by Annie Bellet
I clung to my sword like the lifeline it was and stabbed that hell serpent right in its stupid face.
The snake convulsed, throwing me free of its mouth. I landed hard on the grass and stayed there, in far too much pain to want to move. From my sideways position, I watched the serpent writhe and twist.
Then, with a last terrible convulsion, it dropped into a gold and silver heap, unmoving.
I closed my eyes and let the sword fall from my hand. I knew I should do something about the gaping hole in my guts that was currently gushing blood, but I couldn’t bring myself to care. It would heal or it wouldn’t. At least my blood was warm.
“Lucy!” A man’s voice lifted me out of the dark fog of pain. “Shucks, I forgot about her.”
“Lucy can’t come to the phone right now,” I babbled. “She’s dead.”
“I see that,” Ash said. His face swam into my red-flecked vision. He looked different, but my pain-addled mind wouldn’t tell me what had changed. “You really should stop getting hurt like this.”
“Go fuck yourself,” I said. His face started to double, his eyes crossing, and the stars over his head grew brighter.
Ash laughed. He picked up my sword and looked it over. “Behave,” he said as it started to glow more brightly. The sword dimmed and turned back into a dagger. He slid it into the sheath at my waist.
“Let’s get you somewhere and take a look at this cut, hmm?” He lifted me up.
Darkness swirled over my eyes. I reached for unconsciousness like I would greet the embrace of a long-lost friend. Here I was again, being carried away from a fight by a man. Same bat time. Same bat station. Nothing changes.
“Alek,” I whispered. His hands were on my cheek, warm and familiar. I tried to reach for him, but the dream faded away before I could even grasp its memory. Instead, memory of my fight with the snake flooded back into my head. There was a bed under me and while my belly still felt like it was on fire, the flames were at least dying down. Wherever I was, I was warm and not dead. It’s the little things in life, I was learning.
“Normally I’d be insulted to be called another man’s name,” Ash said from somewhere beside me. “But I have a feeling this is somebody special.”
I opened my eyes and blinked against the yellow light. When they adjusted and focused, I saw I was in a one-room log cabin. A fire crackled cheerfully in a huge stone hearth, lending the air a cozy wood-smoke scent. Ash sat on a hewn wood chair next to my bed. My dagger was in its sheath on a table just beyond him, resting next to an iron teakettle. I looked down at myself. The wound was under a flannel shirt. A Navaho-style blanket covered my legs.
“Hi,” I said, looking back at Ash.
He looked like he had in my vision, only now his hair was long and pulled into two braids. His face was only slightly lined, looking forties instead of seventies, and his skin had lost is dull brown tone, looking more reddish and healthy. Red flecks burned in his eyes.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
“Like I got bit by a giant fucking snake,” I said. “What was that? Where did you go?”
“That was Lucy. I forgot I left her to guard my heart.”
“Your heart?” I blinked at him.
“I had to go get it, so I could remember. So I could be whole. Can’t help my kid if I can barely remember I have one, am I right?” He grinned at me.
“You didn’t know you had one,” I pointed out.
“Of course I did. I knew about you the moment your cells started splitting inside your mom.”
“That’s creepy,” I muttered. More loudly I asked, “If you knew about me, why didn’t you ever come see me? I didn’t know about you.”
“I was bending the rules just being here. You were safe enough where you were. I knew you’d need me later, though. So I buried my heart to keep inside the Oath and went somewhere safe to take a nap. The part of me that knew about you wasn’t able to travel with me. But see? It all worked out.” He shrugged and patted my shoulder gently.
“I think I hate you a little,” I said, too tired and hurt to keep from saying stupid things aloud.
“Fair enough,” he said. He rose and went to the table. He flipped over a small ceramic cup and poured an amber liquid into it.
“What are these rules? What oath? What are you?” I asked. I tried to sit up as he came back over and handed me the cup. My abs, which still had a hole in them from what I could tell, protested with a sharp stab of white-hot pain. Lying down was good. I decided to do that some more.
“We’ll get to that,” he said. “You need to heal. When you wake up, come outside.”
“I don’t have time to heal,” I said. I sniffed the tea. It seemed safe enough, some kind of chamomile and mint medley. Taking a sip, I looked at my father. “I have to regain my magic,” I said. “People I love are depending on it. They don’t have time for me to rest.”
“They have time,” Ash said. His face grew fuzzy. He took the cup from me as my eyes closed of their own volition.
“Drug me?” I slurred.
“Good night, Jade,” he said. It was the last thing I heard before my dreams reclaimed me.
I awoke feeling more rested than I had in weeks. I was alone in the cabin. Sunlight shone in through two windows set high in the far wall. I unbuttoned the flannel shirt. My belly had a nasty puckered scar on it, but the flesh was fading from pink to brown. When I moved, I felt no pain. My ankle took my weight without protest.
