Legacy of Flames- The Complete Trilogy, page 54
part #1 of Legacy of Flames Series
“Some of us bite.” Becks glanced at me with a grin.
I flushed scarlet. Great. “Anything else happen while I was sleeping?”
“Sleeping.” Cori made quote marks with her hands.
I flicked a piece of cereal at her. “Yes, sleeping. That dragon—whatever it did wiped me out.”
Her smile faded. “Yeah. I don’t know why it affected you worse than me, but… why wouldn’t the other dragons want us to come back?”
“I don’t know.” I chewed a mouthful of tasteless cornflakes, wishing we had fresh milk. “I really don’t. Samuel is pretty much the only person who might know, and I don’t entirely trust him. Especially with the timing of the attack on the mages. But I don’t know where they took the Moonbeam this time.”
“The tracking spell’s ready,” Will said. “It should work, though I can’t say much for the accuracy now. It’s been over twelve hours since we took the arm.”
“The arm?” I said blankly.
“The automaton,” said Becks. “Honestly. Where have you been?”
“Possibly a million miles away,” I said. “Wherever we went was freaking cold, anyway. So what’s with the arm?”
Will cleared a space on the table as we all gathered around. The automaton’s metal arm lay in the centre, and lights sprang up around it when he activated the spell.
The longest pause followed. Will leaned in, seeing something none of the rest of us could. Then the spell collapsed into fine powder.
Will looked at us. “It wasn’t very clear, but I know where the automaton was before it attacked us. It came from the alley right next to Samuel’s house. There’s no way he won’t have heard it.”
“Don’t say I told you so,” I said to Astor. “I never completely trusted him. I just like to give people the benefit of the doubt.” Including you.
As though he’d heard the words I hadn’t spoken aloud, he said, “All right, then what now? Because if we go back to the old man’s house, we’re running into a trap. If not, there’s a chance he might be able to track us down anyway. The hunters are coordinating a new plan—it’s obvious.”
“Yeah, it is. They’re not usually so transparent.”
“They want the Moonbeam back,” Cori said. “Now the mages have it under even tighter security. The hunters weren’t trying to steal it last night, though. Otherwise they’d have come in when we did.”
“Yeah, that doesn’t make much sense to me,” I said. “But it’s pretty clear we’re in over our heads. There are only six of us.”
“I think we’re good,” said Cori. “We have one wildcat shifter, two dragons, one gargoyle-witch hybrid, and a faerie.”
“Don’t forget the assassin,” said Will. “Though maybe we should downgrade him to “shitty housekeeper”. There’s still brick dust all over the top floor.”
“I’m not your lapdog,” Astor said. “If you hadn’t got yourselves thrown in jail, I’d be gone.”
“That’s nice. You know, you’re technically trespassing in my house. If you and Ember weren’t screwing—”
“Okay, that’s enough.” I raised my hands. “We need a plan. If we leave Samuel be, no one knows what he’ll do next. If we go back to the mages, if there’s the slightest chance they know what we did last night, we can say goodbye to freedom. That’s Plan A and B. Anyone got any other ideas?”
10
In the end, we opted for Plan C: take an aerial view of the city from the sky, cloaked in shadow spells. Flying was the safest method, considering there was a chance Astor’s stolen car might have been recognised yesterday.
First, of course, I had to shift into dragon form, which meant sneaking into a nearby alley after checking nobody was around, including gargoyles. Even outside, my dragon frame barely fit, what with the wings and tail. The shift, however, was quick, if uncomfortable, and my wings scraped against the walls within seconds.
Cori watched my transformation with wide, admiring eyes. “I want to be able to do that.”
“You will.” I turned human again to speak to her. “For now, you get to ride on my back. Becks will ride on Will, along with Kit. And Astor…”
“Why are you coming?” Cori asked Astor, who’d hung back while I’d shifted, keeping an eye out for anyone nearby.
“Because you need me.”
“Like hell we do.”
“Cori,” I said.
My little sister crossed her arms. “You were singing a different tune before he started seducing you. The others told me.”
