Rake My Lust (Dragons of Blood and Bone #3)

16. Memories

16

MEMORIES

W e’re out of the Old Palace by nightfall, at the time Mikkel and L?rke’s club usually opens. Dressed to the nines, since we’re going inside The Vault again, we’re all wearing chic Euro club wear now.

Even Bjorn has consented to a shiny black, tight-fitted sweater to show off his body, rather than his usual tactical stuff. I’m wearing a strappy dark purple dress, and Strom has on a ripped neon green shirt beneath a black silk jacket, with the sleeves rolled up 80s style.

We’ve got pictures on our phones of our documents, we’re lookin’ tight, and we’re ready for anything as we stroll through the early nighttime traffic near the lowest cliffs of the city.

Though strangely, the slender alley leading to The Vault is silent as we arrive.

“Odd.” Strom frowns as he peruses the doors, shut up tight without a single bouncer in sight. Though a few people have arrived for the evening, same as us, everyone is milling about in confusion now, no queue forming.

As it seems, The Vault is closed for the night.

“They don’t have any signs posted.” Bjorn scowls as he bangs on the enormous steel doors, testing them. He turns back to Strom. “Are you sure they’re supposed to be open?”

“It’s Thursday. They’re open Wednesday through Saturday.” Strom scowls now as he glances around at the milling people. Many are wandering off, assuming the place is closed even as others arrive, adding more confusion to the mix. “If they have a private party or something going on inside, they forgot to notify their clientele via the usual channels. Not something Mik and L?rke generally miss.”

“Maybe they cleared out.” I set my hands on my hips as I process this unexpected development. “If they got a whiff of the Black Dragon Knights cracking down on Bone Mages, thanks to everything recently… they may have gone elsewhere. Someplace safer and less obvious, out of Sweden.”

Even as I speak, a group comes towards us in the throng now. Not dressed in the usual club wear, they have enforcers written all over them as they shoulder through the milling dragons.

Taller than the rest of the dragons in the alley, I think for a moment they’re the club’s bouncers finally arriving for the night. But then something hits my radar wrong; as one’s piercing saffron eyes pin me, I know they’re here for us.

I don’t even have a moment to shift. They’re on us that fast.

The fighting is quick and dirty as we engage these unknown assailants who so casually strolled into our midst. As I duck and roll, hammering one with a blow to the side of the knee, I spread my raging red-gold dragon-aura wide, feeling my way through the fight.

These guys are good, but Strom, Bjorn, and I are better with our dragon power, maneuvers, and coordination. As the club’s usual clientele rush away fast, it’s just us and these six assholes roaring, blocking, and diving in human form in the alley.

Fighting for what reason, I have no clue.

Magical drives are everywhere; I’ve got a wickedly spiked Bloodshield up around me now, and so do my mates, as we cast aside the worst of them. I think for a moment these guys are our enemy Bone Mages. Those dragons were incredibly strong, though, mostly beyond my trio’s abilities in a fight.

These fighters are more like your average muscle, though good; as I spread my senses wide, I don’t feel any Bone Magic in them. At last, Bjorn, Strom, and I have five of them knocked out, the sixth trapped to the ground by my Bloodshield as Strom pins him down with a Bloodnet made from his iron-clad metaphysical strength. Bjorn gets a boot on his throat.

We’re banged up with bloody lips and bruises, but it’s nothing we can’t handle as we hold the last fighter down. The drake on the ground is coughing, starting to choke out, and I signal to Bjorn to let off a bit. He does, and our attacker recovers enough to stare up at us as we pin him.

Not enough to get up, however, or to reengage the fight.

“Who in seven fucks are you?!” Strom growls now as he gets a second Bloodnet around the guy, cinching him up tight like a burrito, so I can back off.

“The Council sends their regards,” the drake says as he coughs, his nose broken and blood pouring down his face and into the back of his throat.

“I fucking knew it!” Bjorn glares down at the man beneath his boot. “How long have you been tracking us?”

The man clams up then. He sets his bloody lips together and I know we’re getting nothing else out of him unless we torture him, which is not our style. The guard dogs of the Black Dragon Knight’s Council are notorious for not giving up information. They’ll die to the last dragon, and say nothing when they’re captured.

Just like this guy here, defiant and staring up at us.

“Here, let me have a go.” Strom cracks a few knuckles, popping a disjointed index finger back into place. “He’ll break under my Bone Magic. I guarantee it.”

As I remember Strom can penetrate minds with his power and do strange things to them, I nod. I know he won’t take it too far; Strom is a good man and has no vendetta against this guard dog of the Council, unknown to us.

I feel it like a black wind as Strom opens his true power wide. When we’re in public, he always puts his regular shielding in place to make others think he has only regular Blood Dragon magic.

As he opens his true power now, however, I feel the vast tide of his Bone Magic sweep us. His magical aura is tremendous; the guy on the ground cowers before Strom now, though his eyes still hold defiance.

