Playing With Fire

Chapter Thirteen

"Well. I'll say this for Gabriel-he has good taste in houses." Cyrene dropped the handle of her suitcase with an audible thump on the rich carpet of the entrance hall. "I hope the rest of the house is as nice as the entrance. It's much nicer than my flat, and certainly better than that dark little hole you inhabit. How many rooms did he say it has?"
"Seven bedrooms." I closed the front door, consulting a small card to punch in the code needed to pacify the security system.
"I shall graciously accept Gabriel's invitation to stay with you until he gets here, then," she said, opening up the door nearest us. "Sitting room. Kitchen back here, do you think?"
"I guess." I stood for a moment in the hallway, noting absently that Cyrene's assessment of quality was, as ever, dead on. The house mightn't be a huge mansion, but it was located in Marylebone, right in the center of London, and it appeared to be furnished simply but elegantly. I touched a finger to the halfpaneled wall before slowly following Cyrene. She explored the house, scattering excited little oohs and ahs of pleasure behind her as she ran from room to room. I paused to look in the sitting room, decorated with antiques of cream, rose, and gold, admired the kitchen with its huge marble-topped center block, and finally stopped at the back of the house, in a parquet-floored conservatory sporting tall palms and a beautiful blue-gray granite fireplace that had to be at least three hundred years old.
It was all lovely, perfectly charming... and utterly lifeless. It was as if Gabriel had never even been there at all, as if his presence hadn't touched the house in any way.
"The master bathtub is divine!" Cyrene announced, coming down from the second floor. "Would you mind...?"
"Go ahead," I said, sitting gingerly on the edge of a spindly legged chair.
"You know how a bath always makes me feel better." She started to go, but paused, looking back at where I sat. "Is something wrong, Mayling? You have the oddest look on your face. Don't you like the house?"
"The house is beautiful. It's just..." I hesitated, finding it difficult to put my strange mood into words. "It just seems so bare, as if it was just here for show and no one has ever really lived in it."
"Well, Gabriel did say he wasn't in London much. Maybe he hasn't had time to make it feel like a home yet. Besides, that's what you're for, isn't it?"
Her words brought to the surface all the feelings of doubt that I'd successfully pinned down during the last twelve hours.
"Mayling?" Cyrene took a couple of steps into the room, her brow furrowed. "You are going to be happy with Gabriel, aren't you?"
Her concern touched me, making me forget my earlier annoyance with her. That had always been the pattern of our relationship... she got into trouble, and, exasperated, I ran to her aid, forgiving her when faced with her genuine affection and gratitude. "Of course I'll be happy. How could I be otherwise? I have a man so sexy he literally burns down a hotel room, a gorgeous house in a prime spot in London, and carte blanche to do with it what I want. I'd have to be insane not to be happy."
"Yes," she said, touching my cheek lightly. "You would. Those dragons are incredibly sexy, don't you think?"
I glanced up quickly, but she had a dreamy look in her eyes, not one that hinted of jealousy. "That's one way of putting it."
"I think it's because they're so... oh, I don't know... exotic. You know what I mean? There's a sense of danger about them, as if they are barely just holding back the beast that dwells within them."
I couldn't deny her assessment, although I was more than a little reluctant to have this discussion. "I suppose so, although Gabriel seems much more even tempered than Drake or his obnoxious brother."
"Obnoxious!" Cyrene gaped at me. "How can you possibly say that about Kostya? He's not obnoxious! He's just... intense. Very, very intense. And so handsome, don't you think?"
Relief mingled with disbelief as she continued to sing Kostya's praises. I recognized the signs all too well, having lived through a good hundred or so of Cyrene's relationships. "He doesn't seem terribly stable, emotionally speaking," I said slowly.
"Who doesn't? Kostya?" She wandered over to a palm, absently stroking its leaves in a manner I knew would have the plant sprouting new branches (plants love naiads). "There's a reason for that, you know. I had a long talk with Aisling earlier, and she told me all about how Kostya had to go into hiding after he killed his wyvern, and then how he was kidnapped by someone unknown, and left to starve in a horrible prison until Drake and Aisling rescued him. So you see, he's been through a lot in the last couple of hundred years. Allowances should be made for his rather brusque manner."
