“But-”
“Do as I say child.”
Jenisia huffed, then stood. “I don’t know that I should leave her-”
Kaetlyn made a noise like a grunt and motioned for Jenisia to leave. With a final look down at the woman on the floor, Jenisia turned and exited Kaetlyn’s tiny house.
“So that was quite a story my Jenisia had to tell,” Kaetlyn said, still staring down at Skye. “Is it true?”
Skye shrugged a little. “Do you think anyone will believe it?”
“It doesn’t matter so much who believes it. The truth is always the truth.”
“She has such fear of the dragons. Do all of your people feel the same here?”
“Everyone fears the dragons, yes, but Jenisia has a special hatred for the winged beasts.”
“Why?”
“A long time ago, Jenisia’s mother, father and her young sister, my grandchildren and great granddaughter, were all killed by a dragon.”
“How did it happen?”
“They were asleep. The dragon found them in the night. It burned them all and ate the bodies.”
Skye nodded at this, looking down at the teacup in her hands. It was warm, and the liquid was a kindness to her body. She felt a little uncomfortable hearing of Jenisia and the old woman’s encounters with her race. It was strange, she never really thought of these humans as having families and feelings before. To her race they were just small creatures, a mutation in their own dragon genes that had happened a hundred thousand years ago, causing their weaker, more apelike brethren, to break off from the dragons’ stronger genetic line. She didn’t like the feeling, and she shifted uncomfortably on the ground.
“What will she do with me?” Skye asked.
“No doubt she will want to force you to help her find the creature that killed her family.”
Skye snorted. “That would be unwise. She is no match for any dragon. None of you are.”
“She brought you to the ground, did she not?”
Sky glared at the wrinkled old hag in the dark. She thought she could see the woman smiling at her and her expression softened. “It was only luck, truly. It will never happen again.”
“Luck for one is tragedy for another,” Kaetlyn said. “Would you like some more tea?”
“No, I - I am feeling very tired,” Skye said. In fact the dark room was getting fuzzy. Her blood loss must really be taking its toll on her, and Skye wondered if she fell asleep if she would ever wake up.
“I should think so, Dragon, I slipped a sleeping draught into your tea.”
Skye’s head snapped up and she tried to rise, but the room began to spin, and Kaetlyn rose and stood over her. With one spindly finger she reached down and pushed the side of Skye’s head. She could not control the fall at all, Skye simply collapsed onto her side in a little heap. Every time she tried to move she slipped deeper into the hole inside her, the one that was filled with swirling black winds. Soon it would swallow her completely. No, she could not let it, she had to fight this off, she could not sleep in the house of her enemy, it would be her ultimate undoing. A voice rang out, it sounded distant yet all around her in her swirling nightmare. It echoed in the walls of her mind like the voice of the gods themselves.
“We only have to get lucky once, monster. Sleep now, for tomorrow we will tear you apart, one piece at a time.”
Chapter Eight
Skye was in a thin tunic, threadbare and scratchy, having been dressed while she slept. Kaetlyn and Jenisia had sown the wound closed on the front and back of her arm, but did nothing for the broken bone. Her ulna bone was in many pieces, shattered by Jenisia’s arrow. They could have splinted the injury, but even then it would probably never heal, not here. And neither Kaetlyn nor Jenisia actually wanted the girl to heal.
When Skye woke she was strung up in the middle of the village. It was dim, but she supposed it was always dim here, without the sunlight. It smelled dank and tangy from many sweaty bodies being close together. Her head hurt, like she had drunk too many spirits the night before. Above her, through the woven ceiling, she saw bits of sunlight glittering overhead. It was daytime then, morning.
“She has awoken,” a cracked, old voice said. Skye willed her eyes to focus and slowly her surroundings became clear. She gasped and pulled hard, then shrieked in pain as the restraints held tight and her broken arm cried out in agony. She was trussed up, her arms and legs spread out in opposing Vs, and tied there with cloth rope. All around her, dim, scared, angry eyes bore into her. Her heart began to race immediately.
