Ashes Of Memory Read online

  Ashes Of Memory

  Dragon Magic: Book 1

  Aiden Bates

  Jill Haven

  Contents

  1. Tam

  2. Vance

  3. Tam

  4. Vance

  5. Tam

  6. Vance

  7. Tam

  8. Vance

  9. Tam

  10. Vance

  11. Tam

  12. Vance

  13. Tam

  14. Vance

  15. Tam

  16. Vance

  17. Tam

  18. Vance

  19. Tam

  20. Vance

  21. Tam

  22. Vance

  23. Tam

  24. Vance

  25. Tam

  Ashes And Grave

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  Ashes Of Memory

  1

  Tam

  I sensed eyes on me for half an hour before the human made his move. Probably he thought he was being careful, subtle; planning his approach and his angle of attack. But dragons have keen senses—a sharper nose than a bear, more sensitive ears than a wolf, and a sense of touch that rivals the cats. By the time the human approached, I had pretty much already decided to have him.

  “Now, if I don’t miss my guess,” he said from behind me at the bar, putting off a scent that was unmistakable as lusty interested, “you’re a shifter.”

  Tail-chasers, they were called. Humans that had a thing for shifter sex. To be fair, I was in a well-known tail-chaser bar. I turned to look at the guy. Youngish, maybe in his twenties—though, humans always looked a bit younger than they were to me—nice firm body under a classy outfit. Not the skin-tight synthetic fabric nonsense so many of the others here wore. He smelled nice, too—no deodorant, cologne, or aftershave to mask his scent. None of those foul fake shifter pheromone mixtures, either. He was cute, too. Tawny blond hair, round face, pert nose. Short.

  Yeah, I thought, all right. After three years, I should start moving on.

  “Dragon,” I said. “Good eye. What’s your name?”

  “Depends,” he said, moving a little closer. “You want to date me or... just go back to my place?”

  I stifled a sigh. No, I didn’t expect to find true love in a tail-chaser bar. That wasn’t what I was there for. Tried that once before and... wasn’t my taste, it seemed. But at least the illusion of some kind of romance would have been nice. “Buy me a drink,” maybe, or, “let me buy you a drink.”

  “You been with a shifter before?” I asked.

  The stranger gave me a coy grin as he slipped onto the stool next to me. “Couple times. I hear a dragon’s knot is... bigger than most.”

  “You heard right,” I murmured. He had nice lips. Might be a good kisser. Or at least, good at other things. “We’re rougher than the others, too. Sometimes.”

  He bit his lip and leaned in. “Promise?”

  The scent of lust grew stronger, teasing at my brain, promising that if I went home with this one I’d at least have a good time, even if it was the usual one-sided nonsense. Tail-chasers were almost universally submissive, which was fine, most of the time. And it had been a while. Years, in fact, since I got away from the weyr and had a chance to have any fun at all, and felt like doing so. For once, there was no pressing matter of state back home. Haval didn’t need my support or advice running the Blackstone Weyr at the moment, which was a pleasant change from the last year. I was a free agent, at least for a night.

  So it should have been easy to say yes, and go get my knot stuck in this cute human.

  “Why don’t we have a drink first?” I asked. Not stalling. Just, you know, getting to know him. Or trying to.

  “I’ve had three,” he said. “Just enough to work up the courage. I don’t live far, just a few blocks.”

  “I’ve only had one,” I said, which was true, mostly. I’d had a few beers before deciding to come out. “Sit with me a little while. I prefer to get to know my partners.”

  “I’m a power bottom,” he said, and winked as he touched my knee and slid a hand up my leg to find my bulge. “And I can suck for a long, long time. You dragons come a lot, right? I swallowed a bear a couple of weeks ago. He said it was the best, deepest, longest blowjob he’d ever gotten. But... I’m happy to break my record...”

  My phone buzzed, in the pocket closest to his hand. He chuckled. “That’s quite a reaction.”

  I grimaced, and pulled away enough that I could fish it out. “Let me finish my drink and we’ll head out.”

  It was Liana’s number, chief of security for my brother. I turned away from the human to answer it. “Liana,” I said, “I hope this is important, I was just about to—”

  “You have to get here,” she said. In a tone that made my stomach sink. “Haval’s place. Fast as you can. Did you drive or fly?”

  “I flew, but what’s—”

  “Good,” she said. “Straight here, no stops. Now.”

  She hung up, leaving me with a phone pressed to my ear and a knot of ice growing in my belly.

  “Everything okay?” my new ‘friend’ asked.

  “I have to go,” I said, and got off the stool.

  He laughed, and stood with me. “Great! I’m just over on—”

  “No,” I said apologetically. “I mean I have to go. Alone, back to my weyr. There’s some... business. Maybe another time? I can give you my number.”

  That scent of lust dried right up. “That’s... a nice offer, but there are, like, twenty other shifters here, man. I’ll just find someone else.”

  Because to a tail-chaser like this kid, we’re all interchangeable. Message received. I might have been more offended if there wasn’t a security emergency back home. “Best of luck with that.”

  “Asshole,” he muttered.

  I ignored it. Fucking tail-chasers. They’re the worst.

