Chapter 12

The following characters are named and appear in this chapter:

Adalinda – Dallas’s Dragon name in Gaelic

Amekinda – Doreen’s Dragon name in Gaelic

Tezcaoatl – Craig’s Dragon name in Gaelic

Bheithir – Steve’s Dragon name in Gaelic

Thevetat – Keith’s Dragon name in Gaelic

Tintaglia - Madailein, the Dragon Queen’s name in Gaelic

Fred

Steve’s Familiar, a large yellow male Manx cat with orange stripes and a short stubby tail

Chuck

Keith’s Familiar, a large gray male cat with black stripes and a long tail

The following characters return from Dragon Wytch:

The Spirit of Black Magic,

Is a figure in black as opposed to the other Spirits being in white or cream colored clothing. It appeared to be a man of at least thirty years or so old.

Muadhnait Graham

Doctor, OB/GYN, an older woman of indeterminate age, but surely more than 70 years old. She is about 5’-6’’ tall and thin with short gray hair. Her eyes were as black as coal.

While the twins still planned in Atlanta, Rosetta had recovered from the hangover and the aftereffects of her drinking. She was still furious with everyone and everything. Those at the Hacienda still walked as if on eggshells and avoided her as much as possible. They hadn’t told her about the loss of the drug house on the east side of Atlanta yet. It hadn’t made the national news, but one of those working the internet for her knew about it.

On the second day after recovering, Rosetta entered her office to find a strange man sitting behind her desk.

“Just who the hell do you think you are to be sitting in my chair behind my desk?” she demanded in a harsh voice.

“You mustn’t get so upset, Rosetta,” the man told her in a calm voice. He appeared to be about 30 years old and was dressed all in black clothing. He smiled while admonishing her.

“Don’t tell me what to do, and get the fuck out of my chair,” she told him, before something else occurred to her.

“How the hell did you get in here anyway? I’ll have someone’s hide if they are sleeping on the job,” she finished.

“No one let me in. I just appeared here. It wasn’t hard at all, as you have used so much of my Magic in the past you see,” he told her still smiling. It didn’t look good on him with all of his black clothes.

“You still haven’t told me who you are, and what do you mean by ‘you just appeared in here’?” she demanded, apparently not having noticed the last part of what he had said.

“Why, I’m the Spirit of Black Magic, Rosetta. I’m here to warn you. You have really stepped in it. You have upset the Dragons. That is never a good thing to do, especially this new kind of Dragons. Of course, it was never a good idea with the old Dragons either. You will find that you will have few if any allies against them.

“Of course, you never had any Demons as allies or even as simple servants. They would have made better spies than either the bikers or the ex-military. Of course, they would only have worked at night, if you could have convinced them to do anything involving the Dragon Queen. They still tend to stay away from the Atlanta area and all of its Magic users, Witches, and Ley Line users. You wouldn’t have gotten any of the Witches or other Magic users to spy on them either. They still remember what happened to those who opposed the Mother, the Dragon Queen.

“No, I’m afraid that your best choice now is to return to Mexico and hide for the next hundred years or so. The Dragons may have forgotten about you by then,” the man in black told her.

“I don’t care who you claim to be, you don’t come in here and tell me what to do. I will have my revenge. They murdered my brothers. That can not be forgiven or forgotten,” she told him, before adding, “get out of my chair and get out of here.”

“You’re much too touchy and not thinking, Rosetta,” he said on rising and moving away from the desk.

“There is one other thing that I need to tell you before I go,” he continued but in a serious voice.

“My relatives, the other Spirits of Magic, have convinced me to not aid you when the Dragons confront you, which they will do shortly. You will have no Magic to use against them. Leave now before it’s too late,” he told her before vanishing. Rosetta stared at where he had been for a short time.

“He’s crazy,” she said to no one. “The Magic is always there for all to use,” she continued and thought nothing of it.

The Spirit of Black Magic hadn’t left. He had only become invisible. He shook his head in disgust on hearing this before vanishing.

