Wickedly Wonderful (Baba Yaga, #2)(84)
“Damn straight,” Chewie said, preening a little.
“You are the coolest dragon-dog in town,” Beka said with a fond smile. But she got serious again when she looked back at Marcus. “There’s a reason he picked this shape for his doggy guise,” she said. “He’s not just any dragon; he’s a water dragon. Water is as much his element as it is mine. More, in fact, since the pressure below doesn’t bother him at all, and he can dive much deeper than I ever could.”
She took a deep breath as she told him the rest of it. “If you’re willing to take us back out there, Chewie is going to dive down to the bottom of the Monterey Trench, and see if he can find whatever Kesh has hidden down there. Then he’s going to bring it back up so I can figure out how to restore the water and the people to health, and prove to the Queen once and for all that I have what it takes to be a Baba Yaga. And it has to happen before the full moon, so I’m running out of time.”
Marcus could see her desperation and her fear. He also saw her determination to see this through, no matter what it took. He thanked his lucky stars that she’d worked up the courage to come ask for his help, because he sure as hell wasn’t letting her do this without him.
Not only did he want to kick Kesh’s ass for chasing away the fish and driving a lot of good men like his father to the brink of losing everything, not to mention messing up their nets and whatever mischief he and his pals had been up to—although god knew, that was reason enough to go after the guy.
But he also wanted to sit on the slimy creep until he admitted to whatever he’d done to Beka and promised to fix it. Because no matter what she said, she really wasn’t okay. And Marcus had the sneaking suspicion that Kesh had something to do with it.
“You bet I’ll take you out there,” he said with an only slightly bloodthirsty grin. “Any chance we’ll meet up with your pal Kesh when we’re there? Because I’ve got a couple of things to say to him the next time we meet.”
Ooh-rah.
TWENTY-THREE
THE FRESH AIR and the feel of the spray on her face revived Beka enough that she actually enjoyed the trip out to the dive site. Although the fact that Marcus seemed to have gotten over being mad at her might have helped too. Just a little.
Once they’d arrived, Marcus looked at Chewie dubiously. “What now?” he asked.
“Now you stand back,” Chewie said.
Marcus shifted about a foot and Chewie snorted, a small hint of flame briefly curling through the salty air.
“Seriously, dude. Way back.”
Beka grabbed Marcus’s arm, only momentarily distracted by the feel of his muscles under her hand. “Brace yourself,” she said, grinning at him. She loved this part.
Marcus looked puzzled, then alarmed, then just plain stunned as Chewie began to shimmer and glow, the massive black Newfoundland replaced by a truly enormous dragon with a long, sinuous neck, tightly overlapping metallic-looking scales, and a tail that wrapped halfway around the front cabin. As a dog, he’d been impressive. As a dragon, he was magnificent; a vibrant royal blue starting at his wedge-shaped head and then shading down through aqua and into a deep green, all glimmering with a deep iridescence like the inside of a shell.
Beka beamed at the dragon proudly. “Kind of cool, isn’t he?”
Marcus gazed from her to Chewie, his eyes wide and round, his jaw hanging. After a moment, he snapped it shut, shook his head, and said, “Kind of cool, Beka? Kind of cool? He’s f*cking glorious.”
Chewie preened, as much as a dragon could be said to do so, and Beka hid a grin behind one hand. “Oh great,” she said. “Now there will be no living with him at all.”
“How can he do that?” Marcus asked, still staring at the gigantic dragon sprawled across his father’s deck. “He was small. Well, he was huge for a dog, but still not . . .” He waved at Chewie’s current form. “Not this. It shouldn’t be possible.”
Beka tried not to laugh. After all, this was his first dragon. It took some getting used to. “Says who?” she asked. “Einstein? He got a few things wrong. Physicists never enter magic into the equation.”
Marcus opened his mouth, closed it again, then just shook his head. “Wow. First witches then dragons.” He looked as if his entire worldview had changed in a second. Which it probably had. “I hate to think what that makes me—the talking frog?”
Chewie nudged him with one webbed foot, claws carefully sheathed. “It makes you in the way, dude.” He nodded to Beka, then half climbed, half slithered over the side of the boat, disappearing under the water without so much as a splash.
“Holy crap.” Marcus sat down rapidly on the nearest flat surface.
“Yep,” Beka said, scooting him over so she could sit next to him. “Now you can see why I didn’t want to try renting a different boat to take him out on. There’s not a distraction big enough in the world to keep people from noticing him when he is in dragon form.”
Marcus didn’t say anything for a minute, so she turned to look at him.
“What?” she asked.
He shrugged broad shoulders. “Oh, I don’t know. I guess part of me hoped that you’d come to me because you trusted me to help. And because maybe you missed me, just a little.”