Chapter Nine

"I 've never truly felt like a red shirt before, but I sure do now." Holland sucked in his breath and winced when I dabbed antiseptic liquid over the six-inch slash across the right side of his chest.

"Sorry," I murmured. "I know it stings, but it's the best I can do until we get you to a healer."

"Red shirt?" Baltic asked, stalking into the portal company's waiting room, his hand held out to me. "Are you done with my phone?"

"Yes, I just had to make one call. Here it is."

He accepted the phone, immediately punching in a text message.

"It's a Star Trek reference," Maura answered Baltic in a resigned voice. "It means the disposable guy who gets killed. Which is basically what I'm going to be unless you let me go."

"My mate wishes for you to remain with us," Baltic said with a dismissive glance at her, still texting.

"Well, it's not so much that as Savian can't get the handcuff off you until we get home. Besides, I know your mother and grandfather are worried sick about you, Maura, and would welcome the chance to talk with you." I wrapped a length of gauze around Holland's chest before tying it off. "Not that I owe Dr. Kostich anything, but still, I'm sure he's worried. And you're far from a red shirt, Holland. We very much appreciate your helping us. Are you absolutely sure your arm isn't hurting you?"

We both looked down to where I had, with Baltic's assistance, bound Holland's severed arm to his shoulder, trying our best to line it up properly.

"Not since Pavel found that morphine, no," he answered, his voice slower now. "With luck, the flesh will start regenerating by the time we get to England."

"I'm afraid your ear is going to suffer for the experience, though," I said, giving the healing remains of his ear a sorrowful glance. "I'm so sorry about that, Holland."

Baltic turned his back to us, speaking softly into the phone.

"It's all right," Holland said with a weak smile. "It was an adventure. Wouldn't have missed it for anything."

His eyes closed as he spoke. I looked across him as Brom returned from visiting the portalling company's bathroom, Pavel dogging his heels. "I feel just terrible about everything, Pavel. I hope you can forgive us for putting your friend in so much danger, and for letting the negrets chomp on him."

Pavel looked surprised. "You did not put us in danger, Ysolde. Thala did that. Or those under her command. We do not hold you to blame for anything."

"Nonetheless, I feel terrible about it."

"Are we going home now, or is Baltic going to draw and quarter Gareth?" Brom asked, tugging at my sleeve.

"No one is going to draw and quarter anyone. Besides, Gareth and Ruth hightailed it out of there after calling up all those wretched negrets."

"Yeah, but he said he was going to kill them just as soon as he was done killing the dragons."

"He what?" I took a deep breath and pulled Brom aside. He obviously needed a little reassurance. "Brom, I know this has been a horrible day for you, what with Gareth and Ruth, and the ouroboros dragons, and then the negrets attacking us, but you know that Baltic and I will never let anything bad happen to you."

"I know that," he said with all the insouciance of a nine-year-old. "Baltic told me he'd kill the dragons, though. The bad ones, I mean. Not Maura, because she's nice, but the others, and then he said he'd draw and quarter Gareth for what he put you through."

A horrible suspicion struck me. What if the ouroboros dragons who had been in the keep hadn't run away, as I assumed they had done once Baltic had bested them. What if…I eyed the dragon of my dreams suspiciously, moving over to where he stood, quickly assessing his hurts, and deciding after a few seconds that he was, as he had claimed, not in any danger of expiring on the spot. That didn't mean others hadn't done so, however. "Is there something you want to tell me?" I asked, nudging Baltic's arm when he ended his call and began to dial another number.

"About what?"

"About killing people?"

He looked up from his phone, frowning. "Negrets aren't people, mate."

"Not them. The others." I waited, but his gaze dropped, and he refused to meet my eyes. "Baltic?"

"No, there is nothing I wish to tell you." The fact that he didn't even look at me spoke volumes.

I sighed and moved around to stand in front of him. "Tell me you didn't kill any of those ouroboros dragons."

"I didn't kill any of the ouroboros dragons."

I looked into his fathomless eyes and did not like what I saw there. "You're lying, aren't you?"

"You just told me to do so." Irritation flared in those beautiful eyes.

"No, I said—oh, never mind. How many dragons did you kill?"

