by Jessica Gunn
My heart began racing. A day ago, all I’d wanted was to leave the city. Now… Gods, I wanted to go back home. My parents might not have always been the best, but right now they had enough money to keep me safe for a small amount of time. I missed my sisters, Maddie and Rachel. I missed Boston and my mundane life, shit as it was at times. But what if my family had been behind the “wanted” bulletin instead of Treya? What if they still didn’t want me back, even after all this time?
Zezza wiggled out of my grip as my thoughts raced, sliding down my arm, to my side, and then to the ground. She landed with a whimper. I frowned.
“She’s hurt,” I said, pulling myself from the overwhelmingly deep well of thoughts I’d been sinking into. “Can one of you heal her at all?” These guys having magic wasn’t guaranteed, least of all healing magic. But all supernaturals seemed to have some kind of gift. That was why we called them supernaturals. Vampires didn’t age or die naturally, and some had magic. Werewolves too. Witches were self-explanatory. Fae were nature’s gift and curse to all of us.
So, what could dragon-like people do?
“I can work healing power, but it’s not as effective as those whose gift is for that sole purpose,” Eli said.
“Then help her. Please.”
He knelt at Zezza’s side and held his open palm against her wound. Magic glowed around his hands, white-hot like lightning with the hum of a storm, but Zezza didn’t flinch or yelp. After a few moments, both he and Zezza smiled.
“Thank you,” I said to him and scooped her up off the ground. She rested her head against my shoulder.
“It is my duty.” He said the words with reverence. “I’m glad both you and she are well.”
Not sure “well” was the right word. Lost, confused, mildly exhausted. Those were all truer words than “well” right now.
But we seemed to be safe, and Zezza and I were out of Boston. Which had been my initial goals after running out of Lunar Royale last night.
I glanced at the three individuals around me, trying to ignore the way Eli seemed to radiate an electrifying presence the way the air feels before a storm’s first roar of thunder. I couldn’t escape his presence, even after moving some feet away and sort of carrying Zezza to put her between us. The energy around him, whether it was an aura or a byproduct of his magic, felt as though it was wrapping me in a hug that sent chills down to my curled toes. Like the stillness of the eye of a storm, still building in strength before unleashing everything it had within it.
I closed my eyes and pulled in a deep breath, both trying to ignore Eli’s aura and focus my thoughts. Zezza jumped out of my arms in the meantime, landing with a soft thud in the sand, and began exploring. I watched her go, although I didn’t want her to explore too much. “Zezza, don’t go far.”
Elena all but rolled her eyes. “She’s safe, as are you. No one can get here unless we bring them.”
“And where exactly is here?” I asked. “Don’t say, ‘the Lair.’ I get that. I mean literally, where are we? Because it’s not Boston, that’s for sure.”
“It is and it is not,” Eli said as his stance finally relaxed. A bit of sweat beaded his brow. I can work healing power, but it’s not as effective as those whose gift is for that sole purpose. Had healing Zezza exhausted him? “We are in a pocket-weave, a thinly existing other place alongside the ley-line that runs through Boston. It is how we hide and have stayed hidden.”
Elena cleared her throat. “Easy, Eli. She’s not one of us yet.”
Eli turned to her. “She’s the Warden, Elena.”
“Yeah,” Elena said. “And that’s the problem.”
Eli lifted a hand to silence her.
There was that term again. Warden of the Storm. Hearing it spoken aloud once more sent waves of emotions through me. Shades of excitement, anticipation, and anxiety. What did it mean? And what did it have to do with me?
“Some Warden,” Tharin said as he checked over his armor. “Couldn’t even fight off a few vampires?” He raked his green gaze over my form, studying me. For what, I wasn’t sure. I was probably only some silly human to them. Not worthy of whatever the title of Warden meant.
My parents would probably be inclined to agree. And my sisters. Long before I had ever decided I wanted nothing to do with the family business, they’d decided I wasn’t worth the time spent grooming me for it. And then, in a single night, a meteor strike turned me into the worst sister ever to have lived. I was very lucky Maddie had. That hadn’t been any of my doing, either. I had no power. I was human. Alexis had saved us all.
