Earth's Hope (32 page)

“We’ll figure out something, some neat little surprise for you.” Perrikus strode to D’Chel’s side. “I think she’s hurt we haven’t tried harder to immobilize her.”

“Indeed. Maybe jealous we put so much more effort into her mate.” D’Chel sent a disingenuous glance at the dragon.

Perrikus’s gaze sharpened. Something passed between him and D’Chel that Aislinn couldn’t decipher. He looked from Aislinn to Dewi.

“Ladies. I’d say our first skirmish ended in an impasse. Be patient. We’ll return for round two once we’ve taken care of some urgent business that just came up.”

The air around both dark mages blackened, turned opaque, and they were gone.

The breath swooshed from Aislinn and she fell into a chair. “We have got to get out of here,” she told the dragon.

“State the obvious, why don’t you,” Dewi said acidly. “Now look here, child. When I give you orders, they’re for a reason. If you’d remained behind me, you wouldn’t have been injured, nor fallen prey to that lecherous scum.”

The anger that had eluded her earlier cut a path from her head to her toes, and Aislinn stomped in front of Dewi. “Funny. You didn’t think it was so wrong when D’Chel was handing out the sex cookies.”

“Stop!” Dewi held up a foreleg. “This is exactly what they want us to do. While I had D’Chel pinned, I pushed into his mind. Not as far as I wanted, but far enough. The reason my magic is uncooperative is there are Persian mirrors here.”

“Huh?” Aislinn scrubbed her hands down her face. “What the fuck are they?”

“I wish I knew more about them, but they serve as gateways, usually to other worlds, but I suppose someone like Adva could manipulate them to make it hard to get in and out of this fortress.”

“Persian? Like from the Arabian Nights?”

“No, more like from the Sufis, the mystical branch of Islam.” Dewi’s eyes whirled faster. “None of that matters. I could tell you everything I know, and it would be a waste of time and breath, because I don’t know all that much. Nidhogg got trapped in one once—”

“Wait.” Aislinn held up a hand. “How can you get trapped in a mirror?”

“Because they only look like mirrors.” Fire flashed from the dragon. “Anyway, he had a hell of a time getting out, but I’ll be damned if I can remember what he told me about it.”

“That’s not helpful.”

They stared at one another, and Aislinn shrugged her pack off to get water. Her stomach was too tense for food. “If we can’t get out of here”—she wiped the back of her hand across her mouth and put the water flask back in her rucksack—“we need a better plan for when they come back.”

“I have one.” Dewi showered her with compulsion. “Since both men want you, and I’m an inconvenience, let’s switch what we did earlier.”

Aislinn shut her eyes for a moment. “I’m a little slow on the uptake here, but switch what?” And then she understood. “Ohhhh. Like when you fucked the Minotaur with me inside you.”

“No Minotaurs here”—Dewi’s jaws lolled in a grin—“so you’re fairly safe.”

Despite reservations, Aislinn could see advantages—lots of them. She straightened her spine. “No sex with any of the dark gods.”

“Agreed. You were right to terminate that event.”

Aislinn’s eyes widened. “No shit. I was right about something?”

“Oh, stop it. If you’re willing, come close and we’ll do this thing. We can hammer out the fine points once we’ve merged.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

Fionn stood in front of the last mirror while Nidhogg looked through his eyes. When the dragon didn’t say anything, Fionn prodded, “We must pick one and be gone. Too much time has passed.”

Bella spread her wings and flew to a table where she landed and looked up at him. “Not going?” Fionn asked.

She shook her head. “None of them feel right to me.”

“’Twould appear Nidhogg is having the same problem,” Bran noted sourly.

Fionn felt steam rise from his lungs and he blew the heated air through his nose and mouth. “Don’t bait him,” he told Bran. “My throat’s raw from dragon effluvium as ’tis.”

Nidhogg pushed their shared body back to the last mirror. “This one.”

“What do we do once we’re inside?” Fionn asked.

“I won’t know until we get there.”

“Not particularly comforting,” Bran muttered.

“You’re taking me.” Rune had been sticking to Fionn’s side like a stubborn shadow.

The dragon borrowed Fionn’s voice. “It may well be the death of you, laddie.”

“I don’t care.” Rune’s tail plumed. “I’m the only one here who can find her.”

“Yon wolf has a point,” Fionn said and reached into a pocket for the length of leather he often used to tie his hair back.