I stifled a little smile at the word "brusque" being applied to Kostya, but kept silent, feeling it was better for her blossoming infatuation to burn itself out without help from me.
"I wonder if he's going to be wyvern of his sept," she said, looking out of the floor-to-ceiling window to a darkened garden.
"I was under the impression there was no sept to be wyvern of."
"Aisling said she thought there were a few black dragons still left, but they are in hiding." Cyrene turned back toward me, making a contrite face. "I'm sorry, here I am chatting on and you're obviously tired and should get some rest. Bath for me, and then the master room is all yours."
She hurried off to take her restorative bath, leaving me to my murky thoughts.
My emotions were too raw to dwell much on the last few hours I'd spent before Cyrene and I had left Greece. Most of the day had been spent kicking my heels at Aisling's house, waiting to hear what Gabriel and Drake had found out about the disappearance of Maata and Tipene. I had been frustrated being kept out of the way, but knew too little about the ways of dragons to know if it was a case of being kept from underfoot, or if Gabriel and Drake were putting themselves in a situation that would have been dangerous to me.
"Anything?" I had asked when Gabriel returned after four hours.
"No." He took my arm and edged me away from where Aisling was grilling Drake. "No one has seen them. Their things weren't touched, and they didn't leave any message for me. I'm afraid the worst has happened."
I put my hand on his chest, wanting to comfort him. "You think they're... dead?"
He was silent for a moment before shaking his head. "No. I'd feel it if they were dead. But someone has taken them against their will, and that someone is Kostya."
"He says he didn't."
Gabriel's eyes were as bright as mercury, his face suddenly frightening in its austerity. "He lies. He's tried to sway Drake over to helping him against us before. This is just another attempt to put me in a bad light, and himself in the role of a victim."
"I have to say," I said slowly, unsure how he'd take my comment in his present unyielding mood, "that he looked to me to be surprised when you accused him of harming your guards."
"He is a very good actor. He's had time to perfect that skill... but it doesn't fool me. The silver dragons are at war with no one. There is no reason anyone would want to take my guard. It has to be Kostya."
"So what do we do now?" I asked.
His eyes warmed several degrees as he looked down at me. "You, little bird, are going to London with your twin as you originally planned."
I was both surprised and hurt at his dismissal. "Do not think I don't want you near me," he said with a flash of his dimples, his fingers soft as he brushed back a strand of my hair. "There are some green dragons who live in the north of Greece-Drake has called on them to help us search."
"Aren't there any silver dragons around here?"
He shook his head. "They populate mostly Africa, and the South Pacific, although recently more have moved into the Caribbean, and the West Coast of America. Very few silver dragons live in Europe."
"Why? Is there something here that keeps the silver dragons away?" I asked.
"Not at all. I myself prefer the southern climes, but business concerns frequently keep me in the Northern Hemisphere. I do not wish to part with you, Mayling, but it will relieve my mind to know you are safe at home. There is enough room for your twin to stay as well-I'd be easier in my mind if you had company with you there. I expect to follow you tomorrow, at the latest. Until then"-his head dipped down as he bit my lower lip-"I will miss you greatly."
The scene played in my mind as I sat alone in the empty, echoing conservatory. Rain pattered down lightly on the windows as indigo claimed the sky. I touched my lips, shivering, but whether it was from the relative cold of an early spring London night, or from a suspicion that what Gabriel would miss was his mate rather than me specifically, I couldn't say.
"This isn't doing you any good," I said aloud, my voice eerily thin. I cleared my throat and tried again. "What you need is a plan of action. Let's put that mind to work and come up with something useful."
Cyrene's faint voice, chirping happily away in the bathroom upstairs, drifted down as I pulled out the blackmail letter she had given me earlier. It was brief and to the point, demanding that I render a service or else the blackmailer would hand over the videotape to the appropriate authorities.
With reluctance, I punched in the phone number the blackmailer had given.
"What?" a gruff male voice answered.
"This is Cyrene Northcott's twin. I understand you wished to speak with me."
"Oh, the doppelganger." The man's voice had a harsh midwestern U.S. twang to it. "About time you called. There's a job I want you to do for me. Something I want you to steal."
I was no stranger to bluntness, so I ignored everything but what was important-I needed to make sure that he didn't know I was also Mei Ling. "What makes you think I'm going to condone an illegal act?"
