“Well, Kylie is much prettier.” She gave Kyle a pointed look. “And your father prefers it.”
She picked up the skirt and held it against Kyle. “My, but you’re tall. This will barely reach past your knees, so we certainly don’t need to hem it any shorter. I think Angela could sew you a few more a bit longer before we leave tomorrow. Skirts aren’t difficult to make.” She smiled. “When we return and have more time, I’ll teach you how so you can sew your own.”
“I have pants that are long enough now. No need for Angela to go to any trouble.”
Ruth frowned. “Pants are not appropriate for women, young lady. Now, get changed and then join me in the kitchen to help prepare dinner for your father.” Her face was stern as she eyed her. “Will I need to tell him that you won’t be eating because you refused to dress properly? I’d hate to do that because you look like you can’t afford to miss another meal.”
The threat was thinly veiled, and the very thought of real food made her mouth water. Even more important, she needed nourishment to get her pyro ability back. She was so debilitated after weeks of starving that she could barely produce a matchstick flame. But she must be careful. Her father didn’t know about her gift, and she was afraid of what he’d do to her if he found out. Kyle lowered her eyes. “No,” she said quietly. “I’ll only be a minute.”
Ruth nodded. “Good, because your father is very busy and likes to eat exactly at six o’clock.”
Kyle waited a heartbeat after Ruth closed the door, then dropped down to lie across the bed. She’d tried twice to escape and return home, but that Simon jerk just kept dragging her back. She couldn’t, wouldn’t believe that her mother and brother were dead until she saw their ashes. No. Their bodies. Her father had said he’d buried them on the back part of their residential cooperative’s homestead. Buried! She didn’t know how she’d find them, but she would. And she’d build funeral pyres for both. Nobody in her family would be badly born into the next life if she had anything to do with it.
Her stomach growled and she sat up. She looked at the skirt and sighed. She’d better get dressed. Her hunger compelled her. She also needed to earn her father’s trust. The next time she left, she wouldn’t be a hotheaded kid running away from her parent. She wasn’t a child any longer. She’d reached legal age more than a year ago and he no longer had the authority to confine her, even if he was her father. She had to form a strategy and squirrel away a stockpile of supplies. She didn’t know how she’d travel, since the credits system used to buy everything was easily traceable. But she’d find a way. Only her immediate destination wouldn’t be the valley that had been her home. Another chain of mountains, somewhere much farther south, was drawing her. She didn’t understand why, only that time was running out.
*
Alyssa sat, stretching her legs in front of her and bracing with her arms behind her to lean back. “I’d rather you show me than tell me.” She wondered if the flush rising up Jael’s neck was from arousal or embarrassment.
“I meant that I’ll explain why the valley below us is filled with people.”
She sat up to mirror Jael’s pose. Despite her disappointment that Jael had obviously switched gears, she was eager to finally learn more about their mission. “You said you couldn’t reveal everything until you could tell everyone at once.”
“I want to tell you now.” Jael’s gaze bore into her. “But you can’t breathe a word to anyone else.”
Alyssa touched her right fist to her left shoulder as she’d seen Second do. “You have my word.”
Jael smiled briefly at the gesture. She stretched her legs out, then bent them to rest her forearms on her knees and stare at the horses that had wandered off to graze. Alyssa waited patiently for her to finally speak.
“I’ve lived many, many incarnations—lives you would likely find completely foreign and appalling.”
“Were you a criminal? A slaver? A prostitute or a politician?” She was a little disappointed when Jael ignored her attempt to lighten the mood by pairing prostitute and politician in the same sentence.
“You could say I was a serial killer of sorts. I was…have always been a warrior.”
Did Jael really think her past made a difference to her? True, she’d known Jael only a few weeks, but she’d sensed no malevolence in her or any of The Guard. All she felt was an intense commitment to duty and honor. “That’s not the same as a murderer. Warriors don’t go after innocents. They battle adversaries.”
Jael’s inviting lips flattened into a tight, bitter line, and her warm blue eyes turned winter cold. “What do you know of war?”
“Obviously, I have no personal experience to recall, but I’ve been reading your books in the evenings.” Alyssa celebrated a small, silent victory when the hard lines of Jael’s handsome face eased and surprise flickered in her eyes. “Besides, you’re not a warrior now. But if you didn’t write about war, people would forget its violence. So, no matter what destruction you may have wrought in past lives, you write about it now so society won’t repeat that bloody part of our history.”
Jael’s sigh was resigned. “I write about it because it’s what I know. It’s who I am.” She shifted to face Alyssa. “Give me your hands and close your eyes.”
Alyssa didn’t hesitate to close her eyes and slide her hands into Jael’s. She smiled when she felt a smooth forehead press against hers and Jael’s warm breath caress her cheek.
