by Willa Hart
I stood in the middle of that sidewalk, completely alone, wondering where the Romanian had run off to. Closing my mind’s eye again, I refocused myself on the scent, following it through meandering side streets, busy freeways, pot-hole ridden backroads, until I stood outside Archibald Thrush’s home in Big Bear. I watched as Archibald staggered out of the house, pursued by a vicious monster with flashing yellow eyes. Danic attacked, both men shifting into dragons and battling in the midst of an oncoming storm, more blood spattering the newly fallen snow.
My consciousness was drawn back down the mountain, down the narrow winding roads, until I found myself back in San Bernardino. The names of the streets I drifted along stuck in my mind, all the way to the outskirts of the town, all the way to the front door of an abandoned house. Awkwardly cut hunks of plywood replaced the windows. Graffiti replaced house paint. Holes replaced shingles. It looked like a spooky haunted house kids dared each other to enter.
I passed through the door without pausing or even thinking such a thing was possible, but it was. I stood just inside what once was a family room, dimly lit by the cracks between the sheets of plywood. Two cheap folding tables had been pushed together in the middle of the room as an ersatz work station. Crumpled maps littered the top, some had been pinned to what remained of the lathe and plaster on the walls. A couple of cell phones lay between old In-N-Out wrappers, some with half-eaten burgers nestled inside, in varying stages of decay.
And sitting around that table were Titus and four of his best dragon friends.
I almost gasped but held my hand over my mouth so I wouldn’t make any noise. I had no idea if they’d see me as Max had, or simply sense me as Lazlo had. My hope was that they wouldn’t know I was there but better safe than sorry.
I stood rooted in the same spot for a solid fifteen seconds before accepting that I wasn’t about to die. I stood plainly out in the open, not hidden from sight, yet not a single one of them even flicked their eyes in my direction. I was invisible, or at least I hoped I was. I fought the urge to test my theory and instead pretended to be a statue.
Titus sat slightly away from the others, marking his superiority by distancing himself from his subordinates. Asshole. Two of the other brutes studied some maps, while another looked at an ancient laptop, and the last munched on a double-double with cheese.
Titus grumbled something that I recognized wasn’t English but understood nonetheless. They were speaking Balaur, the ancient dragon tongue I’d never heard in my life. Nor read. Yet somehow I could do both during my visions.
“Forget it,” Titus snapped, waving a dismissive hand at the guy on the laptop. “Obviously, Maximus the Meek is hiding from everyone, including her. If she doesn’t know where he is, she can’t lead us to him. Better to save the energy for something else.”
“You were sure Aurelia was hiding him,” the man said, an eyebrow quirking up in challenge.
My skin pebbled at the realization Titus and his henchmen had been responsible for that nagging feeling of being followed on my way to Drakonis the day before. After all these years living and working with dragons, looking up when you thought you were being tailed should have been a no-brainer. Duh!
Titus’s eyes flashed from brown to yellow and back again. Uh oh, not good.
“We follow the leads we have,” he said through clenched teeth.
The other dragon took the hint and held his hands up in surrender, fear lighting his eyes. “I’m just saying those leads are running out. If she can’t lead us to him, how are we going to find the guli? He’s the key.”
Titus’s lips, once tight with anger, edged upward into a grim, nasty smile that turned my blood cold. It almost made me forget to make a mental note to find out what a ghouly was later.
“Short-sighted,” he said, shaking his head in disappointment, “just like a human. We don’t need to find Maximus. We make Maximus find us.”
“How?” mumbled the man finishing off a burger, wiping his face on his sleeve and swallowing. “You said it yourself, he’s a coward, he won’t stick his neck out for anything.”
My protective nature flared over the insult to Max, but I managed to keep control of my sassy mouth. After Lazlo’s reaction when I made a noise in the elder meeting, I wanted to operate with an abundance of caution.
“The girl,” Titus said, stealing several fries from the other guy and shoving them into his ugly maw. “She’s the key.”
