Scales ‘N’ Spells, Volume Two

Chapter 1

Ravi stretched his wings. The May air was heavy with the smell of humans and pollution, but the wind carried teasing hints of rich earth, green leaves, and—even farther off—a sharp tang of snow on mountaintops.

He longed to head higher into the sky, but he didn’t dare.

The fog was thick enough that if he went too high up, he’d be in danger of crossing flight space.

Too low, he would of course risk running into buildings. This was the optimum height for flight.

Normally, he wouldn’t be flying during the daylight hours when humans could see him, but Gunter was getting his panties in a twist over collecting more genealogical data on the Aldridge mage clan.

The grumpy dragon had insisted he needed the information now, not tonight when it made more sense to be flying about.

In the past eleven months, the Burkhard fire dragons had acquired mages from three different clans. Not only had dragons found mates, but it had given them new avenues to search for other lost mages.

And new avenues of hope after five hundred years of having very little.

A mage was the only being who could be a true mate for a dragon. The only one who could give them baby dragons, saving them from eventual extinction.

Hence, Ravi flying around in his dragon form during the day with nothing more than a little fog to cover his bright blue scales.

Lisette, their clan’s head mage, had given him an amulet with a cloaking spell to keep him hidden, but it had run out of juice shortly after he’d reached London.

This trip was supposed to be from Sonthofen to Amsterdam and back.

Apparently, some of North’s ancestors from the Aldridge clan had made a pit stop in Amsterdam for a few decades before finally hopping a boat across the ocean for the U.S.

Not that Ravi blamed them. He was a fan of Amsterdam. Beautiful city and wonderful food. But the royal researcher had taken one look at the data Ravi had sent about the new mage’s family and immediately demanded Ravi travel to London.

Ravi had nearly beat his head against the old wooden table he’d been sitting at in the Amsterdam library.

This was not his thing. He didn’t mind reading, but sorting through piles of old books, records, and microfiche—because so many of these old records had never been digitized—was melting his brain with boredom.

Yes, he wanted to find lost mages and bring them to his clan.

Yes, he wanted his fellow dragons to find mates.

Hell, he wanted a mate of his very own.

But why did it require so much boring research? He was more interested in the part where they flew in and told the mage that dragons were real. It didn’t hurt if they also got to kick a little Jaeggi butt, since they were threatening both mages and dragons, but that was a bonus in Ravi’s book.

Trips to find mages were still incredibly rare. So much research had to be done first. It wasn’t like they were going to stumble across a mage—like they had with Cameron—or have a mage tug on a dragon’s tail—like North had, though only magically speaking.

So, Ravi was helping Gunter with research.

Amsterdam had led to a tiny library in Chesterfield, England, and then another library in Northampton and then a much bigger library in London, where he thought he’d finally satisfied Gunter with enough data that he could come home.

But as he was packing up for his stupidly early trek back to Germany, Gunter decided he should make one more quick stop in Paris.

Because, you know, why not? He was already in this part of Europe.

When he finally got home, Ravi was dragging Gunter out of his research dungeon and locking him outside the castle. Gunter would probably hiss and cringe away from the sun like a vampire. Yeah, that would torture the dragon.

Or maybe he’d sneak into Gunter’s library and reorganize all his books according to size, or maybe color.

Ravi amused himself with thoughts of torturing Gunter when he returned to Germany.

He didn’t really mind assisting the effort to find and protect more mages, but he’d always imagined it would be more in the vein of what his fellow retainers and friends, Baldewin and Warin, had done.

They were sent to meet mages. They fought the evil Jaeggi clan and protected their clanmates.

They’d also found their own mates in the process, which was a nice bonus.

He wanted action. Not…not…research gofer duty.

He wanted…a plane spiraling out of control?

Wait! A plane was spinning out of control as it headed straight for the ground. It was hard to tell from the thick black smoke billowing out of the engine, but it looked like an old war plane. Really old. At least by human standards. Had someone taken it out for a test and lost control?

Indecision tore at Ravi for a heartbeat. All dragons knew they were supposed to stay hidden. They were safer if humans thought they’d all died after the war.

