Dragon Count

by Kendal Davis

  Dragon Count

  (Elterian Shifters, Book 1)

  By Kendal Davis

  Text Copyright © 2019 Kendal Davis

  All Rights Reserved

  Cover design by Melody Simmons

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1: Olivia

  Chapter 2: Indigo

  Chapter 3: Olivia

  Chapter 4: Indigo

  Chapter 5: Olivia

  Chapter 6: Indigo

  Chapter 7: Olivia

  Chapter 8: Indigo

  Chapter 9: Olivia

  Chapter 10: Indigo

  Chapter 11: Olivia

  Chapter 12: Indigo

  Chapter 13: Olivia

  Chapter 14: Indigo

  Chapter 15: Olivia

  Chapter 16: Indigo

  Chapter 17: Olivia

  Chapter 18: Indigo

  Chapter 19: Olivia

  Chapter 20: Indigo

  Chapter 21: Olivia

  Chapter 22: Indigo

  Chapter 23: Olivia

  Also by Kendal Davis

  Chapter 1: Olivia

  The evening had turned into a tropical party, damp and inviting. We’d been out on the boat for three days, taking samples of microfauna from the warm waters off the island of Roatán. Now that I had my feet on solid land again, and I had somebody to talk to besides my mentor and our two deckhands, I was all too happy to lose track of time. This beachside bar was full of people hoping to find a night of pleasure in each other’s arms. That was supposed to be easy, right? But it was starting to seem like I was spinning my wheels all evening trying to fit in.

  I was ready for some laughs and some loud music. We’d stopped for the night in Mahogany Bay, a spot famous for adventure. I remembered reading a brochure about this place before we left Cambridge. Back then, in the chilly rain that slated across campus, it had sounded like heaven. The beauty of this beach was a well-known and riotous backdrop for snorkelers and partiers.

  Bring it on.

  I could hear my own laugh piercing the night air as I sat atop a rattan barstool in the sand, trying to charm the guy across from me. He was a tanned Brit with bright blue eyes and a swoop of wavy brown hair. He was just the kind of man that my mom was always telling me I should bring home and settle down with instead of spending all my time at work. He was well-spoken, polite, funny...and totally not into me.

  OK, so the truth was that I’d sat down here with him without an invitation. He had blinked at me then, but I guess he’d decided to roll with it. I was no fashion model, but I hoped I had a few good points. I laughed again, for no particular reason. It might have sounded a little shrill.

  “So, Tim,” I attempted to toss my hair in imitation of my eternally popular younger sister. “What brings you to the island?”

  His mouth curved up only a little bit, in the politest and most strained of London smiles. “It’s Tom, actually. As I just told you, I’m here for the dive on the sunken ship in the harbor. My group arrived yesterday. We’re going to —”

  I was tipsy enough that I interrupted him. Tim, or Tom. Whatever. “I’ve heard about that shipwreck! I’m sure somebody told me once that it is famous for the eel habitat. Wow, let me tell you about the eels. Did you know there are Morays out there?”

  Tom sat up a little straighter. When I’d cut him off, his lips had compressed into a thin line. Damn. I knew that men hated being talked over. I ought to know what it felt like, seeing as they did it to me all the time in my work. It was hard to make it as a female professor at one of the most famous universities in the world if you were sensitive about that.

  Usually, I just plowed ahead, saying whatever I wanted to say. On campus, which was where I spent all my free time, that went over just fine. Here, though, my social skills were landing with a thud. Who would have thought that meeting sexy strangers on a tropical beach would require a different set of soft skills than running research meetings in a frozen college town? I felt like a ship going down in the harbor while bystanders watched, unmoving.

  Tom actually snapped at me. “Yes, I’m the one that told you that about the eels. It was three minutes ago.” He looked at his watch, then allowed his eyes to wander around the beach behind me.

  There was nobody to blame but myself for how badly this was going. Doubling down, I pressed forward. I leaned my elbows on the table and tried what I hoped was a winning, sparkling smile. “But listen, Tom, I don’t know if you realize how exciting it would be to get a close look at Gymnothorax funebris. Did you know that they can grow to five feet long? You may not be aware of the feature of the jaw…”

  My voice trailed off as Tom stood from his chair. He nodded at me, with an expression closer to pity than dislike, and disappeared into the crowd without saying anything more.

  What was his problem?

  I looked down at the table, wishing I knew what I looked like right now. We’d only come in off the boat a few hours ago, but I was sure I was presentable. I’d showered at the hotel, for goodness’ sake. So maybe my cropped khaki pants and boxy t-shirt weren’t all that fashionable. Or sexy, really.

  A wave of embarrassment swept over me. Who could blame the guy for wanting to drift off in search of other women? I was at a beach resort. I looked around at the rest of the crowd. Nobody else here was dressed the way I was, I realized too late. All the other women had gorgeous bikini tops and bright sarongs slung across their svelte hips.

  Nobody would ever describe my hips that way.

  Tears were beginning to prick at the back of my eyes. Maybe the margaritas had something to do with it. I heaved a sigh as I sought to get my feelings under wraps. So the guy hadn’t been into me. That wasn’t the end of the world. After all, I was the one who’d sat at his table, without his asking me to join him. Maybe he was already with somebody, or even married.