I wondered if the news bulletin for my arrest had hit Washington, D.C. yet. Did Alexis know? I doubted there was anything she could do to help me all the way from there anyway. Maybe it didn’t matter what help she was capable of providing.
I stiffened and straightened my shoulders. “It was several vampires and the vampire king of Boston, actually. You try to do that without powers.”
Elena and Tharin laughed. Eli didn’t. Instead, his eyes softened, especially in comparison to the glares his friends were sending me.
Eli place his hand beneath my elbow as if to lead me away from here. His warm, reassuring touch didn’t bother me so much this time. I wished he would lead me back to Boston so I could escape, but I doubted that would be the case. For better or worse, it seemed like Zezza and I were here to stay. For the moment at least.
We were in a pocket-weave now. A separate plane and realm of existence. And I had no idea how to use the ley-lines and their power to transport myself home even if I wanted to.
Zezza started running around, her nose against the ground sniffing and inspecting everything like a curious dog. In a lot of ways, Zezza was very much like a large puppy. Loyal and fierce, but also small and easily injured. As we’d unfortunately learned. Now that we were here in the Lair, it appeared as though Zezza had regained some renewed strength that went beyond the healing power Eli had given to her.
Good. She was all I cared about right now. If she was safe, I’d done whatever job I was apparently chosen to do—Warden or not.
“Come with me,” Eli said, shifting his gaze to the jungle before us. The sun beat down hot and heavy, the air so thick with humidity my clothes already felt damp. In jeans and a sweatshirt, I wasn’t exactly dressed for jungle temperatures and heat.
“Where are we going?” I asked him as I knelt down to call Zezza to me. Dragon scales on their arms or not, I wasn’t sure how much I actually trusted these people. “Why can’t you bring me back to Boston?”
“Humans really aren’t that smart, are they?” Tharin asked, but there was nothing in his tone to suggest he was being patronizing or judgmental about it. More like… maybe he’d never really met another human before? If dragons were supposed to have been extinct after the Supernatural Wars, and before that humans didn’t know they were a real thing, was it possible that this pocket-weave had remained truly hidden for many, many years?
Was it possible they’d been cut off from the rest of supernatural and human society since forever?
I glanced to Tharin. “This human is plenty smart. It’s been a long last night and morning so far and, forgive me, this is the first time I’ve ever seen people with dragon scales on their arms.”
I wanted to ask if they were really dragons. If maybe they were some sort of shifters or half-dragons or something. Werewolves were a thing, and in “human” form, werewolves were generally sort of larger, with pointed nails, and hair that grew really fast. So it would be entirely plausible that these three were dragon shifters if following the same principle.
But it seemed stupid to ask it outright. So instead, I scooped up Zezza as she trotted by. She fought my hold at first but then acquiesced.
Elena scoffed and sent her twin a look. “People with dragon scales. Are you kidding me?”
Eli raised his hand in a calming motion. “She’s new.”
“She must be lying.”
“She’s standing right here.” My tone bit m
ore than intended, but I had to make these people aware that even if I didn’t know what was going on, I wasn’t a total idiot.
“Come on,” Eli said as he added pressure beneath my elbow. “We’re going to the village.”
“Fine.” I moved my arm away from him and followed as he turned and began walking across the sandy-white beach to a path that seemed to lead into the jungle.
While the trees and giant leaves of this rainforest area encroached on the path above us, the dark wooden planks beneath our feet were clear from debris. Hot, humid air filled my lungs. Where I held Zezza in my arms, her little furnace body only made me sweat more. Wherever we were going, I hoped it had a cold shower and a change of clothes more appropriate for the weather here.
