Mortal Danger

TWENTY-SIX

THE huge eyes blinked.

She came back to herself with a jolt, knowing time had passed. How much? She didn’t know. Seconds. A day.

Never mind. She scrambled to her feet, moving because she could. Because, whatever happened, she wanted to meet it on her feet. She put out a hand. Rule was there. Without having to look, she’d known that he’d come up beside her. She rested her hand on his back.

Had he been trapped by the dragon’s gaze, too?

The lupus didn’t look into my eyes. The demon knew better, but did it anyway.

The dragon hadn’t spoken. Those great jaws hadn’t opened or the mouth moved. The words had just appeared in her mind, sharp as glass—thoughts, but not her thoughts.

But that was impossible. She was a sensitive. Magic couldn’t—

Yet I can. I am dragon.

With those words came a sense of something beyond arrogance. Power, perhaps. A vast, knowing power.

Vocalize. Your thoughts are mush. Forcing them into the sort of speech you are accustomed to gives them a small degree of clarity.

Her heart was trying to knock its way out of her chest. “Are we conversing, then?”

Rather than dining, you mean? Amusement, desert-dry, gusted through her mind. When I hunger, I hunt. I don’t have dinner fetched.

“Why did you have us fetched?”

Utility. Politics. Curiosity. The great head lowered in a graceful arc.

She jumped back. Her bad ankle gave out, dumping her ingloriously on her butt. Rule didn’t move, but his fur bristled. Gan squealed in terror.

But the movement didn’t signal a change of mind about the dragon’s dinner plans. It seemed to be settling in for a chat. It rested its head on its tail like a cat curling up for a nap, leaving the three of them entirely circled by dragon.

That long body gave off a lot of heat, she realized. That’s why the sand was so warm. “That didn’t really answer my question. Why did you bring us here?”

It has been many moons since I’ve seen a human. And never have I seen one linked to both a lupus and a demon. Most curious. How did you become half-souled?

“If you mean how did I lose my memory—I don’t remember.”

Those eyes blinked again. Ah. You didn’t know. Its gaze shifted to the quivering lump of demon fifteen feet away. Your demon didn’t tell you.

“Not my demon,” she muttered. “A demon. Not mine.”

Rule’s head swung toward her, as if she’d surprised him. Then he looked at Gan, growling.

“Don’t listen to the dragon,” Gan said. Its attempt at bravado was cancelled by the way it crouched with both arms over its head, as if that would protect it from the dragon’s jaws. “He doesn’t know anything about it. Besides, he can lie. I can’t. Who are you going to believe?”

She snorted. “You lie all the time.”

That annoyed it so much its arms fell away from its head. “No, I don’t! I can’t lie. Everyone knows what I mean even if I say something else. That’s how it works.”

“You may not tell out-and-out whoppers, but you lie by misdirection. Not all that well, actually, because you’ve never learned to manage your face. Maybe demons aren’t used to reading expressions for clues because you all pick up each other’s meanings. By picking your words carefully, though, you can mean what you say and still be lying.”

Clever small bite. Demons prize the ability to deceive without lying. They do this by watching their words, as you say, and also by finding a self who means what they wish to say. This little one you call Gan doesn’t have many selves, so it must rely primarily upon its choice of words.

She rubbed her temples. Not many selves?

Vocalize.

“Uh… what does ‘many selves’ mean?”

Demons consist of all the creatures they have eaten. Those eaten lose volition, not identity.

“So Gan isn’t one demon? It’s a whole bunch of them, but Gan’s the one in charge?”

Gan is mostly imps, bugs, and other nonsentients— though I do hear at least one surprisingly old demon inside it. Gan is also Gan. Demon identity is not what you are used to. The dragon turned his gaze on the little demon. You will now tell me why the human is half-souled.

Gan cowered. “Oh, Great One, mighty of wing and mind, how would this feeble one know? I’m a demon, and such a small, insignificant demon, barely more than an imp. What do I know about souls?”

