Chapter 6 #2
He nodded. “Okay. At Guivre’s request, I’ve put together an insertion team. You’ll paint the target, I’ll pry the portal open for the specialist, and the incursion team sorties inside to make the extraction.”
Avelunne blinked at the unfamiliar jumble of words. “We will do what?”
Tanner’s small smile warmed her. “We are the keys, not the hammers.” His expression turned serious.
“You show me the way in, I infiltrate the demesne so our portal specialist can hold it. The rest of team gets your friends and we all get out. I’m not running the whole operation, just breaching the doorway.
But to do that, we need to know if we can fly together without a mid-air collision. I’m free now, if you are.”
“Ah. You mean a rehearsal.” She looked up at the cloudless sky lit by the winter afternoon sun.
“I feel I must point out that I am twelve years out of practice being a dragon. I’m not sure I can even call the magic to hide my form.
Moonwings are natural night hunters, but since I couldn’t eat meat, my only skill is in catching fish.
It’s not usually a challenge to chase down wily cabbages.
” She sighed, wishing she were everything she was not.
She waved a hand to encompass the sky. “I’ve only flown once since my escape.
As your sad vehicle can attest, that flight didn’t end well. ”
Tanner’s chuckle seemed to insulate them from the biting wind.
“The SUV was insured. I think you underestimate yourself, but let’s find out tonight.
Meet me here at nine.” He pointed toward the Transition Center’s central hub, built to look grander than it was.
“Or we can use the roof of the fake watchtower if you need the height for a launch.”
“Here is fine. I can take off from anywhere if I have wing space.” A skill that had saved her precious pointed tail more than once.
“Good to know. I’ll arrange for you to get a phone. You’ll need it for messages.” His gaze dropped to her wrist, where the magical peace bond bracelet still shimmered faintly against her skin. “I can take those off now. You’re part of the team. You shouldn’t be leashed.”
“No,” she said firmly. “I will keep them on until we launch. If Wolcz or Trolhorne sees me walking around unbound, they will claim I have ensorcelled the Sheriff or broken my parole. I will not give my enemies the chance to stop this mission before it begins.” She stepped back to look him in the eye.
“Northern dragon politics make the Italian ruling families look like bumbling puppies.”
“So I’ve noticed,” he said dryly.
The night air rushed over Avelunne’s scales, cool and crisp and deliciously thin. Jupiter and Saturn hung like bright jewels in the starry black. She’d forgotten how much she missed them.
Around her left foreleg, she wore the small, charmed chain that expanded when she’d shifted.
It allowed her unhindered passage through the town’s formidable shield without triggering the alarm that had greeted her crash landing.
So far, she’d managed to avoid answering pointed questions about how she’d breached the shield in that unfortunate incident.
Avelunne thanked the moon gods that her draconic muscles remembered the rhythms of flight.
The moment her talons left the ground, the wind welcomed her back like a long-lost sister.
Now she banked left, her wings catching an updraft, and leveled out, her dragon magic feeling the glorious, potent stretch of her horizons.
Movement to her right caught her eye. In his human form, he was handsome enough to make her pulse skip, but his thunderbird was magnificent.
A creature of myth made real, a raptor the size of a wide oak, with feathers the dark, mottled grey of a coming storm.
His beak was a wicked, black scythe, and his eyes burned with the intensity of hammered gold.
He owned the sky, moving with a predator’s efficiency and a hawk’s nimble grace.
Even from a distance, Avelunne could feel the subsonic rumble of his magic like a vibration in her breastbone.
He glided faster than the air currents. Perhaps like dragons, magic gave him preternatural speed.
Tanner’s brief screech told her it was time to start their test. Explaining her moonwing magic was one thing; showing him was quite another.
To her relief, it responded to her will as if she’d used it nightly.
Her scales lit up and rippled with raw electricity.
She shaped and pushed the energy outward, a jagged arc of lightning that snapped into the empty space ahead of them.
