Dragon Riders Read online

  “In what way did it go sideways?” I asked, curious about what could make a nearly fearless wolf get a little frisky during a council meeting. A tiny piece of me was wondering how close we were to seeing his dangly bits.

  “Not a way we’d want to see a second time,” Dardennes said. He sat straighter, his expression going dark. “No. We cannot approve that kind of magic, no matter how desperate we might be.”

  I frowned, not cool at all with him acting like some sort of dictator. “Isn’t this something we should be voting on?”

  “I’ll put forward the motion,” Niles said, standing in front of his chair with his chin up. He was no taller at the table doing this, but it did make it look more official. “All in favor of a Moment In Time spell being cast to locate the fae lost in Ishmail Windwalker’s time, say aye.”

  The witches spoke up with their ayes right along with the dwarf. I added mine next, but then that was it; no one else contributed, not even the mute elves and other dark fae I’d never gotten around to meeting, who’d been listening this whole time but not saying a word.

  I nudged Aidan. We still needed more votes. “Come on, man. What’s the matter…scared?” I asked.

  “For you, yes.” He pulled his arm away from me and sat back deeper in his chair, refusing to be goaded into an ‘aye’.

  “Fine.” I turned grumpily to Gregale, knowing that the Moment In Time spell motion was a dead duck. There were too many crusty old fae on this council who were too scared to do what needed to be done. “What’s your idea, then? What do you gray elves think we should do?”

  “I cannot answer that question until I speak with the others. I beg your leave to accomplish that goal.” He bowed once at the group and then waited for Dardennes to speak.

  “How long will you need?” the silver elf asked.

  “Twelve hours should be enough…assuming we can speak with Falco, the fallen fae who has been resurrected.”

  I frowned at his description of my friend. “I didn’t resurrect him.”

  Gregale turned to me. “My understanding is that you found him in the Otherworld dying from a wound suffered in battle, had him drink from a charmed cup of elements drawn from the Overworld, and then a witch transported you back to this realm.”

  “Uhhh, yeah, that’s pretty much what happened.”

  “And then, once he arrived here, he was not visible to anyone until you took some of Robin’s life force and shared it with him.”

  My face grew hot with his accurate and not very pretty description of my actions. The way he said it made it sound like a total amateur move. “Uhhh, that may be what happened.” I paused for a moment before continuing. “Is Robin okay?”

  “It depends what you would consider okay.” Gregale folded his hands in front of his waist waiting for me to respond, and I battled not to bonk him over the head with the dragon fang I kept strapped to my leg.

  “Okay is a hundred percent Robin. Robin unadulterated. Pure Robin with no added ingredients.”

  “Then, no; he is not okay.” Gregale turned to face Dardennes. “May I be permitted to question Falco?”

  “Yes. Please, do as you must.”

  Gregale bowed and left without another word.

  “What’d he mean by that?” I asked no one in particular, praying my flaming hot face would hurry up and chill out. I was both embarrassed and scared. “What’s going on with Robin?” The last time I’d seen him, he was lying on the ground while a couple witches waved some smelling salts under his nose. I’d assumed he’d just fainted or something and was going to come around any second.

  “We do not yet know, but as soon as we do, you will be informed,” Dardennes said before turning his attention to the group. “Please remain in the compound until we hear from the gray elves. I will call you when you are needed. Meeting adjourned.”

  The others stood. I sat there watching all those idiots file out of the room like it was no big deal that we just got an order to sit around with our thumbs up our butts doing nothing. And what the heck was going on with Robin? I hated to think I’d done something to hurt him. I’d never forgive myself if he didn’t recover completely and totally.

  “You coming?” Aidan asked, pulling me temporarily out of my worries for the green elf.

  “Coming where?” I responded, too upset to say more.

  “Breakfast. I’m starving.”

  I shook my head, getting to my feet. “No. I have stuff to do in my room.” Like talk to Abby to see if she knows a way out of this mess. She’d been around and married to double-oh stink butt—Tim, the mighty pixie—for over seventy years. And she’d hung out with the Dark Fae in their compound for over a year, too. Maybe she knew a few tricks we could use to get her husband and my friends back where they belonged.

