Chapter Three
The hairy jackanapes might be underfed, but his solidity was almost more than Alliah could manage when she was both injured and in her weaker human form. Why hadn’t he cooperated? Damn him. If she didn’t get him to the portal and a healer soon, he was one dead dragon, and she would have risked her life and freedom for nothing.
She staggered through the moist, ancient catacombs, his weight draped across her back like ten yokes of water pails all at once. Shifting to her human form hadn’t healed the burns from the fireball, and every droplet of sweat that rolled down her injured side was a hot knife of agony. It had taken longer than she’d hoped to reach Valiant City, much longer. Were the others safe on Earth? She’d seen no signs of them. But now she was close to the portal, at last, and her strength was threatening to fail her.
If secrecy weren’t paramount, she would have started howling for aid. Katia, presumably at the portal, would come running, eager to help any who needed it.
Her thighs trembled as she shuffled along. The cylindrical lantern that the Earth witch, Gillian, had given her was stuck in her sword belt, aimed forward. It occurred to her she could drop her smelly burden and jog to the portal faster, but that would leave him unguarded when wizards were on their heels. He’d bled enough that they’d be able to create a tracking amulet for certain.
She hadn’t had time to pad her claws or find a saddle when she’d been forced by her conscience to rescue him. And he’d been in no shape to cling to her spine. Hopefully one of the strange denizens of Magic, New Mexico, or the wizard from the DLF would be able to heal both of them before the damage was permanent.
But first they had to reach Earth. The wizards pursuing them might be impeded by the security measures in the catacombs, the pitfalls and magical barriers. Not to mention the uncontrollable sneezing caused by that blasted mold. But they might not. The lure of a crystal dragon, and perhaps the lure of Alliah herself, would entice them into foolishness.
If she stopped for a rest, hoping against hope that the wizards were not so foolish, she’d never get the dragon hoisted across her back again.
Finally she neared the vicinity of the portal, from which glowing moss had expanded into nearby caverns, like some kind of road sign. The citizens of Magic weren’t concerned that Tarakonans might discover Earth, but she and the others from Tarakona thought differently. Aiden Silver, a dragon who had escaped Tarakona when he was a child, had been the one to discover the portal to Earth, along with the fungus and its spread, though no one knew how the portal had come to exist. The fungus also caused people who weren’t dragons to sneeze if they had no anti-allergen barriers.
But that was neither here nor there. She was just glad to see the moss. It meant her destination was close. Taking a deep breath, she called to her friend.
“Katia! I need help!”
Footsteps raced toward the chamber where she stood, legs braced, trembling like an exhausted horse. Katia could run like a horse herself with her long legs. She soon bounded into the chamber, her own Earth lantern clutched in her hand.
“There you are! I was so worried. So worried.”
The tall, muscular woman approached Alliah at great speed, taking the unconscious man into her arms. Even Katia staggered under the crystal dragon’s weight. With a sigh, Alliah shouldered his dirty feet, careful of his injured leg, and they carried his silent, bloody form toward the portal.
“Who is this? What happened to him? Looks like you carried him in your claws. Alli, you know we can’t just carry people in our claws.” Katia threatened to outpace her as they wove between manmade arches and pillars, at odds with the natural stone and crumpled stalactites.
“The crystal from Torren’s dungeon. Don’t know his name.” Alliah nearly lost her grip on his feet and forced herself to trot faster, to keep up with Katia. “Slow down.”
“Oh, I can’t do that. This man needs a healer. This dragon. Maurene said the crystal’s name is Leopold. They arrived safely, by the way, all six of them. I’ve bunked them in Aiden Silver’s house since he and Gillian are somewhere in Tarakona with the DLF.”
“Leopold Crystal,” Alliah mouthed. “He didn’t see fit to introduce himself.” Not that it mattered. Knowing the knave’s given name would not soften her toward him after the way he’d treated her. After the things he’d made her feel, her body’s response to his rough, sensual ministrations. But she would savor his reaction when he realized she’d been telling the truth. Provided he survived that long.
She found herself anxious that he would survive that long, if only to see the look on his face.
They crossed into the portal chamber where the green moss had grown so thick it lit the room like daylight. The portal lay inside another manmade arch, a swirl of colors and sparks on this side.
“Did you fertilize it?” Alliah asked.
“Don’t understand the moss. Nobody does. But the Silvers are too busy with the DLF and designing things to worry about such a trivial matter as a fungal infestation. Too bad most of the inventions don’t work. Something about unique electrical currents and skin contact and not having enough types of Tarakonan dragon to experiment on.”
