Chapter 4 Curse #2
As he does, I watch them flare with a diabolical crimson and oilslick-black light. I feel something flash through Baldur then, like a snarl of rage. He quickly blocks me from feeling it through our bond. As it happens, however, I watch his curses from the Black Dragon surge ferociously.
Then devour a half-inch of his un-cursed flesh upon his chest.
It’s just a slight resurgence of his curses, but it’s enough. As the horrible work of the Black Dragon sears once more upon Baldur’s chest, in from his strong shoulders along his stark collarbones, I feel a cascade of darkness wash through our Bloodbond.
Because even though Baldur is our bond’s brightest light, what’s been done to him is of the darkest night. That night is still trying to take him over, as I feel his light gutter to all that intense darkness still devouring him.
Threatening to snuff all his brightness out—forever.
“Baldur!” I exclaim as I see that nasty resurgence of his curses.
As if he didn’t even know it happened, Baldur blinks down at his chest. He pulls one side of his shirt off his shoulder, evaluating his curses as a complicated look comes into his dark blue eyes.
I see them flash a fiery crimson-gold now, as rarely happens for him, but did the first time we met at Mikkel and Laerke’s club in Sweden, The Vault.
That searing fire in his eyes means Baldur’s experiencing intense emotions, as I suddenly feel a hot whip of pure rage snap from him—hate, about what’s just happened.
It cracks through the air, blistering a nasty crimson Bloodwind around him—far more powerful than any of his regular magic. Worse, the edges of that diabolical magic are on fire with the auric flame we’ve all been able to create recently.
Black and diseased at the fire’s edges—the same oilslick color as the Black Dragon itself.
“Well, that’s not good.”
My Third Drake, Mikkel Thorsen, has arrived with his twin sister, Laerke. Mikkel looks far better today, dressed in his classic color, black, wearing a sleeveless leather jerkin with a high collar, tight leather breeches, and tall boots tooled with silver.
A flowing shirt of utterly black silk completes the ensemble. I can’t help but gape as he arrives, shocked at just exactly how much he looks like a pirate, something I’ve always compared him to.
Swashbuckling and deadly, yet hot as sin, Mikkel’s strong jaw is set, his level, dark brows pensive as he takes in the curses resurging upon Baldur.
Mikkel’s skin is pale and almost angelically luminous, his hair is so dark brown it’s nearly black, as a scattering of auburn highlights shine in the torchlight.
With his jet-black eyes and full lips, he looks like a diabolical angel, if that angel fell to sailing the high seas and made his enemies walk the plank. I feel the dark, mamba-like drake of his Bone Magic surge as he enters the room, though it’s far less than his usual.
Still, Mikkel’s energetic wrath of raw power makes me feel like I’ve been zapped by an electric sub-station in his presence. His twin sister, Laerke, is no less, though I’m not Bloodbonded to her; with a wrathful energy as deep and still as Mikkel’s is turbulent, Laerke sweeps forward now.
Taking charge as she comes to Baldur.
Dressed in beautiful tawny women’s fighting leathers embroidered with silver, which makes her almost vampiric complexion absolutely stunning, Laerke’s waist-length platinum hair is bound half-back today in fighting fashion.
Her full, crimson lips scowl now as she kneels by Baldur’s chair.
As she touches his bared shoulder, she examines it with her striking violet eyes, seeing the curse-work’s resurgence.
She snarls, her stoically beautiful visage becoming ruthlessly fierce, as she looks up at him.
“I thought Mikkel and I cleared these curses from you yesterday?!” She bites now, even as she begins a deep healing with her magic, helping ease the blistering nastiness that’s crept onto his chest.
Though Mikkel’s and Laerke’s Bone Magic seethes with poison like a caustic chartreuse green acid, I’ve also learned recently that the counterpoint to all that poison is they have a copious talent at healing.
They saved Baldur’s life with me after I banished the heart-stopping curse the Black Dragon put on him.
And pushed back all his other curses from that most vital organ, to give him a fighting chance.
“I thought so, as well.” Baldur is quiet now as he watches her work, pale and exhausted, as if all the fight was just taken out of him.
