Where the hell was the basement? There needed to be stairs somewhere.
Actually, in most houses the stairs were stacked on top of each other, weren’t they? That meant it was likely that steps to the basement were underneath the steps upstairs. But how to get to them?
I turned. There. That doorway. It would take me back in the direction I came, at least I thought so.
That doorway opened into another empty room, this one with scarlet wallpaper on the walls. It was peeling in places.
I kept walking in the direction that I thought the stairs would be in, still with one arrow notched and two more in my hand.
A noise.
Something. Behind me.
I whirled.
I didn’t see anything.
“Clarke,” called Otis’s voice from the depths of the house. “Clarke, where are you?”
Damn it. He was coming after me.
I stowed the arrows in my quiver, and took off running in the direction that I thought the stairs should be.
I ran out of the red-wallpapered room, through another narrow hallway, through another empty room with wood paneling, and then down one more hallway. I rounded a corner.
And there was Otis. He was waiting for me, an arrow notched in a bow. “What are you doing, Clarke?
I reached back for an arrow of my own.
“Don’t move,” Otis snapped.
I froze. “Look, you were gone a long time,” I said, gazing into the point of his arrow. At this range, he could pierce my heart easy. I was dead if he let that arrow go. “I went looking for you.”
“Bullshit you did,” said Otis. “You’re trying to find the basement. Trying to free your damned dragon. I thought I could trust you, but you’re actually on his side, aintcha?”
“No,” I said.
“Well, look, there is no basement,” said Otis. “I made that up to see what you’d do. The cells are all up on the next floor. But you been scurrying all over, looking for a basement don’t exist.”
“I was looking for you,” I said stubbornly. “For anyone.”
“You’re a dragon-loving slut, and I don’t see any reason for you to keep on breathing.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Oh, geez, this didn’t look good. “God damn it, Otis! I was looking for you.”
“Lying bitch,” he snarled. He squinted, and I could see that he was taking aim. He was going to shoot me.
In that case, there was absolutely no reason to stay still. I hit the floor, face first. And then I realized that something had fallen out of my pocket. I reached out for it…
And then a weird thing happened. I couldn’t see myself. I wasn’t aware of how much of myself that I usually saw. I figured maybe it was like those first-person shooter games, where you can see your arms, your chest if you look down. I wasn’t aware of the fact that I usually could see my brow above my eyes or blurry hints of my eyelashes. That I could even see the tip of my nose out of the corner of my eye.
Now, I couldn’t see any of that.
Because I was invisible.
My hand closed around the pendant, which had fallen out of my pocket.
But this place was seeded with dragon sacrifice. There shouldn’t be any magic here. Of course, it stood to reason that the only magic that dragon sacrifice would cancel out would be dragon magic, and the pendant was something other than that. So… it worked.
I was invisible!
“What the hell?” said Otis, dropping his bow and arrow. He ran towards me, stomping his feet on the ground. “Where are you?”
I backed away, narrowing avoiding his boots’ crushing my fingers.
“What’d you do? Where’d you go?”
Carefully, quietly, I got to my feet and then I backed up the hallway, keeping an eye on Otis, who was stomping around the place that I’d disappeared and swearing loudly.
“Otis!” called a voice. A man came down the stairs.
“Wayne, I lost her!” yelled Otis.
By now, I was back in the big, cold room with the deer on the wall.
Wayne, a portly guy wearing a camouflaged baseball cap, came lumbering through the room. “What do you mean you lost her? Where’d she go?”
“I don’t know. She disappeared.”
I tiptoed past Wayne, which wasn’t easy, because this stupid room was pretty echoey.
But they were yelling at each other, which helped mask the sound.
“Disappeared? What the hell do you mean? People don’t just disappear.”
“Well, she did! She was right there and then bang! Gone.”
I went back the narrow hallway that led to the front door. I started up the steps. The voices of Wayne and Otis faded into the distance.
A woman appeared at the top of the steps. “Wayne?” she yelled. She started down the stairs.
I stepped to the opposite side, sucking in my breath.
She hurried past me. “Wayne, what the hell happened?”
I crept up the rest of the steps as quickly as I could.
At the top of the steps, I emerged into a large room with sets of shackles hanging off the walls.
There was Naelen. He was chained up, arms high above his head, feet chained to the floor. His face was red and swollen. His lower lip was cracked and bleeding. His right eye was surrounded by puffy red skin. His cheeks and forehead were covered in tiny little wounds. His shirt was bloody too and torn in several places.
They’d beaten him. They’d taken him into this place where there was no magic, chained him up, and laid into him.
I swallowed hard, feeling rage at Otis and the others start to fill me.
There was no one else in the room. Maybe the woman had been the guard? Or Wayne? I wasn’t sure. But I did know that I had to get Naelen out of there. What was I going to do about the stupid chains?
And then someone else came into the room. Another woman. She was wearing a leather vest with fringes on it. She folded her arms over her chest and glared at Naelen. Attached to her belt was a big ring of keys.
I needed those damned keys.
