Squinting her eyes, she picked out the dark opening of the cave, cleverly hidden behind a curtain wall that turned back on itself. Big enough to squeeze inside, she let go visions of the temple to refocus her energy on listening for following footfall, distant heartbeats, and harsh breath wheezing in and out of lungs.
Dark and cool inside the domed cave, redolent with the musty, sweet tang of damp soil and rot. A shaft of moonlight filtering in from a fissure in the roof cast a fuzzy, orange glow on the back wall, glinting off twisting rivulets of dripping water from the recent rain.
Yes, someone stayed here recently. The thought gave her pause. Familiar but indistinct, the lingering energies spoke of beings with different motives who might return to claim this shelter.
A chance she had to take.
The camera swung through the stepped back entrance, zipping upward to nestle on a high rock shelf. So used to being watched, Claudia turned her back and sank to her knees, dropping her bundle beside her on the dusty floor. If only she truly commanded magic, she’d hex that opening and trap the orb in here for all eternity.
Sadly, what looked like magic to some of these beings, were god-given powers with limits. Claudia thought about washing in the stream tumbling out from under a rock by the cave entrance. After that, find a private place to pee, then think of a plan for getting into that temple without being seen.
Within seconds of dropping her bundle on the dusty cave floor, waves of lulling sleep washed over her, and she drifted away into dreams of leering viewers cheering her on, while great fireballs fell from the sky. The fireball took shape, spread its flaming wings and flew straight at her, engulfing her in scorching heat.
Chapter Four
Dio! Oh Madonna mia.
Claudia shot from dream to waking in an instant, grabbing at the cave wall. Rolling out of the tangling cloak, she sucked in a long breath.
“Okay. I’m listening,” she muttered, rubbing her sore head. “I’m trying.”
The watching orb slid closer to the edge, alerted to her shocked awakening by some motion sensor. Or did the operatives in central control really watch every breath she took?
“She’s gone. Claudia is gone.” Fixing the orb with a laser focus a stage hypnotist might envy, she flicked her wrists in a shooing motion. “Claudia went down the mountain. You need to go, too. She’s not here.”
She couldn’t resist adding a sarcastic wave for the operative at the other end of the camera. Names made them easier to visualise, so she called him Mario. Today, the operative felt like a male. The orb blinked and moved closer.
All right, he wasn’t going for it, so it would have to be plan B. Sooner than she preferred to show her hand, but what the hell. It suited her to cooperate while she plotted and schemed. Now, the time had come to pick sides. Any hint of trying to thwart that camera, and the chase was on, her window of protection shot.
All or nothing, now.
Lifting her pack, she shook out her tangled hair, and turned her gaze to the cave entrance. The camera swivelled, waiting for her to move.
“Okay, I get it. Ladies first.” With her pulse beating out the crescendo from Rachmaninoff’s second piano concerto, she sauntered to the tall slit of the cave entrance. Still full dark outside, the twin moons rode high in the sky, bathing the mountain in yellow-orange light. The storm had blown over, and the air hung heavy with night scents of damp soil and the myriad plants that chose to bloom in the secret small hours, where no one saw their beauty.
Locked on her moving image, the camera glided from the shelf, confident of following a terrified victim.
They had that part right. Fear almost choked her. For a year now, she gave them everything they wanted. And now she was about to blow it all on a dream of fire that might just as easily kill her as keep her safe?
Her dragon was a beautiful thing. But beauty could so easily mask a great evil. Wait for the camera to approach, smile and lure it on.
“I’m going for a pee. Can’t you give me five minutes’ peace and privacy?”
“Then why take the pack?”
A distant voice answered her question with one of its own, in a buzz of crackly static. When the cameras spoke, the operatives were engaged, the audience out in force. Claudia’s fingers tightened on the pitiful bundle.
“It’s all I have in this world. Would you leave it behind?”
Distract the audience with a question of her own. She could already imagine the
fingers flying over the click buttons, choosing yes or no.