His rage has gone as quickly as it came; as if it was never even there in the first place, that furious, terrible explosion has disappeared, returning him to his regular daily persona.
I know what I felt and saw, however, as his magic seethed from him just now—raw, ugly, and blistered with fire. Because as Strom, Bjorn, and I all watch him now, shocked, I realize that for the very first time, we’ve seen the unhinged rage of the Berserker inside Baldur.
The true wild man that lives within him—riddled with the Black Dragon’s cursed energy.
“Your curses weren’t flaring while you were in stasis.
” Mikkel’s observation is astute as he comes to my side now, rather than Baldur’s.
Mikkel doesn’t embrace me or kiss me in front of my other drakes.
He settles a hand on my shoulder, however, his restless fingers toying with my braid as if he can’t stop himself from touching me.
As his mamba-black drake slithers through me—deliciously.
“Neither was that black-edged auric fire you manifested just now.” Laerke is all business as she looks hard at Baldur while she heals him.
But it’s Mikkel who fixes his mamba-dark power upon my Fourth Drake, intent, as he susses something out.
“Feeling intense emotions, are we, Baldur, ever since the Black Dragon got to you? Finally showing us all that rage you’ve got bottled up inside…
which gives your Blood Magic such bestial power—like the birthing of the very stars themselves? ”
As Mikkel goads Baldur with his fierce, sharp questions, I feel his inner black dragon rake ruthless talons through the air. As he stares intensely at Baldur, ferreting out truth from lies, however, I know he’s not wrong.
My Third Drake is co-owner of an elite chain of Twilight Realm nightclubs; he’s a shark, and has killed countless enemies, anyone who fed him lies.
I see him evaluate Baldur now with his uncanny instincts—and know my Fourth Drake is lying to us with everything he hides from our Bloodbond.
Because, unlike the rest of my drakes, Baldur can hide his power and his mind from me, and from all of us. He can withhold critical information that has already affected us, deeply, and not in a good way.
Mikkel and Baldur have history from their association at the Thorsen’s nightclubs; even though it was more casual than their relationship right now, I feel that long association come into play, as Mikkel stares Baldur down.
Because Mikkel knows what my Fourth Drake is hiding. Maybe he’s always known, as the twins invited Baldur back to their clubs over and over to paint his magnificent auric magic through the air.
It’s darkness, as I see Baldur suddenly rise to Mikkel’s intense, unblinking stare. It’s then that Baldur really shows us what he keeps from our bond; as he jolts, something utterly ferocious roars up inside him—making him heave up from his chair, no trembling anywhere in him now.
I feel the tremendous roar his inner drake gives Mikkel, as Mikkel challenges him and Baldur rises to that challenge, despite his near-death exhaustion.
Surprise takes Mikkel’s features; very few things surprise my deadly Third Drake, but this does, as Baldur suddenly shows Mikkel exactly what he’s made of.
As a towering blaze of star-fire crimson and furiously gold-white magic rushes all around Baldur in the mirror-stone hall, I see it in the Void.
As if Baldur’s true power rising has thrust me into a spontaneous Bloodwalking, I see his inner Blood Magic drake seethe in the cosmos now, vicious for a fight.
As that massive dragon surges up in the Void, its calming blue power is nowhere in it. It’s fiery and vengeful, as it towers up like a galaxy being born in the stars, snarling with pure fury at my Third Drake, Berserk with rage.
Mikkel backs off, because even at one-hundredth of his usual might, Baldur is a force of the ages, as we all see his true power come out, unhindered.
As that massive surge of Bloodwind ignites in the hall again, roaring into a scorched black cyclone all around Baldur now, I feel my Fourth Drake blaze. At last, I see the pure fury that lives inside him, which he’s only hinted at before, as something he had in his youth.
Undiminished, for the millennia he’s tried to calm it.
“There he is… there is the real Baldur,” Mikkel says, as he narrows his black eyes on Baldur. As bright copper blazes in Mikkel’s eyes, he doesn’t back down, and he doesn’t raise his own power.
The slightest smile lifting his lips, cunning.
“When we met, decades ago, I thought perhaps you were just a monk on a mountaintop, with your cagey aloofness, beautiful artwork, and unwavering, glacial calm,” Mikkel says as he watches Baldur now, fierce.
