Central

by Raine Thomas

  They called the animals dragons.

  He hadn’t thought to mention kragens to Olivia. There were so few of them remaining that they were rare to see. How one had gotten into the forests around Ini-herit’s home was puzzling, but James had to believe this one had lived here unnoticed for some time. Kragens only had to feed once per quarter-century, after all.

  But they usually ate large mammals like bear and elk. Never had he heard of a kragen attacking an Estilorian.

  Even as he ran, his eyes yards ahead on the path of displaced foliage marking where Olivia had been dragged, he thought, But Olivia isn’t full Estilorian.

  The fact that Olivia had been taken by the animal combined with the stories she shared with him from the human plane so often filled with dragon violence toward humans led him to conclude that kragens had a taste for human blood.

  Ini-herit and Jabari were right behind him. The only sounds were of their combined breathing and the thrashing noises they made as they ran. James occasionally spotted strands of hair or a patch of blood on the path they followed. He also saw remnants of pink fabric that had obviously shredded from Olivia’s gown. One of her sandals was still on the ground in Ini-herit’s backyard. She had been pulled so violently off her feet that she left the shoe behind.

  He hadn’t ever been so stunned in his entire being as when he watched the kragen’s long tail whip from the trees and snatch her.

  Now, his heart pounded up into his throat due to a combination of fear and exertion. He knew the kragen would take her to its lair before it killed her. It would also…tenderize her first. She wouldn’t have an unbroken bone in her body by the time the creature was ready to devour her.

  As that thought entered his mind, he heard Olivia’s anguished scream. He didn’t know how, but he somehow found it in him to run even faster.

  Olivia’s vision went from red to black and back to red as the agony from her broken leg pulsed through her. But she fought against the pain, no stranger to broken bones.

  The creature’s blazing trail through the forest continued unchecked. She began to actively fight against the cinching tail around her arms and waist, hoping to somehow generate enough room to wriggle free. The texture of the tail felt unusual against her skin. Smooth, but with some kind of residue clinging to it that kept it from being slippery. Unfortunately, the creature sensed her efforts to free herself and simply tightened its hold.

  She stopped squirming as she lost all feeling in her hands.

  “James!” she cried after she gathered a breath, knowing he would be chasing after her. She imagined it could only help to have more clues to guide him in her rescue. “James! I’m over here!”

  She continued to shout for him as her breath permitted, not knowing what else to do. Their rapid trek through the forest probably only lasted about fifteen minutes, but it felt like hours. She knew she had never been this deep into the woods and had no idea where they were.

  They reached a tall, rocky outcropping and the creature began climbing at an astounding pace. Olivia choked back another scream as the jagged edges of the rock sliced the skin of her back and legs and what remained of her dress. Her broken leg flared in renewed agony with every bump. She couldn’t imagine how the creature wasn’t injuring itself on the sharp surface. Where was it taking her?

  “Olivia!”

  She heard James calling her name and it made her light-headed with hope. “James—up here!”

  Her eyes moved down even as the creature crested a high crag and she felt herself lifted into the air several feet off the rock. She spotted the ball of light a second before James emerged from the forest with Ini-herit and Jabari right behind him. Because they had reached a clearing, they extended their wings and headed toward her.

  She observed all of this even as she was once again slammed down. This time, the pain proved unbearable. Darkness overtook her.

  James took flight the moment he could. He caught Olivia’s gaze an instant before the kragen used its vicious tail to slam her mercilessly to the ground. Her complete lifelessness after the brutal action had panic flaring.

  He drew his sword as he neared the kragen. It issued a chilling cry as it continued to climb toward its lair, intent on getting its meal safely home. Then it once again lifted Olivia with the intent to heave her against the rocks a second time. Although the behavior was instinctive for the creature, it drove James to violence that he would otherwise loathe to visit on an animal, especially one as rare as this.

