Fire Reborn

by D. S. O'Neill

  “Marclan’s right. We should get out of here.”

  Quickly snatching the .45’s up off the ground, Katra shook her head vehemently. “Wait, wait, wait. Hold up. I’m not just going to run off with you lot. You were the original group to come after me, remember? Who, by the way, also want to take me to some weird person that is falsely accusing me of stealing some mysterious object that…what? What does it even do? What does it even look like? Do you people even know?”

  “We’re not paid to ask questions.” Kaster’s dark gaze never wavered, though Marclan and Finley were looking considerably uncomfortable.

  “Oh, yes, because that is the most comforting thing you could say right now. No. I’m not going anywhere with you lot. I don’t know who you’re working for—”

  “Alekter.”

  The interruption threw her off. “Pardon?”

  “The man who hired us, who says you stole something important? His name is Alekter. Does that sound familiar?”

  Katra stared at him blankly. “Does it look like that sounds familiar?”

  “I knew this didn’t feel right…” Marclan’s soft mutter off to Katra’s right momentarily drew her attention, and her gaze shifted to him as her stared at her with that same apprehensive expression he’d had when she first laid eyes on him. She was beginning to think that, of the three, this guy was the one who thought things through the most, who considered all the variables in any situation. Probably the one with the most morals, too.

  Although, being a mercenary, his morals were probably still considerably on the low side.

  She kept the handguns lowered down at her sides, but clenched them tightly. “Look, I don’t know who this Alekter is, I don’t know what the hell it is he thinks I stole, and I sure as hell am not going anywhere with you. I will fight you, if I have to, and while there may only be one of me and three of you, I am not going to go down easy.”

  Finley sighed in exasperation. “Sweetheart, we’re not going to take you anywhere except somewhere safe. As soon as Alekter hired out to other mercenaries, our contract was rendered null and void. We are very expressly clear when we take on any employer—no double dipping. If they hire us, they hire only us. It’s a little skeezy hiring out to multiple groups of people for a job. If we were bounty hunters, that would be one thing, but mercenaries? We have a code.”

  Katra snorted in amusement. “A code? Mercenaries have a code? And what, exactly, is this so-called code of yours?”

  “Don’t fuck with us.” The dark comment came from Kaster, and she couldn’t resist rolling her eyes as she shifted her amber gaze to meet his black one.

  “Not gonna lie, that sounds like a pretty universal code, and not at all convincing enough to make me consider going with you.”

  “Is there anything we could say that would convince you?” Finley queried with a raised eyebrow.

  She seriously considered his question for a moment. “…nothing’s coming to mind.”

  Marclan and Finley exchanged a look that Katra couldn’t read before glancing over at Kaster. They looked wary, as if they were either unsure of what his reaction would be or unsure of if they would like his reaction. Either way, Katra could care less. These shifters were not taking her anywhere, not over her cold, dead body. The .45’s felt fantastically heavy in her hands as she stared down the dark eyed dragon shifter.

  “I’m only interested in keeping her away from the sorcerer as a point of pride. Could really care less what happens after that.” Kaster’s response was about as warm and caring as bowl of ice cold water to the face.

  “Yeah, okay, we’re done here.” This had gone on long enough, and Katra was well past the end of her not just frayed, but downright shredded rope.

  A scratching noise rustled through the room, and Katra’s gaze whipped over to the mirror she and her father had used to contact Daromir, her hands raising slightly to aim the firearms in that direction. As she stared, the reflection in the mirror wavered the same way it had before, until Daromir’s face slowly came into focus. It was an odd image, kind of bouncy and shaky, as if he were recording himself on a video camera while he was running. He even seemed out of breath, and as Katra watched, he glanced behind him before staring back down in her direction, and she only then realized that whatever he was using to communicate with her must have been held down low, well below eye level.

  “You need to go with them, Katra.” He huffed shakily.

