TWELVE

DRAGONS

Errol had been enspelled before. Aster had yanked his strings with various enchantments. His first sight of Veronica had sucker-punched him with lust, love, and deepest admiration. As a Venus flytrap was to flies, a nov was to men. Heck, the most recent to put juju on him was standing right in front of him. Yet he knew this time, no magic was involved.

But there might as well have been. Her face was almost hot; she was small and strong and hard, and the body he had been trying to ignore now pressed against him. When Dusk had kissed him before it had been a taunt, an I-dare-you, and he had always felt that behind it there had been at least as much contempt as affection.

Not now. Her arms reached around behind his head and pulled him in deeper; he was lost in her breath, her pulse, the very aliveness of her . . .

Yeah.

He pulled back. It wasn’t easy. She thought he was playing, and tried to follow.

“I—I’m sorry,” he said.

“Why?” she asked. “I asked you to, after all. I was hoping you would.”

“Right,” he said, backing up further. “But I’m not supposed to be doing this.”

“You deny you have feelings for me?” she asked.

“Look, that doesn’t matter,” he said.

“Of course it matters,” Dusk said. “And I know the answer. I know how you look at me. And now I know how you kiss me. How you hold me so sweetly. You may think I have experience with these things, but I have very little. I have spent my life fighting and striving, not cozying to boys. Even so, I cannot be so wrong.”

“Dusk, I have a girlfriend. You know that.”

She frowned. She opened her mouth to speak but hesitated a moment.

“Are you—do you mean the nov?” she finally said.

“Veronica,” he said. “Yes.”

“Errol, I cut her head off.” Then her eyebrows arched up. “Did you keep her head? Oh, Errol, that is—”

“No!” he said. “I gave her the water of health.”

She blinked. “You had one vial between you,” she said. “I took the rest. I assumed you used it on yourself, to heal your true body.”

“I used half of it on Veronica,” he said. “Aster used the other half on me.”

“So the nov still walks,” she said. “And once again you chose her over me.”

“It’s not that simple,” he said. “Look, Dusk, you’re right. You’ve always been right. I—yeah, I feel things for you. But Veronica, she . . .” he trailed off.

“Needs you?” Dusk said.

“Look, I don’t want to talk about it. I shouldn’t have—it shouldn’t have happened. It’s my fault. I—”

She suddenly didn’t seem to be listening to him anymore. She whistled, loudly, then went to Drake’s saddle where it lay in the sand and drew out her sword.

Crap, he thought. Not again.

She pointed the weapon past him, up toward the sky, where he now saw something flying toward them. He thought it might be another bird, but then he wasn’t sure what it was. It wasn’t until they landed that he recognized Aster and Haydevil.

“Aster!” he said.

Aster took a wobbling step, stared at Dusk, and lifted her chin. Errol felt his skin tingle.

“I hope I haven’t interrupted anything,” she said.

Dusk met her gaze, and for a terrible, dragged out moment, Errol was afraid things were going to go bad.

Dusk made a sound in the back of her throat and sheathed her weapon.

“No,” she said. “Nothing important, anyway. Please, join us. We have much to discuss.”

But then things went bad.

The dragon was the first sign of things going haywire, but the ship came hard on its heels.

The last dragon he’d seen had been dead, skin-and-bones, and that had certainly had its own special charm. But the thing he saw coming down out of the sky toward them now was the real deal; it punched every ticket for “dragon” in his personal inventory.

Errol had never been bothered by snakes. He would even go further and admit he liked them. This made him different from almost everyone he knew—most people in his experience either got away from a snake as fast as possible or went hunting for a hoe, stick, or shotgun to put an end to it. That was a shame, because most snakes weren’t dangerous to people. Even those that were venomous didn’t have it in for anyone, and they would avoid humans if they could. They weren’t like ticks, for instance, ticks could make a good meal out of biting you—rattlesnakes had absolutely zero to gain from harming human beings, and they knew it.

His favorite snake had always been the copperhead, and that what this dragon reminded him of, although its scales had a far more metallic gleam. And it had wings, beautiful wings like lightning-laced storm clouds. The dragon was probably a hundred feet long.

The ship looked like a pirate ship from the movies, with three big sails and several smaller ones. What set it apart from the run of ships Errol was familiar with was that it was several hundred feet above the water.

“Stupid,” Dusk muttered, throwing him a look. “We should never have rested for so long.”

Resting, he thought. Now there’s a word for it. He glanced at Aster, wondering what she suspected.

