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

28. Trapped

28

TRAPPED

I wake to the sound of water lapping all around me. Confusion fogs my brain; then I remember what happened at The Chartreuse and I sit bolt upright, wide awake as my inner dragons roar.

As I blink and hold a hand up, shading my eyes from the sun, I notice three things about my situation. First, I’m not at the twins’ club anymore. I’m on an old-style Viking raiding ship. Second, my magic doesn’t seem to work; though I can feel my inner dragons rage into their combined Bloodwalker power now, nothing is coming out around me. And third, I am out on the ocean.

Nothing nearby—my ship far out at sea.

It’s a bright, mild midday, a low wind whipping the waves around the ship. As I come to, Bjorn and Strom, and Mikkel groan, pushing up all around me to sitting with different variations of their hands on their heads. It’s clear that whatever curse Alfhild Fey laid on me, it affected all of us. We’re all coming to at the exact same time.

Though I see L?rke nearby in the boat—not moving.

With a cry, Mikkel goes to her. He presses his fingers to her throat, taking her pulse; I see something inside him ease, as he realizes she’s not dead, just out cold like we were.

Something about the curse laid on L?rke is worse than what was done to the rest of us, however. As if Alfhild knew she couldn’t take a risk with the more powerful Thorsen twin waking, I feel several Bloodrune mind-curses riddled all through L?rke now.

Securing her in a dark, endless slumber.

“Fuck!” Mikkel roars as he loses it. Roaring to the waves, he pulls L?rke into his lap, cradling her to him, though she doesn’t wake. He’s still dressed only in his black silk pajama pants, and L?rke has on her sleep shift.

Alfhild must have some sense of propriety, however, because she’s had me dressed in a purple silk slip that must be L?rke’s, and put green and crimson silk sleep pants on Strom and Bjorn, respectively. We look like a little pajama party, about to get started, except we’re on a boat in the middle of nowhere.

And nobody can seem to raise their power—no matter how hard we try.

“What in seven hells did she do to us?” Bjorn growls now as I feel him try to push his drake’s power into one hand and shift it into talons. His hand does nothing, though I feel his drake’s energy flow into it.

None of us shifting, though we all try now.

“Alfhild has her ways,” Strom says as he focuses everything he has, but only produces a slight green-red shimmer in the air from his magic. Basically useless.

“She’s a master of mind-magics, and curses,” Mikkel snarls now as he cradles L?rke to him. Like a pretty rag doll, she’s out cold, her head lolling to one side as he holds her. “I remember it now, since my memories have come back. Alfhild was far more powerful than either L?rke or me, alone. We have talent with what our minds can do, but Alfhild is thrice that. She’s old… I recall she mentioned at some point that she was well over a thousand years old. Power even L?rke and I can’t ever hope to match. ”

“Fuck. She never told me that. I only ever assumed she was maybe a hundred years older than me. If that,” Strom says, making a fist, as if he’d like to pummel her.

“She had you so far cursed with her power you didn’t know which end was up.” Mikkel glances at Strom. “I hated it, but it made L?rke beyond furious. She couldn’t stand to see you being used like that. I couldn’t either… but there was little we could do, since Alfhild’s power was so tremendous. Other than play her game.”

“She paid for your club’s expansion for your silence about Strom,” I say now, watching Mikkel. The wind gusts in the open-hulled boat and it riffles his hair. I see his dark waves shine with ribbons of auburn in the sunlight, something I’ve never noticed before.

“We helped her on a few heists, when she needed more than just her own mind-talents… but yes.” Mikkel gazes at me. “L?rke and I didn’t want to do it, but she had so much more power than we did. She could have forced us to do her bidding, like she did with Strom, so we opted to make a deal. We would help her when needed and hold our silence about what she was doing. In return, she would fund our new clubs, which we wanted to open beyond Copenhagen. It was a decent deal. Rather than become her slaves.”

“You betrayed your friend,” Bjorn snorts, his all-gold gaze fierce upon Mikkel, “for cash.”

“We did what we could not to become like him, bound to her every whim,” Mikkel growls back, though his dark eyes are sad as he looks at Strom. “For what it’s worth, when we could still remember what was happening, we looked for a cure for you. We searched high and low for something that could break her spell on you, or amplify our own mind-magics enough that we could do it ourselves. No luck.”

“Which is why you’ve helped me search for arcane items ever since. Even though you didn’t remember why you were doing it.” Strom watches Mikkel, his elbows around his knees, as we sit on the floor of the ship.

“Yes. We knew we owed it to you, somehow,” Mikkel says as sorrow fills him. “Even though L?rke and I didn’t remember why we felt indebted to you, we still always felt we needed to help. You never told us about your missing memories, and we didn’t recall ours, but I think somewhere deep down… we knew.”

“You knew you hadn’t been able to help Strom in the past, so you were trying to make it right all these years,” I say now, realizing Mikkel does have a good side to him, like I thought.

