by Willa Hart
The living room sat empty as a battle raged outside. The house shook and the air smelled as if it was on fire. Titus dragged me out the front door, into the fading glow of sunset, where too many dragons to count flew overhead.
Tunnels of flame blasted through the sky as Titus’s lackeys distracted the cavalry. Claws the size of my arms ripped at the tough, leathery flesh of those who’d come to rescue me. Fangs gnashed, drawing blood, which spattered to the arid ground in droplets as big as my head. I watched in amazement as the thirsty dirt drank it up, leaving perfect dark red circles behind.
Before my brain could wrap itself around the terrible sights, sounds and smells of the fight, Titus threw me to the ground and pinned me under his boot. As long as it took me to blink, he shifted into his dragon form, bursting through the seams of his clothes instantly. His foot stretched into a long, taloned thing almost the length of my old Cadillac, the claws digging into the earth inches in front of my face.
I took a breath to scream, but before I could even squeak, those talons closed around me and his massive wings began beating the air for take-off. He squeezed me tight, and I could barely breathe, much less call for help. All I could manage was a weak flap of my hand before getting dizzy from lack of oxygen. I slumped in his grip, unable to do more, as dust and grit swirled around my head.
Titus labored to take off from a standstill, working furiously to get some lift under his wings. My head and exposed limbs flopped around helplessly with each flap. I watched in horror as the ground gradually moved away from me, bushes growing smaller, rocks turning to pinpoints, my silently screaming mouth no longer filled with dust. The entire house became visible under me, with its tortured roof and rust-pocked carport at the back.
I don’t know how high up we were when something knocked Titus off course. All I heard was the heavy thunk of body against body and a loud grunt coming from my captor. I craned my head around enough to see Danic’s red dragon eye staring right at me. Behind him, a slightly darker-colored dragon flew straight for us, its bright green eyes blazing as it rammed its head into Titus’s side.
The second blow sent Titus tumbling. Either he lost his grip on me or he deliberately released me, because the next thing I knew, I was hurtling to earth. Now I had more air available to me than ever, yet I still couldn’t scream. Every instinctive impulse short-circuited inside my brain, leaving me completely paralyzed. Terrified doesn’t even come close to describing the sensation of free falling through the air, knowing your parachute won’t open because — hello! — you don’t have one. My only hope was to close my eyes and pray I passed out before I slammed into the hard-packed terrain.
I hit sooner than expected. Softer than expected too. On top of that, the thing I landed on was moving. I scrabbled to grab something, anything, to maintain my precarious perch, and only once I was reasonably secure did I dare open my eyes.
I lay sprawled on the darker dragon’s back, my fingers wedged under his scales. Ryen, I thought, my body sinking into him a little bit, partly to hold on tight and partly to be closer to him. I felt a low sound rumble along my thighs and belly and chest as it worked its way up from the depths of his dragon.
Moments later, he landed and spread his wing for me. It looked a bit like the slide of an airplane that crash-landed in the water, and that’s how I used it. When my feet hit the dirt, he spread his wings around me to protect me the best he could.
A blood-curdling scream tore the air apart. My hands stood no chance at keeping the sound from nearly bursting my eardrums and turning my brain to mush. Ryen’s shield offered plenty of gaps to watch as Titus swept past, made a long, menacing arc and dove right for us. His chest expanded as he sucked in air, and I knew what was about to come.
I pressed my face against Ryen’s smooth hard underside, too cowardly to face my fate. Blinding light flashed behind my eyelids, and I knew Titus had spit out a fireball that would surely destroy me. Then darkness blotted out the brightness and I knew without looking that five pairs of wings had overlapped each other into a protective dome.
I screamed against the onslaught, and even as my voice died to a croak, another scream took its place. The boys pulled back, allowing me to see Titus streaking through the sky, spots of fire flickering along his head and belly. His fireball had bounced off the guys and back onto him.