My shoes were by the single door. I tugged them on, lacing them quickly. Ash had said to come outside and find him when I awoke. I had no idea how long I’d slept, but I feared it had been more than a single night, judging by how much my wounds had healed. Who knew what danger Alek and my friends were in or how close Samir was to finding and hurting them.
Who knew if Harper’s time had run out?
I thought about Kira’s words as I finished tying my shoes and stood up. Trust. Yeah, that. My friends weren’t helpless. They were shifters, strong and powerful. And they were gamers. Intelligent, used to thinking on their feet. They’d come through the latest Samir shit with me, at my side nearly every step. They had home territory advantage and a freaking druid protecting them.
Alek was one of the smartest people I’d ever met. Great with a gun, a brilliant fighter, and the most powerful shifter I’d ever seen. He’d protected me as many times as I had saved his ass.
Trust. I could do that. For a little while. They needed me, yes. But Ash had been right. They needed me whole and strong. They needed the sorceress. And they needed me to trust that they could handle shit, trust that they could help.
Amazing how much clearer things looked when I’d had a good night of sleep, eh?
I took a deep breath and opened the door.
Beyond the cabin was a meadow. Golden grass, as though it was high summer, stretched as far as my eye could see. A white sun burned high above in a painfully blue sky. I walked out into the meadow, turning in a circle, looking for Ash.
Then, in the distance, some of the golden grass detached itself. A huge serpent-like creature rose up. No, not a serpent. A dragon. I held my ground as it approached, undulating through the grass.
“Morning,” its voice boomed, its tone reminiscent of Ash’s.
“Ash?” I said.
“In the flesh,” he said. The dragon chuckled, the sound rippling over me like a physical force. His breath smelled like fresh-baked bread.
I stared up at him. He was more of an Asian-style dragon than a European one. His body was long and almost serpent-like, but with a thick mane that rippled in the breeze and ran the whole extent of his thirty-or-forty-foot spine. He had spindly arms with three clawed fingers and a clawed thumb. I saw no legs because of the length of the grass, but he had haunches, so I guessed he had some down his length, hidden from my view.
His head was wide, with a long jaw somewhat like a wolf’s. Long tendrils trailed off his chin like a segmented beard. His forward-facing eyes glinted, dark a
s a night sky but with flecks of ruby fire in them instead of stars.
“You’re a freaking dragon,” I said.
“Indeed.” He grinned at me, which was unnerving given the amount of teeth he had. “I figured I’d just show you. Most people don’t believe in dragons anymore.”
I just nodded, still staring up at him. Then it hit me.
The bomb that the rogue Justice Eva had set. Alek saying he’d seen a dragon in the flames. The feeling of total strength and ingrained knowledge that fire wouldn’t hurt me when I’d fought the elemental destroying my game store.
“I’m a half-dragon?” I said softly. I was going to have to add a new template to my character sheet.
“No, don’t be ridiculous,” Ash said. He snorted, intensifying the fresh bread smell in the air.
“Oh,” I said. I looked at my feet, embarrassed that I’d assumed.
“There’s no half about it,” he added. “You are completely dragon.”
“Um.” I looked back up at him. “I can’t turn into a dragon. I think I could have noticed.”
“Your powers have been locked away. I had to do it when you were a baby. It is technically breaking the Oath for me to have a child.”
“What oath? You keep mentioning this.” I dug my foot into the grass. “Can we sit? Staring up at you is kind of painful. The sun is really bright.”
“Oh, sorry,” Ash said. In a blink he was human again. He dropped down into the grass and sat cross-legged.
I joined him, resting my hands on my knees.
“Story time,” Ash said. “I’ll make this as brief as I can. Many thousands of years ago, magic was at its peak. Gods and creatures that are now legend, like dragons, roamed the Earth. It was pretty much a sucky time for humanity, however. Deities meddling in their lives all the time. Things with teeth and claws and magic roaming around murdering them for food or sport. Not a good era to be born mortal.”
I thought about the myths I’d studied in school. I could see his point. The gods had been real dicks in most of those stories.
“Okay,” I said.
“So many of us banded together. A group of gods and other immortals. We created the Oath and sealed away the demons and those gods and their ilk who stood against us. Humanity’s time was rising, magic shrinking. We knew it was time to follow our ancestors and go into the lands beyond the stars.”
“So you just left?” I said. “But not all of you. What about shifters and the fey, things like that?” I also thought about Brie, who was really like six goddesses sharing a single body.
“Not all the gods left. Some stayed to diminish, to guard the world from what magic was left to it. Many of the fey folk retreated to their own kingdoms, though some also stayed. They were not bound by the Oath, being lesser creatures. Same with the shifter folk. They were even rarer before than they are now.”
“You stayed,” I said. It was half a question, half a statement.
“No,” Ash said. “I left, choosing to guard a seal and made a life in the Veil. But two thousand or so years ago now the seal that I watched over in the otherworld cracked open, and I came through, curious what had done it.”
