Light Dragons 02 - The Unbearable Lightness of Dragons

I reassured her, not feeling quite as confident. A lot was riding on my ability to break down the various protective spells that were no doubt covering all entrances to the house.
    “Right.” She consulted her watch. “We’re almost at the zero hour. Everyone ready?”
    There was a murmur of assent.
    “I hope I get to use my Taser,” Cyrene whispered to me as we followed May, who as the official shadow walker, took the lead to watch for any stray guards we hadn’t pinpointed earlier. “I’ve been dying to try it out, but Kostya is just completely unreasonable and won’t let me use it on one of his people.”
    I slid her a quick look, but said nothing other than that if everything went as we planned, we wouldn’t need the Taser.
    May waved us forward. We skulked along the edges of the eerie hedges, my unease not at all lessened by proximity with the hulking black shapes, but the thought of Cyrene at my back with a primed Taser gave me enough peace of mind to get past them to the side of the huge stone house. At the far corner of the house, the shadow of a man could be seen, no doubt one of the guards waiting to be relieved.
    “This is interesting,” Aisling said softly as she paused next to a window.
    “What is?” I asked.
    “That’s a bane.” She pointed at the window, sketching out a shape. “I assumed Drake wouldn’t use them since the dragons need to get in and out of the house daily. But if he ordered up banes on all the entrances . . .”
    “We’re up excrement creek without a flotation device, not to mention a paddle,” Jim finished. “You aren’t thinking of using me for that bane, are you, Ash? Sweetie? Honey? Baby? You wouldn’t do that, would you? ’Cause I just got my coat looking the way I like, and if you go and make me break that bane, it’ll destroy my fabulous form, and—”
    “And you won’t stop bitching about that for months. Yes, we know,” Aisling interrupted, patting the demon dog on its head. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to try to break the bane. Those are three-demon jobbies, and we just don’t have the time. Whoops. Incoming!”
    We ran for the creepy hedge as the staticky sound of a walkie-talkie moved toward the dragon at the corner of the house.
    “We should have about three minutes while they chitchat,” Aisling whispered.
    “This way.” May melted into the darkness, with us following in a line. We went around the side to the back of the house, thick with shadows since the moon was behind clouds.
    “No bane on this one,” Aisling said softly. “This is it, ladies.”
    May and Cyrene held penlights as Aisling, muttering to herself, rolled up her sleeves and wrestled with the ward that had been drawn on the window to keep people from using it. After some words I felt were best ignored, she finally stood back, panting. “OK. Your turn, Ysolde. I can’t do anything with the malediction, so it’s all yours.”
    “What’s a malediction?” Cyrene asked her twin as I reached out with both hands to touch the powerful spell woven into the surface of the window.
    “It’s like a bane, but uses dark magic as its source of power,” May answered.
    “But Ysolde doesn’t have dark powers, does she? Why can she break it?”
    “I can’t,” I said, trying to calm my mind and focus my attention on the feel of the malediction. “But arcane magic has much power against dark magic, and it can be used to break down dark spells. I think I have it, but just for safety’s sake, everyone should probably stand back.”
    “Two minutes, thirty seconds,” May said, glancing at her watch.
    All three women moved backward into the deep shadows, leaving Jim standing next to me.
    I glanced down at it.
    “Never seen a malediction broken,” it answered my unasked question. “Besides, it’s not like you can turn me into a rabbit. I’m a demon. We don’t polymorph easily.”
    It had a point. I closed my eyes, the feel of the malediction making my fingertips numb as I searched for the spot in my mind that would let me draw power from everything around me.
    It wasn’t there.
    “One minute, forty seconds,” May’s voice reached me from the blackness. “You should probably hurry, Ysolde.”
    I shook out my hands, refocusing my attention. I could do this. I tried to hold a picture in my mind of the arcane magic, glowing bluish white, of the sensation of joy that manipulating it gave me. I tried to remember what it felt like to cast a spell and watch it succeed,