“Yes.” Mikkel hugs his sister closer in his lap. He brushes her hair back from her face in the wind, and I see another good side to Mikkel.

How much he loves and cares for his twin—no matter what.

A pause comes as we all switch from past to present now. Glancing around, we take in our current situation.

As we try to figure a way out of it.

“How did she get into your club?” I glance at Mikkel, then Strom. “And why put us on a ship at sea?”

“Alfhild is powerful.” Mikkel shrugs, even as he simmers with a dark hate. “You felt what she can do with her mind-magics. My club’s security has nothing on that, even though we’ve tried to bolster our clubs over the years against other Bone Mages with intense mind-magic. When she comes for someone, however… they fall to her power. L?rke and I fought when she arrived for us, but our battle was brief.”

“We couldn’t fight her at all,” Bjorn says, growling like thunder now as he sits beside me. “She just caught us like rabbits in a trap.”

“Sex is power for her.” Strom heaves a deep sigh. “It doesn’t have to be sex with her that does it. Her magic is strange; like a Vampire, her Bone Magic drinks from sexual energy, using it to power the curses she creates. That’s how she could easily trap us in the moment. Our trio had just finished having sex—and she used that energy to curse us.”

Bjorn growls low again, even as he heaves to his feet to explore the small ship and see what Alfhild left us. Mikkel gives me the saddest, most complex gaze, but he doesn’t rise like Bjorn. Instead, he takes the moment to investigate his sister’s condition more thoroughly; glancing in her eyes, he takes her pulse again, putting a hand to her heart.

I feel how even Mikkel’s powers are restrained, however, as we rock over the waves upon this ship. Alfhild did something to all of us.

Binding our power deep inside our bodies—unable to let it out.

Strom rises and holds out his hands. I take them, welcoming the help up. Thankfully, since my power is still inside me, I’m not cold in the gusting wind like I was when I had Magnussen manacles on. I brush my hair out of my face, pulling it back into a hasty braid so I can evaluate our surroundings.

Wherever we are, we’re way the fuck out at sea. I don’t see any land nearby. Only grey water, our boat, and scudding clouds as they pass in front of the sun, then come out again.

“We’re still somewhere near Copenhagen,” Strom says, as he surveys that vast spread of ocean.

“How can you tell?” I turn to him.

“The ocean smells different here in the south versus where I was born.” Strom shrugs, jutting his chin at the water. “I can’t explain it, but I noticed it as soon as I moved to Copenhagen. Still do.”

“Strom’s right.” Mikkel glances up from where he still sits on the ship’s bottom with L?rke. “I’d say we’re several miles off the coast of Copenhagen, in the ?resund. Visibility at sea is about three miles when you’re offshore, until you can no longer see land. In some places near Copenhagen, the ?resund stretches as wide as twenty miles. We’re most likely somewhere near there… other parts of Denmark smell differently.”

“Bad news; regardless of where we are.” Bjorn returns to us now, from investigating the small Viking ship. “There are no sails on the masts, the rudder is broken on the till, and there’s a small hole scuttled in the boat, back there.” He nods at the stern of the ship, while we’re all sitting in the bow. “We’re taking on water, though it’s slow. I’d say in an hour, maybe an hour and a half, we’ll be sunk. There aren’t any bailing buckets, either.”

“And we can’t shift,” I say, as I push my power through my body again, but come up with nothing. “Alfhild did something to our magics; she didn’t want us to shift and fly out of this as our dragons.”

“She wants us to drown slowly, thinking about what we’ve done… until we’re dead,” Strom snorts, as the first of the water we’re taking on trickles up towards the higher bow deck. I watch it with a slow fascination, the little trickle that signifies our doom. Apparently, the hole in our ship isn’t big enough to sink us all at once.

It will kill us eventually, though—as we sit here, thinking about what we’ve done.

“What a bitch.” Putting my hands on my hips, I glance at Bjorn. “Can we plug that hole?”

“I already did, by ripping up some netting that was still in here and wadding it into the hole,” Bjorn says. “It’s still seeping water, but I think I may have bought us an extra hour… but that’s all.”

“We’ll have to swim it.” Strom gazes out over the water. “Like Mikkel says, it can’t be over seventeen miles to any shore, east or west. I say we jump in, stay together, and haul ass in human form if we can’t shift. We’ll make it to shore, eventually.”

It’s not a bad plan, as we dragons still have tremendous stamina, even in our human forms. But as I nod and Strom sets a hand to the railing to vault over into the water, it sears him.

A blast of energy hammers Strom; he goes careening into Bjorn and they both wind up on their asses in the pooling water down in the main hull of the ship. As Bjorn blinks and Strom snarls, growling at his hand, I can see it’s been blistered a nasty, burned red. The entire railing of the ship spreads in a wave of caustic violet-red Bloodrunes.