We left for Tampa early on the morning of the third day after getting Mother’s approval for the operation. Doreen had picked up one of Dragon Security’s larger SUVs last evening and driven it home. It was large enough to accommodate all five of us and our luggage comfortably. We were all packed and had prepared snacks to eat on the way to Tampa. We would all take turns driving, so no one would be too tired. I had made reservations for three rooms at a hotel near I-75 in Tampa. We would rest there for a time before starting the operation against the Cartel.

It took us about seven and a half hours to drive the 500 miles or so between our house east of Atlanta to the Tampa Bay area. Our hotel wasn’t far from I-75 which we had taken there. The hotel wasn’t flashy but was rather nice with a swimming pool and other attractions. It was after 2:45 when we checked in. We had three adjoining rooms on the third floor. One of the first things that we noticed on arriving here was the small amount of Magic available in the Tampa area. Doreen commented on it.

“There is even less Magic here than there was in Miami. At least there, they had Witch Magic and Black Magic. Tampa seems to be short on all of the branches of Magic,” she commented after we had checked in.

“That could be a good thing for us, since we will be spending the night here,” I reminded her to a smile.

“Maybe several nights,” she suggested with a grin.

“We’ll see,” was all that I said.

We all rested for several hours before preparing to travel out to where the Cartel had their headquarters, which was well outside of Tampa to avoid questions about what they were doing, and why they had guards armed with automatic weapons around their property.

We were up by 6:30 that evening and were on our way shortly after that. The drive wasn’t that far, and we left the SUV at a convenient stopping place and walked the last quarter mile to the Cartel’s property. It was 7:15 as we approached their headquarters. We all stopped on the side of the road, and Doreen and I gripped the hands of our future husbands before we all changed into our Dragon Forms at the twenty-five-fool-tall level. We all stepped out into the middle of the road then and announced ourselves.

“I am Adalinda, first daughter of Tintaglia, the Dragon Queen,” I announced loudly in Gaelic. The sound waves rolled down the road to the Cartel’s house or Hacienda. The trees and other vegetation in the area were affected by my words as leaves and small or weak branches were torn away by the acoustic waves. Even the house trembled some at my words.

“I am Amekinda, second daughter of Tintaglia, the Dragon Queen,” Doreen announced in Gaelic following me. Her voice produced results similar to mine. Craig stepped forward then.

“I am Tezcaoatl, the son of Khawlhring, the mate of Tintaglia, the Dragon Queen,” he announced loudly in Gaelic. His deeper voice had an even stronger acoustic effect on the vegetation in the area surrounding us. It appeared that all of those on the Cartel’s property had been knocked out by our announcements in Gaelic. I turned to our future husbands then with a question.

“Do you know your Dragon names in Gaelic yet?” I asked them to Dragon smiles from them.

“Yes, we both realized what they are while you were announcing yourselves,” Steve told us.

“Then go ahead and announce yourselves also,” I told them. Steve stepped forward.

“I am Bheithir, mate of Adalinda,” he announced in a loud voice in Gaelic. Keith was next.

“I am Thevetat, mate of Amekinda,” he also announced in a loud voice in Gaelic. Many of the trees and the other vegetation had already been stripped of their leaves and small branches, so the acoustic waves of our future husbands had less effect than the earlier announcements had. I stepped forward then with our demands.

“Rosetta, come out and face us. We will settle this now, or we will demolish and totally destroy your holdings here,” I demanded loudly in English. There was no answer after a considerable wait.

“Do you think we knocked her out?” Doreen asked after a time.

“I suppose anything is possible. She could also be playing possum in hopes of being able to attack us,” I reminded her.

“The only thing that we can do then is to go in and dig her out,” Doreen said as smoke drifted from her nostrils.

“All right, but just the three of us. Steve, you and Keith stay out here and cover our backs. Also stop anyone who should show up because of all of the noise and destruction that we create,” I told our guys. They looked a little disappointed, but knew that we didn’t want to be trapped here by the arrival of more Cartel people or the local law.

