36. Caliel

36

Caliel

I had to figure out a way to get to Mykal.

If I was to have any chance of a rescue, I needed to know what their plans were for him. Was Victor, or Finn, taking their anger out on him?

Or was it something more?

How was I going to get to him when all I had was my borrowed knife, and no idea how to use it? My thoughts sheered away from once again using my talent to kill. It was a limited weapon anyway—I needed to make physical contact to do it, and I would be lucky not to end up gutted.

As a rescuer, I was beyond pathetic.

I paced through the building and out the rear exit. This body contained something lethal, and I needed to access it.

The clouds roiled across the night sky, and the drizzle almost changed my mind. But no one else was likely to be out here, making it the perfect place for my experimentation.

There was, however, one issue—the swamp was no place to be at night. The city walls kept the larger predators out, but there were plenty of small venomous species to consider. I eyed the draping moss as I left the path and walked a short distance in, before crouching down at the base of an enormous tree.

I stared at my hands. Even claws would be helpful, if only I could call upon them. I had helped Bree shift form multiple times, but that had been very different. More a sorting of what lay within, and then helping her to visualize while I turned the right thing loose. It was her inherent shifting talent, buried in her genes, that had enabled it to happen.

I had no clear description of how I had organized it for her, and now, faced with my own changing of shape, I also had little idea how to apply it to myself.

Patience, though, was always the first step to healing. Panic only blocked talent. I needed to organize myself properly, and then push the transformation. I closed my eyes, cast myself deep into the tissues of the fingertips, and imagined that they grew long claws instead of wimpy human fingernails.

I opened my eyes. Nothing.

The specter of failure hung over me, but then I thought of something. Bree's Ice Drake had been very sensitive to emotion. Maybe I was not feeding the shift with the right thing.

So, I gathered my worry for Mykal and used it to push the concept of claws. Still nothing. Although the tips tingled, just a little. Was I not using the right emotion?

I closed my eyes and called upon the memory of Jaimie attacking Bree. Of my fear, and my anger. And then, unbidden, came the despair I had felt when I used my talent to kill the Priest.

Tiny pains pierced my fingertips—I opened my eyes to one-inch claws.

Suitable for a baby Sabre, maybe.

Something rustled not far from me, and I decided that one-inch claws were not enough for what might be prowling out here. I ground my teeth as I pushed my way back out of the swamp.

The claws were better than nothing. Gryphons had claws too. I had never used mine in a battle, but as a youngling, I had wrestled with my peers. If push came to shove, I could use these to scratch someone. I sighed as I parted the last cluster of ferns and stepped back out onto the path.

And then, I froze.

In the doorway stood another kind of predator. Every line of his lean body spoke of a lifetime lived by the blade of a knife.

His gaze fastened on me…

Tez.

I was so shocked I couldn't move. When I blinked, certain that I was imagining things, he was still there.

Then, relief flooded through me. Because we could come up with a plan. Together.

"One of the mercs told me you'd headed this way," he said.

"What are you doing here?" I asked.

He crossed his arms. "I fucking live here."

Okay. He was clearly his usual self.

"I can leave again if you'd rather," he said.

"No. I am, in fact, quite glad to see you."

"What are you doing out here?" he asked. Then raised a brow and made an odd up and down jerking motion with one fisted hand.

I stared at him. "Is that supposed to mean something?"

"Figured you were beating one off," he elaborated.

I did not know what that was, but it sounded sexual. The burst of outrage was welcome. "I do not beat one off. I am, in fact, practicing growing claws."

His brows waggled. "How's that going?"

I held up my hand. The dim lights of the back door glinted off my tiny hooks.

"Very nice," he said sardonically.

Before I could come up with a suitably snide comment, movement over the swamp drew my attention. Dragons dropped from the clouds—immense ones, arrowing for the top-level ledge of Victor's chambers.

"Think your pictures have been noticed," Tez said. "Love to be a fly on that wall."

I had no idea what a fly was, but considering Victor's temper as of late, listening in on that particular meeting could have scorching consequences.

Tez looked away from where the Dragons had landed. "If we want to go scope out the kid's situation, now would be the time."

He was right. Whether that was Daize himself or just a messenger mattered naught—it should draw the Trinity and Aurora out of the dungeon.

