More screams came from down the road. Several wolves passed me, headed toward the pandemonium. Their eyes were bright yellow and glowed in the moonlight. They were bigger than any wolf I’d ever seen. Their backs were easily level with my waist.
I crept from behind the branches. Ice spread across the ground in front of me as I walked. My breath was frosty and I could feel the magick tingling in my fingers, waiting to be released.
Growls and shrieks filled the air.
These people had saved my life. I could not stand by and do nothing. Breaking into a run, I followed the sounds toward the mayhem. The crack, crack, crack of those weapons ripped through the din of the fighting.
I turned a corner and was instantly face-to-face with an unfamiliar soldier dressed in black. He raised the black metal weapon and I threw up my hands, covering him in a solid block of ice before he could fire at me. My heart lurched in my chest. I could hear him screaming from inside the ice. The terror in his voice was hard to stomach. But he’d made my choice for me when he raised his weapon. His heartbeat raced and then slowly faded and stopped.
He was dead. I’d killed him. Just like the others before him who had threatened me. Their weapons were strong, but not as strong as the magick I wielded. I could help these people fight. Help them escape to a better place. That is what Eira said they were doing. Merely moving supernaturals from one land where they were hunted to a land where they could live in peace. This was an honorable fight and these soldiers were on the wrong side of it.
CHAPTER TEN
DIANA
I moved swiftly through the darkness. After the first encounter, my vision had changed, allowing me to see clearly in the dark. The inner beast had come forward somehow and now I could see clear outlines of everyone in the roadway.
They wore strange-looking masks made of metal and other materials I wasn’t familiar with. Their weapons were unlike anything I had ever seen. In the dark, fire seemed to spew from the mouths of the metal pipes, but the shaft that fired from them was too small and too fast to see when it was launched.
I froze several more men with their backs to me and tried to ignore the cries that echoed from within the frozen blocks. The ice wasn’t enough to freeze them instantly; instead, they suffocated, slowly running out of air.
There was nothing I could do. I didn’t understand my powers enough to change my fighting tactics. It was all I could do to keep the beast in check and not shift again. The dragon wanted to, but I feared that if I did, I wouldn’t be able to tell friend from foe.
A heavy body slammed into me from the side and air whooshed from my lungs. I tried to cry out, but instead, a blast of icy air exploded from within me and knocked the person away. I rolled to my stomach and glanced up at him. A tall soldier dressed all in black like the rest. His mask had been knocked off and he was feeling around blindly for it. I crept forward, grabbed the mask, and crushed it in my hand. His weapon lay a few feet in the opposite direction.
I reached it first.
“I saw you ice my buddy a few seconds ago. We will find you, dragon bitch, rest assured. Even if every single one of us dies. Now that they know you exist, they will never stop looking for you.”
My heart climbed into my throat and I bit back a growl of frustration. I shouldn’t have to kill to survive. They were making me into a murderer.
Another form floated past, moving so fast I barely saw her except when she paused behind the speaking soldier and snapped his neck. I shuddered and backed away from his fallen body. She disappeared a moment later.
The moonlight reflected off the smooth cheek of the fallen man. Barely a whisker. He was so young. It wasn’t right that he had to die. But it was them or us.
Eira had spared me from having to take another life that evening. For that, I was grateful.
The sounds of the fight died out shortly thereafter. The crack, crack, crack of those terrible weapons had ceased. The night was still again. Quiet.
The wolves shifted in front of me and I gasped in amazement. Eira told me they were shifters, but seeing it in person was so much more … real. It wasn’t a story anymore. These were people who lived, fought, and were willing to die so that I and the others they were smuggling might have a chance in the place they called the Texas Republic.
I recognized Chad’s scent before he approached. He paused about ten feet away and I felt a rush of desire flood my body. I burned on the inside, but ice spread across the ground turning the pavement and grassy area where we stood white. It was such a contradiction. The hotter I felt, the colder everything became around me.
“You okay?”
Taking a deep breath, I nodded my head.
“Thank you for helping. I know stepping in with strangers couldn’t have been easy. You saved lives tonight. It was a big unit and we were having trouble covering everyone. They still got one of the guys we pulled out of Monroe. Silver bullet to the head,” he added.
“One of the soldiers was just a boy.” My voice was flat. The coldness around me faded as I remembered the man Eira had killed before he shot me.
“A lot of them are young. They’re conscripted at age eighteen. A four-year service term is required by law.” Chad shoved his hands into his pockets and rolled his neck from side to side, popping joints with each movement.
“So they are all young?” I swallowed bile. “Where are the trained warriors? They shouldn’t be sending mere boys out to fight for them. Cowards.”
A soft chuckle slipped from between his lips. “Those are fighting words. I bet you were a hell of a spitfire in another life.”
My mind drifted to the strong, handsome men I’d seen in my dreams before escaping that cold cell. Two men—both with dark hair and eyes that glowed like living flames. I never woke from those dreams feeling afraid. Only longing. And love.