Instantly, Tanner banked sharply. Somehow, he caught the bolt, then redirected it toward the heavens as a tighter beam.
His shriek of triumph turned into a roll of thunder that surely woke every sleeping thing for two hundred miles.
Tanner dipped a wing, circling back toward her. Words pushed into her thoughts. Avelunne? … lower... to try something.
Her tail twitched in surprise. Mind speech. She wasn’t the only one with unexpected magic.
His thoughts were hard to catch, like hearing words through the wind. She’d spent most of her life shielding her mind and pretending to have no such skill, so her attempt at a reply took a couple of tries to tell him to lead the way.
His goal was a pair of jagged mountain peaks, scoured clean of snow by the wind.
Can you…smaller bolt? I want to…sonic…rocks. It was like overhearing random words at the diner.
Hoping she interpreted correctly, she generated a light charge and sent it below him, trying to avoid singeing his tail feathers.
He dived down, right into it. A moment later, on the side of the mountain, a boulder exploded. She didn’t know what he did, but it was impressive. He’d turned her spark into a cannon.
That went well. He banked left to turn on a wingtip, like a skater casually spinning on the ice just because he could. Let’s try… higher.
Okay. She had no notion if he was hearing her. Maybe she’d get better with practice.
His powerful wings flapped, taking him on a steep upward trajectory. She followed, bemused by the unexpectedly playful nature of his thunderbird. How long had it been since she’d cavorted in the sky with anyone?
As they climbed together, flying upward into the thinning atmosphere, the air grew bitterly cold, frost forming on her nostrils, but her dragon magic ran hot.
It only took a few test spirals to work out flight patterns that worked for them.
He was much better than she was at maintaining a steady distance, and wondered if thunderbird warriors trained in tight formations.
Northern dragons tended to attack if another dragon got too close.
As they breached the layer where the air turned truly scarce, a flicker of panic fluttered in her mind. The thin air tasted exactly like the desperate flight from the demesne.
This is the height we will need. She pushed the thought toward him as she banked sharply to level off. Whether or not he heard her, he matched her altitude and stayed. Suspended between the stars above and the patterned white and gray land forms below, they hovered on the edge of the in-between.
Let’s go home. His mind speech came clearer that time.
Yes. She started a slow, wide spiral to sink into the heavier air, reluctant to end the flight but desperately ready to leave the painful memories behind.
She slowed, letting him take the lead back toward Kotoyeesinay. From this height, and with her dragon’s magic-sensitive sight, the town was a blazing anomaly in the dark wilderness. The holiday lights created a vibrant kaleidoscope of color that glittered.
Looks like Times Square on New Year’s. Tanner’s words puzzled her. What did time and a shape have to do with the turn of the year?
To her immense relief, her landing behind the Transition Center was a controlled set-down on the spot she chose, letting her magic create the cushion to keep her from bouncing. The shift to human felt slow and sluggish.
We are as fast as we need to be, chided her inner dragon. Put on your clothes before you freeze. Unless you wish to entice the male with our beauty.
Snorting with amusement, Avelunne found the bundle right where she’d left it.
In her former life, she had mastered the magic to manage her clothing when shifting forms, but she hadn’t trusted herself to try it that night.
She didn’t want to take a chance on destroying the intensely pink puffy coat and the star-patterned pants that had been gifted to her.
The town’s clock tower, visible as they’d passed through the shield on the way to their destination, said half past ten.
The lights still glittered, but the shops were closed and the streets quiet.
She walked around the shorter southern wing of the Center to find Tanner waiting near the courtyard fountain, his breath clouding in the freezing air.
She balled her fists in the pockets of her puffy pink coat, grateful for the warmth but missing the protection of her scales.
“Thank you.” She stopped just outside the range of his natural heat. “I appreciate that you backed me in the meeting, and you trusted me now. I know I am a complete stranger.”
“It was the right call.” Tanner studied her, his head tilted slightly. “You pick up modern speech patterns fast. Some of our long-term residents still sound like they stepped out of a Shakespeare play.”
