Thea Harrison: Dragos Takes A Holiday

After that there was nowhere else to go. Feeling a rare sense of impotence and terror, he stood with his taloned fists clenched. They had gotten into a car. By now they could be on a boat.

And while Liam could understand a great deal, his verbal skills had not caught up with his comprehension. Dragos might be able to reach him telepathically, but he couldn’t reply.

Dragos could telepathize with someone else, though.

Merrous, said the dragon in a calm, quiet voice.

After a moment, Merrous gave a telepathic chuckle. Well, this is uncomfortable and unexpected, but surprisingly useful. I was going to send you a burner phone, but this works even better. I have something of yours.

He said, Prove it.

What do you want, a picture or a body part? Merrous laughed.

He had quite a sense of humor for a dead man. The dragon flexed his talons, and nearby, Eva and Hugh blanched. His voice grew gentler. Do you want the Sebille? Because you will never have it without me.

Merrous’s laughter vanished. He said venomously, Yes, I want the Sebille, and I want everything that went down with it. I presume you want this rug rat back. We’ll do an exchange.

When? he asked. Where?

I’ll let you know when I work something out. Now, stop talking to me, or someone is liable to get hurt.

Rage filled his body like burning acid. Dragos looked at Pia and the other two. They had been watching his face closely. “I just talked to Merrous. He says he wants an exchange, and he’ll get back to me once he decides when and where.” He paused as a sliver of rational thought sliced through the lava running through his mind. “He sounds too confident.”

Pia grabbed his arm, her fingers biting into his skin. “What do you mean?”

He shook his head as he thought it through. Instinct settled into certainty. “He knows we’re Wyr, so he has to have some idea of our tracking skills. Right now he thinks he can’t be tracked, which means he’s on a boat.”

Pia’s voice shook. “He can’t have gone too far, but there are a lot of boats out there.”

“There’s only one boat that will have their scents, so we cloak ourselves and go hunting.” He looked at Hugh. “I need you to fly out and check every vessel headed away from shore. If he’s thought this through at all, he will be expecting us to do that. I think he’s acting like someone fishing or on vacation. He’ll either be moored somewhere or he’s moving very slowly. He’ll be hiding in plain sight. We’ve got to move fast.”

“Right.” Hugh shapeshifted and launched.

“I need a gun,” Pia said. Eva shoved hers into Pia’s hands then drew a backup gun from an ankle holster.

“Let’s go.” Dragos shapeshifted, and the two women climbed on his back. Then he launched into the air too.

Liam was starting to feel sorry for himself.

It had been a strange and interesting day, and he had learned a lot. He had flown! Well, a little bit, anyway. And lizard’s tails were delicious. A man had given him his jacket, and had taken him on a car ride. Now he was on a boat. The man took his jacket back only to shove him quickly into a cage and slam and lock the door.

Liam sat and waited for something else to happen. Maybe Mommy and Daddy were on this boat, and they would come get him.

Nothing happened. Mommy and Daddy didn’t come, and the cage smelled like dog. The boat’s engine ran for a while then stopped, and they rocked with the waves.

Nobody came to play with him or bring him food. He had woken up hungry, and he only grew hungrier. And more thirsty.

After a while he looked around the cage. No blanket. No food. No bunny.

He heaved a big sigh and pushed at the door of the cage. When the lock sprang open, he walked out.

He explored the room. It was filled with interesting things like rope, metal tanks, boxes and tarps. Still nothing to eat or drink. He left the room and padded down a short hall. Voices sounded from another room. One of them was the man with the jacket. Liam didn’t know the other one.

Smoke wafted out of the room. His nose wrinkled. He didn’t want to visit with them anymore. He wanted Mommy.

There were stairs at the end of the hall. He climbed up, found himself on a deck and looked around. There were two more strange men in a cabin. He didn’t want to visit with them either, and shore looked awfully small. He eyed it doubtfully. It was much too far for him to fly. He started to realize just how far away Mommy might be.

His eyes filled. That was the saddest thing he had ever thought in his whole life.

Then another thought occurred to him. He had flown the farthest when he had been the highest—from the window of his room. Maybe if he climbed up to the top of the boat he could fly to shore.

He hopped and flapped and climbed. The boat had a motor, but it also had sails. He swarmed up the sail to the very top of the mast, and there he perched. He looked from the boat to land, and back to the boat.

Now he was very high in the air, but the shore still seemed awfully far away—too far away for him to fly. The boat rocked, and he flapped his wings to keep his balance on his small perch. He did not want to climb down and visit the men again. He couldn’t fly away.

He wasn’t sure because he’d only heard the word once before, but he thought he might be in a quandary.

While Hugh flew farther out to sea, Dragos swung to the nearest pier and dove low over each boat. Pia could feel the dragon’s body straining to move as fast as he could while still covering every boat thoroughly before he moved on to the next pier or the next boat that moved at a leisurely pace over the water. They caught wafts of scents from each one—people, alcohol, cooking food, and occasionally cigarette smoke, which was particularly odorous. Dragos always banked and swung around to double-check each boat that smelled like smoke.

She clenched her fists. This search was an excruciating gamble, but the alternative was to do nothing and wait, and that was unthinkable.

Eva sat behind her. “Pia, I don’t know what to say,” she said, her voice low and shaken. “I am so desperately sorry this happened. We did everything we usually do. Hugh swore he checked the room when he put Liam down for a nap, even though nobody had been in there since you got him up this morning. I swear to you, the house was locked up tight.”

Locked.

Pia’s head came up. “Oh, shit.”

“What?” Dragos asked sharply.

“I was just wondering yesterday what talents or attributes he might have gotten from me.” She pressed her fists against her temples. “No lock can hold him. He did it himself. He climbed out the window, and he must have flown to the road.”

Dragos turned so sharply, both women rocked in their seats. In a burst of power, he drove away from the boats they had been circling and hammered through the air. “I see him.”

Pia’s heart leaped. Maybe there was a way out of this nightmare after all. “You see him—where?”

“He’s perched at the top of a mast, half a mile ahead.” A strange mélange of emotions threaded Dragos’s voice.

She shaded her eyes, squinting against the bright light. His predator’s eyes were much sharper than hers. She couldn’t see him.

“A quarter mile away now,” said Dragos. “Dead ahead.”

Then she caught sight of him. He was a small, white figure and from this distance looked very much like a large seagull, flapping his wings every once in a while as the boat rocked. She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “Oh, thank you, God.”

Thank you, thank you.