Chapter 15

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

I felt the intensity of the rainstorm outside increase as I followed Mick around the clear pool to the far side of the cavern. Moisture beaded on my forehead, and water began to drip from my fingers.

The walls beyond the pool were even more loaded with gems, facets glittering under Mick's small fireball. I wondered if Cesnia had taken some of the jewels from these walls to decorate the egg, singing softly to it as she worked.

As the thought went through my head, I swore I heard a whisper of music, a clear note echoing from the emeralds around me.

"Mick," I called.

His name resounded through the room, but he didn't turn.

Mick had focused on an outcropping of rock beyond the pool, one that jutted raggedly from the cavern floor. I heard the thin wail of the mirror as Mick neared it.

"Don't take me any closer, pleeeeze! "

Mick moved relentlessly onward. His lack of fear of most things meant he marched right in where others, me included, dared not tread.

When Mick reached the outcropping, I swore it moved. The sound of pebble clicking on pebble reached me, dying into silence.

Mick halted to study the rock, but did he run away, like a sensible dragon? No, he calmly observed as the outcrop elongated upward, its sides squeezing to compensate for its changing mass.

The column of rock soon towered over Mick, becoming a six-inch diameter stalagmite growing from the floor. It began to arch down toward him, the top of it opening like a maw.

Mick tilted his head back to watch, the dragon tatts on his arms writhing in anticipation. He had fire to fight with, and he could turn dragon and whack the rock to bits, but I had a very, very bad feeling about this.

Did I run away, like a sensible Stormwalker? No, I hurtled forward, my hands bunched into fists that filled with water at every step.

The rainstorm hit the island with a slap. I couldn't see it or hear it deep inside the earth, but I felt it with clarity. Outside, the vegetation bent, the earth turned to black mud, and rain struck Cesnia's windows like grains of sand. The storm found me, rendering my body a living column of water.

The rock dove for Mick. He raised his hands, throwing a barrier of fire between him and it …

Which the entity plowed right through. I screamed as the column of rock went for Mick, that mouthlike point ready to devour him .

Mick ducked just before the mouth would have hit him, tossing out more fire as he scrambled out of its way. The entity, with no sound but the grating of rock on rock, gathered itself for another strike.

I reached Mick as he finally spun to run. "No, Janet," he shouted as I raced past him.

The rock thing was far more frightening up close. It didn't bother taking on any kind of human form—why should it? It raised itself again, mouth open as it fixed on Mick, ignoring me completely.

The boulders that composed the entity were huge, even when compressed. I saw sandstone entwined with basalt and granite. I didn't know the geologic composition of Caribbean islands—I assumed they were volcanic, like Mick's place in the Pacific. Dragons like volcanoes. The rock thing, though, looked as though it had clumped itself together from various sources.

Mick was shedding his jeans, ready to go dragon. He'd dropped the mirror, which was keening somewhere in the dark.

The rock creature struck before Mick could change to his super-strong beast.

I lunged between the entity and Mick, a very scary place to be. I lifted my dripping fingers.

"Rain," I whispered.

Water gushed forth from my hands, my mouth, my arms. It rocketed to the entity like the most forceful firehose, striking the being across its middle. I directed my hands to its maw, narrowing the stream of water to a hard jet, right into the opening.

The entity didn't scream. That would take lungs and vocal cords, and this thing was nothing but an animated pile of stone.

It shuddered and shivered under my onslaught, bits of rock splintering off to fall to the cave floor.

Cathedrals are cleaned by blasting them with water, which grinds away the dirt but also layers of the stone if it isn't done carefully. I didn't take any care with the being trying to eat Mick. I would erode it to nothing and walk away.

The magic flowing through me lifted me a few feet from the floor. My hair and clothes were soaked, and water poured from my boots.

Rainstorms are the worst to recover from. Thunderstorms fill me with crackling lightning, dust storms let me dance on the spiraling drafts, but rainstorms waterlog me until I can't move, and ruin my clothes too.

Because rain is relentless. I beat on the stones with it, gleefully watching the entity shudder and crumble under my onslaught.

My burst of storm magic stirred the Beneath powers inside me as well. I'd promised not to use them to kill, but I couldn't believe Coyote would hold me to that against a supernatural rock creature that tried to creak toward Mick, even while I battered it.

Mick took advantage of the distraction to change to dragon. The cavern was plenty big enough for him, having been fashioned by a dragon as her retreat. He didn't have the space to launch a massive attack from above, but he barreled at the entity, fire spewing.

