He shone the firelight around him, casting a glow on his features. Two red eyes, almost as red as Rakar’s but glowing with a different sort of light, scanned the shadows around him. A red dragon gleamed on the center of his forehead. His dragonsign. It looked like a tattoo, but it glowed with the power of his dragon within, with the use of his fire magic.
My fists clenched with violent hatred that burned the back of my throat. Everything I knew about Dragonlords evoked loathing in me, and not just for what they’d done to my mother and father.
The urge to confront him made my muscles clench, but I knew better than to try and face a Suvia Kyan, especially when he had a buddy around here somewhere. And especially, when weakness kept swimming through me because of the poison from Rakar’s bite. I closed my eyes, wishing I had the power some witches were said to have, to hide myself and Hunter from view. The best I could do was press us back deeper into the shadows and hope they were enough to shield us until the Dragonlord gave up.
“Do you know what will happen if you survive the bite?” the Suvia Kyan growled. “If you survive, you’ll wish you had died. Let me end it all now.”
When I didn’t show myself, he shone the fire around again.
“Would you be more cooperative if I told you I know where your father is?”
My heart leaped. Hunter’s eyes were wide above me. Did the Dragonlord really know where my dad was, or was he just trying to draw me out? For all I knew, he might have been one of those behind my father’s disappearance.
Hunter must have realized what I was thinking, because he touched my face and shook his head. Warning me not to trust the Dragonlord.
Dealing with a Dragonlord always comes at a price no one wants to pay. The old saying flickered through my mind. No human negotiated with a Suvia Kyan. It crushed my heart to remain where I was, but I did.
“Suit yourself, witch.” The Suvia Kyan gave a loud whistle between his teeth.
The other Dragonlord I’d sensed earlier marched across the field from the farmhouse. His tanned skin and golden eyes, marking him for a Suvia Kyan who wielded wind, stood out in dawn’s first light. He walked with his arms outstretched while Weatherby, his wife, and his two children floated in front of him as though suspended from invisible wires. The family kicked and screamed as they spun slowly through the air toward the other Guardsman.
“Doman Hassik, we have them.” The Windwielder dropped the humans in front of his commander and pressed his hand to his heart.
Hunter started to jump to his feet, but I yanked him down by his jacket sleeve. “You’ll get yourself killed,” I hissed.
“I can’t say I’m surprised by your resistance, witch,” Hassik said. “He did warn us you’re as stubborn as your father.”
He? Hunter and I looked at each other.
“If you won’t surrender to save your father, will you give yourself up to save them?” A large fireball glowed above Hassik’s palm and he held it out toward the family, now all forced to their knees in the grass. The kids bawled.
“Leave them alone!” Weatherby’s wife shrieked.
“I’ll kill you,” Weatherby snarled.
Hassik bent toward the little girl, bringing the ball of flame so close to her face that she twisted away violently.
I ripped myself out of Hunter’s arms and stood. “Stop,” I shouted.
“Helena!” Hunter reached for me, but I shook him off. “Fuck.”
Triumph registered in Hassik’s eyes, but he kept the fireball close to the little girl’s face.
“I’m right here.” I held my good arm out. “I’ll go with you willingly, just don’t hurt them.”
“You’d surrender yourself to the justice of the Dragonwatch Guard?”
Something about the way he said that sent alarm bells off in my head.
“I’ll go with you. Just leave them alone.”
“Your word, witch,” the Windwielder said, taking the cuffs off his belt, a set of coppery manacles that looked like something out of a dungeon.
“Let the family go. I’m not giving you anything until they’re safe.”
Hassik glanced at his subordinate.
The Windwielder gave a bored look. “I have a better idea.” He yanked the wife to the ground until she disappeared into the tall corn. I heard a thump, a squeal, a growl, and then a horrible crack. I had no idea what he’d done to her, but I knew she was dead.
“No!” I screamed, running instinctively toward them. Hunter swore and tried to pull me back by the waist. Weatherby grabbed his kids, sobbing and holding them close, crying his wife’s name.
