Rex (Dakota Kekoa Book 2)

by Rita Stradling

  Sarah looked at me, at my hands, and then she ran at Wyvern. She shouted, “The Princep is attacking the Rex. Take him down!”

  There was a bursting of wings behind Wyvern and Harrison. A screech knifed through the silence, directly as two giant eagles pounced on Harrison.

  Sarah dove onto Wyvern, seeming to cover his body with hers.

  Sophie still stood in front of the crowd of onlookers, gesturing madly. Several people screamed, some ran off away from the group that had been gathered there. As the rest of the crowd dispersed, running off toward the main area of the hotel, Sophie yelled, “Go, get out of here!”

  Harrison rolled over, hands raised with two giant eagles snapping their beaks over him.

  Wyvern buckled forward, looking like he was about to be ill and taking Sarah with him. She kept her back pressed to his back, facing the fight but blocking Wyvern from Harrison and me.

  Still running, I shoved my hand into the portal at my waist and pulled Contingency out. Halting about ten yards away, I aimed my gun at Sophie’s head and called out in a deadly calm, “Sarah, you have ten seconds to get off Wyvern or I shoot Sophie. Ten…”

  Sarah put her hands up, her gaze meeting mine. “Dakota, what are you doing?” she asked, as if surprised.

  “Five…”

  The two eagles fixed their gaze on me, tilting their heads, though their gazes looked aggressive.

  Sarah yelled, belligerently, “I can’t believe it… you’re not behind this are you? Are you working with Harrison? Are you an agent—”

  “Two, one,” I pulled back the safety.

  Sarah jumped away just as Wyvern crumpled to the floor.

  The eagles both turned to Wyvern just as Harrison reared back and came down with a lightning quick knife-hand strike on both of the eagle’s heads.

  “No Harrison!” I said way too late. “They were our witnesses!”

  “I should have let them rip out my throat?” He climbed out from the collapsed birds and grabbed Sarah by the arms.

  “No, Harrison! She’s doing the cursing!” I yelled as I shifted to Wyvern’s side, my gun still trained on Sophie.

  “I know. I smell it on Vern. But she can’t hurt me, I have no active aspects,” he growled.

  Wyvern hacked and coughed, his skin rippling, but no huge cloud of white-hot anger engulfed his soul. Even though his soul was expanding at a rapid rate, it instead seemed to sag and settle around him.

  Keeping my gun still pointed on Sophie, I leaned down and pressed the button to Wyvern’s watch to make the water charm come out and press against his skin.

  Wyvern convulsed violently, his body bowing and legs kicking out.

  “Wyvern!” I screamed, dropping my gun. I grabbed his flailing arm and locked the watch-button back into place. I scrambled onto the ground, grabbing my gun and going on one knee, and aimed it at Sophie. She had closed the distance between herself and Wyvern and me, standing within reaching distance. “Back up or I shoot!”

  She halted her course, which had obviously been at Wyvern and turned to raise her hands in the air. “Your dampener didn’t work?” her eyes widened.

  “Because… he’s not just a dracon… he’s also a dragon,” Sarah said.

  Wyvern collapsed, the pupils in his glassy eyes widened to slits slowly and his skin bubbled out. His knees burst out of his pants at odd angles. The transformation was achingly slow as his deflated soul seemed to sag even more around him, it slowly expanded over the field in the opposite direction like a giant puddle.

  A strange, sharp tugging sensation started below my ribcage, as if there was a string under my ribs that was slowly being tugged out. I covered the spot with my free hand. It wasn’t painful, just strange and uncomfortable. When I looked between Wyvern and me, there was also a shimmering line connecting us, thin as a single hair, that I had never noticed before, if it had even existed before.

  “I didn’t… I wasn’t…” Sarah whispered as if horrified.

  I turned the barrel of my gun on her. “What did you do to him?” I yelled.

  “Sarah?” Sophie said.

  Wyvern sprawled out on the ground, his wings slowly unfurling under him. His soul was a leaking balloon around him, slowly expanding.

  “Shouldn’t he be transforming?” Sophie knelt down beside him.

