Hands of Flame

Janx had filled the office he kept in the House of Cards, seeming to take the very air from the room even in his human shape. But as a dragon he’d wound and twisted through it, nearly an oroborus out of necessity. In the unconstrained open floor of Cara’s warehouse, he stretched sinuously, making himself long and dangerous. He was the color of burnished flame in the sunlight, deep red and glittering with silvery whiskers that floated about his face with the capricity of Einstein’s hair. Short, powerful legs that ended in gold-tipped talons scraped gouges into the floor as he wriggled himself and leapt forward, crashing into the line of advancing selkies with catlike glee.

The selkies scattered, moving with the beautiful, flowing poise of creatures born to water. Janx whipped his head around, long muzzle turning to a gaping maw, and spit fire after them. The roar of heat and sound came up from below the ringing in Margrit’s ears and reintroduced hearing, something she wasn’t certain she was grateful for. Hands clutched against her head, she stared wide-eyed as Janx lifted his wings. They were long and slender and spiny, and buffeted flame into swirls, sending it after the selkies. As quick as the flame itself, Janx twitched around for a second attack, exhaling fire at the walls. Destructive heat made girders squeal in protest and turned sheeted metal into puddles of silver.

The selkie army came back together, making a target of themselves without faltering in their advance. Janx, to Margrit’s startlement, fell back a step, swinging his head to bowl the nearest handful of warriors over. Flame rumbled after them, but its bulk was concentrated on the pallets and boxes that made up the warehouse’s contents.

Astonishment pulled a crackling sound of disbelief from Margrit’s lungs. When she’d put the question to a quorum of Old Races elders, only Janx had sided with her in supporting the idea that killing another of the Old Races no longer be an exiling offense. She didn’t believe that a fear of exile stayed the dragon’s hand now, but despite his visible advantages over the selkie fighters, he shied away from killing.

Honor among thieves. Margrit had argued extensively with Alban over the dragonlord’s code, but now, watching him, knew she was right. Janx had his own honor, and it stretched so far as to bow to the laws laid down by the Old Races.

A fresh gout of flame blossomed, heat sizzling across the warehouse. Margrit finally shook herself into movement, backing away and stepping through rubble. A thought caught up with her and she turned, squinting through the smoke and heat in search of Chelsea. She, like the other humans, had to have run: there was no sign of her in the chaos. As there should be no sign of Margrit, she realized, and took a breath of overheated air that she hoped would hold her to the street’s comparative safety.

Cool, ash-free air splashed across her face, making her inhale again, sharply, her relief at finding a source of clean air stronger than the confusion as to its source. It whipped around her, gaining speed and direction, then plunged forward to attack Janx as he wound across the warehouse floor between burning pallets and unma

The wind ripped the next breath of flame away from him, increasing its size for the merest moment, then tearing it apart and sending it into nothingness. Margrit gaped and started forward, but the gales pushed her back again. Selkies slid across the floor, as well, shoved away from Janx by the ferocity of an element with its own mind. Smoke and grit, caught by the wind, formed a vortex, shrieking with speed and tearing fragments of material free around the warehouse. Janx clamped his wings against his sides, hissing as he backed away from the attacking wind. Rubble snapped and broke beneath his weight, the pieces snatched up by the tornado as it pressed toward him.

A wall stopped his retreat and the wind’s assault screamed victory. It tilted on its axis as if it were a living thing with intent, an impossible whir of debris and air angling itself to encompass the dragon entirely.

It was a living thing, Margrit realized abruptly. Janx seemed to realize it at the same moment, letting go a bellow of fear-tainted rage. The wind sucked the sound away, whipping around Janx’s head with deadly aim. He slithered farther back, rising onto his hind legs like a cat trapped in a corner, and the shrieking wind followed him. It was too late to transform: the tornado would only snatch up his human form and tear it apart. Margrit vibrated with indecision, too fragile herself to charge into the vortex and rescue the dragon.

The selkies gathered together again, picking their way around torn-up flooring and overturned heavy equipment. The youth who’d spoken upstairs stood at their head, watching without expression as the wind tore and ripped at Janx. He staggered under its onslaught, breathlessness begi

He looked disdainful. “Janx attacked us. This is the cost.”

“You condone murder to protect your work?” Margrit flung the accusation, but turned away before it hit home, recognizing implacability in his eyes. She couldn’t disrupt the whirlwind on her own, even with Daisani’s gift of healing in her blood. She was too small, too delicate, but there had to be something that wasn’t, something she could move.

Her shrill laugh sounded as though it belonged to someone else as she found what she sought, intellect finally catching up to her panicked thoughts.

A handful of seconds later she rode a forklift across the devastated warehouse floor, waving frantically at Janx and bellowing, “Down! Down! Get down!” at the backed-up dragon. Whether he heard her or whether the wind stealing his air had done its job well enough, he slithered down the wall as Margrit crashed the machine into the wall, literally around him. She had enough time to be startled that his sinuous form was slim enough to fit between the lift’s teeth. Then the screaming vortex lost its strength, disrupted by the forklift in its midst and unable to lift its weight.

Like rain pattering around her, bruised and angry dji

There were more than had been gathered upstairs, all men. Most of them wore human clothing, but two were dressed as Malik had been at Daisani’s ball: flowing robes in the colors of sky and desert and blood, Middle Eastern in flavor but somehow distinctly not human in style. A touch more wing to the shoulders or a flow to the line of sleeve; it drew the eye and made it slide away again, as if the edges of cloth were woven with wind, not silk or linen.

Tariq wasn’t among them. Margrit couldn’t lift her gaze to search the warehouse for him, fear holding her in place. Her hands were knotted around the forklift’s controls so tightly her fingers cramped. She hadn’t thought through what to do next: keeping Janx alive had been an endgame, not just one more move on the board.

The need to act further disappeared beneath a peculiarly familiar rasp, and for a distant, bewildered moment it occurred to Margrit that a woman of the twenty-first century shouldn’t so clearly recognize the sound of a sword clearing its scabbard. Maybe enough movies had ground the soft scrape of metal against leather into her mind; whatever it was, she had no doubt of it, and jerked her eyes to find a scimitar drawn and held by a pinch-faced man who looked as though he not only knew how to use the blade, but was eager to do so. She hadn’t even seen that any of them were carrying weapons, and now stared down a curved length of metal with the vivid awareness that it was probably the last thing she’d ever do.

“I would not, if I were you.” Janx’s voice cut through the sound of air imploding around him as he shifted back into his human form. The dji