Chapter Text
“When My Baby’s Beside Me”, Big Star
“Don’t Fear The Reaper”, Blue Oyster Cult
Pucacuro Dragon Reserve, Peru, January 1982
Manuel Espinoza’s first aid protocol lectures reminded Siobhan strongly of Jakob Heglund’s. She was listening with amusem*nt to familiar phrases while Manuel spoke half in English and half in Spanish, thinking of how Manuel had told her he’d trained Jakob. It certainly explained a lot. She was picking up more of the Spanish since what Manuel was saying was so close to how Jakob did his lectures.
Barry was sitting beside her on the bench at the back of the dining hall, one arm slung around her shoulders, idly playing with her hair while they listened. He’d been out tracking a dragon back to its nest that morning, but had come in for the all-hands lecture from the Healer.
Toward the end of the lecture, Manuel broke out a collection of photographs of previous dragon attacks, which was definitely a change from Jakob’s methods. The photos of dead bodies, victims of dragon attacks, felt too invasive to Siobhan. She was well aware of the risks of being a dragon keeper. The last thing she wanted was to see pictures of burns and bites.
Barry leaned closer to her. “Wait til you see the one of the guy with his leg bitten off.”
“Sounds horrific. I’ll pass. When do you have to be out again?” she asked in a low murmur, her eyes still on Manuel.
“As soon as he wraps up.” He wasn’t looking at her, pretending to pay attention, but he added, lowering his voice even more, “I’m on a solo patrol at the western edge in the mountains, should finish up around midnight. No one will know if I finish up a bit early though.”
She smiled in anticipation. “My quarters or yours?”
“At that hour? Mine. We’ll both fall asleep.”
“Is that a promise? You going to do something to wear me out?”
He smiled and slid a glance at her. “Yes. I will.”
Later that evening when he did finally make it back to the reserve, she was already curled up in his bed with a Spanish-language copy of a Fifi Lafolle novel, trying to make her way through it in hopes of improving her command of the language. Fifi Lafolle novels were easy to read, so long as one didn’t put too much thought into whether the logistics of the sex scenes would actually work, although a few of the Spanish euphemisms were over her head. She understood the gist but not the specific words.
“You reading trashy romance novels?” Barry asked when he saw the cover. He looked amused.
“You wouldn’t believe how filthy some of them are. I’m not sure I know some of the vocabulary words in this, but I’m figuring them out from context.” She smiled up at him and flipped back a page, then held out the book. “Read this bit.”
He sat on the edge of the bed to read and she knelt on the mattress behind him, looking over his shoulder with her arms around his neck. His eyebrows lifted as he read, reaching down with one hand to untie his boots.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. I didn’t know they were this dirty.”
“What’s this word?” she asked, pointing to the page.
“I’ll give you a hint,” he drawled, turning to her with a grin.
She rolled her eyes at him. “I guessed what it meant, I just wanted the specific translation.”
“Pretty sure it’s the word for stuffed animal, like a child’s toy. Kinda weird slang, but I’ve heard worse.” He read through the rest of the page and turned to the next, kicking off his boots while he did. “Holy sh*t. I thought these were teenage girl books.”
“Oh, they are.” She kissed his neck briefly, her eyes still on the page. All of her friends at Hogwarts had been reading these while barely able to even say the word sex, she thought with amusem*nt. The Gryffindor girls had been so endearingly silly back then.
“Hold on, how are they in that position when back here they were-” Barry flipped back a page. “Either I’m misreading this or they skipped a couple of steps here, cause you can’t go from one to the other without getting up off the bed.”
“It’s not that kind of book,” she told him with amusem*nt, flopping back onto the bed.
Barry managed to get out of his clothes without putting the book down, and slid into the bed beside her, stretching out on his back to continue reading. “Man, how are they still going at it? Does anything else happen in this book?”
“Not really,” she admitted. “I can summarize the plot for you if you want. He’s a pirate, but secretly an earl, and she’s his kidnapping victim but that’s apparently a turn-on for her, so they have sex until he falls in love. There’s a little bit of piracy too, but mostly sex.”
Barry snorted. “This book is less realistic than that stupid Auror series.”
She slid an amused glance at him. “So stop reading it.”
“Nah, it’s giving me ideas and they changed positions again. Guy’s got to be nearly - oh, yeah, they’re done. Simultaneously. Good for them.” He flipped a few pages to the next chapter. “Jesus, next chapter is just more sex. Are they doing it on the deck of the ship? She’s going to get splinters in her ass. A gentleman would let her be on top.”
