“I’ll just be a minute,” she said reassuringly. “Nothing’s going to happen while I’m gone.”
“No, don’t leave me!” he pleaded, and tried to reach for her hand. But he was weak and slow and couldn’t quite grab it. It broke Brittany’s heart to leave him there, but she told herself it was for his own good. She would be back soon, and when she came back she would be able to reassure him that more help was on the way.
She sprinted back toward the Winking Wizard’s back door, wondering how in the world this had happened. Who in Torch Lake would have done this to anyone, let alone a child? Torch Lake wasn’t perfect, but it was full of good people with good hearts. There was almost no crime, because no one tolerated people who acted like jerks. And there definitely wasn’t violent crime, like a child being beaten up in the woods.
Brittany’s stomach turned. Was it possible that some of the Dark Warriors had gotten into the city somehow? No, that couldn’t be! There had been some security breaches a few months ago that had resulted in some Dark Warriors getting into Torch Lake and attacking some citizens, but ever since then the guards around the city had been beefed up tremendously. No one could have gotten past them.
But try as she might to reassure herself of this, Brittany could not shake the growing fear deep down inside of her. She ran as fast as she could, but turned to look at the boy one last time just as she reached the door to the bar. What she saw made her heart stop.
A dark shadow, about the size of a large man, was creeping out of the woods toward the boy. Brittany instantly knew that the shadow was up to no good, and she ran toward it as fast as she could, screaming, “Stop!” at the top of her lungs.
At the sound of her scream, both the boy and the dark shadow looked up. The shadow did belong to a large man—a bear shifter, if Brittany had to guess. What she didn’t have to guess about, though, was that this man was up to no good. He must be the “bad man” that the boy had talked about.
The boy started crying at the same moment that the man started to shift. Brittany had no idea what to do. She was no soldier. She was a bartender, and the bars around here were pretty low key. No one ever got into fights, and Brittany had never had to break up any bar brawls. She knew a little bit about magical self-defense, but only from the basic classes she’d taken in high school, and that had been more years ago than she wanted to admit.
Still, she felt she had no choice but to try to help this boy. He was completely helpless and she couldn’t turn a blind eye while this shifter tormented him.
“Magicae arma!” Brittany yelled out as she approached the boy. The shield spell buzzed up around her, and she felt a small measure of relief. At least she could still manage a few moves. She had been the top of her class in magical self-defense, so maybe all of that studying was finally going to pay off today.
But almost as quickly as Brittany’s confidence rose, it evaporated. She saw that she had been right—the shifter was a bear. A large, angry grizzly bear. He snarled at Brittany, and she cowered as she hoped that her shield would hold against him. But he didn’t actually attack her. It wasn’t her he cared about. He wanted the boy.
“No!” Brittany screamed as the bear lunged toward the boy. And then in desperation she called out, “Help! Is there anyone out there who can help me?”
But she had little hope of an answer. The clouds were just starting to let loose their rain, so no one was loitering in the parking lot. And it was far too noisy inside the bar for anyone to hear what was going on outside. If Brittany wanted to save this boy, she was on her own.
“Magicae appugno!” she yelled out, lifting her magic ring and pointing it at the bear. She hadn’t used this attack spell since her final exam for her magical self-defense class, and she half-expected it not to work. It did work though, and laser-like light beams leapt out from her ring and toward the bear. He howled in pain, but he did not slow for long. With another angry growl, he once again lunged toward the boy, who was crying hysterically at this point.
Brittany gritted her teeth together and prepared to try again. “Magicae appugno!” she yelled. Again, her attack stopped the bear in his tracks, but again, only for a moment. Brittany tried not to panic. She knew that if this was all she threw at this shifter, he was eventually going to overcome her attacks. As it was, he was gaining ground in between each of her attacks. Brittany racked her brain trying to think of a stronger, better attack spell, but her mind felt numb. In desperation, she yelled out the same spell again. “Magicae appugno!”
