The sand was searing hot on my hands and knees, but that was as it was meant to be. What had brought me here was the unnatural, the hurt and sickness. I listened.
The wind whispered in a language only my brother Kaelestis could understand. But the sand spoke to me. It cried in pain, and it pointed to a source. I followed the invisible path, finding its end at a withered cactus. The green plant was rotten on one side, soft and decaying, and covered in a black substance.
I reached a hand over the wound. Life energy threaded together under my direction, reweaving the essence of the plant. The stem regrew, returning its tough waxy skin to the affected area. Orange flowers bloomed, and missing spines reformed.
It was almost as it was meant to be. But the black flecks remained. The blight could not be overlooked, it could not be ignored. And it left me with feelings of concern and unease.
I could restore and revive the vegetation. I could shift the soil.
I could not cure the blight.
Chapter 3
Astra
The air was thick with the stench of boiled greens. It clung to my dress, my hair, and my skin. I breathed it in, knowing that the memory of this was all I’d have tomorrow when Dad left again.
I’d go to Aunt Sally’s and she’d tell me how terrible my mother was for leaving us, like I hadn’t heard it a thousand times before. And I had to act like it hadn’t torn open the still-fresh wound every single time.
I stirred the green beans that looked like seaweed and tasted like grass, and I glanced up. Swaying to the soft sounds of “Good Vibrations,” Dad belted the Beach Boys’ words in an octave two levels higher than his natural voice.
He took my hand and spun me. I twirled like a ballerina, and I sang along.
My heart was full. My heart was breaking.
All the while, I knew it wouldn’t last.
Floating in darkness, faint awareness pricked in the back of my head. I wasn’t awake. I wasn’t quite asleep, either.
There was something hard and hot pressed against my cheek. It was rough and gritty, like sandpaper. My entire body, everything but my face was cold—cold and heavy.
There was sound, too. A tropical breeze rustled leaves in the distance, and the comfort of the warm sun threatened to lull me back into rest.
I fought to lift my head. I couldn’t.
Sensations sharpened, pushing back the haze. The song of crashing waves broke the spell. I forced my eyes open. It was so bright.
Sunlight reflected off of white sand as cerulean waves lapped up over me and onto the shore. Cerulean like my favorite crayon.
I managed to lift my head from the ground. I was on a beach. My hair was gross, matted with wet sand. My ear was ringing and felt weird, like water was stuck inside. I shook my head and noticed that at the edge of the shore was a lush forest brimming with palm trees and broad-leaved plants. There was so much color—green everywhere, with splashes of purple, orange, and yellow.
Where was I? More importantly, how the hell did I get here?
All at once, my memories came flooding back. Pirates had taken over the Keepin’ it Reel. The storm tipped the boat just as Dad...Dad and Polly, all of the crew—they were gone.
My chest clenched, my head throbbed. I dropped back onto the sand, tears pricking the corners of my eyes. What if I lost them all?
If I could survive, others could, too. I had to hold onto hope.
Voices carried from the jungle, grounding me. It could be my crew. It could be the pirates.
There was nowhere to hide on the beach. I could remain still and hope if they were hostile, they wouldn’t find me. Or I could run, if my legs were strong enough to carry me. I wasn’t so sure.
The voices grew louder. It was a small group of maybe three to five males. I didn’t recognize any of their voices, but to be honest, I didn’t know everyone on the new crew that well. There was nowhere for me to run, and I was out of time.
I lay prone, making myself as flat and motionless as possible. And I kept my head tilted toward the sound so I could watch their approach.
The group broke through the tree line. There were more of them than I had thought, seven, and they were all men. They didn’t look like my crew or the pirates. They looked like natives to wherever the hell we were, with tanned skin and dark hair. They carried long wooden spears with metal tips, which I really hoped were meant for fishing. They wore loose white pants and no shirts, making it clear even at just a glance that they were built like pro wrestlers.
Please go the other way.
Ignoring my mental plea, they kept coming straight toward me. The two in the lead were laughing about something, oblivious to my existence—thankfully.
It wasn’t too late to run for it. All that they had to do was turn, head a different direction for their fishing. It was a big beach, and my white shirt and tan cargo pants blended right in with the sand. Keep walking. I’m just a lump. Nothing to see here.
They stopped a few feet from the edge of the forest and set down ropes and nets that I hadn’t noticed before. A few of them were talking, but I couldn’t make out their words. The tone sounded casual.
One of them grabbed the hem of his pants and pulled down, leaving him completely nude. No one else seemed to think this was unusual. Mr. Nude-o ran out over the sand, wang bouncing all about. I should have closed my eyes to go along with the whole lump in the sand disguise, but it was the kind of sight that no one could look away from. Well, at least I couldn’t.
He turned and headed away from me, running along the coast, which was all around for the best. Mid-stride, a strange glow of white light surrounded Mr. Nude-o, like someone had hit him with a flash grenade.
I glanced back to his shirtless crew, and no one seemed to be paying him any mind. I looked back to Mr. Nude-o, but where a giant naked dude had been standing, there was no man at all. There was a wolf.
What the hell was going on?
The wolf snapped its head in my direction. Shit.
