Earth Born (The Earth Born Cycle Book 1)

by N. E. Conneely

  Cord pivoted on one foot, sword appearing in his hand as he strode over pulled it open. A very surprised Silas jerked his head back.

  Shasta gently pushed Cord to the side. “What’s wrong? I thought we weren’t due back in the field until morning?”

  Silas’s eyes darted between them, but he managed to babble his message. “You know where you left Branstan? A few dragons flew out, and none of them found him.”

  Shasta closed her eyes and shook her head, trying to get her thoughts away from the argument and to the current issue. “I think he was about a half hour northwest of town. Anthony and Adriana would have a better idea.”

  “There is a small stream nearby; it’s possible he’s not exactly where we left him,” Cord added.

  Silas bobbed his head. “I’ll relay the information. Anthony is going to fly out with the second group and try to guide them to where they left Branstan. It’s likely the first dragons were off course. There’s no indication anything bad happened to him.”

  “Well, there wouldn’t be, would there?” She snarled. “He was tired, could hardly fly, and didn’t have any more fire in him.” It was too easy to picture Branstan out there exhausted, unable to defend himself, when he was attacked. And now he was the next source for that evil creature’s magic.

  Silas gulped and took another step back.

  Cord broke the silence. “Have someone come tell us when he’s found.”

  “I’ll come myself,” Silas promised as he backed away from the door. “Many thanks for your help.”

  Shasta pushed the door closed as the young dragon flew away. They never should’ve left Branstan. At least one of them should’ve stayed, helped protect him, and ensured he would make it back to town. If he wasn’t back in the morning, she’d join the search. She wasn’t going to let what happen to Ophelia happen to Branstan.

  “It’s not your fault. It’s not either of our faults. He made his choice, and there were good reasons for us to go to town without him.” Cord couldn’t quite keep his previous frustration out of his voice, but he was trying.

  “That doesn’t change anything. Even if we find Branstan safe, it’s only a matter of time before that monster kidnaps another dragon. I’m not going to let that happen. I’m going to chase him until the only constants in his world are the frantic beating of his heart and my footsteps. Then I’m going to kill him.”

  When Cord didn’t say anything, Shasta pushed past him and headed for her room. “Can you keep the charm with you in case someone tries to get in touch? I’m not in the mood to talk. I need to figure out how to kill the monster.”

  “Shasta?”

  She looked over her shoulder.

  In the low light inside the house, there were dark shadows under his eyes. “I’m tired of fighting you, and I’m tired of watching you walk away. When you’re ready to finish our talk, so am I.”

  The part of Shasta that loved him wanted to sit down and work things out before he could change his mind. The rest of her was angry, tired, and didn’t believe Cord was ready to hear what she would say. “Thank you.”

  “And I’ll be there, at your side, for this hunt.”

  This time she didn’t look back. “I know.” She pushed the door closed behind her, blood pumping furiously through her veins. She took a deep breath. In, hold, and out. Repeat. Repeat until you feel calm. She could almost hear her mom guiding her through the exercises.

  She would hunt him down, kill him, and fulfill her purpose.

  In, hold, and out.

  She’d make Cord see reason.

  In, hold, and out.

  What was that smell? Part soot, part slime.

  Her eye popped open. It was her. She reeked after the afternoon waltz through the cave. Breathing exercises wouldn’t make her feel normal and clean. A shower would.

  Shasta stripped out of the dirt-stained clothes and walked into the bathroom. In moments she was standing under a shower of warm water, watching dirt wash off her body. The water ran down her skin, and with it, she was able to let go of the excess emotions and distance herself from all her anger.

  As her pulse returned to a nice steady rhythm, she had to admit she’d let the job and personal frustrations mix and mingle. Cord did have one point. They couldn’t be partners if they couldn’t separate their feelings from the work. That was how one or both of them ended up on the wrong side of a spell. That was how they ended up hurt or dead.

