Knox looked around at the small cluster of cabins that served as base camp for the crew. There were eleven cabins here. Six of them were temporarily empty while their owners were away fighting and searching for ancient dragon artifacts. And one was permanently empty, since it had been William’s and he had moved away. The crew had half-heartedly suggested turning it into some sort of storage shed, but no one had been able to bear the idea of transforming William’s cabin into a shed. So there it stood, unused and yet somehow making the crew feel as though William’s spirit was still among them.
Knox got up from the circle and went to check on the grill that was a few feet away. Burgers and brats were sizzling, and the juicy smell of meat mixed with the smoky smell of charcoal. Knox’s mouth watered. One of the biggest downsides to a day of training missions was that breakfast and lunch were often small, cold meals on the run. Knox was looking forward to a nice, hot dinner that consisted of a plate piled high with meat. He was part dragon, after all. He needed plenty of meat to sustain him.
“Grub’s ready,” Knox called out. Whatever story the crew had been in the middle of telling, they immediately abandoned it as they sprang up and made their way to the grill. They each grabbed a plate and began loading it with food. Knox let them all go first, like a good leader should. Then he filled his own plate and followed them back to the circle around the fire. For a few minutes, everyone was quiet as they stuffed food into their hungry mouths. But as the pace of their eating slowed, everyone started once again talking and laughing.
Knox let his mind drift. He was feeling strangely restless tonight, but he wasn’t sure why. Things were going well enough. His dragons were all doing well with their training missions, and the dragons who were out on real missions right now were sending back good reports. By all accounts, Knox was seeing great success as leader of this crew. But he still couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t quite right.
Knox sighed. Maybe Noah was right. Maybe he had just been sitting still too long. He needed to take a mission and stretch his wings a bit. He had trained his crew well, and he knew deep down that they could hold up well without him. Knox took a long sip of his beer and looked over at Myles, Vance, and Owen. Vance and Owen were arguing now about the best way to start a fire in the woods. Of course, as dragons, they could always shift into dragon form and breathe fire onto a pile of firewood. But it was important to be able to do things while in human form, too, since it was often best on missions to shift as little as possible. Vance and Owen both hated being wrong, and their passionate arguing on the finer points of fire-starting was almost comical. Knox was about to step in and egg them on with an argument of his own, when suddenly it hit him.
Why didn’t he go off on a training mission by himself? He could do a survival mission, where he took only very basic emergency supplies with him into the redwoods, and tried to survive as long as he could. He often had his crew members perform these training missions to keep their survival skills sharp, but he had not done one himself since William moved away from the Redwoods. And shouldn’t he be training just as hard as his crew?
It was the perfect solution. Knox could work out some of his restlessness, keep his survival skills sharp, and use the mission as a “test” of how things would run while he was gone. If he started prepping everything now, he could be ready to start tomorrow morning. Knox looked up at Vance and Owen, whose friendly argument was escalating as Myles looked on, laughing. Who would he leave in charge, as second? Normally, he would have given Noah that responsibility, but Noah was far away right now. Vance and Owen were more skilled at fighting, than Myles, but they were too hotheaded to make good leaders. Myles always kept calm and rational, no matter the situation. He would be the better choice.
“I’m going on a survival mission tomorrow,” Knox announced suddenly. Myles, Vance, and Owen fell suddenly silent and looked up at him in surprise.
“You’re going, too? Who are you taking with you?” Vance asked, the confusion evident in his voice. Survival training missions took several days at least, and it was almost a joke among the crew how Knox had been unwilling to leave base camp for more than a day at a time.
“I’m going alone,” Knox said, standing to his feet. “And I’m leaving early tomorrow morning. Myles, you’ll act as clan leader in my absence. I’m not going to leave you with a lot of instructions. You all know the emergency procedures for taking over as leader in the event of a catastrophe. I want you to all act like I suddenly disappeared without warning and left no instructions. I want to see how you perform with no hand-holding.”
“How long will you be gone?” Myles asked uncertainly. Knox knew that it must have come as a shock to Myles that he was to be left in charge. He would have assumed that one of the better fighters, Vance or Owen, would be chosen.
“I don’t know,” Knox said truthfully. “But that will make it a better training experience for you, too. Let’s test ourselves a bit, huh? I know things have been mostly peaceful since William left, but we can never rest on our laurels too much. Complacency kills.”
Knox almost wanted to laugh at the surprised faces of his crew members that were staring back at him. They were no doubt thinking he had gone slightly mad with this sudden announcement, but none of them said anything further.
“I’ll be gone before the sun rises,” Knox said, brushing the dirt off his pants from the log he’d been sitting on.
“And what if we need to reach you?” Myles asked. “What should we do if there’s a true emergency?”
Knox calmed his own nerves as he smiled down at Myles. “Handle it,” Knox said.
And then, without another word, Knox headed for his cabin to prepare for the closest thing to an adventure he’d had in quite a while.
Chapter Four
Bree cursed under her breath as the clouds overhead thickened once again, heavy with the promise of rain. It was the third day since she’d left Falcon Cross, and it had rained on and off nonstop the whole time she was traveling.