I felt in my quiver. Did I have any tranquilizer arrows left?
Yes!
Perfect. I notched the arrow and took aim. Well, best as I could without being able to see the arrow, anyway.
There was a twang when I released the arrow.
“What?” said the woman, whirling. She turned just in time to see the arrow snap into existence in front of her. She screamed.
Great. That was just what I needed.
The arrow hit her in the leg. She clutched the wound and yelled. “Help! Help me! Oh my God, there’s someth—”
And then the tranq took hold and she toppled over.
“Clarke?” said Naelen.
“Yeah,” I said, darting forward and snatching up her keys. They disappeared as soon as I was holding them.
Then I ran over to Naelen. “Just give me a second and I’ll have you free,” I said. When I touched the key to his chains, he and the chains winked out of sight.
“Whoa,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said. “Hurry up. They heard her. They’ll be coming.”
I worked at the lock at his feet as quickly as I could. It came free. “I don’t know if I can reach your hands.”
“Hold on,” said Naelen. “I think that I can move it down to you.” The sound of chains rattling over the bolts that held them up.
“Peggy!” yelled Otis’s voice from below. “Peggy, what happened?”
Footsteps coming up the steps.
I stood on tiptoe, feeling around for the lock…
They were coming. They were almost there.
I found it, working the key in it as quickly as I could. It gave, and Naelen was free.
I clutched him, making sure we were both invisible.
Otis, Wayne, and the other women appeared at the top of the steps. They all ran for Peggy.
“Holy fuck!” said Wayne.
The woman pointed. “The dragon’s gone!
”
I tugged at Naelen. He seemed to understand right away. Together, we began to inch our way around them, toward the steps.
“Where’d he go, where’d he go?” said Wayne.
“She got him out,” said Otis.
“But how?” said the woman.
We just kept right on inching our way free of that place.
* * *
We stayed close and stayed invisible until we were far out sight of the house.
Then I stepped away from Naelen and dropped the pendant. We both popped back into sight.
When I saw his injuries again, I winced. “Geez.”
“What?” he said.
“You’re just… they beat you so bad,” I said.
“I couldn’t do anything about it,” he said. “They had me chained up, and my magic didn’t work. I could feel that place sucking it all out of me. It was cold. So damned cold.” He shuddered. “But I just need someplace to shift.”
“Oh,” I said. “Right. Of course.” When dragons shifted, they healed all their wounds. “Well, maybe if we look at a map or something, we can find some water somewhere.” I pulled my phone out of my pocket and opened up my maps application. I searched around for a minute. “There. That looks like a lake or something, right?”
“It’ll have to do,” he said.
I picked the pendant back up and we headed in that direction.
“You okay to walk?” I asked him. We were walking through fields with sparse trees. I was a little worried about the fact that we weren’t far enough away from the Brotherhood’s house, but out here, Naelen would have magic if they showed up, and we could always go back invisible again.
“Yeah, they mostly concentrated on my face and upper body,” he muttered.
I tried to look at him again, and I almost couldn’t do it. “It looks really bad.”
“I’m fine,” he muttered. “Or I will be when I shift.”
“Okay,” I said. I got it. I didn’t like being reminded of my weaknesses either. I tried to pretend like everything was normal. We were just out for a stroll in the country.
We passed some electric lines up on poles, cutting through the field. I guessed civilization was pretty close by.
“Being beaten wasn’t the worst of it,” he said.
“No?” I said.
“Or it was, but not because of the pain or anything.”
“Because they hate you for no reason other than you were born with magic?”
“Well, that’s screwed up too,” he said. “No, the worst of it was feeling helpless. I hate feeling helpless.”
“I don’t think anyone likes that,” I said quietly.
“It reminds me of being a kid, you know? Being too young to change things, to make things better for me and Reign. And when I was strung up in there, and they were wailing on me, all I could think was how badly I was failing her. And I’m all she has.”
“I know,” I said. I patted his shoulder.
He flinched.
“Sorry,” I said. He was hurt there. I was an idiot.
He swallowed. “You know, when Reign and I were kids, my parents used to bail on us all the time.”
“What do you mean?”
“They were so in love with each other that they’d forget about everything else in the world, including their damned kids. Sometimes, they’d go to some event in the evening and forget to come home until morning. Sometimes, they’d jet off on a vacation on a whim. Just up and leave. No thought for us at all. I mean, it wasn’t horrible, because we’d be abandoned in a penthouse apartment where groceries were delivered and stuff, so it wasn’t like we were starving. But it was basically like we raised ourselves, you know.”
I was quiet. “Or like you raised Reign.”
“Yeah.” He nodded. “I took care of her. I did whatever I could for her. And so, I mean, that’s… that’s what terrifies me the most. That’s why I’m never going to fall in love. Because I don’t want to be consumed that way. It doesn’t seem right to me to be so caught up in one other person that everything else fades.”
“No,” I said, “I guess it doesn’t. But, to be fair, maybe that was just your parents.”
He turned to me. “What?”