“I wish I knew,” I finally answered. “Eira says I could be eight-hundred years old. What if everything I knew is gone? Everyone I might have loved … or who loved me …”
He took several steps closer and I held my hand up to stop him. His scent was already making me wet between my legs. I didn’t trust myself not to leap on him if he came any closer. Whatever this heat was that had taken hold of me had progressed to the point where I barely had the ability to think clearly around a man.
“Sorry,” he mumbled and stepped back.
“It is not your fault that I am taken over by … whatever this is. But you and your friends sheltered me and fought for me tonight, too. It was the least I could do to step up and help. Was anyone else hurt?”
He shook his head. “No, just the one.”
Charlie approached him from behind and Eira blurred to my side a moment later.
“I told you to stay down.”
“I guess I don’t follow directions very well.”
She shrugged. “You probably don’t, since someone had you locked in a tower in another dimension.”
I couldn’t stop the corners of my mouth from curving upward at her sarcasm. But as more people gathered, the severity of the situation robbed me of any humor. Bodies littered the ground. My ice had coated them all with a thin layer of frost and their faces were haunting.
“Will they come back?”
“You mean rise like zombies?” Chad snorted.
I frowned, not understanding his question.
“That’s not what she meant, idiot,” Eira snapped. “She doesn’t even know what a zombie is.”
“Yes,” Charlie spoke, finally answering my question.
Focusing on her, I took a deep breath. “Because of me?”
She nodded. “You’re something they’ve never seen before. A creature only found in stories of mythology and in books that were burned decades ago. The general population doesn’t know what dragons are.”
“So people used to know?”
“Yes.” Charlie answered and then turned to Chad. “Gather the rest. We run together the last five miles. We have to get to Lake Kentucky before morning and get s
ettled into that small hotel off the highway.”
He sprinted off and Eira pointed me toward the road. “We’re almost there, D. Then we can rest.”
“And do it all again tomorrow night.”
“Yep. Though hopefully without the soldiers. It should take them at least two days to regroup, collect their dead, and send another task force,” Eira said, breaking into a full run.
I struggled for a moment to keep up until I remembered the trick with the cold air. Calling on something inside me, my breath became icy cold and the air around me once again held the bite of a new frost.
“Damn, girl. If I didn’t like the cold, I’d be freezing my ass off.”
“Sorry, I just can’t keep up unless—”
“Don’t worry. It’s a pretty nifty power to have. I’m guessing you don’t breathe fire though,” she laughed. “That’s something I’ve always thought would be cool to see. Never met a dragon face-to-face. Even way back, they were pretty private.”
We ran quietly for a few moments before I finally managed to speak the words I’d been holding back. “The heat is getting worse, Eira. And I keep seeing these two men when I close my eyes. Well, the same man, but there are two of them. I think they are twins. My body is so hot it feels like I’m on fire.”
“So it’s a memory. That’s good,” she exclaimed. “Maybe these guys are still around somewhere. It’s highly probable that they’re dragons, too. I’ve heard of supernaturals occasionally mixing with humans, but it’s very rare.”
“But if all the dragons are in the Veil where I came from, I should try to go back there. Not stay here.”
“You can’t go back,” she said, touching my shoulder. We both stopped and I caught her blue gaze. “You have to have the dagger to travel between this world and the Veil.”
I knew that. What I truly wrestled with was continuing on this journey. What if I should be going back the way I came? In addition, my presence put these people in extra danger because soldiers were hunting me.
Averting my eyes, I began jogging again. She loped along my side and whispered. “Don’t tell Charlie or anyone else in this group that you know where the dagger is. Do you understand me?”
“Yes.” Somehow she’d guessed. I hadn’t told anyone I hid the dagger, but she knew, and she wouldn’t tell.
“There’s enough going on in this world. The last thing we need are a bunch of dragons coming after us too because a pack of werewolves thought it would be cool to invade. At least humans get old and eventually die. If you’re any example, I have a feeling dragons hold a grudge for a really, really long time.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
DIANA
“Shit!” Eira’s voice rang through my ears.
I opened my eyes. The hotel room was white. An inch of frost clung to the walls and ceiling. The bed was a block of ice and the floor looked like a frozen pond.
“I leave for a couple of hours and you turn this place into the North Pole. This is not good.”
I sat up and wiped tears from my face. The other dream had come back this time.
“What’s wrong?” She tiptoed across the sheet of ice and sat on the edge of the hard, frozen blanket.
“I didn’t tell you before, but I have this other dream.”
“So the two hot guys aren’t the only men in your life?”
“I don’t believe the men are overheated in the dream. They appear—”
“No, no, I mean handsome. Hot is an expression for appealing. Sorry, what was the dream? You look like you were crying.”
“I was in this dark room. I can’t see any faces, but I hear a baby crying. I ask for the baby but no one answers me. The crying gets fainter and fainter, like the baby is moving farther away from me. It just repeats over and over until I wake up.” I took a deep breath and looked around the room again. Everything was coated with ice, just like the inside of the cell I’d escaped.
“The cell where they kept me was covered in ice like this. So thick I could barely see the stones on the walls or floor any longer.” My mind was spinning so fast. “Eira, I should remember having a child. That’s not something I could forget, is it? I would know if I had a baby.” I wiped another tear from my cheek and shuddered.