That we can see, now that we’ve just triggered them.

“Damn it!” Strom cusses as he uses a wave of his internal dragon-energy to heal himself. It works, but even that is slower than usual, as I see the red burns dissipate.

“Well, it’s clear she doesn’t want us getting out that way.” I contemplate the cursed railing. “Do we smash down through the ship and swim out underwater?”

“We can try it.” Bjorn is up in a moment, cracking his knuckles before he balls one fist.

Then slams it hard into the bottom of the ship.

He’s blasted back just as hard as Strom was by Bloodrunes. As Bjorn is tossed right back up to the bow of the ship, he lands with a hard oof! on Mikkel, who barely shoves the unconscious L?rke out of harm’s way before Bjorn comes down.

They’re dazed in a tangle before Mikkel finally shoves Bjorn off. Sitting now rather than pushing back up to his feet, Bjorn shakes his head several times to clear it.

As I see nasty violet-red sigils dissipate from his fist.

“Well, that’s not going to work, either,” Mikkel says sourly as he pulls L?rke back onto his lap.

“One last thing to try.” I think of a last option for our escape. Picking up a forgotten piece of tackle from the bottom of the boat, I toss it up in midair.

And watch it crackle as it’s hammered back—riddled with Bloodrunes, just like Bjorn’s fist and Strom’s hand.

“Well… we can’t escape this ship even after it goes down.” I realize then that we’re completely, and all-too-fuckedly, trapped. “When this ship goes underwater, we’re going to be dragged down with it. Alfhild has fucked us well and good.”

“Alfhild doesn’t want us to break the curses on the ship to escape.” Strom’s voice is quiet, as I feel him get it. “She wants us to solve them… if we can. And prove that we’re strong enough to live. Strong enough to best her… and keep our lives, free from her.”

“You’ve broken free of her before, Strom,” I say as I consider it. “Think you can do it again?”

“I can try.” Strom is thoughtful as he gazes around the ship. More water is building in the boat’s bottom, about two inches now. It’s not a fast death, but it’s death all the same if we can’t escape this ship.

With a deep breath, Strom stands from where he was kneeling, healing his hand in the bottom of the ship. A few inches of seawater swirl around his bare feet; he ignores that now, as I feel him pull as his dark Bone Magic deep inside. As Strom spirals deep within, I feel him search for an answer. Because somehow, he broke free of Alfhild Fey, before.

And if he did it once, he can do it again.

I feel it, as a swirling confusion builds inside him now, however. As if Alfhild has hidden her curses deep within our minds, Strom is encountering vast resistance suddenly, to finding it. He was cursed by having sex with her before—as were Mikkel and even L?rke. But this can’t be that, I know, because none of us has had sex with Alfhild recently. She’s used something else to bind us with her unfathomable power.

And with a dark shake of his head, Strom opens his eyes—bereft.

“I can’t find it.” He sets his hands on his hips, scuffing one foot through the water. “I can’t feel what she used to bind us this time, Rikyava. Last time, it was my deep attraction to her, and the sex that sealed her curse on me. She’s done something different now. With just my Bone Magic… I can’t find it.”

“Try with me.” I vault down to the belly of the ship with him, holding my hand out. “Run your magic through our Bloodbond and use mine to bolster it. Our power goes two ways now… use me, use both my Bloodwalker dragons, to build yours. And search for what she did to us.”

“I’ll try.” Strom takes my hand. As Bjorn comes to us now, I know what my big First Drake is going to say before he says it.

“Take my power, as well.” Bjorn holds out his hand to Strom. “Since we’re all bound in a group now, rather than just giving power to Rikyava, you can also take from my dragon. I can’t give you Bone Magic to search for what another Bone Mage did to us, but I can give you power. And power is a language all dragons speak… to illuminate the darkness we’re all trapped in. ”

“Well said.” With a hint of a smile now, Strom takes Bjorn’s hand.

I feel our Bloodbonds open between us then, as power surges through our link. We’ve joined hands, and skin contact for a shapeshifter makes every magic we have more accessible.

Though my combined Bloodwalker power whirls in a white, gold, and red maelstrom inside me now to find what Strom’s looking for, pouring through my bond to him in a tirade of darkness and scalding crimson light, pure white searing through me, too, I feel how even that’s not enough.

As Strom’s massive dark red and green drake surges through our bonds, powering up high inside his body, I think he might explode from the force of it. Bolstered by Bjorn’s magnificent gold-red drake, I feel his search expand through us tenfold, as even Aesa’s magic within her Truthstone joins us, the silver stone vibrating hard now upon my chest.

It’s just not enough to find whatever curse the clever Alfhild Fey has put on us. Then I feel my Bloodwalker power suddenly reach out to Mikkel through our new beginnings of a bond, roaring towards him.

To fully Bloodbond him into helping us.

And break all these curses on us, at last.