The man grunted. "Saw you at that oracle's with your hand up his ass, didn't I? You were there for the same thing I was-the arcanum."
"I would hardly refer to being in the oracle's book room as having my hand up his ass, but we'll let that go."
"You're a doppelganger. I looked that up-you can go invisible and get into places normal people can't. So don't come over all high and mighty on me."
I bit back any number of responses, relieved that he hadn't mentioned anything about Mei Ling. The arcanum I was sent to get wasn't particularly valuable- Magoth simply had a desire to see it-and it certainly wasn't of the same quality of items that the infamous Mei Ling had previously stolen, so it was entirely within reason that this person didn't connect a shadow-walking doppelganger named May with a Chinese cat burglar. "What is it you want acquired?"
"Not going to deny it, eh?" The man chuckled, his laugh just as unpleasant as his voice. "Smart girl. There's a piece here in London, a small golden amulet. It's well protected, so you'll need to use your wits to get it. You got a pencil? Here's the address."
I took down the information, wondering what the amulet was, and how I was going to get out of stealing it. For now, I'd let the blackmailer think he had me by the short and curlies, but I would not commit myself to stealing something about which I knew nothing. Perhaps if I knew a little more about who he was working for, I'd be able to assess what it was he wanted stolen. "All right, I have that. My twin said you were working for a dreadlord. Which one?"
"Who I work for is none of your business," he said sharply, on a quick intake of breath.
"Well then, who owns this amulet you want stolen?"
The silence that followed was rife with suspicion.
"Look, I don't know what you think doppelgangers can do, but we can't turn invisible, and we can't walk through walls. We're flesh and blood just like anyone else... more or less... and we can trigger alarms and set off security systems. The more I know about the person who has this amulet, the better I can protect myself and ensure success."
"Just steal the damned thing. You don't need to shove your nose into anything else. Get in, get it, and get out. Call me when you've got it."
"I'm not a miracle worker-" I started to protest.
"If you're caught, he'll kill you," the man interrupted. "So don't get caught."
"But who-"
He hung up before I could finish asking him who it was he intended for me to rob. I sighed and slumped back into the chair, staring blindly at the piece of paper I held. I had a bad feeling about this whole thing, but I wasn't in much of a position to do anything. I'd just have to go to the target's house and assess the situation there.
It wasn't until I was in my room, donning my working outfit, that I realized something odd about the address he'd given me.
"I'll be damned," I said a few minutes later as I looked at the card Aisling had given me. One side of it had her address in London, and on the back, she'd written the location of Kostya's lair.
It was the same address the blackmailer had given me.
An hour and a half later I slipped out of the back door of Gabriel's house, casting an eye upward to the window of the room Cyrene had claimed. A faint light flickered through a gap in the curtains, indicating Cyrene was happily tucked into bed, yakking on the phone to one or another local naiad while she watched late-night TV. I hadn't told her my plans lest she wish to accompany me... and where I was going, she definitely couldn't follow.
Why was the blackmailer trying to steal something from a dragon? No wonder he didn't want to tell me whom I was supposed to steal from-no one in their right mind would ever try to get something out of a dragon's lair.
"More intriguingly, who is he working for?" I murmured aloud to myself. "And does this have anything to do with that phylactery Gabriel wants?"
"What's that?"
I came to myself with a start as the taxi driver pulled up outside a dark and rather grimy warehouse. "Sorry, just talking to myself. Is this it?"
"It is. That'll be five pounds."
I paid the man, hesitating for a moment as I glanced at the warehouse. I wasn't normally a fearful person, but I had to admit there was something about the hulking black building that left me feeling a bit twitchy. "I don't suppose you'd like to wait for me?"
"Here?" He shoved my change in my hands. "Not for five times that. Good luck."
He sped off into the darkness without even a backward glance. "Talk about your foreshadowing," I muttered as I slipped into the shadows.
The lock on the door to the warehouse posed no problem to me. I smiled as I laid my fingers across the front, gently urging the tumblers within it to turn until the lock obligingly clicked open. I've never been sure why, exactly, doppelgangers had the inherent ability to open locks, but it was such a useful talent, I figured it was best not to question it. As the door opened, I shadowed and made my way cautiously into the lower level of the empty warehouse. A small amount of dim light from the buildings on either side filtered through the high, grimy windows, giving me enough light to make out a couple of large boxes in an otherwise empty room.
