Damnit. It had been a long shot that I’d be able to fake having read the book, but I hadn’t thought that he’d be this pissed off that I’d tricked him.
I held my hands up. “Okay, okay, Solus. I’m sorry. But you have to understand why I did it.”
“No, actually, I don’t understand. We had an agreement and you went back on your word. You seem to have forgotten that I still have your old lady with me. What do you think is going to happen to her now?”
Err…what? Alarm bells began to screech painfully in my ear. “What? What the hell are you on about? That’s completely separate to this. You promised that in return for finding out what I was that you’d keep her safe. That’s not changed, Solus.”
“You bitch! It’s all changed. Did you give me that book just because you thought I wouldn’t read it? That I wouldn’t be smart enough to work it out? Because you, lady, have seriously underestimated the Fae if you did. I might be Seelie, but, believe me, I can hold my own. And there are plenty of people and creatures out there who’ve crossed me in the past who have lived to regret it. Now you’re going to join their ranks.”
He lashed out with one hand, catching me across the side of my cheekbone. It hurt like hell, but I knew that if I fought back now everything would be lost. And I knew that something wasn’t right here.
“Solus, I have never lied to you.” I looked up at him, pleadingly, begging him silently to calm down and start paying attention to what was really going on in front of him. Namely that there was something in the book that had made him go all psycho and that I didn’t know what it was.
“What are you?” he demanded.
“What do you mean? I’m me, Mack. Draco Wyr. We met up in Scotland, remember? I have freaky blood that does strange things.”
“Except,” he said grimly, “you are not Draco Wyr. And that means that you are something else. Daemon, hybrid mage, whatever. So tell me what you really are, and I might be merciful.”
I stared at him in shock, reading the absolute truth of what he was saying in his eyes. I wasn’t Draco Wyr? I didn’t have the blood of thousands of years of dragon heritage running through my veins? I sank down onto to the ground. But it had made so much sense. The bloodfire, the crazy green flames, the bad temper. If that wasn’t what I was, then what the fuck was I? Why had John thought that’s what I was? I rocked back and looked back up at Solus.
“How..?” I cleared my throat and found my voice. “How do you know that?”
He put his hands on his hips. I saw a dawning realisation flit across eyes. “You don’t know,” he said, more calm this time.
“Know what, Solus? Tell me what this is all about.” I got back to my feet and drew myself up, looking him in the eye.
“Did you read the book?” he asked suspiciously.
“No, well, yes, I mean, I read some of it.”
“How much?”
“The first chapter. It’s not easy translating those bloody runes, you know! Now, tell me, please, what did it say?”
He blinked slowly then looked away, giving a short sharp laugh. “I should have realised. You thought that you could give me the book and translate it for you. You pretended at the party that you’d already read it. I just assumed that you could read Fae already. Another one of the many strings to your bow, dragonlette.” He shook his head sadly. “Except now I can’t call you that anymore because it’s not true.”
“Solus,” I pleaded, “tell me what it said. I’m sorry I made it seem like I’d read it. I didn’t actually lie outright. I didn’t say that I had actually read it. You just assumed it. But, please, why am I not a Draco Wyr? I have to know.”
He gestured at my shoulder. “Because you’re not marked,” he said softly. “All of the Draco Wyr have a mark on their shoulder. A claw mark. Apparently it’s some kind of throwback to the original dragon who was transformed into a human.”
“Yes, yes,” I said impatiently. “I read that part. But some warrior called Bolox fought him and eventually killed him.”
“Not before he gouged out a chunk from Bolox’s shoulder. And the dragon, who by all accounts had some winning ways with the ladies and had managed to impregnate at least a few of them, did something as he was dying. So that every single one of his offspring and their offspring and all the begetting and begatting that followed and all those resulting offspring had something in common.”
“What?” I demanded.
“A mark. An eternal reminder on their shoulders of Bolox and the fact that he dared to kill great-great-great-great grand-daddy. A claw mark to mirror where the dragon had managed to fight back. And,” he pointed back towards me, “you don’t have one.”
I gazed pointlessly down at what I already knew to be my unblemished shoulder. “Are you sure? I mean, is it definite? It’s not just some old story?”
“It’s true. It rings true at least and there is no cause to doubt it. You are not of the Draco Wyr.”