  “Get away from him!” The barrel of my gun shifted back to point at her head. When she didn’t move, I grazed her hand with a bullet.

  “Don’t shoot her! She’s not even part of this!” Sarah screamed, bucking and wrenching her hands around, but Harrison’s hands didn’t yield.

  “She sure looks like she’s part of this! The next one goes in your lying face unless you tell me what you did to him.” My gaze fixed on Sophie’s sharp yellow eyes.

  “I think it’s the same thing Sarah did to your sister and uncle—”

  “What is it and how do I reverse it? Is it some type of spell? Tell me!”

  “There’s no way to reverse it!” Sarah yelled.

  “Sophie, tell me or I will shoot you—”

  “Shoot me, I’m the one who did this!”

  “No, Dakota, me. I’m willing to die for my sister,” Sophie said, calmly. “I’m sure you understand.”

  “Don’t shoot her! She’s not even part of this! She doesn’t know anything!”

  “She knew you were going to attack Lorelei! She had earplugs in!”

  “She put them in because I told her to! She didn’t know anything! She tried to stop me!”

  “But in the end, she let you do it. She let you attack my little sister.”

  Sophie’s gaze was intent on mine. “I did. When I realized she was going through with her plans no matter what I said, I even helped her. Keep your gun on me.”

  “She’s lying! She didn’t know anything! She still doesn’t! Shoot me instead!”

  “Then you tell us! I don’t need a gun to kill you!” Harrison twisted Sarah’s arm violently.

  Sarah shrieked out in pain. “Torture me all you want, dracon! I believe in a world reborn, and I would die to see it!” She spat in his face.

  I crouched down over Wyvern, my body near his head. He blinked slowly, but his eyes were fixed on nothing. Wyvern’s shifting was achingly slow, a wing joint growing in definition, a claw slowly slipping free.

  “Look at him, Sophie,” I said.

  She met my gaze, her mouth parted, emotions rolling over her face and her soul.

  “I thought you didn’t want a war,” I whispered.

  “I don’t.”

  Tears splashed down from my eyes. “Well you’ll have one if you don’t tell me how to fix him… please.”

  “I don’t know—this isn’t supposed to happen.” Sarah shook her head.

  “I can tell you don’t want him to die! I can see it in your souls! Tell me! I’ll shoot you if you don’t tell me!”

  “We don’t know! This isn’t what was supposed to happen to dracons!” Sarah said.

  Alarms blared in the distance, coming closer.

  “It’s the Draconic Bureau!” Sarah said grimly.

  “Sophie, you saved my life. You saved my life when you could have dropped me onto the vampires and no one would have known… Please, do it again, save him.”

  She shook her head. “I told you. I don’t know how to save him.”

  “You believed what you said about not wanting the loss of life from war! I know you did; I saw it on your soul! You care about preserving life, about preventing war. This isn’t you! You’re caught up in Sarah’s—”

  “Human lives! We care about preserving human lives!” Sarah shouted.

  I turned on Sarah. “But you’re not too good to ally with dracons and vampires to kill me and my family? You were willing to have Teddy killed—”

  “We would never, ever, ally with vampires! Teddy died to save you. That had nothing to do with us! We would have died to save him!” Sarah yelled.

  Sophie inhaled deeply as patrol cars drove onto the lawn and surround
ed us from all sides. Sophie stood straight and brushed the grass from her legs. “I’m sorry, Dakota, I’m not going to let her be tried for treason. We’re going to take you into custody, under Section Two Forty-one for the attempted murder of Wyvern Manderson, Rex of New Anglo.”

  “You really think that my own family is going to arrest me?” I asked.

  Sophie touched her cheek. “You forget who is now in charge of your family.”

  I lowered my gun hand, moving both hands as if I was stowing the gun in the portal purse at my back. As Sophie took a step toward me, I ripped the portal purse from the back of my jeans. I dove for Wyvern, unzipping it the moment after I hit the ground on my stomach.

  I shoved the purse over one of his claws until it caught.

  Sophie tackled me, restraining me under her with my arms at my sides and my face pressed into the lawn.

  “Don’t come any closer!” I heard Harrison yell.