  That line of thought cheered me up, until I looked across the room and saw Tom, or Tim, trying valiantly to chat up a beautiful blonde woman. She was tall, with her sleek hair in a sporty ponytail. Her skimpy red bikini top fit her perfectly. Where her tiny waist slipped into the waistband of her shorts, a little navel ring sparkled.

  Wait a second. She was giving him the iciest of cold shoulders. I kind of loved her for that.

  Only a moment later, she was striding across the sand to me, with the biggest smile I’d seen on her face all week. She parked herself unceremoniously on the seat opposite mine and wiped her forehead. I had to admit, she was even more beautiful up close.

  She looked at me with genuine concern. “I saw that guy ditch you, Olivia,” she said. “And then he had the nerve to try to sidle up to me like that. I told him to get lost.” She smirked with a pure physical confidence that I had never seen in anybody before I met her.

  “Kat, how do you do it?” I wondered aloud. “You work all day out in the sun, and you never seem to get tired. You’re a bundle of energy.” She was the best boat captain out here. While we had been collecting samples, she had been in charge of everybody’s safety, never missing a beat. She was strong and observant. More than anything, I was realizing at this moment, she was a loyal friend.

  “Well, sure I’m tired, but I’m here to party,” she answered. She frowned slightly as she took in my expression. “But not if it means getting up close with a guy who was just acting like a dick to you.” She leaned back and swirled her drink. Just by shifting in her chair, she attracted the attention of four or five men near us.

  “Kat, no matter how many times we take these trips with you, I feel like I learn something new about you every time we come down here. I had no idea you were such a party animal. Here I am, feeling like a frump, and you are turning every head in the place.”

  “Stop that, Olivia,” she said. She met my eyes with a straig
htforwardness that made me think of my mom, even though Kat was several years younger than I was. “You are a beautiful woman. I won’t have you putting yourself down just because the guys in this bar can’t see how amazing you are. When you meet the right man, you’ll know.”

  “You’re right.” I heard my own words, and I laughed. “Not so much that I’m beautiful, although it’s nice of you to say. But it is true that there is a guy out there for me. Somebody who won’t be intimidated by me.” I looked ruefully down at the clothes I’d put on to go out this evening. “And maybe he won’t have any clothes sense at all, so he won’t notice that I don’t either.” My face brightened into a real smile.

  Kat giggled, glad to see that my mood was improving. “That’s right. I believe there is somebody out there for each of us. And I’m going to keep myself busy looking for him.” She saluted me with her drink and hopped down from her stool. She was about to cross to the little dance floor when she leaned over to me and put a hand on my arm. “Seriously, though, I think you should call it a night. I know you don’t usually drink, and it looks like you’ve had a few too many.”

  I was suddenly sure that she was right. “Yeah, I’ll head to the room now. Will you be ok out here alone?”

  She smiled wickedly at me. “The real question is whether this place can handle me.” She smirked and waggled her hips as she made her way over to the dancing, turning the head of every man in the place.

  I shook my head as I made my way across the sand to our rooms. I had no idea where she got her energy. Kat was always up for adventure when we were on shore, but out on the water, she had the dedicated focus of a born captain. It fascinated me to think of the things she knew how to do, and how little they intersected with my own abilities.

  After a cursory brushing of my teeth, I stumbled into bed. I reflected that Kat had better not stay out too late. We were planning on going out on our second trip tomorrow morning. My favorite professor emeritus, David, and I were onto something good with the marine samples we’d taken in the last few days. I had ideas running through my head about at least three research papers I was going to get from this trip.

  As my thoughts swirled me into sleep, I still had a nagging worry at the back of my mind. What had gone wrong at the beach bar tonight? Why was I always the outsider? It was the same old story I’d been living for years. I was too serious, or too unexpected, or too...something. Too driven. That was just code that men used to describe women who were smarter than they were

  The sound of my phone alarm blared me into wakefulness far too soon. I knew we had to get out there to finish our work, but that still didn’t make me a morning person. When I looked over at Kat’s twin bed next to mine, however, I could see that she had already been and gone. I knew she’d be on the boat, performing all the magic that she needed to get us stocked with supplies and ready to spend a week on the water.

  I shouted over to my mentor, as I boarded the boat at the dock. “Good morning, David! I hope you got some good sleep last night. We didn’t see you at the bar at all.”

  He grinned, his green eyes glinting with gentle humor at the idea. “I figured you and Kat would fit in with all the youthful vibes over there. My style is a bit different, you know.”

  I shrugged off his reticence. “Your ideal man is out there, too, David. But you might be right that there wasn’t anybody there over the age of thirty. I noticed that too.”

  The two of us gathered our equipment, working with the easy companionship of old colleagues. David had been my most influential professor for a long time, and now he was my ideal co-author. We never argued, and our research expeditions were tension-free. He and I had both been single for so long that we sometimes joked that we were on the hunt for the same man.

