She could hear the aunties cackling and then she had no attention to spare.
“Father?”
Tucked just inside the edge of the wood, Graham dragged his gaze off the dogfight going on overhead to see Jack pushing his way to the edge of the summit through the underbrush, looking wet, bedraggled, and more than a little pissed off. “Kid, get out of here!”
“Stop calling me kid!” Apparently, the enormous white dragon in the center of the hill held no interest for him. No reason why she should; he’d known her his whole life. He pushed past Graham, shoved his hair back out of his eyes, and stared at Kalynchuk, raking a disdainful golden gaze from head to toe and back again. “You’re my father?”
Kalynchuk smiled. “Graham, punch him in the nose.”
Trapped in his own flesh once again, Graham let the M24 drop on the strap so it rested against his back. Shifting his weight, he grabbed Jack’s shoulder, spun him around, and swung. He felt the bone crack and then warmth against his knuckles just before something slammed into his chest and he flew about three meters, landing hard. He dragged the sniper rifle around and flopped over on his back, gasping for breath.
Jack peered at him over the top of the hand cupping his nose, his upper lip red. “That hurt!”
“Life is pain,” Kalynchuk muttered holding a hand down to Graham.
Without thinking, a little too winded to think, Graham reached up only to have the sorcerer wipe the blood off his knuckles and onto the silver letter opener he pulled from his jacket.
“Jack, come here.” He gestured with the blade. “Stand beside me.”
Graham recognized the look on Jack’s face as the kid began to move—he’d felt it on his own.
“It’s minimal control and it won’t last long,” Kalynchuk admitted as Graham got to his feet, “but now, unless I’m forced to kill you myself, I may be able to bargain with your mother.”
Charlie came out of the Wood at full speed, aiming for Jack, hoping that the amount of power the family had started flinging around would be enough to get his enormous teenage ass moving. She didn’t catch all of what the sorcerer had to say but it didn’t sound good, and there, beside him, stood Graham with a gun. With a split-second to make a decision, she shifted slightly left and wrapped an arm around Graham’s waist. Momentum pushed him stumbling back—one step, two—and they were gone.
Allie had never been so far open and it wasn’t enough. Any farther and Roland wouldn’t be able to hold her. Any farther and they wouldn’t be controlling the power; it would control them. Sweep them away. Destroy them. But if she couldn’t find a way to go farther…
The Dragon Queen shrieked in triumph and began to twist free.
Then Allie sank into a touch she remembered from the bar. Felt Roland yanked aside and Graham’s arms wrap around her.
Heard a whiskey-rough voice by her ear.
“Charlie says let go!”
But Graham wasn’t family. How could he hold?
“She says I’ve got you!”
With no time to question whether she trusted Charlie or not, Allie let go.
If not for Graham’s arms, the rush of power would have lifted her off her feet. She was the hill, the park and every living thing that made it up. Grinding back against him, she poured the power up toward the aunties, felt them shape it.
The Dragon Queen shrieked again, held in place.
It was more power than Allie had ever felt, even in a full working, even with the entire family around and it still…
… wasn’t…
… going…
… to be…
… enough.
She could feel the rush of air as the Dragon Queen filled her lungs.
And a familiar voice yelled, “What the hell is going on here?”
And then a still more familiar voice, twisted with fear. “Brian!”
What were they doing here? Allie fought for focus, saw Michael racing across the hill toward Brian, oblivious to the Dragon Queen pointing her muzzle toward him and opening her mouth.
Time stopped.
Or she stopped it, Allie wasn’t entirely sure.
“Allie?”
Graham. Wherever she was, he was there with her.
She turned in his arms.
Graham had barely registered Charlie charging out of nowhere when her arm hooked around his waist, he’d stumbled back two steps—maybe three—and suddenly found himself in an ancient wood.
“What the…?”
“No time!” Charlie cut him off. She adjusted her grip but kept them moving.
None of the three Gale girls he’d met were exactly delicate, but if he’d wanted to break Charlie’s hold, he should have been able to do it without even breaking a sweat. Not a chance in hell.
“This,” she said, flashing him a grin that had depths so hidden they scared the piss out of him, “is where you need to know what you want to say.”
And then they were on the hill again and in a complicated move he missed at least half of, Charlie spun Roland away from Allie’s back and slammed Graham into his place.
“Tell her it’s okay, that you’ve got her.” A encouraging squeeze on one bare shoulder and it might as well have been just him and Allie on the hilltop.
He had no idea when he’d lost his shirt.
Okay, him, Allie, and one fuck of a big white dragon. Dragoness? Dragon Queen.
“Charlie says, let go!”
Allie didn’t seem to be buying it.
“She says, I’ve got you!”
Then it was the feeling from outside the bar only ramped up so high it burned that memory away. If, at the bar, Allie’d wrapped herself around what it was to be Graham Buchanan, this time she didn’t go around so much as through. He could feel every cell of his body attempting to spin away from the overstimulation and his spine bowed as he fought to hold them both together, his heart slamming up against his ribs so violently he could feel it bruising. His face buried in her hair, he breathed her in, every sense filled with her.
So when she stopped for a moment, he stopped with her.
“Allie?”
She turned in his arms, her eyes a dark and stormy gray.
This, he realized, with a clarity that pushed the air from his lungs, this was the choice the Gale men made. To throw themselves into the storm and trust to love to bring them safely out the other side.
“This is where you need to know what you want to say.”
Turned out, it was easier than he’d thought it would be.
“Yes,” he said. And let go.
Allie could feel it all. Every blade of grass. Every drop of water. Every grain of sand. And everywhere she went, Graham, her anchor to the world.
Although, right now, the world was just a little more than she needed.
She pulled back until she touched the edges of the seven hundred and twenty-one square kilometers that made up the city of Calgary. Until she touched the one million, forty-two thousand, eight hundred and ninety-two souls. No, ninety-three as Jamal Badawi took her first breath. This was enough. This would be home.
She gathered it all, held it cupped in her hands, and…
One of the aunties fell.
The circle broke.
As fire began to blossom between the serrated rows of the Dragon Queen’s teeth, Allie wrapped the power around her and whispered, “There isn’t room for you here. Go home.”
Then she opened a gate.
The sky over the park lit up. Even before the afterimages faded, Jack’s mother was gone. As one of the Dragon Lords screamed, Allie reached out again, gathered up the rest of the family, and sent them home after her. She could sort them out on the other side. Twelve smaller stars crashed to earth.
When both sky and hill were empty, the power grounded out through the only safe path.