But instead of letting him turn tail and escape, my boys pivoted toward him in unison and blew. Five streams of fire twisted together into a massive synchronized tornado of flame. Titus’s yellow eyes grew large in surprise and he tried to dodge the blast, but the fire-nado devoured him. One last guttural scream of fury and pain rent the air around us, then Titus’s charred corpse fell to the ground and shattered into a mound of ash.
The desert air fell eerily still. The battle that had been waging only moments earlier stopped with the abruptness of a car slamming on the brakes to avoid hitting a child. My boys — my dragons — stood facing the remains of Titus while I turned a slow circle to take in the devastation.
The front half of the house was fully engulfed in flames by this time, sending vast plumes of black smoke rising high into the still sky. A dozen or more dragons circled overhead, screeching in victory as they peeled off and headed for wherever they called home.
A handful of living dragons remained on the ground, all hurt or incapacitated to some degree. Some shifted into their human forms and tended to the more injured among them. Three large dragons lay dead in the dirt, and my instincts told me they were all my captors. The fight was over, and the good guys won!
Thank good—
Another scream cut across the silence like a knife. I would have recognized its owner anywhere. Zoe! I looked around for the source, only to see her dangling from the talons of the fifth jadokari flying east fast and furious. He must have hidden under the cover of the carport during the entire fight.
“Zoe!” I wailed, frantically looking around to see which dragons would chase after them.
The ones who hadn’t shifted were too injured. I shot a desperate look toward my guys, only to find them all in their human forms, watching helplessly as the dragon flew off with Zoe.
Well, fuck that! I sprinted after them, tripping over rocks and cacti, but barely noticing. I followed them even as the dragon gained altitude, then disappeared behind a cloud. I stopped, panting heavily, unable to believe that I’d come here to save her, yet I’d lost her anyway.
Running footsteps approached fast from behind, and I knew it was my guys.
“Help her!” I screamed at them. “He’s getting away!”
Kellum was the first to reach me, pulling me into his arms with a sorrowful expression. His face said it was too late, that Zoe was gone, but I refused to accept that. I slapped his hands away and glowered at every last one of them.
“Why are you all just standing around? We have to save Zoe!”
Kellum spoke as the others trotted up to join us. “It’s too dangerous, Favor. If we go after him now, he’ll drop Zoe, and the odds of one of us catching her are nonexistent at that altitude.”
“But—”
He stepped forward, sliding his hand down my arm until he had my hand in his. “She’ll die, Favor.”
“But we’ll find her,” Danic growled, laying a hand on my shoulder.
“More like you’ll find her,” Ryen said with a soft smile as he reached for my other hand.
I must have looked confused, because together Ash and Hale added, “With your psychic powers.”
They each wrapped an arm around my shoulders, and in the span of a heartbeat my panic eased. Clarity returned to my mind, though the pain at seeing Zoe stolen out from under my nose remained. It was enough to fuel my resolve.
“First of all, there’s no evidence that whatever powers I have could track her down. Regardless, I don’t need them for this. I know where he’s taking her. Titus told me.”
They closed the circle around me, focusing me.
“Where?” Kellum whispered.
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“Romania.”
We fell silent for a moment. Ash and Hale exchanged a quick glance, then said in unison, “Then that’s where we’re going too.”
Chapter Twenty
“How did you find me?” I asked, my voice quivering with emotion as I watched the empty sky for any more signs of Zoe and the dragon who’d taken her.
Kellum ran his hand up and down my back, no doubt trying to comfort me, and failing miserably. “Not sure exactly. Danic and I just seemed to know exactly where you were the entire time.”
I didn’t have the bandwidth to process this information, so I nodded as if it made some sort of sense.
“We should get out of here,” Ryen said, scanning the long dirt road. “Emergency services will be here soon.”
As they ushered me toward Ryen’s SUV, which sat miraculously unharmed in front of the inferno, I stopped and touched the wounds of the injured, dragons and men alike. I had no idea if my superpower, or whatever it was, would work, but I figured since they’d risked death for me the least I could do was show them some gratitude.