  It took only one well-aimed strike of his sword to end the creature’s life. Although the dragons in Olivia’s stories were heavily scaled and armored, kragens actually had skin similar to that of snakes. It yielded easily to the sharp steel of his blade.

  Ini-herit swept over to Olivia and pulled her from the kragen’s tail even as it entered its death throes. He swiftly pulled her to safety and flew back down to the forest floor. James followed him, his breathing harsh and his pulse thundering. He retracted his wings and knelt beside Olivia where Ini-herit laid her.

  She was a mess. Her right leg was obviously broken. She was covered in cuts and bruises from her head to her toes. There wasn’t very much left of her gown beneath the knees.

  Ini-herit’s silver healing light flared. His power as an elder was impressive, even if his healing ability wasn’t as potent as Amber’s. And Olivia was half-Corgloresti, making the elder’s efforts all the more successful. Within minutes, she was fully healed.

  Relief flooded James when she opened her eyes and looked at him, blinking in slightly muddled confusion. Then she managed to look down at herself and her memory swiftly returned.

  “Are you all right?” Ini-herit asked in his level voice.

  “Yes, thanks to you,” she said, moving into a sitting position. She looked up and shifted her gaze between Jabari and James. “Truly, thank you all.”

  “Do you feel well enough to go back to the house?” James asked, trying to get his ridiculous heart rate to calm down at least a little.

  She nodded. Although there was still a hint of fear in her expression, she now seemed more curious than anything. “I feel fine, actually. But before we go anywhere, I want you to tell me one thing.

  “What in all of creation was that?”

  Chapter Three

  The following evening, Olivia and Skye sat at the dining table with Ini-herit, Jabari, James and Caleb, just having finished their supper. It was a meal they only ate every other day, something else Olivia was getting used to. Their metabolisms were distinctly slower in their Estilorian forms, making eating and drinking less necessary. Skye was talking a mile a minute about Olivia’s experience with the kragen when she abruptly cut herself off.

  “They’re here!” she declared, jumping to her feet and running for the door, her filmy skirt billowing after her.

  She hadn’t gone three feet before Caleb was up and grabbing her around the waist. “Not so fast,” he declared, ignoring her outraged gasp.

  Olivia had risen at Skye’s outburst and winced as Skye elbowed Caleb in the ribs. Her gaze shifted to the very tall, muscular male still holding Skye even as she wrestled futilely for her release. His long, softly-curled brown hair was pulled back with two rings holding it in a thick ponytail. His caramel skin-tone and features gave him a decidedly exotic look. Like James, he was young in appearance, seemingly no older than twenty human years. And he certainly had his work cut out for him. Fortunately, Olivia thought, he didn’t even seem to feel Skye’s jab, though he wore nothing thicker over his abdomen than a black tank top. He set Skye on her feet and gazed unblinkingly down at her as she flipped her long, unbound hair over her shoulder and glared up at him with her intense light blue eyes.

  “Amber and Gabriel are back,” she snapped, her hands on her hips. “I want to say hi.”

  “I will investigate before you go running off,” Caleb responded brusquely. “For all I know, you are heading right into a Mercesti trap. Stay here.” He turned and left the room. Skye was right be
hind him, completely ignoring his dictate. Olivia sighed.

  A moment later, as the elders along with James and Olivia made their way from the dining room to the front of the house, they could hear Skye’s voice chiming cheerfully.

  “I knew it was you guys! Welcome back!”

  Rounding a corner, Olivia watched Skye disentangle herself from a hug with Amber, who looked as uncomfortable as usual by the embrace, and then launched herself at Gabriel. Giving Skye her moment, Olivia glanced again at Amber, noting that her sister looked extremely happy. And tan. Her white tank top and khaki shorts exposed a lot of sun-kissed skin. Her brown hair seemed to have more golden highlights in it now, too. Since she currently wore it pulled back into a braid that ended between her shoulder blades, it was a little hard to tell. The gold and blue-gray markings along the outer edges of her golden eyes gleamed in the light cast by the balls of energy bouncing along the ceiling.