The approach to the house and the other buildings inside their fenced in area was straight forward. We walked right up to the gates and simply ripped them off their supports and tossed them aside like so much trash. No one had challenged us.

We could see a number of armed guards passed out on the ground between the gate and the front of the house.

“Freeze spells,” I said as we moved past them toward the front of the main house. Doreen demolished the front doors as we neared them, and we entered the house after shrinking to twelve feet tall to accommodate the hallways. There were more guards here as well as what appeared to be domestics, people who took care of the house. We used more freeze spells.

We soon came to a problem. There was a hallway that crossed the hallway that we were in, giving three avenues for guards to approach us.

“Not good,” Craig said looking at the intersecting hallway as we crossed it. Doreen spoke when we had crossed it.

“Remember those Claymores that we got from the hallway and the first room when we took out the sniper?” she asked. A light came on in my head.

“Yeah, we never did dispose of them, did we?” I asked.

“No, we didn’t. They are still sitting in the Timeless zone. They would be perfect for this situation,” she said with a Dragon grin.

“What Claymores?” Craig asked, and we quickly explained about how the sniper had set up booby traps in the area near his location. Doreen called the Claymores to her one at a time, and she and I set them up along with their triggering devices. Craig was not anxious to aid us in this, never having worked with them previously. We explained to him how to set them up as we set up the last one.

We then proceeded deeper into the house to where Felipe had told us Rosetta’s office was located. We checked our wards before getting too close to it. We found the door to the office open on reaching it, and there was an older woman slumped on the floor in front of the desk. She had on a black dress with red trim, long black hair, and she appeared to be about 40 years of age. Her facial features resembled those of Rafael and Romero. It appeared that we had found Rosetta.

“Is that Rosetta?” Craig asked, as he hadn’t seen her two brothers.

“It would appear to be her. At least, her facial features resemble her brothers,” I told him.

“The only way to know for sure is to wake her up and see what she does,” Doreen said before casting the spell to wake her up. Rosetta came awake spitting and shouting in Spanish.

“Bi ciuin (Quiet),” Doreen shouted back at her in Gaelic having finished the short spell. Rosetta closed her mouth in shocked surprise.

“Who are you?” I demanded in English.

“I am Rosetta of the...!” but I cut her off.

“Ciunas! (Silence!)”, I demanded in Gaelic having also completed the spell.

“We will do the talking, and you will answer when we ask questions,” I told her, but the spell still held her. It was a bit weak due to the near total absence of Magic in the area presently. We could use the Dragon language to do the same thing if necessary without the use of Magic.

“Why have you sent people to spy on us, and then other people to attack us and try to kill us? It was a very poor attempt, and we removed all of them and their vehicles. Just as we removed your brothers because they kidnapped a friend of ours. Manuel did that with the help of an amulet from you. We will not tolerate your continued interference. Either stop right now or else,” I told her before canceling the silence spell.

“You ... you killed my brothers and are even so bold as to admit it to my face, and you think I will forget that. Never, I will have my revenge somehow,” she said loudly with balled up fists.

“Your revenge will get you nothing but your own death. We will not allow you or anyone to attack us or our friends. Stop now or suffer the consequences,” Doreen told her as smoke drifted from her nostrils.

“You ... you are the one who killed Romero. Felipe told me about you, and what you did to him,” Rosetta screamed at Doreen in anger, and drew a knife from somewhere on her dress. She then tried to attack Doreen. It was a poor gesture at best, and Doreen snatched her up by the arm and the hand with the knife, lifting her high off the ground until she could look directly into her eyes.

“Yes, I shot your brother in the knee with his own gun and then hauled him up in the air by his wounded leg. He was pathetic just as you are. He liked abusing women, and we won’t stand for that. We also won’t stand for you continuing to attack us,” she told her looking directly into her eyes.

It was evident that Rosetta was in a lot of pain from being held aloft by just her one arm. However, she tried to kick Doreen with her feet. She was unable to connect with Doreen, who then slammed her down on her own desk. I could hear several bones break as her body slammed into the top of the large wooden desk with a lot of force. Rosetta screamed in pain.