  “Ready?” Kat called out her question into the heavy tropical air that was already shimmering with the day’s heat. No matter how early we got up, the most refreshing part of the morning slipped through our fingers too quickly.

  Kat nodded to Andres, her habitually silent younger brother. At about twenty years old, he was one of the shyest people I’d ever met. He was all the crew she needed to make this little boat everything perfect for us. With all of us on board, we cast off and left the harbor.

  A couple of hours later, I had my face to the breeze and the sun in my eyes. It was past time to put on more sunscreen, but I was enjoying the trip too much to move just yet. The awkwardness of last night had left my mind almost completely. Who needed dating, when I had all this beauty in front of me? There would be plenty of time for me to meet Prince Charming in the future, although I was pretty sure that my own awkwardness wasn’t going to resolve itself any time soon.

  Without warning, my deck chair jolted underneath me and I realized that the sky was unexpectedly dark.

  David was at my side, peering up at the swirling maelstrom that was the sky above us. It had been clear just moments ago. I could hear Kat yelling something at Andres, but I couldn’t make out her words.

  She sounded frantic.

  Everything went dark and cold. It was if all the lights in the world had blinked out. There was no more blue sky or turquoise ocean. It had vanished. There was no more glowing morning sunshine, and no more noisy gulls.

  For a brief moment, my mind drifted in the cold vacuum of nothingness.

  Then, in a surge of energy that felt like music blaring at us all at once, we were back. No...not really back.

  What the hell?

  I looked around, doing my best not to give in to the panic that was rising inside me. David was still next to me on the deck, tugging at his short, white beard in a nerve-calming habit I knew well. I could hear Kat and Andres somewhere, but I couldn’t see them. My heart was pounding in my chest as I took in our situation.

  Everything around us looked and smelled different. The changes were absolute. The touchstones of our world, even the smallest things, like the fine spray that had been flinging itself across my shins, were all gone.

  The change that worried me the most was that the water was no longer rocking beneath us. I couldn’t grasp what was different about the feeling of the deck under my feet, but something had shifted. Almost afraid to look, I allowed my eyes to check the ocean on which we’d been floating. We had been in the water, like any seafaring vessel; I was quite sure of it.

  Yet we were now utterly still, marooned on what looked like an ocean of fine, pale yellow sand. A desert surrounded us, stretching as far as I could see in every direction. The sky above it was a pale yellow. Everything rested in an oppressive heat that settled lower every moment, pressing us flat.

  There was no water anywhere in sight. Our little boat had not run aground in the usual way, but here we were, stuck in the sand as if our beautiful blue ocean had transformed into dust underneath us. We were becalmed in endless sand.

  I rubbed at my eyes. There was no way that any of this was possible. We must have entered some kind of vortex, passed through some kind of gateway. No. This was not some sort of Bermuda Triangle fantasy. This was not happening.

  “Where are we?” I whispered the question to David. He was so close that my elbow touched his. Neither of us had moved since we had seen how different things had become for us.

  His response was a strangled attempt at normalcy. “Olivia. Look up. Do it slowly, though. I don’t know where we are. I don’t know how we got here.” He cleared his throat. “But there are dragons in the sky above us.”

  I looked up, almost afraid to see, but also more curious than I’d ever been. I shaded my eyes from the bright sun with my hand and peered into the sky. Sure enough, massive dragons in flight filled the yellow expanse above us. They swooped around each other, drawing nearer every moment to our odd shipwreck. They were brightly colored and strangely beautiful without looking at all delicate.

  In the distance, I could make out a tall, menacing mountain peak. The dragons were moving between the mountains and our position. The fact that I had never seen dragons before was no barrier
to my understanding of what they were. I had no qualms about naming them that. They were clearly, unmistakably dragons. My logical brain was shouting that such creatures did not exist, but the dragons were undaunted by my opinion.

  The dragons were swooping, calling to each other, and advancing toward our boat.

  More than anything else, they looked threatening. Angry.

  And they were coming closer to us.

  Chapter 2: Indigo

  In my world, interdimensional portals were a part of everyday life. Dragons used them to travel from our world of Elter to any number of other locations. Most commonly, we used these space-collapsing gateways to move from one part of Elter to another. As Count of my House, I passed through such vortexes on a regular basis to attend Council events in our capital city. That was all perfectly normal.

  What was decidedly not normal was for beings from another world to hijack our mode of travel and appear of their own accord on my land. On my sand.

  It was deeply disturbing.

  My House was among the oldest, and noblest, on our planet. We were a proud people, known for our learning and commitment to community service. Honor was our byword. However, babysitting stranded off-worlders was most definitely not in my job description.

  I sighed heavily, knowing that today, it might be.

  At the front of the group of dragons making their way to the helpless humans and their immobilized ship, I knew I would have the responsibility of stopping what could turn into carnage. I flew at my fastest, ensuring that I would reach our goal ahead of the other dragons,

  I called over my shoulder to the Captain of my Guard. I was intent on investigating the situation peacefully, at least until I had more information. “Cobalt! You must halt the others while I speak with these intruders. Keep the other Guardsmen in the air. Under no circumstances are they to advance on this ship unless I give the signal.”