  I took off down the hall without a word to anyone, picturing in my mind the door to my bedroom that I shared with my favorite pixie family so it would appear for me to enter.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I ARRIVED AT my room and found Abby waiting for me, hovering just inside the door. I open my mouth to speak but she stopped me by holding up her hand like a traffic cop.

  “Shhh, be quiet. Willie is still sleeping, and I want to keep him that way for as long as possible.”

  I nodded, letting her know I understood. Nothing spells the end of peace and quiet like a wide awake baby pixie. I walked slowly over to the garden where their little home was resting on top of a smallish table and found Willie sleeping on his tiny bed with his arms and legs tucked under him and his little bare booty hiked up in the air. His wings were folded around his sides. He looked like a tiny cocooned bumblebee who’d somehow lost all its butt fur. “They’re so cute when they’re sleeping,” I whispered.

  “Yes, they are.” Abby was hovering in the air next to me. She was about to say something else, but she paused and looked at my face, her eyes roaming upward. Her expression changed from proud mama to confused mama. “What happened to your hair?”

  My eyes followed her gaze up to my forehead. “Oh. That. Uhhh, that’s a long story, actually.” I still hadn’t yet seen my new ‘do, but my sense of touch and the reactions I’d gotten told me it wasn’t going to be pretty when I finally did see my reflection in the mirror. I was going to avoid that event for as long as possible because my life sucked enough at the moment.

  “Come on, let’s go into the other room,” Abby urged.

  I followed her fluttering wings into our sitting room and selected a chair next to the couch. I was afraid if I sat down on the couch itself, I’d fall asleep for twelve straight hours, and I didn’t have time for that nonsense; I needed to go get my friends and then kick some ass on some misplaced demons.

  “I felt your call in my wings,” Abby said, pulling me out of my vengeful thoughts, “but I didn’t want to leave Willy behind on his own. He gets into too much trouble unsupervised, and he always seems to know when there’s no adult around, even when he’s in a deep sleep.”

  “I understand.” I sighed, knowing she wasn’t going to take my news well, but it had to be shared. Then I was going to get into the shower, change my clothes, and get the hell out of there. “Well, I’m sorry to say that the shit has hit the fan again.”

  “Just tell me. I can take it.” Her voice was trembling very slightly. “It’s Tim, isn’t it? Something’s happened to my husband.”

  I shook my head vigorously. “No, no no no. Well, yes, in a way.” I closed my eyes trying to gather my thoughts. I was not handling this well, but to be fair, I was suffering from lack of sleep and a recent pixelation.

  Abby floated down and stood on the table in front of me, pacing back and forth as she waited for me to clear my head.

  I huffed out a big breath and began. “We started out on our trip to the Isle of Skye.”

  She frowned and looked confused. “I can’t believe I didn’t wake up when Tim left. You couldn’t have gotten very far.”

  “Actually, we got really far. The problem is, there’s been so
me time slipping going on.”

  Abby paused her pacing. “Wait…did I just hear you correctly? Did you say you were doing some time slipping?”

  I nodded, feeling like I was about to suffer a scolding much like those meted out by my human school’s vice principal.

  “Why would you do that?” She was clearly pissed off.

  I threw my hands up. “It’s not like I planned it or anything! Someone else time-slipped me, I didn’t time-slip myself.”

  “Oh. That makes more sense.” She started pacing again, only slower this time.

  “Thank you. Anyway, as I said, a couple days ago we started out on our trip…”

  She stopped suddenly and stared up at me. “A couple days? Are you serious? That’s a big time slip.”

  “Is it? I’ve never done it before, so I wouldn’t know. Well…I actually did time-slip a couple times before the massive one, but only by a few minutes at first; but then they got bigger as I pissed the witch off more.”

  Abby’s shoulders slumped and her hands dangled at her sides. “You pissed off a witch?” Her voice raised in pitch. “Which witch?!”

