Shana Abe - Queen of Dragons

• Название: Queen of Dragons
• Автор: Shana Abe
• Жанр: Любовно-фантастические романы
• Год: 2008
• ISBN: 978-0-553-90447-5

Hidden among the remote hills of eighteenth-century England lives a powerful clan of shape-shifters who've become the stuff of myths and legends. They are the drákon—supersensual creatures with the ability to Turn from human to smoke to dragon. Now a treacherous new enemy threatens to destroy their world of magic and glittering power.

For centuries, they thought themselves alone at Darkfrith, but the arrival of a stunning letter from the Princess Maricara sent from the Carpathian Mountains of Transylvania suggests the existence of a lost tribe of drákon. It is a possibility that the Alpha lord, Kimber Langford, Earl of Chasen, cannot ignore. For whoever this unknown princess may be, she's dangerous enough to know about the drákon's existence—and where to find them. That, as Kimber can't help but concede, gives her a decidedly deadly advantage. And, indeed, it wouldn't be long before Maricara breached the defenses of Darkfrith and the walls around Kimber's heart. But the mystery of the princess's real identity and the warning she has come to deliver, of a brutal serial killer targeting the drákon themselves, seem all but impossible to believe. Until the shadowed threat that stalks her arrives at Darkfrith, and Kimber and Maricara must stand together against the greatest enemy the drákon have ever faced—an enemy who may or may not be one of their own. They have no choice but to yield to their passionate attraction for each other. But for two such very different drákon leaders, will an alliance of body and soul mean their salvation, their extinction… or both?

---

"But—"

"We have a rotating contingent of our finest warriors patrolling our territory," Kim said under his breath, tensed in his chair, leaning forward to be heard over all the noises of the people dining in the next room. "We have traps of our own in place, and an entire shire of the most fearsome creatures ever to live ready to defend our home. At any given time, there are over thirty drakon in the air, and another two dozen on the ground, in the village, all of them willing, all of them eager, to safeguard our tribe. And as for all of you—remember what we are. Remember how we are. I don't give a damn what these so-called sanf think they can do to us. If they come to our shire, I very nearly pity the bastards. We're going to slit them end from end."

A new hush took the chamber. The draft from the open window sent a spiral of black smoke from the nearest candle coiling in a long, snakelike arm across the table.

Rhys stirred in his chair. "I have another question. What was it today in those places? What was that thing lurking behind the human smell?"

Maricara cocked her head. "That thing?"

"That scent. Not human, not animal. Never smelled it before."

"Yes." Joan straightened. "I caught it too, almost like perfume, but not. What was that?" "I don't understand," Maricara said.

"Didn't you sense it, Your Grace?" Audrey's voice was still not quite back to normal, a shade too brittle and bright. "Or are your Gifts not as keen as you've portrayed?"

"It was drakon, " Kimber realized, when Maricara only continued to stare at his sister. He had been watching her, the changing light over her face, the shadows hollowing her cheeks, the uncharted depths of her eyes. When she blinked and angled them back to his, he felt the truth of his words strike like a punch to his gut: drakon.

So Kimber held very still. He kept his features composed, as if he'd known all along, as if the new and awful comprehension rising through him didn't exist; he was the Alpha; he was his father's son; so of course he had known. But the wine burned sour in the back of his throat.

He swallowed the sour. "It was the scent of drakon, wasn't it?"

"Yes." She lifted a shoulder, almost helpless. "Of course it was. That's how I knew it was the sanf, and not merely people. You've never encountered such a scent before?"

"Not like that."

"How can that be?" said Audrey. "It wasn't anything like us!"

"It was something like you. A small something, not a full-blooded dragon, but someone lesser. Didn't you know? It's how they find us. They're only Others. So they use someone of dragon blood, not too powerful, just enough to track us. Just enough for the kill. It's how they've always done it."

"A victim," Kimber asked. "Or a collaborator?"

"Both. Either. The sanf inimicus don't care."

Joan had her hand back at her throat. "But—who has blood like that? There's no one of the shire so diluted that we couldn't tell what they were."

"None of you are like that?"

"No," said Kim. "Some of us are stronger than others, but everyone has Gifts of varying degrees. It's—it's how we breed. Our lines are carefully kept."

"Ah." The princess picked up her spoon again, rolling the edge back and forth against her plate. She spoke with that small, tight smile that sharpened the curves of her face. "Yet where I come from, I assure you, there are bastards aplenty."

CHAPTER ELEVEN

It was going to rain. She could feel it in her bones, most particularly the smallest finger of her right hand. It had been broken when she was ten, and had healed before the human physician could even make the trip up to the castle from his hamlet three days away. It had healed straight, of course. There was hardly a bump at all from the fracture. But it still ached occasionally, a phantom pain to remind her of what it had once been like to be ten, a newlywed alone in an echoing palace, in a chamber leafed with gold and studded with diamonds, and a husband who chided her for trying to lock the door to her room against him.

