Ember's Kiss by Deborah Cooke

Elixir.
    He refused to worry about the glisten of blue-green that occasionally touched that thread. This wasn’t about darkfire.
    Jorge had reached O‘ahu two days before the eclipse. Like Chen, he’d sensed the firestorm in the wind. On the morning after the eclipse, he’d enjoyed the destruction caused by the earthquake.
    Then he’d followed Chen’s trail to Hale‘iwa. He’d driven past one old Chinese man walking alone on the highway, leaning heavily on his cane, and had been tempted to run over the elderly idiot just for being both persistent and stupid.
    But he had no time for frivolous games.
    And savagery could draw attention.
    In Hale‘iwa, Jorge stood outside Chen’s lair and felt the frosty tingle of Chen’s protective dragonsmoke barrier. He’d smiled, knowing that he was the only dragon who could cross this line. He and Chen were the sole survivors of those who had drunk the Elixir.
    Which meant they were the only two who could take the salamander form and, more important, the only two dragons who could spontaneously manifestelsewhere. He wondered whether Chen remembered him. He doubted that Chen forgot much. Jorge manifested inside the lair and deliberately chose to unmask his scent.
    That would give the
Slayer
a fright.
    The lair was austerely decorated. Jorge was reminded of a Japanese shrine. The walls were empty. The windows were shuttered. There was no furniture, just a cushion on the floor against one wall. He could hear the surf on the beach and the wind crossing the roof overhead. He closed his eyes and felt the rhythm of the earth far beneath the lair, and understood why Chen had chosen such minimalist decor.
    He could focus on the elements, and, almost certainly, on controlling them.
    Jorge headed for the large central room and paused in shock at the threshold. The floor was covered by a layer of sand. The sand had been worked into a great spiral, one that filled the room, with whorls that turned in on themselves. The hills had to be six inches high, the troughs not more than a scattering of sand across the wood floor.
    What was it for? Jorge’s scalp prickled and he sensed that he was in the presence of potent magic.
    This was what he had come for.
    He saw something gleaming at the center of the whorl.
    Jorge walked across the sand sculpture, not caring that he disturbed it. In fact, he liked the disregard of his footprints in the sand.
    In the middle were three black dragon scales. Their arrangement—like three points of a compass—convinced Jorge that Chen had need of one more to complete whatever spell he was making.
    Whose scales were these? Chen was red in dragon form. The only other black dragon Jorge knew was Erik, but Erik was more of a pewter color.
    He wondered whether this dragon was the one who was having a firestorm. This black dragon must be close, since Chen was hunting his scales and apparently anticipated getting another one soon. The victim must be a weakened
Pyr
, one that Chen meant to enslave.
Slayers
had no firestorms, after all.
    Jorge crouched in the middle of the spiral, yearning to seize the power that he sensed in it. He had nothing to offer Chen, nothing with which to negotiate an alliance.
    He decided to change that.
    Jorge bent and took one scale. It looked like obsidian in the light, a thin line of brilliant orange around its rim. Actually, it looked like a coal, one that was still glowing with the embers of a faded fire.
    He put it in his pocket.
    Jorge smiled in anticipation of his next meeting with Chen, then manifested outside the lair. He walked through the town, enjoying that people thought he was just another tourist, and took care to disguise his scent again. There was just a tendril of it, enough to taunt Chen, enough to show that he was in Hale‘iwa.
    Jorge would talk to Chen on his own terms, and not one minute sooner.
    In the meantime, he wondered what would happen if he broke the scale. A person