“After a while, though, I began to sense something deeper in you, wilder, more untamed—in a way you didn’t want, and had suppressed.
Because you’re really this. A beast of magic—cosmic in your power and diabolical rage.
And now we’re finally getting to see it. Berserker.”
Though Mikkel’s backed off from physically contesting with Baldur, since none of us have enough energy right now to shift into our dragons and fight this shit out, he can’t stop his tongue from flinging truth-barbs.
As the two drakes face off in the vaulted library, I watch in shock as Baldur actually snarls at Mikkel. Both of Baldur’s hands, with his Black Dragon curse-work, half-shift now into massive gold-crimson talons like a Manchurian emperor.
As Baldur slashes through the air, Mikkel’s down on his ass, sliding across the hall from the furious force of that blow. Because even with his power nearly spent right now, Baldur is just that formidable an opponent, as we finally see and feel the real rage that drives him.
It’s furious, roaring, as Baldur strides forward, intent now, as he comes for Mikkel. Because this part of him, this vast inner rage, gives him his insane, cosmic power—and it’s not a nice, calm power anymore, as I finally feel all the darkness that’s so deeply buried inside him.
Not one to back down from any kind of fight, however, Mikkel surges up, snarling with Laerke at his side now, backing him up. We’re suddenly two scales from a dragon-fight—and it’s not one I ever saw coming, as I search my mind frantically for how to stop it.
I thought for sure it would be Bjorn and Baldur going at it someday, thanks to a deep tension both have evinced around each other so far. I never foresaw this battle, though, especially since Baldur and Mikkel know each other.
Plus, Baldur did so much for Mikkel just a scant forty-eight hours ago, donating copious power and life-energy to keep Mikkel alive through all his torture in Copenhagen.
What makes it worse is that I’m not sure whether Baldur can shift into his dragon right now, in his pure, unadulterated rage. I’m certain Mikkel can’t, though, still exhausted and barely healed from everything he went through in the Jarl of Copenhagen’s cells.
Neither can Bjorn, Strom, and me, as we snarl and ready our hands to intervene with our magic as much as we can. Because this is a bad situation, if we have a dragon stuck in human form facing off with one who can shift, with no other dragons to back the human one up.
I’m not letting it happen, as I dash in-between my two drakes and roar at the top of my lungs, shuddering the hall with my harpy’s shrill notes and overtones as I hold out my hands for both of them to stop.
As my inner Blood and Bone Magic unite suddenly into the furious whirlwind of my true Bloodwalker power, though at one-twentieth it’s usual might, I unleash my own crimson-gold magic.
Blazing surges of white devour my power, as I send a hard heave of Bloodwind out at both my drakes. Though I’m still barely functional, my surge is enough to thrust Mikkel back down to his ass on the floor, still exhausted from everything he’s been through.
It does nothing to Baldur, however, who stands strong in my gale, still staring Mikkel down with his seething cosmos-fire flaring all around him. Baldur’s beautiful, calm blue-white is nowhere in his eyes, as his crimson-gold irises suddenly blaze with a terrifying surge of black.
My drakes are choosing sides now, as Strom rushes to Mikkel with Laerke, getting him up fast. Strom and Laerke both step in front of Mikkel now, snarling at Baldur as they keep Mikkel out of harm’s way, while Bjorn has gone to Baldur.
I’m still standing in the middle of the fight, as I roar my all now in a seething storm of Bloodwind.
Giving everything I’ve got left to force my drakes to stand down.
I haven’t got enough, though. Deep inside, I know I’ve got zilch against all of Baldur’s insane star-power right now, crazy as he is for some kind of fight.
I know I could pull on him hard with my Bloodwalker magic. I know I could drain the bejeezus out of him, devouring his magic to the bone to stop his Berserk rage, and this impending battle.
Baldur’s still waging his own war against the Black Dragon’s curses, however. I have no clue what me draining his power would do to him, or how those curses might take him over, if I use my Bloodwalker might.
It leaves me in an impossible situation now, as our bond’s solidarity is suddenly on the verge of total collapse.
Just when I thought things had been going so well between us.