“And?” I said. I leaned forward, wrapped up in story time.
He shook his head with a sigh. “I don’t know. But magic has been creeping back into the world drip by drip.”
“So you had a kid?” I prompted. “On purpose?”
“There are prophecies older than I am,” he said, smiling at me. His smile was sad somehow, and did not touch his dark, red-flecked eyes. “Some speak of a child born outside the Oath to a dragon and a crow.”
Prophecies? About me? Um, yeah. Do not want.
“Let me guess, I’ll bring balance to the Force?” I said, making a face at him.
“Not exactly, Jade Skywalker.” He rolled his eyes, making a face right back at me. “It’s unclear what this child will do, since clarity and prophecy are antithetical to each other, but I couldn’t resist the opportunity.”
“Wait, you’ve seen Star Wars? I thought you were asleep in prison for like forty years?”
He raised his hands in a “what can you do” gesture and said, “They had Netflix.”
Maybe nerd was genetic. I couldn’t resist a smile.
“So,” he said after a moment. Story time was apparently over, though I had a lot of questions. Questions that would have to wait. “What’s your story?”
I took a deep breath. I’d come so far for his help. He deserved the truth, all of it, if he wanted.
“Where should I start?” I asked.
“At the beginning. Childhood should be early enough, I think.”
I thought about that for a minute and gathered my memories along with my courage. Then I told him everything, spilling my guts and leaving out pretty much nothing. I had a suspicion that he knew at least some of it already.
The sun was dropping to the other side of the sky by the time I finished.
“That’s where things stand. My friends are hiding out in the wilderness. My best friend is probably being tortured or has been killed by my evil ex, and I’m totally without magic.” I flexed my fingers, letting blood flow back into them. Apparently I’d been making tight fists through the last part of my tale. My hands hurt almost as much as my heart.
“Then I had better start training you,” Ash said. “I will show you how to unlock your dragon side. When you do that, your magic should return stronger than it has ever been.”
“How long will that take?” I looked up at the sky, wondering how long I’d been away from my friends already.
“If you are a quick study, maybe two months? Just unlocking your power won’t be enough if you can’t control it properly. It would be far too dangerous to unleash an immature dragon on the world.”
“Two months?” I jumped to my feet. “Fuck no. I can’t take two months. I don’t have that kind of time. Two days might make the difference between my friends living and dying. It could already be too damn late.”
“Where do you think you are?” Ash rose gracefully to his feet.
“Not in Kansas anymore?” I said, still upset. I looked around, suspecting a trick question. “Or Oregon? It doesn’t feel like winter here.”
“You aren’t anywhere, not really. We’re in a pocket of the Veil. This isn’t Earth, kiddo. Time won’t pass outside at the same pace as in here. Minutes out there will feel like hours or even days here.”
I looked around again. Golden grass stretching toward a deep blue horizon, the breeze sending a shivering and unending wave through it.
“Seriously? What you are saying is that I’m in Narnia, basically,” I said. My heart stopped trying to punch its way through my chest and I unclenched my fists.
Ash threw back his head and laughed.
“More like the magical equivalent of The Matrix,” he said, his face split by a huge grin.
“You’re going to teach me to dodge bullets?” I said.
“When I’m done, you won’t have to,” he answered, not quite nailing the quote.
I let it pass, figuring he’d seen it a while ago and probably while half asleep. I’d been shot enough to realize never getting shot again was a pretty sweet plan.
“All right,” I said. I spun in a slow circle, taking in this place. Grass, sun, sky, cabin. Dragon.
I turned back to Ash and nodded. “I’m your grasshopper. Show me your dragony ways.”
Samir, you have no idea the pain and destruction coming your way, I promised silently. I will crush your face with my scaly might. Just wait, you bastard. Just you fucking wait.
But my final, much happier thought as I followed my father through the door and into his cabin was that my friends were never going to believe this. I smiled.
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Look for Magic to the Bone, the exciting seventh book in The Twenty-sided Sorceress series.
Coming in 2016.
Also by Annie Bellet:
The Gryphonpike Chronicles:
Witch Hunt
Twice Drowned Dragon
A Stone’s Throw
Dead of Knight
The Barrows (Omnibus Vol.1)
Chwedl Duology:
A Heart in Sun and Shadow
The Raven King
Pyrrh Considerable Crimes Division Series:
Avarice
Short Story Collections:
Till Human Voices Wake Us
Dusk and Shiver
Forgotten Tigers and Other Stories
About the Author:
Annie Bellet lives and writes in the Pacific NW. She is the USA Today bestselling author of the Gryphonpike Chronicles and the Twenty-Sided Sorceress series. Follow her at her website at www.anniebellet.com
Table of Contents
The Twenty-Sided Sorceress series in reading order:
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Harper #1
Chapter 3
Harper #2
Chapter 4
Harper #3
Chapter 5
Harper #4
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Alek