Thea Harrison: Serpent's Kiss

Most of the Elder creatures came into being either on Earth or in the dimensional pockets of Other land. A few, a very few, came into existence in those crossover points between places, where time and space were fluid and changeable, and at the time of the world’s creation, Power was an unformed, immeasurable force.

Rune and his fellow gryphons were just such beings. They were quintessential beings of duality, formed at the cusp between two creatures, on the threshold of changing time and space. Lion and eagle, along with the other ancient Wyr, they learned to shapeshift and walk among humankind, and so they also became Wyr form and man. They had an affinity for the Earth’s between places. They could find crossover passages and Other lands that remained hidden from all others, and in early history they were known throughout the Elder Races for being fearless explorers. There would be no others like them. Creation’s inchoate time had passed and all things, even the crossover points between places, had become fixed in their definitions.

The past scrolled behind him. The future was the unknown thing that waited ahead of him, smiling its Mona Lisa smile. And the ever-fleeting now was continually born and continually died, but was never anything you could get your hands on and hold on to, as it always pushed you along to some other place.

Yeah, he knew a thing or two about living life on the threshold.

He and Aryal had returned to Cuelebre Tower in New York.

There were seven demesnes of Elder Races that overlaid the human geography of the continental United States. The seat of the Wyrkind demesne was in New York City. The seat of Elven demesne was based in Charleston, South Carolina. The Dark Fae’s demesne was centered in Chicago, and the Light Fae’s in Los Angeles. The Nightkind, which included all Vampyric forms, controlled the San Francisco Bay Area and the Pacific Northwest, while the human witches, considered part of the Elder Races due to their command of Power, were based in Louisville, Kentucky. Demonkind, like the Wyr and the Vampyres, consisted of several different types that included goblins and Djinn, and their seat was based in Houston.

Upon Rune and Aryal’s return, the first thing they did was debrief the Lord of the Wyr, Dragos Cuelebre. A massive dark man with gold eyes, Dragos’s Wyr form was a dragon the size of a private jet. He had ruled over the Wyrkind demesne for centuries, with seven immortal Wyr as his sentinels.

Rune was Dragos’s First sentinel. Among Rune’s other duties, he and the other three gryphons, Bayne, Constantine and Graydon, worked to keep the peace in the demesne. Aryal was the sentinel in charge of investigations, and the gargoyle Grym was head of corporate security for Cuelebre Enterprises.

Dragos had just lost his seventh sentinel, who had not yet been replaced. The Wyr Tiago, thunderbird and longtime war-lord sentinel, had walked away from his life and position in the Wyr demesne in order to be with his newfound mate, Niniane.

Dragos was not the most even-tempered at the best of times. At first he had not been pleased with the debriefing. He had not been pleased at all.

“You promised her WHAT ?” The dragon’s deep roar rattled the windows. They stood in his office. Dragos planted his hands on his hips, his dark machete-edged features sharp with incredulity.

Rune set his mouth in the taut lines of someone struggling to hold on to his own temper and said, “I promised to go to Carling in one week and do a favor of her choosing.”

“Un-fucking-believable,” the Wyr Lord growled. “Do you have any idea what you gave away?”

“Yes, actually,” Rune bit out. “I believe I might have a clue.”

“She could ask you to do anything, and now you are bound by the laws of magic to do it. You could be gone for HUNDREDS OF YEARS just trying to complete that one fucking favor.” The dragon’s hot glare flared into incandescence as he paced. “I’ve already lost my warlord sentinel, and now we have no idea how long I will have to do without my First. Could you not have come up with something else to bargain? Anything else. Anything at all.”

“Apparently not, since I was the one who made the goddamn deal,” Rune snapped, as his already strained temper torched.

Dragos fell silent as he swung around to face Rune. It had to be in part, no doubt, from surprise, as Rune was normally the even-keeled one in their relationship. But Dragos was also taking a deep breath before releasing a blast of wrath. The dragon’s Power compressed in the room.

Then Aryal, of all people, stepped in to play her version of peacemaker. “What the hell, Dragos?” the harpy said. “It was life-or-death, and Tiago was bleeding out right in front of us. None of us actually had the time to consult our attorneys about the best bargaining terms to use with the Wicked Witch of the West. We brought you a present. Here.” She threw a leather pack at Dragos, who lifted a reflexive hand to catch it.

Dragos opened the pack and pulled out two sets of black shackles that radiated a menacing Power. “There’s finally a piece of good news,” he breathed.

The three Wyr stared at the chains in revulsion. Fashioned by Dragos’s old enemy, the late Dark Fae King Urien Lorelle, the chains had the ability to imprison the most Powerful Wyr of them all, Dragos himself.

His outburst of anger derailed, Dragos listened as Rune and Aryal finished telling the story of how Naida Riordan, wife of one of the most powerful figures in the Dark Fae government, had used Urien’s old tools in her attempts to kill Niniane and Tiago.

“The shackles prevented Tiago from healing,” Rune said. “We nearly lost him while we were figuring how to get them off. That’s when I had to bargain with Carling.”

The dragon gave him a grim look, thoughts shifting like shadows in his gold eyes.

“All right,” Dragos said after a moment. “Use the week to get your affairs in order and delegate your duties. And when you get to San Francisco, try like hell to persuade Carling to let you do something quick.”

So Rune spent the week delegating, while Bob and the images in his head kept him company at night, and the sights and the sounds of New York assaulted his senses by day.

Normally he enjoyed New York’s energetic hustle and bustle but since returning from Adriyel, the gigantic city steamed in the summer heat, all the smells trapped in a heavy humidity as it emitted a constant harsh, cacophonic noise that scraped like sharp fingernails underneath Rune’s skin. It turned him into a feral stranger with a short, unknown fuse so that when his temper exploded, he shocked himself as much as anyone. He felt something he had never felt before in the long uncounted years of his existence: he felt unsafe.

Maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing he had to take off for a while. It might give him a chance to regroup, recover his equilibrium. It would be wise to take a break from dealing with Dragos’s temper, since his own self-control had become so uncertain. He and Dragos had had a productive relationship that had spanned centuries, and it was based partly on friendship and very heavily on a partnership of reliance on one another’s skills, such as Rune’s even temper and diplomacy.

But at the moment he seemed to have misplaced all of his not-inconsiderable skills at “managing up.” If he continued as he was, he and Dragos could possibly have a serious, very ugly clash, and that wouldn’t be good for anyone, least of all himself. There was simply no reason to let things degenerate to that point.

He was supposed to coax Carling into letting him do something for her that was quick, huh? Maybe he could offer to take out her trash or do her dishes. He wondered how well that would go over.