“I’m not a dragon,” I whispered. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I lifted my eyes back up to Solus. “But my blood and the stuff it does…”
“Means that you are something else entirely. Something powerful and something probably not very good.” His voice took on a hard edge. “All deals are off. I will give you credit for not actually lying so your Mrs. Alcoon shall remain untouched. I will keep that side of my bargain even if the information I received in return wasn’t true. But as we don’t know what you are any more, and as you might be something infinitely more dangerous than I can even possibly conceive, then I have no choice but to inform the Summer Queen about your existence. She will know what to do.”
I stared at him, my tongue cleaved to the roof of my mouth. I had no words, nothing any more to fight back with. Everything over the last year suddenly felt like it had been a lie. What if he was right? What if I was something dangerous? Perhaps that was why I kept getting so angry. One day I’d suddenly explode and go on some kind of terrifying rampage, destroying everything in my path. At least I’d had some kind of answer as to my heritage when I had thought I was Draco Wyr, even if I had next to no real details. Now I had nothing.
“I’m sorry, Mackenzie,” Solus bowed formally and then, once again, vanished.
When I lurched back through the portal again, collapsing to the side to retch up nothing but yellow bile, my mind was so awash with Solus’ revelations that I didn’t immediately notice the crowd of people out at the front. All I was thinking about was what I was going to do next and what on earth I could possibly be. I knew there was no way that I was truly human. Bloodfire aside, my tricklings of magical power proved otherwise. Then I touched the necklace at my throat and began to wonder otherwise. There had been no evidence that I could do anything magical at all until Mrs. Alcoon’s so-called friend, Maggie May, had placed the heavy chain around my neck. What if it was only the necklace that gave me the power in the first place? I’d had no luck in taking it off myself but I pondered the very real possibility that the green fire and the weak inveniora that I’d recently been manifesting were nothing other than traces of the necklace’s power, not my own personal power. I thought about what else I could do. Hear an alpha’s Voice. Initiate my own Voice to Corrigan. And to nobody else, I reminded myself. What if that was some odd offshoot of growing up with shifters that had made that happen? As far as I was aware, there had been no other human in history that had spent their formative years with a pack, so I had no other evidence from which to draw on.
I suddenly smiled. It could just be that after everything, then maybe I actually was human. If I could prove it, then the mages would have to release me from my oath and they’d have to remove the stasis spell from Mrs. Alcoon. And I could forget the Otherworld had ever existed. Then I remembered the strange stuff my physical blood actually achieved and the smile disappeared. I’d broken through a faerie ring. I’d also used it to snap a spell around a mage’s cage to free myself from them. Even more recently, it had helped me open up the vampires’ stupid glass display cabinet. Fuck. No, I wasn’t human. My teeth worried at my bottom lip. What if I was, as Solus suggested, some kind of daemon?
The growing ire in the voices to my left snapped me out of my reverie. Glancing over, I was stunned to see a group of mages, most of them black-robed, clustered around, and virtually all of them with flickering blue flames sprouting from their hands. I scrambled to my feet; what the hell had them so pent up and ready to attack? As soon as I standing and tall enough to see, I realised.
Stood in front of the mages were three vampires, recognisable immediately from their pale skin and lean builds, along with the fact that one of them was clearly my old pal, Aubrey. He was holding something in his hands and arguing loudly.
“You did something to it. Put some kind of spell on it because you thought you’d play a joke on us. Well, the joke’s on you. Now it’s yours and you can deal with the wraith yourselves.” He threw the object at the feet of the crowd of mages who, almost as one, sprang backwards. With a note of pride, I saw that Alex and Thomas were virtually the only ones standing their ground.
“We did nothing to it. You brought this on your own heads by stealing it from the wraith in the first place. The Palladium is no longer our responsibility.” Alex’s voice was calm, but I could definitely detect an edge of stress underlying it.
The Dean pushed forward. “You can take your piece of wood, and yourselves and get the hell off our land.”
Aubrey licked his lips, red eyes flashing. “Oh, don’t worry. I will, as you say, get the hell off your pitiful little school’s grounds. But you can keep the piece of wood. We no longer want it.”
I felt hot ire flicker inside me. How dare he think that just because Tryyl was causing him a few problems, he could dump the bloody Palladium back here? There was no way I was going to let this one slide by. I walked up to the group.