“Experiment on?” Alliah asked sharply. Gillian had some strange power over the technology in her dimension, but she was new to her arts. Was she no better than Tarakonan wizards after all?
“It doesn’t hurt,” Katia insisted, but her shoulders hunched. “They’ve gone to find volunteers. It’s up to us now, Alli. It’s up to us. We have to protect them.”
“We will.”
Transportation through a portal was near instantaneous. They popped through the eddy of nothingness and into the darkness of the night desert on the other side. Permanent portals were usually affixed to a hard surface for safety reasons, in carefully prepared environments. Not this one. Her eyes still adjusting, Alliah tripped on a tumbling cactus of some sort that had blown into the portal’s radius.
“Do be careful!” Katia bore Leopold’s entire weight briefly while Alliah righted her aching, exhausted self and resumed her position. They needed to clear the ground around the portal, which was currently marked by stones. Unlike the portal on the Tarakona side, it was invisible, which meant people could accidentally walk into it.
As for people walking out of it, someone could be seriously hurt, perhaps break a leg.
She smirked and adjusted Leopold’s feet in her grip. “He doesn’t really…oh, never mind.” No need to tell Katia what this surly beast had done. She’d insist Alliah forgive him in his pain and confusion, and then Alliah would feel twice as hardhearted when she refused.
It didn’t matter that she’d tried to protect him from Torren or advised Torren that violence wouldn’t gain the cooperation he wanted. It only mattered that Leopold had been a complete ass to her when she’d tried to save him. Adding that insult to the injuries she’d suffered on the ungrateful sod’s behalf would take some time to forgive.
At a more cautious pace, they proceeded toward the waystation. Now that the Tarakonan portal was a known hazard, Aiden Silver and his adopted father, a flirtatious Earth mage named Rocky, had purchased this parcel of land and set up a sturdy tent, a sun-warmed shower, and a tiny bathroom box that Alliah refused to use. The smell of it was…distasteful.
It was almost as much of a disgrace as that chamber pot in Leo’s cell.
No, she wouldn’t feel sorry for him. She refused to.
“Our Tarakonan wizard isn’t present to offer healing,” Alliah observed as they scuffled past cactuses and rocks. The portal location was protected from observation and the road by a juniper-topped ridge. The tent itself shimmered with desert camouflage. Taller than a troll and boasting an actual door, their new abode on Earth was powered and cooled with some invention of the local witches. “We can hardly take a dragon to an Earth doctor.”
“I have a curative salve. And I’m sure the pixies will be back…sometime.” They carried Leopold to an empty cot and laid him upon it. His body practically spilled off the sides and end.
Katia immediately whirled and caught Alliah to her in a tight hug. “I was so worried!”
“You mentioned.” Alliah couldn’t stifle a hiss of discomfort when Katia’s strong grip abraded the burns beneath her leathers. Though dragons could dissipate and recreate their clothing and a few belongings during a shift, they couldn’t alter their bodies or heal injuries—such as wounds earned by stupidly throwing oneself into the path of a fireball.
“You’re hurt, too?” Katia began patting her extremities until she found the source of the pain. “The magical salve is Earth stuff, but it’s good. I don’t know if it is enough for his ailments. Suppose we shall find out.”
She helped Alliah strip out of her leathers, down to her breast binder and drawers. “It looks worse than it is,” Alliah lied as Katia mother-henned her. The tall red dragon had a green dragon’s disposition, always helping and rescuing and comforting people. But she also possessed the bravery of a red warrior, the fiercest dragon in the skies. Not that all dragons matched the magic they created, but the ways in which they were used by wizards tended to influence their temperaments.
How Katia had maintained her joyousness—and her conviction that people who weren’t dragons were worth saving—was a mystery.
Alliah flinched when her joyous friend smeared the Earth salve on her wounds and braved a glance at the damage. Blisters and raw skin lashed across her arm and torso, and she longed for the surcease of Tarakonan healing. Earth magic was too slow, too unpredictable, on Tarakonan anatomy. Their medical sciences were primitive compared to healing magic.
Not their fault, but she didn’t want to suffer for it.
Katia patted her shoulder once she was finished. “It even smells lovely. Doesn’t it smell lovely? I made sure it smelled lovely in case you needed it. I know how you are.”
“Um, thank you?” Alliah’s nose was more sensitive to bad odors than good ones, and all she detected was a faint sweetness.
“Now for our other patient.”