  A great snore echoed through the shower. Shasta started, dropping her bar of soap and sliding as she tried to pick it up. She finally grabbed it and leaned against the wall, taking deep breaths. It was just another dragon using the roof as a napping ground and not realizing that its snores would echo through the entire building.

  Huffing out a breath, Shasta scrubbed at a stubborn streak of dirt on her arm. Another great snore rippled through the room. It was a normal sound, one that had happened every day since she’d gotten to the Dragon Lands. At first she smiled, and then she started laughing, a deep belly laugh that simply wouldn’t stop. At some point, with water still raining down on her, the laughter turned to tears. She slowly crumpled, curling up on the floor of the shower stall, fat tears rolling down her cheeks as she sobbed uncontrollably.

  She cried as if there was too much emotion for her to know what else to do. She cried for Ophelia, even though she knew the dragon no longer needed to be saved. She cried for Edgar, who’d died a way no child should die. She cried for Matilda. She cried for Branstan. She cried for all the men who would become an experiment rather than a person. And when she was finished crying for them, she cried for herself, Cord, and the relationship she was afraid she would never be able to repair.

  When she couldn’t cry anymore, she pushed herself to her feet, legs trembling with the effort. She washed her face, turned off the water, and stumbled through her nightly routine. All the while, the dragon on the roof snored. If anyone called to ask what the emergency was, Cord could answer the questions for her. Feeling raw and empty, she turned off the light and tucked herself into bed. Between dragon snores, she drifted off to sleep.

  She couldn’t say what it was that awakened her. But as she lay there, eyes open, staring at the ceiling, she realized what she didn’t hear. There was no dragon snoring on the roof. There was no soft chirp of crickets. There wasn’t even the sigh of the wind as it swirled around the building. It was absolutely silent. She eased her shields down and felt heavy swirls of magic blanketing the area. This wasn’t a natural silence.

  She crept out of bed, easing into pants, shirt, and boots. She padded into the bathroom to retrieve a hair tie, carefully braided her hair, and folded it until the thick braid only hung down six inches from the back of her head. She debated wearing a jacket, but she didn’t want to limit her mobility, so she left it in the closet.

  Standing beside her door, she twisted her wrist and felt the comforting weight of her sword settle into her hand. The house was still unnaturally silent as she pushed the door open. She scanned the room, but it looked exactly as it should at night, moonlight coming through the windows and not a single shadow out of place.

  She crept over to Cord’s room and pushed the door open a couple of inches. “Cord? It Shasta,” she whispered.

  She stood there, listening intently as agonizing seconds ticked past, but he never answered. She opened the door all the way. The light coming through the window showed an empty bed. He’d probably slept in the same place he had after their last fight. Which would be more helpful if she knew the actual physical location rather than the more general “not here.”

  She sucked in a deep breath. It didn’t matter—she could find Cord. There was only one person that had a reason to lay a spell like this across the dragon’s town, and she’d vowed to stop him. She locked on to that thought, remembering Edgar’s bones, Ophelia scales, and Matilda’s chains. If Mr. Evil was here, he’d found a new source or marshaled all his resources to capture as many dragons as possible. Since they didn’t seem to be
able to defend themselves against him, it was up to her to protect the dragons.

  Hand clenched around the hilt of her sword, Shasta turned away from Cord’s room and crept across the living room. She eased open the front door, peeking outside. There were dragons lying across the ground. Not as many as last night, but that wasn’t unexpected since they were out on patrol. However, the silence continued. She could see the chests of the nearest dragons rising and falling, but their breathing was quiet. There were no snores, whistles, or any other sound. Just quiet, even breathing.

  She eased through the doorway before pulling it closed behind her. Thanks to the cloudless sky and nearly full moon, she could see quite well, but what she didn’t see was the monster who was behind all this. If she had decided to attack a town of dragons, where would she start the attack, and what would her goal be?

