The Dragon Heir Read online

  “All right. But I can’t stay long.” Grabbing up her clothes from the chair beside her bed, she carried them into the tiny lavatory and locked the door. Shedding her nightgown, she pulled her jeans on, following with a sweatshirt, heavy socks, and her red boots. Armoring herself for the personal battle ahead.

  When she came out, the phone rang, jarringly loud in the quiet inn. Madison ignored it, shrugging on her barn coat and tying a handwoven scarf around her neck.

  “Aren’t you going to get that?” Seph asked, nodding toward the phone.

  “The machine’ll pick up. It’s Mama. She’s the only one besides you who calls me in the middle of the night.”

  The answering machine clicked on. “You’ve reached Maddie Moss. Leave a message.” There was a beep and then her mother’s voice, all husky from cigarettes. “Baby girl, I know you’re there. I need to talk to you. It’s about Grace and John Robert. Pick up the phone!” There was a long pause, and then, “Fine! Go to hell!” And the phone banged down.

  Madison jammed her brimmed hat down on her head. “Let’s go.”

  “Why won’t you talk to her?” Seph asked, as they passed through the dark hallway and descended the stairs.

  Madison put her finger to her lips. “Shhh. I do talk to her. Just not every time she calls.”

  They slipped out the front door, crossed the porch, and turned down Lakeside. It was very cold, despite the proximity of the lake. The snow crunched under their feet like shards of glass.

  “What does she want?” Seph asked. “Your mother, I mean.”

  “She wants me to come home and watch my brother and sister. She needs a babysitter, and—guess what?—she can’t find anyone else who’ll work for free and keep her hours and is available at a moment’s notice.”

  Seph looked at her quizzically. “But you’re in school. She knows that, right?”

  This was so far off Seph’s experience, he couldn’t possibly understand. “She knows that, but she doesn’t specially care. She’d understand if I were studying dental hygiene or computers. But I could do that at the community college at home. As far as she’s concerned, I already know how to paint pretty pictures. I always take the ribbon at the county fair.” Madison shrugged. “She also might need money.”

  “But you don’t make that much,” Seph replied, the understatement of the year. He steered her south on Church Street with a hand on her elbow. She relaxed fractionally. It seemed okay. She couldn’t feel the wizard heat of him through three layers of wool.

  “Mama knows I’m living with Rachel for free. She doesn’t understand that my books cost a hundred and fifty dollars apiece.”

  Madison wanted to change the subject. She wasn’t like Carlene, who was always just about to move to Las Vegas or Paris, France, or join up with a country band, and somehow believed every story she told. Madison wouldn’t pretend she had a different kind of family. She couldn’t pretend that things could ever work out between her and Seph. But that didn’t mean she wanted to talk about it.

  “Where’re we meeting Jason?” Madison asked, knowing nothing was open in Trinity, Ohio, at three in the morning on a Tuesday.

  “St. Catherine’s.”

  Madison missed her step and Seph deftly caught her about the waist. She pulled free quickly, feeling his hot fingers through her coat, feeling the wicked power inside her respond. “We’re meeting him in church in the middle of the night? Who picked that?”

  “Jason did.” Seph shrugged. “I don’t know why, but I guess we’ll find out.” Seph attended Mass at St. Catherine’s regularly. He wore a Celtic cross on a chain around his neck, alongside the dyrne sefa. His Catholic faith was the rock he’d stood upon through a lonely lifetime.

  I wish I believed in something, Madison thought. I wish I belonged somewhere.

  The church stood amid tall trees on a campus that included the Catholic grade school and high school, along with a small cemetery. Seph had keys to the side door of the church.

  The sanctuary was chilly and dark, lit only by the sconces along the walls. The light that usually poured through the great windows was hours away. Madison flinched when something moved in the shadows up by the altar. Two tall figures materialized and came toward them. Jack and Ellen.

  “Jason here yet?” Seph asked.

  They shook their heads. “I hope he gets here soon,” Ellen said. She yawned and sat down in one of the pews, drawing her knees up and pillowing her head on her arms. Unlike most girls her age, Ellen always seemed totally at home in her body. Madison stared down at her own traitorous hands.

