Over the last year or so, Stephen had come to know the room well.
For the first time since he’d had the room built, Stephen turned from the locked door and opened both the shutters and the window. He placed the shard carefully in one corner of the room, then sat in the last red-gold rays of sunset and waited.
He tried not to think of Mina.
This was probably the only room in the house, aside from the servants’ bedrooms, that she’d never entered.
Watching the sun sink behind the roofs of London, Stephen wished for an absurd and painful second that he could have showed it to Mina, that he could have seen more amazed joy in her face or danced across the smooth floor with her.
It wouldn’t be possible. She might have been more curious than afraid at the sigils on the walls, but the claw marks on the floor were another story. He would see nothing but horror in Mina’s face once those caught her eye.
Before Bavaria, changing shape had never been painful. Now the curse yanked him into dragon form, twisting bones and muscles like an impatient maid wringing out clothes, and for once, Stephen welcomed the pain. It was a distraction; it was also a prelude. That night, his other form would be useful.
As dusk fell over London, Stephen’s body grew and twisted.
Wings unfurled from his back, filling the room; claws dug more deep gouges in the floor.
He threw back his head and lashed a scaled, spined tail, feeling the room and the house and the city around him far too close for his liking. He wanted to fly. He wanted to hunt.
He turned his eye to the corner, to the shard he’d placed there.
Now it shone burnt orange, and a trail of the same color rose off it, climbing into the air and out the window.
Stephen looked for a long moment, drew a deep breath—there was a hint of the sharp smell of the gas, though no such thing could hurt him in this form—and sprang upward.
There were no deer in this city to chase, nor gullies to soar through, but at least tonight there would be hunting of a sort.
Stephen launched himself through the window and into the spring night.
The fog hid him well. For once, he was thankful for the modern world and its coal-shrouded cities.
Perhaps someone would see a mysterious shape in the sky.
Most would put it down to drink or weariness or the fog itself warping the silhouette of some bird.
Besides, they were only human. Stephen’s other form might have worried.
When he was the dragon, those concerns were very much at the back of his mind.
He spread his wings and caught an updraft, following the trail of the shard.
It led across London, occasionally crossing paths with the tracks of air sprites and other creatures, but Stephen found it easy enough to follow.
He watched the lights of the city below him as they flickered and shifted, and knew pity for the people who lit them, penned in their little houses and watching the night as if it was an enemy.
He had been one of them until a few minutes ago.
He knew this, but the mind of the dragon was both eternal and immediate.
Now he was soaring, free and strong, with the world beneath him and the sky open above him.
If he’d spent the last year as a prisoner—well, what was a year?
He laughed and heard the rumble of it around him.
On the streets below, people would glance upward and mutter about coming thunderstorms.
The trail he followed led across the Serpentine, and Stephen banked sharply to stay with it, descending as far as he dared.
The orange color spread out ahead of him into a nebulous cloud around a clump of tall, white buildings adorned with complicated ironwork.
Stephen didn’t recognize them, and he was still too high up to read signs, but his human self knew that they were the abodes of wealthy men.
Without being seen, he could go no closer, but he knew that the trail stopped here in one of these buildings.
There was more, too: a presence that he’d encountered before, though he couldn’t see it as clearly as he could the shard’s trail.
In this shape, though, he could tell that it wasn’t entirely human.
Then, below Stephen, a figure emerged from one of the houses.
The light around it shone very brightly to him, almost too brightly to see many physical details, and in a few moments, the figure got into a carriage and drove away, becoming quickly lost in the crowds.
Stephen had a momentary glimpse, though, enough to see a thin male body and long red hair.
Stephen hadn’t met the man before, but he had seen him, and he knew where to find out more.
That was as much as he could achieve in dragon form.
He beat his wings again and headed upward, then reluctantly back toward his home, aware that such nights of hunting would be infrequent for quite a while longer.
It was a very human thought to have in this shape; repression was obviously taking its toll.
To distract himself, Stephen flew upward, above the fog, until the stars spread themselves up above him and the wind was cool around him. From high enough, even nights over London were lovely.
He wished that Mina could have seen the view.
He could almost hear her voice, marveling, and feel her slight weight on his back, her arms around his neck. She’d be brave enough for flight, Stephen knew; she’d take to it eagerly. She’d have a hundred things to say about the stars or the city from above.
It wasn’t wise to dream of her. If anything, being in dragon shape should have made the differences between them all the more apparent.
Mina had stated her wishes very clearly that afternoon.
She’d been very sensible about it, and perhaps her plan would even work.
She was a modern woman, she had a mortal family, and she hadn’t asked to be any part of Stephen’s world.
All the same, he looked up at the stars and saw her face.