  Well, the spell that silenced everything made it unlikely he would awaken the dragons. Plus there could be other effects she didn’t notice because she wasn’t a dragon. So what was Mr. Evil’s endgame? If she were a crazy sorcerer using blood magic, she’d try to capture the most powerful dragon she could find. After all, his experiments certainly seemed to progress once he captured Ophelia. Most of the powerful dragons were also older and large. They couldn’t fit on top of a house like hers. The only place big enough for them was the gathering area.

  With that objective in mind, Shasta crouched down and slowly made her way between two adolescent dragons. From the size and coloration, they were probably Matilda and Randolph. She plotted her course through the next set of dragons as she moved forward. It looked like her entire class was here, so she would use Natalia and Tracy for cover next. After that it would be Romeo and Byron. She felt bad using them this way, but she needed to stay out of sight, and hiding behind dragons was the best way to do that.

  She kept low and placed her feet as carefully as she could as she moved forward. She was between Romeo and Byron when her foot caught on something. She lost her grip on her sword before she could dismiss it, and her arms windmilled as she tumbled over, landing squarely on the end of Romeo’s tail. The dragon didn’t so much as twitch.

  On the bright side, Romeo hadn’t awakened and attracted a lot of attention. The bad news was that if her falling on his tail hadn’t awakened him, there was more to this than a sound-dampening spell. It was a bit too soon to tell if any of the magic could work in her favor, but she had a feeling the spell was going to hide the bad guys from her.

  She got back up and continued forward, this time being a little more sure of where her feet were placed. She stumbled twice more but didn’t go down. Pausing, she took a deep breath and eased open her shields. Her connection to the earth was tenuous at best, giving her very little information. The only other place that had been blocked from her lately was the cave where blood magic was being performed. She silently cursed at the long distance between her house and the gathering place. By the time she made it there, Mr. Evil could’ve gotten away with the dragons, and since the earth clammed up every time he started using blood magic, there wasn’t much it was going to do to help her.

  She raked her eyes over the area. The dragons draped across the landscape hardly seemed to be breathing. She couldn’t see, hear, or sense any other creatures moving around. Abandoning any attempt at stealth, Shasta straightened and started toward the gathering place at a jog. She hoped that’s where Mr. Evil was doing his thing; otherwise, she was going to have to search the town until she found him.

  The air flexed against her. She spun around, sword up. Some sort of creature was in the air, intent on pouncing on her. She slashed at it. It twisted in the air, landing a few feet from her. She brought her sword back up at the guard position. The creature reared its head back and hissed, wings mantled.

  Shasta stared in horror. It ran on all fours, like a dragon or dog, but this had originally been a human. Most of the skull was still human except for the expanded jaw and elongated teeth. The arms were still predominantly human, though the talons on the end of the fingers were most certainly dragon in origin. The hunched back and small wings… Well, she hadn’t thought about what happened to the ones who made it through the experiment but weren’t quite what was hoped for. It would be better to be dead than to be stuck like this, neither human nor dragon and regarded by both species as an abomination.

  It hissed and ran toward her. She got her sword up as it flung itself forward. She sidestepped, slicing at the creature’s side as she moved. Claws lashed out, missing her body but slicing through the fabric of her shirt. Her sword didn’t make contact, and the creature landed, pivoting to face her. Once again it hissed, and she realized she could hear. Unlike everything else, she could hear this creature. That meant the spell wasn’t on everything in the area but only specific things.

  It leaped into the air, using its wings to extend the jump, though they seemed unable to carry it in true flight. This time Shasta didn’t move. She shifted one foot behind her, planted her feet firmly, and held her ground. The creature flew through the air with open jaws and claws ready. As it was about to hit her, she stepped forward, thrusting the sword up with both hands. It punched through the creature’s skin, going deep into its chest. Shasta staggered as the weight threatened to drive her to the ground.