“Survival.” She shrugged one shoulder. “If you sound different, people notice you. Being noticed meant my Storm Mouth clutch mates might find me and drag me back to the family caves. I learned to quickly blend in where I could, and run when I couldn’t.
” She offered a self-deprecating smile. “Though I admit my telepathy is rubbish. I never had anyone to teach me.” Anyone she trusted, that is.
Had her parents known, they would have found someone to pry open her mind to make her more biddable.
“It worked well enough.” Tanner’s voice was low, with that undercurrent of thunder she was beginning to crave. “My thunderbird liked the connection. We’ll refine it.”
She nodded, keeping her expression neutral to hide the relief washing through her.
If the connection had been any clearer, he would have heard the screaming terror clawing at the back of her mind up in the stratosphere.
She knew her courage was a house of cards waiting for a stiff breeze, but she needed him to see a partner, not a liability.
She was doing this for the prisoners, but she was following him.
Tanner’s phone buzzed. He pulled it out, frowned at the screen, and tapped something on it.
Suddenly, Guivre’s voice, crisp and devoid of emotion, cut through the wind.
“The timeline is moved up. We launch tomorrow night. Our spies think Surasa’s agents are in play.
Our oracles say the only way to avoid a sea of blood is to act quickly. Get your team ready.”
The message ended with a click. Avelunne felt the warmth leak from her body. Tomorrow. The buffer of time she’d been counting on to steel her nerves had just evaporated.
The decision to trust him overrode her instinct to hoard information. “There’s something you should know. The portal at the demesne... I might be the only one who can open it. It’s part of how I escaped in the first place.”
He gave her an assessing look, then nodded. “Then we make sure you get close enough to do so. We’ll handle it.” He glanced at his phone again. “You need to eat and sleep. We burned a lot of magic up there.”
“Wait.” She didn’t want him to leave yet. The silence of her room felt too heavy. “What is a times-square? You mentioned it on our way in.”
“It’s a big town square in a city called New York. Giant displays, millions of LEDs, too many people. They count down to midnight to watch the big ball drop.”
“What? Whose ball? And what are el-ee-dees?” As far as she remembered, the city had been a shipping town and the port of entry for visitors. “New York accepts giants as citizens?”
His eyes widened, then he laughed. “Sorry, I’ve confused you. It’s hard to explain. If we live through this, I’ll take you there next year. It’s an experience.”
Next year. The words implied survival. They implied a future where she was still part of his world. It was a beautiful, unlikely dream, but she hoarded the glimmer of hope in her heart.
“I’ll hold you to that.” From out of her pocket, she pulled out the peace-bond bracelets and belt and quickly put them on. She held out her wrists. “Please reset the magic. I don’t want to give Wolcz any ammunition to stop us.”
Tanner hesitated, then stepped closer. He did as she asked, then gently pulled her coat lapels closed.
His knuckles grazed her neck, sending a jolt of heat straight to her core that had nothing to do with magic and everything to do with the wide-shouldered, desirable man in front of her.
For a long second, his eyes locked onto her mouth.
Then he stepped back, and the moment was gone as if she’d only imagined it.
“I’ll message you the rendezvous coordinates,” he said, his voice smooth and austere. “Rest, Avelunne. I’ll get a message to you as soon as I know anything more.”
He turned and strode toward his vehicle without looking back. Avelunne watched until his taillights were no longer visible.
She pulled her coat tighter around her. Tomorrow was going to… what was the modern word? Oh, yes: Suck. Tomorrow was going to suck.
She turned toward the Center, her mind replaying the flight, the freedom, and the heat of his gaze.
She wanted to see the world, yes. But right now, the only territory she really wanted to explore was the Sheriff’s bed.
If he had kissed her, she would have kissed him back without a second thought.
She tucked that possibility into her heart next to the promise of next year as shields against the hell waiting for them tomorrow night.