“What’s happening?” she breathed.
There were men and women all around her. They looked dirty, tired. Many carried bows on their backs, a few had knives in their belts. At their feet were children, all staring at her with the same terrified awe as the adults. From out of the throng of people, Jenisia emerged.
“I’m glad you’re awake. We have some questions for you.”
Even through her fear, Skye felt anger rising quickly to the surface.
“What right do you have to treat me like this?” she hissed.
Jenisia observed her quizzically for a moment. “We have lost many of our people to the winged serpents. They never apologize for the lives they have taken. They never explain themselves to us. All they do is kill without remorse, and we have to continue living in fear, with our hearts and our families broken by you beasts. Yet you ask what right we have?”
Skye looked around at the blank faces. She saw the fear and the curiosity there, yes, but she also saw more. She saw pain and loss, she saw years of suffering. She looked down to a young boy with dirty cheeks and rags tied around his hands. He was just a normal boy, small and thin, but his cheeks held none of the rich color that Skye and her people enjoyed, and she realized it was because he had probably never been out in the sun, never been in the open air. Her arm was throbbing, and the pain was becoming more intense as her body woke fully to her situation. Tears began to form in her eyes.
“What do you want from me?” she finally asked. “I can’t bring back your dead.”
“We want to stop being afraid,” a woman said from behind Jenisia.
“We want you to leave us alone,” someone else said.
“I didn’t come to you,” Skye said. “I was brought here by this woman.”
“Why do you attack us?” Jenisia asked.
“Why do you attack the animals? Why do you hunt or fish? To survive of course. We do not attack you as if you were one of us. You are no different than the animals of the forest to us.”
There was silence and Skye immediately regretted her words. They were true. She didn’t go hunting for humans, but they were prey, so if they happened across them, well…
“Where are the rest of your kind?” Kaetlyn asked, her voice as twisted and wrinkled as her skin.
“We are everywhere. We span the earth.”
“Nonsense,” Kaetlyn argued.
“I have no need to lie to you, old woman. We live in the warmer places because it is easier to fly and hunt and live. We do not like the cold any more than you do.”
“Yet you force us to live in the cold.”
“I have forced nothing!” Skye shouted, angry tears falling from her face. “You attacked me! I didn’t do anything!”
Skye could see Jenisia’s anger boiling over, could see the hate in the woman’s cold blue eyes.
“I didn’t do anything, my family didn’t do anything, yet I had to watch as they burned alive. I had to listen while the serpent devoured them.” She trembled as she spoke, and Skye watched nervously as the black-haired woman stepped closer, one hand on the hilt of her sword. “And just as they suffered, as I still suffer, you will suffer also.”
There were nods and sounds of assent from the crowd gathered around her. Skye had never felt so helpless before. If she could only change, she could escape this place forever and its filthy, bedraggled inhabitants. She searched within herself, but the fire that gave her body strength and will to
change was still quiet. Even though she was rested, she must be very weak. She hadn’t eaten or drank anything except the laced tea since yesterday morning. Couple that with her blood loss and stress, and Skye just did not have the will to change. Jenisia was very close to her now. Skye could smell her breath, it was tangy from some sort of tea.
“Do you know where the purple dragon lay?” Jenisia asked quietly, almost whispering.
Skye tried not to react but gave a little flinch when she heard ‘purple dragon.’ She knew immediately she’d given herself away. Jenisia leaned back with a smug smile on her face.
“So you do know.”
Skye shook her head, but in that instant a blade was at her throat. The people hushed as Jenisia leaned into the lunge. She let the pressure build against Skye’s neck on the fine tip of her blade until the only thing left between her life and death was the fractional surface tension of her skin. Skye breathed shallowly, trying to keep the blade from piercing her. Her knees weakened and then she felt a wet heat trickle down her thighs. Great, that was just fucking great. She was about to be skewered in this shithole of a place and now she would go out with the indignity of pissing herself as well.