"Kostya lives in an abandoned building near Greenwich," Aisling had told me earlier in the day, when Gabriel and Drake were off looking for the two missing bodyguards.
"Does he?" I'd asked, a little bit surprised by the sudden change in what had been up to that point innocuous conversation.
"Yes. I'm telling you now because if Gabriel is anything like Drake, he's not going to want you to do anything on your own. Dragons are like that: very protective, and the wyverns especially so-it's sweet, really, but they just don't realize that we are professionals, and sometimes, we need to be given some space to do our own thing."
I nodded. I had a suspicion I was being kept out of the way, which was already rankling.
"You have quite a reputation as being able to take... well, just about anything, I guess. I mean, anyone who can break into Dr. Kostich's house and take something valuable has got to be pretty good at what she does."
I squirmed a little in the chair, my eyes on the figure of Cyrene and the demon dog Jim as they wandered around the garden. "Er... thank you. I think."
"Oh, that was a compliment," Aisling said, laughing. "I have nothing but respect for strong women who go after what they want. But that's neither here nor there-I'll write down Kostya's address for you. If you're going back to London tonight, you'll want to have a look around his place to see just what's what."
I slid her a curious glance. "Do you think Kostya is lying about the phylactery, and Maata and Tipene?"
"I don't know," she said after a moment of thought. "It's hard for me to read Kostya. In some ways, he's very much like Drake, but in others, he's a complete stranger. His emotions are so volatile. My uncle believes that stems from a prisoner-of-war mentality, but I am starting to believe that it's just his personality. Either way, I know you'll want to look around at his place, and figured I'd give you what information we have."
I made a mental note to thank Aisling again for her help. I hated to think what I might have done if I'd been forced to rely on just the blackmailer's information.
The amulet was bound to be with the rest of Kostya's valuables, which meant I needed to go to a small room on the second floor that Drake-the only one besides Kostya who had actually seen it-had told Aisling was protected pretty heavily by a variety of electronic alarms and locks.
"Nothing like killing two birds with one stone, I guess," I said to myself.
There was a sort of mezzanine in the warehouse, a flight of rickety stairs leading upward to what probably had been administrative offices. I walked carefully down the narrow hallway, avoiding both the rats, which couldn't see me when I shadow walked, and the broken office furniture, which had been piled along the inner wall. A faint red blinking light high up near the ceiling warned of a security camera. I paused in front of the door to the last office, eyeing it carefully. I knew that to normal eyes it would look like a perfectly normal wooden door, equipped with an electronic lock linked to a retina-scan unit attached to the wall next to it. But the door bore things that the casual observer might have missed, such as the illegible words that were apparently etched into the door's surface.
"Dragon's bane," I said softly, looking at it carefully from different angles. I'd never seen one before, Magoth (wisely) never having demanded I burgle a dragon, but Aisling had warned me that any treasure Kostya held might be guarded by a bane.
This one looked powerful, glowing gold against the dark wooden door. I sighed, trying to remember what else Aisling had said about it.
"They're really tricky, and can be deadly if you don't know what you're doing," I recalled her saying, leaning close and speaking quickly as Cyrene and Jim approached. "I went through four demons breaking Fiat's bane, but honestly, I wouldn't advise you to mess with anything Kostya has protected with a bane. It's just bound to be too dangerous."
Those words came back to me now as I examined the door for signs of any weakness. There were none. A quick look at the other rooms, locked by conventional means, yielded nothing as well. I climbed out of the window of the room next to the sealed one, moving carefully along the narrow six-inch stone ledge. I had serious doubts that Kostya would be stupid enough to ignore any entrance into his lair, but figured it couldn't hurt to check.
The window was guarded by not one, but three different security systems, brands I recognized as being nearly impossible to overcome. As I stood plastered against the side of the building, I thought furiously of any means to get into the room. Via the ceiling? From the floor below? Perhaps through the wall of the office next to it? Those and other hopeless ideas were squirreling through my brain when I noticed something odd about the window... One of the panes of glass shimmered slightly in the stiff breeze that was coming off the river.
I laid a hand on it, prepared to make a fast getaway if the alarm gave any sign of a blip. But it didn't. The glass gave way under my hand, swinging open silently, the little electronic box attached to it not giving the slightest indication that the alarm had been triggered.