Then the images came. Furiously fast, awful glimpses so real she could hear and smell and taste them.
A sword thrust through a man’s chest and then twisted with a chilling crunch of bone and sucking squish of mutilated organs. A choking river of blood gushed forth as a dagger sliced a bearded throat. Cutting, slashing through a field of chaos, men shoulder to shoulder. Screams and yells filling air permeated with the stench of blood and bowel and fear. Soldiers transferring a pile of arms and legs onto a wagon behind a surgeon’s tent. The rat-a-tat of gunfire and a deafening explosion. Limbs and torsos scattered about like puzzle pieces. The pop of a sniper rifle in the distance, followed by a spray of brains and skull from a soldier standing two feet away. Silver predators streaking the sky, spewing napalm on jungle, bunkers, and villages alike. Human torches—some child-sized—staggering down a rutted road, trying to outrun the flames eating them. White-suited figures wandering down a street littered with bodies, a city’s entire population murdered instantly by a smart bomb that had left the buildings intact except for shattered windows.
Alyssa jerked away, heart pounding, lungs starving for breath the horrible images had stolen. She gulped great sobbing gasps and struggled to crawl away as Jael drew her onto her lap and wrapped her in a tight hug, stroking her hair and back to calm her.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” Her kisses were gentle on Alyssa’s wet cheeks. “I can take them back. I can erase them so you won’t remember. I just needed you to see.”
Alyssa stopped her struggle and buried her face in Jael’s neck. She felt safe in Jael’s embrace, even though the images still scorched her. She’d briefly lived Jael’s memories, wielded Jael’s sword, fired Jael’s weapon. But it was the last image that disturbed her most. “You killed her.” Jael’s booted foot had rolled a body onto its back. The woman’s eyes were bloody and unseeing, her mouth working until the barrel of Jael’s laser rifle pressed against the woman’s forehead and buzzed. Then her mouth was still.
“The smart bombs in 2180 were a mixture of percussion bomb and biological weapon. They’d plant them in heavily populated areas. The impact would scramble the brains of everyone in a one-mile radius, killing them instantly. Anyone who, for whatever reason, wasn’t impacted enough to die was infected with an incurable virus that liquefied their insides within twenty-four hours. It was very painful, and we could do nothing but end it quickly for them.”
The sun dipped lower and still they clung to each other in silence, Alyssa trembling and Jael stroking. Finally, Alyssa spoke.
“Why?”
“That’s a broad question.”
“Why did you need for me to see it?”
“I want to be honest with you. I need you to see who I am, how different we are. As a warrior, I’ve done terrible things. I’ll take them back now so that you won’t remember specific images that can show up in your dreams, only that they were awful.” Jael’s hands stilled. “I…I hadn’t meant to kiss you until you knew everything. I’m sorry. I can erase that, too, if you want.”
Jael’s pain sliced through her and Alyssa opened to it, absorbed it. When rough fingers closed around hers, she jerked her hand away. “No.”
Jael blinked at her. “I was just going to—”
“Don’t take them from me.” She cupped Jael’s face in her hands. “They’re horrible memories and I can feel how they hurt you, so I want to carry them for you, with you.” She brushed her lips against Jael’s. “And, even if you can take away the memory of our kiss, you can’t erase my need to kiss you again.” She moved her mouth over Jael’s, tracing her tongue over Jael’s lips until she opened and Alyssa sucked her inside. She quivered at the way Jael’s tongue filled her mouth, how Jael flooded her senses, and she ached to cradle her bare breast in Jael’s rough palm, to hold Jael’s long fingers inside.
Alyssa slowly disengaged. “That’s what’ll fill my dreams tonight.”
“I have more to show you.”
“Can’t it wait?” She smoothed her hands down Jael’s strong arms. She didn’t want to see more death and destruction. She didn’t want to dwell on their differences. Fate obviously was drawing them together. They should concentrate on what they shared—this mission, this attraction, this field, this minute. She altered the path of her hands, and Jael caught them in hers just as she was about to explore the taut nipples under Jael’s T-shirt.
“No, it can’t wait. Twilight is seconds away. I have to tell you a story before night reaches us.”
“A story.”
“Yes.” Jael was serious again.
“Okay.” Resigned, she slid off Jael’s lap but sat close enough that their shoulders still touched and her hand rested on Jael’s hard thigh. She couldn’t bring herself to break their physical connection. Not yet. “I’m listening.”
“We’ve been testing DNA for the past weeks so we can identify the people who carry a portion of the DNA sequence shared by the members of The Guard. It’s the genetic element that allows us to bond with them,” she said, gesturing toward the horses.
“You’re just confusing me more. I thought this whole mission thing was about the weather disasters and a cult that is preying on the victims. What do horses have to do with it?” She’d waited weeks for Jael to open up, and now that she had, all Alyssa could think about was getting past this discussion and back to kissing.
