Flying Through Fire (Dark Desires)

by Nina Croft

  He shook himself. The shuttle was still between him and the two attacking dragons. One more blast and she would burn. He could sense Saffira’s pain and her fear—and her determination.

  The closer dragon opened his jaws wide, showing a gaping cavern. Thorne swooped around but knew he wouldn’t make it on time. She was going to die.

  No!

  He stopped abruptly, focused all his love of Saffira, his yearning to see Candace once more, his deep-rooted need to save the goddamn world. And this creature in front of him meant to stop all that. How the fuck dare he? The words roared in his head, blasting down the last of the bonds that secured his powers inside.

  Almost instantaneously the dragon erupted in a ball of flames. The sky was on fire, burning crimson and orange all around him, and Thorne fed from the conflagration.

  Euphoria swept through him, and the power ballooned, grew until he thought it might encompass the whole universe, tear apart the fabric of the world. He was all powerful. He flexed his wings and flew through the flames, but instead of burning, he absorbed their heat and it fed the force inside him.

  He was flying through fire, and he threw back his head and roared.

  “Call it back.” The words whispered in his mind, a cool voice of reason, piercing the red haze that wrapped him.

  “Call it back. Or you will destroy everything.”

  He heard the voice clear in his head. But he wasn’t sure he could call the power back now. Wasn’t even sure he wanted to.

  A vision flashed in his mind—Candy—and a faint flicker of need broke through.

  “Imagine it returning home. Draw it back into you. Will it, and it shall be so.”

  As though the door swung open in his mind, the power surged back in.

  “Now go.”

  He searched around for the source of the voice in his head but saw nothing. Suddenly, the strength went out of him, and he was drowning in a wave of exhaustion that left him reeling.

  The second dragon had come to a halt a little distance away and was focused on him. Did it sense his exhaustion?

  Did it know if it attacked now, he had nothing?

  “Saffira. A wormhole.”

  “Yes.” She sounded dazed.

  “Quickly.”

  He forced his wings to move, a lethargic flap that closed the distance between him and the shuttle. A ripple was forming in space, black on black, against the smoky nothingness.

  He landed on the hull of the shuttle, used his last strength to grip on tight. There was no time to get inside; he could sense the intent of the second dragon.

  The hole took shape, a slash in reality, the internal walls glowing with light, and the shuttle hurtled toward it while it still formed. They were going to make it.

  He’d done it.

  He clung to the blaster shields as the shuttle breached the entrance to the wormhole and reality shifted. At the last minute, he glanced back and swore. But too late. He got a final glimpse of a second shuttle as it hurtled toward the remaining dragon, and beyond it, something dark opening up amid what remained of the smoke and fire.

  He reached out with his last remaining strength. “Candy.”

  Then the wormhole closed behind them and they were gone.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Holy Meridian.

  Thorne had been about to die. Candy had been sure of it, and she’d come out of stealth, not knowing why—she hadn’t exactly been thinking rationally. Maybe she hoped she could distract them.

  Something. Anything.

  Then the closest of the dragons had erupted into a ball of flames, and for a few seconds she’d lost control of her shuttle as some sort of power wave ricocheted through space. The whole world was on fire, but through the flames she could make out Thorne, unaffected by the heat, soaring through the inferno.

  She managed to get control and did a rapid check of the systems. The stealth was down, which was a bummer, but everything else appeared to be functioning. She set a course toward the other shuttle. Through the viewer, she could see Thorne had landed and was clinging to the other craft. There was still one more dragon, but it hovered at a distance.

  She stabbed her finger on the comm button, but got no answer from Saffira. Either the systems were still out, or she was being ignored. They’d see her in a moment. She wasn’t goddamn invisible. But she might as well have been.

  She headed toward them, aiming to get between Saffira’s shuttle, which looked like it had sustained considerable damage, and the remaining dragon. Would Thorne be able to take out this one as well? She had no clue what he had done, but she was sure he’d done something. No exploding heads, but a fireball of a dragon was quite effective.

  Wow.

  One more to go.

  She’d been focused on the dragon, but something drew her eyes away and into space, and she stared as the black on black tear rippled across the sky.

  A wormhole.

  They were going to get to safety. Without her.

  Heart racing, she changed her course and headed toward the hole. She wanted that wormhole with a need she could almost taste. But even as she forced the shuttle’s speed to maximum, futility consumed her. She was too far away.

  Saffira and Thorne were inside now. They hadn’t even noticed her, and the edges of the wormhole were already folding in on themselves. At the last moment, she swore Thorne glanced back. She heard him in her head.

  “Candy.”

  But by the time she got to where the wormhole had been, it was gone, only a faint hint of luminescence remaining.

  Where was Thorne now?

  When was he?

  Would she ever see him again? Saffira’s control of her destination wasn’t exactly reliable under the best of circumstances.

  She slowed the shuttle, brought it to a halt, sat for a moment. What next? She didn’t have a lot of choice. She would head back to the Blood Hunter. After all, she couldn’t follow wherever Thorne had gone.

  A little twinge of…resentment poked at her insides.

  Candy to the rescue.

  Hah.