"Why?" One of his eyebrows rose. "Are you going to locate a priest and pay for indulgences for the deaths of ouroboros dragons, just as you did in the past?"

The second the words left his lips, I felt as if I were caught up in a whirlpool, spun around, and sucked down into dizzying depths…that just as suddenly disappeared, leaving a man's voice echoing in my ears. "…are responsible for the deaths of dragons you claimed were ouroboros, are you not, Baltic?"

"Whoa," said a thin voice, and I blinked away the confusion to see Brom standing next to me, watching with wide eyes the scene in front of us. "We're in another of your visions, aren't we? This one doesn't have Gareth and Ruth. I like it better."

"Why on earth am I having this? My dragon woke up, didn't it?" I wrapped one arm around Brom and moved over to where Baltic stood with a martyred expression on his face. Pavel, Savian, and Maura stood behind him, all three of them blinking in surprise. Holland appeared to be asleep on the couch.

"We're in a vision? I've never seen anything like this," Maura said, glancing around. "It's a vision of the past, I assume. Interesting. Who are those people?"

I leaned into Baltic and watched the two men before us. "The one standing with his arms crossed, and his back to the fireplace is Baltic. I know it doesn't look like him, but that was his original human form. The other man is…Who is that?"

My Baltic sighed. "It matters not. I grow weary of your insistence that I relive episodes from the past that are of no interest to anyone, mate. And now you have brought others in, when we have little time to indulge in such matters. End the vision so that we might take that blasted portal out of Spain."

"Pavel?" I asked, ignoring Baltic's demands.

"That's Alexei, the wyvern of the black dragons," he answered with a little smile.

Baltic shot him an annoyed look.

"Alexei? The wyvern before you?"

"You refuse to answer me?" the man in question demanded of the old Baltic as he stormed past, pacing a path between the long trestle table and a massive fireplace big enough to roast two oxen side by side. Alexei, almost as tall as Baltic, bore a resemblance to the latter, with a similar shape to his jaw and chin, as well as the same dark hair and eyes. Although many black dragons had such coloring, it was obvious even in the dim light that Baltic and Alexei were related.

"Why should I bother to do so?" Baltic asked with a shrug as Alexei paced past him again. "I told you that I would avenge my mother's death, and I have done so."

"At the risk of alienating the red dragons, who are already at the verge of war against us because of you!" Alexei said, his hands gesturing wildly in the air.

"I know that can't be your father, because your father is the—" I glanced beyond my Baltic to where the others stood watching the vision with interest, and bit off the rest of the sentence. I was still coming to grips with the fact that the man I loved with every ounce of my being was the child of a dragon god. "I know Alexei isn't your father, but it's obvious you're related to him somehow."

"End the vision," Baltic growled, turning Brom and me to face him.

"I told you before—I don't know how to end them. What was that bit about avenging your mom?"

"You would have me let the murderers of your own daughter escape without punishment?" the past Baltic snarled. "You may not care that her death be avenged, but I do."

"She was my only daughter! Of course I care! I feel her loss more than you can possibly know, but that does not give you the right to kill Chuan Ren's elite guard!" Alexei snarled right back at him. "As if the situation weren't troublesome enough with your actions threatening the peace of the entire weyr, now you must do this!"

Baltic took me by the arms and gave me a little shake. "Mate, you will cease this immediately!"

I said nothing, unable to look away from the scene between Baltic and…his grandfather?

"I will not be dictated to," the past Baltic snapped. "Not by you, and not by Chuan Ren."

Alexei spun around, his expression as black as his hair. "You are not wyvern here, Baltic; I am. And if I choose to dictate to you, then I will do so!"

"Ysolde!" the present-day Baltic demanded, his voice filled with ire.

I glanced back to him. "Chuan Ren's guards killed your mother? Why? Wait—let's start first with Alexei. He was your grandfather?"

"End this!" he said, his patience frittering away into nothing.

"You keep saying that, but I don't know how," I pointed out, wanting to ask him a dozen more questions, but hesitating with the presence of the others.

