He stroked my arm, and I snuggled into him a little more. “I don’t actually know how a swan is turned into a dragon. Aaron says no one can know unless they participate. He also says he gets to decide who’s there, not me. Sophia told me I should get you to tell Aaron you want to be there.”
He kissed my shoulder. “These things seem to always involve blood or sex, or a combination of the two. I’ll talk to him. What else has Sophia said?”
“Just a lot of conversations about the magic I’ll have access to. They turned someone who went to the dark side within a year. Aaron says the darkness had to have been there before, just hidden. Sophia isn’t so sure. She says there are some morality situations they put those under consideration into now, and that I passed them all with flying colors. She’s certain I won’t turn evil.”
“Do you know what the tests were?”
“No, and she won’t tell me.” I turned in his arms so I was looking up at him. “Actually, I might know one of the times. I was running in the park and a turtle was upside down waving his little legs around. He was in a little indention, so it’s possible he wouldn’t have been able to flip himself back. I stopped, went down the embankment, turned him over, and settled him under a little bush for protection because I figured he’d be scared from being helpless and then freaked because a human had handled him. I had the oddest sensation that people were watching me when I climbed the hillside back to the trail. I didn’t smell or hear anyone, so if they were, it had to be cameras.”
“It makes sense.” He massaged my breast and I closed my eyes. His fingers are magic. “An act of kindness when no one’s watching might give you a window into someone’s true character.”
“Because of the one who went bad, they now bring a vampire in to wipe memories, so no one knows how to turn a swan into to a dragon. Aaron had to kill her and many of the dragons she turned. He says he isn’t supplying troops for the dark side. You’ll have to be okay with that before you can be involved.”
“I’ll talk to Aaron.”
And then his lips were on mine and there were no more words.
Dementor
Aaron asked me to meet him at the Birmingham Drake office at five o’clock. A helicopter landed on the building as Mad Dog and I pulled our bikes into the parking lot. It seems we all arrived at the same time. The receptionist asked us to have a seat, but we stood to wait for him. It takes longer to park a ’copter than it does a bike.
“Sorry, gentleman. I’d intended to be here most of the afternoon, but it didn’t work out that way. Let’s do this in my office.”
As soon as the office door closed, his entire demeanor changed. “I set a meeting with Dementor,” he told Mad Dog. “Why are you here?”
I answered before Mad Dog had a chance. “Because you’re going to demand I keep important secrets from my brothers, and while I’m personally okay with doing that for the membership at large, I need our president to know everything I know.”
He met my gaze several long seconds before he motioned to the guest chairs and sat in one of them. “Whatever we talk about in here falls under the Concilio’s definition of not your secret to tell. It isn’t me you’ll face if you talk. Apollonius is a whole lot scarier than me.”
“Understood,” said Mad Dog. We both took a seat.
“Sophia wants you present,” Aaron told me. “A vampire will make sure you don’t remember a few important points. Ember won’t remember them either. We can’t allow someone to create an army of dragons out of the swan population, so the secrecy is necessary. We’ve asked for Kendra, but she’s warned us it’ll probably be Gavin. Three dragons will be made while we have him present, but not at the same time.”
“Hold up,” said Mad Dog. “Ember’s going to be a fucking dragon? You can turn swans into dragons?”
He said it to Aaron, but then swung around to glare at me. He clearly wasn’t happy about being blindsided by this.
“He couldn’t tell you,” Aaron reminded him. “Not his secret, remember?”
“The best I could do was bring you along and hope Aaron would let you in the meeting.”
Aaron leaned back, his arms relaxed on the chair’s arms. He looked like a coiled dragon. Smelled like one, too.
He looked to Mad Dog. “Perhaps it’s good you’re here, after all. Supernaturals who haven’t recently been around Ember will notice something off, but unless they know a dragon and recognize the scent, they’ll think she’s grown into a stronger swan. However, your people know how she smells now, and most of them have been around me.”
Now that he mentioned it, his scent was similar to Ember’s, but much stronger. Why had I never noticed that before?
Mad Dog leaned back as well. He could pull off the relaxed look, too. “So I should remind the club that whatever they smell falls under the tenets of someone else’s secret?”
Aaron looked to me. “Will it be easier for you to refuse to answer questions if you can tell them your president has been briefed?”
“It will.”
“But I haven’t really been briefed, have I?” Mad Dog asked. “No one knows for sure what your talents are. Can you go into people’s head like a vampire? Will Ember be able to? There are rumors of you flying in human form — if true, will Ember be able to do that? How about the fire thing? All kinds of rumors of you being immune to it no matter which form you’re in.”
“I’m thousands of years old. Ember is still in her twenties. I can do things she won’t learn for another hundred or more years.”
“Wait,” I said. “She won’t age? She’ll have long life?” Immortals can’t be killed. Those who are long lived can be killed, but they don’t age. They live until someone kills them. Some are rumored to be more than five thousand years old.
Aaron’s look was full of sympathy and I wanted to hate him for it, but I held my temper.
“I’m sorry.”
His words made my heart hurt. I’d grow old and Ember wouldn’t. Dragon shifters reportedly live until someone kills them, and they’re damned hard to kill. It could be done — the whole of them had been killed on a single night, with only three to five dragon shifters left alive, depending on who told the story.
I stared at the arm of the sofa. The texture of the fabric. The way the material folded into the seams so you couldn’t see any stitches. At a hundred years old, I’d look like a fifty or sixty year old human, and she’d still look like a twenty-something. I’d look like an old man at one hundred and fifty, and she’d still look exactly as she did on the day she was turned. She’d have to move before people started asking questions. It felt as if my entire world turned on its head.
Aaron’s voice came as if through a tunnel. “Mad Dog, I’d like to speak with your brother alone. If you’ll go to the left when you leave my office, you’ll easily find your way out.”
But my brother had no intention of leaving me in this state — not moments after I’d been punched in the gut. I scented his resolve, but I needed to hear whatever Aaron had to tell me. I met Mad Dog’s gaze. “Maybe there’s some miracle way for me to stay young that he can’t tell me with you here? Go. I’m headed to Blaze when I leave here. I’ll be fine.”