Embers (The Slayer Chronicles Book 2)

by Val St. Crowe

  “What if we’re fighting the dragon, and we die?” he said. “And then I never got to say to you that I… I don’t know, I wonder if I didn’t mean it, what I said on the plane.”

  “We’re not going to die. I can handle a rogue dragon.”

  “Right,” he said. He started forward.

  I grabbed his arm. “Wait. Mean what? What did you mean that you said on the plane?”

  He turned and looked down at me. “I think I’m falling in love with you.”

  My lips parted.

  He gazed down at me, and his eyes were impossibly blue, too blue to really exist, and I could smell him, and he was a mixture of expensive after-shave and something wild and smoky.

  My breath caught in my throat.

  The elevator door closed.

  “Oh,” he said, reaching out and pushing the button to open the doors. “I mean, I don’t know what that means, and it frankly terrifies me. I want to fight it, because I promised myself I would never let it happen. But with you, I’m not worried about the things that I was worried about before, not really. And I know you’re worried about the aging thing, and I wanted to tell you that there are talismans, and there’s magics we could do, and if I don’t want you to die, you won’t, and…” He scratched the top of his head. “Sorry. I guess we’re not meant to be talking about it right now.”

  “No,” I said softly. “We should be thinking about the dragon.”

  He nodded.

  I nodded.

  And then we got out of the elevator.

  What the hell? I was feeling shaky all over. I kind of… believed him. What he was saying sounded genuine. And it was sort of true that he had upended his life to go traveling with me. And he did seem to come up with excuses to be with me all the time.

  I felt a surge of warmth towards him, and I wanted to touch him.

  And then I shook myself.

  That was crazy. No matter what he felt, it didn’t matter, because he was exactly the kind of man that I could never be with. I didn’t want a rich, snobby playboy for a boyfriend. All I felt toward him was lust. That was it.

  I didn’t have feelings for Naelen Spencer.

  I drew myself up. “You should let me go first.”

  “I can go first,” he said. “As you pointed out, I can breathe fire.”

  Normally, I would have argued with him, but I didn’t. I let him go ahead of me.

  We were on the level where we’d first come in. We went past the room where Doyle had been killed into another huge room. It was lined with rows and rows of cages, each filled with dragons. The cages were barely big enough for the dragons to turn around in, not that I much cared about their comfort. Still, they seemed pretty pissed off. They threw themselves against their cages and snarled at us. Some of them even blew out tongues of fire.

  “I could kill them all,” I said.

  “Not yet,” said Naelen. “They’re locked up. They aren’t an immediate threat. Let’s find that other dragon before it kills someone else.”

  He was right.

  “Well, this level seems clear,” I said. “Let’s go back to the elevator.”

  “Wait,” he said. “Maybe we should check out the stairs? Maybe the dragon is there?”

  I shrugged. “Yeah, okay, makes sense.” I took the lead this time. I pushed open the door to the steps. The walls in here were white. The stairs made of stainless steel. Nothing to see. “Nope, nothing here,” I called out.

  And that was when the dragon jumped down on me from the ceiling, where it had been perched on a big, hanging lamp.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The dragon tackled me, its claws at my belly, and knocked me back through the swinging doorway.

  Behind me, the other dragons went nuts, growling and snarling and blowing out fire.

  I struggled, reaching back to grab an arrow. I could jam it into the dragon’s eye—

  The dragon was picked up and flung backwards. It collided hard with the stairs and whimpered.

  I peered up at Naelen. “Thanks.” He’d used his magic to move the dragon.

  The dragon wasn’t down for the count, though. It burst back through the doorway, a growl in its throat, its jaws gaping. Smoke poured from its nostrils.

  “Stop!” Naelen’s voice rang out.

  The dragon stopped. It froze in midair, looking a little confused, at least as much as a monstrous creature can.

  Naelen let out a whoop. “Ha! You’re stuck there. You can’t move,” he taunted the dragon.

  “Naelen, is that really necessary?” I muttered.

  “This is some kind of compulsion,” Naelen said, grinning. “I can see why Cunningham gets off on it. I can feel it, now that I’m using it. It’s like everything in the room is mine to do with as I please.”

  I felt a little alarmed. Something about the lilt of his voice, how cavalier he sounded, reminded me of Cunningham, now that Naelen had brought the guy up.

  “Naelen?” I said. “Maybe you should…”

  “Closer,” said Naelen to the dragon.

  It approached.

  Naelen reached out with one hand and twisted his wrist sharply.

  The dragon’s neck cracked, its head forced to one side. Naelen had used magic to break its neck.

  Naelen laughed wildly. “Whoa. That’s crazy telekinesis, all right.”

  The dragon slammed into the floor, lifeless.

  “Man, I wonder what else I could do with this thing? Maybe I could just fly everyone out through the tunnels or turn them all into a compelled dragon-fighting army.” He laughed again, and it wasn’t a nice sound.

  “Naelen,” I said sharply.

  His laugh trailed off. “Whoa,” he said again, but this time his voice was different. He took out the knife and looked at it. “This thing is…” He sucked in a breath.

  “Give it to me,” I said.

