Chapter One #3
As Mom laughed, I called my magic and transformed my court garb into a knit shirt, slacks, dress shoes, and a belt.
Dragon’s Breath being Dragon’s Breath, its scabbard and sword belt remained where it was.
I was about to cast a dimensional gate when a portal exploded into being six feet away, the blast of magic so thunderous, all three of us jumped.
I’ve spoken to Summerwood’s mayor, and she’s set the town’s wards to admit you, the dragon rumbled from deep in my mind.
Huh. Cachamwri had never taken care of obtaining passage for me before.
My parents stared at the gate swirling with the distinctive multicolored signature of the dragon god’s magic. “Oh, now there’s a nasty little omen,” Mom muttered.
Go, the dragon ordered, an impatient growl edging his words.
I went.
* * *
Iona
I sat in my office chair with my feet up on the desk, approving the police reports Charlie Shift had filed the night before.
I needed to go out on patrol. The Summerwood Police Department had a total complement of twenty-four, with six officers per twelve-hour shift. Police chief or no, I took calls.
For one thing, it got me away from all the damned paperwork.
After a career as a Chicago homicide detective, Sidhe shoplifting cases, and a bar brawl between a centaur and a troll didn’t really strike me as a crime wave. I often joked about policing Mayberry, complete with town drunk. Though admittedly, Otis hadn’t been a banshee.
Iridia was even now singing the song of her people in the drunk tank. Good thing the magistrate would be setting bail in a couple of hours, or her magical keening would depress us all.
You’d think I’d be bored, being chief of the SPD after twenty adrenaline-packed years with the Chicago Police. Nope. One thing about the intelligent races of Immortal Earth -- we were endlessly creative and our respect for the law was… elastic.
Oh, who was I kidding? It was nonexistent.
Case in point, the Demisidhe who’d shoplifted ingredients from Summerwood Spells and Potions.
Probably making something expensive for one of her Internet customers.
All the crap Sivelle Littleshimmer had grabbed weighed more than she did.
She must have opened a dimensional gate and stuffed her loot through.
Meanwhile, her sister had kept the Brounie shopkeeper too distracted to notice the miniature gate opening in his shop.
The Littleshimmer twins didn’t know I could identify the magical signature of anyone I’d ever met.
Which was why I didn’t advertise said talent.
Sivelle and Aurora were literally frequent flyers, usually involving petty thievery.
They were now keeping Iridia company in the tank -- and probably longing for earplugs.
Served the larcenous little bitches right.
My office door flew open. “Chief! Chief, we’ve got trouble!”
I dropped my boots to the floor with a thump as Lapis Swift darted in, glowing bright pink in her agitation, her dragonfly wings beating like a hummingbird’s.
Demisidhe are ADHD as hell, and Lapis was no exception.
She tore around the room in a sparkling rose blur, muttering, “Oh fuck, oh fuck oh fuckety fuck shit!”
I watched her orbit. “Lapis, slow down. What’s the problem?
Did that idiot Baareo start another fight?
” Baareo Cosmagio was the star of Fleethoof, the fantasy flick Sidney Hurst was shooting in the forest outside town.
Someone from the film crew had introduced the centaur to cocaine last night, and I’d had to help Charlie Shift keep him from killing Ajin, one of the mellowest trolls I’d ever met.
Baareo was a nice guy for a centaur, but coke made him mean.
“Worse!” Lapis zipped up to eye-level and hung there, wings whipping a miniature breeze into my face. “The Wolf Prince is here!”
I frowned. I’d heard of King Ll?r’s son.
Like Hollywood stars, Sidhe aristocrats were prime targets for gossip, even on Mortal Earth.
I still had no idea why his arrival would send Lapis into a panic.
“How did he get past the wards?” The mayor had designed the town’s barrier spell to be impenetrable. Even my mother couldn’t have broken it.
“She let him in!” Lapis’s voice hit a pitch so high and sharp, I winced.
The Demisidhe was seriously freaked out, which was disturbing -- I’d seen Lapis kick a troll’s ass.
Her ability to switch sizes mid-brawl made her one of the nastiest fighters in the SPD.
“Dearg Galatyn is scary enough when he’s the Wolf Prince, but he’s got Dragon’s Breath, and that means there’s someone in Summerwood Cachamwri wants dead. ”
“How the hell does a Sidhe manifest dragon’s breath?” I’d heard all kinds of gossip about Dearg, but breathing fire was not on the list.