  I tried not to giggle. I really did, but come on… Which witch said in an angry voice? Too funny. When I saw she was ready to let me have it with another volley of heat-filled words, though, I controlled myself and held up my hands to stop her. “Wait. Hold on. Just chill for a second. Can I just tell you the story and you save your questions ’til the end?” I was never going to get to the finale if she kept interrupting me. And I got that she was freaking out about her missing husband and the time-slipping and all that, but I didn’t have any time to waste, and this storytelling event had already been going on for too long.

  “Fine. But I reserve the right to be very upset with you.”

  Arguing with her was going to get me nowhere and neither was trying to defend myself. If she wanted to be mad at me, fine; I didn’t really care. Well, I cared, but it was less important to me than accomplishing my rescue mission. All I wanted to do was get my friends home where they belonged and things put back to normal in the Overworld. It was possible Chase was in trouble up there, and the very idea had my stomach turning itself into knots, so I had to make sure he was okay too. Then, of course, I had to go hang out with Biad at the portal to the Underworld. Talk about time slipping; it felt like time was slipping through my fingers at twice the normal speed.

  Ever since I entered this Fae world, everything had been turning upside down and inside out. I wondered what it would be like living in the compound with everything finally going the way it was supposed to, without anyone invading the other realms and without demons or witches always out to get me. Would I be bored? This was a question for another day, because the look on Abby’s face told me I had some ‘splainin’ to do and I’d better hurry up about it.

  I cleared my throat. “Uh-hum, yeah, so…we went on our trip as planned, but we didn’t get very far before a couple time-slips happened. Once Jared realized what was going on, we started to pay closer attention to our six, and we stopped using rest stops. Eventually, we got to the bed-and-breakfast on the Isle of Skye, and the person there waiting for us was a Fate named Judith.” I held up my hand to keep Abby from asking the question I could sense was perched on the tip of her tongue. “She put a spell on the house, and part of it was supposed to keep Tim out, but being the superhero that he is, he figured out how to get through it by using his butt dust.”

  “Body dust.” Abby corrected, rolling her eyes.

  “Whatever. He dusted the hell out of that place and got inside, and so did I. We found our friends upstairs in a big, collective trance. None of them remembered anything about our trip or where we were. We slapped them around, did the Macarena, got them back on track, and we escaped. Unfortunately, we ended up bringing a troll with us, and we didn’t just leave the bed-and-breakfast for the van outside, which would have been my preference; the witch whammied us with a prophecy spell or whatever and sent us into another realm or another time. No one’s quite sure exactly where we ended up…”

  “And this is where Tim is? In this…no-where, no-place…place?”

  “Yes, but please save all your questions ’til the end.” I stared at her until she nodded. “Anyway, we met a guy over there named Ishmail Windwalker, who I guess is…some sort of wind elemental maybe?… The guy who got lost in his element about a thousand years ago?” That was a shot in the dark, educated guess kind of thing on my part, but when Abby nodded, I paused to execute a quick fist pump in celebration of my amazing puzzle-solving capabilities before continuing. “He introduced me to his dragon Othello, and I got to go for a visit to Othello’s cave, and, long story short, we mated, and then he flew me to the entrance of the Overworld.”

  “Wait a minute,” Abby interrupted, holding up a finger, “back up a second. Did you just tell me that you mated with a dragon?”

  I try to wave her concern away. “Yeah, but it was no big deal. It’s not like I touched any dragon junk or anything.”

  She looked lost. “I’m not sure I understand…”

  My hands were fluttering all over the place, trying to distract her from her current line of questioning. “You don’t need to understand that part. It’s not important. The important part is that I was flying on the back of this dragon, headed to the entrance to the Overworld, and Tim was flying next to me, and then I got to the entrance and suddenly Tim was gone.”

  Abby wasn’t lost anymore. She had quickly transitioned into cranky. “What do you mean he was gone?”

