He snorted and ran his fingers through my dark, shoulder-length curls. “Come on, Mittens. Help me unpack these groceries. You won’t die if you don’t get into trouble today.”
I hid a smile at the nickname. To this day, I never knew why he called me Mittens, but I liked it. “You don’t get it. I can live without movies or arcades. But there’s no people. A kid like me needs human interaction. Or at least the internet.”
Dad stopped in the middle of unpacking a grocery bag and dropped to one knee. He sighed and turned me to face him.
His scent enveloped me, warm and spicy, with a hint of peppermint from his gum and tobacco from the pipe he smoked every night. I inhaled, loving the scents that would forever remind me of my father, the only home I’d ever known.
“You know we talked about this. What did I tell you?”
I blew out an irritated breath. “We live where it’s safe, we do what is safe.”
“That’s right. The fewer people around us, the fewer people who’ll ask questions we can’t answer. We don’t have internet because paying for it means information on file. I know it’s lonely—”
“And boring.”
“And boring. I’d give anything for you to have kids to play with, a school to go to. But it’s too dangerous.”
I rolled my eyes toward the wood rafters, hating that they stung, remembering watching a group of kids playing together outside that store where we’d bought groceries. “I get it.”
“Tell you what.” He pushed my curls back. “Finish the homework I assigned to you, even the math, and I’ll take you into to the city this afternoon for a few hours. I’ll hack into someone’s unlocked wi-fi for you to use.”
I beamed. Hacking. He sounded so…criminal. “You’re almost cool, you know.”
He chuckled. “Almost? How do I upgrade to cool?”
“You can’t.”
“Why?”
“‘Cuz you’re my father, silly.”
“What, so dads don’t get to be cool?”
“Nope.”
“I kill monsters. Does that count?” His eyes sparkled.
“No.” It did, though. Carrying a set of blades inside the sleeves of his trench coat, and a sword hidden in his truck, earned him the motherlode of coolness points, but no way would I tell him that. “Besides, like you said, you aren’t a monster hunter anymore.”
“That’s right.” He pulled me into an embrace. “No more monsters for us. From here on out, it’s just cattle and grain and chickens and lots of hanging out with Dad.”
I threw my arms around my daddy and squeezed him tight. Right then, life on this farm didn’t seem so bad. My throat constricted with love for him.
He pulled back and took my hands. “If anyone asks, what’s your name?”
“Anne Cooper.”
“What’s mine?”
“Jack Cooper.”
“How old are you?”
“Twelve.”
“Where are you from?”
“America.”
He gave me a shrewd look. “What if they ask you where in America?”
I put on my best cute smile. “We’ve moved a lot. I only remember Idaho and Atlanta.”
“Good girl. Get working on those math questions. Have them done in an hour.”
Aaaannd, he just lost his points.
An hour later, I’d worked my way through half the math questions my father had assigned when movement outside the living room window made me lift my head. My jaw dropped.
The biggest dog I’d ever seen stood some fifty feet from the window. Somehow, I could tell it was watching me. I rose slowly from my seat at the table as the dog cocked its head this way and that. Gooseflesh rose on my arms and neck. In the sun’s glare, its long thick fur looked as dark as midnight. It must have stood almost as tall as my dad.
I tried to call for Dad, but nothing came out. “Wow,” I whispered when I finally found my voice. “Dad! Come look at this!”
He didn’t answer. I turned and looked around the house, but didn’t hear or see him. Back in the yard, the dog was still there. Dad was probably out in the barn. I wished he’d told me. Or maybe he had, and I hadn’t been paying attention.
I peered closer at the dog’s face. My mouth fell open again. Two of the reddest, glowiest eyes stared at me from that black fur.
I raced out the back door of the house to the barn, shouting. “Dad! Check this out. Sirius Black is in our yard.”
At the doors to the barn, I turned to look back at the dog. I blinked. He was…gone.
“Dad!” I screamed. “Ohh, Daaaad!” I raced into the barn.