Laughing, she snatched the book away from him and set it on the bedside table. “I thought it might help improve my Spanish, and I’ve already read everything in the library that’s in English anyway.”
“Well, it’ll definitely improve some very specific Spanish usage.” He gave her a considering look. “You know, I remember when you were in China and writing me stuff like that, and you’re better at it than this. Maybe you should publish a book.”
She smirked at him. “And call it what, ‘Ways I Want Barry Flanagan To Do Me’?”
He started laughing and grabbed for her, hugging her tight. “Ah, Jesus, woman. You say the best sh*t.”
He kissed her with one of his rumbling purrs that she loved to hear, and she broke the kiss long enough to pull her t-shirt over her head. Barry reached down to slide her knickers off, kissing her neck and collarbone before returning to her lips.
“You know, we have some holiday time coming up,” she said in between kisses.
“We do, right around when my contract ends.” He seemed a little distracted by her body, but Barry’s ability to hold a full conversation while naked in bed far exceeded most men, in her opinion. “Where do you want to go?”
She pushed him back so she could climb on top of him, straddling his hips, and put both hands on his broad chest to brace herself. “Take me to America, Barry. I want to see a thunderbird.”
His hands slid up her legs to her waist, and she traced the outline of the bird tattoo and then ran her hands over his biceps. His scarred arm was covered from shoulder to elbow in a half-sleeve Muggle tattoo, a jungle scene with tigers and black panthers that reminded her of some of the spots deep in the Amazon he’d taken her to. She liked his magical tattoos the best, though, because they were all touch activated. She especially liked the sea serpent along his hipbone. That one undulated across his skin when she ran her fingers or her tongue over it.
Barry’s body was an endless source of fascination to her. She was entranced by his muscular form, the ridges and valleys of him, the warm skin that was smooth in some places and rough or scarred in others, and the patches of color inked into his skin by needles and magic. She drew a fingertip over the bird again, and then dipped her head to kiss his throat, enjoying the little growl this elicited.
His hands flexed on her waist, and he flipped her over to her back. “You want to see thunderbirds?” he murmured, and began a trail of kisses on her neck, working his way downward.
“Mm-hmm,” was all she could manage as he disappeared under the blankets and robbed her of her own ability to hold a conversation while naked.
Later, he gathered her close, draped across his big, warm body, and told her, “I’ll take you to the thunderbirds, Siobhan.”
“I knew you would,” she mumbled as she fell asleep.
*
February was the rainy season in the Amazon basin, and while the dragons seemed to enjoy it, flapping their wings in their pens and letting out happy little gusts of fire while they snapped their jaws to catch raindrops, the keepers were less enamored of it. Half of the pens became a mudpit that had to be dried out with magic twice a day.
Siobhan was at the pens with Sebastian Huapaya, one of the old hands at the reserve who’d come on board sometime in the 1950s with Manuel and Antonio. He wore a wide-brimmed hat that seemed to have some sort of waterproofing on it, because the rain was running off it in tiny rivers, avoiding his clothing so that he was only damp instead of soaked through. Siobhan had done the umbrella spell and was still holding her wand aloft, dreading when she’d have to take it down so they could Stun the juvenile dragon in the pen. It had an injured wing pinion from fighting with its former companion in the pen, and the only way to get Manuel in to Heal it was to knock the dragon unconscious. Vipertooths were tough little dragons who took a Stunner without being injured, where some breeds of dragon like Chinese Fireballs and Hungarian Horntails could react badly to a Stunner and were better off with a hunk of meat dosed with a Sleeping Draught.
“Siobhan.”
She turned to see Barry jogging down the slope toward her. He had his wand up for an umbrella as well, but he looked like he’d already been out in the rain without it.
“Hey Sebastian,” he said briefly, then turned back to her. “Can I talk to you a minute?”
“Sure. Be right back,” she added to Sebastian, who gave her a look that clearly said he thought she was skiving off. Evidently he wasn’t going to say anything, at least in front of Barry. She ignored him and followed Barry over to the edge of the reserve building, under the overhanging eaves so they were out of the rain.
“I’m off to tell a couple Aurors what to do with themselves,” he told her with a wide grin.
She laughed in surprise. “I’m sure they’ll love that. Aren’t you supposed to be out on patrol somewhere?”
“Siobhan, I’ve got news for you, I’m often not where I’m supposed to be,” he drawled.
No kidding, she thought, amused. “Yeah, I’ve noticed. But you keep telling me where you really are.”
He gave her a very serious look, then the smile quirked his lips again. “I told you. I don’t give a f*ck if it makes the Aurors, Jimena, or God himself mad. I’ll make sure you always know where I really am.”