  “What I meant was, I didn’t see him anymore, and I didn’t hear him anymore, and I didn’t sense him there near me. But I’m sure he was there somewhere. The dragon knew that we’re friends and would never have hurt him. I made him promise. And Othello was stirring up some serious air currents that Tim was riding like a boss, so I’m just going to assume that Tim got blasted up into another part of the atmosphere on one of those currents or something. I’m sure he’s fine.”

  I waited for Abby to start freaking out, but all she did was stare at me, so I kept going, pretending I didn’t see her stress-o-meter moving into the red. “Anyway, I was told by Othello that I had to go into the Overworld alone, so I did. I kept waiting for Tim to join me, because telling him he can’t go somewhere is pretty much the same as sending him an engraved invitation, but he never showed up. It’s possible that the entrance was spelled so that he couldn’t go in, so it didn’t worry me at the time. And then I got to the Overworld and I heard all these terrible noises and suddenly realized that there was a big battle going on. And while I was trying to figure out what to do about it, this fae got blasted and landed right at my feet, and turns out it was Falco the green elf who was killed by Samantha a couple months back. I’m not sure if you knew him…”

  “I didn’t know him personally, but I knew of him. He went to the Overworld when he died…and you saw him there?”

  “Yeah. And he was about to die again in the Overworld, which I didn’t even think was possible, but whatever. Anyway, I had this wedding present in a bag that the dragon had given me, this special cup that turns colors, so I filled it up with water, gave it to Falco because he seemed really thirsty, and then Judith the fate was suddenly there, and she saw what I was doing, and she got really pissed and blasted me with her cane.” I let out a big sigh. “There. End of story. You may now ask your questions.” I grinned like a loon, hoping she wouldn’t have any.

  Abby started in without wasting a second. “Judith was at the bed-and-breakfast and then she was in the Overworld too?”

  “Yeah. And she blasted me. And I ended up back here with you guys.”

  “And you’re saying that Falco is here now, too? You brought him from the Overworld to the Here and Now?”

  “Well, yeah. Kind of.” I squirmed in my chair, not comfortable at all with this part of the story, especially when I recalled Gregale’s description of what I’d done to Robin.

  She sighed heavily. “Why do I feel lik
e I’m only getting part of the story?”

  I held back the frustrated growl that wanted to burst out of me. “Because, those details don’t matter. It doesn’t matter that Falco was a ghost when he got here and then I connected him up to Robin, and now everyone can see Falco and apparently Robin is passed out on the floor somewhere.” I shook my head, trying to clear it of the images of one of the most awesome fae I know lying comatose on the ground. “I mean, of course it matters. Robin is a very good friend of mine, and I don’t want him to stay passed out. But I’m sure the witches can fix it. I just need to get back there to get Tim and the rest of our friends so we can come home together.”

  “I agree with you that we need to retrieve my husband and our friends, but I’m not sure that I agree about Falco and Robin.”

  “Why?” I let my hands drop to the chair on either side of me, preparing myself for the motherly lecture I was sure I was about to receive.

  “The only true and correct way for any being to get from the Overworld to the Here and Now is through the portal, and these days only with the permission of the portal guardian. You have violated that rule, and in doing so, there must be payment.”

  A shiver ran up my spine at her words delivered in such an ominous tone. “Payment? Of what? Because I’ve already had a black taint on my soul once, and I really don’t want to ever have one there again.”

  “I’m not surprised. Taints have a tendency to make everyone uncomfortable.”

  “So, what is it, then? Am I doomed?” I remembered Lars the demon telling me how many times he’d been eaten by the dragons inhabiting the Underworld and shivered again. I did not want to end up as dragon poo, that was for damn sure.

  “No. But we need to fix the problem with Robin and Falco as soon as possible. Anything left in limbo like that is bound to throw things off in both realms.”

  “How about if I leave that up to you? I’ll head back to Ish’s time and get the others while you fix that little problem with Falco and Robin, and then everything’ll be back to normal. Presto change-o.” I dusted my hands off, trying to convince her and myself how easy it would be.