"Then I will end it for you!" he snapped, and without concern for the fact that I still held Brom close to me, he pulled me against him, his lips claiming mine, his dragon fire spilling out in a spiral around all three of us. Brom squeaked something about being crushed, until I released him and allowed him to pop out from between us, my attention now focused on the man whose kiss dominated me, demanding a response I was unable to withhold.

"Aww," I heard Brom say a minute later, when I could catch my breath and rally my thoughts into something other than how badly I wanted to wrestle Baltic to the nearest bed and have my womanly way with him. "It's gone."

"It'll never be gone," I said without a care for grammar, staring into Baltic's eyes and reveling in the love I saw in return.

"Never," he agreed, brushing his thumb along my lower lip.

"That was fascinating," Maura said thoughtfully. "Not your kiss, the vision. I had no idea one could revisit the past in that way. What causes that, Ysolde? Do you know?"

I stepped back from Baltic, not surprised to see that he had, in fact, ended the vision by the simple method of kissing me senseless. "I used to think it was the frustrated dragon inside me trying to get me to wake it up. But it's woken now, so that doesn't make sense anymore."

"It's not woken," Baltic said, brushing back a strand of my hair. "It answered your call when you needed it, but that is all. The dragon inside you still slumbers."

"How do you know?" I asked, warmed to my toes by the gentle caress of his hand on my cheek.

"I know." He turned back to his phone, dismissing the rest of us.

"I don't have a dragon inside me, although Sullivan says when I'm older and I have children, they will be light dragons, and will be able to shift into dragon form," Brom told Maura. "I wish I could do that. I don't want to have children, but Sullivan says I probably will later on. How come you turned red when you were a dragon, if you aren't in a sept?"

"My father was a red dragon, so that is the form I take when I'm dragonny," she answered, giving him a little smile that faded almost immediately. "My mother isn't a dragon, however."

"You know I'm going to have at least a dozen questions about that whole scene," I told Baltic as he consulted a text message he had just received.

He sighed a particularly martyred sigh. "I know."

"I'll go check to see if the portal is ready yet," Pavel said, and slipped away.

"I should check the area outside to make sure no pursuing dragons, liches, or negrets are about to descend upon us," Savian said, groaning out loud when he limped forward. "Come along, princess. You can pick up any of my body parts that happen to fall off."

"Oh, for the love of the good green earth," Maura said, snapping the handcuffs in an annoyed manner. "You're such a big baby! You don't have nearly the number of wounds that poor knocker has, and you're making a much bigger fuss about them than he is."

"You're going to drive me barking mad until I can get these cuffs off, aren't you?" Savian asked her as they left the waiting room.

"A girl has to have some fun."

"Did you get everything in order?" I asked Baltic as he tucked away his phone. "Did you arrange to have a healer standing by when we get back to England? I don't like the looks of Holland's injuries, even though he says he can heal that severed arm."

"We're not going to England," Baltic said, taking my arm with one hand, and Brom with the other.

"We're not?" I asked as he ushered us out of the room and into the portalling chamber. "Where are we going?"

"Home."

"Home is England, isn't it?"

"No."

"Then where are we going?"

"Going? Right, this is where I make my last stand. I absolutely refuse to leave," Maura said as Savian and she reentered the building. "I have told you people and told you people—I can't leave. There are things I must do, and I cannot do them if Thala finds me missing. I'll just have to do them with this giant pain in the ass attached to me."

"Like hell you will," Savian growled. "I'm not staying here to be chewed to shreds by that red-haired she-devil. You're coming with us whether you want to or not."

"Please, I can't leave Spain," she pleaded as Savian, with a grim expression and a loud groan of pain, bent down and hoisted her onto his shoulder. "Dear goddess! What do you think you're doing? Put me down!"

"I know you're anxious about everything, Maura, but you needn't be. Once Savian gets the key to his handcuffs, I will talk to your grandfather for you if you like," I offered as we stepped into the portalling room. "I know how intimidating he can be, and I'm sure with his help, he'll keep Thala from threatening you, or whatever it is you're afraid she'll do to you because we took you away with us."

"No, you don't understand at all…. It's not that simple."