  “Excuse me?” Katra gaped as she tucked the .45’s in the back of her jeans. “What are you talking about? We don’t even know these guys, Daromir. They’re mercenaries! They hire themselves out to the highest bidder and probably—”

  “Stop arguing, Katra, and listen!” Daromir shouted at her before glancing behind him again.

  His harsh response startled her into silence.

  “I heard what you all have been saying. The mirror you’re using”—pant, pant—”I can use it to listen to whatever is going on in that room. Alekter”—pant, pant—“is not someone you want to mess with, Katra. He is more powerful than almost any other sorcerer, and”—pant, pant—“twice as in insane. If he gets his hands on you…people will die. So many people. Thousands.”

  “Daromir, what are you—”

  “Stop interrupting! Take the stylus you used to contact me, and write these runes on the mirror when I’m done. They will take you to another safe house in Ireland, one that is warded against anyone who would wish you harm.” He seemed to stumble, and the image momentarily blurred into unrecognizable movements, before clearing again to show his harried face.

  “Stay safe, Katra, but most of all, stay free.” With that last foreboding statement, his face vanished from the mirror, to be replaced with a smoky impression of three, swirling runes. Katra stared at the runes in shock before they eventually faded.

  “Did…did anyone happen to write those runes down?” Finley asked hesitantly after a moment of silence.

  Shuffling came from her right as Katra continued to stare at her own shocked expression, and a second later, Marclan’s reflection appeared next to hers. He gently placed a large, heavy hand on her shoulder, motioning for her to move aside, before stepping up to the mirror and writing the three runes that Daromir had somehow magically sent to them. The reflection on the surface rippled again before the entire mirror began to glow. As she watched, the mirror began to grow in length until it was large enough for a person to step through, and the surface shifted until the image of a small, brick cottage on a green countryside appeared. The sky above it was a dark cloudy, grey, and she could even smell the rain that drizzled down.

  “Come on, Katra. Let’s go.” She turned to meet Marclan’s kind, hazel eyes.

  Why was he so quick to help her? He didn’t even know her.

  Turning back to the mirror, she stared at it blankly. “I can’t leave him here.”

  Marclan’s gaze swiveled over to Jakob’s body. “Then we’ll take him with us.”

  “We do not have time for this.” Kaster’s irritated voice drifted to Katra’s ears, and she resisted the urge to flip him off.

  She was surprised when Finley’s voice responded with just as much vehemence as Kaster’s. “We, of all people, know what it’s like to lose a father, Kaster.”

  The statement surprised her a little, and she glanced over at the dark eyed dragon shifter, curious to see his response. She was not disappointed. His eyes softened fractionally as he glanced at Jakob, before settling his dark gaze on her. “Very well. We’ll take him, and give him a dragon shifter’s funeral.”

  Both Finley and Marclan nodded in affirmation, seeming pleased with this response, although Katra found herself feeling a little wary over what exactly a dragon shifter’s funeral was comprised of.

  When Kaster strode solemnly over to Jakob’s body, Katra had to avert her eyes, unable to watch them lift his limp form. Instead, she stepped up to the mirror and reached out her hand to touch the image on its surface.
Instead of the hard glass of a mirror, her hand met what felt like cold water, but with a thicker consistency before passing through it. With an abrupt rush of motion, she felt herself thrown wildly off kilter as her body was sucked through the cold, liquidy surface.

  Chapter 4

  A cold, misty rain coated Katra’s face the instant she appeared on the other side of the mirror, and she stared in awe at the jagged, step-like cliffs and the vast, dark ocean beyond the little brick cottage that sat before her. Glancing behind her, she saw in the distance what looked like a small village, and beyond that, a large mountain dominated the landscape. She thought she even saw a castle on the mountain, though from this far away, it was hard to say for certain.

  Shuffling came from beside her, and she turned to see that Marclan, Finley, and Kaster had arrived with her father. They took in the scenery only momentarily before they silently moved down the dirt road leading away from the distant village.

