Yet, something always held her back from changing their relationship beyond friends. She didn’t love him romantically. Maybe she had instinctively known to give herself to Justin would have been very wrong. Just as her family had been wrong to trust him.
A thought flashed through her mind. She suspected her mother’s accident might not have been an accident. She shied away from thinking about her grandmother who had never liked Justin and had always let Justin know of her disapproval of him. More than once, Nana told him to his face he sounded phony half the time. Maya had to come to terms with the fact Justin planned this for a long, long time.
Well, she would not sit around and wait for him to come for her. She needed to get out of here, wherever here was. But how?
Ah, Maya, I see you are awake.
The voice in her head sounded near. Funny the way she recognized it now. Maya looked over her shoulder in time to see him stepping through a tear forming in the clouds behind her. A black line stood out starkly against the white mist, about six feet tall then expanded until it widened enough for his entire body to get through. It hadn’t been there before, and it closed once he completely crossed over the threshold. Before it did, Maya caught a glimpse of rocky walls. Maybe the way out?
Quickly, she turned her body so she stood in front of him. She wouldn’t have her back to this creature. He could not be trusted.
“You bastard! Where am I?” She refused to speak to him mind-to-mind. It smacked of intimacy he had no right to. She would not voluntarily open herself any more to him than she already had. The more mind touch exchanged the more likely a link could form between them. She refused to allow him to establish any manner of link with her. The less mental contact they had the better. In fact, the less contact they had period the better.
Where you are is not really important, but I’ll tell you anyway. This is a between place. This is where I come to heal, rest, rejuvenate. Let time pass by, if you will. I discovered it quite by accident when I was injured once, but that was long before your time.
Maya took a wild guess. “Like when Draakar’s mother tried to kill your sorry ass? It’s a shame she didn’t succeed, but don’t worry, I’m sure her son will finish the job.”
When his eyes fumed with silver fire, Maya knew she’d guessed correctly and hit a sore spot. Draakar’s mother had hurt him. If he could be hurt he could be killed. She never thought she’d ever plot to kill anyone or anything in her life, but if she could, she would kill this thing.
The glow from his eyes grew brighter. For the first time, Maya saw the true color of them, silver, just as she also saw him as his true self. Power fueled by envy, hatred and fear emanated from him, drowning her psyche. How could they have missed the fact he was dragon brethren? It seemed so obvious to her now.
You have no idea what you’re talking about. I am stronger than Draakar and I will destroy him, just as I destroyed all the others. But let’s not argue, you and I. I’ve wanted so long for you to be able to see me as I really am. To show you my power. No more pretending.
Maya turned her gaze away slightly and squinted at him. His eyes were so bright they blinded her against the white world. She grew tired of his rantings. “What do you want, Justin?”
“My true name is Anwar.”
“Your true name is betrayer. Why am I here?”
You know why, Maya.
“Why don’t you tell me anyway?” She’d be damned if she gave him any leeway. He would have to spell it out.
Very well, I’ll indulge you. I always have. You are mine. You always have been meant for me. You are my truemate.
Maya laughed; she couldn’t help herself. The man, creature, clearly harbored delusions. Abruptly, Maya stopped laughing, and got angry instead. “You!” she scoffed, placing her fisted hands on her hips. “I don’t think so! I have never wanted you and I let you know. Anything other than friendship between us was a figment of your overactive imagination, and frankly, so was the friendship part. You were never a friend to me. I turned down your marriage offer but you don’t seem to want to remember that. Well, get this through your fat head.” She pointed a finger at her chest. “I am not yours. I have never been yours. I will never be.”
Maya lowered her hand. She didn’t shout her reply. She stated it in a low growl, making her denial carry the force of absolute truth along with her repugnance for him.
Justin threw his head back, raised his arms away from his sides, and roared. Blue flame erupted from his opened mouth, cutting a path about twenty feet high through the seemingly endless vapor.
The surge from his use of power crawled like an eight-legged bug down her arms. She shivered from revulsion. Maya scrambled back and tried to create her shield, but nothing happened. Mother Earth didn’t respond to her request. No energy drifted up from the ground to empower her. She couldn’t even feel her own internal energy of power. Something blocked her from connecting to her magicks as it blocked her access to Mother Earth.
Justin dropped his hands and stopped his display of temper. Only his eyes continued to glow. He laughed with glee at the shocked expression on Maya’s face. Maya read his surface thoughts like a horror novel. The ripple along his skin told him she’d tried to use her powers and nothing happened. What he had done worked. Her powers were null; blanked in this realm, while his were as strong as ever and would get stronger still. All this she read.
Your powers don’t work here, sweetheart. He chuckled. You’re not on Earth anymore, nor are you on Akgon.
Stunned, Maya tried to hide her growing fear. If none of her powers worked here, did that mean Draakar’s wouldn’t either? She quickly shifted through her ancestral memories but could find no explanation. “Why…why do yours then?” She frowned. “You’re brethren of Earth and Akgon, so why do yours work?”
