Kitabı oku: «Royal Enchantment»

Chapter 1

“Is this where you saw the beast?” asked Arthur Pendragon, High King of the Britons, as he slowed the Chevy SUV into the gravel beside a remote highway.

“Yes, about a half hour’s walk off the road.” His passenger was the dark-haired Scottish knight, Sir Gawain. “That’s a wee bit close for comfort.”

They were miles from civilization, but both men knew that meant nothing. A determined monster could find a town and crush it in the matter of an afternoon. Arthur parked and got out, a cold drop of rain making him look up. The October sky was baggy with clouds, promising a downpour.

Sir Gawain slammed the passenger door and walked around the front of the vehicle to stand beside him. The two men gazed toward the wild landscape of the inlet, a forest of cedars to their backs. Arthur glimpsed a distant sliver of water crowned with the ghostly outline of hills. The raw beauty of the place only darkened his mood. “Let’s gear up.”

They pulled weapons from the back of the SUV—swords, guns and knives—and buckled them on. Once armed, Gawain loped toward the forest at a speed that said much about the urgency of their hunt. He’d shrugged a leather jacket over a fleece hoodie and looked more like a local than a knight of Camelot. On the whole, he’d adapted to the twenty-first century with enviable ease.

Arthur followed, his heavy-soled boots sinking into the soft loam. Unlike Gawain, he’d spent his entire life as a king or preparing to be one, and blending in hadn’t been a necessary skill. Until now, anyway. Waking up in the modern world had changed more things than he could count—but not his duty to guard the mortal realms.

As they crossed the swath of scruffy grass between the road and the trees, Arthur saw the tracks. He immediately dropped to one knee. “Blood and thunder,” he cursed softly. The print was enormous, as big as a platter with three clawed toes pointed forward and a fourth behind. “Not to ask the obvious question, but what is a dragon doing in Washington State?”

“What’s Camelot doing here?” Gawain countered with a shrug.

“Are you saying there’s a connection?”

Gawain didn’t answer, and Arthur didn’t blame him. Sometimes there was no easy way to tell enchantment from sheer bad luck. As a case in point, after Merlin had sent the Knights of the Round Table into an enchanted sleep, an entrepreneur had moved the church and its contents—knights included—to the small town of Carlyle, Washington, to form the central feature of the Medievaland Theme Park. Arthur had gone to sleep in the south of England and awakened nearly a thousand years later as part of a tourist attraction in the US of A. After that, a fire-breathing monster hardly surprised him.

Arthur rose, dusting grit and pine needles from his hands. “A dragon can’t cross into the mortal realms on its own. It doesn’t have that kind of magic.”

“Then it had help,” Gawain muttered. “I suspect that’s your connection.”

Arthur shifted uneasily, the wind catching at the long skirts of his heavy leather coat. “So do we have a new enemy or an old one we’ve overlooked?” There were too many choices.

Gawain grabbed his arm in a bruising grip. “There!” He pointed, his hand steady but his face losing color.

Arthur sucked in his breath as a ripple of movement stirred the undergrowth. He reached for the hilt of his sword, Excalibur, but his fingers froze as the beast reared from the shaggy treetops. He was forced to tip his head back, and then tip it more as he looked up into a nightmare. “Bloody hell.”

The dragon’s green head was long and narrow with extravagant whiskers. Huge topaz eyes flared with menace, the slitted pupils widened as the beast caught sight of the two men. The eager expression in that gaze reminded Arthur of a cat spotting a wounded bird.

“I told you it was big,” said Gawain helpfully.

Arthur’s thoughts jammed like a rusted crossbow. The dragon was close enough that he could make out its scent—an odd mix of musk and cinders. Through the screen of trees, he could see a bony ridge of spikes descending from its humped back onto a long muscular tail that twitched with impatience. Or hunger.

“Ideas?” Gawain asked under his breath.

Arthur repressed a desperate urge to run. “Be charming. Maybe it will listen to reason.”

Gawain gave a strangled curse.

“Hello, mortal fleas,” the dragon boomed, its deep voice resonant with unpleasant amusement.

Arthur grasped Excalibur’s hilt and drew the long sword with a hiss. It should have made him feel better, but fewer knights than dragons walked away from a fight. He adopted his most courteous tone. “Sir Dragon, pray tell us what brings you to this realm?”

“Are there only two of you?” The dragon’s tufted ears cupped forward with curiosity as he pointedly ignored Arthur’s question. “What happened to your armies, little king?”

Arthur flinched with annoyance. After transporting Camelot’s resting place to Washington State, Medievaland’s founder had sold off most of the stone knights as a fund-raising effort. As a result, Camelot’s warriors now resided in museums and private collections, and there they would stay until awakened with magic. Counting Arthur, Camelot had exactly eight knights awake out of the one hundred and fifty that had gone into the stone sleep and no one knew where the rest of them were. Arthur was hunting his missing men one by one, but it was slow going.