The bear once again stopped, but only temporarily. Brittany was just gathering her strength to repeat the spell another time when everything changed.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, she heard an angry roar unlike anything she’d ever heard before. The sound sent chills down her spine, and she hoped with all her might that whoever had just roared was on her side, not the bear shifter’s. When she turned to look, she felt a rush of relief. The roar was coming from Simon, that obnoxious dragon shifter she couldn’t wait to get rid of earlier. Now, in this moment, she thought she’d never been so happy to see anyone in her life. He was shifting as he ran toward them, his dragon form already stretching out his body and leaving his clothes in piles of little shreds. His dragon hide was thick, and shimmered with iridescent colors when a flash of lightning lit it up. His tail and wings were spiked, and his horns and teeth looked sharper than anything Brittany had ever seen before. When he breathed in and then let his breath out in a stream of fire, she was in awe. She hadn’t actually seen a dragon shifter in dragon form before, and she had to admit that it was impressive.
Okay, so maybe all those chicks who are into dragons are onto something after all.
The bear shifter was impressed, too, but not in a good way. With a yelp of terror, the giant grizzly took off running into the forest at a surprisingly fast pace for a beast of his size. He didn’t stand any chance against Simon’s dragon, though. Simon went charging into the trees after him, snapping branches as he went. Brittany wasn’t sure what to do, other than kneel beside the crying boy and try to comfort him.
“Shh, it’s okay. You have a dragon looking out for you now. No one’s going to hurt you.”
The boy’s cries died down somewhat, but he still whimpered. Brittany herself was trembling. She had no idea how her five minute break had somehow turned into this strange life-or-death situation. She realized suddenly that she’d probably been gone about fifteen minutes now, but Joe probably still hadn’t noticed. That struck her as strangely funny, and she laughed. For some reason, her laugh seemed to calm the boy. He looked up at her and stopped whimpering, his eyes wide.
“You have a pretty laugh,” he said.
Brittany was touched. “Thank you.”
“Am I…am I going to be okay now? Really?”
Brittany smiled. “Yes. You are. Grizzly shifters are pretty fierce, but they still don’t stand a chance against a dragon.”
The boy’s eyes widened even more. “That’s the first time I’ve seen a dragon in person. I’ve only seen them on TV before.”
Brittany leaned down toward the boy. “Want to know a secret? It was my first time, too. It’s a pretty cool thing to see, huh?”
The boy managed a smile, but before he could reply, a crashing sound came from the woods. Brittany looked up, startled and hoping she wasn’t about to have to fight again. But when the figure crashing through the woods came into view, Brittany breathed a sigh of relief. It was Simon, in human form once again. He had a grave expression on his face, and she couldn’t help but notice the fact that he was stark naked. She awkwardly tried to fix her eyes on his eyes, avoiding looking at his body, which she had noticed was quite muscular from head to toe. Shifters were used to seeing people naked all the time, since they always lost their clothes when they shifted. But despite living in the same town as shifters for the last several years, Brittany still hadn’t gotten used to the idea of randomly seeing people naked. Especially not when the naked person in question was an u
ndeniably gorgeous dragon shifter who had been hitting on her just an hour earlier.
Simon, of course, didn’t notice or care that his nakedness made Brittany uncomfortable. He jogged toward them and quickly bent down to check on the boy, furrowing his brow as he did a physical assessment of the child. Then he turned to Brittany and started giving orders.
“Go inside and go find the dragon shifters. You know the table where they all sit?”
Brittany nodded. Anyone who had spent more than one night hanging out at the Winking Wizard knew where the dragon shifters’ usual table was located
“Good. Go tell them I’m outside and need their help with an urgent matter. Don’t say more than that, and try not to let anyone else hear you. I don’t want the whole damn bar coming out here and gawking. After you’ve talked to the dragon shifters, call an ambulance so we can get some paramedics to get this kid to the hospital and take care of him.”