Not about to break, unless Strom does his worst.

Strom has better tricks than that, though. As he pushes his power into the man now, I feel it like deep water swamping the man. It’s like the blackest depths of the ocean as Strom stares at the man’s eyes; the drake on the ground tries to shut his eyes to break contact, but Strom heaves another wave of his power into the guy, and his eyes flicker, then pin open wide.

Crouching, Strom presses his power deep inside the man’s mind now. I feel it roll him under the blackest lake.

And then all his secrets are just tumbling out.

“The Council wants you dead,” he says to Strom as he gazes up at my Second Drake. “They know what you are now; you can’t hide at the Old Palace forever, under the watchful eyes of your Jarl and family. Sometime, you’re going to slip up; when you do, we’ll be there to gut you. Bone Mages aren’t tolerated in this world. You are anathema… hiding behind your false vows to the Black Dragon Knights all this time.”

“My vows were never false.” Strom’s voice is cold as he stares the man down. “They were just sworn to better ideals than this current Council have ever stood for. Tell me, who leads the Council since Bintha’s death?”

“Ruta Bein has taken the position of Head Matriarch, after Bintha Lofta’s demise,” the man says, no hesitation now, with Strom’s incredible power surging through his mind, swamping him and making him tell us the truth. “She ordered this stakeout and knows you often associate with the Thorsens. She has told us they are Bone Mages and sent us here to guard this place, in case they, or you, came back. And here you are.”

“Fucking hells.” Bjorn curses as his golden gaze pins Strom. “The Council knows your allies are Bone Mages, Strom, and they’ve put two and two together about you.”

“It was only a matter of time…” Strom says, though not letting anything frazzle him as he keeps his gaze pinned to our informant, his power focused. “Tell me… did Ruta act alone on this order, or was this the outcome of a Council vote?”

It’s a question I want to know, as well. Ruta is looking far more like an enemy to us, rather than the ally I always thought she was.

As I wonder now if she was the one who betrayed us—all this time.

“It was a full Council vote on the matter,” the man says, as he stares at Strom. “She gave the order, as per their wishes.”

Relief flows through me to know Ruta was simply doing her duty as Head Matriarch to enact an order the full Council voted on. It leaves me wondering, however, if it was Secret Piercer Anya Bittersuss who found out this information about Strom and the Thorsens, or someone else.

A terrible feeling hits me then, as I recall Ruta was at the battle in Jurggadden. She would have seen what Strom really was, as he fought in that clash.

She’s done so much for us, though; she saved me, my mates, and Maryse’s from certain death after the Black Dragon’s attack on the Council hall, then saved Vjen after the fight at Jurggadden. Still, I feel doubt linger in me, where there had only been certainty before.

As a shared thought passes between Bjorn, Strom, and me—to not involve Ruta in any of this from here on out.

“Where have the Thorsens gone?” Strom presses the man now, as I feel his magic dive even deeper inside him. “Are they still in town, or did they go someplace else and shut the club down?”

“If we had those answers, we’d be attacking them right now rather than just you,” the man says with a scowl. “The Thorsens are sneaky; we don’t know yet where they went. Probably cleared out of Sweden, since we have fewer correspondents telling us of suspects’ whereabouts beyond this country.”

I believe the man and Strom does, too, with his power pouring all through the guy. As we run out of questions now, we come to the part where we either kill him or let him go.

But Strom has an answer for that, too. “I can wipe his memory… make him forget he ever saw us. And forget what information he gave us.”

“Do it,” Bjorn says with a decisive nod, his boot still on the guy’s neck. “Even though the Council sent them after us, I’d hate to get even more blood on these nice boots by breaking his neck with my foot.”

“So pragmatic, Bjorn.” It gets the tiniest smile from Strom, but he still has to keep his gaze locked on the guy we’re interrogating. He refocuses on our Black Dragon Knight as a fell wind from his power sweeps the alley—deep inside the man. “You will forget you ever saw us. You will forget any of this ever happened. You will forget what you told us and discredit your fellows if they mention the attack. You never encountered us; we were never here. You and your men were just involved in an alley brawl with a bunch of upset club goers. That’s all.”

As Strom pushes these suggestions into the man’s mind with his power, I feel the drake resist. It’s clear he has some strength; though he rolled to our interrogation, he’s being quite a lot more resistant now to forgetting all this entirely.

Strom focuses hard now, roaring his Bone Magic into the guy like an avalanche, as I lend it my Bloodwalker’s might. As my own Bone Magic rises like a dark leviathan inside me, towering over my brighter Blood Magic drakaina and blocking out her crimson light, I feel it engulf me like a night full of stars.

I’m gone to that immense power inside me now, as Strom uses it like a hurricane, hammering it into the guy on the ground before us. I don’t even know I’ve blacked out from that immense sensation until Bjorn catches me .