“You filthy, double-crossing Dragonspawn.” I wasn’t sure if I was talking to Hassik or the one who’d killed her.
“Pax is a little overzealous.” Hassik lifted his shoulders. “Still, there is no need for such language. Such racial epithets get a human hanged on the spot according to our laws.”
“I told you, I would surrender,” I snarled.
“And so you shall.” He signaled, the other Guardsman backed away from the family, and then Hassik flung out a fireball at the three of them.
I shouted, my right hand flying out before I could stop myself. I shoved air toward him, toward the fire. The fireball flew up and out over the cornfield, landed thirty feet away, and sent the cornstalks there up in flames.
Anger flickered across Hassik’s face. He flung out another ball of flame, and before I could stop it, it engulfed Weatherby and his children in a fiery explosion.
Horror tore into me and my stomach rolled. I pushed my hand out again, this time shoving air at the flames so that they quickly surrounded the two Guardsmen. Hassik had magic that would keep them unharmed and allow him to snuff out the flames, but doing so would slow him down.
Just as Hassik spun around and the fire died, Hunter and I ran toward the house. The two Suvia Kyans raced after us, voices vibrating with the low rumbles of their dragons. Cornstalks cracked and swooshed underfoot.
Not for the first time, I was grateful Suvia Kyans hadn’t been able to take on dragon form in a thousand years. If they could have flown, Hunter and I would have been goners.
I flung my right hand out behind me. What should have been a solid wall of air came out as sputtering gusts and flickers of light, but Hassik shouted and bodies fell.
“Run, Hunter!” I shouted.
At the back of the farmhouse, we raced to the door. Hunter flung it open and we scrambled inside. The two Dragonlords barreled at us, Hassik flinging fire at the door. Before the fire hit, I pushed air at the door and it barely swung closed in time.
“You make this harder on yourself, woman. I will have you and your dog boy drawn and quartered while your father watches!”
I sent the chair Weatherby’s wife had been sitting in sliding across the room, jamming the backrest under the doorknob just as Hassik tried to kick it in.
“Hunter, go!” I threw my vehicle’s keys to him. “Get to the Blazer!”
He headed for the front door. I followed, but stopped across the room long enough to throw the Weatherby’s heavy table toward the back entrance. The table slid into the chair, flattening it to the door. I upended it, using it as a barricade. Weakness from the use of so much magic sent me to my knees, my head swimming.
I heard Hassik’s roar, rich and filled with hate.
“Let’s burn the bitch.”
Shit!
This house was all wooden walls and hardwood floors. If I got caught in here when it went up, I’d be as dead as the Weatherbys, roasted alive in an instant.
Hunter’s arms slid around me, pulling me to my feet. He half pushed, half carried me through the front door and onto the lawn.
Flames roared, and the house went up with a boom. “Fuck me.” Hunter scooped me up into his arms, pain ripped through my shoulder, and I screamed.
“Sorry.” His long legs ate up the distance to the Blazer, his strides inhumanly swift.
Truthfully, I hated all Dragonlords, but I really, really, hated Firewalkers.
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Before he reached the vehicle, I flung a weak hand out and the door unlocked and sprang open. He slid me inside, shut the door, leaped over the top of the Blazer in a single bound, and jumped inside.
Before Hunter even had the key in the ignition, I made a turning motion at it. The engine roared to life. I flung my hand at the gearshift; the stick slid back, putting the vehicle into drive. I pushed my palm at the gas pedal until it slammed down and shot the vehicle out of the drive for the road.
“Jesus,” Hunter stared at the pedals operating on their own.
“Drive,” I said.
Hunter took over the gas and threw the truck forward at full speed just as Hassik and Pax came racing around the house toward the drive.
