Embers (The Slayer Chronicles Book 2)

by Val St. Crowe

I scrambled backwards. Where the hell were my arrows? Had I really gone somewhere without my bow and arrows? Hell.

  Tumbling off the bed, he swiped his robe off the floor and threw me mine. “Maybe it was a blessing, anyway, because we were about to do that without a condom, and that’s not good.”

  “Oh,” I said, furrowing my brow. “How could I have forgotten—”

  The dragon blew out more fire.

  Naelen held up a hand and the dragon flew backwards, out the window.

  I shrugged into my robe. “I need to go get my bow.”

  Naelen hurried over to the bedside table and yanked open the drawer. He took out the knife.

  The dragon flew back through the window, breathing more fire. The curtains were on fire.

  Naelen held up his hand and twisted his wrist.

  The dragon’s neck snapped and it fell to the ground, lifeless.

  Cold air blew inside the room.

  Naelen put his robe back on.

  I shivered.

  Naelen gestured at the burning curtains. They rolled up into a ball, extinguishing the flames. He turned to look at me.

  I bit down on my bottom lip, shrugging. “Uh, nice work?”

  “The knife’s handy,” he said.

  I pulled my robe tighter around my body. “Yeah, I can see that.”

  “You all right?”

  I nodded. I felt stupid, like some kind of damsel in distress. Naked and shivering and helpless.

  Naelen looked at the window, and then back at the dragon.

  I stuck out my chin, and my voice was shrill. “I guess you’ve just got condoms on you all the time?”

  “In my wallet,” he said.

  “You’re not supposed to keep them in your wallet,” I said.

  “Why not?”

  “It’s something about the latex and the warmth from your…” Ass? “Body.” I felt flustered.

  “Huh,” he said. “Never heard that.”

  We were quiet, neither of us looking at the other.

  Naelen wandered over to the dragon’s body and nudged it with his toe. “Ugliest cock block ever.”

  I glared at him. “Seriously?”

  He shrugged.

  I scrambled off the bed. “It’s cold. We can’t stay in here.”

  He nodded. “Right.”

  When I opened the door to his room, we were greeted by Jonah there, with a cart of room service food and our clothes. His eyes were big. “So, uh, about those dragons?”

  * * *

  Ten minutes later, dressed in sweats that advertised the ski lodge, Naelen and I addressed the seven people in the lodge. They were all squeezed together in the storage room.

  “Stay here,” I said. “Just don’t go out until we come back.”

  “What if we have to go to the bathroom?” said Celia.

  “Keep away from the windows,” I said.

  The remaining four dragons were circling the lodge, and one had broken into another room on the other side of the building.

  Naelen smiled at them. “You guys will be fine. Don’t worry. Clarke’s good with the dragons.”

  “Look,” said Foster, “we did not manage to be the lone survivors of that lab just to die in this lodge.”

  “You won’t,” I said. “I swear.”

  “Maybe we could help?” said Foster.

  “Speak for yourself,” said Jonah.

  “You’ll help us best by staying here and keeping out of sight,” I said.

  Then we shut them in the storage room and headed down the hallway toward the exit.

  Naelen turned the knife over and over in one hand. “You’re never going to let me see you naked again, are you? That was a fluke, and we were interrupted, and now I’ve lost my shot.”

  “This is what you’re thinking about right now?” I said. “You have a problem, Naelen Spencer.”

  “What are you thinking about?”

  “Killing dragons,” I said.

  “There’s only four,” he said. “You’ve got exploding arrows, and I’ve got the knife. How hard could it really be?”

  I sighed. “I guess you’re right.”

  He swung open the door to the lodge.

  I followed him, pulling my hood up over my head and cinching it tight around my face. It was freaking cold out here.

  “So?” he said, peering up into the sky.

  There were the dragons, all right. All four seemed to be traveling in circles around the lodge. They went at different speeds and in overlapping circuits, so they didn’t seem coordinated, like a group of hawks. More they were haphazard and terrifying. But Naelen was right. We could work with this. “So what?”

