Hands of Flame

“Ours?” Daisani asked in astonishment. “Ours both?” He looked back at the twins. Ursula lifted a shoulder and let it fall.

“Chimera, Janx called us. Children of two races, but not three. I’m all vampire. Kate’s all dragon. I think if we were anything less, we wouldn’t be able to do what we do.” She kept staring at Daisani, eating him with her gaze, though neither of them moved any closer to the other.

“The selkies said half-blood children are full heirs to their Old Races gifts,” Margrit recalled. “What would happen if a dragon and a vampire had a child?”

Daisani turned a dangerous look on her, so quelling that goose bumps rose on her arms. Bewildered, she gaped at him, and some of the warning in his gaze faded. He looked back toward Ursula, leaving Margrit to wonder what bit of precious knowledge she’d come so close to treading on. A quick glance at Alban garnered no evident answers: the gargoyle lifted his eyebrows in as much question as she had, then dropped a wink that promised they would explore the question later, together.

“I would like to know you.” Daisani spoke so quietly it almost went unheard under Margrit’s silent conversation with Alban. She glanced back toward the father and daughter, and discovered she recognized the control with which Daisani held himself. He had stood similarly when Rebecca Knight had been in his arms; he had stood so when he had ordered Margrit to find the man who had murdered Vanessa Gray. He had even, she thought, perhaps stood that way when he’d invited her to dance in a ballroom filled with six sentient races, and it shot an agony of sympathy through Margrit’s heart. Immortality, she had realized only recently, was a lonely business, and to read the vampire’s emotions and vulnerabilities so clearly took her breath away. Inhuman, yes; they were all inhuman, but not at all incomprehensible.

“I’d like that, too,” Ursula finally said. “Mother told us what she could about you, but it’s not the same.”

Something unbent within Daisani, his next breath more easily taken. “No, it’s not. I am honored for the opportunity.”

“Yeah.” Kate tossed her hair and gave the vampire a defiant look. “You should be.”

“Kate,” Alban murmured, and she looked a little abashed.

Janx draped himself over the abandoned chaise lounge and folded his arms behind his head in a soft blur of thin blue smoke. “Lovely as this all is, I’m sure it’s not why you came sneaking to my lair, Eliseo. Why are you here?”

“Ah.” Daisani turned away from the twins with one last glance at Ursula. “My conundrum, yes. I received a phone call a little while ago, Margrit. A call from, if you’ll excuse the colloquialism, the last person on earth I might expect to receive such a thing from.”

A cold fist wrapped around Margrit’s stomach and clenched. She felt her expression turn stricken as guesswork ran ahead of Daisani’s words. “Mother?”

“Indeed. She laid out a conundrum of her own, one dealing with dragons and dji

“Oh my,” all three of the daughters in the room murmured, and Janx’s tenor ran below them with the same phrase. Margrit wrinkled her face as Janx waved a finger at Alban in admonishment. “Really, Stoneheart, you couldn’t possibly have failed to see that coming. Won’t you at least play along?”

“Not until I learn what trouble Rebecca Knight has had that she turns to Eliseo to solve it.” Alban folded his arms over his chest, making his breadth that much more impressive.

Daisani’s lighthearted telling sobered, not because of Alban’s unvoiced threat, but because his focus narrowed on Margrit, a hint of anger coming through. “It wasn’t a bad idea, Miss Knight. Calling on your mother to help lay my empire low. Not that she would agree, which even I could have told you. Even to save her daughter’s life, she wouldn’t act on a promise like that, perhaps especially one made to the dji

“I’ve been dead once. Isn’t that enough?” Margrit passed her own question off with a wave she recognized as having been adopted from the Old Races; from Janx, specifically, she thought. “You could call the playing field even,” she said more quietly and more seriously. “You’re in a position to do that.”

Janx tipped his head, small motion that still managed to be a warning. Margrit fought off a grimace, briefly exasperated with the ancient battle of one-upmanship the two elders had. “I wish you would,” she went on. “Walk away from New York. Let this lifetime go. You’ve got plenty more ahead of you.”

“You’re not answering the question, Miss Knight.”

Margrit made her hands into fists. “Tariq’s happy to backstab you now over a decision you made months ago, a decision that doesn’t have anything to do with him or his people or any deal you made with them. He’s playing my survival off as being a betrayal of your agreeing to my death, and he’s…” She trailed off, finally fully realizing what Daisani had said. “My mother double-crossed a dji

“Really, Margrit, how many times have I told you that your mother is a remarkable woman? I’m sure she doesn’t think of it as double-crossing. I’m sure she considers it to be…survival of the fittest. If she could lie bold-faced to one of the Old Races, then turn around and ask another of us for help, I would say she’s most certainly fit to survive.”

Pride rose up in Margrit as a blush, heating her cheeks and bringing a foolish smile to her face. “Go, Mom. Wow. The best I’ve done is mislead you.”

“Which is fairly remarkable in itself,” Daisani said dryly. “Once more, you’ve failed to answer the question.”

Still riding on a wave of pride, Margrit let the truth out unvarnished. “You should break the deal with the dji

“An honest enemy. One who will report to work Monday morning as expected?”

“Keep your friends close?” Margrit asked with a wince. “I’d like to. I’d actually like to, and part of me is saying if I go to work for you, I have a chance at getting my hands on the right kinds of material to bring you down. I can’t just try like I did tonight and walk away. I have to succeed, because Janx isn’t going to let Tony go on a good try from the home team.”

“Janx?” Daisani wheeled to face the indolent dragon, who looked up with mocking apology.

“I’m afraid she’s right. If she’d like to go to work for you, I’m happy to take the cost out of Detective Pulcella’s hide. Entirely up to you, Margrit, of course.”

“Of course.” Margrit pressed her lips together, arms folded across her chest defensively. “You know, I actually came down here to ask you something, Janx. Something I didn’t think Eliseo would answer.”

“Really.” Janx kicked his legs off the lounge and sat up, fingers laced and interest brightening his eyes. “Whatever could that be?”

“I came to ask about one of his vulnerabilities.” Margrit watched the vampire as she spoke, unconcerned for Janx or his reaction. “I came to ask if you knew what it would mean if I asked him where the bodies are buried.”

Sound erupted around her, a cat’s shriek melded with a whale’s song and all of it accompanied by an explosion of movement vastly unlike anything Margrit had seen from the Old Races before. Daisani seemed to fly apart, a black viscous splash of oil and night, and then came back together again so quickly she doubted she’d even seen the change.

He was in Margrit’s face, and somehow stopped from tearing her apart: Ursula was there, between them, moving as fast as he did. Then Alban, crushing Daisani’s biceps in an unforgiving grip. Janx was on his feet, flexing with eagerness, and Kate crowded in beside Ursula, helping make a barrier.