  A slice of light spilled into the nave as the side door opened and closed. A ripple of power washed over Madison before the intruder spoke.

  “Friend or foe?” someone whispered. “Weir or Anaweir?”

  It was Jason.

  He came forward into the light, wearing only a leather jacket against the bitter cold. He carried a duffle, and a backpack was slung over one shoulder, a golf bag over the other. He was grinning, that grin that always had an edge to it, as if he didn’t trust the world or himself.

  Power fountained off him with an intensity Madison had never seen in Jason before, contrasting with his travel-beaten, haggard appearance. There were dark circles under his blue eyes, and his face was unevenly stubbled over.

  “How are things in the UK?” Jack asked. “Did you look up any of our old friends from Raven’s Ghyll?”

  Jason’s head snapped up, but then he settled back and sort of smiled. “Nah. Maybe next time.”

  “How’s my father?” Seph asked.

  “Your old man’s all right,” Jason replied, fussing with the buckle on the back pack. “I saw him in London two days ago.”

  “What’s in the bag?” Jack asked, gazing curiously at the golf bag.

  “You’ve got us all intrigued,” Madison drawled.

  “Me most of all.” Nick Snowbeard appeared from behind the altar, leaning heavily on his staff. “Which should be obvious from the fact that I’m here. Old men aren’t used to gadding about in the middle of the night.”

  Madison squinted at Nick, surprised. Seph had said that Snowbeard was maintaining the boundary, yet the old wizard was still able to function. Seph was always visibly distracted, almost impaired, when he was on duty.

  Jason laid the golf bag on the floor and knelt next to it. “First. A present for Ellen.” He unzipped the bag and lifted out a sword in a scabbard, presenting it to her with both hands, reverently, like a courtier to his queen.

  Ellen blinked at him, stunned speechless, as if no one had ever given her a present before. Then she took the sword from Jason and drew it slowly from its scabbard. The blade illuminated the entire nave of the church with blue light. The cross on the hilt blazed brightest of all.

  “Maybe you won’t be able to tell what it can do inside a church, but . . .” Jason’s voice trailed off as Ellen went through a series of stances, her face fierce and focused. The blade hummed as it cut the air, and the candles on the altar guttered and flamed higher than before. Jack stood watching, balanced lightly on the balls of his feet, body tilted forward, eyes following the arc of the sword like a child on the playground who longs to join in the game.

  Finally, Ellen completed the sequence, cheeks flushed, eyes shining. She grinned, allowing the tip of the blade to drift to the floor. Then looked around at the circle of faces, fastening on Jason’s. “Whoa! Really? This is for me?” as if she couldn’t quite believe it. “This is so . . . cool,” she finished lamely.

  “May I see the blade, my dear?” Nick extended his weathered hand. Reluctantly, Ellen passed him the sword. Nick turned it over in his hands, studying the crosspiece, the layered metal blade, the cross emblazoned on the hilt. The old wizard blinked slowly, like a blindsided owl.

  “Where did you get this?” he asked Jason, an unusual edge to his voice.

  “At Raven’s Ghyll. In a cave in Ravenshead, under the Dragon’s Tooth. You know. The Weirstone.”

  Nick frowned
. “In a cave under the Weirstone? I’m quite familiar with the place, and there is no cave there these days.”

  “It opened in an earthquake,” Jason explained. “I guess D’Orsay and the others didn’t know it was there, either.”

  “I daresay.” Nick eyed him keenly for a moment. “The cave is open, is it?”

  “Well. Maybe not. It kind of caved in when I left.”

  Nick took a quick breath, as if he wanted to ask more questions, but instead turned to Ellen. “Has your weapon told you her name?”

  She nodded. “Waymaker,” she whispered, glaring around at the others, as if they might argue.

  “Ah. I thought so.” The old man nodded. “Waymaker, wrought by sorcerers in Dragon’s Ghyll under the rule of the Dragon Aidan Ladhra. One of the seven great blades.” Snowbeard closed his eyes for a long moment, then sighed and opened them and handed the blade back to Ellen. “It’s fitting that Waymaker fight next to Shadowslayer in the hands of the last heirs of the Warrior Guild.”