  Why were they helping her?

  She was no one to them.

  They were mercenaries. Mercenaries didn’t care…right?

  She followed them a short way down the road, around a hill and out of sight of the village before they stopped. Kaster gently placed Jakob’s body on the dirt road. They gathered around him in a semi-circle, and Katra waited a hesitant moment before she stepped up to complete it.

  “I don’t know if you are aware of this, but a dragon shifter can only be born to another dragon shifter. For other shifters, the animal belonging to the child born is a toss-up—wolves can give birth to falcon shifters, tigers can give birth to bear shifters. But for dragons, the community stays small, because at least one of the parents has to be a dragon shifter. More often than not, both parents are dragon shifters. This is what allows for the dragon funeral that has come to be traditional in the dragon community. When a dragon shifter has passed, the family and community come forward to bestow blessings upon the deceased in the hopes that these blessings will call forth the spirit of the first dragon. The Dragon Spirit will help guide the soul of the dragon shifter to the next world. During the traditional dragon shifter funeral, after the blessings have been bestowed, the dragon shifter’s body is laid out in a clearing. A fire dragon, ice dragon, air dragon, and dark dragon come forward and, combining their fires, they transform the body into a diamond-like material. They are then placed in the dragon catacombs.” Finley recounted the dragon shifter traditions in a soft, reverent voice, and he glanced up at his brothers briefly—an action that went completely unnoticed by Katra as her eyes remained glued to her father’s still form—before continuing on quietly. “Seeing as how we do not have all the necessary dragon types present, I was thinking—and this is entirely up to you—but did your father…would you be okay with him being cremated? I don’t know what his last wishes were, or if you were even able to talk about it at any point, but…I’m a fire dragon, and if it’s what you would like, I would be honored to perform a cremation ceremony for him.”

  It was oddly surprising to Katra that, in all their time on the run, the subject of her father’s last wishes never came up. Undoubtedly, it was a subject no father would ever want to discuss with his daughter, but her father had always been relatively practical (it was probably the historian in him, capable of seeing and learning from the people and things that came before), so the realization that he’d never once mentioned his burial wishes came as a dull shock for her, cutting through her previous shock with just enough force for her to recognize the thought and question it.

  “Um…yeah. I guess. I mean…I don’t really know what he wanted. So…I guess he just…” Her throat closed up as her mind filled with memories of her dad and what he was like, what he wanted, and what meant the most to him. “I guess he would have wanted whatever I wanted. I don’t think he would have cared what happened to him after death, so long as it’s something I’m okay with. I think cremation will be okay—er—good. Yeah.” Actually, if she were to really consider the question, she’d say her father would most likely have been thrilled to be honored with a dragon shifter funeral, even if it was altered some. He had always called dragon shifters living legends, the only living legends left from the world of mythical shifters.

  Aside from her.

  But as it was, she simply didn’t know what she wanted. The shock was too fresh, the sudden abruptness of his departure too painful. Perhaps she would regret this in the future (though it seemed unlikely), but for now, she would gratefully accept the dragon shifter’s offer. Or at least, as gratefully as she could considering the state of shock she was in.

  A heavy arm fell over her shoulders, and she gave in to the slight tugging as Marclan pulled her back a few paces, with Finley stepping up to take their place. Kaster moved back even further, as if separating himself physically from the situation would help to separate himself emotionally from it—or perhaps, from her. It was clear that, of the three, he seemed most disinclined toward accepting her in any way, shape, or form.

  Finley cleared his throat hesitantly after staring down at Jakob’s body for a few moments. He glanced up at Katra hesitantly, almost with a touch of fear, before speaking quietly. “Katra…have you ever seen a dragon shifter shift into his animal form?”

  The tiny shake of her head was almost unnoticeable.