Several thanked me but I was far too numb to pay much attention. My thoughts whizzed around in my brain like a pinball, not leaving much brain power for anything else, including niceties. As I climbed into Ryen’s rig, I almost pinched myself, as Zoe had, to make sure this all had really gone down and wasn’t another of my bad dreams. But I knew it wouldn’t do any good. Facts were facts, no matter how much we didn’t want them to be.
Before the guys followed me into the vehicle, I glanced over at the dead dragons, vaguely wondering how they would be explained to the fire department, but then three of my unknown saviors stood together and blasted each massive body with dragon fire. Their fire streams didn’t merge, as my guys’ had done, but the intensity of the flame seemed strong enough to do the trick. It probably would take longer for the remains to turn to ash, but I turned away before the task had been completed. I’d had enough trauma for one day.
I closed my eyes on the world around me, then a terrifying sensation of tumbling ass over tea kettle hit me, like vertigo. When I dared open my eyes, I was no longer sitting in the back seat of Ryen’s SUV — I sat on a hard wooden chair inside a uniquely familiar cave.
“Uncle Max!” I cried, when I spotted him standing in front of his own rustic throne.
He looked exactly as he had the last time I’d seen him in one of my visits, or visions, or whatever they were. Tall, leathery skin, long gray hippie ponytail, fully formed paunch. Same ol’ Max and it warmed my heart more than anything else could in that moment.
“Favor, there you are,” he said as he walked toward me, as if I were late for a prescheduled appointment. “Seems we’ve been playing phone tag with—”
I didn’t let him finish. As soon as he was within arms-length, I leaped into his arms for a fierce hug. It took him off-guard, and he was speechless for a moment before returning the embrace.
“It’s good to see you too, Party Favor,” he murmured in my ear, then pushed me back. “Unfortunately, we don’t have time for a happy reunion. I need a status update, and quickly.”
I nodded, trying to rein in my emotions. “Sorry, Max, but things have been pretty crazy. In fact, I thought I might never see you again.”
When his eyes widened in surprise, I explained. “The short version is that Titus and three other jadokari are dead. The last one kidnapped Zoe and I believe he’s taking her to Romania.”
“Zoe?” he asked, thinking about who I might be talking about. “Wait, your friend, Zoe?”
“Yeah, they’re trying to get to you through me.”
He looked contemplative for a moment, then nodded. “They took her to lure you in, thinking it would lure me in.”
“Exactly.”
Max ran a hand over his face, pacing around a bit and furrowing his brow. He swore under his breath in the dragon-tongue, a word that didn’t really translate to English well, but it was potent.
“Rude,” he muttered.
“Huh?”
He shook his head in disgust. “Rude to involve humans. Poor manners.”
“Poor manners?” I balked. “Max, her life is in danger.”
“Of course,” he said, patting my shoulder as if one day, when I was all grown up, I’d understand. “But I believe she’s safe. For now.”
“Safe? The last I saw of her, she was dangling from a dragon’s claws!”
“Favor, they need to keep her alive and healthy if they want to lure you and me across the globe to secure her release.”
“They?” I asked, a heavy sense of dread filling my belly. “I told you, the others died in the fight.”
Max gave me a grim look. “There are more jadokari, Favor. Many more.”
I threw up my hands and huffed. “That’s just fan-fucking-tastic!”
Max resumed his pacing, while I wondered how the hell I was going to track down my best friend while she was in the clutches of some insane dragons half a world away.
“Is it safe?” he asked, interrupting my depressing thoughts.
“Huh?”
“Is it safe?” This time with more urgency.
“What? Is what safe?”
Max stepped forward, grabbing my arms. “The Dragon’s Heart. Is it safe?”
“Max, what are you talking about?”
He dropped his hands and his face grew ashen. “The Dragon’s Heart. The guli?”
“Oh! That’s what Titus kept asking about.”
“And?”