The orb crept closer. That’s right, come on, I need you nearer than this. She’d already picked out a rock that might take it out, or at least blind the creepy little spy and allow her the chance to escape.
Turn your back so they can’t see your face. Snatch up the rock, aim and run.
And hope she didn’t run straight into another camera lurking outside the cave. No sense of any eyes in the sky watching out there, but this tired, she was simply an ordinary woman going on instinct. All of her energy went into this.
Stooping, she pretended to fiddle with her moccasin, grabbed the rock at her foot, and spun around. Heavier than she imagined, the rock looped through the air and fell a whole head short to land with a dull thud on the cave floor.
Shit.
No mistaking the audience reaction, now. Their collective gasp as the stone hurtled towards the camera would have awoken the sleeping dragons themselves. Claudia scooped up a smaller rock. Threw. On target, but the cameras were fast learners. The orb dodged the missile with an almost lazy sweep sideways, and then swung towards her, leaving her in no doubt of the operator’s excitement at this unexpected turn.
“Okay, try this.” Claudia channelled every scrap of her gift into one last assault. Time seemed to slow and flow like a river of thick treacle, giving her space to pause and think and plan. Outside the cave, short stubby bushes with hard, wiry limbs reached into the void edging the mountain track. The bundle clutched to her chest, she raced from the cave, dodging through the slit in the rocks a few seconds before the camera.
The orb overtook her, zooming away to reposition, then sliding back to hang menacingly in her path on the side going down, not up the mountain. The operator made the wrong call, believing she wanted retreat, and not the eerie temple ruins. They thought her too afraid to risk those silent stones? Who was she to disillusion them?
She feinted a run down the path twisted and kicked out in a ninja move to stamp on a sturdy limb of a woody shrub, snapping it at the base. Dropping her bundle, she ignored the sharp pain in her foot, grasped the branch in both fists, and swung at the camera, keeping her eye firmly on the vulnerable edge. The one small point where a hit might take it out. She’d seen it done, but watching was nothing like doing. The stick bounced. The blow spun her around and brought her dangerously close to the path edge.
Claudia dived for safety, throwing her forearm across her eyes. Please, please let this work.
Someone heard her prayer. With a small static hiss, the camera exploded in a rainbow of curved shards. A second later, pain bloomed at her temple, sending hot, sticky blood seeping into her eye. Swiping it away with her fingers, she ran, stumbling up the path. For however long it took for the Corporation to send backup cameras to film this exciting, new event, she was invisible to the audience. This was a rare chance to disappear.
The Corporation owed her one for this. Renegades like her earned prime time billing, and she’d definitely upped her value, now.
Out there on distant planets, viewers cheered and scrabbled for the voting buttons to log their options on the polls appearing on screens.
Clouds. She visualised big, fat clouds descending to cover the mountain top. Send me clouds, mist, fog, give me cover.
The skies remained stubbornly clear. Unlike Serllia, Claudia had no influence over the wind and rain.
Time resumed its normal pace. Or as normal as time ever got on this prison moon. Where was the temple? It looked and felt a lot closer
farther down the slope. Claudia pumped her arms, half blinded by the blood seeping from the shallow head wound. Ahead of her, the grey shape of the temple melded into the moonlit sky. She’d never make it before the square boxes, with her body signature locked in, found her.
Those would be hard to evade.
The jump of adrenaline fizzled, and her legs grew heavy. Her feet skidded and slid on the loose shale covering the track. On the final bend, she leaned on the sheer rock face, sucking in a few desperate breaths under the grand archway, a towering curve of finely balanced stones like the soaring buttresses of the cathedrals on Earth.
Big enough for dragons to fly through, full wings outstretched.
Instinctively, Claudia ducked, as the imaginary flying dragons became vivid memories floating on the ether and written in the stones. They really did glide through this archway, catching shards of coloured light on glittering scales. Filling their followers with awe and respect.