  “So, are we going to pick up where we left off after we kill these dragons?”

  “I can tell you that if you keep talking about it, the chances of that happening will get slimmer and slimmer.”

  “So, there’s a chance, then?” He grinned at me.

  I rolled my eyes.

  He grabbed the front of my coat and pulled me close. He kissed me, our furry hoods enclosing us in a dark, warm space for a moment.

  I pushed him away. “Stop it, the dragons—”

  “Oh, fuck the dragons.” He pointed at one. Then he pointed at the ground.

  The dragon plummeted, crashing into the ground so hard that its body bent in half.

  “That knife is handy,” I said.

  Naelen pointed at another dragon. “Exploding arrow, Clarke. You can hit that thing in your sleep.”

  I yanked out an arrow and sent it flying. “Sure, okay, but that’s not the point.”

  The arrow hit the dragon. It exploded. The dragon fell.

  “What’s the point?” said Naelen, gesturing behind himself at the third dragon. It dive-bombed into a rocky cliff and its skull smashed.

  “The point is,” I said, notching the next arrow, “that we have to stay on our toes when we’re fighting these things, because you never know—” I let the arrow fly— “what’s going to happen next.”

  The last dragon exploded.

  He pursed his lips. “Yes, I can see why we both needed to be uber-focused for this little exercise.”

  I sighed.

  He grinned. “Now, we go back to bed?”

  I rubbed my forehead. “Naelen…”

  He groaned. “That’s a no, isn’t it? I knew it.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  I was sitting on a couch in the lodge’s foyer, wedged between Jonah on one side and Celia on the other. Foster was sitting on the coffee table in front of us. We all had beer. Except Celia, that is. They didn’t have any Corona at this establishment, which was a shame. It was all dark stout beers and really heavy stuff. Apparently, that was appropriate for snow.

  I had to admit the one I was drinking was pretty tasty. It had a chocolate note at the end, very delicious. But it was like drinking bread. Seriously.

  “So, I just can’t thank you enough,” said Jonah. “Because if you hadn’t been here, and those dragons had showed up, we would have been screwed.”

  I debated pointing out that the dragons wouldn’t have been here if it hadn’t been for us letting them loose when the lab exploded, but decided it wasn’t worth bringing up, not since all the dragons were dead.

  “There’s no one we could have called,” he said. “No one can get up the mountain unless they came up on snowmobiles or something, so we would have been sitting ducks. So, again, thank you.”

  “It’s really not a big deal,” I said. “It’s what I do. I’m a dragon slayer.”

  “See, I always thought dragon slayers were horrible people killing for money. I had no idea that there were dragons like this.”

  “It’s a well-kept secret,” I said. “Most people who see them end up dead or else they conveniently forget everything.”

  Jonah’s eyes got big. “Hell. Are we going to have our memories wiped by some freaky government institution or something? People will show up in sunglasses and black coats and make us stare at bl
inking little lights and boom. We’ll remember nothing.”

  “I don’t know how it works,” I said. “But I don’t think it’s the government.”

  Jonah shook his head. “It’s crazy.”

  “It really is,” said Foster. “But I think we should do our best to let the public know about rogue dragons.”

  “What?” said Celia. “Are you crazy? That’s the dumbest idea ever.”

  “Why do you think that?” said Foster.

  “You speak out and you put a target on your back,” said Celia. “If you try to say anything, I’m not going to back you up. I have a baby to think about.”

  Foster considered this. “Yeah, okay, I guess that makes sense. It’s only that people are in danger, though.”

  “That’s where I come in,” I said.

  “This is your job?” said Celia. “Going around saving people?”

  I nodded.

  “Do you get, like, paid?” said Jonah.

  “Obviously, they don’t need to,” said Celia. “That Naelen guy is loaded.”