I shrugged. “And…nothing. I have no clue what this ghouly thing is.”
“Guli,” he spat through clenched teeth.
He spun away, fists clenched, then he turned back to face me, fear and anger and worry flickering orange in his brown eyes.
“It’s the paperweight with the rock inside, the thing I hid in the toilet tank, remember?”
“Oh! That?”
I thought back and recalled stuffing it into the bottom of my backpack and then… What? So much had happened since then.
Then it hit me. My heart sank into my gut as I met Max’s gaze.
“Favor, where is it?” he asked softly, as if he didn’t really want to hear the answer but knew he must.
“I-I…” I swallowed hard and chewed on my lip for a second. “I put it in my backpack for safekeeping.”
He could sense I was holding back. “And?”
“And…” I let out a deep sigh of shame. “I set it down in Enoch’s hideout while we were interrogating him.”
“So?”
I shrugged. “Sorry, Max, but we ran out of there when Titus and his team attacked, and I completely forgot to grab it.”
After everything that had happened over the last few days, the fact my ratty old backpack was missing had barely registered on my Aw-Shit-O-Meter. Of course, I'd noticed it was nowhere to be found, but when I hadn't been able to find it for Monday's class, I'd assumed it was at the office and carried my books and laptop in my arms. Once Kellum had replaced my phone — the singular most important item in the pack, or so I thought — I pretty much forgot all about it.
“Well, get your ass back up to Ventura County and get it!”
He sounded frantic, which seemed a little over the top for an oversized paperweight.
“Max, Titus blew up that shack. All that was left when we drove away was a flaming pile of lumber.”
“Good, it will be easier to find,” he said.
“No, you don’t understand. That place got blown to smithereens. No way your paperweight survived, Max.”
He glowered at me, sending shivers down my spine. Max didn’t get angry often, but when he did, watch out.
“The Dragon’s Heart is intact, that much I can guarantee, Favor. The exterior part may have melted away, but the Heart did not. Now you must do what you failed to do in the first place. Get your ass up to Ventura County and find it. And above all else — all else — keep it safe, do you understand?”
He loomed over me,
using his size to intimidate me. On any other day, it wouldn’t have worked, but the fierce gleam in his eyes left no room to argue.
“I’m sor—”
“No time for apologies. Just do it.”
“I will.” I nodded quickly as tears burned the back of my eyes over disappointing him. “But Max—”
I never finished the thought. Between the time I started the first word and finished the second, I returned to the real world, with all of my guys staring down at me. I lay prone in the back seat, all five crowded around the open door, watching me intently, none of them clothed.
“I’m guessing either Max left a really long note this time, or you had an actual conversation,” Ryen said.
Exhaustion crushed me under an unbearable weight as I struggled to sit up. Danic and Ash helped steady me until I sat facing them so I could relay my conversation with Max. Their nudity barely registered, I was so tired and overwhelmed.
“What’s this guli thing?” Danic asked, shooting a look at Kellum.
He shrugged. “No idea, but it must be important. What I do know is that Favor is in no shape to go hunting for it.”
“But—”
“No,” Kellum said flatly. “Look at you. You can hardly hold your head up. You need rest.”
I shook my head. “Max said—”
“We’ll go,” Hale said, stepping next to his brother, who nodded.
“Yeah, we can sift through ashes with the best of them,” Ash agreed. “And we’ll get there faster by flying. Just tell us what we’re looking for.”
“I only saw it through the amber or whatever the stuff was encasing it. It was a dark, heart-shaped stone that had some red crystals in it that gleamed.”
I left out the part about how it would pulse in time with my heart, because I didn’t really need them thinking I’d lost my mind. Or more of it, anyway.
“Good idea,” Kellum said. “And if what Uncle Max said about the jadokari is correct, Favor shouldn’t go anywhere near the thing. Too risky.”
“She probably shouldn’t go back to Max and Shirley’s house, either,” Danic pointed out. “Too obvious.”