There was no way he was sharing those details. “I don’t need an army to say that this place offers you no welcome. The mortal realms have forgotten the old ways, and dragons are no more than myths. Not even the fae reveal themselves to the humans here.”

The dragon snorted, twin puffs of smoke curling up from its cavernous nostrils. “And what does this world make of you, High King of the Britons?”

Arthur held Excalibur loosely in one hand, the tip resting between his feet. It was a posture meant to look relaxed, but he was balanced and ready to strike. “To my great sorrow, Camelot is forgotten. I keep my true name to myself.”

Amused, the dragon rumbled with a sound like crashing boulders. “But you still tell me to go? You would risk a thankless death for the ignorant rabble who live here?”

“Yes,” Arthur replied with outward calm.

Like a preening cat, the dragon stroked a huge, taloned forepaw over its whiskers. It looked casual, but Arthur detected something else in the dragon’s manner. Anger or sorrow or even disappointment.

“You amaze me, little king,” said the creature. “Once, your Pendragon forefathers held the deep respect of my kind. Now you can do no more than shoo me away as if I were a stray cat.”

“This time is different.”

“Is that why you left the mistress of your forgotten realm a widow?”

Arthur clenched his jaw. Guinevere. The memory of her made him ache with a mix of fury and regret. “That is not your affair.”

“A shame.” There was a dragonish, smoky sigh. “The minstrels of my world still sing of the Queen of Camelot’s beauty. A dragon would have kept his mate close.”

Arthur ground his teeth. Leaving his queen was the only thing he’d done right in their marriage. Back then, even the image of her delicate face and graceful hands had burned like acid crumbling his bones. He’d desired her so much, and yet they’d been so utterly mismatched. His crown and sword, his title and lands—none of it had meant a thing to her. All she’d wanted was—he wasn’t even certain what she’d wanted. He prayed she’d found happiness in the end.

“Don’t speak of my queen,” Arthur growled, all pretense of civility gone. “I ask you again, dragon, why are you here?”

“Ask me rather what I want.” The dragon arched its neck to angle one huge yellow eye at Arthur.

His words echoed Arthur’s thoughts with almost-sinister precision. “Fine. What do you want?”

“It has been long years since I made humans tremble behind their flimsy doors. I was once a destroyer of cities, a fiery death that rained from the skies. The name of Rukon Shadow Wing was the refrain of minstrels’ songs.”

None that Arthur had heard, but he kept that to himself. “Our cities are not your playthings.”

“They are if I make them so, and this mortal realm is ripe for plucking. My name shall be whispered in terror once again.”

“Humans have weapons far greater than my sword,” Arthur said, his voice hard. “You won’t survive.”

“But there your logic breaks down, little king. You don’t have an army, and by your own admission, modern mortals think me a myth.” The dragon gave a sly smile that was horribly full of teeth. “It will be too late by the time the modern generals gather their wits for an attack.”

“I will stop you.”

“Assuming you could find the men to do so, every accord with the hidden world, including the witches and even the fae, decrees that the magical realm must stay hidden. Breaking that trust means war with the few allies you have left, and you can’t afford that.”

Arthur said nothing. Unfortunately, the creature was right.

The dragon chuckled, smoke rolling from its muzzle. “Poor king. Even if you could convince the human world that I am real, the rules won’t let you say a word. What will you do, I wonder? Stand aside and watch me rampage through the countryside, or try to stop me all by yourself?”

Arthur finally lost his temper, gripping Excalibur’s hilt, but the dragon still wasn’t done.

“That would be the finest song of all,” the beast said with a growling purr. “Rukon Shadow Wing defeating the mighty King of Camelot. You see, at the end of it all, that is what I want the most. The trophy of your head in my lair.”

“I will not play the games of a delusional lizard!” Arthur roared, his gut burning. “I will see you dead first.”

The creature’s gaze flashed. “Foolish and rude. An unfortunate move, little king.” And it bared its scythe-like fangs, saliva dripping from their points.

Arthur heard Gawain’s breath hiss with alarm. His friend had been so still, Arthur had all but forgotten his presence. Now, with quicksilver speed, Gawain drew his gun and fired, grazing the long, weaving neck.

The dragon stretched its head high and snarled. White flame shot toward the sky, the heart of it a blue as pale and clear as gemstones. Terror shot down Arthur’s spine, making his heart pound so hard he barely heard the branches shatter as the dragon crashed through the trees. It was coming toward them at a deliberate jog, tail lashing in its wake.