Now wasn’t the time for that conversation. “Can we just go with it? We need to check the mages’ place first, and see if we can find where they put the Moonbeam. And… Samuel is expecting us to bring it to him today. It can’t hurt to fly over to his place and see if he really does have the hunters at his house.”
“I have a question,” said Cori. “Why’d he ask us to bring the Moonbeam to him, if we don’t need the mirror to get through to the dragon shifters? The Moonbeam works fine on its own. We don’t have to involve him.”
“Because he’s a mole planted by the hunters,” said Astor.
“We’ll see.” But I suspected he was right. “But if what he said was true, maybe he has seen the dragons. If the hunters had access to the mirror before it broke, we need to make sure they haven’t been anywhere near them.”
Cori flashed me an uneasy look. What if it was true? One hunter could kill a dozen dragons, given enough bullets. But surely Malkin would have broadcast to the whole city if he’d slain another of my kind. He wanted to hurt me.
After flying over the mages’ place and finding no signs of where they might have moved the Moonbeam to, I flew in the direction of Samuel’s house instead.
Flying to Samuel’s place took ten minutes rather than an hour’s drive, but was considerably wetter. Cori grumbled about the rain while Astor maintained his usual silence until we dipped lower over the rows of terraced houses. There were so few people in the streets, the sight of two black-clad figures walking down the road drew me to a screeching halt. They weren’t even trying to be unobtrusive.
I flew down, the air current of my wings hitting the two walking figures in the back. They kept walking, probably thinking it was only the weather. They didn’t know a predator followed them.
As I suspected, their path took them in the direction of Samuel’s house. But were they there to attack, or collaborate? Both meant we were in trouble, because they’d know we’d been there. The question was, had they already worked out the mages had the Moonbeam? I hadn’t said so directly, but there were only so many hiding places for an item that valuable. Maybe the attack last night had been an attempt to steal the Moonbeam after all. It’s a good job the mages held the hunters off.
But that didn’t explain the mirror. Had the hunters been the ones to break it, or Samuel himself? Was he a liar, or an impostor? Had the League really found the dragons?
I hovered, invisible, as Samuel left his house and approached the two walking hunters.
“Is everything in place?” he asked them.
“Of course,” said the hunter on the right. “The attack on the mages yesterday destabilised them, but they can’t possibly know what they’re in for.”
“I suspect not.” Samuel pulled out a perfect copy of the mirror.
I held my breath. It’s a trick. Sure looked like one anyway. That, or we’d been seriously set up. Good job we hadn’t stolen the Moonbeam for him, because it was pretty damn clear that the mirror had never been broken at all. But this wasn’t the real Samuel, unless he’d worked for the hunters all along.
The mirror’s glow expanded, and one hunter stepped through the mirror and then vanished. The other followed.
Well, shit.
I touched down, claws digging into the road, flames ready to burst from my lungs and set the house alight. Fire roared through my veins. Did they just go after the other dragons?
“You can come out now, Ember,” said Samuel.
I didn’t move, barely restraining the flames inside me. Exposing myself would also expose Cori and Astor, and if people could walk into the mirror, they could also walk out. What the hell waited on the other side?
Samuel spoke into the mirror, and a dark shape appeared in the glass, growing bigger by the second. A giant furred shifter leaped out, aiming directly at me—of course, it could scent me through the shadow spell.
I raised a hand to swat the beast away, and it hit the wall with a crash that knocked a few bricks onto the tarmac. Kit’s glamour faded as Will touched down alongside me, showing Samuel he was outnumbered. If I had been in human form, I’d have asked where the portal led… but I had a sinking feeling it led right into the heart of the hunters’ lair. But if Samuel had once used it to keep in contact with the dragons—did that mean the hunters were there, killing or torturing them right this minute?
I needed to get through that mirror.