  “Maybe we’re not the last.” Jack looked uncomfortable at the idea of being the last of a dying breed. “Maybe there are others we don’t know about.”

  “If there are,” Ellen said, strapping on the scabbard and cinching it around her hips, “they can find their own swords.”

  “Wait till you see the rest of this,” Jason said, lifting his backpack onto the front pew and unzipping it. He dumped the contents onto the weathered wood seat and stood back, allowing the others to crowd in. Only Ellen stood aside, caressing Waymaker’s hilt, a distant expression on her face.

  Madison picked through the jewelry. She’d always loved shiny things. There were gold and silver medieval pieces, set with precious and semiprecious stones: brooches and necklaces and bracelets and hair adornments. Her fingers itched to sketch the designs. She gathered her mass of hair into a gold net and set a jewel-encrusted tiara on her head, stuck three rings on each hand, and admired the result. “I always wanted to be a queen,” she said wistfully.

  Queens never had to worry about finding money for tuition and books.

  Her eyes kept straying to the backpack. Jason had set it aside in one of the pews. Something glittered in the back of her mind, a light in the darkness, like a painting she’d not yet splashed onto the canvas.

  Seph had collected a pile of objects in front of him. Some were dull black rocks, totally unimpressive, others were crafted in precious metals, engraved with mysterious designs. Some were mounted on chains or set into jewelry. He sorted through them with his long fingers, turning them to catch the light so he could read the inscriptions on them, murmuring magical words under his breath.

  Jack tried on a pair of gauntlets in a lightweight silver metal, extending his arms to check out the effect.

  “And these all came from the same cave, I assume?” Snowbeard said.

  Jason nodded. “This wasn’t even half of it, but I tried to take the best, as far as I could choose. Hastings told me to bring all this stuff back here and hide it, and not to let anyone know it’s here. That’s why I’m back.” He half-mumbled the last part, like he didn’t want to say it out loud.

  Madison sat down in the pew next to the backpack. It was illuminated, pulsing with magic, and she realized that the power that had seemed to emanate from Jason was really coming from it. Before she knew what she was doing, she’d lifted it onto her lap, cradling it in her arms.

  “Hey!” Jason jerked the backpack out of her hands. “Careful.”

  Madison was mortified. She wasn’t usually a grabby person. “I—I’m sorry. But, you know what? Something’s still in there,” she said. “It’s like ... I don’t know ... important.”

  Suddenly, it was like everybody in the church had stopped talking and focused on them.

  “Is there something else, Jason?” Nick asked into the silence.

  Jason’s face hardened, and his eyes narrowed, like he might refuse to answer. He looked from Nick to Madison, then sighed and groped in the front pocket of his backpack. He brought out a velvet bag embroidered over with symbols in a darker thread. “It’s some kind of sefa,” he said, shrugging. “I . . . ah . . . picked it out for myself.” He handed it to Nick.

  The old man weighed the parcel in his two hands, as if he could discern its essence by touch alone. “This is very old,” he said thoughtfully. “And yet, somehow new. Familiar, yet strange. It has a potential for power that is truly amazing, yet not quite manifest. Something I’ve never encountered before.”

  He opened the bag and drew out a large, slightly ovoid stone. They all gathered around it, like planets around a new sun.

  “Mère de Dieu,” Seph muttered. He always lapsed into French when he got excited. “What is it?”

  “I think it’s called the Dragonheart,” Jason replied, his eyes on the stone.” Then he shut his mouth, as if he’d said too much.

  Nick’s head came up. “The Dragonheart? Really? What makes you think so?”

  “There was a book in the cave. I read some of it. It talked about a stone like this. Called the Dragonheart.”

  “Do you have the book?” Nick asked, his black eyes glittering with interest.

  Jason shook his head. “No, I—ah—lost it on the way out.”

  “What else did it say about the stone?” Nick’s voice had sharpened considerably.

  “I don’t remember exactly,” Jason said sullenly. “Something about taking control of the magical guilds or destroying them. Like it was a weapon or something. I was kind of in a hurry.”

