Dragon's Teeth (The Iphigenia Black Series #1)

The Iphigenia Black Series - Book One

DRAGON’S TEETH

Nicola Rhodes

Dragon’s Teeth. Copyright 2011 Nicola Rhodes

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

Introduction

This book is for Claudia. Were it not for her, I doubt Iffie would have existed in quite the way she does for we are all subject to influences whether subtle or strong, and in the end (as she well knows) there is an awful lot of Claudia in Iffie.

I first introduced Iphigenia Black (Iffie) in the Tamar Black book: Rise Of The Nephilim as the daughter of Tamar and Denny (whom some of you will know) I daresay it was because of this that I naturally (but not consciously at the time) looked to my own daughter for inspiration (although I feel it is worth pointing out here that Iffie’s mother, Tamar, was never written with me in mind) and now, as I continue to write about Iffie some years later, I find myself still looking. The Iphigenia in this book can’t help but reflect the changes that have occurred in my daughter during the intervening time. And this is, perhaps, how it should be.

About Tamar and Denny

This book is part of a spin off series. For those who have read the Tamar Black books, there is no need to read the following. For those of you who have not –a brief synopsis to fill in the past.

Many years before the events of this tale occurred, the young Denny Sanger (a slacker since before there was a word for it) became a hero when he freed a genie from her 5000 year imprisonment – which was her own fault and came about entirely through her own greed and hubris, but Denny thought she had been punished enough. Maybe he was right. In any case, during the course of their quest for her freedom they became quite fond of one another but naturally there were obstacles (although Tamar reverted to humanity, she retained her dangerous Djinn powers which meant Denny could not go near her without burning to a crisp). A further series of adventures (during which Denny acquired a demonic Athame which lent him some pretty serious powers of his own) contrived to see these off and eventually, after saving the world a few times (as you do) with the help of some allies and friends they had picked up along the way, (including a dizzy witch called Cindy, a Scotland Yard Detective called Jack Stiles, Clive – a clerk from mainframe, Hank the Hunter – a small forest god – and the goddess of witches herself, Hecaté) they married.

And had a daughter.

Now it is her turn to save the world.

(Confused? Don’t worry; this was just to get you started. The rest is in the footnotes. It will all make sense by the end – promise.)

Note on the Mainframe.

It is essential that readers understand the concept of the mainframe if they are to follow certain parts of this story.

Again, readers who have read about Tamar and Denny in the past can skip this bit and get straight to the story.

Oh dear, how to explain succinctly a concept which grew and evolved over the course of eight books. Well, I will try.

Mainframe generally refers to the hub containing all the files and folders that go to make up the universe. Files for everything, all that was, is and might be, not to mention all the files for all that stuff that never happened. The deleted files – there are several just to contain the entire mythological age. It happened, you see, and then after it was deleted, it didn’t. Of course, hub is the wrong word, since the mainframe is everywhere and everywhen too. Everything is a part of the mainframe. Access to mainframe – to get into other files (historical, for example, if you fancy a little time travel – or mythological, if you need to get to Valhalla to recruit a few dead Vikings for a war on the Faeries – but I digress) can be made through the interface of a normal human computer. But you have to know what you are doing. Having the passwords helps too.

Eventually, Tamar and Denny were in and out of mainframe so much they might as well have installed a revolving door.

There are clerks in mainframe – they think they run the universe, but really they just file the universe which is not quite the same thing. But it’s still an important job.

Clerks are ambivalent about humanity, considering them no more or less than a lot of work But there is no doubt that they hate heroes who interfere with the smooth running of the universe and cause even more extra work. And Tamar, Denny and their friends are their perennial enemies, and various subtle and not so subtle attempts to destroy or at least render them harmless have been made in the past. Needless to say, these were unsuccessful.

Clive

Clive is a different kind of clerk; he has been infected as the others would say by too much interaction with humans. Sitting behind the scenes and directing – often helping and sometimes not – with Tamar and Denny’s trials, he seems to have a secret agenda of his own. Neither Tamar nor Denny trust him, but they often need his help; which is okay, as long as it is taken warily and his advice sifted to get at his true meaning. It has occasionally appeared that he knows a good deal more than the other clerks do and perhaps he is not quite what he seems to be. Yet his power within mainframe is not great, and he is not particularly respected among the other clerks.

Nobody lives forever - But everybody tries to.

