“That was pretty impressive,” Knox said, glancing sideways at Bree. “I mean, I can breathe fire, but I’m not sure I would have been able to make a strong enough flame to burn a whole roadway in an instant. And then to make that big hole in a matter of seconds…remind me never to piss you off.”
Bree chuckled, but she was having a hard time feeling truly happy right now.
“Hey, what’s wrong?” Knox asked, sensing her sadness.
Bree sighed. “It’s just that getting this stone back was much easier than I expected. Almost too easy, you know? I staked my magic and my reputation in the wizard community on the fact that getting the stone and defending against those who had the stone would result in huge battles that would require help from the shifters. But I basically just walked up to the armored vehicle, took the stone, and walked off. No battle. No need for backup help. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I should have listened to the High Council, and I do deserve to be stripped of my magic.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself, Bree,” Knox said, reaching over to squeeze her knee with his hand. “For one thing, you wouldn’t have had the information you needed to so easily find the armored vehicle and switch the stones if you hadn’t met me. You wouldn’t have known the guy who made the replacement stone. And, besides, don’t be so sure that there won’t be battles coming. The guys who are on the trail of the stone aren’t going to give up just because they weren’t the first ones to get to it.”
Bree frowned. “Maybe you’re right,” she said. “But I can’t help but wondering if I did do the right thing after all, or if this was all worth it.”
Knox looked over at her with a big smile, and he squeezed her knee again. The gesture filled Bree with warmth and peace, and she felt at least slightly better.
“You met me,” he said. “So I hope it was worth it. And I know you have a good heart. You were trying to do the right thing. I promise you, I will defend you with everything in me. If anyone tries to attack you or take your magic from me, they’re going to have to get through me and my dragons first. And, trust me—we might not have magic, but we know how to fight.”
“I hope it doesn’t come to that,” Bree said weakly. But as the car started inching forward again, she had a sinking feeling that it would.
Chapter Sixteen
Although Knox did not want to say anything to make Bree feel worse than she already did, he had to admit that he was also quite surprised at how easy it had been to recover the dragon sapphire. The whole time they had been chasing down the armored car, he kept waiting for something to go wrong, but nothing ever did. Things worked out as smoothly as they could have possibly hoped for.
It seemed that their long-term plan had been unnecessary, and so had the idea of renting an apartment in Mountain View. Not that Knox was complaining. He’d had plenty of missions that had turned out much more complicated than he’d originally thought they would, so it was good to have things turn out better that he thought, for once.
He wasn’t so sure that Bree shared his relief. The closer they got to Mountain View, the more agitated she seemed to be. She stared out the passenger side window of their car, fingering her magic ring and not speaking at all. Every now and then when he glanced over, he could see that she was chewing her lip in frustration. She was not happy, and his heart ached for her. He didn’t want to meddle in wizard politics, but it seemed unfair to him that someone who had such a good heart, and had taken great risks solely for the sake of trying to protect her wizard clan, was now worried that she would forever be a fugitive, or be stripped of her magic. Surely, there had to be some sort of loophole. But she didn’t want to discuss the matter right now, and Knox decided to respect her desire for silence. There would be time for talking later. Right now, the most important thing was to get the dragon sapphire safely back to the Redwoods.
Knox’s plan was to stop in Mountain View to gather up the few things that he and Bree had left there. He had decided not to say anything to the owner of the apartment complex about the fact that they were leaving. Leaving so soon right after arriving might seem too suspicious, and the last thing that Knox wanted to do was to raise suspicions. No, he would just let the owner think that they were still staying there for now.
Once Knox and Bree had gathered up their things, they would drive the rental car back to the town where they had picked it up. Then, Knox would shift back into a dragon and fly Bree back to the Redwoods. It would make for a long day, but they should be able to arrive home late tonight. Knox had already spoken to Noah, who had called Pierce, their good friend and unicorn shifter. Pierce, as one of the shifter protectors, would take charge of the dragon sapphire and make sure that it was taken somewhere that it would be safely guarded. Ordinarily, Knox kept any ancient dragon artifacts that he found in the Redwood forests for safekeeping. But this dragon stone was special. It was not, as far as Knox could tell, originally from the Redwood line of dragons, and so Knox didn’t feel right keeping it. He felt it was better to hand it over to Pierce. Once the stone had been handed off, Knox planned to focus on Bree for a while. He hoped that he could convince her to stay with him in the Redwoods, especially if she didn’t feel safe going back to her clan. He didn’t want to be insensitive to her sorrow, but he wanted her to know that she definitely had a place to go if she felt that she needed a new home.
“I’m worried about being in Mountain View,” Bree said, suddenly breaking the silence without warning.
“What do you mean?” Knox asked as he glanced over at her, surprised. They were only about twenty minutes away from their new apartment, and this was the first she had mentioned of being worried about Mountain View itself.
“It’s well-known that the gem collector lives there,” Bree said. “And my wizard clan knows that I was in search of the dragon sapphire. It’s very likely they have spies in Mountain View. I’m surprised they haven’t already found me, to tell the truth. I was an idiot to go walking around last night with my face in plain sight.”