You are right, small bite. The demon does not deceive well, though the din of its mind makes it difficult to sort through what passes for its thoughts. The dragon’s tail flicked out suddenly. It whizzed over Lily’s head and thudded into Gan, sending the demon tumbling. I have all your surface names and thirty-two of the deeper ones, Izhatipoibanolitofaidinbaravha—

“All right, all right! Don’t say it all!”

I can acquire the rest of your names if I choose. Or simply pull pieces of you off, but that would dirty my sand. Be truthful. What happened to the human ?

If demons had been able to cry, Gan would have been sniffling. “I just wanted to get away—when that mage fire hit the staff, it hurt! I can cross all by myself,” it added, puffing its chest a bit. “Hardly anyone can do that, but I can. But I was already tied to Lily Yu, so when I crossed, she came, too. And she’s tied to the wolf in some weird way, so he got dragged along, and… and everything went wrong.”

“You mean you did it?” she exclaimed. “You brought us here, not the staff?”

Gan heaved a windy sigh and nodded.

“Then you can take us back.”

“No, I can’t.”

Rule lowered his head, growling.

Gan scowled. “I tried! You think I’d rather be eaten by dragons than go back to Earth? Well, they didn’t eat us, but I thought they would, so I tried to cross. I tried and tried, but I couldn’t.”

Because Lily Yu did not come along completely. When you tried to possess her, you became partially lodged inside her. You brought that part with you, but left behind the named half. She is both here and there. The effect is rather as if you’d jammed something against a door. It won’t open for you.

Horror squeezed the air from her lungs. “I’m—I’m missing more than memories? Are you sure?”

The dragon flicked her a glance. The black-and-silver eyes were too removed, too dispassionate, for anything as personal as contempt or compassion. I do not say what I am not sure of. I wonder if your other half is a ghost? Neither of your sundered selves will live long, of course, but it would be interesting to—

Rule howled and launched himself at Gan.

Ah, but he was fast! By the time Lily got to her feet he’d already hit once, bounced away before the demon’s roundhouse swing could connect, and was circling for another leap.

The dragon’s tail smashed into him in mid-air.

Lily cried out and stumbled over to him. He wasn’t moving.

Foolish. I had expected better. He seemed to have some sense.

“Shut up,” she said fiercely, kneeling. His heart was beating, she discovered when she pressed her hand to the bottom of his rib cage. But his ribs had already been cracked or broken. The lashing tail could have staved them in, punctured a lung.

“I guess you don’t care that I’m bleeding over here,” Gan said grumpily.

No, she didn’t. The demon was alive and talking, while Rule… wait, his eyelids twitched. Then they blinked open.

Her breath shuddered out. “Where are you hurt?”

Slowly, as if it hurt, he lifted his head. With his nose he indicated his left foreleg.

Not his gut or his chest, then. Not a punctured lung.

A minor concussion as well, he thinks. But the leg is more of a problem. You will need to set it.

Okay. She drew in a breath and ran her hand along the leg. He jerked. “I’m sorry.” She’d learned what she needed to know, though. Her fingertips glistened red. “There’s a bit of bone sticking out through the skin. It needs to be set, splinted.” Without anesthetic. She didn’t want to think about how much that would hurt. “I… I don’t know how to do it.”

She looked at her hands. They were shaking. But that made sense. She was dying. She had memories of only a couple of days of life, and she was dying.

Such drama. You aren’t dying yet.

“You said—”

I was interrupted. You’ll die of your condition eventually, but the demon is keeping you alive for now.

She looked at Gan.

It sat in the sand, scowling. A chunk of flesh and muscle was missing where its shoulder met its neck. The wound seemed to have already stopped bleeding, but its orange skin was heavily splashed with blood. Red blood, like hers.

Rule really had meant to kill Gan. “You’re keeping me alive?”

Its lower lip stuck out like a sulky child’s. “Why do you think I made you take ymu? He needs me, too.” Gan gave the dragon a wary glance. “To keep you alive. He probably plans to trade you to Xitil. If dragons aren’t eating demons, they’re trying to get more territory from us.”

“Is that what you wanted me for?” she asked the dragon. “To trade?”

Perhaps. The demon is correct about my desire to keep you alive. If your wolf had been thinking, he would have realized that. Why else would I suffer having a demon brought here ?