The shifter beast attacked again, and a second appeared from the mirror, followed by a third. I faced them, and the heat burst from my chest in a torrent of dragonfire. The shifters fell, charred corpses, but Samuel was unharmed. He’d held up the mirror in front of him, and it must have protected him somehow. The ground beneath his feet smoked, heat pouring from the tarmac, but his clothes remained unsinged. He smiled directly at me—the shadow spell had switched off, perhaps burned away in the fire, too. He didn’t fear me at all.
“This is a handy device,” he said. “Dragon-made, so it’s fireproof. Convenient.”
I growled a warning, and he looked at me calmly.
“You should have done as you were told, Ember. I made things so easy for you.”
The tone of voice he used left no doubt as to who really wore Samuel’s face. Malkin.
Of course he’d staged the attack on the mages. Or the hunters had, after he’d tipped them off that the mages must be the ones with the Moonbeam. So he’d tried to get me to steal it—why? Because he knew the wards would attack the hunters on sight, and I’d stand a better chance of getting it away from them?
Light flashed through the mirror and a powerful gust of wind had hit me in the face. My wings beat frantically, unable to fight the current as it steered me off course, over the rooftops. Cori screamed in my ear. I caught a glimpse of Will caught in the air current, too, fighting it with all his strength.
I dived, my wings dragged sideways against my will. I didn’t want to risk the others’ lives. The torrent of air felt like a witch spell, and sure enough, when I managed to get closer to the house again, a flare of light surrounded it. Tripwire spell. A powerful one—and one I suspected belonged to the real Samuel. Malkin must have triggered it himself.
The mirror couldn’t burn, but the house could.
I unleashed the fire again. Bricks ignited, and the whole house went up in a bright inferno. Unfortunately, Malkin-wearing-Samuel’s-face didn’t. The mirror flared white, and the fire went around him, destroying everything else in its path. As though the mirror deflected the damage. If it was fireproof, it couldn’t be destroyed. Which left one option: steal it, or damage it in some other way. I flapped my wings, the torrent of fire having momentarily stopped the breeze which had blown Will and me off course. I used the pause to dive again, close enough for my claws to swipe out at the false Samuel…
He wasn’t Samuel anymore. Malkin smiled at me, holding the mirror. An illusion spell. He used a witch spell. He wore his usual clothes, the armour which would cause me pain if I touched it. Maybe it was fireproof, too. The mirror was a prop, but he’d sent those hunters somewhere using it, and he clearly knew it linked with the Moonbeam. He’d probably tortured all the information from the real Samuel before killing him.
“Useful tool, this,” he said. “If I’d known there was another, I wouldn’t have held onto the Moonbeam so tightly. Very useful… and to think the foolish old man left it switched on, unused, gathering dust down in the dark.”
I growled a warning. He continued to smile at me. “Ember, you can’t beat me even like that. You know what I’m capable of. The old man hardly put up a fight.”
Yeah, I knew you killed him. But where the hell does that mirror lead? Are the hunters fighting the dragons right now?
I swiped at the hand holding the mirror and narrowly missed.
He bared his teeth in a smile. “You want to go after them? It’s too late, Ember.” He took a step back, and light flared around the wrecked house. A current of air hit me hard, sending me flying again, and my vision momentarily blacked out.
When my ears stopped ringing, I caught the sound of sobbing from behind my head. Cori. I tried to shout her name, but only a growl came out.
“Ember, get down,” said Astor. “It’s hard to breathe up here.”
Holy crap. We’d been blown right into the clouds. I descended, my huge body shaking, and nearly crashed into Will. He dropped in a spiralling arc, clearly caught in the same wind current that had hit me. Becks’s cat form clung to his back, shrieking in fear.
Mercifully, there were trees below. I descended in time to reach and grab Will’s wing and stop him from plummeting into the earth. I used the last dregs of strength to push us over a clearing so we wouldn’t crash into the trees, and we dropped the rest of the way to the ground.
Will landed upside-down in a bush, turning human again. “What in hell was that?” He lifted his head feebly. “Becks lost it and started clawing at my back.”
Becks lay in a heap next to Kit, who groaned. “That was powerful magic. How did Malkin do that?”