She smiled slowly. When he looked at her like that, it gave her a little shiver of awareness down her spine. “So where will you really be today?”
“Over near Iquitos, at the river. Just a consult, to tell them what I know about White River monsters. They think one was spotted in the Amazon River. I don’t think it was,” he added. “They’re nearly impossible to catch, and there’s no reason anyone would go to the effort of catching one and dragging it all the way here from Arkansas to let it loose in the Amazon when they could just sell it to a wandmaker for the spines, but I told them I’d come anyway.”
That sounded different than his usual jobs with various Aurors. “Are they paying you?”
He chuckled. “Nah, Apparating down there and talking to them for half an hour isn’t worth demanding a paycheck.”
She rolled her eyes at him. “Of course it is. You should get paid every time they want something from you. I’m surprised Jimena doesn’t negotiate that, she’s such a hard-ass.”
“She only negotiates for the reserve. What I do with Aurors is separate.” He wrapped an arm around her, pulling her close for a kiss. “Maybe you should negotiate for me next time.”
“Maybe I will. You shouldn’t do anything for government agencies without a paycheck.” Something else occurred to her. “Do the other specialists do consults for free?”
He shrugged. “Dunno. Working as a specialist isn’t exactly a common thing, so I don’t know what Bagnon or Mackinty do. There used to be more of us, but Anderson got killed in ’79 and Hossam actually managed to retire last year. It’s not exactly like there’s training to do this. Seems like it just kind of happens, you turn into a specialist when you know too much about too many kinds of creatures and can hold your own with the Aurors.” He paused and co*cked his head at her. “I don’t really care about money, you know. Money is just a way to travel and have fun.”
“All the more reason to get paid what you’re worth every time you work.”
He hugged her then, lifting her off her feet. She could feel him smiling against her neck. He could be amused by her if he wanted, but the Aurors bloody well ought to be paying him every time they bothered him for information, not just when they risked his life.
When he set her down, he was still smiling. “You can negotiate with them next time they contact me,” said Barry fondly.
“You’re rotten,” she told him, and he laughed.
“Yeah, you and me both.”
She stood on tiptoe to kiss him, then put her palm on his chest and gave him a gentle push. “Go play with the Aurors, then. But next time they want to hire you, let me look it over first.”
“Okay. See you later,” he said, and she turned to walk back to the pens, but he grabbed her hand and pulled her back to kiss her again, wrapping one arm around her waist and bending her backward.
When he released her, he Disapparated with a loud crack, and she blew out her breath and put her wand back up for an umbrella.
His contract was ending soon, and he hadn’t told her what he planned to do. She still had until November on her own contract. Neither one of them had brought it up, though Siobhan was all too aware that his eighteen months would end soon. The thought of him leaving Peru gave her a prickly sort of feeling, like the inside of her skin itched, and she shook it off. Nothing lasted forever, and she’d never tried to pretend something would. They were just casual, anyway, having fun with each other, she told herself firmly.
It was just hard to imagine being at Pucacuro without his hugs lifting her off the ground, without breathless kisses and mischievous smiles. It was hard to imagine being anywhere without him, really.
Last night she’d been in his bed, reading aloud the filthiest scene she could find in that Fifi Lafolle book while he laid between her thighs and did unspeakable things with his tongue until she’d dropped the book and screamed, and how was she supposed to live without nights like that now that she’d had them?
Sebastian shook his head at her when she rejoined him, but he didn’t say anything. She smiled a bit as they started for the pen’s entrance gate.
The rain let up by the time Siobhan had finished at the pens and returned to her quarters to relax and write a letter to Solfrid. She’d had one from Solfrid last month and hadn’t written her back yet. She was halfway through the letter when Barry knocked at the open door to get her attention.
He leaned against the door frame. “Hey.”
“Hey. You’re back.” She scooted over to make room for him, but he stayed at the door.
“Did you know there was a third Pern book?”
Siobhan hadn’t been expecting that, and was a little thrown off. “There is?”
He reached into his back pocket and then tossed a paperback book to her. She caught it and had to turn it over to examine the cover. There was a painting of a man on dragonback, a white dragon that looked too small for a Pern dragon. The cover was in English.
“Thought you might like to read it,” Barry told her fondly. The corners of his eyes crinkled as he smiled softly at her.
Caught between surprise and delight that he would think to look for a book for her, Siobhan smiled up at him. “Where did you find this?”
“At a bookshop in Iquitos.”
“I thought you were just going to talk to the Aurors. Why on earth were you in a bookshop?”
“To see if there were any books in English.” The little smile widened into a mischievous grin. “I didn’t have any Muggle money on me, so I stole it.”