Dad was up in the hay loft. He had a pair of ear buds in his ears attached to the IPod on his hip and he hummed to himself as he raked up the hay. So that’s why he hadn’t heard me. I cupped my hands around my mouth. “Hey, Dad!”
He pulled out an ear bud and turned to me. “Shit, Mittens, what—” He leaned over the railing toward me. The old rotting wood gave way with a loud crack. He tumbled toward the hard, concrete floor of the barn with a curse.
I reacted without thinking.
Hands flung out, eyes squeezed shut, I willed his body to stop falling. When I didn’t hear a crash, I opened one eye.
My father hovered three feet above the ground as though he lay on an invisible cushion of air.
“Oh, shit.” I lowered my hands. He dropped to the ground on his belly. I hurried over to him.
“Mittens.” He scrambled to his feet. “Did you…did you do that?”
My heart thudded in my throat. “I’m sorry, Daddy. I had to. You were falling. I know I’m not supposed to use magic, but—”
He pulled me close. “It’s all right, sweetie. I’m not mad.”
But I could feel his worry. He was too tense and, this close, his heart hammered like a drum in my ears.
“It’ll be fine, honey. Let’s get inside. I’ll make you some lemonade.”
Was his voice shaking?
He hurried us to the house and inside. I didn’t miss the way he jerked the lock on the door, then went to the window and yanked the curtains closed. “Go on, finish your math questions.”
I turned to walk back to the dinning room table, having forgotten all about the dog. Dad went into the kitchen.
A vehicle pulled into the drive outside, making me turn. I went back to the window and pulled the curtains aside.
A large black SUV had pulled up, and two blocky men, walls of muscle in dark suits, climbed out. Even before they got close, before I could see more than their shapes and their crisp strong male features, I knew something was wrong.
“Dad,” I croaked.
“Mittens, you aren’t working.”
“We have company.”
I watched the men draw closer, my heart speeding up with every step they took toward our door. Why?
Then it hit me. Something about the way they moved didn’t look right. It looked…animal. Too fluid. They made their way up the steps, and then I felt it. Throbbing on the inside of my brain, buzzing along my own inner powers like an electrical current. I almost smelled it, old and predatory.
Crap…
My father came to the window, looking out. “Shit.”
He dashed for one of the walls and took down a painting there, revealing a bare stretch of wall and a small keypad. When he tapped in the pass code, I knew a long panel in the wall would move aside, revealing half the weapons that, until then, he’d kept in the back of our Blazer in a similarly hidden compartment. Dad started to type in the code, but didn’t get the chance to finish.
There was a loud splintering sound and the door flew open, banging against the wall. The two men swept into the house.
My dad pulled me behind him and backed us both away from the hidden weapons cache.
One of the men, with a bald head, flung a hand out toward my dad. My father flew across the room and slammed into the wall between the living room and the kitchen. He struck the wall so hard drywall cracked.
“Found you.” Baldy’s lips peeled back in a snarl, showing big white teeth. He looked human, but he sounded like something else, something demonic. I noticed an odd look to him, too; an ageless look that made it hard to tell how old he was. He could have been twenty-five or fifty-five.
I wanted to help my father, knew I needed to use my powers again, but I couldn’t. I’d just used them, and now these men were here. They were hurting him, and it was my fault. I stood frozen in fear, watching this man magic my father against the wall and strangle him.
“You come here, witch.” The second man, with a gold tooth, lunged for me. I screamed and threw myself under the table, sliding on my belly across the floor out of his reach.
Dad made a strangled wheeze. Well, these men already knew what I was. Could I do whatever the hell I’d done in the barn again? Concentrating, I thrust my hand out at the bald one.
Baldy stumbled, hit by a wall of air, but didn’t fall. My dad slid down the wall and dropped to his knees, wheezing, hand on his throat.
The other man whirled around to me and growled in rage. He sprang up onto the table with an ease that reminded me of the wolf or bear shifters my dad had come up against, but neither he nor Baldy were like any shifters I had ever seen. They seemed meaner and more unnatural.
“Come here, kid,” he snarled, his gold tooth gleaming.