Zezza, on the other hand, couldn’t seem to stop moving around. She was looking at everything, sniffing every leaf we passed. Both looking as though she’d never been here in her life and at the same time like she was happy to be returning home. I wondered if it was genetic memory. I had heard about that once before dropping out of school. Like humans’ innate fear of the dark. Maybe Zezza’s mother or another draconic ancestor had been from this pocket-weave. If what Eli had said was true, then that was surely the case. And if that was true, I wondered why Elena and Eli seemed to have the same coloration in their scales.
A whole pocket-weave for dragons and dragonkind. People with dragon scales on their arms.
Wait a minute. I was right.
I looked up at Eli. “You’re not human, are you?”
Eli’s lips twisted into a smirk. “Not entirely.”
“But you’re not dragons, either.”
“No.”
“Shifters then? Like a dragon werewolf? Or are half-dragons a thing?”
At this, Tharin laughed loudly. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Shut it, Tharin,” Eli said, then he gave me a sidelong glance. “Yes, we are dragon shifters. We can shift at-will, and it’s not a curse. Dragon shifters aren’t made. We’re born.”
I gulped and resisted the urge to check for dragon scales on my arms that I knew didn’t exist. My skin had never had scales. Maybe this Warden thing they thought me to be wasn’t a shifter.
Zezza wagged her dragon tail as if in acknowledgement. Shifter or not, she seemed to like me all the same.
“Weird,” I said belatedly after an awkward amount of time had passed. “So you can turn into a full-grown dragon?”
Eli nodded and brushed away a massive, green leaf that had grown over the pathway. “Mostly. Our shifter forms do not grow to the same size as our ancestral counterparts.”
“Nature’s way of balancing everything out?” I asked as the memory of seeing a full-grown dragon on the night of the meteor strike came swimming back to me. It’d buried a few blocks of Boston beneath dragon fire and ash.
“In a way, I suppose,” Eli said. “Nature had nothing to do with the first shifter, though.”
Zezza nudged my neck at the same time with her scaled snout, warm from the sun. She sent me a mental image of a person standing next to a massive blue dragon with lightning crackling around them both in giant arcs. The hairs on my arms rose as if by static electricity.
“Wow,” I said shakily. Zezza’s image had stolen my breath. I had to stop walking for a moment.
“Hmm?” Eli asked.
I gestured to Zezza trilling happily on my shoulder. “She showed me an image.”
“Of?” Elena asked.
“History, I think,” I said as I glanced down at the happy hatchling. “The meaning behind what she shows me isn’t always very clear.”
At that, Zezza sent me an image of me pushing Keir away again, even though it had been her magic that had done so.
“Like that,” I said to Zezza.
Elena’s brows twisted together. “Interesting. You already have a strong connection then?”
I nodded. “I guess. I’ve known her for less than a day.”
“Right,” Tharin said. “You won this egg in an illegal game.”
I cringed some. By most accounts, it wasn’t illegal. Not really. “It’s legal in Boston.”
“And are trafficking eggs of our kind also legal?” Tharin asked.
“Um, no.” I pulled Zezza closer to me and she responded by tucking her snout under my chin and trilling loudly once more. Her closeness, the scales of her body, made me feel safe in a way I couldn’t explain. “I had no idea dragons still actually existed until earlier today. And I’m not sure who put up Zezza’s egg as a prize in that game. I just sort of assumed one of the supernaturals involved had found it somewhere. I guess.”
Eli nodded. “We aren’t sure either. The palace received word of a dragon egg on the mortal weave and sent me to investigate. When I realized who would have control of it if won, and when I ran into you and realized who you were, I returned to get help.”
Doubt spread like a cloud around me. How had someone from here, this hidden away pocket-weave, found out about the dragon egg? Or the game at Lunar Royale? How had the other supernaturals not known about the existence of dragons post-war?
There were so many questions and inconsistencies. I had no idea where to start unraveling them, or if I should.
I followed Eli and the others for what felt like a half hour. Although we walked along a path made from flat wooden boards, a presence seemed to fall over my awareness, confusing and twisting the route in my mind. I tried to think back and retrace our steps, but doing so felt akin to the thought of climbing Mount Everest. A monumental task that couldn’t be done.
