Luther
I could not seem to bring myself to let go of Jade, and it had already been three hours since the attack. Three hours since we’d returned to Hillcrest Hollow with one swift ride in the claws of a dragon. Chardum allowed only one person in existence to ride on his back, and that was Rosy. Being cradled in the massive palm of his beastly claw was fine too, it beat walking or waiting in those trees, where something more dangerous roamed than those Sunworld agents.
“Does anyone want a cup of coffee or tea?” Jade asked the room at large. Everyone had gathered in my living room, and it was possibly the first time in over twenty years I’d had that many visitors at once. My arm tightened around Jade’s middle, pressing her more tightly into my lap, and her fingers came down on my wrist to stroke me reassuringly. She was as shaken up as I was after that attack, but possibly handling it a little better. She was tough, my librarian.
“I think I need to hear what you guys discovered again,” Grandma Liz said from where she oversaw the entire room from my reading chair. “We need to make a plan for the future.” She was grim-faced, and her silver curls were covered by a lavender scarf to hide her bedhead. Jackson had dragged her from bed when he’d sensed Chardum’s return with us.
The sheriff and his mate, Gwen, were sitting on my rug with their backs against my bookshelf, curled up tightly the way I was with Jade, while the dragon and his nymph were on my secondcouch across from me, and Chardum was taking up far too much space.
Even Arden had come, but the call of pain had been impossible for him to ignore. The troll shifter had finished healing Jade’s wrists, leaving her with smooth, unblemished skin once again. At Jade’s offer of drinks, he was the one who slipped into the kitchen and began making them with his big, capable hands—a sharp contrast against my fine china, though I knew he’d never break one of the elegant cups.
Gregory and his mate, Kess, were missing because they’d gone to retrieve the armored car with his tow truck. I had protested against this, because the creature plaguing our town had made a very deadly appearance. He’d lowered his head in that stubborn, bullish way of his and told me to mind my own business.
As they drove off, I’d overheard Kess on the phone with Bianca, and that was about all the reassurance I would get about their safety. Bianca was mated to the other dragon in town—well, not in town—he lived far into the woods. Gregory would have backup, and that was all that mattered; a threat this large meant none of us should be taking any chances.
It felt like we were meeting for war, a war I wasn’t sure we could win. “I think Jade has had enough. We need to sleep,” I said. Not only had we crawled out of a car wreck and faced off with Sunworld, but healing always did take it out of a person. Sure, the burns had been superficial, but she had to be feeling her energy flag. The problems would still be there tomorrow.
I will bellow fire and chase them out,Belfry offered helpfully. He fluttered down from where he’d been hanging from thechandelier and made a threatening loop around the room. Except, nobody would consider the tiny bat threatening, especially since only Jade and I had heard his threat.
Chardum looked up just as Belfry passed over his head. I saw a golden eye shutter, and then a wisp of fire curled from his lips. It did not hit Belfry, his aim was too precise for that, but it made my bat yelp and dive for cover behind my shoulder. The golden dragon rumbled a laugh, and suddenly I had a feeling he might have heard Belfry too. That was confirmed when he said, “I shall teach you a thing or two about breathing fire, little one.”
Gwen shuffled as if she intended to rise and leave, as I had suggested, but Jackson held her back. Drew, the gargoyle deputy, placed a heavy hand on my shoulder. I was pretty sure he thought he had to keep me in check against Char for threatening Belfry. He didn’t, though; I was sure Chardum had considered that play.
“I’m fine, Luther. Let’s go over it one more time and make a plan,” Jade murmured, her fingers tightening in a soft squeeze against my arm. Every part of me still ached after the car crash, but I had healed, and without Arden’s aid. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. The troll chose that moment to show up and hand me a glass of thick, red blood, and then he casually circled the room to hand out drinks to everyone else. I sighed. Fine, meeting not over yet.
“I want to see the book,” Thorne said from where he lurked in the shadows by the door. We’d already gone over that, but he was very adamant that he should be allowed to take it home with him. At least on that front, I did not have to stand up for Jade.She gave him a cool glare, shook her head, and then told him he could meet her at the library tomorrow to see it.