“Nothing in Advocacy school prepared me for this,” she muttered as she found shelter in the hollowed out trunk of an old redwood tree. She wasn’t sure where she was, and she had quickly realized how ill-prepared she had been for a solo wilderness trek. Why hadn’t she thought to pack a pocket knife? Or a compass? She had plenty of food for the moment, but she was beginning to wonder if it would last her the time that it took to travel to San Francisco. And she was beginning to wonder what, exactly, she was going to do once she arrived there. Her initial excitement at leaving had faded as the days wore on.
But there was no turning back now. She was sure that Falcon Cross was abuzz with news of her leaving, and that if she tried to return she would be stripped of her magic and excommunicated from the wizards. She had to remain strong and focused, not only for her own sake but because she knew that the entire future of Falcon Cross depended on her now. She had to find the good shifters.
The rain started falling, gaining momentum as the minutes passed until it was an all-out deluge. Little rivers of cold water trickled into Bree’s tree trunk cave, and she sighed as she picked up her backpack to make sure her food stayed dry. Summer was supposed to be the dry season, but apparently Mother Nature had no respect for seasons.
Bree fingered her magic ring, wishing she dared to use it to start a fire to warm herself. But even though the inside of the hollowed out redwood was a large, empty space, Bree worried that a fire in here would catch the sides of the tree trunk and send the whole tree up in flames from the inside out. So instead, she held her ring out from her body, aiming its sharp point toward the dark, wet world outside the tree, and she cried out “magicae lucis!”
Instantly, a flashlight-like beam came shooting from her ring. She aimed it into the forest, sweeping it up, down, and around. It was late afternoon now, and the woods were steadily growing darker as the rain grew heavier. Bree had a feeling she would not be seeing the sun again today.
Her light illuminated the enorm
ous, reddish-brown trunks of the redwoods, standing like eerie sentinels in the forest which felt to Bree like it was alive with eyes. This was ridiculous, of course, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was being watched. She swept her ring’s light beam across the ground foliage, not even sure what she was searching for. Was there an animal out there? Was it possible that a wizard search party had somehow found her and was stalking her at this moment, waiting for the right moment to pounce?
A loud crash sounded from somewhere to Bree’s left. She nearly jumped out of her skin as she shrank back into the hollow tree trunk, her heart pounding.
“Lucis terminantur,” she hissed, and the light beam on her ring instantly went out. Just before the light died, though, she saw two large squirrels running from a nearby tree. She took a deep breath, trying to steady her breathing. The noise had only been squirrels fighting.
Or had it?
As she strained her eyes to see into the ever-darkening forest, she heard a noise that sounded horrifyingly close to the sound of boots crunching on the leaves and twigs that littered the forest floor. She held her breath, listening as carefully as she could. For a moment, she thought she had imagined it. The only sound she could make out was the falling rain. But then, she heard it again.
Crunch, crunch, crunch.
Someone was definitely out there, and he or she sounded like they were getting closer.
Crunch, crunch, crunch.
Bree held her breath again, willing the sound to go away, but knowing that it wouldn’t. When a flashlight beam shone through the darkness outside the tree trunk, Bree nearly squealed in fright. She wasn’t cut out for the fugitive life, she thought, catching herself and biting her lip quietly just before she accidentally gave herself away with a frightened noise.
Now, Bree could tell that whoever was out there was sweeping the flashlight across the outside of the tree. They were searching for her.
It must be the wizards, she thought. But how had they found her? She had been careful not to leave a trail. At least in the beginning, she had left no trace of where she had been after she’d abandoned her car in the trailhead parking lot for one of California’s state parks. She had gotten lazy over the last day, though. As she grew more miserable, lonely, and tired, she had started to not worry about whether or not she was leaving obvious traces as she stumbled along through the forest. Still, even if she had been leaving a trail today, wouldn’t the wizards have had a hard time even finding where that trail began? There would have been miles and miles of forest where she had carefully hidden her tracks.
Crunch, crunch, crunch. The footsteps were right outside the tree now. There was no use wondering how they had found her. The reality was that they had. Bree felt her heart beating violently against her chest as she raised her ringed hand high above her head.
“Magicae invisibilia,” she hissed as loud as she dared. She felt a rush of energy suddenly pressing against her body, and she knew the invisibility spell had worked. Not that it would do much good against a wizard search party. All they had to do was use a revealing spell and her invisibility disguise would be removed. Still, it might give her a few seconds to try to escape through the tree trunk’s opening and make a run for it, although she wasn’t quite sure where she could run to get away from a group of wizards.
But just as she was about to slip through the tree trunk’s opening, a head appeared there. Bree skidded to a stop, managing to halt her forward momentum just in time to avoid running into the man who had suddenly appeared. Her eyes widened as his own eyes narrowed. He was only inches from her face, and he was peering into the tree, scanning the hollowed out trunk but looking right through Bree.
