He began to race along the dock, the gollywypper slung over his shoulder. Yutani had slapped a pair of handcuffs on him, so he couldn’t do much damage with his hands, and Kipa was strong enough to keep him in check.

  As we sped up, following Kipa, I kept my focus on the dragons overhead. They were going at it fang and claw, speeding through the air as easily as I had swum through the water. They were playing for keeps, because the blue dragon landed a long rake on the side of the red, and scales and blood began to sputter down through the air to splatter in the parking lot.

  The red dragon let out a roar that almost deafened me. By now people were emerging from nearby buildings to watch in wonder and fear. I could hear sirens in the distance. We were nearly to our car, keeping our eyes on the skies so that we wouldn’t end up as roadkill or caught in a flame strike. Our car wasn’t directly under the pair, but we weren’t far away.

  As we reached the Expedition, there was another loud shriek from above. I glanced up in time to see the blue dragon bite its opponent, catching the front left leg. Blue bit right through the cartilage and bone of Red, severing the leg.

  Red floundered, and blood began to froth out, pouring down in earnest. Another moment, and the massive dragon began to spiral down, slowly at first.

  “Oh crap, it’s going to land on us!” I yelled, yanking open the nearest car door. “Everybody in.”

  We scrambled. Wager and Wendy leaped into the back of the SUV and Kipa tossed the gollywypper on their laps. He then raced around to slide into the second row of seats, along with Raven. Yutani and I slammed shut our doors and he put the SUV in gear. As we peeled back out of the parking slot, turning to the left, the red dragon continued to fall. Yutani slammed on the gas and we lurched forward, peeling rubber as the dragon slammed into the pavement, sending a shockwave to shake the entire lot.

  It let out a massive growl, flailing, as the blue dragon nosedived down, flame raging out of its mouth. We had barely spun out of the way when Blue flamed Red, scorching the fallen dragon all along one side. As the red dragon continued to struggle, we managed to make it to the entrance. The cops were headed in and Yutani waved one of them over, quickly explaining what was going on back there.

  They nodded, waving for us to go, and we were once again back on the street, this time headed home with our captive and one scary-ass memory.

  So dragons were now fighting against dragons. I could only imagine the damage that would ensue if the gods had inadvertently created a civil war. Leaning back against my seat, I closed my eyes, just wanting to be somewhere safe, in a quiet place.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  On the way back to the office, Yutani handed me his phone and asked me to call Herne. “They need to know what’s going on with the dragons—holy crap!” He swerved, skidding left as a long flame strafed the road to our right.

  “Two white dragons after a green one!” Raven stuck her head out the window, then quickly pulled it back in again as one of the whites flew low enough to rock the roof of the Expedition. I glanced up, shocked to see a long claw gash open the metal before the dragon flew up and ahead, chasing down the green with his partner.

  “He’s speed dial 3—hit pound twice, then the number three,” Yutani said, trying to steady the car.

  “One of the cars behind us got hit,” Wendy called up. “Damned white dragon sent it rolling. We should go back and see if they need help.”

  “Damn it,” Yutani mumbled under his breath, making a U-turn in the middle of the road and heading back to the overturned car. He pulled off onto the shoulder as I waited for someone to pick up.

  “Hello?” Herne answered. “What’s going on?”

  “This is Lyrical, Yutani asked me to call. We’ve got trouble here with the dragons. Now that they can attack each other, they’re going to town.” I quickly described what had happened.

  “I’ll meet you at the office,” he said, hanging up.

  I scrambled out of the car. Wendy and Wager stayed in the back to keep a watch on the now-unconscious gollywypper. His leg was wrapped tight but I could see the blood staining the bandage.

  As Yutani, Raven, Kipa, and I ran toward the overturned car, I kept an eye out for more dragons. Thank gods, the ones who had attacked us had moved on. Yutani dropped to his knees beside the car, peering in. I immediately put in a call to 911.