Knox frowned. “Well, I suppose you might be right,” he said. “But we don’t have to stay there long. If you want to stay low and hidden in the car, I’ll run in to the apartment and get our things. We didn’t have that much stuff, so it should only take me a few minutes to gather it all up. We can grab food on the road somewhere, and look at the stone closer then, too. I think it’s safe to assume that the stone we got is, in fact, the real stone.”
Bree nodded her head. “I’m a fan of anything that gets me out of Mountain View faster,” she said. “And I’m positive this is the real stone. There’s no reason to think that this one was a fake.”
Knox nodded. “Alright. We’ll get in and out of Mountain View as quickly as we can.”
As they drove closer and closer to the small apartment they had rented, Bree sunk lower and lower in her seat, until she would not have been visible at all to anyone outside the truck. Knox found himself feeling strangely nervous as well. Why hadn’t it occurred to him how dangerous it might be to bring Bree here? He had been such an idiot, focusing so much on the dragon sapphire but not thinking about the dangers their search might present for Bree.
“Why don’t you do one of those invisibility spells,” Knox said as Bree sank so low that she was practically sitting on the floorboard of the car. She looked up at him with a raised eyebrow, and if it hadn’t been for the fact that the situation was so serious, he might have laughed. She looked so funny, squashed down there in the bottom of the car.
“I can try,” she said, sounding doubtful. “But the wizards searching for me know powerful spells to enable them to see through invisibility spells. There are no spells to give you x-ray vision, though, so as long as I’m actually physically out of sight, they shouldn’t see me.”
“It can’t hurt to stay low and do an invisibility spell, though” Knox said.
Bree seemed to agree, because the next words out of her mouth were “Magicae invisibilia.” She instantly disappeared from Knox’s view, which at least made hi
m feel better. Now that Bree had aroused his suspicions, he couldn’t help looking at every car and pedestrian they passed as a possible menace. Were they being watched? Was some seemingly innocent bystander actually preparing to attack them?
“You’re staying low, right?” Knox asked. Now that he couldn’t see Bree, he had no way of knowing where exactly she was sitting in the car.
“Yup, as low as I can get,” came her muffled voice from somewhere near the passenger floorboard.
With a resigned sigh, Knox pulled in to the parking garage of their apartment complex.
“I’ll be right back,” he said to invisible Bree.
He ran into the apartment and quickly gathered up their things, giving a longing glance to the soft bed in the small bedroom, which they had left unmade this morning in their rush to go catch the dragon sapphire. How he wished that right now he could just stay here, and curl up in that bed with Bree. Although it was still early afternoon right now, Knox felt exhausted, as though he had been up for days.
But it would be a long time before he could cuddle up to Bree. The road ahead of them would take several hours to travel, and the sooner he started, the sooner the journey would be over. Knox took one last look around the apartment to make sure they had not left anything behind, and then he left, holding a large backpack in his arms and locking the door behind him. He wondered if he would ever see this place again, shaking his head at how ridiculous it now seemed that they had bothered to rent an actual apartment.
He got back to the seemingly empty car and threw the backpack in the backseat with a large thud, then slid into the driver’s seat.
“You still here?” he asked Bree, groping around in the empty air, trying to feel for her. An invisible hand reached up to grab his, holding it tight.
“I’m here,” she said. Knox smiled. Even though he couldn’t see it right now, the feel of her hand against his skin was heavenly.
“Then let’s go,” he said. He fired up the engine and started driving, his eyes once again looking warily around him, trying to see whether any dangers lurked in plain sight. But nothing seemed out of the ordinary. After an hour of travel, they were finally well past the outskirts of Silicon Valley’s heart, and Knox was beginning to believe that they had actually managed to leave the area without being found.
“I think we’re safe,” he said, glancing at the area of the floorboard where he knew Bree was still crouched.
“Invisibilia terminantur,” she said, her voice seeming to come out of thin air. But seconds later, the invisibility spell fell away and he could once again see Bree. She stiffly climbed back up into the passenger seat, stretching out her cramped muscles before fastening her seatbelt.
“It’s really strange that no one seemed to be watching in Mountain View,” Bree said. She was pulling out her hair tie to readjust the messy bun she had pulled her hair into. Her hairstyle had become quite disheveled during her time on the floor.
“Maybe they were still off searching the woods,” Knox suggested with a shrug. He did think it was a little strange that no one had been posted to watch the main areas of the city where Bree was most likely to show up. Perhaps, though, they had assumed it would take her longer to get there. Or maybe they had just thought she would never dare to go there so openly. Whatever the reason, Knox felt lucky that they had managed to get in and out of the area with the dragon sapphire and without being caught.
Bree, however, did not seem as convinced. She stared off into the distance through the front windshield with a scowl on her face.
“No,” she said. “Something is wrong. There’s something ominous about the fact that they weren’t here. Something bigger is brewing.”
Privately, Knox thought she was being a bit dramatic. Sometimes, things really did just work out well, and when those times came you considered yourself lucky and moved forward. But Knox did not say any of this to her. He merely kept driving and let her mull over her thoughts as she stared out the window. Hopefully, once they were back to the Redwoods and the sapphire was safely handed off to Pierce, Bree would be able to relax a bit more.