  “That’s a pity.” Nick stroked the surface of the stone with a wrinkled finger. “Even here in church, you can feel it.” The glow from the stone lit the wizard’s face, accentuating the lines of age so that he looked like the oldest of prophets. “Madison is right. This is important.”

  “I don’t know about important,” Jason said, clearly worried that his prize might be confiscated. “But I thought it looked cool.” He pulled out a dangerous-looking metal stand, all sharp edges and sinuous monsters. “This came with it.”

  Madison was fascinated by the stone in Nick’s hands. Broad flashes of blue and green surfaced as he turned it, like the scales of some brilliantly colored fish surfacing in an exotic tropical sea.

  Not that she’d ever seen an exotic tropical sea.

  It was more than her usual fascination with shiny things. She was always conscious of the presence of power, drawn to it, in fact, but this beat against her senses and clamored in her ears, impossible to ignore.

  Ambushed by a rush of desire, Madison reached out a finger toward the stone. The stone kindled, illuminating the entire church, and a small tongue of flame erupted from the center to lick the surface, as if seeking a connection. She jerked back her hand without making contact and retreated a step, gripping the side of the pew to steady herself.

  No. No more. She was done with that. She drew a shaky breath and looked up to see Jason watching her.

  “You okay?” he asked, laying a proprietary hand on the stone. Madison nodded mutely.

  “I would like to study these objects,” Nick said, frowning. “It would help if Mercedes Foster could take a look at them, as well, since they’re the work of sorcerers, for the most part. Though the more people who know about this, the more difficult it will be to keep it a secret.”

  Jason nodded. “Hastings said to hide this stuff somewhere secure. So I thought of the church, because—you know— churches suppress magic. Maybe these things wouldn’t be so obvious to someone who’s looking for them. Seph belongs here, and has a key, so he could go in and out pretty easy.”

  “Why? Is someone after you?” Madison asked, trying to shake off the influence of the stone. “Does anyone know about this?”

  Jason looked away from her. “As far as I know, I got away clean.” Something told Madison he was lying.

  “But there are people in here all the time,” Ellen objected. “What if we need to get to . . . get to these things, and a Mass is going on? Besides, where would we hide
it? We can’t just shove it under a pew.”

  “There’s the mourner’s chapel,” Seph suggested. “People don’t go in there unless there’s a funeral, and not a lot for that, since it’s tiny. It’s downstairs, next to the crypt. And there’s a secret entrance.”

  “There’s dead people in this church?” Madison shivered. She preferred that bodies be buried out in the churchyard, so their spirits could roam free if they liked.

  Seph nodded. “It was built by the Presbyterians, but it was taken over by European Catholics more than a hundred and fifty years ago. They liked to be buried out of the weather, I guess. Come on. Bring the stuff. I’ll show you.”

  Seph led them through a doorway at the front of the sanctuary and down a narrow, dimly lit flight of stairs.

  The crypt lay on one side of the stairs, the chapel on the other. The chapel was just big enough for a family to gather privately. At one end a stone was set into the wall, engraved with the name and dates for one JAMES MCALISTER 1795 TO 1860.

  “Seems like a strange resting place for a Presbyterian, but McAlister was also one of the region’s leading abolitionists,” Seph said. “Watch.”

  He pushed the stone and it pivoted silently on an invisible hinge, revealing a rough opening the width of a man’s shoulders. Air whistled through, bringing with it the scent of water and stone.

  “This was a station on the Underground Railway. There’s a tunnel that runs all the way to the lake. Escaped slaves would hide in the church basement, then meet boats on the shore and travel across to Canada. Not fun to crawl through, these days. If ever.”

  The crypt housed several rooms lined with vaults, most of them occupied for more than a century. Jack walked down the row, scanning the names on the vaults in a businesslike fashion until he came to the one he was looking for. “Here we go,” he murmured, pointing at an inscription. “Perfect.”

  Madison peered around him to read, J. THOMAS SWIFT, ESQ. There were no dates.

  “Who’s that?” she asked.