  I dropped out of a semi-legal low-altitude flight and into Haval’s broad backyard barely twenty minutes later and shifted the second my claws touched the earth. Security was everywhere, at least half of Liana’s team already inside Haval’s place, the other half visible from above combing the surrounding area. I pulled sweats out of my pack and pulled them on as I made my way to the back deck. “Liana! What the fuck is going—”

  I froze at the threshold of the house as the scent of blood struck my nostrils. Copper and sulphur—dragon’s blood. Panic struck me in the chest. “Haval?” I called as I stepped into his dining room. “Sophia? Baz!”

  Liana seemed to coalesce from nowhere in front of me, one powerful hand on my chest. “Tam.”

  I glared at her. “What the fuck is going on? Where is Haval?”

  She smelled like cold fury and fear, and... loss. “We’re investigating what happened.”

  “What happened?” I demanded. “Whose blood is that? It smells like Sophia. Where is Haval, Liana? And Baz? Was there some kind of attack? I need to see them, if we’re going to war—”

  “Tam, please,” Liana whispered. She closed her eyes, and her hand on my chest grew heavier as she leaned on me. “Tam, I’m so sorry. Haval... he and Sophia both are... they’re gone. Killed. We’re trying to figure it out.”

  I looked around at the house that was still largely in one piece. Haval hadn’t been killed here, or Sophia. If there had been that kind of attack, this place would be a crater. “No. That’s not... they can’t... Haval would have burned this place to the dirt. And no one gets past you and your... why would you say that?”

  My heart had sped up while I was distracted. It was harder to breathe. I searched the scene behind her for some evidence of a body, or a fight, and found myself pushing past my brother’s chie
f of security as she tried to hold me back. “It’s a crime scene, Tam, you can’t contaminate it.”

  “What... what happened? How did this happen?” I turned on her, realizing she hadn’t mentioned my nephew in the list of losses. “Baz. Where is he? I should be with him, maybe he saw something.”

  “If he did,” Liana said softly, “we would have asked him already. He’s missing. Maybe... whatever happened, Haval and Sophia told him to run, and he did. We’ve got our best looking for his scent, but if you know where he might have gone, that would be helpful.”

  Nowhere is where he would have gone. Not without his parents. None of this felt real. Liana had to be mistaken. They’d found some blood, and jumped to conclusions, but Haval was fine. Sophia was fine, and they were probably with Baz somewhere on the weyr. “This... Liana, if Baz is missing, he’s with his parents, we just need to find them. Have you called Haval?”

  Her expression briefly turned incredulous, but it was short-lived. “Tam... there are bodies. Follow me. Outside, don’t walk through the house.”

  She led me back to the deck and around to the front of the house, where two stretchers were beside an ambulance. The ambulance lights were off. “Human authorities are here as well,” she warned me. “Don’t make a scene. We have to report... this kind of thing.”

  Murders. That’s what she meant. Both stretchers had body bags on them. And inside, it was obvious, there were bodies. As much as I liked Jarek and Thane—Haval and Sophia’s honor guard—I wanted it to be them in the bags.

  Liana drew me toward them. I resisted, but not so much that she couldn’t pull me along. When one of the human authorities—a sheriff’s deputy—moved to intervene, Liana flashed her Blackstone Security Corps badge. “This is Tammerlin Blackstone,” she said. “Currently the Primus Draconis of Blackstone Weyr. He needs to see the remains.”

  Remains. The word made my anger rise, and my dragon with it so that the world was briefly thrown into a haze of red that revealed stark details in the dim, night-time world around me.

  The deputy, a middle-aged man with lines around his eyes, heavyset but solid looking, gave a slow nod to her and tipped his hat to me. “Sir,” he acknowledged. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  My vision gradually returned to normal. “Thank you,” I rasped.

  With Liana at my side, I approached the gurneys where the stretchers rested. One of them was larger, and I stood near that one first. My hand wouldn’t move to pull the zipper down, so Liana did it for me.

  Maybe it’s different in humans. For me, seeing Haval’s pallid face between the parted seam of the body bag didn’t cause a sudden surge of grief, or rage, or fear at what could have taken the most powerful dragon in the weyr from us. Instead, a wave of numbness spread through me where fire should have been, dulling everything. Even the edges of my vision seemed to fade, until only Haval’s face was visible in the world. Just him, and me, and... nothing.

  That it was Haval was undeniable. Liana had spoken true, and I didn’t need to see the other bag to know that Sophia would be in it.

  “If you need a minute...” Liana hesitated, and started to back away.

  “No,” I told her. She’d spoken true when she told the deputy who I was, as well. Next in line to Primus Draconis, leader of the Blackstone Weyr. At least as long as Baz was missing. Technically, when he came of age, it would be his position. He was Haval’s first born. His only born. Sophia had confessed that she didn’t much care for pregnancy, though Haval was gradually changing her mind. Especially as Baz grew older, became more independent—made them both miss the old days when he was whelpling.

  Baz was it now. The only son of the Blackstone lineage left, aside from me.

  “Does anyone have Baz’s scent yet?” I asked.