“Mittens, run!” Dad shouted hoarsely.
A hundred times we’d gone over this. When he told me to run, I would obey, leave him to save myself. But now, faced with abandoning him to death at the hands of these men, instinct overcame obedience and fear. I wasn’t going anywhere.
I screamed, throwing my hands out. The table slid out from under Gold Tooth’s feet, sending him to the floor on his back.
In one motion, he threw himself to his feet and vaulted over the table for me. I hurtled myself at the smashed-in front door. Something burning hot wrapped around my ankle, and I fell to floor. I twisted and kicked to free my foot, but Gold Tooth pulled me back toward him with something that looked like a rope made of pure flame.
“Daddy!” I screamed. The rope wrapped my ankle in searing agony.
While dragging me across the floor, the man changed. His form and clothes rippled with energy and light. His suit was replaced with a dark tunic and leggings that looked medieval. A long cape flowed out of thin air and down his back, pinned to the shoulder clasps of a steely breastplate. Emblazed across the breastplate, a red coat of arms gleamed, shaped like a phoenix.
“You shouldn’t have used those powers, little witch.” He took a pair of reddish colored shackles off his hip and squatted over me, slapping the cuffs onto my wrists. The rope still burning my ankle vanished. I kicked and bit at him. He drew back one huge gauntlet-covered fist and hammered it into my jaw. Steel struck with abominable force, driven with strength that was probably far beyond a human fist. Pain became my world.
A few feet across the room, my dad hollered. “Leave her alone, you fucking dragon scum!” He was on the floor on his stomach, pinned there under Baldy’s boot. Ropes of white light shimmered around his wrists, binding them behind his back.
But Gold Tooth didn’t release me, instead locking his cuffs around my wrists.
The awareness of my magic cut off. One moment I could sense it, pulsing against his, and then it was gone. I reached inside myself for it, like trying to pick up a blade, but there was nothing to grab, only an empty void.
He grinned down at me. “Lose something, witch?”
I didn’t remember what color his eyes were before, but when I looked at them now, they were red. Blood red. A crimson dragon appeared on his cheek, glowing with an unnatural light, like his eyes. It looked almost like a tattoo, but more real somehow, like it was alive. The dragon had a pincer-tipped tail and wings curled around its body.
“What did you do to her?” my dad demanded.
“It’s the cuffs, Jack.” Baldy. “Or should I call you Adam?”
“How did they find us so fast? Where did they come from, Dad?”
“Trade secret, girl.” Baldy winked playfully. He gestured with his hand. Dad flipped over onto his back, hands still tied. Baldy’s sky-blue eyes suddenly turned to golden orbs, glowing. He wasn’t wearing gauntlets like his cohort; on the back of his fist, another dragon appeared, but this one was golden, wings spread and raised up as though in flight. I choked and kicked and flailed as Gold Tooth pinned me to the floor.
“Fight me, little girl. I like when humans fight.” His hand was around my throat, squeezing.
“Let her go!” My dad again.
“Cron, deal with her later,” Baldy ordered.
“She’s run from us long enough. She needs to pay.”
“She belongs to him. She’s his to deal with.”
His to deal with? His who?
Baldy bent and punched my father in the gut. My dad doubled over, coughing. “You, on the other hand, are fair game. Cron, tie her up and stop fucking around.”
“Yes, Hael Falkor,” Gold Tooth—Cron—grumbled, but released me. I tried to sit up, but my head throbbed, skull feeling like it would split in two. My jaw felt like someone had set it on fire where he’d hit me.
The bald man, Falkor, drew back and then kicked my father so hard in the ribs that I heard them break. Without being able to fend off his attacker, Dad coughed and curled in on himself, in a vain attempt to protect his chest.
“Daddy!” I screamed.
“Cron’s right, it’s better when they fight.” Baldy waved his hand. The ropes around my dad’s wrists vanished, because he pulled his arms out from under him. Somehow, he managed to get a blade from inside his boot and fling it at Falkor’s head. Falkor batted the knife aside. It skidded across the floor.