  Claws swiped at her as she rotated the creature to the side and dumped it off her sword. Its chest expanded as if it was about to let out a great scream. Without hesitation, she lifted the sword and brought it down across the creature’s neck, severing the head from the body. Blood went everywhere, warm flecks landing on her hands and face.

  Shasta backed away from the body, her heart beating wildly, blood thundering through her veins. She’d killed it. Whatever the creature was called, she had killed it.

  Chapter Fifteen

  She looked at her sword, letting the moonlight shine on the blade. Her dad was right. It was a good weapon, and even with the blood running down it, she could keep a good grip on the hilt.

  Shasta felt a piece of herself she’d been denying for years fit into place. It didn’t matter if the man had been good in life; in his current form, he was born of blood magic, a type of evil that couldn’t be allowed to exist. Now she had to find the rest of these creatures and their creator and kill them. That was, after all, why she’d been created.

  She lowered the sword, turned back to the gathering place, and continued moving forward. During her fight with the creature, something had changed. The spells were affecting her less. She could hear the crickets chirping and the night air easing across the land. In the distance, she picked up sounds of people moving around, perhaps even hauling a dragon.

  She felt the footfalls vibrate through the earth and into her. She swung to the left, lifting her sword, ready for an attack. Three misshapen creatures ran toward her, eyes gleaming with excitement. They were a little different than the other one—two didn’t have wings, and the remaining one appeared to have almost nothing human about it. That didn’t mean any of the creatures was stupid. Dragons were at least as smart as humans, so it didn’t really matter which type of brain these things ended up with.

  The one with wings launched himself into the air, much as the previous creature had, but this one had some control of his flight. After three determined wingbeats, he was flying at twice his previous speed. Her eyes darted to the flightless brutes; they’d picked up the pace as well. She held her ground until the flying monster was almost upon her, then she dropped down and rolled under him. He landed somewhere behind her, but she had two other problems.

  Either these two had fought before, or they were running on pure instinct and their instincts were on point. They attacked her from two sides, forcing her to choose between defending herself from the right or the left. Plus the flying creature was behind her. She bared her teeth at them. It was her turn to show off.

  As they closed in, she shifted her weight onto her back foot and took two powerful strides forward before leaping. She felt the air push her along a
s she tucked her body and rolled. The creatures collided and toppled to the side. She kept her joints loose as she landed, quickly turning to face the three attackers, all of whom were in front of her now. The creature with wings was ahead of the other two, diving at her from above. This time she had an answer.

  “No air.” She put her mix of elven and witch powers behind the command. All atmosphere under his wings evacuated the space. He crashed to the ground with a meaty thud.

  The other two didn’t even pause. They lunged at her, swiping with their claws and snapping with their oddly shaped teeth. Shasta threw her left hand up, picturing a solid wall of air and magic. She blocked a bite with the air shield. The second ground creature lunged at her. She kept the shield between them, and her feet slid across the grass as he pushed her back. She lashed out with her sword, opening a long wound across its rib cage and hindquarters.

  The other creature ran headfirst into her shield, pushing her back several feet. His head twisted to the side, and with a sickening snap, its neck broke. It crumpled to the ground and didn’t so much as twitch. She risked a glance at the one she’d knocked out of the air. It was crawling in her direction but not fast enough to be a danger.

  A hiss had her whirling around. All her eyes could see in the dim light was a blur of movement. She tried to get the shield between herself and her attacker, but she was too slow, and a set of claws dug into the top of her shoulder. Rather than lurching back, she dropped down. The claws slipped off her shoulder, leaving a set of five gashes behind. The other set of claws was still coming at her, this time from above. She slashed with her sword, cutting through both the creature’s quadriceps. It collapsed with a hissing scream that was sure to draw attention. With one swift movement, she sliced its throat.

  She turned toward the remaining creature. It whimpered and curled up in a distorted fetal position.

  She braced her legs and lifted the sword. “I’m sorry.”