Page 1 of Bound By Fire and Magic
1
Who in Dragon’s fire was calling at six on a Sunday morning? Kirin Slade fumbled for his cell phone and squinted at the screen. His twin sister.
The word “Yeah?” scratched out of his throat.
“You have to come home,” Lyra said without preamble. “Pop’s gone.”
“Oh, is there a celebration then?”
“Kirin! I don’t mean he’s run off to the Bahamas. He’s been missing for two days, and it’s not some midlife crisis. He would never abandon me to run the bakery by myself, and his bedroom is a wreck, like there was a fight.”
“Or the famous Stein temper.”
“But you know his pattern; lose it, clean it up, and pretend it never happened, not leave a mess and disappear. And the rest of the house is okay, so it’s not a robbery. Whatever happened, it was about him.”
Kirin sat up and rubbed his face, his brain assembling the facts and implications. Though honestly, he was more worried about his twin’s concern than his pop. “How was he acting before he went missing? Did he seem stressed, depressed?”
“Pop hasn’t been the same since, well, you know…”
Oh, no, he wasn’t going to let her off that easily. “Since he had an affair with my girlfriend’s mother, who then disappeared?” Fury rushed through him. “Is that what you mean?”
“Pop had nothing to do with that, and you know it.”
“I knew it when I lied to the Guard and the Mundane police. I remembered how Uncle Louie was executed over circumstantial evidence. But you know Pop was hiding something. After everything we did for him, everything I lost, we deserved to know what it was. He wouldn’t even admit to the affair.”
“I think it happened the way he said, that Tara came to tell him she was happy about you and Ellie being together even if her butthead of a Deuce husband wasn’t. How they became friends because she liked having a connection with another Dragon. Men and women can be just friends.”
“What, you read that on the internet? Believe what you want. I’m not buying it.” He fell back on the bed, his forearm over his eyes to block out the light streaming through the curtains. “He’ll probably be back today.”
“Come home for you, if not for me or Pop. Living away from the Field has to be taking a toll on you. You looked all blah when I came to see you last month.”
Yeah, the downside to harboring the essence of a Dragon god in one’s body was that the essence required the Deus Vis to survive, the god-force that emanated from the mysterious crystal core of the island of their ancestors. Lucifera, the crystal core, had sunk hundreds of years ago in the Bermuda Triangle, but the Deus Vis still radiated enough to affect the electromagnetic energy. The Field of Deus Vis reached into the Miami area in a crescent shape.
“That’s only because I was overdue for my biweekly trip to recharge,” he said.
“Oh.” A pause. “You come down but don’t see me?”
Shoot, he had admitted that, hadn’t he? “I go to the edge of the Field, let my Dragon out, then head right back to Atlanta.”
“I get—sort of—why you wouldn’t want to see Pop. But can’t you forgive me for my part in it?”
Guilt nibbled at him. “I needed a break from my life, Lyra. Do you know how freakin’ cool it is to walk into a store, a restaurant, everywhere, and only see Mundane humans? No having to pretend there’s not an Elemental sitting at the next table flicking peas at me. No whacked-out Dragons waiting around the corner to tear my throat out; no Deuce magick to prickle the hairs at the back of my neck. Getting this contract was a godsend. And the pay is insane.”
He wouldn’t admit to the lack of energy, the drain on his soul, or the hunger to Catalyze into his Dragon. Or how boring having sex with Mundane women was. “When my contract expires, I’ll move back.”
“Your poor Dragon must be withering. Being the badass paintball champion isn’t the same as sparring Dragon to Dragon in the Obsidian room. Getting your pilot’s license will never give you the thrill of being who you really are.”
“Maybe not, but flying is pretty damned cool. Since we can’t fly the real way.” They’d been born after the flying ban in the seventies, which completely sucked. Since the age of satellite imagery and Miami’s population explosion, displays of magick were illegal. The Hidden, which encompassed Crescent magick and other magickal creatures, had to stay just that—hidden. Never let the Mundanes see your magick. “The paintball arena gives me all the predatory thrills I need.”
“I can’t fathom how shooting someone with a blob of paint could even begin to compare to the raw power of your Dragon coursing through you, or body-slamming an opponent and sinking your fangs into their hide.”
Memories of letting his Dragon out in the private room at Cyntag’s dojo tingled through his veins. He rolled out of bed, ambled to the window, and watched the normal world outside. Fall was sniffing at the edge of summer, turning a few leaves dark red and yellow. The beast inside him was drying up like the leaves skittering across the sidewalk on a breeze. “It’s a rush.” Except the statement fell flat.
“Kirin, please. I need you.”
Lyra was rarely vulnerable or needy. No, she usually jumped headlong into everything, taking action without considering the consequences.
His resistance melted. “It takes about eleven hours to drive down there, so I’ll see you late tonight.”
