The conference between the Omari dragons was brief and within a minute, all but Haru were climbing higher and higher into the air, heading to the clan.
Adrian walked up to Haru and clapped him on the shoulder. “We’ll find the godstone, the king will have a quick chat, and you’ll be in the air with an angry, deity-charged badass ready to kick some Takahashi dragon carcass.”
The dragon lifted a brow at Adrian as if the man had lost his mind, and then he looked over at his cousin.
Caelan offered a small shrug. “I’ve been told I have a temper problem when it comes to my family and their safety.”
“I’ll take it.”
Rayne didn’t find it reassuring, though. Caelan’s use of the gods’ powers was taking a bigger and bigger toll on him both physically and mentally. He wasn’t sure how much more Caelan could take before something broke that could not be fixed.
But he had to swallow those worries for now. They needed to find the godstone. There was no leaving the Hayashi compound until they’d spoken with Caris.
“Can you tell where the godstone is?” Rayne inquired.
“Underground,” Caelan replied without hesitation.
“Do you need to be standing in front of the godstone, or can you just be here?” Adrian inquired, waving sort of vaguely around them.
“Or maybe you can burrow down to it like a mole,” Haru suggested.
Drayce snickered and punched Caelan in the shoulder. “He’s definitely your cousin. You’re both crazy.”
Caelan gave his best friend a shove and glared at Adrian and Haru. “Yes, I need to be standing in front of it, and no, I can’t burrow like a mole. But let’s see if the gods are in the mood to help speed this along.”
He stood in the middle of the central courtyard and held his hands out on either side of him with his palms facing up. In his left hand, blue energy swirled and crackled like a small storm. In his right hand, warm green energy burbled up, twisting slowly like a vine.
Caelan closed his hands and the energy shot out, zipping through one building and then another as his high-speed bloodhounds, seeking out the entrance to the godstone room. The power from the two gods was little more than a green and blue blur in the fading darkness. Rayne’s heart sped up while his eyes struggled to follow their path. Caelan remained in the center of the courtyard, unmoving, with his eyes closed.
Suddenly the king flinched and shook his head. “Yeah, yeah. I got it,” he muttered. He turned to the rest of them and pointed toward the rear of the compound. “In the central house, there’s a steel door. Though I’m really hoping someone knows how to pick a lock, because we don’t have the key.”
Adrian snorted. “Why else did you bring me along?”
“Seriously? You can pick locks?” Drayce gasped.
Adrian shook his head, appearing thoroughly disgusted. “Of course. What kind of reformed thief would I be if I didn’t know how to pick locks?”
“Dude, you gotta teach me. I—” Drayce started, but Eno grabbed him and placed his hand over the smaller man’s mouth.
“Absolutely not. You don’t have enough common sense for that skill,” Eno argued.
Drayce shoved at Eno, breaking free. “I do too. I could totally learn it.”
“I think what he means is that you don’t have the common sense needed to keep you from using it at the wrong time,” Caelan explained, already leading the way to the main building.
“Oh!” Drayce nodded. “He’s right. I don’t. I would get in all kinds of trouble with that skill.”
Haru walked up beside Rayne and cocked his head a little so that his eyes could sweep over Rayne’s face. “I understand now why you have those lines across your forehead all the time. You must find them exhausting.”
Rayne thought long and hard about poking Haru with one of his knives, but he restrained himself. The dragon chuckled and hurried to catch up with the others.
“You okay?” Eno asked when Rayne joined them in the building.
“We are returning Haru to Nori as soon as possible. It’s bad enough that Adrian and Drayce get along so well. Our party does not need a third one of them.” Rayne muttered.
Eno surprised him by brushing a kiss across his cheek. “If it helps, Haru manages to drive both Drayce and Adrian insane too.”
Rayne tried to hold on to his irritation, but it was slipping through his fingers under the warmth of Eno’s love. “It doesn’t help,” he replied, but his words had lost all their grumbliness.
They flicked on flashlights as they moved slowly through the main building. The floors were warped by years of water and weather damage. Some boards were missing completely, forcing them to backtrack and cross rooms in a single-file fashion. Vines grew in where windows had once been and crawled naked across the floor, their leaves gone, thanks to winter’s grip. The scent of mildew and rot whispered through the rooms, but the winter wind had kept the air from growing stale with it.