  Sophie let go of one of her hands on me to reach for the purse on Wyvern’s claw.

  I shifted my gun hand ever so slightly and fired. Sophie screamed and a warm wetness hit my leg. She shifted, moving just enough so I could buck her off me. Rolling over, I kicked her in the gun wound in her ankle.

  She grabbed for me, but I had rolled out of the way. Setting the safety back in place, I stowed Contingency at the small of my back.

  “Don’t move, Sophie!” A voice I recognized said from behind me. “Dakota!”

  I spun to see my uncle Glacier surrounded with other soldiers from my family. Half of them had guns trained on Harrison, who held up Sarah between them. The other half aimed at Sophie, no one aimed at me.

  “I have the right to detain her under section Two Forty-one.”

  “I’m not here as your backup. I am here because I knew my niece was in danger after I told her that you are a double-agent.”

  “You have no authority here. These two will be taken into custody for attempted murder.” Though her expression was placid, Sophie’s soul was overwhelmed with sadness and longing as she looked at my uncle. When I glanced at her ankle, it had already stopped bleeding. She wouldn’t be hobbled for long.

  “I follow my patriarch’s orders only.” Glacier gave me a meaningful look. “Reeves has ordered you taken home and—”

  Wyvern vanished.

  One minute there was a growing mass of limbs the size of a mid-sized car sprawling across the golf course lawn, the next, only my little eastern portal purse sat nestled in the grass. That strange shimmering line between us did not vanish, it instead changed its direction to lead straight down to the ground.

  I looked back up to my uncle Glacier.

  He shook his head ever so slightly. “Do not even think about it. That’s an order Dakota!”

  “I’m suspended from taking orders!” I dove for the purse. A second later, three bodies smacked into mine, pining me to the ground.

  When one of my not-so-well-known uncles and cousin soldiers wrested me into showing both my hands, Glacier looked at my closed mouth where I had already shoved the purse in, sticking my tongue through the portal.

  I looked up at Glacier, seeing the pure terror wafting off his soul as he shoved his fingers into the sides of my jaw. His soul was a solar flare of fear; I’d never seen so much fear condensed into one place before. His thumbs dug into the sides of my face.

  Even though I was sure I was going to have two perfect bruises, I locked my jaw.

  “Damn it, Dakota!”

  I straightened my lips into a sort-of smile. I couldn’t help it; I’d never heard Glacier swear before in my entire life.

  “Don’t do this! At least let me go with you!” he shouted in my face.

  I shook my head, sudden tears coursing down my face. My last thought was, ‘oh gods, I hope Wyvern cleared a path for me,’ as my body was suddenly stretched like a noodle and pulled through the portal.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  I remember the day my grandfather gave me the portal purse. I’d only been working for him for about a year, though I’d already been on several missions.

  “A portal, like the ring?” I’d asked as my fingers just barely brushed against the material. The purse sat on my knee.

  We’d been sitting in my grandfather’s private hearth room. Bobby snored from his seat next to the fire, while Glacier sat stoically in the seat beside him, his profile outlined in fire.

  I sat beside my grandfather on a long leather couch, my head on his shoulder as I looked at the portal purse.

  “No, this portal is very different and quite a bit more dangerous than the ring. This is a portal to the Dragon Kingdoms. Deep below your great-grandfather’s castle, he’s created a couple stone boxes for me to have portals to. If you don’t pull your hand out quickly enough, you’ll be pulled into the stone box.”

  “A box? Like, I’ll be crunched up into a shoe box.”

  “No. What a dragon would consider a box. Smaller than this room, but bigger than the inside of your uncle’s van.”

  “And I’ll die?” I asked.

  His arm tightened around my shoulders and “No, my darling granddaughter, you will not die, but you might wish you did. If you are ever pulled through, you must follow my instructions exactly.” And, for the next couple hours, while the fire burned and my uncle snored, my grandfather told me what to do if I was ever stupid enough to get myself pulled through the portal into the Dragon Kingdoms.

  Moving through the portal took less than an instant, though I’d felt as if I’d been stretched on into eternity in that moment. It hit me like a sharp blazing heat that vanished a moment later. Though where I had landed was almost just as hot.