Prologue

‘Iphigenia? What kind of a name is that?’

‘Does that really matter?’ said Clive impatiently. ‘The fact is that Iphigenia Black represents an even greater menace than her mother did. She has her father in her too,’ he muttered. ‘And in some ways, he was worse.’

There was some sage nodding around the table. It was true. Who was it who had crashed the entire mainframe after all?*

*[Denny did indeed do this – for details see Anything But Ordinary but he had a good reason – at least, he thought so at the time.]

The greatest power in the universe – that of the dragons – resides in the hands of a seventeen year old chit,’ said Mordantus, who was given to making pompous statements of the staggeringly obvious. Clive gave him a look, but said nothing. Now was not the time and frankly some of the sleepier clerks probably needed to hear the bad news a few times before it sunk in.

‘Who knows what she might do?’ said another gloomily.

‘I dread to think.’ said Clive with a brisk cheeriness that belied his words. He rubbed his hands together in silent satisfaction under the table and suppressed a grin. It was, he thought, about time for some excitement. It would do this lot some good to have the complacency shaken out of them a bit.

‘Oh yes,’ he thought, ‘this is where the fun really starts.’

Chapter One

It was not a funeral, not as such, more of a memorial, but not even that.

It was goodbye though.

Tamar and Denny were going to the end of time and probably would not be coming back. Make that definitely would not be coming back. Not while the world lasted anyway.

It was like a funeral; seeing her parents off into eternity, never to return in this lifetime.

Who could blame Iffie for crying a little?

And it was like a death, in that it was not something that could be explained or understood. They were just going. And it seemed that they had no choice in the matter either. Just like death.

‘Got anything black to wear?’ Denny joked (Iffie wore only black at all times – it was a witch thing so she said – Denny maintained it was actually a teenage thing. You never saw Cindy in black) but Iffie only scowled. It was not funny to her at all.

‘We’ve left you the house of course,’ said Tamar awkwardly. ‘You and Jack can stay here for as long as you like.’

Jack being the son of Cindy (only not really)* and brought up in the house too.

*[Jack was a faerie changeling, swapped with Cindy’s real son by the Faerie King – see Faerie Tale]

Iphigenia raised large black rimmed eyes scornfully to her mother’s face. ‘Thanks!’ she said witheringly and then shrugged and turned away.

Denny and Tamar looked helplessly at each other – there really did not seem to be anything left to say.

Everyone’s life on this Earth must end in one way or another and sooner or later all parents must fail their children, if not by their own inadequacy, then by deliberate choice. It had come upon Tamar and Denny sooner than they had expected but then, it always does. There is rarely time to prepare for events like these, and if there was who knows if it would really make it any easier? Denny was nearly sixty, and Tamar was more than five thousand years old and still it felt far too soon.

Iffie, at eighteen, felt as if it were far too soon indeed. This feeling was made worse by the fact that, in their world, she had had more reason than most teens to believe her parents were immortal and would never leave her – because they were! Her mother had talked of not only founding a dynasty but also living to preside over it in perpetuity. It was not going to happen now.

After it was over, and it happened in a flash – literally; ‘Now you see them, now you don’t,’ as Iffie remarked dourly later on, Iffie turned to Jack and took his hand firmly.

‘Come on,’ she said turning away from the house. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

And they walked away without looking back.

* * *

That had been 25 years ago, and Iffie had never looked back yet. But the nightmares persisted.

She woke in a cold sweat – not a good sign – and for a moment she thought she saw ... but it was impossible, ridiculous!

She was in prison, would always be in prison – forever. The clerks in mainframe did not do things by halves – and after what she had done.

But the next night she saw her again – running like a through the bedroom like a shadowy ghost in a fifth rate horror movie, but without the shrieking.

It was her. Isabelle Wilde.

Iffie’s mind instantly shot back, twenty three years.

* * *

She had been drifting for two years, living almost hand to mouth, taken in by covens all around the world, refusing to settle, restlessly moving on every few months searching for she knew not what. Peace perhaps, perhaps answers. Whatever it was she had never found it yet. The old gang had broken up when Tamar and Denny had departed. Cindy had moved on already with Slick*, and Jack and Hecaté had now removed to some remote location suitable for Godly types – somewhere in the underworld. Jack Stiles had been human at first, but had later become a god through making a great sacrifice.