But this person was going to die if Ravi did nothing.

There was no choice to be made. He had to do something. The pilot wasn’t bailing out. Maybe if he acted quickly, no one would see him and he could disappear into the fog.

And if he couldn’t disappear, then Alric was going to strangle him.

Mentally crossing his fingers, Ravi darted forward, putting on as much speed as he could muster to reach the plane. The clouds of smoke pouring out of it provided him with some cover as he got into position above the plane.

It was older than he’d expected, by the looks of it, but in excellent condition. He tucked his wings close for a moment, trying to match the plane’s speed and timing it so that he could wrap his talons around the nose of the beast.

His claws pierced the outer coating and a horrible, shrill squealing rose up as he used his wings and his own control over the wind to stop the plane’s spiral.

As he got the plane well in hand, he threw out his wings to their full extension, catching the wind and slowing their descent.

But it wasn’t enough. He was too small, and the plane was too heavy.

Sucking in a heavy breath, Ravi summoned more wind.

He drew it deep into his lungs and exhaled, using the gust of wind he created to help slow them further.

His heart pounded in his ears above the sputtering of the plane engine, and he thought he might have heard a bewildered shout from the pilot, but he couldn’t worry about the human. He had a new problem.

The ground was still coming up very quickly. Like. VERY. QUICKLY.

And there were people on the ground who might go squish if he didn’t control the descent better. Squishing people was bad.

Ravi mentally talked himself through this, even as he put more effort into slowing the plane down.

Perched above it like this, he had no way of landing normally, so he had to slow it enough to gently drop it.

Yeah. Really gentle drop, that’s what you need to do, okay, self?

Right. And then somehow bounce ahead and not land on top of the plane you just dropped.

Oh, and avoid the people on the ground. That would also be a good step.

Shit, he really could use more space here. There wasn’t a lot of room to maneuver.

Even as all of this went through his head, some part of his brain issued a warning. He was going to be seen. Oh shit, Alric was going to be pissed.

But it was okay. He was saving a life. Alric would understand. Ravi would get the plane safely on the ground, make sure the human was okay, and then he’d get the hell out of there before someone got a camera pointed in his direction.

It wasn’t a great plan, but at least he had a plan in place. For Ravi, that was actually rather amazing.

As he and the plane got closer to the ground, he was relieved that the human at least had enough sense to put down the landing gear. Ravi didn’t want to damage the plane more than he already had with his massive talons.

Muscles strained and his wings trembled with exertion.

He was going to be so damn sore later. The ground rose up faster and faster.

Ravi slowed them further with another exhalation of breath, forcing them to drop more speed, his wings back-flapping hard.

He clenched his teeth and was about to close his eyes when something else caught his attention.

More people.

Lots more people.

People with cameras and lights and microphones…and was that a catering table?

Big cameras like the ones they use to make movies.

Oh shit…

He thought the pilot had been in trouble and aiming for an empty field in which to crash.

But the pilot hadn’t actually been in trouble at all. He’d been shooting a scene for a movie. And Ravi had flown right into their shot.

Oh yeah, there was no doubt about it now. Alric was going to skin him and mount his head on his office wall.

Maybe it had been a controlled flight before, maybe not, but Ravi had complete control of it now. And he had to focus on getting them to the ground before he really screwed this up. He back-flapped again, and this time he was able to drop the plane the last three feet to the ground.

Before Ravi could come up with any kind of plan to escape this new mess, his heels hit the dirt hard, causing him to skid forward.

Dirt and dust were flung into the air in every direction, creating a small cloud around him and the plane.

But not nearly enough for him to hide in.

He might not be a large dragon, but he was big enough that his shining blue scales showed bright against the silver metal and vibrant green grass.

When he and the plane had come to a complete halt, Ravi carefully balanced himself, leaving his wings half-unfurled as he regarded the gathered people.

No one moved. If he hadn’t known better, he would have said they were all props, mannequins.

Except for the fact that several of them were holding up their cellphones, recording everything.