His fire bounced off the rock creature as though it had coated itself with flame retardant. Dragon fire hit the water jets that poured out of me and filled the cavern with steam .

Mick flapped past, amazement in his large dragon eye. He whirled to come at the rock again, intending to simply knock it apart with his impact.

The creature flowed abruptly downward the instant before Mick hit it. It spread itself across the cavern floor, reforming as Mick hurtled onward. The dragon roared in frustration.

I didn't wait for the rock being to reform. I floated above the floor and blasted its boulders with water laced with Beneath magic.

At the same time, I reached down to lift the shard of mirror in my watery grip. The mirror howled in protest, but I directed my combined magic into it, reflecting a double dose of power into the spreading rocks.

There was a sound like masonry imploding. A thousand shards of rock flew upward then angled down at me as though intending to go through me like bullets.

The rainstorm in me slapped the shards away. I skewered the individual pieces with the white hot Beneath magic, magnified by the mirror.

Now I did hear a scream, a psychic one, as the pebbles the entity had been disintegrated to dust. I kept burning and flooding even the dust, not wanting one speck to adhere to another and reform the creature.

The thing gave one last screech in my head and then vanished altogether.

Dust stirred at my feet. I held myself ready, but the particles shimmered and then disappeared. Whether the creature had died completely or had been pulled back to wherever it had come from, I couldn't say.

I found myself doubling over, hands on my knees as I gasped for breath on the drenched cavern floor. Mick circled above me, the hot gust from his wings barely warming me. The cave's walls glowed with the inner fire of the gems, the mirror catching the light and throwing spangled facets over my face.

Mick landed, his form shrouded in darkness before he emerged from it, tall and strong.

Water continued to pour from me, the rain above the cavern not abating. I could barely move in my soaked clothes, my hair a sopping mess down my back.

I yanked off my clothes, letting them land in a wet thunk on the ground. I turned, spread my arms, and dove into the gleaming pool.

I was water. I glided across the pond, the liquid within me and without combining into one. No need to hold my breath—I existed without oxygen. The currents I created brushed my skin, and I floated with them.

More rain pounded down outside, and I embraced it.

A crash sounded beside me, a heavy weight pushing aside water. Hard hands grabbed me, and I shouted in fury. I was dragged upward, painfully, out of the beautiful water and back to the cold, hard surface of the cavern floor.

I struggled, but Mick held me down, his face set. I drew a breath to berate him for taking me out of my beautiful haven, and choked.

I coughed and coughed, my need for air kicking me in the gut. Water poured from my mouth and nose, making me panic.

Mick laid me facedown, hard hands on my back to squash all the water out of me. I belched it up, which hurt like hell, but finally I drew a blissful, if grating, breath.

"I'm okay," I croaked when Mick kept pressing. "I'm okay. "

I wasn't, but I needed Mick to stop crushing me. He was strong.

Mick lifted away and gathered me to him on his lap. We were both naked, which was fine with me. His skin was warm, while mine was brutally cold.

Mick cradled me close. Fire laced his fingers but didn't burn. He was drawing off the extra energy of my storm magic before it shattered me.

He'd done a similar thing the first night I'd met him, a sign that he was the only one for me. Took my brain a little while longer to figure that out, but an instinctive part of me had bonded with him that night.

Little by little, under his touch, I calmed. The rain outside continued, but it no longer consumed me.

"Thank you," I whispered.

For answer Mick kissed me. I could breathe now, thank the gods, and I kissed him back with deep pleasure.

Our combined magics were a powerful aphrodisiac. Mick laid me down, and we entwined in a more physical way. He'd somehow managed to land me on a pile of his clothes, cushioning my back from the hard rock.

For a time, we gloried in each other, thankful we'd survived another dangerous encounter. Thankful we were together.

"Aw, Mick, honey, why'd you drop me face-down?" the mirror asked fretfully. "I can't see anything ."

I knew Mick had done that deliberately too.

"What was it?" I asked a long time later. I lay on my side against Mick, tracing gentle designs on his chest. "That rock thing? Did I kill it?"

"I don't know, and I don't know." Mick smoothed my still-damp hair. "It didn't give a shit about anything I threw at it, that's for sure. I am happy you were with me."

I gazed into his eyes, which were so very blue. "Has the big, bad dragon finally found something to be afraid of?"