“Sweetie, I’m so sorry.”
Eira tentatively wrapped an arm around my shoulders and I turned to lean into her. The tears flowed down my cheeks and froze solid once they left my skin, clinking against the frozen blanket covering the bed.
“Even if I did have a baby. It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?”
“Probably so, but I’ll help you any way I can. Maybe my friend in Ada has a spell to help you get back your lost memories. Just hang in there and try not to freeze the whole hotel. Those wolves down the hall might have fur, but they’d rather not sleep in it.”
Always trying to lighten the mood, Eira was definitely good for a smile. She was cheerful, sassy at times, but no-nonsense —an interesting combination and welcome companion.
Eira was tense when it came to touching me, not that I could blame her, but she genuinely seemed unafraid that I was a dragon. In fact, I think she may have liked me more because of it. I was this fantastical creature she’d never encountered in all her centuries of life.
The idea that there might be someone out there who could help me piece together my memories made me want to get to Ada even more.
I pulled away from her and stood. “When do we leave?”
Eira chuckled. “That got your antenna up, didn’t it?”
I cocked an eyebrow and she grinned again.
“Sorry, I meant it attracted your attention,” she replied.
“Oh … then yes. My antenna is up.”
“We can’t leave until dark. Plus, this is the second check-in for Manda. She popped in at our last stop and Charlie had a short conversation with her dad about you, via Manda’s teleportation, before we headed out that night.”
“Who is Manda?” I wasn’t even going to ask about teleportation.
“A Djinn who works with the Mason pack. She helps keep us one step ahead of Xerxes’ and the SECR soldiers. Although after last night, I wonder if they suspect her alliance with us.”
“Who is Xerxes? And what is a Djinn?”
“A Djinn is a supernatural that can appear anywhere in world with the snap of their fingers. No walking or running. Just poof and they’re there.”
“That sounds like a pretty helpful power to have.”
Eira nodded. “Xerxes is an evil, supernatural badass who wants to rule the world. He’s slowly and successfully infiltrating the human systems of government with his own lackeys and putting down supernaturals that don’t support him.”
“I take it that you, Charlie, and the others in this group are against him ruling the world.”
“Yeah, big time. He’s an ass and has something up his sleeve that we can’t quite put a pin on. All of the Djinn work for him, but Manda has gone rogue and helped us out of a huge jam on more than one occasion. Whatever her reasons are for betraying the Djinn king Cyrus and Xerxes, we don’t know, but we’ll take the help.”
“What if she’s playing you?”
“Then life will suck donkey balls when she finally betrays us.”
I snorted at the image and shook my head.
“For now, the Masons are semi-careful. There are measures in place in Ada and some of the other larger bases to slow down the Djinn, should they ever show up uninvited. But, you’re right. Mostly it would be a shit-storm and a lot of people would get hurt, or worse.”
“Are Charlie and Chad together?”
Eira glanced up, catching my gaze. “Stay away from that dog. He and Charlie aren’t an item, but he’ll sleep with you and then sleep with the girl down the hall the same night. You don’t want any of that,” she said, waving her hands toward the door. “I don’t care how horny you get. We’re gonna find those two hotties you keep dreaming about and you can do them to your heart’s content.” Her vocabulary still perplexe
d me, but I knew what she meant this time.
She walked to the door, cracked it open slightly, and peered out. “We should find you something to eat. Can’t run all night on an empty stomach. Although, I have to give you props for last night. With your wound and mental state, I didn’t think you would keep up.”
“My wound is healed. I can barely see the mark where it was. Did you eat yet, Eira?”
Eira shut the door and licked her lips. As she turned back toward me, I could see a narrow ring of red around her blue irises.
“You haven’t, have you? How long are you going to starve yourself to protect me?”
“I’m not.” She closed the door and turned the deadbolt.
I frowned.
“Ok, fine. I am. You’re a dragon. Everyone wants you. Even Charlie’s dad, Randall. They want to interrogate you when we get to Ada. I’ve got to make sure you stay safe. I claimed responsibility for you when we pulled you out of that ditch where you crash-landed. Technically, they can’t take you from me without a fight because I claimed you as my ward.”
“I’m not a child. I can protect myself.”
“I know, but you looked young at first and so beaten down. You were naked and covered in blood. Every mothering instinct I never had shuffled out to stake a claim.”
She pretended to be all tough and hard, but I could see through the chinks in her armor. “Thank you.”
Eira shrugged. “I protect people. I always have. You’re just my newest stray. I brought in Chad, too. That’s why he does what I say and—”
“The real reason you don’t want me to sleep with him.”
“You know for a gal who can’t remember anything, you’re quick.”
This crazy world I’d been thrust into so violently wasn’t all that bad with Eira to guide my way. But I had a feeling life might get ugly if I ever lost her. I moved to the dresser where a clear cup sat with some white paper packets in it. I dumped them out and touched the hilt of the large knife she’d given me to wear strapped to my thigh. Pulling it from the sheath, I pressed the sharp blade to my palm until it cut through.
My Dragon Masters Page 6