“We don’t know they’re here for us,” Errol said, hopefully.

“I think it would be a great coincidence if they were here for anyone else,” Dusk said. “Drake!”

The horse-dragon trotted from the woods, and she quickly began saddling him.

“Are you coming?” she asked Errol.

He looked at Aster and Haydevil.

“I will take her,” Haydevil said. As he said it, he grabbed Aster’s hand and they whirled up into the air.

Dusk was already mounted; Errol quickly climbed up behind her, and a moment later, Drake beat his wings and soared upward.

The dragon was fast. It changed directions incredibly quickly for a creature its size. As Drake fought for altitude, Errol watched the beast attack Aster and Haydevil, coming at it from above, moving sinuously, like a banner in the wind, forcing the dragon down. Haydevil did his best, jinking and swerving to get around, but each move he made was countered by the titanic creature.

Aster wasn’t going without a fight, though. He saw something flare as brightly as the sun, followed by a black whirlwind that dipped into the sea long enough to become a waterspout. For a moment he lost sight of the dragon in the impromptu tornado, and his heart soared.

Then he saw it come through the pocket maelstrom, its tail snapping against Haydevil and Aster sending them plummeting toward the waters.

“Dusk!” he shouted.

“I see,” she snapped.

He wasn’t sure if she intended to try to help the others, because before she could finish the turn, the dragon was winging toward them.

“Hold on,” she said.

She sent Drake into a steep dive, straight toward the water, pulling up when they were mere feet above the waves. A glance behind showed the dragon following their every move and gaining fast.

Dusk hauled back on the reins, and their mount turned up and away, climbing with such speed that Errol felt lightheaded and more than a little dizzy. He wasn’t sure where up and down were anymore. Suddenly, he was staring at a solid column of metallic scales closing around them. He heard Dusk yell and saw her cut at the monster with her sword.

The next moment they were falling.

He hit the water, hard, and at such a sharp angle he skipped once before slamming back down and into the depths.

Surrounded by bubbles, he tried to get his shell-shocked arms and legs to move, but now he was even more confused about which way was up. He didn’t have very much air in his lungs, either, and he was quickly losing hope of drawing any more.

Weirdly, he felt something pulling him up, and realized it had to be the armor on his back. On land it had been somewhat heavy; albeit not as heavy as Dusk’s metal gear. In the water, however, it appeared to be buoyant.

His head came out of the water, and he began heaving deep breaths, looking around wildly to see what was going on.

He saw Drake, riderless, speeding across the water—toward the dragon.

“Drake, no!”

Her voice sounded distant and thin, but it was Dusk. He saw her some twenty yards away, treading water.

In the instant before Drake struck the dragon head-on, the horse-beast belched a stream of flame. Compared to the dragon’s firebreath, it looked like a cigarette lighter trying to burn a jet plane.

Then that whole half of the sky blazed into raging, scarlet flames. As the flare faded, he had a glimpse of the dragon’s great body, smoke boiling from where its head had been, as it struck the sea.

Something grabbed him by the ankles. Acting out of pure instinct, he gulped a lungful of air before the water once again closed over his head.

When Aster came to, it was to the creaking of wood, disorientation, and nausea. She wanted desperately to throw up, but her empty stomach could not oblige. It was dim, but not completely dark, and she quickly realized she was in a wooden room, with irons on her hands and feet. She tried to open her mouth and felt the gag that was tied in it.

She wasn’t alone. Dusk was a few feet away, similarly bound and gagged.

There were others: all girls, girls of every description. No Haydevil and no Errol. What had happened to them? Had they escaped, or been ignored by her captors?

Or—as seemed more likely—killed?

They must be in the belly of the ship, she reasoned. Her father had managed to have her followed, or possibly used an Adjuration of Prescience to foresee where she would end up—or any number of spells she wasn’t aware of.

Still, something about that didn’t ring quite true. Her father had wanted her questioned. He had singled her out, whether because he thought she was part of some plot or because some part of him did remember her. But here she was, with a whole shipload of captives, and her father nowhere in sight. What if it she hadn’t been captured on her father’s orders at all? What if this trap had been meant for Dusk, and she fell into it?

She tried to calm her mind. There were spells that could be done without speech, although at the moment she couldn’t recall any that were likely to be of use. There was no telling how long the voyage would be; it could be a day or a year, for all she knew. She had to keep calm, work out what was happening and why, and find the way out.