  “Well…it can be a little…jarring. A dragon shifter’s dragon form is dependent on what kind of dragon they are. As a dragon shifter, I am roughly the size of a city bus. Now, please understand—it has been many years since my first shift, and I am in full and complete control of my dragon. I will never, in any way, shape, or form, harm you. You will be perfectly safe at all times. Basically, I’m trying to say that, you might be afraid at first, but don’t worry. I won’t hurt you. I swear on my life.”

  Katra couldn’t do anything more than nod her head a second time, and, after another hesitant moment, Finley finally nodded as well before taking a step back.

  When a shifter first shifts, usually around the age of puberty, it is usually a long, drawn out, painful ordeal. It’s not until after many years of shifting that the process becomes almost instantaneous, and it quickly became clear that dragon shifters were no exception, even though the size of their animal drastically differs from other shifters. The entire process of Finley shifting—from start to finish—was perhaps no more than four or five seconds, and in the space of a few breaths, Katra found herself staring up at a long, sleek, deep red dragon. His neck was roughly as long as her whole body, and his tail was twice that, adorned with blunt spikes that travelled all the way up his spine to the top of his head, where they ended in six spikes that ringed the top of his head like a crown. His snout was long, lean and wolf-shaped, and little puffs of smoke drifted in mesmerizing swirls from his nostrils. He stared down at her with the same deep ocean blue eyes, only the pupils of his eyes were now in the shape of a slit, like a cat’s eye.

  He stared at her for a few breaths, the tendrils of smoke continuing to drift up from his snout, as if he was waiting for her to freak out. To be fair, any other person probably would have based on his massive size and the sheer number of massive, razor-sharp teeth lining his mouth, but, previous shock aside, Katra found herself oddly unperturbed by his dragon, so she simply stared back at him without an ounce of emotion as she waited for him to get on with it.

  Finally, as though satisfied by her reaction (or lack thereof), turned to face Jakob’s body.

  “I don’t know if you want to watch this.” Marclan said softly behind her, and she nearly jumped as she had completely forgotten he was still there, even though his heavy arm continued to rest across her shoulders.

  “I have to.” This was really the only response she could muster.

  “Did you want to say something first?”

  Katra gazed down at her father’s body, at his brown hair, his lean form, and his closed eyes that she would never see again. She tugged at the bracelet on her wrist, mapping out the shape of each of the little st
ar charms with her fingers as she tried to think of what she could possibly say.

  “I’m sorry. I wish…I’m just sorry.”

  She could see Marclan watching her out of her peripheral vision, and she was vaguely perplexed by the unidentifiable emotion on his face. Marclan, though not as intense as Kaster, was nearly as unreadable as the other dragon, but where Kaster was all simmering intensity and heated power, Marclan was withdrawn, almost shy, but with a veiled power all his own. She almost found herself craving his quiet strength, though she gladly wrote it off as post-trauma behavior.

  A rush of bright, white-hot fire burst forth, drawing her attention back to the moment that was unveiling itself before her. She watched in awe as Finley’s fire enveloped her father’s body, to the point where she could no longer see him. It was bright to the point of blinding, but Katra did not look away. Perhaps it was her own affinity to fire, but what should have been a retina-searing sight was nothing for her. She simply watched, until the fire stopped and there was nothing but a pile of ash sitting before her.

  Moments later, Finley stepped up next to her in his human form.

  Everything about this moment in time seemed strange, as if reality itself had been laced with some kind of hallucinogenic, giving it a fuzzy, dreamlike feel. Even the three dragons surrounding her, towering over her tiny form, felt unreal. They were strangers, mercenaries hired to bring her in to some creepy employer, but no wait—now they don’t want to bring her in (well, two out of three didn’t want to bring her in). They want to help her, of all things. If she didn’t know any better, she would have believed that she was dreaming and would wake up at any moment to regale her father with her strange and bizarre dream as he sat at his desk with a historical volume open in front of him and his attention only half on what she was saying.