“Are you still interested in revenge?” Doreen demanded in a calm voice.

“Yes, I will never stop until you and your entire family are dead,” Rosetta screamed at her, though she was in considerable pain.

“Wrong answer. There is only one solution then,” Doreen said as she released her hold on Rosetta and brought her right hand up with the claws spread. She then drove her hand down claws first into Rosetta’s belly and ripped her open from just above her vagina to the top of her lungs. Rosetta screamed in agony as blood went everywhere.

“Join your brothers in Hell,” Doreen said before breathing Dragon Fire on the screaming woman, who quickly stopped screaming as she was dead.

“DDee#ffic,” I said in the Dragon language but quietly, and the fire went out.

“So, what do we do with this place?” Craig asked while looking around.

“We destroy it and burn the remains,” Doreen told him. “It will show others what happens when you bother Dragons,” she finished.

“Hold up a minute on the destruction,” I told them. “The other Cartel locations had money ... a lot of money. There is probably money here also. We will soon be having children. Children are expensive. We didn’t realize that when we were young, but I’ll bet that we cost our parents a pretty penny in clothes, food, and other things. We should check to see if there is money here before we destroy the place,” I told them.

We spread out and checked the different rooms. We found drugs a plenty and started them burning. We found the weapons storage area and made sure none of them would survive. We found the computer room, and finally, we found the counting room with the money ... a lot of money. We collected it in the bags we had found in other places and sent it to the SUV for safe keeping.

“Are we done?” Doreen asked following that.

“Yes, let’s wake all of these people up and chase them out of the house and other buildings. Then we can destroy it and everything left in it,” I told the others. We canceled the freeze spells, and cast the wake up spell before shouting at everyone to leave the house and grounds.

“What about the Claymores?” Craig asked.

“Leave them. When the house is destroyed, they will go off, and we won’t need to deal with them again,” Doreen told him. We transferred outside after checking that the house was empty with the limited Magic available here.

“How do you want to do this?” Craig asked, as he wasn’t used to operating with us.

“From the air. Blast everything and then use Dragon Fire to burn what’s left,” Doreen suggested.

“We have a little problem with that,” I reminded her.

“What problem?” she asked.

“The lack of available Magic,” I told her.

“Oh yeah, I forgot about that. That does present a problem,” she acknowledged, swishing her tail in annoyance.

“We still have our Dragon Fire. It will certainly burn through the roof and destroy everything inside,” Craig pointed out.

This was before I noticed that there were a number of round concrete spheres on the ground around the outside of the house. They were about 18 inches in diameter. They were painted in several colors, but I had no idea what they were or why they were there, other than as decorations.

“What about these concrete balls? We could drop them on the house and other buildings from high in the air. They would surely make a mess and destroy whatever they landed on,” I told the others.

“Let’s give it a try. What are they for anyway?” Doreen asked.

“I have no idea, but there are certainly enough of them,” Craig answered, as we all grabbed one and took off. It required a longer than normal run to get airborne with the concrete balls, which weighed about 200 pounds, and it was more work to reach what we thought was an altitude high enough to drop them. They certainly did make a mess of what they struck, destroying it and themselves in the process, leaving little or no evidence of how this was done.

Fortunately, no one had arrived yet to see what was going on here, so we had plenty of time to destroy the various parts of the house and the other buildings. Following that, we flew a number of strafing runs using Dragon Fire. The entire structure was soon aflame and burning brightly before we landed.

Someone was sure to notice the smoke and the light from the fires, so we needed to be gone before they arrived. All of the guards and others from the house had disappeared, but not in the direction of our SUV, as Steve and Keith had scared them away from going in that direction, plus we had wards on the vehicle. It was just after 9:00 o’clock and nearly dark before we headed back to our hotel, the job finished.