A thousand times more beautiful than the horny wyverns’ drab greys and browns, that only blocked the light instead of harnessing it in blinding colour.
She slumped, murmuring a small prayer of thanks she’d made it this far. The flagstone courtyard beyond the entrance looked deserted, but that meant nothing. The viewers loved spying on unsuspecting prisoners, and a camera might already be in place.
She took a cautious step, listening with mortal senses and the last sliver of her supernatural energy dredged from somewhere deep inside. Peace, she just wanted a little peace from the constant barrage of messages from the other side of the veil. But voices this strong would not be denied. The temple hummed and sang with glories of ages past and the fainter whispers of the first beings who worshipped here. The thud of great dragon feet making padding indents on the stone. The memory of their beating wings rippled the air.
Only ghosts left here. Even the tearing wind shunned this place. No leaves tumbling across the stone courtyard, no stems on the short grasses bending in obeisance. The temple seemed to hold its breath, waiting. Keeping to the wall, Claudia navigated the courtyard perimeter to the black shape of an opening into the temple ruins, the hairs on her arms prickling with the swirling energy harnessed in the ancient stones.
You’ve done this before, they’re only ghosts. Spirits trapped on this plane, doomed to relive one small period of their lives over and over until they got it right.
Open a safe path, spirit guardians. She intoned a short prayer and took a deep breath for courage. Get inside before the cameras found her. Sophisticated enough to find a discarded pin in a mighty forest, they would find her.
The gaping void in the wall led to an antechamber lit by dim moonlight pooling at the entrance. Darkness shadowed the far corner and another opening. Claudia listened for lingering threads of the temple’s past. Living beings had been here recently. Animals, perhaps a human or two. Images of fire caught and burned brighter.
Trembling, she was so close to turning tail and running. Then she remembered Othrid, the avenging wyvern, waiting out there for her.
Keep going. Her future lay in fire.
In the pool of moonlight spilling through the opening, Claudia turned a slow circle, taking in the walls etched with images and stories of magnificent dragons and robed priests offering worship.
Chatra Trials. Two words floated forward, guiding her to a far wall near to steps descending into a void. A series of exquisite bas-relief carvings, the colours protected from harsh light. Placing flat palms on the cold stone, she read the dragon shifters’ history. Calm and peaceful enough in here for her gift to surface without the energy sap of fear and panic, she saw the Draegon initiation rituals, first endured and then rewarded with inked swirls on skin, declaiming the warrior’s journey to the highest level.
Secret rituals. She turned sharply at the sudden feeling of being watched by the living, not technology. Coming from the steps leading down from the tall, rectangular opening on the rear chamber wall, it didn’t feel quite human, or like any of the alien signatures encountered in her year on the moon.
Claudia measured every soft press of her feet to the ground, breathing in the damp, cold scent of mildewed stone. Something was leading her, luring her, even. She gnawed at her lip, trying to read the unfamiliar energy mingling with her own.
Shafts of weak moonlight filtered into the first chamber beyond the anteroom. Looking up, she marvelled at the way polished shields caught the light and sent it on to the next. After all this time, the ingenious devices still worked.
No shields in the next chamber, only an inky darkness and a sense of high ceilings and stone steps in the right-hand corner. Feeling with her hands along the wall, she mapped her journey, stepping carefully, her feet crunching on dried leaves blown in from past seasons.
A faint glow made a halo in the corner by the steps, coming from beyond the opening where tiny pinpricks of light joined as one, broke up, and reformed like a sparkling, flying cloud.
Lightwings. Flying bugs doing their crazy dance, pulsing with light and chasing away the dark. Too small to be the living thing she sensed watching her. Stumbling about in the dark like this, she risked being jumped by some loner, or a gang taking shelter. Some aliens barely made a ripple on her radar.
And yet she had to go on.
Her foot skidded away on the top step, worn lethally smooth by thousands of feet from the past. Claudia pressed to the wall, keeping a careful watch on the void to her right that seemed to go on forever.