The other four men shot each other confused looks. Burger guy braved to put words to their collective thoughts. “But we just said—”
“We only need to get her to Romania,” Titus explained as if he was speaking to a toddler. “Maximus will come.”
“And if he doesn’t bring the guli?”
Titus sighed with satisfaction, leaning back in the rickety lawn chair until I thought he might topple over. Wished he would. He didn’t.
“He will.”
Cold brown eyes slid across the room toward the door, exactly where I was standing. My own grew wide and my heart pounded in my chest. He knew I was there! But his gaze was soft, not focused on me directly. I breathed a silent sigh of relief and rolled my eyes up in a silent prayer of gratitude. Then Titus spoke again.
“Or else.”
I jerked my gaze back to him and he stared me straight in the eye.
“Favor!”
Kellum’s voice pierced my mind like an arrow. Jerking myself back to the office, I woke in the arms of Kellum and Danic, holding me upright. I held onto them while I regained my footing, clutching the fabric of their clothes to make sure I was really here and not back in the dragon’s den.
“San Bernardino,” I squeaked, shooting each a meaningful look. “I was there, at their hideout. Like when I visit Max’s lair.”
Everyone in the room stared at me, their jaws hanging wide open like in a cartoon. If the situation had been slightly less terrifying, I might have laughed.
“This is great!” Ash said, picking me up in his arms and twirling me around for a second. “We got him!”
I slapped his shoulder to set me down. Lazlo stood and loomed over me as if he was inspecting me. I didn’t feel threatened this time, which the guys must have sensed so they didn’t surround me like before. As he studied me, a million ants crawled all over my skin. Maybe he had some special powers of his own.
“If you’ve found him, why do you not seem pleased?”
I met his gaze and refused to let it waver, to show my fear. I needed to be strong, especially now.
“Because they’re planning to kidnap me so they can get to Max.”
Two big, black SUVs trundled toward the outskirts of San Bernardino, carrying seven very large dragons and one tiny human. Not that I had a clue, but the tension inside Ryen’s rig was so thick I wondered if it was similar to riding into a war zone. It couldn’t be too far off, considering a dozen dragons would soon be blasting away at each other with flames and fireballs.
I sat in the back seat, next to Kellum, while Danic rode shotgun and Ryen drove. The others were in the rig behind us. They all sat quietly, staring out the windows, lost in thought or maybe silently planning out different ambush scenarios. Who knew what warriors thought of when they were heading into battle.
My phone binged in my back pocket, reminding me there was a whole other world out there, not just dragons and mages and crazy healing powers. It was a group text between Zoe, Alisha, Yazmin and me. I was surprised to see several new messages.
U guys up for a study sesh 2nite? Alisha had asked earlier in the morning.
About an hour later, Yaz had replied with a cute GIF of Sponge Bob Squarepants reeling in a thumbs up.
After that, radio silence until Alisha had texted again a few minutes ago.
Zoe? Favor? 6 at my place?
I stared out my window as I formulated my reply. It wasn’t as if I could say “Sorry, guys, can’t make it. Busy hunting down the rogue dragon who killed my parents. YOLO!” In the end, ambiguity seemed to be the be
st choice.
Sorry, plans 2nite. C U in class!
I hoped.
I glanced up as we approached an intersection, deep inside the San Bernardino city limits. “Right at this light.”
Ryen nodded, continuing to follow my directions. Danic glanced back at me.
“How do you do that? I still have to use the GPS to go to Drakonis.”
“If you humans hadn’t invented GPS by now, he’d probably be working as a cage fighter,” Ryen teased, which earned him a painful punch in the arm from Danic. He laughed as he rubbed the sore spot. “Thanks for proving my point, bro.”
“Stay frosty, you two,” Kellum growled next to me. Ever the worried leader, and I loved him for it.
The thought surprised me, yet also felt pure and natural. As if I’d loved him all my life. The revelation didn’t knock my socks off. What surprised me was how long it had taken for me to admit it to myself. My lips quirked up in a self-satisfied smile. I was so lost in thoughts of love, I almost missed the next turn.
“Left here!”