When the voices of the Dragonlords finally faded, I sat back, heart beating a tattoo into my chest. My breathing sawed in and out. I was drenched in a cold sweat. Blood had soaked through Hunter’s padding, running down my back and chest until my shirt stuck to my skin. I looked under the pad at my shoulder. The bleeding had stopped; the moisture flooding my shirt was just sweat. The wound seemed to be fading, like it was self-healing. The wound should have been gone by now. My accelerated healing was working slower than usual.
“Shit. That was close,” Hunter threw a look back down the road. “Helena, are you all right?” he demanded. He looked over at my shoulder, eyes widening. “No way is that wound healed already.”
I’d never heard him sound so shocked. Even shifter healing like his didn’t work that fast on a wound as severe as mine.
I put my head back, dropping my crossbow to the floor of the truck. If the wound was healing so fast, why did I feel like my blood had turned to ice? Dizziness and lethargy washed over me in a wave. I swallowed hard.
“You look like shit. I’m taking you to a hospital.” Hunter sounded livid.
“No,” I snapped. He glanced sidelong at me. “No doctors. Can’t leave that kind of trail for the Dragonwatch to follow.”
His ash-blond brows winged down. A million questions stormed through his eyes. It was easy to imagine what some of them were. How long had I been wanted by the Dragonwatch? How had they found out I was a witch? Did I know Hassik the way he seemed to know me? And so many others.
“How the fuck do you treat a Demon Wolf bite? Is it like a werewolf bite?”
“I don’t know.” I lifted my shoulders when he stared at me. “There isn’t much on record about anyone having been bitten by a wolf like Rakar.” I swallowed, throat parched. “My father has a few reports, but they’re fragmented and not all are reliable. For the most part, we’ll have to treat this like a werewolf bite and hope that’s enough.”
“Is Rakar a shifter?”
“I think so. Reports…there are reports about the messenger of Shandar turning into a man. If those reports are true, he should be a shifter.”
“Which means you’ll turn into one. Become like him.”
“If we don’t stop the transformation, yes.” I can’t be his mate. I can’t be…
He ran a hand down his face, then took my hand gently in his. I hated that I was shaking, and not all from the poison chilling me.
Images raced through my mind, horrible images of me ripping out a human throat as Rakar had done with Officer Garrison. Of killing those I loved and not remembering what I’d done once I changed back.
“If this is the same as a were bite…” He paused, and I had the impression he was going over a list in his mind. “We need somewhere clean and dry. The hotter the better. We’ll clean the wound. Flush the poison.”
“You’ll need to burn the poison out of me, Hunter.” When he shot a look at me, I squeezed his hand, letting him know I could handle it and I trusted him.
“That’s a disgusting, arcane practice, and there’s no proof that it even works. I won’t burn you.”
“You have to. And then you lock me somewhere where I won’t get out, and you wait. Got it?”
“Fucking Christ.”
“Hunter. Don’t let me hurt anyone. I need you to promise me you’ll take care of it.”
He lifted my hand and pressed his lips to my knuckles, heating them. “All right. I will. I’ll take care of you.”
I managed a weak smile, my heart swelling for him.
“Where do we go?” He headed out of Allentown, looking at me for directions.
“My father has places to contain the creatures he hunts when he needs to. Cells of sorts. There’s one an hour outside of Allentown. Head west.”
“How did they know to find us there, Helena?”
I swallowed again. “I thought it was the wolf that drew them, until Hassik said, what was it? ‘He warned us you were as stubborn as your father.’”
“He, who?”
I shook my head.
“Who knew you were coming here? I mean, to Allentown, to deal with Rakar?”
“No one. Except you and Chief Lawson.”
“Lawson? The Chief of the Allentown PD?” His grip tightened on the wheel.
I nodded. God, my head pounded, almost as bad as my shoulder throbbed. Alarm registered on his face, and I realized what he thought.
“Lawson wouldn’t have told them. He knows about Rakar and some of the other creatures Dad and I have taken out, but he doesn’t know about them. Besides, he’s been Dad’s friend for years.”
“He doesn’t know what? That Dragonlords exist, or that they’re after you?”