They drove at a steady pace, stopping only to gas up and then to grab some food from a drive-through. Both of them were more than ready to be back in the Redwoods, and the only way to get there was to keep moving forward. By the time they got to the small town to drop their rental car off, even Bree seemed to have relaxed somewhat. They were making good time, and nothing out of the ordinary seemed to have happened. No one was following them, and once the car was dropped off, all that was left was to hike a short distance into the woods, let Knox shift into a dragon, and then take off into the sunset sky to make the flight back to the Redwoods base camp.
Knox pulled his backpack on, made sure Bree had all of her stuff, and then began walking into the forest toward a spot he knew would be a good place for him to shift and take off. Before he stripped down to change into dragon form, though, he wanted a chance to actually look at the dragon sapphire. Bree had secured it in one of the interior pockets of her backpack, and she knelt to pull it out now. She gave it a careful look before handing it over to Knox.
“It looks legit,” she said. “It’s exactly like the fake one we switched it out for.”
Knox took the sapphire in his hands and stared at it in wonder. It was firm and heavy, and even in the waning, shaded light of the forest, it seemed to sparkle brilliantly. His mind instantly flashed back to when he had held the emerald dragon stone after its capture in Texas a few years ago. At the time, Knox, along with the rest of the dragon shifters, had thought that the emerald stone was the only dragon stone in existence. Knox remembered thinking that the emerald was heavy, too, and that it seemed to be almost lit from within. This sapphire seemed similar. Although the fake sapphire had been a close replica, the fake had not had the same inner light that this sapphire had. Knox knew without a doubt that the dragon sapphire existed, and that he was holding it in his hands.
He wondered what power he held in his hands. The emerald dragon stone was immensely powerful, allowing a single good shifter to take on an entire army of evil shifters by himself. This was why it was so important that the dragon stones stay in the hands of good shifters. Or, good wizards, Knox thought, looking up at Bree. He still found it hard to believe that whole communities of wizards existed. Even though he had seen Bree in action, and it was clear that she was indeed a wizard, the idea of hundreds more wizards existing in their own clans and towns boggled his mind. After being taught his whole life that wizards did not exist anymore, it was difficult to make the mental switch so quickly to knowing that they were alive and well after all.
But there was time to continue processing all of this new information later. Right now, the important thing was that they did have the actual dragon sapphire, and that they were nearly home.
“It does look legit,” Knox said. “Ready to get going? We should get this thing back to base camp where it will be safe.”
Bree nodded. “The sooner the better,” she said.
Knox quickly stripped down, and Bree helped him fold his clothes and put them in his backpack. She no longer looked away in embarrassment when he took his clothes off to shift, and Knox found it strangely comforting that she was so at ease with him.
When everything was packed up, Knox looked up at Bree to make sure she was okay, and then nodded to let her know he was about to shift. Bree gave him a slight nod of acknowledgment, then waited. With a mighty roar, Knox let loose the dragon within him. A rush of power emanated forth from him, shaking even the trunks of the mighty redwoods. His human skin gave way to thick dragon hide, and his hands became the sharply clawed feet of a dragon. His head became majestic and horned, and he gave it several shakes to work out the kinks that had formed in it while he had been driving for hours in human form.
Bree flung his backpack up onto his broad dragon back, then climbed up after it. After giving Bree a few moments to secure herself by holding tightly to the iridescent scales on his back,
Knox began flapping his wings, lifting himself rapidly up into the air high above the redwoods. The sun was setting in the distance, lighting the tops of the trees with a red-orange glow. Knox breathed in deeply, filling his lungs with the fresh, cool, high altitude air. A small smile curled up his dragon lips as he turned in the direction of the Redwood Base camp.
He was going home, and Bree was coming with him.
Chapter Seventeen
Bree breathed a sigh of relief as Knox finally landed near his dragons’ base camp. She slid off of him, and waited a few moments as he shifted back into human form and put his clothes back on. They walked together to the cabins, where the fire pit was going strong and Bree saw the familiar faces of Noah, Myles, Owen and Vance, along with some new faces. Everyone rushed forward to greet them, asking dozens of questions at once about the dragon sapphire. Knox laughed and held up his hands, saying that he wanted to get some food and a beer before answering any questions. He did take time, though, to introduce Bree to the new faces in the crowd.
“This is Pierce Dyer, my unicorn shifter friend I’ve told you about. He’s one of the best protectors in the business, and he’s going to make sure the dragon sapphire is stored somewhere safe. This here is his lifemate, Aria. She’s a wolf shifter, and helps him with his protector work. And over there is Levi Sullivan, a panther shifter and another one of the protectors. I’d guess he’s here to help Pierce and Aria get the dragon sapphire safely back?”
The man who had been introduced as Pierce nodded. “Yup. I didn’t want to bring too large of a crowd with me and attract attention, but I wanted a couple good fighters with me in case anything goes wrong. I’m assuming, though, that with the dragon sapphire on our side, we’ll be pretty safe? If it’s anything like the dragon emerald, it should be extremely powerful.”
Defiance and the Dragon (Redwood Dragons Book 1) Page 13