The dark English clouds were seething over the dark English sea. The moisture saturating the air was enough to feel like slime clinging to her hair and skin. Maricara was a creature of the cool, arid alps. Rain was not her element.

"You should stay here tonight," she said to the earl. He had followed her nearly into the hotel bedchamber, was standing silently near the doorway with his arms folded across his chest. Sconces of candles behind cut glass adorned the walls, their flames burning dim but steady.

Kimber's position kept him from the light. She wondered if he did it deliberately, if he had begun to realize how much she could fathom from his eyes.

She crossed to the nightstand, holding on to a corner as she removed her heels. She could hear Rhys and the sisters in the parlor beyond, the three of them caught in an unspeaking circle, everyone waiting, it seemed, for the rainclouds to rupture, for the weight of the water to fall.

"You're most generous," said Kimber. He spoke his native language exactly the same way he had spoken French: with effortless elegance, as if the words themselves were made just to be shaped by his lips, to resonate with his low, agreeable voice.

"The roads will be too muddy tonight to return, in any case." Mari stripped off the right pump, balancing a moment with her arm out, then the left. "The bed is large and comfortable. If you try, the four of you might fit."

His brows lifted. "That's not quite how I envisioned it."

"Well, I suppose a gentleman would offer it first to his sisters, but they seem hardy enough." The looking glass on the nightstand caught her face in a square of pewter; she began to remove the diamonds from her hair. "Frankly, were it a matter between me and the brown-eyed one—"

"Audrey."

"Yes. She'd be on the floor."

The glass was small. She couldn't see his face in it, so she couldn't see if he smiled. She felt him though, felt him as clearly as ever, even through the stifling humidity.

He was anticipating a thousand outcomes to this moment. The rainstorm boiling off the sea only heightened his awareness; he would be like her in that way. They could not help but feed off the energy of the air.

The sconcelight, the shape of the room, the downy bed. The bright, heavy stones she'd used for adornment: all factors into this instant, into what she might do next.

Without her heels, the hem of the cocoa gown rumpled against her feet, an accidental train bunched at her ankles. She turned around and walked carefully back to Kimber, holding out her hand. He accepted the diamond clips she poured into his palm without comment, a baron's fortune singing and sparkling against his cupped fingers.

Thunder began a long, distant rumble. She removed her bracelets, one by one, never looking away from his face.

"And where," asked the earl, "are you planning to sleep, Your Grace?"

She smiled. She tilted her head and dropped the bracelets into his other palm. "You feel where I hid the key to the safe, don't you? It's a fairly simple lock. I have faith you'll manage it."

"Pray do not delude yourself," he said courteously, "into thinking that you're leaving this hotel alone."

"Try sleeping head to foot. That's how we did it in the mountains when I was a girl. You can fit more people on the mattress that way."

"Charming. I'll bear it in mind the next time I actually cannot afford to acquire my own hotel room. My dear child, you do realize the second you Turn, I'll be after you."

"But I rather think you won't catch me, Lord Chasen. You haven't yet."

Now he smiled, a half smile, a predator's smile, cold and gleaming; it turned his gaze to flint. "Maricara. You don't want to goad me into action tonight."

"Yes, that's true. What I want is for you to take my belongings back with you to Darkfrith tomorrow. I'll join you there. Really," she added, when his smile never changed. "Do you think I'd let you abscond with all my best jewelry?"

"It's not actually absconding if you give it to me."

"And I'm not. I'm merely handing it to you with the conviction that I'll get it back soon."

Without another word, the earl spread his fingers. Sapphires and diamonds tumbled in a shower of light to his feet.

"There are monsters out there," he said quietly. "And I don't want to have to fight them yet. Stay here, Princess. Stay here, where it's safe."

"I wish I could," she said, and Turned before he could add anything else, before he could finish reaching for her waist with his hands, and she wouldn't have to feel the urge to close her eyes and lean into him, to believe in words like stay and safe, no matter how beautifully he said them.

He did follow, of course. As far as she could tell, he didn't even take the time to alert his siblings; he just Turned to smoke, exactly as she had. But she knew the town in a way that he didn't; she knew the crooks and crannies of the rooftops; where the wind held a constant upsweep; which alleys were longest and darkest; which garrets would be empty.

She also knew that he'd be able to feel her—but she was willing to take risks he wouldn't. So she raced to the town square, where cobblestones echoed with horses' hooves, and carriages could be found at nearly any hour, jingling as they struck the bumps and holes. A foursome of oil lamps stuck atop poles threw light upon a statue of Poseidon in the center. She wound around his trident and then his beard, and all the horses trotting nearby began to shudder—then to veer. Coachmen, hauling at their reins, started to shout.