I opened it a bit more and poked my head into the room to get a good close look at the electronic box... It had been disabled.
"Well, now. How about that?" I murmured, taking a fast look around the room with a penlight. The room itself was small and musty, with a curious airless feeling as if it had been sealed for a thousand years. It was empty of furniture, but one side of the wall was lined with three wooden chests, each bound with iron. Cautiously, I let myself down out of the window, bracing myself for sirens as I landed on the floor.
The room was as silent as the tomb of which it reminded me, every noise magnified. Even the breath I drew sounded oddly amplified. I checked all available surfaces for any other electronics, breathing a sigh of relief when I found none. Either Kostya had been imprisoned so long he'd forgotten how to guard the treasures in his lair, or... well, perhaps this wasn't his lair after all.
I frowned at the door. "Then why bind a bane into the entrance?" I turned to look back at the window, trying to piece together the contradictions. I had taken a step toward the window when a very slight vibration shook the floor of the mezzanine.
Someone had closed the large metal door directly below where I stood. I had to get out of there... but could I count on such easy access to the lair any other time?
I didn't debate the issue. I figured I had about thirty seconds to find both the phylactery and the amulet before Kostya-or whoever it was who had just come into the warehouse-made it upstairs. I flicked the penlight over the first of the three wooden chests. It was locked with a bright, shiny new lock, but nothing else. The second bore several powerful wards, and a couple of arcane spells keeping it shut. The latter wouldn't stop me, but the former would slow me down considerably. The third chest was oddly unprotected.
The faintest of vibrations warned of someone coming up the metal staircase. Even a standard lock would take me too long to open-I crouched down before the third chest, my heart sinking as I realized that no one in their right mind would leave something so valuable as an amulet or the dragon phylactery sitting around unprotected. There were various antique art objects in the chest, mostly gold, but a few bejeweled pieces that looked valuable. Tucked down beneath them all was a small box, which, when opened, revealed an ugly gold lump wrapped in a piece of blue silk. I almost sighed in relief. The gold was shaped roughly in the form of a dragon, although it had a very primitive feel to it.
"One down, one to go... but no time left," I murmured almost silently.
A sound at the door had me stuffing the gold lump into my bodice before hurriedly replacing everything in the chest.
I shadowed and was almost to the window when all hell broke out. Brilliant blue-white fluorescent lights- bane of doppelgangers since they eliminate all shadows- lit up the room like spotlights. I reached the window just as the window alarm suddenly came to life, a grid of lasers glowing red as they made a crisscross pattern across the glass. I had a horrible feeling they were there for more than just sensing movement.
"You!" a man's voice bellowed behind me. I didn't need to look to tell it was Kostya. I just leaped for the window, slamming open the glass and ignoring the horrible searing sensation as the lasers burned through my clothing to my flesh. Kostya yelled something, but I wasn't about to stay to find out how he dealt with intruders to his lair-I threw myself out the window, my arms and legs cartwheeling as I plummeted to the pavement below.
The shock of hitting the ground stunned me for a few seconds, but luckily, self-preservation had caused me to shadow as I fell, aiding the darkness to keep me hidden from Kostya as he leaped out after me. I managed to roll a few feet away until I was wrapped around a cement post that supported a heavy chain fence to keep pedestrians from tumbling the few feet into the river.
Dimly, I was aware of the fact that Kostya passed within a foot of me, where he was joined by another person. My brain was still muzzy from the fall, but it had enough sense to know I couldn't lie there and wait for them to step on me. I half slid, half rolled down a shallow slope into the river. The cold water hit me with the force of a semi-truck, but it served the purpose of yanking me into full consciousness.
The Thames River isn't my idea of an ideal swimming location, and especially not when it's the part of the river that runs past industrial areas. I kept my face out of the water, oil, muck, and gods only knew what else had been pumped, dropped, or otherwise deposited into the river, swimming silently away from the warehouse. The laser burns on my chest and arms screamed in agony as the water hit them, but the sound of Kostya and his companion as they called to each other behind me kept me moving despite the almost overwhelming need to curl up into a ball and pass out.