  Gabriel accepted Skye’s enthusiastic hug with his usual friendliness warming his blue-gray eyes. It was still a marvel to Olivia that her new brother-in-law was, in fact, the Gloresti elder. She was practical to the bone, but even she recognized his and Amber’s story as a kind of fairy tale.

  Of the nine Estilorian elders, it had been Gabriel who had felt so responsible for the unpredictable behavior of the girls’ father nearly twenty years ago. It had been an emotional act that had blindsided the unemotional Estilorians. In an effort to develop an understanding of human emotions and hopefully avoid anything like this happening again at the cost of other lives, Gabriel had offered to have his Estilorian mind suppressed so that he could enter the human plane as a baby. As the boy who grew up in Newnan, Georgia with Amber as a foster sister for nearly six years, he hadn’t remembered a thing about his Estilorian self. And in the process, he had developed human emotions and fallen in love with Amber.

  Olivia figured that receiving the news that he was a several thousand-year-old being from another plane had come as at least as much of a shock to the eighteen-year-old human Gabriel as the entire story had been to her. She watched him exchange an amused glance with Amber as Skye clung to him and babbled, and decided that he, at least, had certainly reconciled his Estilorian life with the one he left behind on the human plane.

  After another minute, she took pity on the newlyweds who hadn’t even made it a foot past the door. “Hi, guys,” she interjected as Skye paused for breath. “Welcome back!”

  “Thanks, Liv,” Amber said. “What’d we miss?”

  She thought of her harrowing experience the day before and smiled. “Oh, not much,” she said.

  James stood in Ini-herit’s kitchen the following morning with a cup of steaming hot water. Olivia had an affinity for a blend of herbal tea that he had suggested she try when she complained they didn’t have something called “Diet Coke” on this plane. He had to admit that her description of the beverage was intriguing, though why one would willingly want to drink something that popped and bubbled in your mouth and caused gaseous emissions in your gut was lost to him.

  He had to admit that he had grown fascinated with her descriptions of things from the human plane. She didn’t know it, but the Corgloresti who traveled to the human plane were only allowed to discuss the things they learned with the elders, who then decided as a group what was shared with everyone else. Thus, most Estilorians knew very little about modern humans. After hearing about things like guns and nuclear weapons, he had to admit that he could understand the need to keep some knowledge barriers in place. Something like that in the hands of the Mercesti would be disastrous.

  It was a deliberate choice on his part not to censor Olivia. His thirst for knowledge rivaled the one he sensed in her. They had spent hours over the past six weeks talking about the differences between humans and Estilorians, and he figured he was still decades away from knowing all there was to know. As the incident with the kragen had shown him, he also knew he still had a lot to teach her about this plane.

  When he had been chosen to serve as her Gloresti, he had considered it an extraordinary honor. He still did. He hadn’t expected to be considered for a pairing for at least another century, as was usual. He understood that this was for a number of important reasons, not the least of which was training to defend. The other primary reason for the delay was to ensure the Gloresti had shed himself of enough emotion that it didn’t impede his ability to fulfill his role. It was considered a maturing process.

  After he had been selected for pairing with Olivia, he had learned from archigos Gabriel that the elders had hoped that younger Gloresti would better relate to the sisters. James supposed that was true enough with Simon, the Gloresti who had been assigned to watch over Amber’s Estilorian form. Simon was quite affable and rather young—perhaps human would be a better word—in his mannerisms. But because Gabriel was avowed to Amber, he was now her paired Gloresti. Simon had been promoted for his efforts to protect Amber while she was on the human plane and for bringing her safely across the planes, though James hadn’t yet learned into what role.

  As he set Olivia’s tea to steep, he walked to the window overlooking the backyard and watched the sun slowly breech the horizon. Much like he had for the past two decades, he wondered whether the elders had chosen correctly when they selected him. He knew he didn’t have the depth of feeling that he sensed in the sisters and Gabriel…in truth, even Simon. More than half the time, he didn’t understand Olivia’s expressions and gestures. Although he was skilled enough in the ways of defense, he couldn’t help but acknowledge that there were probably other Gloresti who might have been better emotionally suited to pair with her than he was.