  “Yeah,” he said softly, handing it over. “That’s maybe more power than I want to be packing in my pants.” He cringed, actually turning red. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “You’re embarrassed? You?”

  He chuckled. “That knife is…” He shivered. “I don’t like it. It’s disconcerting being too powerful.”

  “I agree,” I said.

  “It was handy against the dragon, though,” he said. “But, uh, you should hang onto it, I think. And if we’re in danger, you could give it back.”

  “Definitely,” I said.

  He nodded, still looking shaken.

  * * *

  We dragged the dragon corpse out of the stairwell, so that it wasn’t blocking the steps or the door, and then we took the elevator back up to the upper levels.

  But when we got back to the rec room, the place was practically deserted.

  Kinsie was still in there. So were Beverly, Jack, the divorced pair of scientists, and Tate.

  “What happened?” I said.

  “Well, everyone kept arguing after you left,” said Kinsie. “And they all kept going on about who was a murderer and who wasn’t.”

  “Right,” said Beverly, “and Rose really didn’t want to be in here. She kept saying she was going crazy.”

  “And maybe she was,” said Tate. “I never saw her make a face like that before.”

  “So, anyway, everyone left,” said Jack.

  I rolled my eyes. “I guess it doesn’t matter now.”

  “You got the dragon?” said Beverly.

  “We did,” I said.

  She bit her lip. “You killed it, didn’t you?”

  “You know that I had to,” I said.

  She shook her head. “I know you think you had to, but I still think there had to have been another way.”

  “We have more dragons,” said Kinsie.

  “I know,” said Beverly. “I know.” She sighed. “So, what do we do now?”

  “Whatever it is that you usually do, I suppose,” I said.

  “You two will be wanting to leave, right?” said Jack. “I d
on’t know how bad the storm is yet. We should take a look at the forecast. Come over here, I got my tablet.”

  “Actually,” said Naelen, “I don’t know if we can leave just yet.”

  “You said you killed the dragon,” said Kinsie.

  “We need to talk to Doyle,” I said.

  “Doyle might be the man in charge right now,” said Jack, “but that doesn’t mean he makes all the decisions, you know.”

  “You can talk to us,” said Beverly.

  “It’s only that if these dragons got out once, they’ll get out again,” I said.

  “But they didn’t get out,” said Beverly. “It’s sounding more and more like someone let them out.”

  “Well, that’s even worse,” I said. “It all adds up to a bad environment here. I can’t in good conscience allow a place like this to exist.”

  “Me either,” said Naelen. “Especially considering I’m partially responsible for its existence in the first place.”

  “So, what?” said Tate. “You want to kill all the dragons?”

  “Well…” I turned to Naelen. “Maybe we shouldn’t really get into it.”

  “You do,” said Beverly. “But you can’t. This is our work. We are helping people.”

  “Well, to be fair, we haven’t made much progress,” said Kinsie. “Maybe what she’s saying is right. Anyway, whatever you guys decide, I don’t think I’m staying here.”

  “No?” said Tate.

  She shrugged. “No college credit is worth this.”

  He nodded. “Yeah, good point.”

  A distant scream echoed through the room.

  We all froze.

  “What was that?” I said.

  “Maybe nothing?” said Tate hopefully.

  I started back for the doorway of the rec room.

  Another scream greeted me, still far away, but getting closer.

  I stepped out of the rec room.

  And was greeted by the sight of four dragons, all shades of blue so dark they might have been black, running up the hall.

  “What the hell?” I said, pulling three arrows out of my quiver.

  “Clarke?” yelled Naelen.

  “More fucking dragons!” I yelled back, letting my arrows go.

  I did well, hitting three of the four dragons, and two of them were lethal shots, right in the head. Two of the dragons went down.

  Two were still coming.

  And the screams were getting louder.

  I yanked out more arrows, sent them sailing at the dragons.

  Another one down.

  And then Naelen was behind me, and he reached out with his magic and froze the fourth one, giving me a perfect shot.

  I sent my arrow straight into its eye.

  It squealed and thudded into the ground.

  “Oh!” said Beverly, coming out of the rec room. “You’re killing them.”

  People were running toward us. Students whose names I didn’t yet know. There were more dragons at their heels.

  “They’re all out!” one of them yelled. “They’re all coming!”

  A ball of fire emanated from one of the dragon’s mouths, engulfing the yeller in flame.

  He screamed in pain and horror.

  I shot the dragon.

  But it was too late. The student was burning to death, and he was already being torn apart by two of the stampeding dragons.

  I sent off more arrows, sent them off as quickly as I could.

  I felled two more dragons.

  Three.

  Naelen breathed fire. He used telekinesis. He burnt them and banged them into the floor.

  I ran out of arrows.

  And they were still coming.

  We ran.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  We ran back into the rec room. We tried to close the door on the dragons, but they were too close, and there were too many of them, and we abandoned that idea and ran through the rec room into the kitchen, where there was tunnel access.

  It was more than just Naelen and me. There were a bunch of us, but I couldn’t be sure who exactly was there. They’d come from upstairs, from behind and in front of us.

  Everyone was screaming. Everyone was yelling. Everyone was running.