Ryen reacted instantly, sending everyone in the cab sliding to the right as he barely made the corner. The SUV driven by Ash followed suit.
“A little warning would be nice,” he said once we were back at cruising speed.
“Sorry.”
The houses were trending toward downtrodden and ramshackle at this point in the journey, and they were coming farther and farther apart, which wasn’t saying much for anywhere within sixty miles from downtown L.A. What had once been sprawling grassy lawns had morphed into vast swaths of hard-packed barren earth. Security bars covered the windows of the tidier houses. Plywood covered the windows of the rest. Wrecks on cinder blocks littered the lots, some guarded by snarling pit bulls. Having shuttled from home to home during my stint in foster care, I’d lived in much worse neighborhoods, but not by much.
“Three blocks down,” I said, pointing forward, “then you’ll want to take a left, and it’ll be the third house on the right.”
“This part of town looks abandoned,” Ryen remarked as he peered at the houses we passed.
“Depressed, more like,” Danic corrected. “A lot of these places gotta have squatters in them.”
“Perfect place to hide,” Kellum said, taking a deep bracing breath. “Okay, guys. We’re going to go in hot. There are five dragons in there, and we’ve seen what they’re capable of. From what Favor says, we may or may not have the element of surprise on our side. If we do, it’s going to save our asses. If we don’t…”
“Then we give them another taste of what we delivered above that strawberry field,” Ryen said with a smirk. “They had all the time in the world to prepare for us then and we still kicked their asses.”
“I’d like there to be fewer casualties this time,” I said.
“There was only one last time,” Ryen pointed out.
“Exactly,” I mumbled, recalling the grief I’d felt when Enoch had died in my arms thinking I was his mother.
Before I could dwell on it, we pulled up to the house I’d seen in my vision. Barely an hour had passed between the moment I’d come to and the time we arrived. Dragons certainly could take their time when they wanted to, but when they were ready to act not much could stop them. Other than a certain human who didn’t have the ability to fly.
We parked a half-block down the street, so we didn’t alert the bad guys. Ryen left the keys dangling in the ignition and when I pointed it out, he gave me a cocky grin.
“No one steals a dragon’s ride.”
Oh brother!
We all converged between the parked SUVs, Kellum taking the lead, not Lazlo. Admiration for him swelled in my heart.
“Danic, Rufus, you’ll hang back and protect Favor while the rest of us crash the party. That work for you, Lazlo?”
Lazlo nodded, a light flashing in his steel gray eyes.
“Wait,” I interjected. “Why do I have to hang back? I have more at stake here than any of you.”
“Exactly,” Kellum said, giving me a hard look that broached no argument. “You’ll stay here with Danic and Rufus. Right guys?”
The two mountains in question stepped in front of me, very effectively blocking me from joining the others. I huffed in resignation, though deep down I knew it was the right move. Not only would I not stand a chance against a dragon — much less five — but the guys might have been too worried about my safety to focus, and what they needed at that moment was to focus.
The five men rushed the house, two running to the back as the other three broke down the front door and stormed inside. Shouts and stomping reached us, a half-block away, but Danic and Rufus remained resolute in their duty, never even twitching with desire to join the fray.
“Clear!” Ryen shouted, his voice muffled.
“Clear!” That one came from Lazlo.
“Clear!” Ash called out at the same time Hale shouted, “Clear!”
Silence fell on the neighborhood. I caught Danic’s eye and he looked as confused as I felt. I’d prepared myself to witness an epic dragon battle, so while I wasn’t exactly disappointed that didn’t seem to be happening, I definitely was curious.
Ryen trotted out the front door and waved at us to join him.
“You sure you got the right place, Favor?” he asked as we ran up to the house.
“One hundred percent. Why? What’s up?”
He shrugged. “Guess we’re a little too fashionably late to the party. The place is deserted.”
“No way,” I seethed, pushing past him and sprinting inside.
The interior looked exactly as I remembered…almost. The room was the same, the chairs and table sat in the same spots, though all the maps and half-eaten burgers were nowhere to be seen, and even the light filtering through the boarded-up windows looked the same. But the place was completely empty. Kellum and Lazlo appeared from separate rooms, both of them giving uncertain shrugs.