She stared at him a moment, stunned, then laughed. “You shoplifted a book?”
“Yeah.” He came over to sit on the edge of her mattress, leaning over her. “I don’t care about a little petty theft if it makes you smile. You love those books.”
“The Aurors aren’t going to let you play with them if you’re a real criminal, not just playing one for their bloody cases.” She reached up and pulled him down for a kiss.
“Sure they will. They still hire Mackinty. Anyway, it’s only illegal if you get caught, and I never do.” He kissed her again, then straightened up. “I’ve got to finish up the river patrol. Won’t be back til after three in the morning. Tell me if it’s good and I’ll read it when you’re done. You gonna sleep in here or in my bed tonight? And I do mean sleep, cause I’ll be useless for anything much else by three.”
“Yours. But if I fall asleep reading before I make it to your bed, you’d better come and get me when you get back.”
He leaned down again, planting his hands on either side of her while he kissed her, long and slow, and then rested his forehead against hers, his pale gaze steady on her.
“I will,” he said quietly.
When he was gone, she looked down at the book again, running her fingertips across the white dragon on the cover. He’d stolen a book because he thought she’d like to read it. That probably wasn’t supposed to make her heart trip with delight.
Romantic gestures didn’t usually please her, and she wasn’t sure this really qualified. He probably wouldn’t see it as romantic. If he’d given her flowers or some other traditional gesture, she wouldn’t have wanted them. But Barry stealing a book to make her happy was romantic, in a weird sort of way.
She tried not to think about how distinctly not-casual he looked when he smiled at her like he had when she saw the book. That wasn’t a subject she wanted to dwell on. Instead she snuggled down into her blanket and opened the novel.
*
Pucacuro Dragon Reserve, Peru, March 1982
Siobhan spent the morning at the dragon pens with Lucia and Manuel, working on the new spring hatchlings. Several of them had been in a vicious battle last night, leaving two of them dead at the back of the pen and four more injured. It was an unfortunately common occurrence with this species of dragon. Vipertooths hatched larger clutches of eggs than most dragons because they were more likely not to survive infancy. It reminded Siobhan of certain species of sharks, who turned cannibal even before birth. One of the dead Vipertooths was already half-eaten by the other dragon babies. No spell invented yet could keep the hatchlings calm enough that they didn’t fight each other, so all the reserve could do was clean up after something like this happened.
Once Manuel had the injured dragonets fixed up, he headed back for the reserve, leaving Lucia and Siobhan alone to finish their work before the hatchlings came around from the Stunning Spell they were under. Lucia repaired the damage to one corner of the pen, patching up the spells and the wood slats of the fence, while Siobhan moved the two dead dragonets out of the pen and over to the large, hexagonal building that served as game larder. There was nothing useful in the little dragons’ bodies, they were too small and too young to be used in magic yet, but they would be properly disposed of by the three keepers whose job it was to butcher dragons when the reserve sold their horns, scales, blood, and other parts.
Siobhan had never liked that part of dragon keeping, though in some ways that was what it was all about. The magical world needed dragon parts, and the reserves kept it supplied while maintaining and protecting the creatures’ populations, keeping them from encroaching on the Muggles and ensuring there were healthy numbers of dragons in the wild. The dragons were humanely slaughtered by the reserves, unlike the poachers and black market sales, and that was something she could live with. She was too much a realist to get upset over it, but sometimes it made her a little wistful when she thought of it.
She and Lucia headed into the reserve building after the cleanup was done, and ate lunch together in companionable silence that quickly became a friendly chat. Lucia had been a dragon keeper too long to get upset over normal deaths at the reserve, just like her. Lucia had grown up in the small half-wizarding town nearby, and her family still lived there. She was telling Siobhan stories about her brother, who was a Squib and had become a carpenter but still lived next door to their witch mother.
When they left the dining hall, Siobhan caught sight of Barry’s unmistakable figure heading into the director’s office in the corridor across from them. She stopped abruptly.
“I’m off to my sister’s this afternoon,” Lucia told her cheerfully, not noticing Siobhan’s distraction.
“See you later,” she said, managing a smile at Lucia.
Lucia walked off toward the keepers’ wing, leaving Siobhan standing outside the dining hall alone.
He’d gone into Jimena’s office. She stood frozen for a moment, staring at the closed door where he’d disappeared, then turned on her heel and walked off, trying not to think about why he was in there. His contract was over next week. He’d be going somewhere new. That was what he loved, and what he had always done. He’d been all around the world working with dangerous magical creatures of all types, he wasn’t going to stop now. They hadn’t talked at all about him staying, or what would happen when he left Peru.
