“What is it?”
“Shackles,” Jenn said. “Neig doesn’t have servants. Only slaves.”
Alpin traced the outline of the symbol on the stone. “When you see it with the broken arrow, it means here Neig can’t see you. Here you are free.”
“What about this one?” Roman asked, pointing at another symbol, which looked vaguely like a flower.
“Bagpipes,” Drest said.
“What do bagpipes have to do with anything?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Bagpipes were battle music.”
“He would’ve killed everyone eventually,” Jenn told us. “But then the Fomorians invaded and kept him busy. They killed his wife. His children he either killed himself or ran off.”
“He doesn’t like competition.” Drest grimaced. “His brother tried to fight him, lost, and sailed off with his own portion of the army. They got their asses kicked somewhere in Europe. Only one ship came back.”
“What about the Tuatha Dé Danann?” I asked.
“They made a bargain with Neig,” Drest said. “Gave him tribute. By that point he’d moved on to Scotland, anyway. Bigger place. More land. He had both islands before he was done.”
“How did your ancestors beat him?” Roman asked.
“They didn’t.” Drest’s face was grim. “They outlasted him. Eventually the magic fell, and one day he disappeared. He’d clawed himself a lair outside our world and took his hoard and army with him. Occasionally, he’d raid while the magic held. You never knew when or where he’d pop out. Our people were so scared of him, they kept building curving stones centuries after he went dormant.”
“In all that time, nobody managed to get close enough to hurt him?” I asked. “I understand he has fire magic, but I fought Morfran and I met Morrighan. You’re telling me nobody could get to this guy?”
“You don’t get it,” Drest said.
“Show her,” Jenn told him.
Drest touched the kudzu. It rolled back, creeping up and over. The stone lay bare. I looked at the carving in the top of it. My insides went cold.
“Neig isn’t a man,” Alpin said softly.
“He is a dragon,” I whispered.
A colossal dragon reared up on the battlefield, the figures of fighters tiny next to him. A cone of churning flame tore out of his mouth, disintegrating the palisade.
That was whom I’d felt in the clouds above me. That was why he’d tried to kill Yu Fong. Goose bumps ran up my arms.
“But his magic is blue,” I said. “Like a human.”
“All dragon magic is blue,” Alpin said.
“Everyone knows that,” Jenn said.
“Neig will never find us,” Drest told me. “We have curving stones. But you, you’re fucked.”
ROMAN AND I didn’t talk until we reached the city.
“It could be metaphorical,” he finally said.
“It’s not.” I told him about Yu Fong. “Everything we ever read about dragons suggests they are highly territorial. He felt Yu Fong and tried to take out the competition.”
“But he was in human shape when you saw him. So, what, he can shapeshift?”
“I don’t know.”
“Aspid can’t shapeshift,” Roman said. “It’s a blessing too, or he would follow me everywhere, licking me. That would be weird.”
Aspid, an enormous black serpent-dragon who belonged to Chernobog, had a deep, all-encompassing puppy love for Roman, which he expressed by wrapping his tongue around the black volhv.
“We need to call an emergency Conclave,” I said.
The Conclave had started as a way to avoid conflicts between the Pack and the People, but in an emergency, every magical faction in the city came to it. It would take everyone to fight something like this off.
Roman raised his black eyebrows. “And tell them that we’re about to get invaded by a dragon?”
“Yes.”
“We don’t have any evidence,” Roman said.
He was right. Yu Fong was still in a coma, Beau Clayton and his deputies only saw Neig as a human, and the Druids wouldn’t back me up in public. They barely even came to the Conclave. I would need evidence. Something more than visions of fire and carved rocks.
At the very least I had to warn the Pack and the People. With those two, my word would be sufficient. I had to call Nick, too.
“Let me out here,” Roman said.
I pulled over.
“I’ll talk to the volhvs and the witches,” Roman said. “But talk is cheap. We need evidence. Witnesses.”
“I know. Do you believe me that it’s a dragon?”
“Yes,” Roman said. “I believe you. But not because of the Picts and rocks. I believe you because you’re you. I don’t need to see it. It’s enough for me that you believe it’s a dragon. But it won’t be enough for others.”
“I know.”
“It will be okay.”
I doubted that, but nodded anyway.
“Don’t kill yourself.”
Oh, for the love of . . . “Will you stop with that?”
He shook his finger at me. “Don’t do it. I’m watching you.”
“Get out of my car.”
I drove straight to Cutting Edge. Neig was right about one thing: he was legend. Over the years, legends became warped. They grew and evolved as they were passed from one generation to the next. Everyone “knew” that dragons hoarded treasure, lived in mountain caves, breathed fire, and killed their rivals. But how much of that was true was anybody’s guess.
Was there even a point in trying to research? Most of what Drest had told us was considered to be myth. And it was distorted by Christianity. As Christianity had crept across the Middle East and Europe, the priests had realized that fighting old pagan ideas would doom the new religion. They were too deeply ingrained. So instead, Christianity adopted them, incorporating them into their rites, borrowing everything from Christmas and Easter to the idea of the immortal soul that separated from the physical body at death. Christianity tied the timeline of ancient Ireland to Noah’s descendants and the flood. None of it would be helpful in figuring out Neig.
I drove into our parking lot and maneuvered the Jeep into the parking space. Mine was the only car. The kids and Curran were gone.
I unlocked the door and stepped inside. Over the years, Cutting Edge had become my fortress. Like my house, it was a place where I could take my sword off my back. I unbuckled the sheath and dropped it on my desk. I opened the fridge, took a pitcher of iced tea out, and poured myself a glass. I’d done this hundreds of times before. There was comfort in the ritual and I needed comfort today, because the dragon had knocked me off my stride.
How the hell do you fight a dragon? How large was he, exactly? If the carving on the stone was to scale, we were in deep shit. I could just imagine the conversation around the Conclave table. So what evidence do you have of this dragon? Well, there is this overgrown rock in the magic druid camp. You can’t see this rock or find this druid camp, but take my word for it. Ugh.
Someone knocked on my door.
“Come in,” I called.
The door swung open. Knight-abettor Norwood stepped through, followed by the two other knights. Just what I needed.
I leaned on my elbow. “The Holy Trinity. Come in, don’t be shy. Grab a chair.”
“You’re disrespectful,” the Hispanic woman told me.
“I’m so sorry, I should’ve used your names. So rude of me. You take the chair on the right, Larry, and Moe and Curly can sit over there.”
The Hispanic woman opened her mouth. Knight-abettor Norwood glanced at her and she clamped her jaws shut.
Right. So, there was a script. They weren’t sure what I was capable of and they wanted to find out, so they picked her to bait me. Bad idea.
The knights sat.