Valley of the Dragons (Rule 9 Academy, #3)

by Rain, Elizabeth

  He tripped over the fallen limb that had come down to partially block the road, stumbling forward. The whir of air and the sting along the crease of his ear alerted him to the fact that someone had just shot at him. He moved forward into the fall, rolling into a forward summersault and coming up with a five foot limb clutched in his hand, his gold eyes scanning the clearing ahead of him, narrowing in the near darkness that the moon couldn’t cut.

  The man that stepped out to block his path was tall and broad. He held the long gun easily in his fists as he stared down at Todd, loading another dart. Todd’s eyes narrowed and his shoulders bunched as he tightened his hold on the improvised staff he gripped in both hands.

  His ears picked up the approach of the others behind him and he cursed his stupidity. He had walked into an ambush. His pursuers were in no hurry, he was going right where they wanted him. His eyes shifted off the trail and he considered taking to the woods and the high country. His nostrils flared. These were humans and nothing more.

  “I think you boys need to reconsider what you are about here. You don’t want any piece of me.” He shouted the warning, the words hanging in the air.

  Soft laughter, cold and excited, floated down to him. “Oh, but that’s where you’re wrong Todd. You are exactly what we want.” As he finished speaking, the man pulled the bolt back and locked it in place, and then he waited.

  Todd whirled as the others moved into sight behind him. Two more. One average height and older. The other was obviously the brother to the first, just as tall but with lighter hair. A family of vigilantes.

  It didn’t take much for Todd to recognize he was in serious trouble. He didn’t want to find out firsthand what was in those darts. The brother down the trail stared up at him grinning, with a similar gun held easy in the crook of his arm.

  Todd looked up beyond the first toward camp. He was better than halfway there, but not near close enough for anyone to hear if he shouted. He’d been stupid, assuming he could handle anything that happened. He thought of the other boy, Jake Winters, that they’d found on the ridge. Murdered, tortured, beaten. It didn’t take a significant leap of brains to imagine these three might have had something to do with that. Would they discover his body broken and rotting too?

  As they closed in his options for flight narrowed. If he turned to run, they’d both fire. He hefted his impromptu weapon, the heft of it light and even in his hands as he twisted and turned, keeping them both in his eyesight with difficulty, waiting for someone to make the first move. The sudden movement below him had him jerking the staff up reflexively just in time to catch the first dart neat. It stuck fast in the fleshy part of his staff, pinkish liquid oozing, and catching the moonlight as it dampened the wood. Todd was no fool, he was already whirling as the original brother fired. But he was at a disadvantage, having to swing his staff around fast enough, hoping to have as much luck the second time. He was close as the spinning dart whirled past the staff, the feathered fletching catching it just enough to alter the aim. It glanced off his shoulder, the sharp needle digging a deep furrow and sticking for just a second before it bobbled off into the undergrowth. That was too close. Before he could recover, they were on him. The silver reflection of their knives as they came at him made him tense as he called his wolf with a snarl. His fingertips lengthened, curving into claws sharp enough to cleave meat from bone.

  But they outnumbered him as he felt the first nick of the knife along his side that he wasn’t quick enough to avoid. He buried the end of the staff in the solar plexus of the older man, making him double over with a ‘woof’ of expelled air. He never paused as he kept the momentum of the staff going to clip the second brother under the chin, sending him stumbling back, blood splitting the air from the long gash that would probably need stitches.

  Todd had another problem. As the first brother closed in, a wave of dizziness clouded his vision. The dart had almost missed, but not entirely. His stomach roiled and the world spun as he struggled to focus on the glittering knife carving the air towards his shoulder. He blinked, struggling to bring the staff around in time.

  He wasn’t going to make it.

  “What’s the matter, wolf, cat got your tongue. You don’t seem so steady.” The first brother taunted, grinning as he came.