  But as she shuffled into the kitchen at the exact same time as she did every morning and gifted him with her beautiful smile because he had tea waiting for her, he knew he would never voice his doubts to anyone. She was, in human terms, stuck with him.

  “Good morning,” she said quietly, keeping her voice low to avoid disturbing anyone. “Thanks for the tea. That’s very sweet.”

  His brow wrinkled in confusion. “I did not put any sugar or honey in it. And you have not tasted it. How would you know whether or not it is sweet?”

  She didn’t respond, but merely lifted the cup so she could blow on its contents and gazed at him with her laughing eyes.

  “Ah.” Comprehension dawned. “A human colloquialism.” He moved over to the door leading out onto the back deck as he thought about this phrase. “It means…thoughtful?” he guessed from context as he opened the door and looked carefully in every direction. Sensing no danger, he stepped through it and held it open for her. He knew she loved to sit outside and watch the sun rise.

  “Correct,” she said, her soft voice filled with what he now knew was humor. She sat in one of the wooden Adirondack-style chairs situated on the porch, gathering her long, warm, white robe so she could sit comfortably while she drank her tea.

  He enjoyed watching her just like this: her long, brown hair unbound and slightly tousled, the gathering sunrise pulling out the golden and reddish tints in its curling length to where it ended mid-waist. Her full, heart-shaped mouth curved into a soft smile, the dimple peeking at him from her left cheek. Her beautiful, long-lashed green eyes glowed the color of ripening limes as the sun hit them. The light green leaves entwined by a thin vine decorating the outer edges of each of her eyes were also a natural part of her and gave her an aura of mystery that he found oddly compelling.

  “Did you sleep well?” he asked as he took the seat beside her.

  “Oh, not too bad,” she said.

  There was a note in her voice that told him there was something more to the statement. He looked at her questioningly. “Are you finding it difficult to sleep after the kragen’s attack?”

  To his surprise, she blushed as she quickly shook her head. “Nope. How about you? Did you sleep well?” she asked, deliberately turning the focus from her.

  Deciding not to pursue it since it obviously caused her discomfort, he simply nodded. />
  They sat a while longer in companionable silence. The surrounding forest slowly came to life as the sun rose and warmed the slight chill in the air. Sounds emerged from the forest. Eventually, a familiar form trotted toward them from the edge of the trees. Glancing quickly at Olivia, he watched the pleasure spread over her face as she spotted Aurora. Her expression was the same every day, regardless of how many times she watched her feline companion wake and emerge from the woods. He found it fascinating.

  Because Olivia communicated with Aurora through her mind, it had been slightly unsettling the first time he had watched them interact. They frequently held each other’s gazes for long minutes, obviously holding conversations that only the two of them could hear. Now, though, it seemed quite natural.

  In fact, he acknowledged as Aurora finished whatever she had to say to Olivia and turned to him for a rub on the neck, he knew that he had some kind of connection to the animal himself. It wasn’t telepathic, like she was connected with Olivia. But since he had brought both Olivia and Aurora over from the human plane, he could sense certain things perceived by the animal. It had been James who had realized something was wrong when the Mercesti attacked the three sisters after the Becoming ceremony, even though the Mercesti female known as Layla had been blocking his Gloresti connection with Olivia. It was because he had somehow received Aurora’s angry panther cry in his mind when the animal had heard Olivia’s shout for help that he had been alerted. This knowledge was something he hadn’t shared with anyone. It seemed more useful that way.

  After giving the awesome panther the attention she deserved, he said, “She seems to have fed well last night.”

  Olivia gifted him with one of her throaty laughs. When her humor had calmed, she finished her tea and set the cup to the side. “And what makes you say that?”