He was no wizard, and he clearly had no idea that anyone was in the trunk. He was so close that if Bree had leaned forward just a fraction of an inch, her nose would have bumped against his. Her mind screamed at her to back up, but for a moment, she stood frozen. His green eyes held an intelligent expression, and they blended well with the tanned skin of his chiseled face. His short, dark brown hair was soaking and plastered across his forehead. He wore a hoodie, but had not put the hood up against the rain. Bree could just see the tips of his ears peeking out from under his hair, and she nearly gasped when she saw that they had a slightly elfish shape.
The man suddenly breathed in deeply, his whole face furrowing in concentration as he did. Bree came to her senses and stepped silently backward just as the man leaned deeper into the tree trunk. As quickly as she dared, Bree continued to take steps backward until her back was flat against the tree trunk, just opposite from the opening.
The man stepped into the tree trunk, and suddenly, the hollowed out space that had seemed so large suddenly felt unbearably confining. The man was large—much larger than any wizard or non-wizard human Bree had ever seen. He stood at least a foot taller than Bree, and his giant muscles could be seen even under the thick, soaking fabric of his hoodie. There were still about three feet between where he stood and where Bree stood, but if he reached out, he would feel her there. What would he do, if he realized that there was another person in here? Would he lash out violently at what he would probably perceive as an invisible enemy?
The man breathed in deeply again, his eyes scanning the ground now. Bree winced as she realized that she had left foot prints all over the now muddy floor of the tree trunk hollow.
“Strange,” the man said, bending down to put his finger in one of the footprints. When he bent, Bree could see that he had a very large backpack on. She also caught another, better glimpse of his ears. They definitely had an elfish shape. It was slight, but it was there.
The man was a shifter, and one of the mythological varieties. Bree struggled to remember what she knew about shifter classifications. Elfish ears meant either a unicorn or a dragon, but how did you tell the difference? With a furrowed brow, Bree mentally ran through all of her notes from her classes on shifters. Unicorns had iridescent skin, right? And shimmering black eyes.
Bree glanced down at the man’s skin. It was mostly covered by soaking wet clothing, but she could see his face, hands and a bit of his forearm. She could not detect the slightest hint of iridescence. And his eyes had been green, not black, with no shimmer to them. Besides that, the elfish shape of his ears was not very well pronounced. From what Bree remembered, unicorns all had very elfish ears, while dragons frequently had only a small elfish shape to their ears, or even no elfish features at all.
The man was a dragon shifter. His deep, confused sniffing made sense now. Like all shifters, he had an excellent sense of smell, and he could no doubt smell that Bree was here, even though he couldn’t see her. He stood up straight then, and looked around again. He reached out his arm and started tracing it along the side of the tree trunk’s interior. Bree ducked down just in time for him to miss her, and her heart pounded as his hand went over her head.
She was not sure what to do. She was looking for a shifter, but she needed that shifter to be one of the good shifters. If the man had been a unicorn, she would have revealed herself to him right away. Everyone knew that unicorns were good, and nearly impossible to corrupt. But dragons…dragons were fiery beings, and many had been turned to evil over the years. If this man was a corrupt dragon, she might be worse off than if the wizards found her. The wizards would only take her magic. A corrupt dragon would take her life.
The dragon shifter turned in a large circle inside the tree trunk, sniffing deeply and looking up as though he expected to see someone clinging to the trunk and hiding above his head. But, of course, he saw nothing. He ran his fingers through his hair and sighed.
“Strange,” he said again. Then, to Bree’s great relief he turned and walked back out into the rain. She took a full minute to steady her breathing, and then, slowly, carefully, she walked out into the rain as well. He had not gone far yet. He was walking slowly through the thick, dark forest, looking in every direction and sniffing deeply. Bree almost had to laugh. The poor guy probably thought his nos
e wasn’t working correctly. She had a brief impulse to end her invisibility smell and yell “Surprise!” just to see the shocked look on his face.
But of course, she remained silent. There was something strange about a dragon shifter alone in the woods. Was he running from something, too? And were his reasons for running perhaps not quite as noble as Bree’s? She couldn’t take a chance that he was an evil dragon, and that’s why he was sneaking around out here like a fugitive. But she also didn’t want to miss the chance to talk to him if he was one of the good dragons. After all, she was pretty much a fugitive herself, but she was a good person with good motives. Maybe his story was similar.
Bree decided then that she would follow him for a while. If she could stay on his trail, under the cover of her invisibility spell, perhaps she could get a sense of where he was going and why he was out here on his own. If he seemed like the sort of dragon who would not, in fact, kill her, then she would reveal herself to him.
Bree scurried to catch up with the man, who had quickened his pace now. Much to her dismay, he did not seem interested in stopping to take cover from the rain. He was pressing forward with a determined gait, and, unless she wanted to lose him in the dark woods, she had no choice but to follow. She kept up as silently as she could, although occasionally she would accidentally step on a twig and crack it sharply, or make some similar careless noise. Whenever she did this, he would turn sharply, his piercing eyes scanning the forest as he breathed in deeply. Bree could tell he was troubled. Her smell was too strong, and the noises of twigs breaking were too loud to have been caused by a squirrel. He was confused, but he had the sense that he was being followed.
Defiance and the Dragon (Redwood Dragons Book 1) Page 3