  “Crap, we’ve got kids in the car,” he said. “Kipa, can you help me turn it right side up?”

  They worked together, god and demi-god, managing to set the car back on its tires. I ran around to open the back left door and saw two children inside. They were strapped into booster seats, and both were crying. The adults in the front were silent and I could detect the faint scent of death. I could also smell gas.

  “We have to get the kids out now—the gas is leaking.” I quickly unbuckled the seatbelt holding the little girl in and bundled her in my arms, handing her to Raven. Kipa got the little boy out and handed him to me before going to help Yutani with the two adults. They gently dragged them out of their seats, pulling them away from the car a moment before the gas tank caught fire. We hurried to get everyone away in case it decided to blow, Kipa and Yutani carrying the two adults as Raven and I carried the children.

  We managed to make it to a reasonable distance away before the car actually caught fire. By then, we were hearing sirens coming down the freeway. An ambulance and two fire trucks were headed our way. As we waited, Kipa and Yutani examined the adults. They looked up with sober eyes, both shaking their heads. I glanced at the little boy in my arms. He couldn’t be more than two years old, and his sister seem to be a little older. They were going to grow up without their parents thanks to the dragons.

  The police were following the ambulances, and as the paramedics burst out of their truck, Raven and I handed over the children to them. We moved off to join Kipa and Yutani, who were talking to the cops.

  “It was two white dragons chasing a green. This is the second fight we witnessed between dragons today.” Yutani shrugged. “I have no clue what’s going on.”

  “The dragons have figured out that they are no longer immortal, and this means they can kill each other. What used to keep the peace—their immortality—has now been removed, so any impediments to war between the dragons are gone. A great mass of them took off over the past eight hours, leaving for the Forgotten Kingdom. But a number have stayed, and I think we’re going to have trouble with all of them, even the ones who are more peaceful.” The cop let out a sigh. “Unfortunately, we seem to be living in interesting times.”

  “Well, both parents are dead,” one of the medics said, as he walked up to our group. “The children are okay except for some bumps and bruises, and whatever trauma they’ll retain from this. You said that a dragon rolled their car?”

  Yutani nodded. “Yes, and they tried to do the same to ours except that I didn’t give them the chance to finish. By the way,” he added, “we have the individual who’s been killing the Light Fae.” He thumbed over his shoulder toward our car. “He’s in the back. I’d appreciate it if you take him off our hands so that we can focus on other things.” He held out his arm, showing them the tattoo, which brought an instant recognition to their faces.

  “We can do that. You say that’s our serial killer?”

  Yutani nodded. “Yes, though there may be more of them. They prefer to feed off the energy of Light Fae, but they’ll feed on others too, if they’re hungry enough.”

  The cops hauled him out of the back of her car, noting the gash on his leg. “Who did this?”

  I raised my hand. “He was trying to swim away. I was chasing him and I didn’t want him to get away.”

  “Does she work with you?” The cop nodded at me, asking Yutani.

  “She’s our newest recruit,” Yutani said. “She had no choice if we didn’t want to lose him.”

  “Well, many thanks to you. Do you know if there was only one killer? Or are we still looking for another?”

  “That I can’t tell you.” Yutani glanced overhead. “We should get home. We need to tell Herne and Ember about this.”

  The officer gestured toward our vehicle. “It looks like you took damage as well? Can you still drive it?”

  “Yeah, though it’s not pretty.”

  As we separated, the cops going back to their car, the medics going back to the ambulance, and us back to the Expedition, it occurred to me that we were all in trouble. With the dragons at odds with each other, they wouldn’t stop to think about the human collateral damage that might occur. It reinforced my feelings that we couldn’t trust any of them, even the ones who claimed to be on our side.

  As we drove away, watching the ambulance speed the children to the hospital, I felt an odd wistfulness. We’d never know what happened to those kids. We never find out how they adapted to their loss. There were so many people in this world whose lives we touched, and whose lives we just as quickly walked away from, and all of those people had stories of their own, tragedies and victories, successes and failures. And most of the time we’d never know anything about them. Quite often, even their names.