We had a late dinner at a restaurant near our hotel before retiring for the night. We each had a room. Steve and I were in one room. Doreen and Keith were in a second room, and Craig was in a third room by himself. We had all been surprised by the amount of Magic that was now available by the time we finished dinner. There was considerably more Magic available than there had been while we had been dealing with the Cartel, but there was still no Ley Line Magic here.

“Where did all of the Magic come from?” Doreen and I both asked when we noticed it.

“It would appear that someone shut down most of the Magic in the area while we worked,” Craig said with a smile after thinking for a short time.

“That could have only been done by the Spirits of Magic,” I said and was surprised by what it revealed. “Apparently, we weren’t as alone on this job as we appeared to be,” I said following that.

In our room following a shower, Steve and I made love for a long time with kissing and hugging and rolling around in the bed before getting to the sex. Doreen and I were both fired up from dealing with the Cartel and hopefully solving our own and other people’s problems with them. Steve and I were so wrapped up with each other during our love making and the following sex that we didn’t notice the Magic that had accumulated in the room until we had recovered some. It wasn’t Ley Line Magic, just ordinary Magic and Witch Magic. It wasn’t as thick as it had been in the lobby of the Dragon Security building when we first met, but it was probably most of the Magic that had returned to the area after we had finished with the Cartel.

“Oh dear, where did all of that come from and why?” I asked on seeing it rotate around us and through the wall of the room and into Doreen’s room.

“Ah oh!” I said on realizing what that meant. “We may have a problem,” I told Steve.

“What kind of problem?”

“Similar to the one that we had in Miami, except we had sex this time,” I told him.

“OH!”

“Yes, oh!” I said. “Should we disturb Doreen and Keith? The Magic is going through the wall into their room, too,” I reminded him.

“Ah oh!” he said then. “Maybe, do you think they are finished?” he asked.

“We could wait for a bit and see if the amount of Magic decreases or slows down,” I told him. We spent the time cuddling and kissing, but about fifteen minutes or so later, there was a knock on our door.

“What is it?” I asked, as we both got up and donned robes.

“It’s Doreen. Open up,” I heard through the door. As soon as I opened the door, Doreen rushed in with Keith right behind her. He firmly closed the door.

“Was the Magic in here too?” she asked breathlessly.

“Yes, we were waiting for it to go down before checking on you,” I told her.

“Yeah, we couldn’t wait. Do you think it means what I think it means?” she asked in an excited voice.

“Yes, I believe that it does,” I answered, shaking my head up and down.

“Is Mom going to be upset?” she asked more cautiously.

“Possibly, but the Queens in the Jewel were glowing when we talked about having children. She may not be too upset if they have talked to her,” I told my twin.

“We should know in a couple of weeks,” she said giving me a hug before they returned to their room. Steve and I went back to bed following a quick shower. We slept very well for the rest of the night. The Magic had disappeared by the time we finished showering.

In the morning, we caught the local news on the cable television provided by the hotel. There was amazement that the Cartel headquarters had been destroyed. Many of the people who had worked there had disappeared, but the few who had been found had different versions of what had occurred. Some claimed that Dragons had attacked them. A couple of others claimed just as passionately that they had been attacked by a hostile Cartel, while several others claimed that it had been the Army or the Marines that had attacked them.

No one knew what to believe. The police and the fire department could only report that the entire Hacienda and all of its buildings had been destroyed and burned. They were still searching for evidence of how it was done. It would take time, they claimed, for their experts to determine what had been used to destroy the buildings.

There was a side note at the end of the local news about the local Witches and Magic users complaining about how weak the available Magic had been yesterday evening, and that it had all disappeared for a time that night. They did report that it appeared to be back to normal this morning. We all knew what had caused that, all except Craig who had slept through the gathering of Magic here.

Doreen and I decided that since we were already down here, we would stay for another day before heading back home. We actually stayed two more days before leaving and driving home. We had counted all of the money that we had taken from the Hacienda and had decided that we could afford it. We would need to report to Mother what we had done, if the story hadn’t been spread by the media. There was still talk and speculation about what had happened on the local radio and television when we left. The drive home went very smoothly.