“It was a defensive ward,” said Will. “One of the old man’s. It activated when Ember attacked the house.”
My body shrunk and I crumpled into human form again, willing myself to stay conscious. “Don’t tell me you wouldn’t have done the same in my position,” I croaked. “He—he killed the real Samuel and stole the mirror. Now he’s sending hunters through there, and… and I know what’s on the other side.”
“No, we don’t,” said Cori. “It can’t be the dragons. They’d have pulverised the hunters.”
I wished I had her confidence. I climbed to my feet, my limbs shaking. “This is all wrong. Where even are we?”
“Hyde Park,” said Becks. “Aka, faerie territory.”
“So we are still in the city.”
“Just about.” Will rubbed the back of his neck. “That air current nearly tore my wings off.”
“Mine, too,” I said. “That was some powerful magic. I’ve never felt anything like it before.”
“I have,” said Kit. “When the faeries came.”
On cue, a redcap appeared at the clearing’s entrance. The faeries apparently hadn’t taken kindly to our trespassing on their territory. Just what we needed. Two more redcaps ran up to join him, followed by three more.
“Wait!” Kit moved in front of us to talk to them. “We didn’t mean to drop in. We’re just leaving.”
The first redcap ran screaming at us, brandishing a knife. So much for talking it through politely.
Kit threw a magical shield of green energy in front of us and legged it, apparently not keen to stick around and fight our way out. I wasn’t up to flying again, not after the battering I’d taken before.
“Wait!” I said as Astor moved towards the redcaps, not away. “Don’t. We did fall out the sky on their territory.”
Astor cursed, and then started running for a gap in the trees. Dammit. If there are dryads in there, we’re screwed. But there were trees on all sides, and faerie territory covered the whole park.
We ran, feet pounding against the grass. My lungs burned, my muscles aching from the shift, yet I didn’t stop. I knew a lost cause when I saw one. Worse, we’d landed right near mage territory on the park’s other side, and the last thing I needed was for Lord Smyth to realise what I’d been up to.
And speaking of mages…
Lightning and fire clashed outside the park, igniting the sky in ribbons of fire almost like the faeries’ invasion. Another mage battle.
At least it signalled the way out, but we didn’t want to get involved in their fight. I nodded to the others as I spotted the nearest exit, and flat-out sprinted—
Right into a team of hunters.
Astor reacted first, flinging a knife at one of them. The hunter crashed onto his back, and Astor leaped at the second. As I ran to join him, Kit jumped past and threw a handful of green light at them. Astor finished three hunters off in the time it took to blink, lifting the one survivor by the scruff of his neck and shaking him violently.
“Tell me what the hell’s going on or I’ll break your fingers one by one.”
I didn’t expect the guy to react—he was a hunter, after all. But after Astor muttered in his ear, he cracked and said something I didn’t catch. They’d presumably decided to shortcut through the park, perhaps assuming their sheer numbers would overwhelm the faeries. Or their guns.
Astor stabbed the hunters in the chest and left him bleeding as the rest of us caught up to him.
“Nice,” Will commented. “Did he tell you what’s going on?”
“Another attack on the mages,” he said. “This one’s more brutal than the last one. They brought reinforcements, and—”
A crashing noise drowned out his words.
“Automatons?” I suggested.
Astor swore. “There’s no way back to the tunnels which won’t involve walking around them. You’re injured, Ember, and—”
A familiar bright white light drew my gaze before he could speak. It shone like a beacon on the other side of the exit.
“Someone has the Moonbeam,” I gasped.
Tiredness swept aside, I started running again. They’re close. We ran out of the park’s exit, where I nearly tripped over two mages lying on the ground, not moving. Two more hunters ran around the corner—masked, armoured Elites, one of them carrying the Moonbeam. They must have worked out a way around the mages’ defences after all.
I can’t let them take it.
Kit said, “We’re glamoured. Ambush them.”
Our eyes met. He understood how much this meant to me, even if Astor didn’t. As far as he was concerned, anything that’d help us destroy Malkin was worth the risk. All right, then.
