“I can tell the time, Michael.”
“Shouldn’t you be sleeping?”
“I can sleep when I’m dead.” Or when everyone else is, was pretty strongly implied. “Answer the question.”
“Uh… they’re just observing.” He motioned Joe closer. The leprechaun shook his head and backed up a couple of steps.
“The Dragon Lords?”
She knew about the Dragon Lords. That made things a little simpler. “Yeah, the Dragon Lords.”
“And what are they observing the Dragon Lords doing?”
“I don’t know.”
She could, apparently, hear the truth in that. “I see,” she sniffed after a moment. “Does this have anything to do with my sister?”
“With Gran? I don’t think so. Do you think so?”
“I wouldn’t put it past her,” Auntie Jane muttered. “Oh, and your young man misses you a great deal.”
“Brian? Why were you talking to Brian?”
“He has your phone. You should call him.”
“Not going to happen, Auntie Jane.”
“I’ve thought you were a number of things over the years, Michael, but I never thought you were a coward. Do not prove me wrong.”
He listened to the dial tone for a moment, then closed the phone. “Auntie Jane,” he said to Joe.
“I figured. Don’t take this the wrong way, but the whole lying to relatives thing? You really suck at it.”
“We have to get him to the apartment!” Allie wrapped her jacket around the boy’s shoulders. “Do you have a name?”
“Yeah, I have a name!” he declared, yanking the jacket close.
“And it is?”
“Why should I tell you?” The full upper lip curled. “You are not my father!”
The special round safe in his pocket, Graham slapped in a magazine of full metal jackets and almost said, “Your father sent me to kill you,” but he didn’t know for certain, not one hundred percent for certain, that Kalynchuk knew the creature emerging, the boy, was his son. For the sake of the years they’d spent together, he had to give him the benefit of the doubt.
“Your father couldn’t make it,” Allie told him. “We’re here in his place.”
“He sent you?”
“He sent me,” Graham growled.
The boy studied Graham for a moment, eyes hazel now although other colors slipped in and out. “I can smell him on you.”
“Then you know I’m telling the truth.”
“Why didn’t he come himself?” Graham glanced up at the sky and the boy laughed. “Oh, yeah. Them. They would devour him if they could. My name is Jack. My mother says it is a name for heroes.”
Jack and the Beanstalk.
Jack the Giant Killer.
Little Jack Horner.
Jack O’Neill.
Captain Jack Sparrow.
Captain Jack Harkness.
Those were all the Jacks Allie could recall off the top of her head, but in her own defense she was a little distracted by the blue Dragon Lord falling from the sky, trailing flame from great gashes in its scales. It hit the ground with less impact than the wind accompanying it, ignited, disappeared.
Half a dozen trees turned into torches.
Allie threw power at David. The fires went out.
They almost missed the second Dragon Lord, scales a rich chocolate brown, diving toward them from the south, and the third, a much darker green than Ryan, dropping in from almost directly above.
Graham snapped his weapon up and squeezed off a shot. It hit the brown Dragon Lord in the meaty part of the muscle where the left wing joined the body. Spraying blood, he screamed and wheeled off. David filled a green wing with wind, pinwheeling the sinuous body down toward the ground. The Dragon Lord changed just before impact, ran half a dozen steps as a heavyset man with dark tattoos, changed again, and disappeared into the clouds.
“We need to talk about this somewhere else!” Graham yelled, scanning the sky.
David ground an ember out under his heel. “He’s right.”
“Didn’t I say we had to get Jack to the apartment?” Allie rolled her eyes. “Maybe if we started moving!”
“I want to go to my father!”
“First, let’s not get killed by your uncles.”
Jack thought about that for a moment, then nodded.
Graham caught up to the rental car as they turned onto 9th Ave S.W. heading east. As they passed 6th Street, as he passed 6th Street, as he drove right on by without even considering turning toward the office and Stanley Kalynchuk, he realized that this finalized the choice he’d made when he let Jack live. He touched the shape of the special bullet in his vest pocket.
His blood to make it fly true and Kalynchuk’s to make the kill.
Did Kalynchuk know?
He’d made enemies in the UnderRealm; Graham had already dealt with a few. He might have only sensed the power coming, known it was an enemy but not which enemy.
Until the arrival of the Dragon Lords.
Unless he’d thought it was the mother emerging and not the child.
Not hard to believe the mother’d be pissed. Given Jack’s apparent age and the fact he’d fired that first shot to save Kalynchuk’s life almost exactly thirteen years ago and knew the sorcerer hadn’t been to the UnderRealm since, Kalynchuk had knocked up a Dragon Lord and walked away, leaving a big scaly, flying, fire-breathing single mom behind.
A trickle of sweat rolled down Graham’s back at the thought. The Dragon Lords were not Human. Didn’t matter what they sometimes looked like. They were…
Well, they weren’t. That was the point.
For Kalynchuk to actually…
He might have been forced. Taken without his consent. Not ever known there’d been a child.
But blood magic wouldn’t kill without a blood connection.
Would it?
Had he known?
“Put a gun to his fucking head if you have to.” First time he’d ever used a pronoun. And Graham hadn’t told him what, exactly had emerged.
“Is the boy dead?”
The boy. Not the enemy. Or the creature.
There didn’t seem to be much doubt left to give him.