She went into the library to look for the first Pern book, hoping no one else had borrowed it. She needed something to take her mind off things, and trying to make it through a novel in Spanish was too much right now. She stared blindly at the shelves for a moment before snapping herself to attention.
He wasn’t under any obligation to her, after all.
The library wasn’t well organized, and she was still searching the shelves for the book she thought of as hers though it didn’t belong to her when she heard footsteps behind her.
“Siobhan. Hey.”
She spared him a glance over her shoulder, but the sarcastic remark she wanted to make wouldn’t come to her lips, and she went back to searching the shelves. “Hey.”
Barry grabbed her waist and turned her to face him, wrapping her in a tight hug. “I just went to see Jimena.”
She hid her face against his broad chest and tried to squash down feelings she’d never liked having so he wouldn’t know. She didn’t want to go back to only seeing him for a week every few months when their holiday time allowed it. It was much better climbing in his bed (and on top of him) every night. Time for this to end, then. He loved going somewhere new, and he’d been in Peru so long already. He wasn’t hers to keep when the wide world was calling him.
Just casual.
“I extended my contract,” he told her softly, kissing the top of her head.
The tension abruptly left her body, and she relaxed against him. With a sigh, she looked up at him. “You’re not leaving yet?”
He was smiling at her with a mix of fondness and the mischief that always seemed at the edge of his smiles. “Thought I’d stick around a little longer. I like it here where it’s hot and wet.”
Siobhan laughed. “Do you mean the jungle, or me?”
His chuckle rumbled through her, and she held him tighter, still smiling. He was stroking her hair with one hand, and suddenly everything felt brighter. He wasn’t hers to keep, but she could borrow him a little longer.
“Maybe both,” he said teasingly.
“Maybe I should remind you which is hotter and wetter.” She stood on tiptoe and buried a hand in his hair, pulling him down for a kiss.
“Jesus. You definitely should.” He lifted her in a bear hug, and she couldn’t stop her smile as he kissed her a few more times.
“You’re sure you want to stay?” she asked in a whisper when he set her down.
Barry cupped her face gently in his hands, looking down at her with a soft smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes. “Yeah. I am.”
*
A fortnight after Barry had extended his contract at the reserve, Siobhan was eating breakfast alone at the back of the dining hall, looking out at the tree canopy. There weren’t many birds out this morning, but she was enjoying the stillness before she had to spend the day along the southern edge of the reserve’s border with Sebastian and Olga to strengthen the border spells. A day of Apparating multiple times and casting powerful spells was going to tire her out, so she was absorbing all the peace and quiet the morning could give her.
She’d only just walked down the steps to the courtyard, ready to meet up for the day’s work, when Antonio Chavez appeared in front of her with a loud crack.
“Rampage,” Antonio said succinctly. “There’s no time, get in the air and head for the river.” And he disappeared again.
She scrambled for the broom shed, and was in the air alongside several other keepers.
“This way, this way!”
Over in the distance, she could see a keeper waving his arms at them, seated on a broom high above the tree canopy. She couldn’t tell who it was, but she flew toward him.
When she got closer, it turned out to be Carlos Querevalu. He pointed downward and to the east, toward the Amazon River. “It’s already been in three villages. Hurry!”
“This is going to take all day to clean up,” grumbled Olga behind her.
Siobhan rolled her eyes and flew off toward the river, following the glittering of the water in the bright morning sunshine. They caught up to Carlos de Olivei, already on a broom and flying away from a village along the river.
“This is a bad one,” he called to them as he fell into their formation. “It’s going to take the entire reserve to cover up what happened. Five dead just in that village, and that was the third or fourth one already.”
Sebastian shook his head, and Siobhan could just make out the string of curse words coming from him. She didn’t know all the Spanish words he used, but she had a pretty good guess what they were.
They flew past another village a few minutes later, where the amount of wailing and activity indicated the dragon had already passed through, and Sebastian gestured for them to split up to search for the dragon. Siobhan flew out over the jungle to the northeast, trying to find any indication of where the rampaging dragon had gone next.
Up ahead another broom emerged from the jungle, and Barry caught sight of her and waved. She slowed down to float alongside him.
“There you are,” she called. “Where’s the bloody dragon?”
“I f*cking hate brooms,” he told her, then pointed toward the river. “It’s somewhere down there, come on.”
She followed him down to skim above the river, looking for the rogue dragon somewhere over the broad expanse of the Amazon River. There was no sign of it, and a boat was heading their way so she flew upward again, heading to the top of the canopy with Barry right behind her. He didn’t look comfortable on the broom, but he flew fairly well.