"Where are we going?" I asked Baltic again as the portal attendant gestured us toward the oval of grey light that twisted upon itself, a never-ending M?bius that sat in the middle of the room. Just looking at it raised the hairs on the back of my neck; it was wrong, somehow, that a tear in the fabric of space should just hang in the air like that. Baltic's face was grim as he looked at it, and I knew that he and the other dragons were all dreading the experience to come.

"Latvia," he answered as Pavel, with an identical expression of complete and utter loathing, stepped into the portal.

"To Ziema?" I asked, naming the town where the forest that hid Dauva was located. Dammit, I was sure we were going home. I'd have to make another phone call.

"Riga. Pavel located a house there for us yesterday, before Brom was taken. He was going to have you look at it, but there was no time. We will go there now, and set up defenses so that the usurping bastard will not threaten you or Brom again."

I said nothing before I entered the portal other than to reassure the still-protesting Maura that I would help her deal with her grandfather and mother. Baltic waited until Brom and Savian and Maura had been sent through the portal after me before venturing into it himself, the now-comatose Holland in his arms.

He was just as rumpled and discombobulated coming out the other side as he had been going to Spain. I spent a few minutes fussing over Holland before attending to Baltic. He suffered me to smooth out his shirt, and tidy his hair (which always came undone from its leather tie when he went through a portal) before turning his attention to Pavel.

"There should be two cars waiting for us."

"Where the hell are we?" Savian asked, rubbing his chest with a pained expression on his face. "Did the portal company screw up?"

"I'll see that they're ready," Pavel said with a nod. He got to his feet and staggered out the door.

"There wasn't a screwup, no," I told Savian before turning a worried glance on Holland. "Baltic, we need a healer."

"One will be at the house when we arrive."

"Then what are we doing here?" Savian asked.

"Wait a minute—this isn't England," Maura said, somewhat belatedly, it was true, but she, being a dragon, was extremely discomposed by the portal. Nico was only now shaking his head and rubbing his face, clearly trying to recover from the effects of portalling.

"No, it's Latvia." I waited for the explosion and wasn't disappointed.

"Latvia?" Maura exploded in a flurry of oaths that were luckily in Zilant, the archaic language once used by the dragons in the weyr. "Why are you doing this to me? Why do you want me to suffer like this?"

"We don't want you to suffer. Admittedly I may have wanted that a while ago, but not since you've been so helpful in Spain. And considering that you went against Thala in order to aid us, I feel it's only right we aid you in return. Baltic, can I use your phone for a second? My battery is dead."

By the time I made a fast phone call, visited the ladies' room to tidy myself up (I may have a dragon buried deep in my psyche, but luckily, portal travel didn't discommode me much) and returned to the others, Pavel was feeling much more like himself and announced that the cars were waiting.

Baltic picked up Holland. "Brom, you may open the car door for me. Holland will travel with Pavel, while you will stay with your mother and me."

The rest of us shuffled out of the portalling office after them, Maura still protesting that she couldn't be in Latvia; it just wasn't possible, and why couldn't we understand that?

She complained the entire way through town, and into the outskirts.

"Seriously, there has to be a way to get these handcuffs off," she said, still going at it when Baltic pointed to a dirt driveway. I turned up it, trying to think of some way to calm down Maura when Savian took care of the matter for me.

"You're making my head hurt with your endless bitching," Savian said, rubbing his face.

"I'm not bitching; I'm complaining about this unnecessary abduction. And tough toenails!" was her reply.

He cast her a glance that had her opening her eyes wide. "It hurts so bad, I may vomit. On you. Savvy?"

Silence reigned in the car for a whole thirty seconds before Brom, his nose pressed to the window, asked, "Is that my lab? It looks kind of crumbly."

The drive was long and straight, the rich chocolate earth covered in golden leaves from the aspens that lined the drive, their branches arching over us in a lovely way that had me thinking warm thoughts about Pavel's house-finding abilities.

To the right, a shimmer of water could be seen through the trees, as well as a ruined red stone wall with still-intact Gothic windows.

"Oh, I'm sure that's not it. That's not much more than a shell of a building. Surely Pavel would have found us something with a basement, or a completed outbuilding." I glanced at Baltic, beside me. "Wouldn't he?"

