The Angelus Brothers Chronicles - The Golden Hind

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

"She can't see me in my ghost form." Offered Maude as Gabriel rubbed his face. 

"No one can see you, dearest." Said Nettie as she patted her mate's hand. A few yellowed bruises were still visible on the wolf's face and she was using a stick to take the weight off her still sore leg. But she was recovering quickly from the human attack.

"Since we can't all become invisible we need another way past the dragon." From the doorway, Winston cleared his throat. 

"Is the dragon black Miss Maude? With a redhead and wings?" 

"Yes." Said Maude in a questioning tone. 

"She has a horn missing?" 

"Yes. She has one on the left but a broken stub on the right." 

"Winston?" Asked Gabriel standing from his desk and crossing to the doorway of his office. 

"The dragon was originally the Oracles protector, not her jailer." Said the dwarf.

"How would you know that Winston?" The dwarf took a deep breath. 

"When I was young, long before your father found your mother. The forest we lived in, it was the Amazon's forest." Gabriel's eyes went wide.

"You and my mother knew the Oracle?" 

"Miss Amaranth knew her better than me. I met her a couple of times though." 

"And you never thought to mention this before?" Gabriel rubbed his face and crossed to the window to watch Kaia in the distance in her deer form running around the lake. 

"Your mother, having been friends with the Oracle, would not have assisted your search. It did not seem relevant before." Gabriel considered the new information as he watched Kaia run and half wondered where his daughter was if Winston was up here with him. Well, he supposed the idea his mother had planted that it was the amazon's that trained Winston to fight was right. 

"What can you tell us about the dragon? Will she know you?" 

"She would have known your mother better. But she may well remember me. I played with her as a child. I do not understand why she would help those who took the Oracle and slaughtered the Amazons. She was sworn to protect them." 

"They have her chained with huge metal spikes pinning her wings to her sides." Offered Maude. Gabriel broke his gaze away from his mate as the sun made her coat shimmer. 

"Will you come with us when we go in after the Oracle Winston? Not to fight but to try and distract the dragon?" Winston nodded. 

"I would have come with you anyway Master Gabriel. My place is as always at your side." The vampire nodded at the tight-lipped butler who he loved more dearly as he imagined most loved their fathers.  

"You've had a response? We're going in?" Asked Nettie sounding excited. 

"I've not had a response. But yes, we're going in." 

***

Gabriel knocked at Azrael's door and opened it without waiting for a response. His brother was as ever at his desk reading long-forgotten texts and mumbling to himself. He remembered how Azrael had once been before his twin sister had been killed by their father. He knew their sister's tree still being alive gave their brother the hope that maybe Ariel was still lived somewhere. But it had been well over a century. If she had survived to get to wherever their father had sent her, it was unlikely she still was. Gabriel had tried every contact he had to find the Nymph. With her one blue eye and one green like her twin brother, she stood out from all the other green-eyed nymphs. But it had been to no avail. No one in this dimension or any other he had contact with, had seen her.