  “Where is he, anyway?” said Foster, twisting to look around the room.

  “I think he’s in the hot tub,” said Jonah. “Arthur and Ken said they were headed out there.”

  He was avoiding me. Which was fine. I was avoiding him too. We were stuck here until we could get down the mountain to the airport. I was hoping to keep away from him until then, but I knew that was going to be one awkward plane ride. I couldn’t believe how far I had let things get. In the moment, it had seemed…

  But now, I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. Maybe being interrupted had been a blessing.

  “I would get in the hot tub,” said Celia. “But I can’t.”

  “Why not?” said Foster. “If you get in, I’ll get in with you.”

  “You’re not supposed to when you’re pregnant,” she said. “Apparently, it can raise your body temperature to dangerous levels.”

  “Weird,” said Foster. “Who would have ever thought that?”

  “I didn’t know you were pregnant,” said Jonah.

  “Yeah,” said Celia, “well, it wasn’t exactly planned.”

  “Where’s the baby’s father?” said Jonah.

  “He’s dead,” said Celia. She made a face. “That wasn’t exactly a healthy relationship, anyway. I probably should have never gotten involved with him.”

  “You think?” I muttered into my beer.

  She turned to me. “You’re judging me, I guess?”

  I shook my head. “No, I’m not. I think I understand, actually. Sometimes, there are people you really shouldn’t sleep with. And somehow, knowing that you shouldn’t sleep with them simply makes you want to sleep with them even more.”

  Celia sighed. “Yeah, I guess there was some aspect of the forbidden to the whole thing, but it wasn’t like that, not really. I just thought it would be cool to be with someone older and more experienced. But it wasn’t really.”

  “No?” said Foster.

  “It wasn’t as real for him as it was for me,” she said. “And I don’t think he was really very happy about the baby either. He was pretty pissed when I said I didn’t want to get rid of it.”

  “Well,” said Foster, “he wasn’t exactly a nice guy, all things told. He was a brilliant scientist and all, but he didn’t have a lot of human compassion. He never let us have a day off and worked us like dogs.”

  “True,” said Celia.

  “Where were you guys?” said Jonah.

  “We were interns in a lab that was trying to cure the dragons,” said Foster. “Turns out they’re not curable.”

  “Whoa,” said Jonah.

  Foster turned back to Celia. “Anyway, now that our internship is over, what will you do?”

  “Back to school, I guess,” she said. “You?”

  He nodded. “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “So, we’ll see each other, then.”

  “Yeah.” He smiled at her.

  She smiled back.

  I narrowed my eyes. Really? This was happening between them? He was still interested in her even knowing she’d had an affair with a married man and was pregnant? How did that make any sense?

  “Well, we’ll hopefully be able to get down the mountain soon,” said Jonah. “You guys can get back to school right away.”

  “Good,” said Foster. “I called my parents, and I didn’t even know what to tell them. They only knew I was an intern at a school-sponsored remote lab. They didn’t know anything about the dragons. Ezra wanted it kept quiet.”

  “You called your parents?” I said.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Something wrong with that?”

  “No,” I said. “It just reminds me that I might want to call someone too.”

  * * *

  “How are you doing?” I said into the phone.

  “Good,” said my sister Gina. “Really good.”

  “New job going well?” I said.

  “Excellent.”

  “Still wearing that weird white scarf thing?”

  “Clarke,” she laughed. “The pristine color inspires purity within me. It’s meditative.”

  “Right,” I said. I thought that hippie spiritual stuff was hogwash. It seemed to work for Gina, though, so I wasn’t going to throw stones.

  “Why are you calling?” she said. “Not that it isn’t nice to hear from you and all, but you usually don’t call.”

  “I just… I got out of a situation that was pretty hairy. A lot of people didn’t survive, but I did, and I guess I wanted to check in with you. Let you know I was still alive.”

  “Of course you’re still alive. I never worry about you, Clarke. You’re so good at taking care of yourself.” She was only saying that because she was absolute shit at taking care of herself.