  As we settled back in the car, I stared at the gash in the ceiling. The claw that had caused it had been sharp enough to slice through the metal. I couldn’t imagine what it would do to bone and flesh and sinew. I looked away, not wanting to think about how easily these creatures could destroy the rest of us. Even when they weren’t immortal, they were dangerous and deadly.

  All the way back to the office, none of us said much of anything.

  By the time we got back to the office, Herne and Morgana were there. There were also a dozen messages from the mayor of Seattle.

  “I’m not sure exactly what happened, but the mayor’s up in arms. Although she did say thank you for catching the cop killer.” Talia raised her eyebrows. “I’ve been watching reports all day about dragons turning on each other. It’s dangerous to be outside right now. Or inside, for that matter. In New Jersey, two dragons who were fighting overhead came tumbling down on a house, killing everybody inside and wounding both dragons severely. Since nobody knows how to heal them, they’re just lying there in the rubble of the house, covering up the corpses of the family while authorities try to figure out what to do about them.”

  Herne rubbed his head, groaning as he slipped into a chair. Morgana paled, following suit.

  “We were almost run off the road by fighting dragons today. And we saw a car overturned and a couple killed, thanks to a dragon fight. By the way, Herne, I’m afraid that the Expedition needs a new roof. One of the dragons ripped a hole in it.

  “The Luminous Warriors are going up against the Celestial Wanderers and the Mountain Dreamers. I guess now that they know they can kill each other, they’re making up for lost time. We also witnessed another dragon attack when we caught the gollywypper.”

  “I don’t think anybody foresaw this. Granted, we know that the Luminous Warriors don’t get along with the other two factions, but I don’t think any of us ever foresaw that the dragons would turn on each other instead of just turning on humans.” Herne leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees as he stared at the floor. “By the way, Eiru spoke to Gaia. The climate shift is real. Gaia’s not happy about climate change and she’s trying to move things back, but she admitted that she may have gone too far the other way. So expect massive shifts in weather. The good news is that she’s used up a tremendous amount of energy and she’s going back to sleep for a while. So we are on our own dealing with the dragons and the weather.”

  “Oh wonderful,” Raven said. “By the way, where’s Ember?”

  “Good to see you too,” Herne said with a smile. “She’s at home. She’s on bed rest for now. Ferosyn said that since she’s carrying triplets, she has to be cautious. I tell you that she’s really unhappy about the bed rest part. Angel’s keeping her company, but Ember’s champing at the bit to help out. I promised I’d tell her what’s going down as soon as I found out. This is just going to make it harder to keep her in check.”

  “Well, you have nobody to blame but yourself. Nobody else planted those babies in her.” Yutani grinned at Herne.

  Herne snorted. “I’m grateful for that. But Ember deserves some of the credit. She decided it would be good to get pregnancy over with all at once. I think she willed those triplets into existence. She’s keen on having children, but not thrilled about the whole process of childbirth and pregnancy.”

  “Back to the dragons,” Viktor said, entering the room. He still looked like he had a bit of a hangover, but he was walking steadily. “I heard what you are talking about while I was in the other office. What the hell are we going to do about corralling all this chaos?”

  “I don’t know,” Herne said. He turned to Morgana. “Do you have any ideas, Mother?”

  Morgana paced as she thought. “Are the dragons afraid of anybody else? And if so, has that changed since they were stripped of their immortality? We need to find who—or what—they fear the most.”

  “Don’t you think it would just be death? They’ve never had to experience that before.” I shrugged. “It makes sense to me.”

  She cocked her head, then shook it. “I don’t think they fully realize what death means. When you never have to deal with it, you lose sight of what it actually entails. I was mortal at one time, so I have a much better comprehension of the reality surrounding death than do the other gods. I think with dragons it’s going to be similar. We need to find someone who can go up against them easily—who can scare them into acting right. If they stay in our world, they can’t just keep terrorizing everyone. Especially if the government’s threatening to use missiles on them.”