And Aesa’s Truthstone flares—seething a blinding white wildfire through my chest.

That blistering light floods like a torrent all through me, as it swamps my Bone Magic out. It roars into Strom via our wide-open connection; he screams as that resonance reopens the tirade of his missing memories, swamping him for the second time in as many days.

I’m the one on the ground now as Bjorn vaults to Strom, wrapping him in a hard embrace and swaddling him in his fierce, fire-bright Blood Magic to keep Strom with us and not go Wraith and shift up. Strom stays human this time, but barely. Our position with our Knight is now lost, as the man scrambles away from us and shifts.

Vaulting up as his dragon into the starry night sky.

We’re left heaving hard breaths in the alley, as Bjorn manages to get Strom under control with his power. But Strom’s gone inside his eyes for a long minute, his brimstone and emerald dragon raging inside him until the red clears and he blinks at last.

The rest of the unconscious Knights are waking now, however. We either fight them all over again, or we scram and take ourselves elsewhere.

Bjorn and I get under each of Strom’s arms and hustle him out of the alley, twisting and turning through so many avenues I’m thoroughly lost before we finally slow. Strom seems to know where we are, though, as his head clears; pointing us to an archway, he nods us down an extremely tight alley, and we come to a guarded door.

He nods at the guard; the man recognizes him and nods back. In a trice, we’re back inside the walls of the Old Palace, in the tiniest little walled garden you’ve ever seen.

As Strom sinks to a stone bench beside a mermaid fountain, Bjorn and I settle beside him. I hold his hands as Bjorn rubs his shoulders; shaking his head, Strom blinks, though I can feel he’s back with us.

“Strom? Where are you?” Bjorn growls as he checks in with the third of our trio, making sure he’s okay.

“I don’t know. The memories are gone, again.” Strom glances at us in befuddlement. “I got more of them now. I had images of Denmark; Copenhagen, where I was when all this shit went down and my memories were erased. I saw Mikkel and L?rke there, in a few clubs they own, though they looked like they did back when I was there in my youth. There was someone else with them, a woman. She—” But Strom cuts off then, as he scowls. “Shit. It’s gone again.”

“What else do you remember? Quickly, before it fades,” I say, knowing these memories are important.

“I saw… her…” Strom says with uncertainty now. As he closes his eyes, I feel him put himself back in that place. “She was influential in Copenhagen, but those memories are still a jumble. I see a warehouse, maybe by some docks? I don’t know. It’s not a place I’ve ever remembered. But then there were other memories…”

“Others?” I ask, holding his hand and feeling Aesa’s stone hum upon my chest now, as if helping him.

“I see a wide field, green rolling hills,” he says, as if he’s gone deep in trance. “I see a battle, or the remnants of one… Riksfold.”

“Riksfold?!” I take a sharp inhale, as Bjorn sucks his teeth. We all lost family at the Battle of Riksfold over sixty years ago, and it’s a sore point for each of us.

“I was there just after the carnage happened,” Strom says now, as that strange lilt takes his voice. “I was left behind at the palace with a subset of younger Kingsguard to protect it… we came to the battlefield afterwards to help with the dead. I was searching for my brother. Everyone was looking for the dead, for fallen loved ones. I found him, broken and bloodied upon the field, dead. But when I did, I also saw… ”

He pauses then, as a dark frown takes him.

“What did you see?” I press him, feeling this is important, as Aesa’s stone hums even more brightly upon my chest.

Pushing him with its Truth-telling power.

“She was small,” he says then, his voice so soft I can barely hear it. “The smallest drakaina, almost like you, Rikyava… but her energy was pu re might. She seared through the skies, pausing to see me down below with my dead brother. She swooped at me like she might kill me too, but a massive golden drake intervened, and she flew off. I knew her energy, though. I knew what she was about to strike me down with. It was Bone Magic, through and through. I thought I’d remember it forever… but then I forgot her along with the rest of my missing memories.”

As Strom finally blinks his eyes open, it’s like a sleeper come awake. He inhales a deep breath, then pins me with his emerald gaze. “When we were in the battle at Jurggadden, Rikyava, I saw that same small drakaina. She was with the Bone Mages we were fighting, just for a moment. I saw her strike down Bintha Lofta, the blow that killed her. And I saw her send the curse that blasted Maryse’s bracelet off your wrist.”

I stare at him, astounded, as we get the truth. But Aesa’s stone hums like wildfire now at my breast with a flare of brimstone magic inside me, and I know Strom’s right.

Even though I only saw that small, lithe drakaina kill Bintha, Strom saw far more at the fight over Jurggadden. He didn’t remember it until now; until our resonance with Aesa’s stone revealed yet another truth to him.

That the same enemy Bone Mage drakaina was at Riksfold.

The battle that killed my parents, Bjorn’s mother, and Strom’s elder brother, sixty years ago.