“Well, I know you talk about the dragon bond a lot and everything, but if every mated pair of dragons behaved like your parents did, then certainly we’d all know about it, because dragon families are practically celebrities. So, some people must manage it okay.”
He sighed. “No, it changes people. I had a buddy in high school. Met his mate early, like when he was sixteen. That doesn’t happen often. Lots of dragons don’t meet their mates until much later in life. Anyway, the minute he met his mate, that was it. He was obsessed with her. They got married. They had kids. He was just… swallowed up into this whole other world where that was the only thing that was important.”
“Yeah, but was he neglectful of his children?”
“That’s not the point,” said Naelen.
“I think it is. You resent your parents, and with good reason. It sounds like they were crappy parents. But that doesn’t mean if you loved someone you’d become a crappy parent too.”
“You’re completely missing the point.”
“Oh,” I said. “Sorry. I guess I thought… What is the point?”
“The point is that the dragon mating bond makes you do things that you wouldn’t choose to do without it. And it makes you like it. Talk about being helpless, Clarke, that’s the worst kind of helpless there is.”
I was quiet.
“You don’t agree?”
“I just never thought about it that way before. I don’t have to worry about some kind of mystical mating bond. I get to choose who I fall in love with.”
He turned to me sharply. “Choose? You think that’s really true? Even without a bond, look at those crazy polyamorous people we just met. You think if they were really honest with themselves, they’d freely choose to be freaks like that?”
“Freaks? I thought you were cool with their lifestyle.”
“I am cool with it. But the vast majority of people are weirded out by it,” he said. “Who chooses to live that way? To be that different?”
“Some people do,” I said.
“Nah,” he said. “That gets chosen for you. Something happens and you get stuck and you can’t get free, so you make the best of it.”
I shook my head. “I don’t think so. I think we have a say over our lives. I’m not saying there aren’t factors. For instance, I’m not going to be attracted to every single man in the world. That I can’t really control. But even if I’m drawn to someone, that doesn’t mean that I have to give in to it.”
“Right,” he said. “You can fight it.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Like me and Logan, for instance. I don’t have to—”
“You’re drawn to Logan?” He glared at me with his ruined face.
I stumbled at the sight of him. He was fearsome. I tried to speak, but I just stammered some syllables.
His voice was dark. “What’s the difference between the way you’re drawn to Logan and the way you’re drawn to me?”
I licked my lips. “We should find the lake.”
“You are drawn to me,” he rasped. “I can tell that you are.”
I put my head down and walked. “You said you wouldn’t do this.”
He stepped in front of me, blocking my path. “I said I wouldn’t try to seduce you. I’m not. I’m simply trying to figure you out. Logan makes you sad. Deeply sad. And yet you still want him. But I have done nothing to hurt you, and you won’t go near me.”
“I’m not going near Logan either.” I tried to move around him.
He took me by the shoulders, holding me in place. “But you have. You’ve slept with him.”
“That’s none of your business. And let go of me.”
“Haven’t you?”
“We were together. He was my boyfriend.”
He narrowed his eyes. “W
hat if I was your boyfriend?”
“You’re not. You don’t want to be. You… you make a very big deal about how much you don’t want to settle down with someone.”
He let go of me. “I never thought about being with someone—really being with someone—who wasn’t a dragon. It’s not done.”
“I know that.” Of course it wasn’t done. What was he saying?
He turned around and started to walk. He didn’t turn around, but his voice carried. “So, that’s it? That’s the only difference? He was your boyfriend?”
I stood, rooted in the spot. “Well… at the time, I wanted him to be my boyfriend.”
He kept moving. “And you don’t want me to be your boyfriend?”
“I… why are we talking about this? It’s idiotic. That’s never going to happen, anyway.”
He crested over a hill, and then he disappeared.
I started moving. “Is it?” I called.
No answer.
By the time I caught up, I only got a glimpse of him diving down into the water of the shimmering lake. His clothes were in a pile on the bank.
When he surfaced, he was in dragon form. He rose up out of the water and flapped his wings—his emerald green scales glinting in the sunlight. Water dripped off of him. He was magnificent.
Then he dove back down into the water.
In a moment, his human head came back up. He was perfectly healed, his beautiful features all intact.
I turned away. I didn’t want to see him without his clothes.
In a few moments, he joined me, fully clothed, but his clothes were blood stained and damp, clinging to his wet skin. He ran his hand through his wet hair. “Hey,” he said.
I looked at him sidelong. “Hey.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “You know, you and Logan… I’m not trying to stand in the way of that.”
I gaped at him. “What? That’s what you say to me right now?”
“You said you were drawn to him,” he said. “After all the ways he’s hurt you, you’re still drawn to him. I don’t get that. At all.”
I groaned. “It’s complicated.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“We knew each other when we were kids,” I said. We were back on the jet. The pilot hadn’t even done more than go get something to eat. Now, we were flying to the next location, which would hopefully take us to Cunningham, the objects, and Reign.
Smoke (The Slayer Chronicles Book 1) Page 20