His expression grew tight with displeasure, and the obsessive gleam in his eyes grew more pronounced, but when Jade kept talking, it eased. “Thorne was right, though. I think we really are dealing with a Galamut. The book doesn’t know what they are exactly or where they come from, but it speaks of prisons all over the world that contain them—them, as in many of these… things.”
She turned to look more fully at Chardum and Rosemary, the dragon once in charge of guarding such a prison. “The book seems to divide these Galamut into different classes, and they roughly appear to be tied to elements.” This was new, and I hurried to down the blood and lean more tightly against Jade’s back. It might be considered a protective hover, but I didn’t care.
“And the one we’re dealing with is an Earth creature, like me,” Rosemary said, leaping to the obvious conclusion. We were all silent for a moment after that, as we considered the powers the creature had demonstrated so far: darkness, the ability to call to us in dreams—especially to humans—and yes, always in the woods did we feel its presence the strongest.
“This is why a nymph was required to guard the prison,” Chardum concluded slowly. “Does the book say how to stick it back in its prison, or better yet, how to kill it?” Jade shifted in my lap and uneasily shook her head. It made everyone gathered fall silent again, and we all shared worried looks.
“The only thing I noticed is that the one here seems weak compared to the horrors described in this book. I think it’sinjured, or drained, and it’s building strength right now…” Her words trailed off, left hanging in the air as she let them sink in. How much worse was it going to get when the Galamut regained its strength? Jade had an answer for that too: “Think natural disaster on a massive scale. Tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, famine, blight, plague…”
“Then we’ll just have to figure out how to kill it before it gets that strong, won’t we?” Gwen said optimistically. Nobody responded, because those alive for a couple of centuries knew it was never that easy. Jackson rose with her in his arms, glancing out of my window as if he were tempted to leap skyward with his mate and soar away. I couldn’t blame him if that was what they chose to do.
“I think we’ll need to fight fire with fire,” Grandma Liz said firmly, and she rose as well. Her bangles clattered together in a sound that would have been merry, if not for the grim mood. “I’m going to put in a call with the region boss, perhaps even put it all the way through to the top. We need the most powerful creature around to fight this.”
She was talking about stepping past the Taoiseach and going directly for the Regis. He was a vampire, like me, but at the same time, I was leagues away from the power Nathaniel Flynn wielded. A man who ruled all of supernatural Northern America had to be something special. Even the generals in charge of large sections of his territory were incredibly powerful. Someone like that might just be enough, but it would also draw attention to our little nook of the world. All of us here had come to hide, in a way, and the last thing we wanted was to bring all eyes down on us.
“I believe we might not have a choice,” Chardum agreed, and when he rose, that signaled the end of the meeting. Thorne swore—viciously and loudly—and then slipped away into the night without a backward glance. Out of all of us here, he might be the one with the most to hide. He wouldn’t like the prospect of tangling with supernatural authorities.
Gwen hugged Jade tightly by the door. “I’m so sorry you got tangled up in this,” she said, as if the small B&B owner were personally responsible. Jade hugged her back just as tightly and waved as Jackson took his mate down the backstairs and across the street to their home.
Once the last person had left, I turned her into my arms. “Whatever the future brings, darling, we’ll face it together.” She curled herself under my chin with a soft sigh and a smile that told me she believed that with all her heart. I meant it: we’d been through hell and back already and come out stronger; we’d conquer this Galamut too.
And as I took her to bed not much later, I focused on the present, on her body and each perfect, silky curve. I told myself that niggle of fear at the back of my head wasn’t there. Later, though, when Jade slept in my arms, I could not push it away any longer. That niggle said: But why prisons? Why did our ancestors not kill these terrible creatures? And I feared the answer was: Because they couldn’t.
Epilogue
Jade
I locked the library doors behind me and slid the key into my pocket, savoring the sound of the click the lock made. It was lunch hour, and nowadays, that was my favorite hour. I glanced at the glass store windows of the General Store down the sidewalk and felt my cheeks crease with the beginnings of a wide smile.
The last few weeks had been quiet, too quiet, if I was being honest. After the confrontation in the woods, the town had settled into an uneasy calm. The book hadn’t yielded any more answers, not really. The second half had been encoded, and I was still teasing apart symbols and substitutions late into the night. Thorne came by sometimes to “help,” which mostly meant pacing, scowling, and pointing out things I already knew.
