Wide awake now, all thoughts of other problems pushed out of her mind by the excitement of discovery, she cleared the table, stacking books and documents in uneven piles on the floor, and set the scroll down where she could examine it. The paper was brown and brittle, crumbling at the edges. Stains blotched its surface. Unrolling it would surely cause damage, but the desire to open it outweighed all of her scruples.
Anchoring one end with a book, she began to unroll the scroll, cringing as the paper cracked and flaked in her hands. Using books, she weighted it at regular intervals to minimize the damage. It was handwritten, and not by a single person. At the very top, a heading in a script that looked like it had been written by a medieval monk read, Chronicle of thee Shyfters of thee Dreame.
Underneath the heading was written a name, Taliesin. Beside it, the legend, lost in battle at Camlann.
Vivian touched her finger to the name in wonder. Taliesin, a fascinating mythological character in Celtic and Arthurian legend. At least she’d always thought him mythological, but everything she had once believed was turning out not to be true. She’d encountered him in Le Morte d’Arthur, in the Mabinogion, had loved him enough to track down The Book of Taliesin.
I have been a tear in the air,
I have been the dullest of stars.
I have been a word among letters . . .
Beneath his name several others were written in the same hand, each with the manner of death. Typical medieval things—a fevere, ded in his sleepe, by sworde in battle. After that the writing changed, and with it the ink. And then changed again. And again. Names. Thousands of them. Some of them in languages she couldn’t read—Chinese, Cyrillic, Russian, even what looked suspiciously like Sanskrit.
When the scroll had unfurled as far as the end of the table, the entries had begun to include dates alongside the cause of death. She went back and rerolled it at the top, forcing herself to work slowly and methodically to preserve the fragile paper as much as possible. By the time she reached the bottom of the list her hands were shaking, her heart fluttering at the base of her throat.
The final entries were written in a spiky black script that Vivian knew well as belonging to her grandfather, George Maylor.
Xiaohu, poisoned, 1656
Amrit Nehru, combustion by dragon poison, 1689
Mary Miller, hanged as a witch, 1692
John the Cooper, dead of a wasting disease, 1775
Evan Evans, a dragon took him, 1778
Niklas Kappel, slain by a giant bear, June 1887
Edward Jennings, murdered, 1925
Weston Jennings, missing, 1925
George Maylor, murdered, October 2011
And beneath it, on the last line at the bottom of this long list of people, all long dead, Vivian Maylor. No date or cause of death, but her fate seemed to be lurking in the empty space, only lacking the means and the date.
Vivian shivered, this time not from the cold. She retrieved the quilt and pulled it tightly around her anyway, taking some comfort from the warmth and the softness of the old fabric.
“Viv, it’s three A.M.” Zee stood in the shadows on the far side of the room, dark hair tangled on bare shoulders, faded jeans riding low on his narrow hips.
“I couldn’t sleep.”
He crossed the room toward her, light-footed as a cat, and tired as she was she smiled at the combination of softness and lethality that was Zee. The hair, those clear agate eyes, bespoke the artist, while the hard muscle of his arms and chest, and above all the still-healing scars that marred his face, brought to mind the warrior.
“You can’t go on like this.” Zee moved behind her, hands warm on the tightness of her shoulders, and she relaxed back against the solid strength of him, letting his hands knead away some of the tension and fear.
“It’s the dream thing, isn’t it?” he asked her. “Sit, this will be more effective.”
Vivian sank into a chair as he directed. Dreams lay at the heart of her, and although she feared her own, she craved them with an intensity that frightened her. Something whispered that she must dream, or she would die.
“Did you dream?” she murmured. “Tell me.”
His strong fingers hesitated, then moved to her neck, working the clenched knots at the base of her skull. “Pizza,” he said.
She snorted, disbelieving. Her dreams, forever and always, had been big dreams—dragons and shadows and the twisting mazes of the Between.
“The rest of us mortals,” he said, moving his hands back onto her shoulders so his thumbs could isolate the muscle just below her shoulder blades, “often dream about silly things. Like pizza. Now, did you want to hear my dream or not?”
“I’m sorry. Tell.”
“We ordered pizza. About three days later it showed up in the U.S. Mail van. The driver tried to fit it into the mailbox but it wouldn’t bend, and then Poe flew out to get it, only he ate it on the way back.”
“You made that up.” But she was laughing, caught out of herself and leaning back into him, her head comfortable against his chest. His hands slowed; she heard the catch in his breath and felt her own heart start to race. Head tilted back, she caught the expression on his face, the question in his eyes.
The kiss hung there between them, ready for the taking.
She pulled away, leaning forward on her elbows and rolling her shoulders experimentally. “That feels better.”
“What did you find?” His voice was a little too casual and she knew she had hurt him, again, and hated herself for it. There was nothing to be said, so she leaned aside so he could see the scroll, argument and conclusion in a list of names and dates of death.
A long moment of silence. When she dared to look at him again, his jaw was clenched, all the softness of sleep wiped away.
“You want to know what I really dreamed?” he said. “I dreamed that a dragon came after you and I killed it. None of those people on that list had me standing guard. Do you understand?”
She did. This was the face of the warrior, scarred and lethal. He would die to protect her, and maybe she was underestimating him. Maybe he loved her enough to encompass all that she was—including sorceress and dragon. Her body and soul yearned for him, to slip into his embrace and be—safe.
There was no safety, though, not now. Not being what she was.
As if to emphasize these thoughts, the scanner let out a burst of static and then the voices came on. A woman’s voice, first. Dispatch:
“Control two eighty-seven, do you read?”
“This is two eighty-seven.”
“I’ve got a report of fireballs at Finger Beach. Two injured. Need ambulance, fire, and all patrol units.”
Zee asked the question with his eyes. Vivian nodded. No need for a word between them. It was time do something about the dragon.
Two
Hey, sleepyhead, we’re here.”
Vivian thought she felt a hand stroke her hair and rest warm on her shoulder, but by the time she got her eyes open Zee was checking his weapons—slamming a cartridge into the .38 he’d found at her grandfather’s cabin, loosening the sword in its sheath.
It was a good four-hour drive from the cabin to the town of Krebston, and she’d lost the fight against sleep within about the first thirty minutes, drifting on the margins of dream without ever going under. Or so she’d thought. Now she wasn’t sure whether she’d dreamed the hand stroking her hair or if it had been real.