The following day, we went to see Mother to report on what had occurred in Tampa and to retrieve our Familiars who had stayed at her house while we were gone.

“I saw the video of the fire at the Cartel’s headquarters. Have you any idea of why there were such divergent reports of who conducted the attack?” she asked.

“There was very little Magic available in the area during the attack, and we believe that someone was using illusions to confuse those in the headquarters as to just who was attacking them,” I told her as Bee rubbed herself against my leg. I also noticed that Bess was rubbing up against Doreen and was purring up a storm. Bill, however, wasn’t paying any attention to Craig and had, in fact, gone to sleep beside his chair.

“What is up with our Familiars?” I wondered, as they weren’t usually this welcoming when we returned from a trip. At least, Bee and Bess seemed very glad to see us.

“Something wrong?” Mother asked, seeing my distraction.

“No, it’s just that our Familiars seem very glad to see us,” I told her, wondering if they could tell that we were pregnant. Did we smell different when we are pregnant, I wondered, but Mother was still speaking.

“I retrieved your Father’s Book of Magic from the Nest in Stone Mountain while you were gone. Your future husbands can begin studying it today. When are you going to take them to learn to fly?” she finished.

“We’ll start them on the Book today and take them to start learning to fly tomorrow. It will be several weeks before they are proficient enough to fly by themselves,” I told her, as Bee continued to rub up against me and to purr. Reaching down, I skritched her between her ears and under her chin. She purred very contentedly at this.

“We will discuss the possibility of children later,” Mother told us to end the meeting. We had decided not to mention that we could already be pregnant.

The guys started studying Father’s Book of Magic that day, and we took them to the Demon-lands to teach them to fly the next day. Over the next two weeks, they made good progress with both. It was at the end of those two weeks that we expected to have our periods. Ours had been very consistent for the last six years since we had seen Doctor Graham when we were fifteen. In this we were disappointed. We waited a few more days, but we were still disappointed.

“We need to make an appointment to see Dr. Graham,” Doreen told me in a serious voice once we had decided that we weren’t having our periods.

“Yes, I’ll call her receptionist and get us an appointment,” I agreed reluctantly. Dr. Graham was not the most uplifting person we had ever met.

Of course, the receptionist had our old address, and I needed to change that, since we didn’t want our parents to know that we could be pregnant yet. We would go by ourselves and not take our future husbands. If we were pregnant, we would need to inform our mother, the Dragon Queen, of that and arrange to be married. Our appointment was for nine days from the day that I called. Our guys continued to study and we went flying every other day during this waiting period.

On the appointed day, we were up early, dressed, ate breakfast, and then fidgeted until it was time to leave for our appointment. We hadn’t had sex the previous night, as we had on most of the other nights since returning from Tampa. We had only attracted a little Magic each night.

Dr. Graham’s office was the same as it had been the previous time that we had been here. On arriving, we handed in the paperwork they had sent us. Shortly, the nurse appeared and took us to the back where she individually took our temperature and our weight and height before drawing blood. We were shown to the same room and told to remove our clothes and put on the gowns provided. They also wanted a urine specimen from each of us.

Having completed all of that, Dr. Graham soon arrived. She was still as old looking and thin as she had been previously. On entering, she stopped and stared at us for a number of seconds.

“Both of you are pregnant with twin girls,” she said following that with a hint of a smile.

“That is what you wanted to know, isn’t it?” she asked.

“That is what we suspected,” Doreen told her.

“Ah ... you haven’t told the Dragon Queen yet,” she said and actually did smile.

“No, we haven’t told Mother yet. We are hoping that the previous Queens will keep her from being too upset,” I told her.

“They will probably like the idea of there being four more Female Dragons,” she agreed before giving each of us a very through examination. We received an appointment for our next visit before leaving. All of the money that we had brought back from Tampa, and it was several hundred million dollars, would help defray the medical and other bills for our children. We would also need to see about another house, as ours wasn’t large enough for two families with children.