The earl remained a sheet of gray above. She'd been right; he would not descend.

So she did. There was a gutter at the foot of the statue that led to a tunnel that led to the sea. It was black and filthy and clogged with trash. She darted through it as quickly as she could—rotting vegetables; oyster shells; excrement; a living rat, which turned, red-eyed, and shrieked at her approach—and emerged like a bullet into the tide, shooting up through the spray and into the very first raindrops that were beginning to fall.

She kept going. Kimber was no longer near, and neither was her priory. She punched through the bottom of a fat, salty cloud and used it as her cover, letting herself blow with the gathering storm back to land.

"They're gone," said Joan, lifting her head. She'd been lazing in a chair by the fire, her feet out with her ankles crossed, a fist supporting her cheek. She sat up abruptly, looking around the room. "They Turned, just now. Did you feel it?"

"Yes," said Audrey, in the opposite chair, then muttered, "Lackwits."

Rhys had been pretending to be asleep on the floor by the hearth, a pillow stuffed under his neck. He'd unbuttoned his waistcoat and kept on his boots, his fingers laced over his stomach.

He'd felt them Turn. He'd felt Maricara's intention before it even happened, her eagerness to become smoke; it had washed over him in waves of lovely deep power, like strong spirits, like laudanum. It had kept him locked in his motionless state; he'd wanted nothing to interrupt the sensation of her, even the sensation of her departure.

Joan tugged a hand through her wig, disgruntled. "Well, bugger. What are we supposed to do now?"

Audrey came to her feet. "I don't know about you two, but I'm taking the bed."

She stepped over his boots and walked to the bedchamber on a yawn, her tinseled skirts sweeping the floor behind her.

She went inland. Kim could tell that much. He caught the faint lure of her to the south, and so that was where he drifted, trying not to panic, to succumb to anger, or the fear for her that buzzed through him like atoms charged with the storm.

The rain began gently. It was a mist, and then a sprinkling, and it was no great difficulty to maneuver through it. Rain this sheer was more like a caress than a hindrance, especially when he did not fight it. He could be flat or deep, might or persuasion; the rain would let him know what he needed to do.

He blew past the last yellow-lit streets of the town, over darker cottages and orchards, steaming fields melting into moors of wildflowers and peat.

The rain picked up. It began to feel less like a caress and more like a great many tiny needles, but still Kimber stayed smoke.

That's what Maricara was doing. He could perceive it.

The thunder increased. Lightning forked the amethyst sky. The wind burned with electricity and traces of her, telling him, yes, there, or no, you've gone too far, she circled back.

There were farms below him. He sensed those too, the scant vibrations of humans in slumber, of cows and bulls and goats huddled in barns, or against tall trees.

He did not detect that sly, slight sense of dragon again. Not here. Not yet.

And then he lost her.

Just like that; lightning flashed, the wind slammed from the other direction, and all awareness of her was just—obliterated.

He pulled thick. He fought the storm and hovered in place, seeking new clues. But all he got was rainfall and grass and dirt and leaves being washed clean of their daily dust. The last farmer's cottage he'd passed had a chimney that leaked the aroma of scorched peat—he still smelled that, for God's sake, and it was at least fifteen miles back.

Where had she gone?

The wind blew harder, ruffling his edges. He fought it a minute longer and then Turned to dragon, maddened, soaked instantly, straining against the blunt rage of the storm.

He dipped lower to the earth. Water sluiced off his scales and the dagger tips of his wings, down his claws. It stung his eyes and he narrowed them into slits; long, gilded lashes shielded him from the worst of it.

He skimmed a slow loop above the moor. Had there been anyone about it would have been suicidal; he was vividly colored, easily within the range of a flintlock. But there were no Others, no drakon.and no Maricara.

He kept on. Woods. Meadows. Ponds whipped to whitecaps, reeds bent in half along their shores. Alders and oaks with their leaves all pointing the direction of the gale. There came a moment when Kimber realized he was no longer entirely certain where he was: thirty miles inland? Forty-five? But if he turned his head, he could still taste the salt in certain raindrops. The sea would be behind them. So that was all right.

He kept on. And on. He wasn't going to give up, but he was starting to rethink his situation. What if she'd landed long ago, holed up in a barn or an empty silo? What if she'd doubled back to Seaham or some other town, if she had another hotel, another bed? What if—

Then he felt her. His body realized it before his mind did; he was already banking right, zooming in a long, straight line to minimize his friction against the headwind. His wings took the force of his turn with a straining hurt. His eyes shed tears into the wind.