  We careened through the tunnel. Doyle was in the lead. I didn’t know when he’d come back or where he’d been, but he was back now.

  The tunnel led us down to the lab level. We came out in one of the labs, and we all went out in the room.

  “This room has tunnel access,” Doyle said, heading to the next room down.

  We all poured through the doorway into the lab. It was lined with tables against all the walls, each covered in things like computers and graduated cylinders and weights and balances.

  When we were all inside, we slammed the door behind us.

  Doyle made sure it was locked, and then started moving things off one of the tables. “Help me clear this off so that we can push this in front of the door.”

  That made sense to me, so I came forward to pitch in. So did everyone else, and within minutes, we’d barricaded the door.

  Then we all stepped back, catching our breath.

  I looked around at the people in the lab with us. Besides Doyle, there were several other people there. Celia, the intern. Nicole, Ezra’s husband. Beverly and Jack. Tate, the intern. Foster, the only black intern. And Jameson, the maintenance guy.

  Where the hell was everyone else?

  Were they all dead?

  “Someone let the rest of the dragons out,” said Jameson, rubbing his forehead. “It’s because they know we’re onto them. They know we know what they did to Ezra, and now they’re going to kill us all so the secret dies with us.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” said Doyle, who was still wheezing a little. “There’s no way out of this facility. If someone let the dragons out, then they’d be killing themselves as well.”

  “Maybe the killer found a way out,” said Jameson.

  “There’s a storm going on,” said Beverly. “A bad storm.”

  “Well, the killer knows something we don’t,” said Jameson.

  “Maybe,” I said, “the dragons got loose because it’s really stupid to keep a bunch of rogue dragons penned up someplace.”

  Doyle glowered at me. “Yes, we already know your opinion on the subject, Clarke, thanks.”

  “Maybe it was stupid,” said Foster, shaking his head. “Maybe all of this was stupid. We should have known better.”

  “My point isn’t to insult you,” I said. “None of you are actually stupid. You’re all clearly very intelligent.”

  “So, what was your point?” said Nicole.

  “Maybe just that it doesn’t matter how the dragons got out,” said Naelen. “It’s what she’s been saying all along. The dragons are the danger. We need to focus on stopping them.”

  “Well, if we’re locked in with the killer, then that’s a problem,” spoke up Tate.

  “The killer got away,” said Jameson.

  “We don’t know if there’s a killer,” I said. “Let’s try to focus on the problem at hand, which is that this place is crawling with rogue dragons.”

  “Yeah, what are we going to do about that?” Naelen caught my eye.

  “We need to go and round them back up somehow,” said Doyle. “Get them back into their cages.”

  “We can’t round them up,” I said. “I can’t believe you’re still harping on trying to save the dragons’ lives. Look around. For all we know, we’re the only ones who survived. The dragons have very possibly killed everyone else, and you want to try to round them up?”

  “We can’t kill all the specimens,” said Beverly. “That would end our research.”

  “Well, your research should end,” I said. “This is the only possible outcome that your research can have. The dragons getting loose and killing people.”

  Naelen cleared his throat.

  “What?” I said.

  “Not that I don’t agree with you, Clarke,
but maybe this argument isn’t the most productive use of our time,” he said.

  “Fine,” I said. “So, what do we do?”

  Naelen looked at Doyle. “Do you have any kind of chemical we could use as an airborne poison?”

  “We’re not killing the dragons,” said Jack.

  “Besides,” said Doyle. “Anything like that would also kill us.”

  “I’m out of arrows,” I said. “So, I can’t even shoot them if they come for us. We need something that we can use against them.”

  Naelen crossed to me. He lowered his voice. “Give me the knife.”

  I handed it over. “What are you doing?” I whispered.

  “Maybe I can… I don’t know… compel them all to bash their heads against the ground until they’re dead.”

  I raised my eyebrows.

  He closed his fist around the knife. He shut his eyes, concentrating.

  I listened, wondering if I’d hear the sound of all the dragons banging their skulls into the ground. But I didn’t hear anything.

  Naelen shook his head, handing the knife back. “There’s too many of them. It’s not working.”

  “Well, it was a good thought, anyway,” I said. “Too bad it didn’t work.”

  “Yeah, too bad,” he said.

  “What are you two muttering about over there?” said Beverly. “You trying to come up with some way to kill all the dragons behind our backs?”

  “Maybe they let the dragons out,” said Nicole.

  “What?” I said.

  She shrugged. “You want to kill them, that’s obvious. This way, you figure, you have to kill them.”

  “I kill dragons in order to save lives,” I said. “So, no, I wouldn’t let the dragons out, not if it meant hurting all these people.”

  “The killer let them out,” said Jameson.

  I sighed.

  Tate dragged a hand over his face. “Oh, man. We’re all going to die, aren’t we?”

  * * *

  About a half hour later, there was a banging on the door.

  We all got to our feet, tensed and ready. I wasn’t sure exactly what I was going to do, because I didn’t have any arrows. I looked around the room for some kind of weapon. Maybe if I broke some of the glassware, I could use it as a makeshift blade. Maybe even like little throwing stars.

  “Hey, let us in,” came a voice.