Gawain and Arthur fell back step by step, keeping just enough distance to avoid the wicked jaws. The creature was perhaps eight feet high at the shoulder, but three times that from nose to tail. The huge head bobbed on the snakelike neck, jaws gaping to show its flickering tongue. But despite the danger, Arthur’s thoughts turned to crystalline calm as he tracked its every motion. This kind of impossible fight was what Arthur of Camelot had trained for.

They reached the grassy ground beyond the trees and used the room to run, drawing the monster into the open. Gawain fired again just as the dragon’s shoulders pushed out of the forest. The weak sunlight shimmered along its scales as it twisted away from the shot, but this time the beast wasn’t so lucky. Chips of scale flew as the bullet hit its side. It was no more than a flesh wound, but the dragon bellowed with fury, the sound so loud it was a physical blow.

The beast bounded forward and snatched up Gawain, quick as a heron plucking fish from the water. The knight’s howl of surprise shut off as the dragon’s jaws clamped around his chest. The gun flew from Gawain’s hand as the long neck reeled him skyward. One burst of flame, and he would be cooked.

Arthur swung Excalibur, his only thought to save his friend. Rukon reared up as Arthur attacked, the long belly flashing creamy white. Arthur lunged for one of the pale gaps between scales. It was a suicidal move, but a man defended his brothers, and a king spilled his blood for them. Arthur felt his blade connect, the shock of the blow jolting his shoulder before he spun away. Blood spilled but Excalibur’s edge did not slide far into the flesh. The beast seemed to be made of iron. Still, Arthur bolted in again, refusing to give up.

The next second Rukon’s whiplike tail whirled through the air, hammering Arthur so hard he flew back into the forest. Branches crackled and clawed at his face, turning the world into a mosaic of green and golden leaves—but not before he saw the dragon toss Gawain into the air with a disgusted flick. Gawain spun, arms outstretched, and dropped into the bushes with a mighty crash.

Arthur scrambled to Gawain’s side, dreading what he would find. Just as Arthur reached him, the dragon roared again, then thrust its head through the trees toward Arthur. He scrabbled for Excalibur, but it wasn’t needed. The dragon simply wanted to mock them now.

“This match goes to me. Have a worthy army waiting for my return, and bring reporters so that they can sing the song of my victory.”

“Reporters?” Arthur repeated the word with confusion. What did a dragon know about the human press?

He didn’t get a reply. With a huff of smoke, the dragon drew its head out of the trees and turned its back to the forest. Then it broke into a thundering run across the grass and unfurled huge leathery wings, each spine tipped with a glittering claw. The wingspan was enormous, blotting out the light. With a thunderous flap, Rukon Shadow Wing sprang into the sky, beating hard until the long, twisting form soared above the wild landscape.

As it rose higher and higher, a bright spiral of light appeared in the clouds. It was no bigger than a coin to Arthur’s sight, but he knew it was a rift into another realm—a doorway no dragon should have been able to create. Rukon dived through it, and the light winked out. The sky was suddenly empty of anything but the coming rain.

Gawain moaned and rolled onto his back. “Did I ever mention dragon breath smells like old barbecue?”

“How badly are you hurt?” Arthur asked, helping Gawain as he struggled to sit up.

The knight paused before answering, as if doing a mental check of his bruises. “Hitting the bushes hurt the worst.” He peered at the sleeve of his leather jacket. The fabric was scarred by the dragon’s fangs, but not torn. For some reason, Rukon had spared him.

Arthur clapped his friend on the shoulder, unable to speak. Relief had closed his throat with a burning ache. They had survived, but he had a feeling their good luck had just run out. Too much didn’t make sense. How was the dragon traveling between realms? Was Rukon really so hungry for glory—for the chance to kill Arthur before the cameras of the human media—that it was willing to risk starting a war with every magical creature that preferred to hide from human eyes? And why hadn’t it butchered Gawain?

“Have you ever heard of Rukon Shadow Wing?” Gawain asked.

“No,” Arthur replied, getting to his feet. “And I’d remember if we’d met.”

Arthur picked up Excalibur and scowled at the blade. The strike against the dragon’s scales had dulled the edge. He slammed the sword back into its scabbard and paced the loamy ground, anger and confusion prickling along his nerves. What was going on and, more to the point, how could he stop it?

Both men jumped when Gawain’s phone rang with the sound of a tiny fanfare. The knight was still sitting on the ground, but he unzipped his pocket and extracted the smartphone in its shockproof case. “Hello?”

Arthur watched his friend’s face pucker in confusion. He knew most of Gawain’s trademark scowls, but this was different. The knight held out the phone with a faintly dazed expression. “It’s your wife.”

The clouds picked that moment to unlock their downpour.