  When those cold eyes blanked in sudden shock and his back arched backwards Todd froze in confusion. The knife tumbled from his assailant’s nerveless fingers. Todd’s blurring vision tried to make sense of the apparitions running down the trail in his direction. Before he could, he was shoved aside as the other two grabbed their fallen comrade, dragging him as he stumbled between them down the road towards Purdy.

  They paused in their wild descent to turn and fire back up the mountain. Something hard slammed into him before he realized it was his brother, Thomas. They hit the heavy brush on the side of the trail, tumbling end over end into the woods. The others dove for the relative safety of the forest as the shots whirred over their heads, coming way too close for comfort.

  One shot pinged off the trigger of Sadie’s bow and she dropped it with a scream, fingers stinging from the shock. She stood up and called her fire, sending an orange arc of flames shooting down the trail after them before she called it back. Someone screamed, but there was no way to know for sure if it had hit anyone.

  Moments passed and silence descended in the forest as they struggled to catch their breath. The vigilantes were gone.

  Todd pushed himself to a sitting position, the world spinning around him as he tried to focus. He made out his brother’s ravaged face. Beside him crouched Sadie and Niel. He opened his mouth to thank them, to tell them how grateful he was that they’d come back for him, to say something, anything really.

  Instead, his stomach gurgled and the entire contents of a Big Mac meal and a chocolate shake came up, spewing over the ground and just missing everyone’s shoes as they sprung back out of the way.

  “I don’t feel so good,” he said, the words slurring as he passed out.

  “No shit, sherlock!” Sadie growled, looking down at her damp shoes.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  LUCY WAS PLAYING CHESS with Blaine when her father and brothers returned.

  Despite his condition, or maybe because of it, the one game Blaine loved and kicked her butt in every time was Chess. He had an instinctual understanding of the game that was hard wired in with his autism.

  Lucy moved her rook as a defensive move. One more move and she’d have him in check.

  “That was a dumb move.” He smiled. Voice even and without inflection. He moved his queen. “Check-mate.” He said quietly, as if he were discussing the sunshine on a cloudy day.

  Lucy sat back and stared. How come she hadn’t seen that coming? This was their second game since she’d checked in on him and hour ago. He’d gotten her in under eight moves.

  She reached in and tipped her king, conceding defeat.

  A noise and a shout on the other side of the building caught her attention as the front door slammed.

  She looked at her brother. “We’ll play more later. Why don’t you grab your headphones and listen to a book?” She suggested. Without a word he began methodically returning the chess pieces to their box, each in a specific place and order.

  In the hall, Lucy stared in shock as her father and Wyatt came down the hall, dragging Jazz between them. They ignored her and made a turn into the kitchen. By the time she got there they had him propped in a chair, removing his blood-stained shirt while he swore at them, batting at their fingers and trying to undo the buttons himself.

  “Can’t believe the bitch got a shot off on me. Lucky is what it was,” he complained.

  Lucy moved further out into the hall. “What happened?” Dread pooled in her gut.

  Her father glanced up and then went back to removing first-aid supplies from the cabinet.

  “Nothing you need to worry about girl. We were out hunting and Jazz here, he doesn’t duck so good.” His joke fell on humorless ears as J
azz shot him a filthy glance, snatching up the wet rag and antiseptic laid out on the table and applying it himself with a hiss to the oozing wound, high on his shoulder.

  “Brings me to another problem, sister.” It was not an endearment, not the way Jazz snarled it, slanting a calculating glare in her direction. “This is your fault, you know. If you were doing your job better...” he began.

  Terrence interrupted with a pointed look in his son’s direction. “That’s enough boy. She’s doing fine. Now shut the hell up and let us get this stitched. That bolt tore you up good, but you’ll live.” So saying, he poured the bottle of disinfectant over the open wound. Jazz screamed and came half-way out of his chair, spewing a lengthy line of foul from his mouth that made Lucy cringe.

  Lucy stared at her family, uneasy. “Who shot you? You said she. What were you doing out there tonight?” she persisted.

  Wyatt stepped past his father. He’d readied a needle and thread, dousing them in alcohol to disinfect them before he started to sew.