I closed my eyes and hid my face in the sand. Someone shouted, likely after spotting the wolf. I wasn’t going to look to check. Still, I had to stay as still as possible.
The voices grew louder, but my fuzzy brain made it so I couldn’t understand the words. If they were coming this way, my window for escape had long passed. There was only one thing left to do—play dead.
I’m just a lump.
I lay as motionless as possible. They could run right by and leave me be, or...I didn’t know the or part yet, but I’d survived a shipwreck in the middle of the fucking ocean. I wasn’t going down now.
I could feel the weight of someone close. Something cold and damp poked my arm, exhaling against my skin. Holy fuck, it was the wolf.
I held my breath. Someone poked my ribs with what felt like the blunt end of his spear.
“Is she dead?”
They spoke English. I hadn’t expected that, though to be honest I didn’t know what to expect.
“No, I can hear the beating of her heart.”
How the hell could he do that? Creepy. At this point, though, no one was touching me, so I remained still, waiting for the right moment to strike.
“She smells strange.”
There were sounds of more than one of them inhaling after that. Super creepy.
“What do you think she is?”
“Hmm. Yes, quite unusual.”
Seriously? I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. They could hear my heartbeat, seemed to think it was okay to go around smelling people, and I was the unusual one?
My cover was blown. Now—I had to make my move now. I pushed up on my arms and rose to my feet. I was slower than I would have liked, and less sturdy. The fishermen were standing in a circle around me as I swayed on my feet.
“She’s a regular human being, just like you.” I planted my hands on my hips and stood as tall as my five-foot-three stature would allow. “You wouldn’t smell so great if you were barfed up from the ocean, either.”
The men exchanged glances, a few gaping at me, and they all stepped back like I had the fucking plague. In wordless coordination, they pointed their spears at me. All but the wolf—the really big fucking wolf. He bared his teeth. It was like he was one of them, a trained fishing companion and attack beast. My chances of fighting my way out of this weren’t looking so good.
I raised my hands in defense. It wasn’t anger or hostility that I saw in their eyes. It was fear.
“A human on the island…” one of them whispered.
“It’s a sign,” another said. “Our lord is displeased. Our faithlessness allowed the blight, and now the humans are invading!”
“Invading? I can assure you, I’m not invading. My ship was destroyed in a storm. I washed up here. And I don’t even know where here is.”
“We must take her to Thorn,” one of them said, completely ignoring me. “He’ll know how to stop the human invasion.”
“Cedar, bind her and we will return her to the village.”
What kind of name was Cedar? Not that it mattered. One of them tapped my side with his spear, and I was grateful that it wasn’t the pointy part. There was no escape, not yet at least.
Resigned to the binding thing, I put my hands together and Cedar wrapped my wrists with rope, squeezing so tight it hurt. He tied a knot, leaving no room to wiggle or for blood to circulate.
Cedar pulled the rope. Given I didn’t particularly want to get dragged along the ground, I was forced to follow. My wet clothes, along with quite a bit of sand, clung uncomfortably to my skin, leaving me cold and grimy. And my socks were soggy inside my boots.
I kept pace, and kept an eye on my captors. They all had the same pants and the same sandals on their feet, except of course for the wolf who was either behind me or out in the forest somewhere devouring defenseless animals.
We left the beach behind and entered the forest. Sounds of the ocean faded into the distance, replaced by the hum of insects and the wild caw of some sort of bird. I’d never seen so many palm trees growing so close together before. They were ridiculously tall, their wide leaves threading together to block out the sun. Small beams broke through the thicket and danced along the forest floor like laser pointers.
Among the low-growing plants were splashes of color like I’d seen from the shore. There were waxy leaves striped with orange and yellow, purple and green. It was like nothing else, like nowhere else.
My brain kept returning to the questions that I had no way of answering. There was no land near where my ship had gone down. How was it that I had survived, and where exactly had the current carried me?
Cedar froze in his tracks. The others did, too, their attention set to the forest ahead. I followed their gazes, but saw nothing but the dirt and colorful leaves.
I opened my mouth to ask what was going on, but before I could speak a single word, something slithered across the path in front of us. I would have said it was a snake if it weren’t so thick. It was at least as tall as my waist, though I had no intention of getting close enough to check for sure. The long body continued past slowly blocking our path forward. I watched the scaly golden and black pattern of scales move by like a slow slithery train, my breath held.
Please don’t eat me. Please don’t eat me.
The good thing—if it was going to eat anyone, I wasn’t closest. I was smack in the middle of the pack. The bad thing, aside from the mere existence of a monster snake—Cedar was up front, with the rope that bound me tied to his belt. The thought of getting pulled into the jaws of a prehistoric creature was quite a bit more terrifying than going back to these guys’ village.
Eventually, after what felt like an eternity of waiting to be devoured, the snake blockade tapered away and the fishermen started walking once more.
After a while, one of the men spoke. “What if Thorn’s mad when we get there?”
“Why?” one of the others asked.
“Because, Woody, she could be the first of many, a scout that alerts the others to the location of our village.”
Woody? These guys and their names. I sighed, and repeated what I’d already told them. “I’m just the lone survivor of a shipwreck.”