Time passed. How much time I don't really know; it all tended to blur into one long moment of pain and discomfort that stretched into an eon. At some point, however, I found myself clawing at a set of slimy stone steps that led out of the river to a small area that overlooked the river.
"Need some help?" a man's voice asked from the darkness.
I froze for a second when I realized I wasn't shadowed any longer, eyeing the man who stood in the pool of light cast from a streetlamp.
He looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn't quite place his face. I took a step closer, and I relaxed a smidgen as I saw he wasn't a dragon.
"Um... yeah. Thanks." I took the hand he offered, grateful for his strength when he helped me up the narrow, slippery steps.
"Take a tumble into the river?" he asked when I stood at the top, shivering with shock, cold, and pain, my hair dripping horrible slimy blobs onto the pavement, my clothes reeking of waste of so many forms, I couldn't begin to separate them into individual elements. I was filthy, stinking to the skies, with bloodstains clearly visible on my clothing despite the swim.
"Something like that, yes," I muttered, uselessly trying to brush off the worst of the mucky residue left by the water. "Thank you for your help. I'll be all right now."
"My pleasure." The man had a pleasant face with dark blond hair, blue-gray eyes, and one of those little clefts in his chin that seemed to drive women wild. "You are a mess, though, aren't you? Here, let me help you. My car is right over here."
I shook my head as the man carefully took my arm, escorting me toward a small parking area next to a restaurant that sat on the river. "Thank you, but there's nothing wrong with me that a gallon of disinfectant and a long shower won't cure. Er... by any chance, have we met? I normally have a good memory for people, and something about you is very familiar, but I can't seem to recall just where it is we've met."
"We haven't met. I'd have remembered if we had," the man said with absolute conviction, but despite that, there was an oddly unplaceable note in his voice that had a little warning bell going off in my head. "Here; wrap yourself in this. I don't mind being a Good Samaritan, but this is my employer's car, and I don't think he'd appreciate waterlogged leather seats."
Numbly, I accepted the blanket he took out of the trunk of a car and thrust into my arms. I knew I should just walk away, but the events of the evening had left me feeling more than a little bit out of it. I touched my head, wincing when I found a huge lump on the side. I must have hit my head on the ground when I'd gone out the window, knocking myself out for a few seconds. "Well... if you're sure. I don't want to be any trouble."
"No trouble at all; it's what I'm here for!" He held open the passenger-side door, carefully tucking the blanket around me (no doubt more to protect the upholstery of the car than to warm me), snapping me in with the seat belt before going around to the driver's side.
"I'm May," I said as he started up the car.
"Savian." He shot me a quick look, which changed into a smile. "You look like hell, May. You need something hot to drink."
"I'll be fine, thanks. I'm staying in Marylebone, on Wimpole Street. It shouldn't be too long a drive from here."
"That's a nice area," he said agreeably.
I tried to think again why he seemed so familiar, but gave it up as being a lost cause with my wits so apparently scrambled from the fall. I closed my eyes for a moment, reliving the last hour of the evening, and wondering what it was I'd found in Kostya's lair. I didn't feel the least pang of guilt at stealing from him, not when he so basely attacked Gabriel. I had no doubt the phylactery was locked in the chest with the wards, which made Kostya's attempt to shift blame to Gabriel all the more reprehensible.
A police siren passing by us jerked me out of the doze I'd fallen into. I sat up, looking around confusedly at the bright lights of the area in which we were driving. "Savian? This... er... this appears to be the airport."
"That's right," he said, flashing a smile as he whipped us into an airport parking lot.
Suspicion took its own sweet time dawning, but at last the warning bells went off in my head.
"You led me on quite a chase, let me tell you, Mei Ling. I can't name the number of times you slipped away just as I was about to nab you, and I have to admit, you'd probably have gotten away from me again this time except you seemed to knock yourself silly jumping out of that window. Still, all's well that ends well. If you would come this way, please?"
"What...? Who...?" My brain was still sluggishly processing his words when he unbuckled my seat belt and pulled me out of the car, his hands hard around my wrists.
"Sorry, didn't I introduce myself properly earlier?" he asked with a little chuckle. He kept ahold of my wrists with one hand, the other going to his chest as he bowed in the elegant manner that only the people of the Otherworld seemed to be able to master. "Savian Bartholomew, L'au-dela thief taker, at your service. And you, fair thief, are my prisoner."