  Liana shook her head. “Not yet. We’ve got a perimeter search going, expanding by twenty meters each round. At the current rate, we’ll have the whole weyr covered in a few hours. But there should be a scent leading from the house. It’s making some of my people... suspicious.”

  Of magic. Naturally. It was one of only a few good explanations. Haval’s face showed no signs of trauma. He hadn’t shifted before he died, or they would have needed a much larger bag. Which meant he had been taken essentially unaware, and whatever killed him had been very sudden, and almost instantly lethal. There were some shifter types that could have pulled it off—a viper might have managed it. Djinn were another possibility, but we had no qualms with either the vipers nests or the nation of Djinn, and in any case they were all far away. There wasn’t a single nest or nation in North America.

  But there were mages.

  I glanced around at the deputies, paramedics, crime-scene investigation staff, and the security corps. So many cooks in the kitchen, it was a wonder there weren’t more bodies. When I settled on Liana, she knew what I was going to ask before I asked it.

  “There are traces of magic,” she confirmed. “But they’re faint, and Claudia can’t be sure what kind of mage they belong to. Haval did meet with a small delegation from the Custodes Lux cabal, so it’s possible those traces are from their visit.”

  “What was the meeting about?” I asked. “Is it possible they did this?”

  Liana spread her hands. “I don’t think so, but anything is possible. The meeting went well, Haval was pleased with the outcome. It was just a small trade negotiation. Shed teeth and scales for some alchemiks for the weyr’s medical stores. It was a win-win sort of deal, they wouldn’t have held a grudge, and I don’t think they would endanger the trade agreement.”

  There were six cabals in spitting distance from the weyr—which was a long way, where magic was concerned. A standing trade agreement with one hardly eliminated the other five as possible culprits. But while Blackstone—and, for that matter, all the East Coast weyrs—didn’t have friendly relations with any but Custodes Lux, and that only recently, it seemed, neither were we at war with them. And as far as I knew, none wanted it.

  Liana’s lips tightened. She had a certain look in her eyes, like she was going to make a suggestion I wasn’t going to like. “Spit it out,” I grunted.

  “Claudia has... mentioned the possibility of abyssal magic at play,” she said hesitantly. And with good reason. “If that’s so, then it’s outside the scope of her talent, and anyone in the weyrs. Maybe you could ask Vance—”

  “No,” I said, flatly. “Absolutely not. I’m not involving him.”

  She grimaced. “He’s the only esper familiar to Blackstone, he’s local, and we don’t have the cachet with any cabal to make a request. I’ve already queried Custodes Lux, they don’t have an esper in their ranks, much less one with experience like this.”

  “It’s not a question of whether he’s capable,” I told her, and gave Haval’s face a last look before I zipped the bag. “He’s not... I don’t have the cachet with him that you might think. And even if I did, he’s likely in no condition. You saw what he was like after the Red Valley incident. I can’t drag him into something like this again. Route a request through Custodes Lux, have them find us an esper or someone else sensitive to abyssal magic. Leverage the trade deal, tell them they help us or else, I don’t care.”

  Liana stiffened. “It doesn’t work that way, Tam. And everyone here knows Vance, knows that you could contact him if you wanted. If you don’t at least try, it... won’t look good. Do you understand me?”

  I blinked at her, uncomprehending. “He’d be useless even if he did agree, which he wouldn’t,” I pointed out. “What do you mean to say?”

  She sighed, and came around the gurney to my side, then gently drew me away from it by my arm. “No one is making any accusations,” she prefaced, “but, if you don’t pursue all possible options here... people will wonder if you had something to do with Haval’s death. With him dead and Baz missing, leadership defaults to you and—”

  Before I realized what I was doing, I had two handfuls of her heavy security corps jacket in my hands. My face was so close to h
ers I could feel the buzz of her dragon under her skin as it rose on reflex to the sudden threat. Scales outlined across her face, her eyes flashing red, her pupils briefly slitted. “Say that again,” I growled.

  Liana put her hands on mine, not to remove them but to soothe me. “Tam, calm down,” she whispered with more calm than I was owed. “Of course I don’t believe anything like that, but I can’t control the thoughts of a hundred and fifty dragons and assorted mates, and people will talk. This won’t help that, either.”

  I stowed my anger and slowly let her jacket go. “I’m sorry,” I muttered when she was free and my hands were securely in my pockets. “I... I can’t approach Vance about this, Liana. You don’t know what it was like, those months after. And after what I did, he’ll turn me away, and we’ll both just be hurt all over again. For no good reason.”

  She put a hand on my shoulder. “Believe me, I get it,” she said. “We were all sorry for what happened to him. Everyone knows you did what you had to. But you know he and Haval were close. Him and Baz, too. And if he says no, then at least you’ll have tried. But right now, he’s our fastest option. If this is some abyssal matter... you don’t want what happened to the pups to happen to Baz, Tam. Please. Not just for the weyr. For Baz. For Sophia, and Haval. You’ve got to at least ask. And you’re the only one who can. Whatever’s left between you two... you can set it aside for this.”

  I closed my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose. She was right. I sorely wished she wasn’t. That there was some other way, some other mage who could be here quickly who had the experience to help.