He shrugged. "He showed me the information about the house. It is an eighteenth-century mansion with five standing outbuildings, on twenty-seven acres. It has power and water. That is all I know about it. It was up to you to approve it or not, but he did not have time to show you the pictures."

"An eighteenth-century mansion," I said, a little thrill of excitement making me shiver. "It sounds wonderful."

"It sounds full of mice," Maura said in a subdued voice.

"Pessimist," Savian told her.

"Realist, thank you. Emile has an eighteenth-century house in the north of France that is mouse central. I grew up there." She shuddered.

"Another ruin," Brom said, pointing to the other side of the drive.

"That looks like it could have been a barn or something," I commented as the trees grew denser around us, the track making a sweeping curve to the northeast. "Oh, I think I see the house through the trees! It looks big. Yes, that must be it. How excit—" The words dried up on my lips as we rounded a dense clump of trees that lurked at the far end of a large pond, revealing the three-story mansion in all its glory.

If you could use that word. Which I wasn't about to.

"Sins of the saints," I swore, letting the car roll to a stop a few yards away from the closest end of the house.

Baltic squinted at the house for a moment before opening the car door. "It needs some work."

"Needs some work?" My mouth hung open as I stared at the looming monstrosity before me. Oh, it was a mansion all right, and it looked as though it had seen every single moment of time that had passed since it was built three hundred years before.

"Told you it has mice," Maura said with grim satisfaction as Savian, wordless at the sight of the house, slid out of the backseat, pulling her after him. "Probably rats, too. And given the state of the house, I wouldn't be surprised to see badgers, foxes, and bears inhabiting it, as well."

"Cool," Brom said as he stared wide-eyed at it. "It looks haunted. What's behind it? That looks like a building back there. I'm going to go see."

I closed my eyes and rested my forehead on the steering wheel for a moment, wondering if it was possible to gather everyone back up to whisk them away to England and civilization.

"Mate?" Baltic stood with my door open, his hand outstretched for mine.

I looked up at him, then over to the house. I have no idea what the original color of the paint was, but now it was basically the color of putty. Mildewed putty on which a dog had thrown up. The ground-floor paned windows had tall, elegant dimensions that you see in homes of its age; the second floor bore gabled windows of a lesser stature, but topped with ornate hemispheres. The upper floor had more gabled windows, but without the prettiness, obviously belonging to the servants' quarters. The roof, dotted with chimneys of varying colors, was solid green with moss, as were the gables. Unkempt, scraggly grass the color of straw surrounded the house, along with some depressed-looking bare trees that drooped claustrophobically over the far end of the house, no doubt making the rooms at that end of the house extremely dark.

It looked like a deranged special effects master's idea of a house sitting over a portal to hell.

"You don't seriously expect us to live there," I told Baltic as I slowly emerged from the safety of the car. "If it's not infested with mice and bears, or haunted—both of which are frankly quite likely—then it's got to be nothing but a giant mold and mildew pit, and completely uninhabitable."

"You like fixing things up," he said, his fingers twining through mine in a gesture that I suspected owed more to a desire to keep me from running away than one of affection. "This house will satisfy your need to be domestic."

I tore my horrified gaze from the house and let it rest on him. "You're joking, right?"

"Consider it a challenge. Or if you like, practice for how you will furnish Dauva once it is completed. Ah. There are Pavel and the others."

"I found a building I can use," Brom said, running around the house toward us, as happy and excited as a boy could be. "It's got a big door and windows, and everything. There's no glass in the windows, but that's OK. It even has a sink, although there's something brown that growled at me living in it."

"This is a nightmare, isn't it?" Maura said, staring at the house with the expression I had a feeling was also on my face. "I'm having a nightmare to end all nightmares, and this is just the capper on that, isn't it?"

"I don't think I've ever seen a house I'd use the word ‘rancid' about, but this one fulfills just about every meaning of the word," Savian said, likewise staring at it.

I was about to tell Baltic that there was no way I would ever consent to live in such a horrible parody of a house, when one of the two double front doors opened up, and a man emerged onto a short, split verandah.

"There you are," Constantine said, gesturing grandly toward the house. "Welcome to Valmieras!"