  A whole lot of good that had done. A waste of fucking energy. She might as well have watched the show from the comfort of the bridge with everyone else. She’d always thought she was special, being a werewolf, but among these people, she was useless.

  God, she was a miserable bitch.

  But she’d wanted to save him.

  She was coming down from the high—or was it a low?—that feeling of imminent death. She closed her eyes and let the knowledge that somewhere Thorne was—probably—safe, wash through her. And he’d saved Saffira so he wasn’t going to go all broody-Thorne again.

  Plus, he could kill dragons, so maybe, just maybe, they weren’t all going to die.

  She smiled, then switched on the engine and turned the shuttle around.

  Holy freaking Meridian.

  How the hell had she forgotten the dragon? For a second, she stared at the monitor. She’d never seen one this close, so close she could make out the individual scales. It—or rather he; Saffira had told her all living dragons were male—was a pale gold color, his eyes the vivid purple of the Collective. He was beautiful in a savage, really scary sort of way, lean and sinuous, framed by golden wings.

  And he looked…pissed. She wasn’t a mind reader, but she could sense the fury radiating from the creature. Or maybe it was the twitching of the wing tips. Thorne’s wings did the same thing when he was annoyed. This one clearly wasn’t happy. But then, he had just seen his buddy go up in a fireball and his target get away.

  It didn’t seem fair that she should have to deal with the fallout.

  The shuttle was too small; it wouldn’t last one blast of dragon fire, certainly not this close. Maybe a few laser shots would discourage him.

  A movement from the screen drew back her gaze. The thing was rearing back, his jaws opening, smoke curling from the black nostrils. Her hand was only halfway to the laser button, she slammed it down…and nothing happened.<
br />
  Little tendrils of flame leaked from the dragon’s open mouth. She swallowed. She didn’t want to die.

  She banged her fist on the console a few times, but nothing. The comm unit was dead, so no calling for help. Besides, who would get here in time? It was situations like these where she really wished she was telepathic.

  But there was something else materializing in the smoky denseness behind the dragon. A darkness forming where the first dragon had exploded. A huge pulsating blackness, as though the fire and light was being sucked out of the universe.

  And it was expanding, creating a backdrop to the golden dragon so it stood out, stark against the darkness. Then there was a huge explosion and the dragon reared backward, the great wings spread as he flapped frantically, trying to gain purchase on nothing. He was dragged toward the hole, his speed increasing, his claws clenched. He opened his mouth in a silent roar. As he breached the hole, a flash of bright white light lit up the gaping maw, and then the dragon was gone.

  She released her breath on a sigh.

  For long moments, she stared at the monitor. The shuttle was moving. Slowly at first, but gaining speed. She was being sucked into that darkness. She smashed her hands down on the console, hitting reverse, but the engine refused to respond, and the pull was getting stronger.

  She waited for the terror to engulf her, as the darkness soon would, but her mind remained clear. Time seemed to slow. But however slow, no way was she going to get away from that thing in a damaged shuttle. She tore her gaze from the monitor to the console, her hand reaching out to the blaster control.

  Did it even still work?

  Could you blast a black hole?

  And where the hell had it come from? She would swear there had been nothing there before. Had Saffira somehow brought it into being?

  Shit.

  She still didn’t want to die. She wanted to live forever with Thorne, she wanted to make love, and to explore the universe with him. A wave of sadness for all that would never be washed through her. His image flashed in her mind, and she held on to it tight, wanting his face to be the last thing she saw.

  The proximity alarms went off, but she hardly noticed, frozen in place, her gaze transfixed by the black hole that now filled the screen.

  Would it hurt?

  Would there be anything on the other side?

  Her speed increased, pushing her back against the seat, shoving the air from her lungs. Her heart beat fast, and magic tingled in the air. Her wolf was being dragged to the surface by the knowledge of her own death. But her wolf couldn’t save her this time.

  She had a strange inkling that nothing could save her.

  Almost there.

  It felt as though the thing was pulling at her very mind, while wolf clawed at her insides, desperate to get free.

  Now the shuttle was racing through nothingness, and it was as if time stood still. They were past the entrance and into the very darkness. Her breath caught, and she held it in tight.

  Something hit the shuttle; it lurched to the side, and she was almost thrown from her seat. Then she was rolling as though in the grip of some giant hand, dragged backward, then upside down, so she crashed to the ceiling of the shuttle and then back to the floor.

  No harness—why the hell hadn’t she fastened her harness?

  The ship was still moving, but slowly, and the movement had a strange almost undulating feel.

  Blowing out her breath, she pushed onto her elbows, wincing as sharp pain stabbed her in the ribs. The shuttle had no window, but there was a manual viewer that allowed her to see into space. She hobbled over to the side, one arm gripped around her chest to hold her ribs in place, and unscrewed the cap then placed her eye to the viewer.

  What the…?

  She looked again, her brows drawing together.

  Right.

  What were the chances she had banged her head really hard and she was hallucinating? Probably low. Which meant her shuttle was clutched in the talons of the biggest mother-fucking dragon she had ever seen.