When David turned down into the alley behind the store, Graham followed. Seemed like a way to show commitment. Plenty of room in the garage for the car; room enough for him to pull up tight against the building and still leave space for the garbage truck to pass. He took his weapon with him—he didn’t know if Kalynchuk could show his displeasure by de-hexing the locks from a distance, but that wasn’t a risk he was willing to take.
The garage door slid closed behind him. He supposed it was a good sign it hadn’t slid closed in his face.
Things had changed during the trip.
Jack now wore jeans and a black T-shirt under Allie’s jacket—or a jacket that bore some resemblance to Allie’s. The jeans had that baggy-ass thing going and both his boots trailed their laces. Roland was missing his shirt, Charlie was barefoot.
“Jack realized he should have more clothes, so he made some out of the available fabric,” Allie told him as Jack wandered off to explore the garage.
“Made some?”
“Yeah. Dragon Lord levels of power applied to sorcery which I’m not sure he should even be able to do at his age. And I don’t think the car rental place is going to be happy.”
Graham glanced into the car. Most of the fabric had been removed from the back of the front seat. There were also gouges in the fabric of the roof, deep enough he could see the gleam of metal. As he straightened, he glanced over at David and saw a rack of antlers that wouldn’t have looked out of place on the wall of an old Scottish castle flickering in and out of sight. “Those are… I mean, they’re…”
Allie followed his gaze. “You can see them? Great.” Reaching out, she swept her fingertips through the lower prongs. When she turned to him again, she was frowning. “You shouldn’t be able to see them, they’re insubstantial.”
Behind her, David turned, and his expression shifted Graham’s grip on his weapon. He knew what power barely under control looked like. “Allie.”
He couldn’t see her expression when she turned to face her brother, but he did see her shoulders tighten.
“David, I’m so sorry. I didn’t…” A long step back bumped her up against Graham’s chest-the car door limiting his movement. She reached behind her and wrapped her fingers around his wrist to steady herself.
To his surprise, the tension visibly eased, and David suddenly looked like less of a threat. “You’re Graham.”
“Yeah.” They’d never actually been introduced, given the flaming flying lizards and all.
David stepped back, long legs moving him around the front of the car until the bulk of it was between them. “Later.”
“He means you’ll talk later,” Allie murmured, releasing him.
His wrist throbbed where her fingers had been, the skin feeling hot and tight. “I got that. What’s up with the…” A jerk of his head toward the flickering horn.
“It’s a family thing. But you can thank Jack that they’re not solid. I think he drew on David to fuel the transfigurations he did in the car.” She wasn’t exactly looking at him, but she wasn’t moving away, so Graham decided to count that as a win. “I mean, it’s no wonder his uncles freaked—he’s an instinctive sorcerer with Dragon Lord access to power.”
“Instinctive?”
“Unless your boss…”
“Ex-boss.” Probably. She actually smiled at him then, and he hoped the qualifier hadn’t shown on his face.
“Okay, unless your ex-boss kept trotting back to the UnderRealm to give lessons, he’s untrained.”
“He didn’t.”
“You’re certain.”
“As I can be. So he was right; Jack’s dangerous.” He wasn’t exactly asking, he wasn’t stupid.
Before Allie could respond, the paint can Jack had moved to the workbench to examine exploded.
Graham hit the dirt but lifted his head in time to see David clench a fist and the blast crumple in on itself. The antlers seemed to firm up for a moment.
“Jack’s thirteen,” Allie told him as he stood, brushing off his jeans. “That’s always dangerous.” They locked eyes for a moment, but before Graham could figure out what to say, Allie turned away. “Come on, Jack…” She tugged the boy away from the bench. “… let’s go inside. I bet you’re hungry.”
“Starving!” In the low light of the garage, his eyes glowed.
“Do you like pie?”
“I don’t know.”
“Let’s find out.”
Roland followed Allie and Jack out into the yard, staying close enough that Graham had to swallow the growl rising in his throat. He looked away to find David studying him. Speculatively? Suspiciously? Hard to say.
But this was apparently not later as David turned his head to maneuver his purportedly insubstantial antlers out the door. Graham fell in beside Charlie, moving a little more slowly because of her bare feet.
“So,” she said as they stepped out into the courtyard, “figure out what you want to say to her yet?”
“It’s not that easy.”
“It’s not supposed to be easy, dumbass.”
He nodded at David crossing the courtyard. No way the three scrawny bushes leaned toward him as he passed. “How did he get those things into the car if it was Jack who made them insubstantial.” Kalynchuk had never mentioned the abilities of the Gale men, and Roland had been able to stop him cold, sweater vest and all. David seemed like an entirely different level of problem, especially since Graham had no idea where he and Allie actually stood. Or if they stood together at all.
Charlie rolled her eyes. “Please, that was later. I had to blow him in the parking lot and bring them down a bit, or he’d have been walking back.”
Graham literally felt his jaw drop. She didn’t sound like she was bullshitting, and he had a reporter’s built-in bullshit detector. “Seriously?”
“Why do you think Auntie Catherine drove a convertible?”
“She didn’t have…” He waved a hand above his head.
“The aunties are first circle.” Charlie’s smile curved wickedly and Graham’s pants felt suddenly, uncomfortably tight. “She could get as many of those as she wanted.”
All of a sudden, his memories of conversations with Catherine Gale showed up in a whole new light. “So when she suggested we…?”
“She meant it.”
“That’s…” Graham paused, caught by his reflection in the enormous mirror in the back hall behind the store. “Why are there fourteen of me?”
Charlie shrugged as she pushed past. “Maybe it likes you.”