She stared into Jenisia’s eyes, looking for something, anything, but there was naught but hatred there. Skye could almost see it, the memory of her family locked away in her head, she could almost feel the pain as that young girl watched her family die. And worst of all, Skye knew who had done it, and when. It had been her brother, on the day of his change. All dragons take their first flight on their eighteenth birthday, and on that day they are the most volatile and unpredictable. The onslaught of dragon power took over their senses and drove them to the sky, and then to do the next thing that was most natural to them, to hunt.
Most civilized dragons eat meals at a table while in their human form, dining on meats that were procured from livestock. But on that first night, nothing could stop the ancient reptilian instinct from taking over. Many deaths occur on that night of the change, and not only prey. Dragons were prone to fighting on a good day, and on that first night it was even worse. There had been a time several years ago when a set of twins changed atop the plateau, then met in the air and fought until one of them was killed. It had been a mournful day for all.
“Are you listening, dragon?”
Skye hadn’t been. In fact she felt only semi-conscious. All eyes were on her, and on the blade poised to skewer her through the throat.
“I said, you will tell me where to find the purple dragon.” Jenisia’s voice was, for a human at least, very frightening. It came out of her thin body more like a growl, and it provoked an involuntary shiver through Skye that almost ended her life with the blade pressed against her neck.
“What the fuck is going on here?” a loud male voice boomed through the crowd. Heads turned, but Jenisia just narrowed her eyes at Skye.
Mikhael appeared, walking through the crowd toward Jenisia. He stopped short ten paces away when he saw the woman hanging there. His eyebrows furrowed deeply.
“Jenisia, what are you doing?” he demanded.
Jenisia flinched a little. “Conducting an interrogation, Mikhael,” she sighed. “Why are you up so early?”
Mikhael continued toward them, brushing a length of brown hair away from his face. He was dressed in simple brown pants with an off-white shirt stretched over his massive chest. His cheeks and chin were covered with stubble this morning, he had no doubt just rolled out of bed. The crowd parted for him. Mikhael was the largest and the strongest among them, and arguable the best of their hunters, besides Jenisia. He was also a bit of a lone wolf, preferring his home on the dangerous edge of the forest to the safety of civilized life in the village.
He stopped in front of Skye. He was a handsome man, very handsome, and large for a human. His eyes were rich and brown, and full of fierce light, but also kindness.
“Who is this woman?” he hissed at Jenisia.
“She is a dragon, Mikhael,” Jenisia replied simply.
Mikhael stared at Jenisia as if she were mad, and then looked back to Skye, examining her very carefully.
“This is a woman, Jenisia, have you lost your mind?”
“I shot her out of the sky, Mikhael. She is a dragon, when she fell she took on this human guise.”
Mikhael looked like he didn’t believe her, but he wasn’t just dumb and cute. Skye saw real intelligence behind those eyes.
“You shot her…”
“Yes, through the arm, there,” Jenisia said, motioning with her chin. “She came down from the sky and when I found her, she had an arrow wound through her arm.”
“You’re sure it was from your arrow?”
“Absolutely, there is no other shaped like it.”
Mikhael nodded. “Is this true, woman? Are you a dragon? A shapeshifter?”
Skye stared at him without answering, but tears continued to well up in her eyes and fall over her face. There was so much going on behind the man’s eyes, but she didn’t feel like she could open up to him, even though he seemed much kinder than anyone else here.
“Cut her down,” Mikhael said.
“No!” Jenisia protested.
“Cut her down now, Jen, this is not the way to do this.”
“This may be my only chance to find my family’s killer-”
“Was it her?” he asked Jenisia sharply. Then he turned to Skye. “Was it you that killed her family?”
Skye shook her head carefully, mindful of the blade still at her throat. More tears slid down her face.
“Then cut her down now. We will find out what we can from her, but not like this.” He gave Jenisia a cold stare that would have frightened most men. “And not by you.”