Mick sent me a puzzled glance. "I'm afraid of a lot of things. Pissing off your grandmother, upsetting your dad. You getting hurt. But yeah, when it shrugged off my fire, that unnerved me. I hit it full blast because I feared it would turn on you."

He had no idea how much his answers made me want to kiss and hold him. "So, we've figured out it's impervious to dragon fire. Also good at evading you barging into it." I drummed my fingers on his chest. "But Stormwalker and Beneath magic bested it or drove it away. I don't know which one did the trick—I probably needed the combination."

Mick's voice rumbled in his chest. "You were amazing."

His admiration seared me all over again. Mick believing in me was why I was still alive, and why I was able to better balance the roiling magics inside me. If I'd tried what I had today a few years ago, I'd have blown up the cave, the house, or maybe the whole island.

"Do you think that thing killed Cesnia?" I asked, growing somber.

"Again, no idea." Mick didn't like not having answers. "Drake found her, you say?"

I replayed my conversation with Drake in my head. "He didn't say that specifically, only that she was dead. I wonder if Titus found her instead. He was certainly upset. For Titus, I mean."

"We will have to ask them if they encountered this thing, plus find out what it was. A manifestation from a powerful mage? Or was it a creature with its own volition?"

I shivered. Something that could kill dragons with impunity put the egg in great peril. I hoped Grandmother, Nitis, and Gabrielle would be able to withstand something like that, and that Mick and I coming here had drawn attention away from Grandmother's house.

"Either way, not good," I said. "It was very different from the lightning mesh that attacked my hotel. Do we have one enemy using various methods? Or many different enemies?" Neither answer appealed to me.

"Mmm." Mick rested one hand behind his head, as comfortable as if he lay in the super-soft bed in Cesnia's house. "Only one would be easier to fight."

So far, nothing had been easy. "Nitis told me he didn't have much trouble driving off the lightning at the hotel because it was an like an illusion. But I felt it. Nash sucked away some of the shock, but it struck his grandfather and me. If Nash hadn't been there, I'm pretty sure we wouldn't be alive to talk about it."

"Which means I'm grateful to Jones for existing." Mick caught my hand and squeezed it. "I chased that lightning off, but I couldn't affect it. It left because it wanted to."

I snuggled down on Mick's shoulder, stealing a moment of stillness. "I prefer dealing with one enemy at a time."

"So do I. All of this bugs me. Nothing made of earth magic should be able to withstand a dragon. We are the most powerful earth-magic creatures alive. "

I pressed a kiss to his neck. "Who don't have huge egos, or anything."

Mick didn't smile. "It has nothing to do with ego. It's a simple fact."

"Of course." I touched another light kiss to his damp skin. "You're right that whatever is causing this is an earth-magic entity. I didn't have any sense of Beneath from the lightning or from the rock. Or god magic, either."

"What about the rock thing's aura?" Mick asked. "Any hint of someone else controlling it?"

"I didn't have time for a precise read. Too busy being terrified." I forced my thoughts back over the fight, my pulse fluttering with vestiges of fear. "I didn't sense anyone else. When a creature is made or controlled, there's another aura superimposed on it. I didn't feel that."

"Great. An earth-magic creature I've never encountered who can best dragons, acting on its own volition." Mick let out a growl. "Much as I hate to say it, I need to call a meeting of the dragon council."

I groaned and slumped against him, my arm over my face. "Just when I thought this day couldn't get any worse …"

Mick at least conceded to let me sleep in Cesnia's comfortable abode overnight.

When we returned to the house, we sealed up the wall behind her bed to keep anyone else from stumbling across her secret lair. I then seeped Beneath magic into the wall in case any other earth-magic creatures were in there ready to come out after Mick. That bit of magic would also alert me to any dragons trying to break in.

Mick had scraped up the ash from where I'd burned the rock creature and put it into a little vial he happened to have with him. My dragon biker boyfriend was nerdy about science things.

I called Grandmother as soon as we were done, to make sure all was well. She told me everything was quiet, grumpily, as though annoyed I didn't trust her to guard the egg. I could hear the others conversing in the room behind her before I hung up, the camaraderie pulling at me. I needed a long visit home. But at least the egg was fine for now.

We didn't feel right sleeping in Cesnia's bed, but we found a guest room that turned out to be very comfy. I imagined Titus stretching out on the mattress in here and making himself at home. Drake had probably sat up all night analyzing why he'd come and how he felt about it.