  I’d landed in a heap with warm scaly skin on all sides of me. The area was completely pitch black.

  I spat out the material still in my mouth “Score,” I whispered. I had no idea that the portal would come along for the journey. But, as the portal only led here, I zipped it up and shoved it into my bra.

  When I felt around, on one side, stone hit my fingertips, on all other sides my fingers found Wyvern’s slowly expanding body.

  “Umph, obviously, that didn’t work,” I whispered as I attempted to push myself through Wyvern’s limbs. Something sharp scraped along my arm as I dragged myself up his reptilian body. His body expanded some more, wedging my body against the stone. I cried out, pushing back his limbs as best I could.

  Dragon scales were stronger than stone, I knew that, but I was positive in that moment that Wyvern’s expanding body would crush me before it broke through the stone box.

  Pushing down on what I thought was his wing joint, I climbed over and slipped down what I was pretty sure was the not-completely transformed side of his neck. I was upside down, and pinned to the wall by his body. When he expanded once more, I took what I knew might be my last deep inhale and pushed my body under Wyvern’s neck. The weight on me threatened to shatter every one of my bones. My hand moved back and forth slowly over the stone beneath Wyvern, feeling for the switch that would open the portal out but it wasn’t there.

  I screamed as he expanded more, feeling my body flattening into the wall.

  A sudden booming ripped through the air as the box around me shook. There was another loud crash, and then suddenly, I could breathe again. Wyvern’s body was still crushing me into the wall, but I had enough space to breathe. There were a couple extremely loud grunts, then Wyvern’s body slipped away from mine.

  My hands hit the stone behind me as I gasped for air. A burst of light filled the space, illuminating the jagged, destroyed walls of the stone box. Three feet ahead to my right, a large switch sat in its ‘down’ position. Beside the switch, the wall had been ripped away leaving a giant gaping hole across one entire wall and parts of every wall adjoining it.

  I took as deep of an inhale as I could manage, then yelled, “I claim protection over him!”

  A claw wrapped around the broken shard of one wall, it’s reddish-brown scales gleaming in the firelight. A moment later, a
large brown-scaled head lowered in profile so one gleaming red eye looked straight at me.

  I sat up, noticing that I was bleeding all over my legs and arms. My clothing was pretty much rags now. I pulled my hair behind my ears, waved at the gigantic dragon. “Hi there, great-grandfather… I’m Dakota.” My voice shook as the intensity of his soul rolled over me.

  Spending all this time with Wyvern had helped me adjust to immense souls, but being in the presence of a full dragon’s soul still attempted to shatter my mind for a few long seconds as he stayed there, regarding me.

  My great-grandfather Pax huffed out a stream of hot air that hit my face and lifted his head away from the hole.

  “Okay.” Getting to my feet, I slowly climbed over the deep divots in the stone, then over the piles of rubble around the outside of the stone box.

  The large chamber had a dry heat to it. Though we lived in one of the warmest areas of the surface, our heat was wet and humid. This heat was dry as your mouth gets from standing too close to a fire for too long.

  Wyvern wasn’t far from the destroyed entrance, lying prostrate on a bed of twinkling gems. He continued to expand in a slow, incremental unfurling.

  Crouched over for balance, I climbed over the uneven floor to him. Kneeling by his head, I held my hand over his long slit of a nostril. The barest breeze moved into my palm.

  That strange constant pulling sensation was stronger now, and that shimmering line looked as if it pulled taut.

  A moment after the feel of the immensity of my great-grandfather’s soul hit me, just suddenly blinking into existence from nowhere, a voice drawled, “I heard you liked to get yourself into trouble, but locking yourself in a stone box with a transforming dragon? That’s something even I would not do.”

  “I made a… miscalculation, but I came because I desperately need help.” I looked up to find my great-grandfather standing on the side of the large pile of gems. He leaned against the wall, regarding me, a green velvet waistcoat buttoned to his collar. Large, bulbous green pants came down and tucked in over the knee. What I could only assume was thick brown tights covered the rest of his legs. White ruffles spread out around his neck and wrists, contrasting with the red-amber hue of his skin.