“It’s already been through four villages, did they tell you?” he yelled to her.
“I heard,” she called back. “And I saw.”
“Juvenile male, looked about a year and a half old to me.”
“f*cking idiot teenage boys!” She rolled her eyes theatrically and Barry laughed and shook his head at her.
“You’ve got a sick sense of humor sometimes, woman.”
She stuck her tongue out at him and flew on.
He flew a little closer, enough that she could hear him easily. “Come on, let’s see if we can spot the damn thing from up high.”
He led her up above the jungle canopy again, away from the river, just in time for Cesar Quispe to burst out of the trees a hundred yards ahead of them. He waved both arms at them, and they flew toward him.
“Pronto, pronto, rápido,” he was yelling, and turned his broom back downward as soon as they reached him.
When they were through the canopy, the dragon abruptly came into view. There was blood on its talons, and its body was still sleek and narrow. It wasn’t eating its kills, just killing and moving on. If it would have settled to eat, it might have been too engorged to keep going. Dragons were easier to catch after they’d eaten their fill. This one was flying as if it had nothing better to do than feel the wind and rake its claws over any human or animal it got near.
Cesar shot a Stunner at it at the same time she and Barry did, but the dragon dodged it and the spell splashed in a burst of red light against a yellow meranti tree.
They followed it as it whipped through the jungle, falling into a single line to weave between the trees. The dragon was doing barrel rolls, looking as if it were having the time of its life, and headed for the next village along the river. It changed direction abruptly, heading toward the sky, and they followed it.
Too slow, it seemed, because when they emerged from the tree canopy, the dragon had gone again, diving back down into the jungle. Siobhan slowed her broom, looking around with one hand shading her eyes for signs of movement or birds disturbed that might show where the bloody thing had disappeared to.
“sh*t, where’d it go now?” Barry was looking around as well, annoyance on his face.
“Down there!” Cesar yelled, pointing below Barry.
Sebastian and the other Carlos were on its tail as it passed the tree canopy into the sunlight and saw the three of them. She saw its attention change focus just a second too late. The dragon was right below them now, and Vipertooths were so bloody fast. The Vipertooth flapped its wings hard, twisting its body around as it gained altitude, and before Barry could do more than rear up on his broom in surprise, the dragon had caught him around the torso in its jaws.
It bit once, twice, snapping its fangs around Barry’s chest before releasing him. Siobhan couldn’t even draw breath to scream, and didn’t have time to think before he was falling, unconscious, his big body gone limp. Blood was spreading across the blue cotton of his shirt. She flew after him, ignoring the other keepers and the rampaging dragon, not caring about anything else but catching him before he hit the trees.
She had her wand out to stop his fall before he could crash, and nearly fell off her own broom getting to him. He was bleeding heavily, and she didn’t stop to think through a strategy, because Vipertooths were venomous and there was no time. She grabbed his arm while he was still in mid-air, pulling him close to her body, and Disapparated, reappearing in the infirmary.
“Manuel!” She almost didn’t recognize her own voice, screaming for the Healer.
Barry was already collapsing against her, and she sank under his weight, sliding to the ground so he didn’t hit hard against the tile floor. Manuel was at her side by the time she was on the floor, moving Barry off of her and stretching him out to examine him.
“Side-along Apparition for an injured person is very dangerous,” he chided her as he ripped open Barry’s blood-soaked shirt to examine the bite wounds. The dragon’s jaws had left an oval-shaped half-moon of holes in Barry’s ribcage, overlapping from the two bites. It could almost have been a large crocodile that had bit into him, but the skin around the fang marks was already turning black from the venom, and no crocodile bite ever looked like that. “You could have made it worse. But in this case, you did the right thing, I think,” Manuel finished in a murmur.
He touched the center of the bite radius, and Barry’s eyes opened, glazed with pain.
“You’re lucky it didn’t take a chunk out of you,” Manuel told him while he worked on the bite wounds. “Vipertooths like eating human flesh, but apparently that one didn’t like the taste of norteamericanos.” He had his wand out and Siobhan had no idea what he was doing, what spells were even possible for this. Barry tried to sit up, and Manuel pushed him back down. “Move again and I knock you out.”
Barry ignored him. “Are you okay?” he whispered, gripping Siobhan’s hand.
She almost punched him for asking her that when he was bleeding in her lap. “I’m fine, I’m fine, but you’re not. Do what he says, Barry, please.”
He drew a long breath, and the blood around one of the fang marks bubbled, the red blood turning black as more bubbles came up. The venom was spreading, as fast as the blood making a pool underneath him, but the bubbles scared her with new fears. Barry’s eyes closed, his hand in hers going limp again. Siobhan thought her heart would stop if his did and looked in panic to Manuel.