Rule lifted his head and looked straight at the dragon.

You would question me, wolf?

She couldn’t tell if the trace of emotion coating that thought was amusement or irritation. She knew what she felt, though. Frustration. Everyone could understand Rule except her. “What did he say? Or think, or… whatever.”

He wonders why I’m here at all. Why dragons are living with demons.

Gan snorted. “Living with us! Eating us, more like, when you can. Trying to get more territory the rest of the time.” It looked at Lily. “No one knows why the dragons left Earth. I was just an imp when some of them showed up here, but even imps heard about the battles. Dragons live by magic, see, but they can’t be affected by it. That was their big advantage. Well, they’re good fighters, too, but we outnumbered them thousands to one. But—”

But you did not unite to attack us, allowing us to prevail over the local lord and his court. Nor did you learn from this. When Xitil allowed Ishtar’s enemy to guest with her, the other lords should have banded together and destroyed them both. They never even considered it. This was folly of a monstrous degree.

“Big wars are wasteful,” Gan said. “Unpredictable. Xitil will destroy the avatar.”

I am unsurprised by your attitude.

Ishtar’s enemy? Hadn’t Gan used that name, too? Lily shook her head. “Look, all that is interesting, but the timing’s bad for history lessons. I need something straight to use for a splint, and something to fasten it with. Cloth, rope, leather… something I can tie around the leg and splint. And if you know anything about setting bones…” Her voice faltered. “I could use some help with that.” She had no reason to think the dragon would offer it.

That great head turned, focusing on Gan. The demon’s kind are good with bodies.

Gan sniffed. “I’m not going to help him. He tried to kill me.”

You will do as 1 wish, Izhatipoibanolit—

“Right, right. But do you mean you want the wolf’s leg fixed?” Gan was incredulous.

I do.

Gan heaved a huge, put-upon sigh and stood. “I can put his bone back in place, but it won’t stay. He’s no demon. He can’t heal that quick.”

“That’s what the splint is for.” Hope stirred, fragile and hard to trust. The dragon had broken Rule’s leg, but now wanted it to heal straight. She didn’t understand. Were dragons capable of compassion? “We have to stabilize the leg.”

The dragon tilted his head up. After a moment, one of the circling shapes overhead broke from the rest, diving for the land at the top of the cliff.

We are well supplied with bones. One of my line-kin will bring you an assortment to choose from for the splint. There are coverings in your cave. Tear strips from one, or have the demon do so. It has good teeth.

“Uh—my cave?”

The place you will stay. The entrance is near the grass at the eastern end of the beach. With that, he stood.

The dragon’s legs were short and thick in proportion to his body, bowed out like a lizard’s. His haunches were house-high, his shoulders slightly lower. There is food in the cave. You won’t need it, but the lupus will. At the rear of the cave is a small freshwater spring.

“I need food, too,” Gan said. “I can’t eat dead things.”

You’ll be fed. You’ll continue to feed the human. Drop to the ground now.

The dragon moved.

A creature so large should have seemed ponderous. He wasn’t. She had to flatten herself to avoid getting clipped by his tail when he started walking, but the wide-set legs carried him over the sand as agilely as one of his tiny kin.

“Wait!” Lily pushed to her feet. “Where are you going? When will you be back?”

The dragon flowed over the side of the sandbox, stepping down the twenty feet to the beach like a cat oozing off a couch.

“What’s your name?” she called.

He just kept moving.

“How did you know we were in that other region? How did you know I’m a sensitive before you brought us here? Why did you bring us here?”

The great beast was a several dozen yards down the beach now.

“Dammit, I’m vocalizing at you!”

He stopped, his wings partially unfurled. They were doubled, those wings, like a moth’s. Slowly the neck swung around until he was looking back at her. Faint, so faint she might have imagined it, she caught a wisp of amusement just before he straightened, rising up on his hind legs, the long body lifting up and up. The haunches bunched and he sprang for the sky like a cat leaping onto a windowsill.

Even from this distance, the wind from his wings stirred the sand, getting grit in her eyes. She was blinking them clean when she caught his last words: Sam. I believe you may call me Sam.