  Her father admitted, “We were tracking another Magical, had him dead to rights, when the cavalry arrived so to speak. There were too many of them, and one of them shot Jazz with a cross-bow. Her parting shot of blue fire was spectacular too. Almost got us as we were running away. They were all definitely Magicals.”

  A sliver of dread and Lucy’s stomach turned. She was positive it wasn’t the flu. “Where did you find the Magical? I have pointed no one out to you in like a week,” she added.

  Wyatt’s stare pulled in her direction as he clipped the last stitch, calculating. “Nope, you haven’t. Why is that sister, dear? Anyway, we discovered him heading up the mountain last night and followed.”

  Lucy met her brother and father’s deadpan stare. They weren’t making sense.

  “If you were chasing him, how did you catch him? Magicals are much faster than we are...” she finished.

  All three looked at her at that. But nobody answered. What were they hiding from her?

  Her father gathered bloodied rags and started pitching them in the trash, capping bottles and wrapping gauze.

  “Speaking of which. We’re going to be heading out a little later. We have a lead on another freak and we have to check it out. We need groceries. Not a damn thing to eat around here and I need a beer. Can you take care of that for me?”

  Lucy shivered. Lead... what lead? “I can’t buy beer, you know that.”

  Wyatt grunted, washing his hands. “I can pick that up on the way back,” he conceded.

  Needing to keep her own hands busy, Lucy opened cupboards and pulled down a tin of tuna and crackers, opening them and arranging them on a paper plate. She snagged one of the last two cokes left and walked out towards Blaine’s room. She felt their eyes on her, the mistrust and suspicion. They were right not to trust her any more than she trusted them. They had to know the only thing that gained them her cooperation in their madness was her brother, Blaine. He was the leverage, the only carrot they had to dangle.

  Lucy leaned back against the wall, reclining on the twin bed. She watched her brother eat, his movements precise and measured, as was everything he did. Her heart filled with love and desperation. She leaned back against the wall and closed her eyes. Just for a minute, she promised herself.

  Who did you follow up the mountain last night? Who shot you? Would it have been such a tragedy if her aim had been better?

  Even as the thought occurred, she chastised herself for her traitorous musings. They were her family, after all—same as Blaine.

  She opened one eye to stare at her brother as he placed his empty plate and can in the garbage, dusting his hands clean but ignoring the smear of mayonnaise and tuna at the corner of his mouth.

  He turned without meeting her eyes or acknowledging her presence and put his headphones back on, his mouth spreading in an immediate grin as his audio book picked up from where he’d hit the pause.

  Would you have been like them? If you weren’t afflicted with autism, would you have been as evil and cruel?

  She sighed and closed her eyes again as sleep pulled her under.

  THE SCREAM JERKED LUCY wide awake in an instant and she sat up in alarm, heart thrumming double time.

  She looked around the room. Blaine was still where she’d left him, the headphones deadening the noise. But the expanding shadows told her it was much later in the evening. And she’d never made it to the grocery store. How many hours have I been asleep?

  The next cry of pain ended on an odd gurgle, and Lucy slapped her hands over her ears to drown out the sound. The sick feeling in her stomach was back. Maybe it was anxiety. It could be an ulcer. She looked at her brother’s headphones and considered snatching them from his head to conceal the sounds. But he needed them more than she did.

  Unable to stand it any longer, she moved into the hall and looked towards the stairs leading down to the basement. It was where they housed their victims. The next shout of suffering made her feet move against their will in the basement's direction. What were they trying to accomplish? What reason could they have for torturing their victims other than some sick enjoyment she didn’t comprehend.

  she moved down the stairs on leaden feet.

  What was she doing? What did she think she could accomplish by interfering?

  But how could she not?

  She moved along the darkened hallway at the bottom to the double doors on the end into the room that had been turned into a temporary lab where Jonah was allowed free rein.

  Jonah Whiting was a monster.