Jenisia gritted her teeth then backed up and took one swing with her sword. It whipped through the air just above Skye, cutting her bindings. Skye immediately fell to the ground before Mikhael caught her and helped her to her feet. Skye crumpled against him and started sobbing into his chest. He put an arm around her shoulder.
Jenisia stepped up to him. “You better not fuck this up, Mikhael,” she hissed. “And you,” she said to Skye, “I am far from finished with you.”
“I’ll bring her to my house. We’ll talk, and I’ll get whatever information I can. Where did you find her?”
Jenisia faltered a little. “The Valley of the Lost-”
“The what?! Are you kidding me right now?”
“She was flying this way!”
“You dragged this woman through the valley?”
Jenisia shrugged.
“And you brought her here! Were you followed?”
“No, of course not,” Jenisia snapped back.
“Look at her hands, Jen!” Mikhael said, and held up one of Skye’s hands. Skye was confused for a moment. “Look how tiny they are. Look at her nails, how perfectly they are manicured. This is someone important, whatever she is, and you brought her all the way through the valley!”
“So?”
“So someone is obviously going to come looking for her!”
Jenisia froze.
“So she’s shot, probably bleeding like crazy, and you bring her here. Did you even try to cover your tracks? Did you do anything to disguise your path?”
Mikhael’s words were sharp and angry and Jenisia’s face grew very red. She didn’t answer, she couldn’t. There were murmurings behind her as the rest of the villagers worried over the new information.
“This is why we don’t go into the valley, Jen, because someone could follow us back. What in the hell are we going to do when they come for her?”
Chapter Nine
Darion flew fast and low out to the ridge. Cold air was coming east up the mountains, making it difficult to fly. These conditions would only continue to worsen, he knew. Earlier that day the air was more temperate, and that’s when Skye supposedly left. Her flight east would have been cold but manageable.
As it was, when Darion rose over the snowy mountain peaks, he had
to blow little jets of flame forward to warm the air on his wings. What a shit situation this was. Darion soared over the black ridge; it was topped with snow, and even more was in the air, but as he flew beyond, dipping down into the lower elevation of the valley, the snow stopped and he saw the wide forest canopy. It was still green, but there was a crispness to the air. Soon the snow would be falling here as well. He wanted to be well on his way before that happened.
Their dragon physiology was an interesting one. While in human form, they were just as warm blooded as any mammal, but because the dragon form stretched their bodies far beyond their physical limits, they sacrificed their warmth for a cold-blooded, reptilian body. Their chests were filled with the heat of their fire, but other appendages, such as the tail and wings, even his head, were defenseless against the cold. Typically this wasn’t a problem, as his kind stayed in the temperate west where the air was warm and humid all year.
Fucking Skye, he thought, spoiled little girl. He remembered playing with Skye as a child. She was three years younger than him, and as a kid she was an annoying little twit, following him around everywhere he went. He got used to her though, and soon his annoyance with her became just for show. They would have little adventures together, staying out long and late, playing in the warm California sun. Before the change when they turned eighteen, Darion and Skye were more human than dragon, and they ran and climbed and swam anywhere possible, just like a human child would. He remembered one day they swam out into the ocean as far as they could, determined to make it to the faraway lands past the great sea. They only made it a hundred yards or so before running out of steam and getting stranded on a sand bar. Too weak to swim back, they had stood out in the water, Darion screaming for help and Skye bawling her eyes out until their father finally came and retrieved them. They had both been given a whipping that night.
Darion shook his long head, scanning the trees as he did. There is was. The crash site was as obvious to him as the clouds were in the sky. He swooped down, extending his wings as his legs reached for the ground. He landed softly, for him, which still made the trees shake around him. He inhaled deeply. It smelled of pine forest, rotting vegetation, and blood. He sniffed the ground, and immediately located the spot where she had fallen. There was a lot of blood lost here.
A Plague of Dragons (A Dragon Anthology) Page 35