“I had wondered what you were. I had my suspicions in my garden. I am not sure I like being right.”
“Why not?”
“Your kind makes their own legends. Sometimes they end up like the one in the sea.”
Wade frowned at her. “I’m no god.”
“You are lucky, then, that I am Tuatha Dé Danann.” Lady Caith raised a hand, fingers curling like claws. In her palm, magic spun into being, the color a deep, angry gray, like the storm clouds above. “I left Tír na nÓg for reasons that do not concern you, but I left with the fury of a storm in me. You cannotdefeat Caoránach on your own, but we can drive her away. My court will help the Boston god pack retrieve their alpha, as obligated by the alliance we all share. You and I will deal with an Oilliphéist.”
“So we’re gonna crispifry her?”
Lady Caith shrugged, magic tangling around her wrist and fingers. “I suppose that is one way of describing it.”
Wade nodded. “I’ll get her out of the ocean and see how much fire she can take. What will you do?”
Lady Caith’s smile was small and hard. “Your selkies can call whirlpools. My specialty is with the air and the sea together.”
Wade glanced at the sky, frowning at the way the clouds were already starting to spin. “Man, my wings are gonna ache after this.”
He stripped off the raincoat and left it piled on the rocky sand, stepping away from Lady Caith. Wade then shifted mass, letting go of his human form, falling into the shape of what he truly was. He stretched, body settling into the clawed legs, long tail and neck, and the heat of a volcano in his belly. He stretched his wings up and out to their fullest, tail lashing against the sand as he sank down on his haunches. With a politeness that would make Sage proud, he offered one foretalon to Lady Caith, allowing her to step into his palm. He lifted her up on top of the cliff, which was honestly safer than if he’d tossed her.
“We need to remove Caoránach from the harbor,” she said, pitching her voice a little louder. Wade’s hearing in his true form was highly sensitive and enhanced, and he could make out her words perfectly. She stepped up to the edge of the cliff, attention focused on the ocean, hands angled to either side of her body.
The wind picked up, white spray from the waves misting the air over the sea. Despite the daylight hour, the clouds were thick, and there was no sign of the sun. Boston was a distant strip ofland, and he hoped the storm had driven everyone inside. If he made the evening news, his pack would be so pissed.
Wade stretched out his wings and looked up at the sky and the clouds that spun there in a way not unlike a hurricane. He really hoped Lady Caith wasn’t going to create one of those. He didn’t think Boston could handle a storm like that.
He snaked his head around, staring through the rain at the approaching speedboats and the quick-moving shadows he could see in the churning sea. Amidst the waves were spots of faintly glowing lights that darted through the water and the whirlpools that spun offshore. Wade knew what those meant—fuath were harassing the selkies. Ugh, they were as bad as pixies.
Wade spread his wings, digging his hindquarters into the sand, crushing chunks of granite rock as he readied himself to launch. With a snap of his wings, he threw himself into the wind and sky, wings flapping hard to get himself airborne, long tail snaking out behind him. Gravity sloughed away as he rose higher into the storm, the island falling away from him. Lady Caith was soon lost to sight, even if the result of her magic wasn’t.
The higher he flew, the stronger the wind became, and Wade had to work to keep himself steady in the air. The Boston Harbor stretched out below him. He adjusted his eyesight, bringing everything below him into close relief. As he watched, one of the farthest yachts out suddenly capsized before being tossed into the air by the bulk of a monster swimming below.
Wade adjusted his vision again, bringing Caoránach’s shadowy form more into focus. She was fast-moving as a sea serpent, and Wade knew he couldn’t get drawn into a battle beneath the waves. He’d lose.
What he needed was to get her into the air and get her away from the island. He could fight her, but he knew he couldn’t win against a god. Best he could do was chuck her east and hopeshe landed hard enough on the water that she’d break some bones. Maybe her neck. Or her spine. Wade wasn’t picky; he just wanted her gone as of yesterday.
Some of the whirlpools disappeared below, while others changed size. The wind picked up even more, and Wade had to work his wings harder to stay in the area. The rain came down so horrendously it was almost like a curtain, impossible to see through. Despite the ferocity of the building storm, Wade could easily make out the churning of the water below as it spun in the same direction as the wind and rain above it.
It was rising—twisting—into a waterspout created by fae magic.
Oh, he didn’t want to fly into that. He really didn’t, but it was forming right over Caoránach’s position in the sea, the spray circle down there highly distinct, and Wade couldn’t leave her down there with the selkies. He wasn’t giving her the harbor, and he wasn’t giving Niall Boston, and neither of them were getting Riordan.
Wade folded his wings, diving through the sky before snapping them open again. He banked on a wingtip, flying around the open air that wouldn’t be open for long once the spinning sea water reached the rainwater in the middle to become a pillar of destruction. He caught a glimpse of Lady Caith on the small cliff, doing her best impression of a lighthouse with how brightly she glowed.
He did another circuit around the rapidly forming waterspout before he finally caught sight of his prey. Caoránach’s bioluminescent spines breached the water below at the edge of the waterspout. The selkies’ whirlpools around the base of the waterspout had disappeared, and Wade didn’t dwell on what that could mean—that the selkies could be hurt, that any of them could be dead. He focused instead on the problemthat had led him to Boston, diving down without a roar so she wouldn’t hear him coming.
He sank all four taloned claws into Caoránach’s body, dragging her out of the sea. Water and blood flowed around his talons where they were embedded in her body, pierced right through scales and skin. Her great head crested a wave, mouth open in an angry roar that reverberated through the air. Wade matched it with his own and a burst of dragon fire as well, burning the nearest glowing spines on her body. They turned black, breaking off at the connecting point to her back.
Her roar this time was something hideous, full of pain, but Wade wouldn’t apologize for the agony he inflicted on her. He flapped his wings harder, dragging her bulk out of the waves, belching fire at her when Caoránach’s head wrenched around, mouth open for an attack. She spat something black and foul-smelling in his direction, but whatever it was—poison, acid, take your pick—Wade met it with fire. The smell it created when it burned wasso gross. If he’d been human, he would have gagged.
Something slammed into his left thigh, a sharp edge slicing through the scales there. Wade roared in irritated pain, lashing at the thing—which turned out to be Caoránach’s barbed tail—with his own. He kept flapping his wings, using all his strength to drag her fully out of the ocean, clawing at her writhing form.
::Do you think you can cage me, fledgling?::
Caoránach’s voice was meant for the water. The way it sounded in his ears, in his mind—bloated and heavy and wanting to echo—gave Wade a headache he didn’t appreciate. He didn’t bother responding, mostly because he couldn’t. His brain’s ability to translate languages worked great. His ability to respond to mental conversations was still forming. Reed had told him it would be decades more before that part of his mind fully formed. Until then, he could receive other people’s thoughts, just not project his own.
It was weird, sometimes, to think that he’d be a kid in dragon years for centuries to come when it felt like he’d lived a lifetime already.