I didn’t miss the accusation there. Guilt cut at me deep. “Hunter.”
“Why didn’t you tell me they were after you?”
I tried to look at him, but that made my head pound. Every part of my body was turning hot and felt dead-tired. I didn’t know why, but something bothered me about the concern in his voice.
“How long have they been after you?” he demanded when I didn’t answer.
“All my life.”
“What?” he snapped. “Why? Because you have magic? How did they know you had it that—”
“Because of my mother.” Why the hell was it getting hard to breathe? And why did it feel like my skin was on fire?
At my answer, I thought the Blazer slowed like he’d taken his foot off the gas for a moment.
“Your mother was a witch then.”
I nodded.
“Wait, is that why they took your dad and murdered your mother?” When I nodded again, he sighed. “I didn’t think Suvia Kyans lowered themselves to kidnap humans like your father. I’m sorry.”
His familiarity with the Dragonlords bothered me. Few humans called them Suvia Kyans. My father was the only one I knew who did, a habit I picked up from him.
“Do you think Hassik really knows where he is? Did he kidnap him?”
“He could have.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah.”
“I wish you had told me they were after you. If I’d known, I wouldn’t have…” He trailed off and shook his head. Alarm worked its way up my spine, an icy trickle.
“You wouldn’t have what?”
He shook his head and gunned the gas.
“Hunter.”
“Let’s just get you somewhere safe.”
He’d say nothing more no matter how hard I pressed him.
Would I turn into a bloodthirsty Demon Wolf before I ever had a chance to tell him how I felt? Before I found my father and saved him from the Dragonspawn who had him?
Had Hassik been one of the Dragonlords who kidnapped my dad? Who’d killed my mother? Had he done those things because of me?
My head swam, vision blurring. I fought back the sleep that threatened to pull me under.
“Helena, don’t sleep. Stay with me.” Hunter shook my shoulder.
My eyes felt so heavy, head felt so light.
“Helena.” His voice rose, and he shook me harder. “Helena. Fuck, no, stay with me. Helena…”
Blackness enveloped me.
Chapter 3
Breaking Rules
Ontario Canada, July 2004
The first time I saw a Dragonlord, I was twelve.
That was also the year my father made one of the biggest mistakes either of us would ever make. It was the year he tried to settle us, to put down roots and give me a real home.
For twelve years, my father had been hunting every manner of evil being, most of them undead or were-creatures linked to Shandar. Low-level inhabitants of the Dark Realm that had escaped through fissures in the gateway between worlds. On Earth, they hunted and tortured human prey or drained their life force. Long-established rules were all that kept us safe. Until one night a werewolf my father had contained, one who’d become a follower of Shandar, escaped its confinement and nearly ripped Dad’s head off.
As he’d told me later, the thought of leaving me orphaned had been all that saved his life. He’d killed the were, but he’d also made himself a promise. From this point on, his life as a monster hunter was over.
I’d always suspected there was more to the story than what he’d told me. After all this time, Dad was used to deadly encounters, and we’d always agreed that protecting others was what he did, it was who he was. I’d never seen him so affected by a brush with evil, and especially not one as comparatively weak as a Shandarian werewolf.
Whatever the case, he’d hung up his crossbow, and a week later, bought a farm on a large stretch of land out past Caledon, Ontario. Fifteen minutes from Brampton, the farm sat in the middle of nothing, in the ass end of nowhere. The nearest neighbors’ farms were dots in the distance.
In dad’s eyes, no one would find us in a place this isolated. At last, there would be no more running. No more monsters, no more fear.
I hated it.
“Dad.” I picked up the last grocery bag from the back of the Blazer and followed him into the farmhouse. “Please tell me again why we’re all the way out here.”
My father flashed me a grin over his shoulder. “We’ve been here almost a week, and you’ve given up on this place already?”
“I gave up on this place five minutes after we got here.” I stepped around the pile of boxes still stacked by the door and set the bag down on the scuffed, second-hand dining room table. “There’s nothing out here.”
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