  They’d picked him up somewhere south of Wichita, Kansas, a couple years back. She shivered when he looked up from the stainless steel cart and stared at her, gaze fixed on her with clinical precision. His eyes, the lightest ice-blue she’d ever seen, gleamed with a crazy excitement was as terrifying as it was insane. She didn’t like Jonah. She never had, but her family had adopted him readily enough. When they’d found him he’d been singing at the top of his lungs and covered in blood on some back country road. None of it had been his.

  Lucy had begged them to keep going, scared to death. But her family had been dumb enough to believe him when he told them he’d been in an accident. But Lucy had seen the crazed glint of insanity in those freaky eyes and the lack of any actual wounds.

  In the years he’d been with them, he’d never proved her wrong. The guys used him to experiment on their victims, to discover what made them what they were. Jonah had fooled them into thinking his methods were purely scientific, but Lucy knew he enjoyed his work way too much.

  They’d picked up a Serial Killer hitchhiking along the road. The only reason he hadn’t turned on them was because her brother’s and father gave him a steady supply of victims. They fed his madness and he dined well.

  Her brothers were there, though her father was absent. Wyatt sat on a stool, partially turned away, his mouth in a moue of disgust. But Jazz sat fascinated, staring as Jonah moved in on their latest victim, strapped tight with special straps strong enough to hold a Magical on a long table beneath a bank of lights that lit him up in all his gory splendor.

  Lucy jerked when the knife flashed and a long thin cut appeared high on his naked shoulder. It was added to the others that bisected his chest and arms, all of them deep and leaking. The puddle beneath the table was growing, the steady flow draining into the pebbled screen recessed in the floor beneath the table.

  The young man laying prone on the table writhed with each new cut, his eyes frantic and desperate. He opened his mouth in a long scream when Jonah cut him unexpectedly deep with a beatific smile.

  The flash of fangs told Lucy what he was. This was new, they’d never had a vampire before.

  “What are you doing?” she asked in a whisper, afraid she already knew.

  “Experimenting. We found him dining on one of the vagrants down by the docks. We want to know how badly blood loss weakens them. Does it make them vulnerable?”

  Lucy stared on in horror, the sight of so much blood makin
g her queasy. “How does that help? Do we even know who he is?”

  Jazz slashed a hard stare in her direction, the coldness making her suck in her breath. “And we should care? Bloodsucker deserves what he gets. He was draining his victim dry.”

  Lucy looked at the frantic boy on the table. They’d removed his shirt and shoes, but he still had the ratty shorts they’d captured him in, the filthy ragged state of them making Lucy wonder if he hadn’t been desperate himself. Even if he had it coming; that was one in how many victims that hadn’t?

  And I continue to allow it to happen...

  She fled the room. There was nothing she could do to help him now. Everything she did or didn’t do wasn’t for her benefit. It kept Blaine safe, and there was nothing she wouldn’t do to protect him. Even if it sacrificed a bit of her soul every time she was a party to their capture of the next victim or remained silent in the face of their screams.

  Lucy moved up the stairs and down the hall as far away from the sounds in the basement as she could, slamming the door and climbing onto her small make-shift bed and curling up in the corner. She plastered her fingers over her ears to block it out. At first they’d at least let their victims live. She tried to convince herself that was still the case, to assuage her own guilt.

  She thought of Jake Winters, and the tears came. They’d told her he was alive when they left him on the mountain. Only she knew in her heart, that black part of her that was beyond redemption, that she was only fooling herself. Her family was no better than the victims they tortured him in the room beneath her feet. They murdered without a qualm and did it in the name of their own sense of warped justice. But it was a lie, all of it, and she was helpless to do anything about it.

  I’M NOT SURE WHAT IMP made me do it, but something angry and mean inside me caught Nick’s eye staring at me across the sparring field. I turned back to what Niel was saying and laughed so hard and long at whatever he said that Niel looked at me like I’d gone mad. Our conversation hadn’t been near that funny.