Brittany nodded and ran to do as she was told. The dragon shifters didn’t question her when she said Simon needed her. They rose quickly, leaving their beers at the table and heading outside. A few people raised eyebrows at their departure, but most people were already too tipsy at this point to wonder too much about why all the dragon shifters were suddenly leaving.
After Brittany called an ambulance, she went back to the bar to find Joe, who, as she’d suspected, hadn’t even noticed that she’d left. She probably could have asked and gotten permission to just leave for the night, if she told him something important had come up. And part of her did want to go out and see how the boy was doing, and thank Simon for his help. But another part of her felt like she’d just be in the way, and would feel horribly out of place amongst the large group of dragon shifters. And so she took her place behind the bar again, acting like nothing unusual had happened. On the outside, she looked perfectly calm. But on the inside, she was a jumble of nerves and emotions.
And the scariest emotion was the one that was making her think she’d been wrong to reject Simon. She’d believed for the last few years that all the dragons were just a bunch of stuck-up brats, but what Simon had done tonight had been anything but bratty. He’d stepped in and saved a child that Brittany herself had been doing a piss-poor job of saving.
Brittany realized that her hands were trembling, and she did her best to push away all thoughts of Simon and the boy. If she was going to make it through this work night, she had to act like nothing had happened.
But something had happened. And for Brittany, that something had changed everything. It had opened her eyes to how dragons acted in the moments that really mattered, and it had made her wonder if she’d been wrong to brush Simon off so quickly.
She vowed that if she ever got another chance to go on a date with a dragon, she would take it. But she wasn’t too hopeful that she’d get that chance. After all, she’d blown Simon off completely, and he was the last available dragon in town. Odds weren’t good he was going to come running back to her now.
Or were they?
Chapter Three
Well over twenty-four hours later, Simon once again set foot in the Winking Wizard. The Saturday night crowd was a bit sparser than the Friday night crowd had been, probably because the weather had improved dramatically since last night. Many of the bar’s usual patrons had opted to go drink by the lake. Simon might have, too, if it had been a normal day. One of his favorite things to do was kick back by Torch Lake with good friends and good beer.
Today had been anything but normal, though. He’d spent most of the day in meetings with the High Council and military commanders, trying to determine how a Dark Warrior shifter had managed to get into the city. The military commanders had been so sure that the City Guard was effective that they had refused to believe at first that there had really been an enemy bear shifter in their midst. But when confronted with evidence that the son of a prominent government official had been attacked, they had to admit that something suspicious was going on.
Simon frowned as he headed toward the bar, scanning quickly to see whether Brittany was here tonight. She was. A moment later, he spotted her popping from behind a large pile of glassware crates, holding giant mugs and smiling as she said something to one of the nearby customers at the bar. His heart twisted in his chest with longing as he watched her, but he forced the emotion away. He wasn’t here to ask her out again. He was here to officially thank her for her help in saving the boy last night. Without Brittany, in fact, that boy would probably be dead right now. Simon still wasn’t sure exactly how Brittany had ended up tangled up in that mess, which was another reason he wanted to talk to her. He was hoping that she might have some more information on what had happened—information that would help the High Council and the military piece together how the Dark Warriors had snuck into the city yet again. Simon knew the odds of Brittany having more information were slim, but he had to at least try.
He approached the bar and chose a barstool on the side of the bar where Brittany was working. For a few minutes, she didn’t see him, still busy with her other customers. But when she looked up and their eyes met, she froze.
An unreadable expression went across her face, and for a moment Simon was worried that she might be angry. But then she smiled at him, and held up a finger to indicate she’d be with him in just a second. Simon relaxed a bit, his heart warmed more than he would have thought possible by just her simple smile.
She finished serving the customers she’d been with, then came over to see him.
“Hey,” she said, her voice sounding almost shy. “What are you having? It’s on the house tonight. Another Dragon’s Breath Lager?”