  It wasn’t the golden beast who had nearly incinerated her, but black, gleaming with deep purple iridescent lights. Now she could see the underside of the huge wings as they flapped, speeding them along through space.

  This couldn’t be real.

  At that moment the shuttle rolled again, her head smashing into the console, and for a few seconds everything went black. When she came to, she was shifting, an uncontrollable shift as wolf screamed for release. Her bones snapped, her jaw lengthened, she tried to scream as pain engulfed her, but her vocal cords were gone.

  Something wasn’t right.

  A pressure was building in her brain, a darkness. She could no longer see. Was this how dying felt?

  Then the pressure imploded. Her head filled with a white light, and then nothing.

  …

  By the time the wormhole spat them out the other end, Thorne had frozen in place. They spiraled a few times before the shuttle slowed and finally halted, floating lethargically in space.

  He’d expected the trip to be a short one. Time in a wormhole was usually indicative of distance or time travelled, and he hadn’t wanted to go far.

  But when the hell did he get what he wanted?

  Throughout the journey, he’d been haunted by that last glimpse of Candy’s tiny shuttle almost overshadowed by the dragon.

  Maybe he wouldn’t attack. There was no reason to. Candy would be okay. She’d see they’d gone and take herself out of there and back to the Blood Hunter. He had absolutely no reason to worry.

  So why was he?

  She was so goddamned impetuous. Why couldn’t she have waited where he left her?

  After prying his fingers free from the blaster shield, he pushed himself to his feet. He tottered and spread his wings for balance, then shuffled across the top of the shuttle to the airlock. It opened as he got there, and he dropped down inside, pulling it closed behind him.

  As the outer door sealed, the inner opened and he climbed down the ladder and into the main body of the shuttle. She was a big one, with seats around the outside, as well as a row behind the pilot and copilot’s chairs, and a separate room for sleeping.

  Saffira stood in the middle of the main cabin, spine straight, shoulders tense, biting her lip. Her face was pale, and she didn’t look particularly happy considering he had just saved her life.

  A frown tugged at his lips, but he didn’t say anything. Instead, he crossed to the food dispenser in the corner of the room and procured himself a hot drink. Wrapping his icy cold fingers around the cup, he sank into the nearest chair, stretched his legs out, and drank in silence.

  Shivers ran through him, his hand holding the cup shook, and his brain was fuzzy. He rubbed at his forehead, trying to ease the dull ache.

  He’d killed one of them.

  That was momentous.

  But he couldn’t get up any real emotion.

  “You should have let me do it.”

  Saffira spoke, and he raised his head from his contemplation of his boots. “What?”

  “It was my decision to make.”

  What had happened to a nice, simple “thank you”?

  She bit her lip and blinked and he looked at her closely. She appeared near to tears. Saffira never cried.

  “I thought you were dead,” she said. “I thought they would kill you, and it would all be for nothing, and then they’d kill me as well.”

  She sagged, the strength going out of her, and Thorne dropped his cup, rose and crossed to her quickly, wrapping his arms around her and holding her close. She sniffled for a minute, and he let her.

  Finally, she raised her head and gazed at him out of tear-drenched eyes, and his heart cracked. “I didn’t want to die, but I’d sort of reconciled myself. But not you. You need to go on. The world needs you, because you’ll always do the right thing.” She blinked then studied him. “You’re back, aren’t you? You scared me so much with how you acted.”

  Was he back? He d
idn’t know. Maybe, but not in the way she meant. But at least his apathy had gone, burned away in a ball of fire.

  Once he stopped feeling so goddamned weak and pathetic, he’d think of what to do next.

  He took a deep breath. He wished he could curl up and sleep. But he had to get back, had to make sure that Candy was safe. And maybe he had to save the world. Because there was a chance he could do that now. A chance he could beat them. He had been given this power for a reason. He couldn’t waste that. And afterward he would…what?

  He put Saffira from him and went back to the dispenser, got two cups this time, and handed one to her. “Where are we?”

  She bit her lip again, which didn’t bode well. “I’m not sure.”

  “How about when are we? I take it you’ve got the comm unit back up?”

  “Yes, but I can’t reach anyone.” She tugged on her ponytail, a trait he remembered from when she was young and would get agitated by her inability to do something. “I think we’re only a couple of days ahead.”

  “Well, that’s good.”

  “Yes, though actually I hadn’t meant to move in time. And distance-wise, we’re a long way off, and I’d meant to take us to Trakis Two.” She gave a shrug. “I don’t recognize any of the stars. I’ve been running them through the databases of recorded systems trying to get a fix, but nothing so far.”

  Which meant, in all likelihood, they were in a different universe. And if they were that far away, Saffira was going to have to open another wormhole to take them back. God help them.

  But that sort of attitude wouldn’t help. Opening another wormhole would be risky, but if they didn’t, they would never get back. “Go for it.”

  Ten minutes later, she swore and then collapsed to the floor. She peered up at him through her hair. “I don’t think that one did much good.”

  He held out a hand for her, but she shook her head. “Leave me here for a minute.” She closed her eyes. Her face was lined with exhaustion, and he bit back his impatience.

  “Sleep for a while. We’ll try again later.”