“What the hell?” I muttered, searching everywhere for some sign Titus and his crew had been there. “They were right here! Maps and a laptop and fast food…”
Ryen kneeled down, picked up a minuscule speck of something, then sniffed it. “This looks suspiciously deep-fried, but it seems they packed up everything and moved on.”
“Not everything,” Kellum said, pointing toward the kitchen.
Something rectangular and pink and sparkly lay in the middle of the pass-through counter. I froze in place, not wanting to move closer because it would only confirm what I already knew. All the blood fled from my face, even as my heart picked up its pace to a frantic rhythm. Chills skittered across my head and neck and down my spine. A stray beam of sunlight fell on the object as I inched closer, making the phone shimmer with all the little rhinestones covering its case. Shaky hands reached for it as the breath seized in my lungs.
“Favor, are you okay?” Kellum asked, as he and the rest of my boys closed in on me.
No, I wasn’t okay. Not even a little bit. I knew the phone in my hand, almost better than my own. If I pulled out my phone and punched my most frequently called number, I knew in my heart the sparkly pink one in my hand would ring.
I turned to face them, tears in my eyes. “They’ve got Zoe.”
Chapter Seventeen
He’d known. The whole time I’d been standing in the living room of the rundown house, thinking Titus and his gang couldn’t see me, he’d known. Maybe he hadn’t seen me, but he must have sensed me, exactly like Lazlo had a million years ago during the elder meeting.
My world crashed down around me, leaving me shaking with rage and breathless with fear. Reality no longer felt real. The universe folded over on top of itself, trapping me inside — either that or the revelation my best friend since childhood had been kidnapped and was in mortal peril had simply caused my hold on reality to snap. Or maybe I simply couldn’t fully acknowledge what had happened, because if I did, I’d also have to admit to the most agonizing fact of all.
This was all my fault.
My presence in her life now left that life hanging in the balance. Zoe didn’t deserve to get dragged into whatever was going on. She’d never hurt anyone, much less a dragon. It was bad enough that she’d freaked so badly when she learned of their existence, but this? Unforgivable.
“Are you sure?” Kellum asked, rubbing my back to calm me down.
Normally, the gesture would have worked a trick, but not this time. My entire body vibrated with so many emotions I couldn’t track them all. Before I could spin on Kellum and tell him I knew Zoe’s phone when I saw it, it buzzed in my hand. I screamed and nearly dropped it but managed to maintain my grip — on the phone, if not my sanity.
“Zoe? Zoe, is that you?” I shouted in a panic.
Before a sound was uttered, I knew it wasn’t her. It was him.
“Ah, Favor Fiske,” said a deep, rumbling voice with a thick Eastern European accent. He sounded happy.
My blood boiled. “Where the hell is Zoe, fuckhead!”
My boys gathered close around me, giving me strength to continue, if not control my language. Not that Titus seemed bothered by it. He chuckled softly at either my demand or my pottymouth.
“Zee girl ees in our possession,” he said, every word dripping with malice. I could almost hear him grinning. “She ees very…how you say? Alluring.”
“If you touch her or hurt her in any way…” I growled, my threat hanging in the air.
Again, he seemed completely unperturbed. “Vat? Vat vill you do?”
My teeth clenched tight. “I’ll kill you,” I hissed, meaning every syllable. I didn’t know how, but I knew I would. Even more, I knew I could.
Apparently, Titus didn’t get that memo.
“You are very brave, for a human,” he grunted with amusement, the clipped cadence of his Romanian accent making him sound even more threatening.
“I have offer, Favor Fiske. A trade.”
“Anything you want, just give her back.”
Kellum’s eyes went wide and he shook his head, but I ignored him. Whatever they wanted, I’d give it to them. Max had to have some kind of treasure hidden away in his lair or a bank or under his bed. I didn’t have any money, but I felt certain the boys would chip in whatever they could, and maybe I could even sweet-talk Lazlo into making up the difference.