Light Dragons 02 - The Unbearable Lightness of Dragons

terms.”
    “What?” both Baltic and Constantine asked at the same time.
    “The First Dragon is bound to not like it, and frankly, I’ve had enough of being in his bad graces.”
    “Now you will die!” Curly said with a dramatic flourish of his gun at me.
    “Hi-ya!” My best Xena, Warrior Princess shout was the answer to that threat. I flung a huge ball of arcane power at Curly just as he was about to riddle me with bullets. He saw it coming, though, and ducked so it zoomed past him and hit Larry dead-on, causing a huge flash of light to temporarily blind everyone.
    “What the—what was that?”
    I shook the dazzle from my eyes and saw Maura stagger to her feet, rubbing her face.
    As the dragon fire raged around us, now more or less a small forest fire, everyone stood stunned by the blast of arcane light, staring at the spot where Larry had moments before stood. In his place was a two-foot-tall rock, an odd line of runes carved in a circle around the circumference.
    With synchronization that would make Olympic swimmers envious, everyone turned to look at me.
    “Er . . .” I said, eyeing the rock.
    Curly screamed a profanity and jumped over Baltic toward me. Constantine shouted something about saving me, but his form shivered and faded to nothing, leaving him profaning the air with a litany of oaths. I tossed out a few quick attempts to dampen the dragon fire that was consuming the forest around us, but couldn’t risk losing my concentration. In a contest between Baltic and the forest, the forest was bound to lose.
    Baltic grabbed Curly by the tail and with a massive effort flipped him over backward, sending him crashing into Larry the rock.
    “No! Stop it, all of you!” Maura shouted, waving her hands in the air. “This isn’t what we’re supposed to do! We’re just going to hold you for ransom, that’s all. There’s no shooting! I distinctly said ‘no shooting’ at the planning meeting.”
    Baltic flung himself on Curly, twisting his head with a bone-crunching noise that left me wanting to retch. Moe jumped onto his back, but Baltic knocked him backward, toward me.
    Maura limped forward, her gun raised.
    “You messed with the wrong wyvern’s mate, lady,” I snarled, gathering up another ball of arcane magic, but before I could fling it at her, Moe lunged sideways and kicked out with one leg, sending me flying into a rock. My head connected with an audible thunk that was almost as painful to hear as it was to feel.
    Baltic screamed my name and shifted to human form in midleap as he ran to my side, pulling me up against his chest. “Ysolde! My love, are you hurt? Do not move. I will get a healer.”
    “They’re getting away,” Constantine’s voice informed us. “You go after them, Baltic. I will stay and attend to Ysolde.”
    “I’m sorry,” Maura said, gesturing with the gun. “This isn’t what was supposed to happen. We were going to kidnap you, Ysolde, that’s all. I had no idea she had other plans. I really am sorry.”
    Baltic carefully felt my neck and the back of my head, his hands coming away red as I woozily tried to sit up. “Maura, you have to listen to me—”
    “I’m sorry,” she said again, then with one last distraught look, turned on her heel and fled after Moe and Curly.
    Two Baltics weaved before my face, the flickering fire casting a reddish orange glow to his skin, but even woozy as I was, I could see the concern in his darkly mysterious eyes. “You’re never going to let me hear the end of this, are you?” I asked him.
    “Never,” he swore, and kissed me.

Chapter Eighteen
    I t took a good half hour for Baltic and me to put out the fire that, sadly, consumed a quarter of the woods. Luckily, the firemen who arrived to assist weren’t wild about entering a forest that had long been known to be cursed, so they and the curious bystanders remained on the fringes, soaking nearby buildings lest the fire jump to them.
    My head ached by the time we got the last of the fire tamped down to nothing, and it was with great relief that I sank onto the rocky mound that marked the opening to Baltic’s lair. “I’ve never known your dragon fire to get out of control like that.”
    “It doesn’t. It was your arcane power that fed the fire into an inferno,” Baltic told me, pulling out a flask from a small pack and handing it to me. I took a swig of it, relishing the fire of the dragon’s blood wine as it coursed down my throat.
    “Oh. I guess that was the