  “Well, anyway, Gina, I’m still here, and I love you.”

  “I love you, too,” she said.

  “I guess I’ll let you get back to focusing on your white light or whatever.”

  “Actually, hold up a second,” she said. “Can you call Logan?”

  “What?”

  “Logan’s worried about you. Or something. I couldn’t make heads or tails of it. He came in to see me, and he was all broody and intense like he is, and he wouldn’t talk about what was bothering him, but he wanted me to let him know if I heard from you.”

  I sighed. “I can’t call Logan right now.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s complicated.” I’d been naked with Naelen, that was why. I was thoroughly confused. But then, I’d left on this trip confused. So, I was no better off.

  “He’s worried about you. Really worried.”

  “Well, then you call him,” I said. “Tell him I’m all right. Tell him I’ll be back in Sea City sometime soon.”

  “You can’t tell him this yourself?”

  I sighed. If I chose Logan, did he need to know that I nearly slept with Naelen? Somehow, I’d thought that wanting to sleep with Naelen would have meant that I’d made my choice and that I’d chosen Naelen. But now I realized it wasn’t that simple. All I knew was that I wanted to have sex with Naelen. That was it. I did care about him, but I didn’t know if it was love or not.

  And even though I knew that I had loved Logan in the past, I didn’t know if I still loved him. I mean, I loved him. I cared about him. But was I in love with him?

  “Clarke?” came Gina’s voice.

  “I can’t call him right now,” I said.

  “What’s going on with you?” she said. “I always thought you and Logan were written in the stars or something. I thought it was me that was getting in your way, always screwing things up.”

  I was quiet again.

  She was quiet too, waiting.

  “It’s not your fault,” I said, finally. “Don’t think that you were screwing things up for me.”

  “But I was,” she said. “Me and my addiction screwed up a lot of things for you.”

  “Well, you didn’t mean it.”

/>   “Sometimes I did,” she said. “But I am sorry about all of it now. So very, very sorry.”

  “No, I know,” I said.

  “I think it’s important to own your mistakes and take responsibility for your actions. It’s the only way you can truly move on from them.”

  And that was probably right, I figured. She’d gotten that tidbit from the weirdos in white. They weren’t all bad. “Yeah, okay,” I said. “I hear that. As long as you’re not beating yourself up about it.”

  “I’m not,” she said. “So… you aren’t in love with Logan after all?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Isn’t a person supposed to know these things?”

  “I couldn’t say. I’m fairly sure that the only thing I’ve ever really loved was dice. And that wasn’t really love.”

  “Oh, Gina.” I wished I was there. I wished I could give her a hug.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “It doesn’t matter to me whether you want to be with Logan or not. If not, that’s fine. I just want you to be happy,” she said. “You’re my sister, and I love you.”

  “I love you too,” I said.

  But when I hung up, I felt even more confused. I didn’t know what I wanted.

  * * *

  Later on, I left Celia and Foster having a conversation about raising her baby together to go back to my room. I was really surprised at the way those two were hitting it off, but it wasn’t my business. Maybe it wouldn’t last, and it was only born of shock and trauma. Or maybe the harrowing experience they’d been through together had bonded them in some way and they would always have that.

  But when I got back to my room, Naelen was there in the hallway. His hair was wet, and he was in a t-shirt and sweats—both from the lodge gift shop. He had a towel hanging around his neck. He was outside the door to his new room, which was on the opposite side of mine. His old room had a busted-out window and wasn’t inhabitable currently.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Hey,” I said. I felt acutely embarrassed being near him. I didn’t feel ashamed of myself for what had passed between us, not really, but I didn’t know how to act in front of him now that he’d seen me without my clothes and put his fingers all over my nude body. I didn’t know what the rules for polite conversation were after all that had happened.

  He used the towel to rub at his wet hair briskly. “You going to sleep?”