“What if our lord is angered that we brought a human home?” one of the others asked, his voice quiet.
“You could just let me go,” I suggested. “I won’t follow you guys, I swear.”
“We should hide her,” Cedar said.
“It’s a sign,” Woody said. “Doom is coming to the forest.”
“You’re right, it is a sign. But not one of doom,” one of the others said.
Finally someone reasonable. He stepped in front of the rest. I noticed his dark hair was streaked with a touch of gray. I hoped he was in charge.
“Our lord needs sustenance to combat the blight,” Mr. Gray said.
“Yes, and then he will protect us with renewed strength and vigor!” Cedar lit up with a grin that overtook his face.
“Take her to Dragon Rock and we shall summon him!” Mr. Gray pounded the butt of his staff against the ground.
“Yes! I shall get the horn bearer and meet you there,” Woody said.
They all moved a bit faster after that, though I wasn’t sure I wanted to know who their lord was, or what he had to do with me. But a sense of unease settled in my gut.
As we walked farther, the jungle woods changed from tropical to more what I pictured when I thought of a forest. There was moss and boulders, and big fat pine trees. I didn’t get too much time to sight-see before Cedar grabbed me with one of this tree-trunk arms and threw me over his shoulder. I struggled a bit, but it was no use. The fishermen started running, and I bounced around like a sack of potatoes.
Wherever the hell we were, I hated it.
Cedar and friends headed up an incline, and the trees grew sparse. They didn’t stop running until we reached the top of a tall hill. At the crest, there was a massive gray monolith. The rock was at least twenty feet tall and heavily weathered. Faded runes and glyphs were carved across its surface.
Cedar dropped me down before he and one of his buddies shoved my shoulders against the stone. It was warm on my back, heated by the tropical sun, which was kind of pleasant compared to the chill of wet clothes against my skin.
But I wasn’t exactly thrilled with the way this seemed to be going.
Mr. Gray turned and addressed the crowd. “Bring forth the sacrificial cords of binding!”
Sacrificial...yeah, I was really starting to not like the way this was going. My heart raced, and panic flooded through my veins. I fought to free myself from the fishermen’s grasp. They were stronger than me.
Woody returned to the group with a bunch of new people.
“Someone want to give me a hand here?” I scanned the crowd. “Innocent person being tied up against her will.”
There were women among them—a whole group of people dressed in white clothes and sandals. This was a cult, and I was fucked.
People murmured and looked at each other, but no one was going to help.
Mr. Gray frowned. “Who has more rope?”
A man two rows back pushed forward and handed Mr. Gray a coil of rope like those that had been attached to the fishing nets.
“Thank you.” He handed the rope to Cedar. “Bind the virgin to the stone.”
“Wait, I’m not really a—” My words were cut short by Mr. Gray tying a gag around my mouth. Fucker.
He turned back to the crowd and shouted over me. “Her pure blood shall satiate our lord!”
A cheer rose up from the crowd and I felt the ropes tighten over my chest.
“Horn bearer, summon the great dragon!”
A man at the front of the crowd who had a white carved horn hanging from his neck by a leather cord stepped forward.
“Are you sure? Didn’t he say to only use this for life or death emergencies?”
“What could be more of an emergency than stopping the blight with the chaste, virginal body of this human?” Mr. Gray challeng
ed.
I’m not a virgin. All I could produce with the gag in my mouth were muffled sounds.
“We shall sacrifice this human as a feast to the great dragon!” Mr. Gray raised his fist toward the sky. “Now blow the damn horn!”
Chapter 4
Celedon
From the desert I heard the bellow of my summoning horn. No matter the location of my warrior when he sounded the magic-imbued instrument, I would hear him. All of the island could hear him.
Massacre, carnage, destruction—no matter the type of devastation, it was my duty to support my people. It was only during the most difficult of circumstances that the wolf shifters of Lycaon village needed my assistance. Though I didn’t know most of them personally, I was moved by their plight.
I shifted and took to the sky, following the sound across the island. It didn’t take long to pinpoint the location of origin. Dragon Rock.
A group of villagers were gathered on the hill, gazing up at the sky. I circled upon descent, offering them warning that I would soon land. They scurried about, stopping together as a group, leaving space for me.
When my claws hit the soil, I shifted back to human form. Gasps and excited proclamations came from the crowd. The sound of all of their voices speaking at once was unpleasant. On the rare occasion I was forced to interact with others, it was most often one-on-one with my warrior.
In silence and solitude I found solace.
Two women wrapped a cloth around my hips to cover my nakedness, but I hardly noticed them. My attention was otherwise occupied, captured by the woman bound to the stone dais that had once been an altar to my father.
Her scent was of the sea, and something other. I approached slowly, watching the woman squirm against the ropes that bound her. Her clothing was unfamiliar, soaking wet and plastered to her body like a second skin. A cloth covered her mouth so she couldn’t speak.
And her eyes wide with terror.
A man with gray streaks in his hair stepped into my line of sight and dropped to his knees in front of me. “My lord, I can’t believe you came.”
Dragon Guardian of Land (Alphas & Alchemy: Elemental Shifters Book 1) Page 2