Weird. Maybe it was some sort of protection around the place these dragon shifters and their kind called home. Above us, the volcano shed smoke into the warm, slightly humid breeze. I imagined that the Lair was really a set of interconnected tunnels and cave chambers inside that volcano. We were sort of heading that way in a roundabout route, snaking along the base of it.
How many dragons lived on this island pocket-weave?
“Are there dragons here?” I asked Eli, glancing up at him after a while. “Or are there only shifters like you guys?” The one dragon I’d seen during the night of the meteor strike had been ancient and massive. I couldn’t tell from the jungle how large this island was, or how expansive this pocket-weave could be, but I couldn’t imagine too many dragons of that size roaming around. In all the stories and myths, dragons were largely portrayed as aggressive, territorial hoarders of wealth and treasure. That couldn’t lend itself well to community building if it were all true.
Besides, according to all the news I’d read during the time of the Supernatural War, true dragons had all been killed. Even if some escaped here, to the Lair, there couldn’t be that many of them left.
Right?
Tharin bristled at my questions. “You say that like it’s a bad thing we’re ‘only shifters.’”
I shrugged. “I honestly have no idea what to expect. I didn’t exactly plan any of this, and you and your kind aren’t supposed to exist anymore.”
Zezza’s tail smacked into the back of my head lightly. A warning?
Tharin chuckled. “I think she’s telling you to wake up and realize what you’ve gotten yourself into.”
“Right,” I said slowly as I slipped off my hoodie and tied it around my waist. Somehow, I managed to do so without dislodging Zezza for too long. My cheeks flushed and I refocused my eyes on the path before us. The platform path began widening up ahead, where lit torches were smoking slightly, even in the early morning hours.
Finally, buildings came into view. Most were one-floor structures of various sizes, made from wood and a light, beige stone I couldn’t identify. They stood proudly amongst the jungle trees in a clearing at the foot of a large cliff-face, a sheer, vertical line that led up the volcano. The larger buildings had stained-glass windows depicting sunny skies and stormy days alike, along with dragons. A lot of them. All different colors and sizes, in more combinations than I had ever thought possible.
Dragons had f
or so long been nothing but a myth that when they’d come out of hiding after the meteor strike, learning what humans could about them had become completely reactionary.
This “village” was the size of a town, simple in appearance although that didn’t mean anything. If dragonkind had once lived in the mortal weave, you wouldn’t be able to tell by looking at it from the outside. While the buildings were made from wood and stone, I didn’t see a single modern structure at all. The sound of running water flowed in the distance, as though coming from a large waterfall I couldn’t see. The scents of wood-burning fires and cooking filled the air, making my stomach rumble awkwardly. I coughed to hide it and rubbed my arms, taking in the sight before me.
Zezza’s snout nudged my neck as she trilled. I ran my hand down her back and grinned. “If this is home for you, it’s amazing.”
“It is,” Eli said, watching us with a curious smile. “Home for her, that is. And us. Although she was in an egg at the time, Zezza is from here. We all are.”
I frowned. Granted, I wasn’t sure where Zezza had come from, but I’d assumed it had been from some museum or weird collector’s collection on the mortal weave. Not a pocket plane. Because if Zezza was from here and had ended up in my world, it meant one of two things: Zezza’s egg had fallen through to the mortal weave during the meteor strike or, more likely, her egg had been stolen and put up as a prize in that notorious game of poker.
Which meant that what Eli had said previously was wrong.
Others could, and had, gotten onto this pocket-weave somehow.
Or… one of their own was hiding something.
Chapter 12
My three guards brought Zezza and me into the center of the village. A few people milled about, going about their days like nothing was amiss. They all wore simple, but colorful clothing appropriate for warm, sunny days and seemed to be from all walks and ethnicities, the same you’d find in the mortal weave. Not a single person did do anything to indicate anything was different than usual even when they first saw me or Zezza. That they didn’t stop and stare at her made me turn to the skies. It was such a different experience compared to back in Boston that I couldn’t help but look at everyone and everything in wonder and awe.