"Can we get him out while they are preoccupied?" I asked.

Tez snorted a laugh. "Not unless you want to be caught."

I stared at him. "Your Serpent is powerful."

His brows lowered. "And the Priests are still hanging around. I unleash that, and they'll be all over us before we get twenty feet." He shook his head. "Even if we can free Mykal, we need a plan to get out of the building with him. And out of the city. If we try this without one, we will fail."

I swallowed. "The Priests are still here?"

"Saw two at the dock." He turned away. "Let's go get some food."

With my mind focused on the possibilities of serpentine conquest, it took me a moment to reorient. Food. Right. It would give us a reason to visit the prisoner.

My desire to just grab the boy and run nearly overwhelmed me. But if we were going to get Mykal out of here, I needed to be smarter about it. We had only gotten Bree out because the Priests provided the perfect distraction. My idea, but Tez had known just what to do.

He was resourceful and clever, and his presence here gave me hope. Of course, Karst might still try to send him back to Drosfi. But he let me stay—so I was confident it could be extended to Tez.

As we headed for the kitchen, I walked close to him. "How is she?" I whispered.

He looked directly at me. And his eyes flashed.

"She says hi."

My stride hitched, and my pulse began to pound. "Are you… did you—" I did not know quite how to ask.

"Yes," he said.

I swallowed, and my heart twisted tight in my chest. After Tez pulled the sword, I had suspected they were fated, but the reality of them culminating the bond hit me hard.

The diminutive bird on Tez's shoulder turned to stare at me with her bright little eyes. Then, to my surprise, she flitted to land on mine. She twittered at me, and bumped me with her head.

I did not know quite how to deal with that, so I settled for raising a cautious finger, and stroking her. She seemed to like it.

For some reason, Tez rolled his eyes. He led us to the mess hall, where we loaded a tray.

"The guards aren't likely to let us both in," Tez said. "The tray is good cover for only one. But if you carry Nemi with you, I can watch from the storage room."

I exchanged a surprised glance with him. "You can see through her eyes?"

He nodded.

My mind raced. "Birds are attracted to you. Can you do that with others?"

"I've only tried it with her." His dark brows drew down. "I seem to attract lizards, too."

"Fits with the facts. They are related." I hesitated as we descended the stairs, remembering the dream, and the faint echoes of compulsion I had felt. "I think you even have an effect on Gryphons. We are part bird, after all, and part lizard. Would it also work on Dragons, if you really focused?"

The look he shot me seemed unsettled. "My so-called talent seems to be changing all the time. It's like a fucking evil twin that keeps messing with my life."

Nemi chirped at him from my shoulder.

"Yeah, yeah," Tez muttered as we reached the dungeon's level. He handed me the tray and hugged the wall as he cracked the stairway door open just a few inches.

Nemi was off my shoulder and through it in a flash. Tez shut the door and closed his eyes. After a moment, he murmured, "Two Bellati guards are in the hall outside the chambers. The door is shut. With any luck, there's no one inside with Mykal." He cracked the door again, and Nemi darted back in, landing on his shoulder.

"With the guards in the hall, I can't use the storage room across from them," he said. "I'll have to stay here. If someone comes, I'll move toward you and say I was looking for you. If Nemi drills you with her beak, it is time to leave."

Right. Okay, then. As the little bird transferred to my shoulder, I steadied the tray and walked out into the hall.

I schooled my expression into my best impression of Slade's cold and indifferent outlook on life. The Bellatis watched me come, but to my relief, their equally cold features did not reveal any surprise at my presence there.

These Bellatis had strayed far from their warrior code by continuing to be part of this fiasco. The small group that had followed Isobel had been misguided at best, but now? Now they were part of something truly twisted. But as I looked into their crimson-tinged eyes, I wondered just how much of the Bellati warrior remained intact within them. Like it did everything else, the bloodmagic had perfused and tainted them.

One grabbed a meatroll from the tray. "He's not likely to eat it," he explained with a shrug. "No sense in letting all this go to waste."

His partner also chose one, and neither commented as I pushed through the door with the tray.

I breathed a sigh of relief when the door swung shut behind me, and I looked into an unoccupied chamber. Unoccupied, that is, except for Mykal.