“The one worse off than me whom you should have tended first,” Alliah chided her, although her burns were already feeling a bit better. Maybe it was that lovely smell. “Have the pixies taken care of the thrall crystals in the others?”
“I’ll need Sir Rocky to help me speak to the wee ones.” Katia shook her head sadly and began smearing Leopold with healing ointment, which was labeled “Raine’s Cure-all.” Alliah had been as gentle with him as possible, and the cuts from her talons were primarily surface wounds. It was that broken leg and possible concussion she was worried about. “They buzzed around like lunatics when the other dragons arrived and then zipped off into the desert before I could stop them.”
“I don’t think you could stop them if you wanted to.” The little blue creatures were difficult to communicate with and even more difficult to capture long enough to try. They seemed to understand the concept of “evil crystal” and had removed Alliah’s and Katia’s, but communication with them ended there. “Speaking of not being able to stop things, we should discuss the wizards on my tail.”
“Surely they won’t be able to find their way through the catacombs,” Katia argued. “Not with all the traps.” Of course, dear Katia could get lost in a house that had two stories instead of one.
“I don’t know how long until the wizards trace Leopold to the portal. He definitely left enough blood to exploit. We need to be ready.” Just the two of them now, and Katia had more experience dealing with the peculiarities of this world than she did. “I will stand guard on the Tarakona side while you find a—”
“No, no, you’re far too tired,” Katia said. “Did you recognize any of the wizards?”
“Bertha Treacher and Ignatius Jellow.” No longer would she address wizards with the titles of Your Honor or Your Grace. “Two or three more I didn’t know.”
“We can fight them. They barely have a dragon apiece.” Katia appeared to be running out of salve as she globbed it onto Leopold’s cuts. “Whatever happened to the poor thing’s hand? His fingers are broken.”
“Focus on the wizards,” Alliah advised, unwilling to tell her friend about the groping incident. The general defense plan for the portal was to stop intruders who bypassed the security measures on the Tarakonan side with an assist from some gadgets that shot out wire lattices that prevented movement and spells. “We might need something beyond the nets to defeat them.”
“I can ask Rocky about that, too,” Katia said doubtfully, “but he doesn’t seem like a warrior. Oh, did you know at least one Earth dragon lives in Magic? He is their law person. I wonder if he would aid us. I also heard of an upcoming dragon festival. Perhaps they can recommend additional security measures against less than friendly dragonkind.”
“Perhaps. And perhaps the residents of Magic don’t see wizards from another dimension as a threat and would welcome them the same way they did us.” Alliah favored the Earth weapons called guns; the rest were not so bloodthirsty. Whatever she needed to defend her little family, she would use it. But without an assist from a purple dragon and wizard—a Tarakonan dragon and wizard—how could they make intruders forget the location of Earth?
Naturally, the Silvers and their mates were working on it. Leaving Alliah and Katia and the pixies who wouldn’t talk to them to hold the line.
“If the citizens of this world will not aid us, then I shall defend the portal,” Katia said, scooping out a final glob of salve. “To my very last breath. None shall pass.”
She had no desire for her best friend to take her last breath so early in her life. They were free, finally free, to discover their own dreams. If only the blasted portal could be shut down somehow. Blocked. It should be a simple process, and yet it required magic—something Katia and Alliah were full of but couldn’t access to save their lives. Literally.
“Did Courtier make any progress on locking the portal down before he ran off to the DLF?” Nadia Silver’s beloved, one Barnabas Courtier, was a compassionate Tarakonan wizard who knew about Earth. Alliah had allowed him to harvest her magic as needed. She’d always known not all wizards were evil, but one didn’t have to be pure evil to go along with the custom of the land. To enthrall dragons because that was how dragons were managed.
Katia capped the jar of salve, though it was empty, and inspected her handiwork on Leopold’s injuries. “No, there wasn’t enough time. They just improved the magical barriers in the catacombs.”
With Gillian still mastering her abilities, one of Courtier’s many tasks was discovering some method by which they could secure the portal and allow through only those who were approved. But crystal dragons were rare, and their magic would be needed for any portal tinkering.
As it happened, they had a freshly-freed crystal dragon at their disposal.
Alliah eyed Leopold’s huge, unconscious body with new consideration. “We truly cannot let him die,” she decided. It had nothing to do with wanting to see the look on his face when he realized she was his liberator. And it absolutely had nothing to do with the way he’d touched her in his manky jail cell. “We’ll need to find a proper healer. And I have an idea for what to do when we must leave our post unattended. Do you, my dear friend, have enough energy to shift to your dragon form and fetch me a boulder the size of…a portal?”