“Drake.” Mick snarled the word as he pushed me forcefully to him. “Protect her.”
He swung away from us and began running, making for the widest part of the clearing. I started after him, but Drake’s hand, wickedly strong, jerked me back.
“It’s his fight, Janet,” he said in a low voice. “And he’s highly trained.”
Mick had vanished behind a cloud of darkness and now rose as a dragon, black shot with red, like his aura. The other two dragons hadn’t attacked before Mick could change—they’d never dream of besting him unfairly.
Dragons, Mick had once told me, were all about honor. Me, they’d crush into a smear and not care. But then, I wasn’t dragon.
Is this what had happened while I’d waited, ignorant and worried, in the lakeside motel room, for Mick’s return? Had he fought two members of the Dragon Council and won his way free of them? Dragon issues were so strange that maybe he had to go through this fight before they’d agree that I was under Mick’s parole.
Why didn’t that feel right?
The black dragon and the white hit the air then split left and right to flank Mick and dive at him from two sides. Hot air pumped over Drake and me on the ground as fireballs shot out of all three dragons at once.
I gathered my strength. The storm on the edges of the mountains crackled pleasantly with electricity, and I drew all of it into me.
In this space and time, I hadn’t been in control of my magics. But the Janet who was dreaming had worked very hard in the ensuing years to conquer them.
I’d also learned how to touch the Beneath magic in me. Here, far from any vortex that contained my mother, I could draw on it without fear of awakening her. I balled my fists, reaching for the power Mick and others had taught me to tame.
I found it, the Beneath magic raw and waiting, gleefully willing me to bring it forth. I wrapped my senses around the storm, gathered lightning in my fingers, and wrapped it around a ball of Beneath magic.
Drake’s hand clamped down on my shoulder. “Janet, no! Let it play out.”
“Are you kidding me?” My fingers danced with fire, and I jerked from him. “They’ll kill him. Why don’t you help him?”
“Because I can’t.” Drake’s jaw tightened, and I saw anguish in his eyes. “This is the way it happened. We have to let it.”
I stared at him in sudden shock. I’d been so distracted with worry for Mick that I missed how Drake had been acting since I’d run up to them. Not as though he’d never seen me before and believed me evil incarnate, but as though he already knew me. He’d called me by name and had given Mick tacit agreement to keep me safe while the three dragons battled it out.
But this was my dream—my dream of the past. Drake hadn’t known me a this time. He’d only met me when Bancroft kidnapped me and locked me in the dragon compound a year ago. At that time, both Bancroft and Drake had been convinced that I’d been born to end the world.
Why did he act as though he knew me now?
I narrowed my eyes. “You burned down my saloon.”
Drake switched his dark gaze to me, his brows shooting together. “I paid to have it rebuilt. And you should not know that.”
“I do know that. You do it six years from this time. I’m dreaming this … I think.”
“No, this is my dream,” Drake said. “My memories of this night.”
I stared at him again. “Well, this is a hell of a thing.”
“Anything can happen in a dream,” Drake said, looking stubborn. “Because you talk of a shared experience in our future does not mean I am not dreaming. Dreams can juxtapose many things, past and present, memories and wishes, hopes and fears.”
“You studied psychology in college, did you?” I asked testily. “I’m beginning to think this isn’t a shared dream, but an alternate reality.”
“There is no such thing as an alternate reality,” Drake countered.
“Actually, the idea of multiple universes is studied seriously in quantum physics. So Mick tells me. But that’s not what I mean. This is magic. I suspect Emmett has something to do with it.”
Drake’s unease and determination that this was nothing but a dream vanished in a wash of rage.
“Smith? This is his doing?” His eyes flashed fire, his fists balling. The dragon wing tatts on his back moved restlessly up his shoulders.
“I think so,” I said. “I don’t know anyone else who could do a spell this hefty.”
Drake’s fury didn’t die, but his voice calmed slightly. “To what end?”
“To kill me and Mick and steal my mirror.”