They had put him in the cage, and he was no longer human. He had shifted to his Dragon.

Nemi flew up into the rafters as I examined what lay in there. The beast was huddled up against the bars as though he had flung himself there before collapsing. His scales were still muddy with youth, but the gleam of purple through the gray promised he would end up much like his father.

He did not move as I approached him with the tray.

"Mykal?" I said. "I've brought you food."

No response. What had they done to him? I set the tray aside and reached through the bars to lay my hand on his scaled forearm.

In an instant, he grabbed me with his other taloned forefoot, and pulled, slamming me into the rusty metal rods.

It hurt, and would leave bruises, but had the Bellatis heard? I whispered urgently, "I am a friend. I can help you. But you need to let me go."

His metallic eyes blazed at me, and although he was much smaller than an adult, there was nothing childlike in his gaze.

"Please," I said. "Your father sent me—you have to trust me."

His eyes narrowed. "Hows do I knows yous aren't lying?"

I groped for something that might work to establish his trust. "Your father sometimes goes by the name Michelangelo, after a favorite teenage character. Who I think was a turtle?"

He let me go, just as the door to the chamber opened.

"Thought I heard something," the Bellati guard said.

"I'm fucking fine. Just trying to convince this idiot to eat," I snarled.

"Well, don't get too close. He put holes in another guard," the Bellati stated, and disappeared behind the door again.

"I dids exactly that. And wills do it again." Mykal growled. He shivered and pushed his head into the bars. "I feels sick."

"I can help," I said. "But I need to touch you. And you cannot tell anyone what I am about to do."

His eyes flared wide and rolled to examine me as he considered my request. Then he closed them. "Okays."

I wrapped my hand around his scaled arm, and unleashed my healing talent, sending it rushing through his Dragon body.

What I found shocked me. Had Mykal been ill before his capture? Or was this something the Trinity and Aurora had done to him? His body was in complete chaos, the cells dividing much more rapidly than normal, but in a controlled manner. He was burning with fever and shivering beneath my touch.

"I'll be right back." I rose. Surely there were crystals in the cabinetry along the walls. I dug through them, recoiling from the bloodmagic-soaked crimson shards. Eventually I discovered a drawer of the blue and green untainted ones.

I filled my pockets and brought a fistful back to Mykal. He regarded me through the bars. "Yous ares a healer?" he asked.

"It's a secret, okay?"

He nodded as I laid a hand on him again and did my best to resolve the inflammation and calm the mad cell division. He sighed and relaxed into my touch.

"Betters," he conceded.

Nemi dropped to hover around me, and then she darted back into the rafters. I took it as a warning that my time was running out, rather than that of an imminent arrival. I was already shaking—I was using too much of my talent just to keep functioning. I did not have much left, even if enhanced with crystal power.

I shoved the remnants into my pockets with the others. "Do you think you can eat?" I asked.

He drew himself up to a sitting position and sighed. And then, his body writhed its way to human.

My heart twisted as it became obvious just what Finn's damned Trinity had been doing with him.

Mykal was only a boy.

Or rather, he had been.

The youth that stared out at me through the bars was on the cusp of adolescence, with a frame starting to reveal the power he would have as an adult. And the eyes that met mine were so much like Riggs's that it tore at my heart.

"What's wrong?" he asked, and frowned when his voice broke.

I composed myself and started passing food to him through the bars. They had put the same type of half-collar on him that they had put on Bree, so he could shift to his Dragon. I had no idea why they were forcing him to mature, but Finn never did anything on a whim.

Nemi darted down again and chirped at me. "I have to go," I said, handing him the last meatroll. "You have to keep up your strength, so eat when you can. I am going to figure out a way to get you out of here."

Mykal shoved the meatroll into his mouth, and then stopped, suddenly, to examine his hand. And then the rest of him, which he had automatically clad in scales.

"What have they done to me?" he gasped.

"They are aging you, I do not know why," I said. "Just try to hold on."

He rose. The gaze that met mine was mature beyond his years. "Who are you?"

I swallowed. "A friend. But you need to call me Slade, while we are here."

He nodded. "Thank you."

It was viciously hard to turn, then, and walk away. Who knew what Finn had planned for the boy. But I knew Tez was right.

If we wanted to get Mykal out of here, we needed a plan.