The lightwings must have sensed her life force. They swarmed ahead and around her, illuminating her way into a chamber occupied by a flat, stone table, surrounded by scattered debris left by monks, or priests? Given time to sit and meditate, the whole history of the place would download into her mind like a computer app into past lives. Another flight of steps leading down into blacker darkness made her think of descending into hell, and her skin crawled.
This was it.
Not hell, fire. Her fire lay down there.
Where it was cold, now heat bathed her skin, intensifying the nearer she moved. The merest hint of a feeling, for now. No glow of a real fire sending flickering shadows chasing up the wall.
You sat alone in haunted castles, faced unquiet spirits and sent them to their rest. Trust that this fire won’t burn you. Go face it.
Claudia glanced up and behind her, searching out camera orbs. So much a part of the past year, it felt strange not having them peering over her shoulder, logging every step. Maybe these solid stones, being this far underground, blocked her tense body signature from their spying eyes?
Don’t count on it. The thought of being found spurred her on, and she navigated the steps down to another dimly lit chamber so vast, the back walls disappeared into darkness.
As her eyes adjusted, a shape formed, filling the space in the centre of the chamber. Was it real? Or her mind helpfully filling in with the thing she expected to see?
A dragon.
A cold, still, statue of a sleeping dragon, spiny neck curved around the massive bulk of its body, sculpted as if the artist caught the dragon sleeping, and captured its image for all time.
Serllia had showed her stone, and that’s exactly what Claudia saw. No less beautiful than the shimmering creature she saw riding the skies, but stone all the same.
Standing on the last step, one hand on the wall, she remembered the other image Serllia insisted she see. The life trapped screaming inside the monument.
Why wasn’t she feeling it? Sensing that strong voice she heard back in the camp? The silence in the chamber was almost crushing in its weight. She saw no cameras, felt no hidden eyes. Sensed no laughter echoing across the galaxy as she stood, confused and a little disappointed, after days of worrying the beast might make a one-bite meal of her.
It still might. Claudia tensed, ready to run if it was the beast blocking her senses and merely playing dead. If it moved suddenly now, her screams would pierce Corporation headquarters.
“So, dragon, you called to me. T
alk to me. Tell me what to do. How to help you.”
Push past the disbelief and open to the possibility. “If you’re in there, send me a sign. Talk in my head, like you did before.”
She was here for a reason, and that reason sat before her, huge and majestic. A little tragic with its broken wing and crushed front foot. Patches of faded colour, once shading beautiful blue hues, brushed its flanks and neck. Elsewhere, bare patches and deep gouges gaped where the scales had been crudely prised from its body.
Cautiously, Claudia felt for the step behind her and hunkered down, her eyes never leaving the creature caught and held frozen in a moment of time. Elbows on knees, chin resting on the heels of her hands, her gaze roved over the sloping back, the heavy, muscled legs, the elegant curve of the neck tapering towards the head.
Kin to the wyvern only in outward shape, with four legs instead of two, even in this cold stone statue, the dragon held a majesty the wyvern could never hope to emulate. Little wonder the drab beasts badmouthed their more magnificent cousins at every opportunity.
Did this one embody the very nobility and strength of the whole Draegon race, or only the essence of this one, warrior dragon?
Claudia pushed upright, blinking and aware she’d zoned out for a few seconds. Warrior? Soldier? Was she picking up leftover symbols of the wars, or remembering what the wyvern said about princes and warrior dragons turning to stone, if they didn’t make it to Paradise?
The sense of being watched returned, dancing over her skin, tugging at some deep-held memory. She, of all people, should believe in spirits trapped in stone. That didn’t only happen in fairy tales.
Touch me.
Okay, she heard that. Little more than a disturbance of the air, the voice so small it could be screaming at her from across the galaxy. Relax and let it in. If something did burst from that stone shell, she might make it up those steps and through that narrow opening.
It would never squeeze through. Unless it shifted.
STONE DRAGON: A Prison Moon Series Romance Novel Page 5