“Fuck.” For some reason my dad laughed, but it sounded painful.
One of us needed to get to my dad’s weapons stash. Needed to open that wall panel.
Falkor flung out a palm, the blade flew to his hand, and he squatted over my father, the knife in his fist.
“Twelve years, and now you’ll pay for your mistake while your daughter watches. No human insults a Suvia Kyan as you have and lives to tell about it.”
He slashed the blade down across my father’s face. The cut sliced through his eye, down through his cheek to his jaw. Blood ran everywhere.
My father howled, whole body bucking in pain.
“Daaaaaadddeeeeeee!” I wailed, tears filling my eyes. I thrashed.
Cron just pinned me to the floor with a hand around my throat and laughed.
Laughed.
I could have lived a hundred years, and I’d never have forgotten that laugh. It was dark and demonic and evil. A dragon’s laugh.
Falkor stood up, releasing my father long enough to grab a chair, probably to tie him into it. My father grabbed the table leg behind him and yanked it off. It came loose with a crack of old wood. Before Falkor could react, Dad vaulted to his feet and drove the foot end of the table leg into his eye like a spike.
Cron leaped up to help his superior, releasing me.
I scrambled to the wall and punched in the code. The panel in the wall slid aside. My father jump-kicked a flailing, angry Falkor, sending him crashing to the wall behind him. Dad skidded to the open wall panel, grabbing one of the swords mounted there.
Why Falkor didn’t just use his magic to kill him, I didn’t know, but my father whipped around, and as Falkor ran at him, Dad swung the sword across his neck.
His head rolled, and his body crashed to the floor. Blood pooled fast on the hardwood. My stomach somersaulted violently.
“Oh, I will have fun with you, human.” Cron stalked for him. “Killing one of us gets humans drawn and quartered, but I’ll settle for flaying you alive while your daughter watches. When you’re dead, she will make a good weapon for the Dragonwatch.”
Anger twisted my father’s face for an instant before Cron charged at him. Rage must have made Cron stupid, why else would he have charged my father instead
of using magic? My father dropped onto his back, then stabbed the blade hard up into Cron’s neck, above that silvery armor plating that protected his chest.
Cron’s body gave a spasm. He gurgled, blood spilled everywhere, and he went still. Dad swung the body off him and lumbered to his feet. With one eye destroyed and half his face painted in blood, he tried to pick me up, but groaned and clutched his ribs.
“We gotta get out of here, Mittens.”
I did my best to help him to the door, letting him lean on my small frame.
“You’re hurt, Daddy.” Panic welled up, threatening split me in two.
“I’ll be fine.” But he dropped to his knees and collapsed against the doorframe. “Shit.”
I tried to pull him to a sitting position but he gently pushed me off.
“I’m fine. It’s just a scratch.”
Was he kidding? Blood ran down his face, covering the front of his pale blue shirt. When he talked, the edges of the wound separated, allowing me to see a flash of bone and cartilage.
“I just need a minute, and then we’ll get out of here. Come here, Mittens.” He moved to pull me into him, but I shook my head.
“This is my fault. I used my magic again.”
“No. You did it to save me.” He smiled weakly. “The Dragonlords did this. They’re the monsters. You understand?”
I shook my head, pulling out the burner phone he’d given me. “You need the hospital. I’m calling 911.”
“No!” He took the phone from me, and when I widened my eyes, he added more gently, “What are the rules?”
“No doctors, I know. But you need one.” Cold fear made a home in my chest. “You need help.”
“I’ll be fine. I’ve had worse. Helena, I want you to get me a needle and thread. Clean cloths. A pail of hot water. Brandy from the cabinet, and the aspirin from the cupboard. Can you remember all that?”
I nodded, eyes stinging. His speech sounded weird. Like he was drunk. I did as he said though, and a few minutes later, returned to him with everything he listed. As soon as I saw him, I dropped the pail, and the hot water splashed to the floor.
My father lay against the doorframe, head fallen to the side. He didn’t move. I raced to him.
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