Page 99

Kit looked back, not out of any great courage, or indeed, any emotion at all. It felt like his mind had just blanked whilst staring into that great face. One with a maw large enough to swallow him whole, like Jonah with the whale.

Kit had never thought much of that story, but he was revising his opinion now. Especially when one thought finally did manage to override the buzzing noise that had taken over his thoughts, like a great swarm of bees. Gillian; it could swallow Gillian as well.

Which was when Kit Marlowe, who had spent most of his life in trouble for acting before he leapt, took his greatest leap of all—right at the monster who was threatening his companion. “Run!” he screamed at her as the great beast reared back, with a master vampire clinging to its face, and wrapped around the huge maw to keep it shut. “Flee for your life!”

Gillian did not flee. He could tell because she was suddenly yelling things he couldn’t understand over the rush of air about the great wings, and the violent shaking that the beast was doing to try to throw him off.

“Go!” Kit yelled. “I can’t hold him!”

This was undoubtedly true. He was using everything, every scrap of energy he possessed, just to hang on, but it wasn’t going to be enough. Most master vampires could pull added power from family, from the many servants they had made throughout their long lives, the people they called their Children.

But Kit had no Children, having not had time to make any, and thus had no one to back him up.

“Well, save one,” he thought, his heart sinking, as his Lady’s voice suddenly resonated through his head.

“What are you doing?”

Kit thought that was fairly obvious. He was clinging to a giant dragon’s head over a staggeringly long drop, whilst it did its best to throw him off. And its best was rather good.

Especially when there was nothing really to hold onto.

He could feel his fingers slipping on the perfection of those scales, his legs sliding, his grip on the beast loosening. But there was nothing he could do about it. And neither could she, since he was in Faerie!

“A place you did not have permission to go,” she pointed out mildly.

He could see her now, no longer on her throne, but in one of the deep pools she kept in the basement of her palace, where she took hours-long baths. He didn’t know if she simply liked being clean, or if it was for her skin. Which did tend to turn a bit scaley—

“Impertinent child,” she murmured, folding her arms on the side of the great bath and regarding him through the steam.

And then she said something else, but not to Kit. And not in English, or any language he had ever heard. And since coming into her service, he had heard quite a few.

But this one didn’t originate on Earth, something he felt in his bones. And on his tongue as it spilled out of him, in long, liquid syllables that were unrushed despite the fact that he only had seconds left to live. And which had an immediate effect on his captive.

The great head stopped shaking. The huge eyes, black as sin and with an alarming intelligence behind them, narrowed. And then fixed on Kit the way that a human might have regarded an impertinent insect that had had the temerity to land on his nose.

Kit briefly wondered if, like that annoyed human, a hand would be next, to smack him off. And it did not help his panic when he felt one closing around him. It was also larger than he was, because nothing about this creature was small!

It could have flicked him away or closed its grip, ending him in an instant.

But it did neither, preferring to bring him up to one of the massive eyes, instead.

“I speak the witches’ tongue,” it said, the force of its over-hot breath scorching Kit as it flowed past. “For we have long known that they walk these mountains, communing with the old ones under our protection. But I am surprised to find that you speak mine.”

Kit stared back at him, trying to twist his mind around two concepts at once. The first, and most obvious being that the creature . . . was talking . . . which was enough to have caused him to pass out if he was still able to do that. And second, that he did not, most emphatically, speak its language.

But his Lady did. And the richness of the visuals she was sending him through their link suddenly ramped up a thousandfold.

Kit normally saw her hazily, like through the drifting wisps of steam in her bath. He could see them now, too, but there was nothing hazy about them this time. They were almost tangible, with soft brushes against his skin, like the drops of water rolling down the olive expanse of her shoulders, which reflected his startled face.

He didn’t know how she was doing this, or why, and didn’t have a chance to ask before she started speaking again.

“I found your language to be of such surpassing beauty, that I could not but strive to learn a little for myself,” she said, pushing off from the side of the pool to luxuriate in the water. “You are kind to say that I speak it, however. I am but a learner.”

“Your tongue is certainly practiced for one so young,” the creature said, huffing out a laugh that almost set Kit’s hair on fire.

“I like to think so,” she said. “But not so young.”

And with her words, a great wash of images from a multitude of centuries flowed through Kit and apparently into the dragon, because its eyes widened.