“Here.” Bran handed him more cord. “That isna long enough.”

“Thanks.” Fionn hastily fashioned a collar with a loop he could hang onto. Rune eyed him balefully, but didn’t protest when he snugged the device around his neck.

“We must stay together,” the dragon cautioned. “I’ll use magic to bind us, but the pull inside the glass is strong, and it only takes seconds to get swept away.”

“Will we be able to talk in there?” Rune asked.

“I don’t know,” Nidhogg replied.

“Let’s find out.” Fionn chafed to be gone. Sharing his body with the dragon was taxing, and he wanted to get into the thick of things, rescue Aislinn, and be gone from here. Once she was safe, he could return and make short work of the dark gods. Or maybe just blow their dead, rotten borderworld out of existence. Hours had passed since Aislinn and Dewi’s disappearance. Despair riddled him if he let himself think about everything that could have happened to Aislinn in all that time.

“Here we go,” Nidhogg said. “Follow my lead.”

Fionn gripped Rune’s leash and stepped through the silvery surface. It rippled around him and pressed hard, as if it were trying to crush him. Rune grunted, but didn’t yip.

“Ooph, not exactly pleasant,” Bran muttered.

They still weren’t through the glass; the sensation of being crushed intensified. “Pull us the rest of the way through,” Fionn told Nidhogg, struggling to breathe through compressed lungs.

“I did this on purpose.” The dragon didn’t sound much better than Fionn felt. “Once we’re through, we’re at its mercy.”

“We have to control it,” Fionn ground out. “We’ll never do that half in and half out.”

With a wrenching tug that made a wet, slurping sound, the dragon moved them to the far side of the glass. As soon as they were through, the dark haze before Fionn’s vision cleared, and pulsating, iridescent tunnels spread in three directions. He dug in his heels and anchored himself to the dragon’s magic to avoid being sucked into one of them.

Bran wove magic in with his, and clutched Fionn’s arm. “Which way?”

“Rune?” Nidhogg’s deep voice echoed and the tunnels pulsed harder.

The wolf whined; something about the ultrasonic frequency in the vibrating walls hurt him—probably his ears because they were pinned back against his skull. Fionn felt the wolf deploy the Hunter bond. Thank fucking Christ it didn’t boomerang back and hurt him further.

“Middle,” the wolf said. He whined again and added, “Hurry. This is hard.”

And it only got harder. The magic didn’t want them in the middle tunnel, which told Fionn the wolf had chosen wisely. Power buffeted them from behind, pushing them to the right, then the left. Even with the dragon’s magic linked to his own, Fionn moved forward at a glacial pace, as if he were plowing through thigh deep quicksand or snow. Bran’s hand tightened on his arm and the rough sound of his breathing joined Fionn’s own.

Deep in Fionn’s mind, Nidhogg cursed, first in Gaelic and then in the dragons’ language. Fionn considered asking where he thought the other tunnels led, but didn’t want to disturb his concentration. Maybe they didn’t lead anywhere fixed. The thought of mutable passageways that shifted depending on who was in them was even more unsettling than Majestron Zalia’s head had been.

He lost all sense of time. The pressure surrounding him ebbed and flowed. Once the wolf yelped piteously and Fionn picked him up, holding him awkwardly and shielding his ears.

“Will this get better once we reach the tunnel?” Fionn asked Nidhogg.

“Probably.”

“Can we hurry?” They’d been crossing the fifty yards between them and the center passageway forever, or maybe time ran differently behind the glass. Fionn snuck a glance over one shoulder and couldn’t see the backside of the glass. How would they find their way out?

I canna worry about that.

Rune wriggled in his arms and he whispered soothing Gaelic into the wolf’s ear. Finally, just when Fionn was within a hairsbreadth of telling Nidhogg they had to go back, that the pearlescent tunnel would suck the life out of them, things got easier. And easier still. Rather than thigh-deep quicksand, it was just knee-deep, and then mid-calf.

“’Twould appear we survived the first leg,” Bran observed. “Would ye like me to carry the wolf? He must be heavy.”

“I can walk,” Rune said, so Fionn set him down and they covered the final few feet to the rounded opening of the center passage.

“Hang on,” Nidhogg said. “Things may go very fast once we pass beneath the lintel.”