“Punctured lung,” Manuel said shortly. “You should go. I’ll call for you when I can.”
She didn’t want to leave him, but there was nothing she could do. She bent down to kiss Barry’s forehead, and his skin was cold under her lips. She was going to burst open because she couldn’t help him, feeling flayed to the bone and helpless to stop it.
“If you don’t save him, I swear to God I will kill you,” she told Manuel.
He smiled, glancing at her while he worked. “Don’t cry, Siobhan. You know I’m the best at my job.”
She wiped her face with her hands. She hadn’t realized she’d been crying. The backs of her hands were wet with tears and blood now, and she tried to dry them against her trousers, but those were soaked with blood too.
“Go,” Manuel told her again, and she went, nearly tripping as she went down the stone steps from the infirmary to the grass courtyard. She couldn’t go any farther, though, and collapsed to the ground.
Oh God, please, not Barry.
She pulled her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, rocking a bit, and began a Hail Mary prayer in a whispered murmur, the Latin bubbling out of her unconsciously while the litany in her head continued.
Not Barry. Oh God, not Barry. Please, not Barry.
It was an endless time and uncounted decades of Hail Marys before Manuel finally came outside. When she looked up at him, she realized it was sunset. It felt like time had slipped; one moment she’d been in the air, just after breakfast, and now the day was gone. Manuel didn’t look surprised to see her still there.
“He’ll live, Siobhan.” Manuel reached down to take her hand, boosting her to her feet. “I have stopped the spread of the poison, and in a few weeks it will be reversed. It was close. It’s good that you Apparated with him, but don’t do that again with a patient without asking me.” He handed her a potion bottle. “Go wash up. Use this to clean up, so you don’t react to any residual venom on your skin. I’ll summon you when he’s awake.”
“You’re sure?” She was too shaken to be ashamed of showing her vulnerabilities to Manuel. She didn’t want him to tell her how close it had been, or she might start screaming and never stop. Her throat felt raw and tight, like she already had been screaming. “He’s going to live? You’re sure, Manuel?”
“I am the best,” he reminded her. “And Barry is far too tough to let a dragon bite kill him.” He gave her a little push toward the main building. “Go, clean up, you’re covered in his blood. I’ll send for you when he wakes up.”
“I lost my broom,” she said, just then realizing she’d left it behind somewhere in the Amazon. It occurred to her she might be in shock.
“It is only a broom,” Manuel told her kindly.
On her way back to her quarters, she ran into Carlos de Olivei, who stopped in his tracks at the sight of her, his handsome face going pale. She must look truly horrifying for him to get that look on his face.
“Flanagan?” the handsome Brazilian asked her starkly.
“Manuel says he’ll live.” Her voice was definitely shocky. She didn’t sound like herself. The world felt strange and alien. She needed Barry to still be in it. She didn’t want to be in a world without him. She needed to see him, to touch him and feel his heart beating, to see him smiling at her with that wide grin and icy pale eyes.
Not Barry.
Carlos nodded, still staring at her as if he were looking at a ghost. “We got the dragon. It’s down in the pens, knocked out. Jimena is considering whether to put it down or try to rehabilitate it.”
She nodded, though she didn’t care whether the dragon was alive or dead at this point.
“Go get cleaned up,” he told her, putting a hand gently on her shoulder. “You’re not hurt too, are you?”
She hurt, but not in a way anyone could help. She walked away, and nothing seemed to register with her until she was in her quarters, staring at her reflection with no memory of how she’d gotten there.
The blood really was everywhere, all over the front of her body from holding him while he slid down her, on her face, her arms and hands, her trousers where she’d knelt beside him in the pool of blood with Manuel. It was even in the tips of her hair, the curls sticking together from the dried blood. She looked like a horror movie. So much blood.
Not Barry.
She stared a moment longer, then stripped down to her skin, tossing the bloody clothes in a pile on the floor. Barry’s wand had wound up in her possession, and she clutched the fir wand in her left hand while she incinerated the pile of clothes with a quick spell with her own beechwood wand. His wand felt as cold as his skin had, and she dropped both wands on her bed. The last time she’d been in this bed, Barry had been in it with her.
The showers were empty, and she stood under the blazing hot water until it no longer ran red with Barry’s blood.
Not Barry.
Manuel didn’t summon her until late in the night. It didn’t matter that it was well after midnight. She had been sitting on her bed, waiting, staring at Barry’s wand and hers laid side by side on the blanket. There was no way she’d have been able to sleep until she saw him whole again with her own eyes.