Simon shook his head no. “I’ll just take a coffee, if you have any brewed.”
“Of course. Cream and sugar?”
“Just black.”
She nodded and went to grab his coffee. He saw her say something to Joe, the other bartender, on her way back. Joe shrugged and nodded, and then went back to his work. Brittany came over and set the coffee in front of Simon, and then, much to his surprise, she hopped over the bar and sat in the empty barstool next to him.
“I asked Joe if I could take the rest of the night off,” she explained. “It’s pretty slow, and we aren’t likely to get any busier at this point. Besides, I was supposed to get off in fifteen minutes anyway.”
Simon glanced at his watch. It was nearly eleven-fifteen. He hadn’t realized it was quite that late, and he was glad he’d caught Brittany before she’d left for the night. Sitting next to her now was making his heart pound like crazy, but he knew he couldn’t let himself focus on that. He needed to say the things he’d come here to say.
“Listen, I wanted to thank you for your help last night. I actually would have liked to thank you last night, but you never came back out and things were so chaotic.”
Brittany blushed and shrugged. “I figured it was best if I stayed out of the way. I don’t think I could have done more than you and the other dragon shifters were already doing.”
“Well, what you did do was amazing. I know you aren’t a soldier, but you held off that grizzly shifter until help came. That’s no easy task.”
Brittany lowered her eyes. “I’m just glad you showed up. I wasn’t sure anyone was going to hear me calling for help, and I don’t know how much longer I would have been able to hold back the bear. How did you hear me, anyway?”
“I happened to be leaving right when you called for help. I was honestly fuming a bit, and walking to my car slowly. This cute bartender I had asked out had rejected me.”
Simon winked at Brittany, and she blushed again but didn’t say anything.
“Anyway,” Simon continued. “I thought I heard someone calling for help, and then I thought I heard a shifter roaring. I knew something was wrong and ran over right away. Needless to say I was quite surprised to find you back there battling a grizzly.”
“Who was that guy?” Brittany asked. “Surely he wasn’t a Torch Lake citizen?”
Simon shook
his head no, then finally took a sip of his coffee before answering. The coffee was strong and thick, just the way he liked it. He took another sip, then glanced around to make sure no one was too close. He didn’t want anyone overhearing this.
“The grizzly was a Dark Warrior. That boy he attacked was the son of one of Torch Lake’s major government officials. We think the grizzly was intending to use the kid as some sort of bargaining chip against Torch Lake, although we’re not exactly sure why he did so much harm to the boy. Maybe he thought if it looked like the kid’s life was truly in danger then people would pay more attention.”
“How is the kid doing?”
“He’s fine. He had some cuts that needed stitches, and he’s got quite a few nasty bruises. But there’s no permanent damage. Not physically, at least. I’m sure emotionally he’s quite shaken up.”
“Poor thing.” Brittany shook her head in disgust. Then she looked at Simon with narrowed eyes. “But how did that Dark Warrior get into the city in the first place? The High Council assured us that the guards and shields around the city are impenetrable.”
“Apparently they were wrong, which is bad news. What’s even worse news is that we actually don’t have a clue how they did get in. It’s one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you. I was hoping you might have seen something that would help us figure that out.”
To Simon’s disappointment, though, Brittany was slowly shaking her head. “I didn’t really see that much. I was out back taking a break when the boy emerged from the woods. He was in a black sack and didn’t look good. I went to try to help him, but when I said I was going inside for a minute to have someone call an ambulance, he freaked out and said he didn’t want to be left alone. I didn’t see what choice I had, though, so I started to leave anyway. That’s when the grizzly shifter came rushing out of the woods. The next few minutes are a blur. I tried to call for help but I wasn’t sure if anyone would hear me. I panicked and tried to attack the shifter, but it wasn’t going so well. Like you said, I’m no soldier. Thank god you came when you did.”
Dragon Triumphing Page 2