* * * *

Young Nidhogg did a quick nose count. They’d all made it back to Earth handily. In truth, he’d been impressed by the amount of power they’d been able to concentrate. It was triple what he’d expected.

“That was fun,” the copper male crowed.

“What’s next?” one of the green males asked.

“We move to the borderworld,” Nidhogg junior answered. “It will be harder, but we can do it, and we need to move fast, before Royce and Vaughna track us.”

“Yes, it would be bad for them to haul us back now,” the copper male said.

“Once we’re heroes,” the green male said, “they won’t be able to punish us.”

The black youngling, understudy to the Norse dragon slot, wasn’t so certain about that. He was fairly sure there’d be hell to pay once one of the adults caught up to them, but until then they’d keep going. His link with his father came and went, and he hadn’t liked the last bit he’d seen. Something about a place of shifting sands and illusion that crushed and pulled.

“Ready?” he asked and scattered what magic he could to obliterate signs of them having passed this way. It might fake out Royce and Vaughna. Maybe.

“Do we have time to hunt?” a red female asked.

“No. Heroes eat after victory, not before.”

“Who made that rule?” the copper dragon grumbled.

“My father,” Nidhogg junior answered. “Now let’s go. There’s no air for this crossing, so fill your lungs well.”

To the accompaniment of huge sucking breaths, Nidhogg borrowed magic shamelessly from his eggmates and formed the spell that would take them to the borderworld. They tumbled through a gateway so fast he was certain he’d done something wrong, but before he took them back to Earth to start over, he sent his magic spinning outward.

“This is an ugly place,” one of the red females said.

“Yes, and it stinks,” the copper male cut in.

“Not much lives here,” a green male said, “but there’s lots that’s dead and decayed.”

Nidhogg junior exhaled sharply. Despite his doubts, he’d led them to the right place. Clear traces of his father and mother lingered in the stale, lifeless air.

“Do you suppose they’re in there?” The copper dragon inclined his head toward a sprawling building.

“Well, they’re not out here, and I sense them close, so it’s logical,” young Nidhogg replied.

“How do we get inside?” the copper male asked. “Should we teleport again?”

The black dragon shuffled the idea through his father’s memories. “Not a good idea. We have to get inside, but there’s a barrier once we get in there. Everyone else went through the front door and ran into problems. Let’s look for another entrance. Maybe one where we won’t get trapped by whatever crushed Father.”

“Is he all right?” one of the red females cried anxiously.

“Yes. Bad choice of words. There was a crushing sensation, but he got through it.”

“Is Mother with him?” a green male asked.

“No. I don’t have the same link to her that I do with Father. She’s inside, and alive, but I don’t know anything further.”

“I know where she is,” the red female who’d been reluctant to come with them spoke up.

He eyed her and was suffused with sudden understanding. “You’re the next Celtic dragon god.”

She snorted fire. “Unfortunately, yes. It’s a shit job and I don’t want it.”

He wanted to slap her, tell her to quit whining and grow up. Instead, he swallowed his irritation and said, “You’ll have a long time to get over that. I suspect Mother will live a few thousand more years.” He spread his wings. “Fly with me. All of you. We’ve come this far. Let’s get to where we can do some good.”

As he pumped his wings, forcing the air to support him, young Nidhogg hoped to hell they could find a way inside. He feared the way his father had taken might well be the death of them. It had taken most of his father’s wisdom—and power—to lead himself, Fionn, Bran, and the wolf through the bad place. As he flew, he sought Nidhogg, trying to pinpoint where he was in the rambling structure beneath him.

“You!” detonated in his head, nearly blowing his brains out his ears. “I thought I sensed you. What in the hell are you up to?”

Young Nidhogg hastily erected wards. He should have done it before, and he sent orders down the line to his eggmates to do the same. The last thing he needed was their father ordering them home. Not when they were so close to their chance to become heroes.

As he flew in an arcing circle, something caught his attention. Toward the rear of the building, a collection of other structures linked to the main house by a partially submerged walkway. Surely that was how servants had gotten inside. Those entrances were probably never warded.

“Look there,” he sent to the other dragons. “A way in.”

“Not a moment too soon,” the copper male sent. “A portal just opened on the other side of the building, and I sense more dragons.”

Crap! Must be Kra and Berra. Or even worse, Royce and Vaughna.

“Hurry,” Nidhogg urged his eggmates and scattered magic to obliterate any evidence of their presence on this world.