When she got to the infirmary, Barry was sitting up in bed with the blanket pulled up to his waist. His torso was heavily bandaged, and he looked pale even in the dim light of the infirmary. But he really was alive, and her heartbeat went all erratic at the sight of him. He was alive.
“Hey,” he said, and his voice sounded weaker than she’d ever heard it.
“Hey.”
He smiled at her briefly, tired and wan but still trying to reassure her. “I’m okay, Siobhan.”
She took a few steps closer, looking him over carefully. She couldn’t see beneath the bandages to see how bad it looked. She wasn’t even sure she wanted to see, not when that would make her see how close he’d come to death. She’d seen it fresh, but it had been hard to take in because of all the blood, obscuring her vision and shocking her brain into dissociating. There’d been so much blood.
Not Barry.
“You threatened to kill Manuel?” he asked. His hands rested on the bandages. There was a small smile playing around his lips.
“I might have.” She didn’t remember that, but she probably had.
He moved over, making room for her beside him, and patted the bed to invite her next to him.
She climbed in beside him, curling her body against his gently, and rested her hand on his chest, above the bandages. His skin felt cool still, when he usually ran hot, and she tried not to let the thought settle that this was from blood loss. She rubbed her cheek against his arm, where the little dragon tattoo breathed fire. He reached up to cover her hand with his own, and kissed the top of her head.
“Don’t ever do that again,” she told him in a shaky voice.
“I didn’t set out to do it the first time. I didn’t think the damn thing was big enough to get such a good bite of me.”
She wasn’t in the mood for him to make jokes. Dark humor was usually fine by her, but she felt like her skin was going to jump off her bones when she thought about what had happened to him, how much worse it had almost been. Sometimes she could still see Broos’s silhouette in the Short-snout’s flames when she closed her eyes, and that had been nothing compared to what she’d felt today.
The thought of Barry dying by dragonflame or poisoned by dragon bite was overwhelming, devastating in its intensity. Barry wasn’t supposed to die young. Barry was supposed to die of old age, a long time from now, over a hundred years old, not thirty-four. She wanted to yell at him for getting that close to the dragon, for letting himself get that close to death.
Oh God, not Barry.
“You said I’d always know where you are,” she whispered.
His arm flexed beneath her cheek. “You will. It’s not going to happen again. Come here.”
He put his arm around her, holding her close and wincing a bit at the movement, and she settled against him with her cheek on the bare skin of his chest next to their hands, still entwined.
A tear slid down her cheek where it rested against his chest, and she closed her eyes tightly to keep any more from falling. He must’ve noticed it, but he didn’t say anything. Instead he rubbed his thumb slowly, soothingly, against her arm, and began to hum one of his sea chanteys. It took a few bars for her to recognize ‘Rolling Down to Old Maui’, and she thought of the first time she’d heard him singing this, at a bonfire in Tanzania with the Uluguru Mountains looming over them, after the nundu had been successfully killed.
He’d seemed so invincible, so huge, towering over most of the other wizards who’d gathered for that hunt. And here he was lying in a bed in the infirmary, barely surviving dragon venom and comforting her because she’d almost lost him.
She hated this. But she didn’t let go of him, and hummed along with the chorus when he reached it again, her tears still falling silently.
*
That spring, after Manuel finally declared him free of the Vipertooth venom completely, they both took a sabbatical. Barry took her to Arizona, and they spent several weeks in the desert, camping and making love under the stars. Eventually he tracked down a thunderbird nest for her, and held her as the giant birds flew overhead, lightning cracking through the sky above them.
They were the most amazing thing she’d ever seen, aside from Barry.
At the end of their trip, they stopped in one of the Muggle cities for lunch and to catch up on the Muggle world.
In the record store, Siobhan flipped through the rock albums while Barry found folk recordings. He was utterly entranced by a Canadian folk record, listening to a song called ‘Northwest Passage’ with such concentration that she knew he was memorizing it. He let her sit on his lap so she could listen to it too, the headphones covering her ears and his arms holding her tight while he pressed his face to her back, his breath warm on her skin through her t-shirt. She gave him the headphones back and watched while he played the record track again. The look on his face when he was falling in love with a piece of music gave her a raw, savage feeling.
She bought the album for him.
He really had memorized it. That night he stood under the stars and sang it to her in his beautiful baritone, and she thought about the six weeks he’d spent in the infirmary healing from dragon venom. For the first time in nearly ten years, she didn’t want to go back to the magical world, wanted only to stay in the desert forever with Barry, safe and whole and far away from the dragons that had nearly stolen him from her.