I pictured them in the guest room, because from Mick's descriptions of lady dragons, they weren't ones for sleeping with their lovers. Cesnia might have been different, but she would have been cautious about letting down her guard.

All the rooms in the house were clean and pristine. This made me wonder who did the housework. At the dragon compound, the head dragons had a host of human lackeys devoted to them. Did Cesnia? And where were all these people?

Despite the thoughts spinning in my head, I fell asleep quickly and slept hard. The rainstorm had abated, becoming a soothing patter of rain outside the windows. Mick passed out with me for a time, but I woke alone.

I wasn't alarmed when I didn't find Mick beside me in the morning light, because I heard him clanking pots and pans in the kitchen. The appealing aroma of coffee and sizzling bacon floated to me.

"Can the house on your island be like this?" I asked as I wandered into the massive kitchen, dressed but my hair still a mess.

Mick glanced at me from the stove. What's hotter than a gorgeous man cooking you breakfast?

"If that's what you want, sure."

"What do you want?" I pushed tangles from my eyes. I needed a shower, but my willingness to drown myself yesterday in the cave made me wary of jumping into the tub.

Mick considered my question with all the seriousness of a debate on world peace. "I want us to be content, wherever we are, whatever house we live in. I want you to be happy. And me to be happy right alongside you."

He said this in a warm rumble, without much force, but I heard the sincerity in his answer. Also, the simplicity. Dragons lived complicated lives, as much as they protested they didn't.

Mick wanted happiness, for both of us together. That was all.

"You constantly remind me why I'm in love with you," I said.

His brows rose. "Just answering you honestly."

"And there too." I went to him and slid my arms around him from behind. "You did it again."

Mick's body vibrated with his laughter. "I'm glad it's so easy."

"I'd drag you back to bed and show you how much I love you, but I'm really hungry. Storm hangover does that to me."

Mick removed the hot pan from the burner and shut off the stove before he turned and lifted me into his strong arms. "I always remember why I'm in love with you ," he said.

The breakfast had grown cold by the time we got back to it. Mick rewarmed the eggs and bacon, and I devoured everything on my plate, doubly hungry after our quick session on a kitchen chair.

As I enjoyed the delicious repast, Mick told me he'd contacted Bancroft at the dragon compound and filled him in on what happened. The council would be waiting for us, Mick said, which curbed my appetite a little.

After I finished breakfast, I made myself shower—alone, or we'd never get out of there. I worried that my residual Stormwalker magic would make me try to become one with the water again, but apparently, I'd returned to my normal self. I washed up as I always did, with no urge to meld with the water.

Afterward, I tidied up the soap I'd dripped on the glass shower walls and put the used towels in a hamper.

I wondered if anyone would come now to look after the place. I'd have to find that out, so I could keep it nice for Junior. Cesnia would want that, I'd think.

We shut up the house, Mick making sure all was secure against the next storm. I put on my jacket, though it was warm here, and closed my eyes, bracing for the chilly and motion sickness-inducing flight to New Mexico .

Mick carried me as gently as he could and flew without too much bobbing around. There's only so much a dragon can do, though, when he has to flap massive wings plus stay out of sight of passing planes and ground control.

That meant a lot of flying inside clouds. Clouds look beautiful and puffy when you see them up in the blue sky, but they are soggy and cold on the inside. After my session on the island, I was thoroughly tired of being coated with water.

In midafternoon, Mick circled over Santa Fe before coming to rest outside a large house built on a high cliff. Once Mick morphed to human outside the large Spanish-style front door, he quickly put on the clothes I'd carried for him in the backpack and donned his motorcycle boots.

The dragons inside must know we were here, but they wouldn't come out and greet us like friends or welcome visitors. We were neither.

Once he'd finished dressing, Mick smoothed his unsmoothable hair, stepped closer to the intricately carved wooden door, and pushed the doorbell.

The door opened almost instantly, but the dragon who appeared on the doorstep took me by surprise. Why he was answering, instead of one of the many servants I had no idea.

"Micky!" Colby roared. "How are you, my friend? Janet!" He grabbed me and spun me off my feet in a hug. I'd seen Colby a month ago, when I'd gone to Las Vegas to visit Gabrielle, but he always acted like we hadn't been in touch in years.

Colby set me down and turned to Mick. "You're late," he stated. "Bancroft is about to shit a brick. Something I really don't want to see. So, let's get to the meeting, shall we?"