“No! Dragon’s Breath is his sword.” She started orbiting my head again as if unable to stop. “It’s imbued with the dragon god’s power, and it’s leaking sparks. That means the prince is hunting someone for Cachamwri.”
I leaned forward and braced my elbows on the desktop. “Yeah, that does sound bad. Why do you think he’s going to kill somebody?”
“Because the only time he carries Dragon’s Breath is when Cachamwri has given him a death decree.” She whizzed around my head even faster, a blur of pink light, blue uniform, and panic.
My hair tried to whip in her breeze, but I had it in a French twist, so only a few stray locks danced. “Officer Swift, would you please put your tiny butt in a chair? You’re making me dizzy.”
“Fine!” She zipped over to one of my guest chairs and plopped down on it, growing as she did so.
The wings disappeared when she hit human size in her SPD uniform.
Lapis’s hair was a dark blue that complemented eyes as huge and liquid as a Siamese cat’s.
“When the prince has the Dragon’s Breath, he’s absolutely deadly,” she continued, her voice dropping to a register that no longer threatened to make my ears bleed.
“‘He can’t be bargained with. He can’t be reasoned with.
He doesn’t feel pity or remorse or fear, and he absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead! ’”
“Isn’t that a movie quote?”
“The Terminator, 1984,” Lapis confirmed. “It’s got a great shot of Ah-nold bare-ass nekkid. He was surprisingly hot back in the day.” She sighed. “Humans age so fast.”
She wasn’t wrong. “Well, we can’t leave the Heir to Heroes wandering around lost. Go get him and bring him to the PD.”
Lapis looked uneasy. “I…” she began and broke off.
The light dawned. “You think he’s after you?” It was all I could do not to laugh. Lapis was as by-the-book as Demisidhe got, which was why I’d hired her. Those wings made her fast as hell, and her tiny alternate shape made her the perfect undercover cop.
“No. Not… really.”
I raised an eyebrow and stared.
“Look, with that guy, who the fuck knows? Fine, I’ll go get him, but if I’m not back in fifteen, come look for me. He may have eaten me.”
I blinked. Werewolf or not, the man was royalty. “Does he make a habit of eating people?”
“That’s what they say,” she said darkly.
“Do you honestly think Ll?r Galatyn would let his son eat people?”
“Not if he knew about it.” That last emerged as a grim little mutter. She rose from her chair, turned with a military snap, and marched out. The set of her shoulders said she headed for a battle to the death but was determined to do her duty anyway.
Damn, I hope she’s just being a drama queen. Wish I had time to call Grandma. Maeve knew every aristocrat on Immortal Earth.
Though I’d never thought Lapis was the kind to panic. Despite being six inches tall in Demisidhe mode, she was an excellent officer. The rumors about Prince Dearg must have been nasty.
Normally I would’ve dismissed all that out of hand, but if Cachamwri had made the prince his Blade, the werewolf really was some kind of badass.
Another five minutes went by while I tried to remember everything I’d heard about the Wolf Prince.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t much. I’d been in Chicago when Dearg had become his father’s spymaster.
I hadn’t put much credence in the gossip that had circulated since.
For one thing, he was young to be as nasty as everyone said -- just thirty or so.
Sidhe didn’t consider anyone under a century to be an adult, much less an unstoppable killer.
True, Sidhe aristocrats were as prone to character assassination as mortals, and even more inclined to believe conspiracy theories. Mostly because they weren’t really theories. Some fairy noble somewhere was always plotting something lethal. They made Lucretia Borgia look like Glinda the Good.
Mom, for example, could give Hannibal Lector a case of the creeps.
Which was when I felt the prince coming. Oh, so that’s why Lapis is acting like he’s a werewolf Darth Vader.
The sense of menacing, boiling power radiated right through the walls as he walked into the building.
Admittedly, I was sensitive when it came to magic -- an occupational hazard when gods lurk in your family tree.
Dearg’s approaching bow wave reminded me uncomfortably of Mom’s, though the power itself was quite different.
My mother’s and grandmother’s abilities felt like a more intense version of the nature magic most Sidhe had.
The prince’s power felt ancient despite his youth -- all dark woods and dragon magic.
Shit, this could be bad. What the hell could he want?
The sense of power grew stronger as Lapis opened my door. “And this is her office,” she said as she led the way inside. She gave me a tight smile. “Chief, if you’ll excuse me, I have paperwork to finish.” She vanished back down the hall far faster than a police report deserved.
Traitor.
I forced myself to smile despite the instincts Prince Dearg’s menacing aura triggered and resisted the impulse to conjure a sword. We don’t want to piss off Darth Fido.