In all his years he had never heard his dragon hum. A sound midway between a single note sung by a vast choir and a jet engine, it could only be called a hum. It resonated through him as he glanced around.
There was no one in sight. The only evidence of the encounter was the footprints in the sand, now slowly smoothing away under the incoming tide.
He’d gone to the cave to scout before dawn, to limit the possibility of being seen. But he’d only just entered it when he’d felt the urge to check the beach behind him. And that was when he’d seen two people looking on as a tall person struck down a curiously compelling small one. Mikhail had leaped into action, hoping against hope that he hadn’t been too late.
And he hadn’t been. In fact, it seemed that he wasn’t too late for a great many things he’d thought he’d long since missed his chance at.
His dragon’s hum deepened and roughened toward the jet e
ngine end of the spectrum. Our mate is the most important thing in our life now. We must learn how she feels about us!
Of course she is, Mikhail replied. But she is human, and she did not recognize the mate bond for what it is, much less the telepathic link. It would be dishonorable to read her mind without her awareness, much less her consent.
The dragon was silent, but the vast harmonics of the hum harshened down to a subsonic rumble.
Mikhail walked to the barbed wire fence and the signs with gigantic red letters warning off trespassers. He glanced around once more to ensure that no one was watching. As a mythic shifter, he had no need to undress before shifting, but he didn’t want to seem to vanish before some startled human’s eyes. But no one was there. He leaped into the air, transforming into a dragon and becoming invisible in the blink of an eye.
He sailed high over the rusted barbs, then drifted down the rising morning breeze toward the caverns to find the rock fall that had revealed . . . something . . . hidden for uncounted years.
His dragon’s hum intensified. It can wait a little longer. Let’s go find our mate and show her our glory!
Stop right there, Mikhail replied. Consider the humans we have encountered over the years, and the disguises we’ve assumed to protect knowledge of the shifter world. What do you think is going to happen if I knock on her door—which she has not offered to reveal—and tell her that she and I are bonded for the rest of our lives, and by the way, I’m a dragon?
The rumble stopped. The dragon sank down below Mikhail’s consciousness, probably sulking. No, make that definitely sulking. His dragon, usually cool and calm as a winter lake, facing danger with preternatural patience, was as impatient as a . . . a nestling, with his desire to be with their mate now.
Mikhail did not pretend to be good at personal relations with humans. His life had not required him to be. By order of the empress, he had joined together with another dragon and produced a son, a duty to make certain the clan did not dwindle. And then he and his assigned partner had parted on terms of professional good will and gone their separate ways.
But while Mikhail had little to do with humans, that was not true of his son. Fei Zhan was modern in ways that sometimes disconcerted Mikhail—like his dependence on cell phones. Mikhail knew what they were, of course, and had mastered their arcane and ever-changing technicalities with the same precise attention to detail that he had used to master the driving of automobiles. He carried a cell phone, as people could scarcely move in today’s world without one. But he tended to forget its existence until the rare times someone used it to call or text him.
However, Fei Zhan’s modernity might help Mikhail now. His son was currently in Los Angeles, dealing with the clan’s tea business. Mikhail landed on the beach and shifted back to his human self. He took out the cell phone and texted his son the name of his motel and a request to meet. Then, after a moment’s thought, he added, Important, need advice.
And then Mikhail could no longer delay his mission. He made his way inside the cave. It smelled of rotting seaweed and the trash left by negligent humans. As the light dimmed, he checked the entry, extending his senses for the least hint of danger, either physical or supernatural.
He found none. The place was wide open, beckoning him to enter.
That, by itself, seemed a touch suspicious. A trap, perhaps?
Mikhail began to shift to his dragon, but stopped the transformation before he lost his human form. His eyes were always the first to transform. His skin had not even begun to scale when he halted. Holding himself in this stage took energy, but he was used to it. And he’d need his dragon’s sight.
He made his way past old stone walls, pockmarked by seawater over the centuries. Graffiti marked everything within reach of human hands, sloppy images obviously scrawled by drunken teens. He worked his way deeper into the cave until he reached a huge pile of rubble. There the stone wall had cracked spectacularly into a forty foot high crevasse. He sensed a powerful ward there, still strong even though it must have been hiding... whatever it was hiding... for centuries.
The crevasse gave way into what had once been an enclosed room, its entrance now partially blocked by rubble. There was a magical ward barring the entrance, a compulsion that evoked fear and dread, no doubt to keep idle explorers away. But that was no barrier to Mikhail. He scanned carefully, but again sensed no imminent threat.
Mikhail stepped inside and looked around. The cave room appeared to be empty. One stone wall had a large mural full of busy figures. Here and there the paint had been worn away by moisture, revealing even older images beneath. They were mostly obscured, but he could both see and sense that they were ancient.
He turned away from the mural for now. It seemed less important than the fact that he sensed the presence of what he sought, like a single note struck on a crystal. He closed his eyes, hoping to home in on it. But he couldn’t trace it to a location. The presence seemed to be everywhere at once, which was to be expected for a magical treasure.
He could not tell where the object of his quest had been hidden, nor even what its form was. However, that crystalline note was unmistakable. The dragon empress, a seer whose awareness extended over the entire mythic plane, had seen this place in her dreams. But her dreams were symbolic, especially when she sensed objects obscured by time. It was his job to sort through the physical clues to find this treasure, and to guard it until the empress decided what must be done with it.
He stood still, breathing softly. It was rare that emotions such as awe caught him up, after a long life of soaring high above the northern peaks that never saw spring, and over vast golden deserts that seemed as endless as the sea. It seemed that meeting his mate, even for such a frustratingly brief encounter, was already changing him.
He savored the remembered image of Bird’s bright eyes and silver-touched hair, then remembered that he’d summoned his son. And though he was surrounded by darkness, he sensed the sun sliding west. He had spent a long time in the cave.
Mikhail hurried out and emerged into the bright afternoon sun. There he released the iron control and shifted all the way to into a dragon, wrapping light and air and water around himself as a cloak of invisibility to mortal eyes.
He spiraled upward on a slow current of ocean air, his senses stretched out for danger. Finding no signs of threat, he arrowed downward into the little town. With perfect control, he shifted to human form in midair and landed lightly on the balcony of his motel room.
Mikhail leaned on his swordstick and watched the sun sink toward the sea until he sensed what he had been waiting for. His son Fei Zhan could not fly as fast as Mikhail could, being an earth dragon. But he was a good, solid flier. Mikhail watched him soaring above the clouds and then dropping downward, visible only to those who could see the mythic plane.