Wouldn’t you like to know? Justin laughed again. It worked; it worked. He wanted to dance and shout. The power source he had discovered here worked, but only for him. Only because he had the luxury of time to eventually figure it out. It merely took a couple hundred years of sporadic experiments. He had been trapped here after his battle with Draakar’s mother.
Mortally wounded, he had stumbled into a cave. Drawn to a section of the cave wall pulsing with power, there he found a tear in the wall. A gateway leading to another realm, this one. His only thought survival, he had used the last of his strength to crawl through the portal and had fallen into a deep sleep. When he had awakened, his wounds were healed but he couldn’t access any magicks. At first he panicked. He had no idea how long he had been there but after trying to repeatedly access his magicks and failing time after time, he finally figured out the secret to this realm.
While he had healed, his body had been placed in a semi-hibernation state by the realm itself so he wouldn’t starve. This state enabled him to maintain some level of consciousness and communicate on a basic level with the elemental existing in the realm. Eventually he made his desires known. This realm held great power, not Earth bound magicks, but magicks nonetheless. Magicks he now had easy access to since he no longer had full use of Earth magicks, Mother Earth and the Stones hampered him. But his access and use of the magicks from the mist made him very powerful.
Let’s just say I had lots of time on my hands. He knew Maya would eventually, given enough time, figure out the puzzle of the realm. He had no intention of allowing her time.
He stopped laughing. Between one breath and the next, he stood close enough to grab her arms and tug her toward him. When she tried to push him away from her, he used his greater strength to pull her against his chest. Holding her so tightly to him, he could feel the beat of his heart vibrate against her chest. Arwan bent his head to kiss her, but she violently jerked her head away from him and brought her leg up hard, kneeing him in the balls. The blow came unexpected. He had been aroused and the immediate and intense pain caused him to bend forward, automatically releasing her. She took several steps away from him as he straightened. Furious.
�
��Do not touch me!” she hissed.
He took a deep breath, and then visibly shook the pain off. You took me by surprise, sweetheart. I promise you that will not happen again, but you need to understand something. I will touch you, whenever I want to, wherever I want to. You are mine.
“What? Are you deaf, too? Never! I will never be yours!”
Never is not a long time by dragon standards. Don’t worry. I will be patient a little while longer, but mine you are, so get used to it. As soon as I kill Draakar there will be nothing standing between us, and you will come to me of your own free will.
“Ha! Lie to yourself all you want, it’s not happening. Draakar will come for me, and he will kill you and if he doesn’t, I will.” Maya knew she could and would kill this man, not only because if what she suspected he did to both her mother and grandmother were true, but also for all he had done in the past and what he would do in the future. He had to be stopped.
His smile showed only teeth and a coldness lit his eyes. Oh, I want him to come after me. I’ve been waiting a long time to finish what I started. As far as who will kill whom, well, we shall see. No one will stand in my way. I will kill him as I have killed others.
Maya couldn’t help herself. She had to know. “Did you…did you have anything to do with my grandmother’s accident? With my mother?”
The man she knew as Justin merely stared at her with those eerily silver eyes. No, not Justin, he never existed. It had always been the silver dragon. At first Maya thought he wasn’t going to answer her question, then she heard him in her mind and wished to God she hadn’t.
I wasn’t going to let anyone stand in my way. Your grandmother was cleverer than I thought. She never trusted me. Most people do you know. A year ago she came across some information, how I’m still not sure. Anyway, she began to ask questions about my background. She asked those questions of my business associates and I believe she hired a private detective. He passed some of the things he learned on to your grandmother. Things that would have seemed innocent by themselves, but put together by the wrong person had the potential of causing problems for me. Under such close scrutiny combined with her intuitiveness, it wouldn’t have taken long for your nana to figure out my identity didn’t hold up, and some of my associates were not part of the law-abiding community. For some reason my mind control could not work on her. She was able to see the truth and not what I wanted her to see.
“You mean she recognized you for the evil you really are.”
His hands clenched at his sides and his chest rose and fell faster. She recognized my power and feared it. So you see, I had no choice really. She had the ability to turn you against me because like her, I couldn’t control you either. Somehow, she knew where to look, how to look to reveal some of my shadier dealings, and she would have revealed these things to you. So as I said, I had no choice. I couldn’t fool her; she was a threat and had to be removed. Conveniently, by accident, so there would be no suspicion of anything else.
Maya took deep gulps of air before she could bring herself to say anything. “You…you killed my grandmother!” She suspected it but to hear him so callously rationalize his thinking numbed her mind.
He held up his hands palms forward. It wasn’t my hand that killed her. I would spare you that.
“Bastard!” she screamed, balling her hands into fists. “Your hands carry her blood. It’s because you wanted her dead she is. Then you turned around and tried to kill my mother, too.”
Actually, no. If I wanted your mother dead she would be. I just wanted to make sure she was close enough to death you would return home. My plan was to restore her for you and earn your gratitude. His features scrunched up into a sneer. Ah, but Draakar showed up with you. No matter. This just makes it easier to kill him. Away from the Stones, his powers will not be as strong.