  “I guess that’s going to call for research,” Herne said. “Yutani, Wager, Talia—the three of you dive in and see what you can find. Meanwhile, we have to be ready to go if we’re called out on a case where dragons are involved. To that end, Brighid came through. Tomorrow, I’ll be bringing over literally hundreds of ilithiniam arrows. That’s a good first step.”

  “Is there anything I can do?” I asked.

  “Yeah, start practicing with the bow and arrow now. I suggest a handheld crossbow. It’s easier and quicker and you can learn faster on it.”

  As the others began to discuss various ways to take down a dragon, I started to tune them out. What had seemed a simple idea at first—joining the Wild Hunt—now seemed fraught with danger.

  Sure, we had found the gollywypper. That had been a lucky coincidence, in my opinion. If I hadn’t been attacked by him at the store, we might not have figured it out. But I had, and we did. But this—this whole dragon fiasco—was something entirely different. I hadn’t realized how many dragons had entered the world. But when I saw storm after storm of dragons flying by, I realized that they had come out in full force.

  Raven joined me as I stared out the window. The others were discussing various strategies, but it didn’t sound like they were coming to much of a consensus, so I didn’t feel like I was missing valuable information.

  “Are you sorry you came back?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “Not really, although I’ll be happy to move back into my house as long as we’re going to stay here for a while. And I’ll need to bring Raj over.”

  “Raj?”

  “My gargoyle. He’s young, and he was severely injured when he was a baby. A demon cut off his wings. So I put a forget spell on him so that he wouldn’t remember having them and so he wouldn’t miss them. He’s rather childlike. At first I thought it was because he was young. But it’s more than that, Väinämöinen, my mentor, told me. Väinämöinen’s part of the Force Majeure.”

  I knew about the Force Majeure. “And what did he say?”

  “Raj is actually very much a teenager when it comes to his actual age. However, on an intellectual level, he’s the equivalent to about three years old. Maybe four. He’s developmentally disabled and that probably comes from being underfed when the demon first had him. Also, the trauma of having his wings cut off contributed to stunting his abilities. So he’ll always be with me. I don’t think he’ll ever be able to take care of himself. He’s a sweetheart, though, and funny as hell.”

  “Do you have any other pets?” Then, I realized I might have insulted her and Raj. “Not that Raj is a pet. I didn’t mean that.”

  “It’s all right, I know what you meant. No, I don’t have any pets, per se. But I’m the guardian for three ferrets who are human spirits trapped in ferret form thanks to a curse. They’re losing their humanity, though, and I’m desperately trying to find a cure for them. Väinämöinen says he may be able to help, but so far all our attempts have run amok. So I not only take care of Raj but also three ferrets.”

  Her answers startled me in silence. She seemed so young, young enough to almost be jailbait, even though I knew she wasn’t. But when she spoke, she sounded like an adult, fully aware of what her capabilities were and what her place in the world was.

  I glanced over my shoulder at the crowd. “They all seem like good people.”

  “They’re the best you’ll ever find. Don’t ever take your friendships with them for granted, because I’ve been alone before. And I know how good it feels to have someone to talk to, to discuss subjects that nobody else would understand. Just hang in there, and they’ll all be here for you. Including Kipa and me.”

  I nodded, a smile on my lips. I started to thank her but she shook her head.

  “I’m serious. Don’t ever forget we’re just a phone call away.”

  As she rejoined the others, I looked out the window again. Outside the day seemed bleak, but inside at least there was light and laughter and camaraderie.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  One week later…

  I was typing up a clear description of what gollywyppers were for the police department—and for our files—when Yutani summoned us for a meeting. So far, there had been no more new deaths and even though the cops put out a bounty on any more of the creatures, nobody moved to claim it. It looked like we might be out of the woods on that score.