*[Formerly of The Agency –. Real name unknown.* Just The Agency – a secretly run cadre that investigates supernatural phenomena and who once tried to recruit Tamar. She decided against it in the end, but they remained allies]

She could have contacted them easily, she supposed, had she wanted to, but she had not wanted to. Likewise with their friends in the Agency. Somehow it had just been easier to cut all ties and start again.

This insouciance was assumed; the truth was she was too angry, too afraid to go back.. She felt betrayed and unsafe as if her whole life had been some sort of fantasy and now she had suddenly been unceremoniously thrust into reality without warning, without preparation and without weapons for the fight that she now understood life to be. The safety net had been pulled away before she was ready, so she made the bitterness and fury inside into a hard shell of protection. But inside she was uneasy and lonely; a small child still capable of jumping at noises in the dark. The only person she was still prepared to trust was Jack, but even he had been pushed away to a safe distance.

She still met up with Jack occasionally, usually in the middle of some catastrophe of epic proportions that threatened the whole of creation; something they were both drawn to (it was the way they had been raised) but generally, despite his love for her, he respected her desire to be left alone to wander, he even understood it – he too had been abandoned by a beloved parent. She would come back to him one day he felt sure.

Iffie had felt the power of the strange dusty haired girl as soon as she entered the coven in, of all places, Islington. The girl had raised dull, lifeless eyes to her and then turned away to gaze out of the window as if the line of grey trees outside were far more fascinating than Iffie.

It was an unusual reaction, Iffie herself, now with her hair a startling shade of burgundy replacing the former jet black that she had inherited from her mother, but still sporting the heavy kohl around her bright blue eyes – her father’s eyes – and the purple lips, dark lacy sleeves and multitude of rings and charms of her earlier youth, was a striking figure in any company. Even here! She still, even now, wore her look as if it were a suit of armour rather than a fashion choice, and it was hard to ignore her. Yet the girl managed it with a nonchalance that could surely not have been feigned.

Piqued, Iffie had tried to ignore the girl right back, but it was impossible.

For one thing, she was beautiful, so beautiful she would have attracted attention anywhere. Tall above the average with an elegance of stance that rivalled a catwalk model, and a perfectly oval face with delicate features. She made Iffie (who had won the hearts of angels* feel dowdy and plain by comparison.

*[Well, one angel anyway. Well a half-angel at least. See "Rise Of The Nephilim]

Dressed in a strange collection of rags and tags and with her odd coloured hair piled untidily on her head, she looked like the archetypal witch despite her beauty, yet Iffie knew she was not. She was something more.

* * *

For four more nights, she saw the imploring face of Isabelle Wilde in her bedroom then it stopped. She was not surprised, only wearily accepting, when she went into the kitchen one morning and found Isabelle sat at the kitchen table as if she had been there all her life.

‘Hello Bel,’ said Iffie. ‘I’ve been expecting you.’

Isabelle nodded. ‘Have you found them yet?’ she asked.

Iffie was touched despite herself – she remembered. After all this time in the horrible shadow places of mainframe, she remembered. She shook herself impatiently. Would she never be free of the fascination of this woman?

‘No,’ she said shortly.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Bel. ‘I would help you ... if you’d let me. Can I stay?’

I suppose so,’ said Iffie, knowing that she would never be rid of her now and not really caring much.

‘You look exactly the same,’ Bel told her inconsequentially. It was true in a way; Iffie would never age, but her hair was now back to its natural black and it curled around her waist giving her a strong resemblance to her mother. She had not, however, abandoned her armour. Like her father, Iffie preferred to hide. But whereas he had hidden behind scruffy clothes, tatty hair and several days’ growth of beard, Iffie hid behind a certain aura of glamour so that one could never be sure whether or not she was beautiful. She certainly did not think she was, which accounted for the armour but then, she never saw herself as others did.

Bel did not look the same though; she had aged. It was not, however, the years that had passed that had aged her Iffie surmised, and she shuddered internally.

In some strange way, she had known this would happen. She was destined for this. Even at the time of the trial, she had known in her heart that she was the one responsible, the one who would end up being Bel’s caretaker. Wasn’t it her fault too?

She was not even surprised that Bel had found her, despite the fact that she had moved away – far away – from her old stomping grounds to escape the past. What was another town, another country, another life to Bel? Or to the bods in mainframe either for that matter, it was all the same to them.

Iffie had not, in any case, been running from Bel or even her past really; she had