Done being numb by his revelations, blood rushed through Maya’s body, giving her additional strength. She dug deep within herself, letting the anger guide her. She could feel her magick lying within but couldn’t reach it no matter how hard she tried. She sent a mental call again to Draakar and met silence. “Some way, some how, I will kill you,” she promised.
The beast merely smiled as though she told him something amusing. This just made her angrier. Her eyes blazed with heat, but no fire erupted from their depths to incinerate him where he stood. She took a step forward and raised her fist to punch the smirk off his face. Immediately, he raised his shield and shook his finger at her as if she were a wayward child.
Maya slowly lowered her hand, but made it clear by the tenseness of her body and her facial express if she could hurt him, better yet kill him, she would not hesitate. None of which seemed to faze him one bit.
I have to leave you for a while, sweetheart. I have to lay the trail for Draakar to find you. Meanwhile, I’ve left you a little something to eat. Time runs a little differently in most of the realms, and you may be here for a while. As you will soon discover, there is neither food nor water in this place. You can’t access your powers here so you can neither summon food to you nor create it from matter. I don’t want you to starve and have to go into a hibernation state. I need you awake and alert for when I return.
The betrayer raised his hand as if he wanted to touch her, but when she glared at him he lowered his outstretched hand before he reached her. I will always take good care of you, Maya, and attend to all of your needs.
Obviously Justin’s power trip fried his brain. Before Maya could form a scathing reply, he took one step backward and the tear reopened in the mist behind him. She again caught a glimpse of rocks and this time a dirt floor. Once his entire body appeared on the other side, the tear closed immediately.
It took a moment for Maya to move; when she did she shook with anger and frustration. Walking over to the spot where the tear had appeared, she found nothing there but vapor filled space. She easily walked back and forth across the area, yet remained in the mist-covered realm. As she turned around, her foot struck something solid and she looked down. Exactly where she had seen the bottom of the tear appear sat a wicker picnic basket that hadn’t been there before.
She kneeled down in front of it and opened the lid and found it stocked with enough food for a picnic for one. It included a bottle of water, a bottle of her favorite red wine, a baguette and lamb marsala—still hot. This was no picnic though, far from it. She took out the bottle of water and closed the basket lid. Hungry or not she couldn’t bring herself to eat any of the food. She didn’t trust Justin not to drug it, and she’d stay away from the wine. She would need her wits about her. Opening the bottle of water, she took a sniff. It appeared to be just water. She tested it by just wetting her tongue. Cold, nothing strange, so she took a sip and enjoyed the sensation of the cool fresh taste gliding over her tongue and down her throat. Still thirsty, she only took one more small sip; no telling how long she had to make the water last.
With the bottle in hand, Maya stood and walked away from the basket. She wanted to explore her surroundings, maybe try to get beyond the mist. Anything to evade Justin, or rather, the betrayer. She’d be damned if she referred to him any other way.
She’d been walking around long enough for the ice-cold bottle to turn warm from the heat of her grasp, but it didn’t seem to matter which direction she went; it all looked the same. At first she tried walking in a straight line, as straight as she could without visual markers, and counted her steps as she walked. When she reached one thousand and nothing whatsoever had changed in the view, she stopped. She had once read somewhere the secret to most mazes was to always take left turns. This didn’t appear to be a maze but she didn’t have any other ideas, so she turned left and continued walking.
She stopped counting after two hundred steps because she saw something up ahead. As she got closer to the object, Maya couldn’t believe her eyes. She ran toward it, coming to a stop right in front of it. Dropping to her knees she opened the lid of the basket, already knowing what she’d find. The picnic baske
t, just as she’d left it, minus the water bottle. How could that be?
She placed her head in her hands and groaned. “Well, shit!”
Chapter Twenty-Four
The black Hummer pulled up in front of the Center For Performing Arts at George Mason University in Fairfax. It stopped beside a tall young man with ridiculously long blond hair, standing on the sidewalk, obviously waiting for this ride. When the door opened beside him, he slung his backpack off his shoulder before climbing into the car. He hesitated briefly as his eyes met those of the man who sat in the back seat. The young man couldn’t maintain eye contact and lowered his head. Slowly, he eased onto the plush leather seat and shut the door, placing his backpack on the floor between them.
Draakar shifted his head slightly. Talon watched as the emerald glow emanating from his father’s eyes grew brighter, revealing a face very similarly featured to his own—minus the overt expression of anger—but his father had a right to be angry.
I’m sorry, Father, but you know why I had to do it.
I understand, that still doesn’t mean I’m not angry with you. You placed yourself in danger by cutting yourself off from me. There is a silver dragon loose in this world. He has already attacked our brethren, killed an innocent, and now he has taken Maya. He could just as easily have come after you.
I’m sorry, Father. I don’t know what else to say. I did not know. I sensed something familiar yet foreign when I first arrived, but it didn’t make any sense. How could there be a silver dragon aware on earth?
A good question and the Stones have been abysmally silent on an answer. But he is here and has been all this time. It’s the betrayer.
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