“So impatient. It’s a story that spans hundreds of years, but I’ll try to summarize and get to the point quickly.”
“Please do, before we move on to our next lives.”
Jael didn’t acknowledge Alyssa’s sarcasm. “Even before my first life, there were legends of great dragons on what was once known as the Asian continent. The Welsh recorded tales of winged dragons that breathed fire and guarded castles. The Greeks wrote about a mythical winged horse, Pegasus. They also wrote about Centaurs who were half human, half horse. Throughout history there have been legends of shape-shifters, skin-walkers, and other things we scoff away because we can’t explain them with logic or science.”
Alyssa struggled to concentrate on what Jael was saying rather than the movement of her lips. “Those are rather otherworldly.”
“Like reading the thoughts or feelings of other people? Or like shooting fire from your fingertips?” Jael snapped her fingers to ignite, then extinguish a small flame.
She frowned. “People are quick to dismiss things they can’t immediately understand.” She shook her head. “But fire-breathing dragons and flying horses?”
The horses moved restlessly in the fading light, their hooves dull thumps against the turf, and Jael stood, holding out her hand to help Alyssa to her feet, too.
“Behind every legend is usually some grain of truth.” Jael’s fingers closed around hers as she ignited a bright, blue-white fireball in the palm of her other hand and held it aloft to push back the gathering darkness. Jael’s tight grip was the only thing that kept Alyssa from a screaming, headlong sprint down the mountain when the hide on Specter’s shoulders began to move like something was trying to get out.
Chapter Thirteen
Two bony protrusions sprouted and punched through bloodless skin as Specter’s shrill whinny turned to a predatory scream that chilled every cell in Alyssa’s body. The protrusions grew to at least a meter each and snapped open to form three-meter leathery wings. He shook his great wings and reared, baring sharp teeth and huffing his own blue-white fireball into the dark sky.
“Stars above,” Alyssa breathed. “Great stars above!”
One by one, the other horses transformed and lunged skyward to disappear into the darkness. Only Specter remained, breath escaping in a plume of white smoke.
“Where are they going? We have to warn people.” Her thoughts ricocheted wildly in her head. Giant bats, indeed. Would they descend on neighboring farms or the camp in the valley to carry off cattle or people to roast for a meal?
Specter snorted, shooting small spurts of flame from his wide nostrils.
She sucked in a breath, her eyes still fixed on him. “We have to stop them.” She blinked in the darkness when Jael extinguished the fireball in her hand, but a full moon was rising and her eyes began to adjust.
Jael slid an arm around her shoulders. “They’re flying off to meet their warriors. The bond is strong and drives them to reaffirm the connection each time they transform.”
“They’re not going to terrorize the countryside and steal cattle?”
Jael smiled and shook her head. “They’re horses—herbivores. The only things they eat that regular horses don’t are rocks made from the minerals that enhance their fire-breathing ability.”
Okay. The wing-sprouting was pretty weird, but fire-breathing wasn’t much different from Jael’s pyrotechnic ability. Who was she kidding? This fire-breathing, flying horse thing was big. Bigger than realizing she was an empath. More incredible than having a message implanted in your brain by your mentor, then extracted by tall and sexy. More fantastic than…well, not more fantastic than the kiss…or any of Jael’s kisses. But, stars, her mind was spinning like a wind turbine. She pressed against Jael’s side and wrapped her arm around Jael’s waist. She was solid. The fit of her length against Alyssa was real in a world that was becoming too surreal. She took a deep breath. It was just a horse with wings—okay, a horse that glittered even in the moonlight and breathed fire. Another deep breath and curiosity began to replace her initial panic. This winged horse was incredibly beautiful. “Can I touch them?”
“Touch them?”
“His wings. Will he mind if I touch his wings?”
Specter stepped forward. The bones in his face were sawtooth ridges now. His round, dark pupils had transformed into bloodred vertical slits. Jael released her and she hesitated, but he dropped his head and slowly spread his wings low enough that she could touch them. The thin membrane of skin that stretched between the framework of bone was actually covered with thin, silky hair that glittered like the rest of Specter. “It’s like someone sprinkled him with fairy dust,” she said softly. She touched the hard, jagged ridge that ran the length of his face. “A very scary fairy.”
“I hope you’re over the vertigo, because he’s our ride down the mountain.”
Her heart leapt with both fear and exhilaration. “We…we’re going to fly down?”
“I don’t recommend stumbling down in the dark.”
She tentatively touched his lips. Huge spiked teeth had replaced the blunt molars used for tearing off and chewing grass. “If he doesn’t eat flesh, why does he have these wicked teeth?”
; “At night, after they’ve transformed, they need the teeth to split rock into small-enough pieces that they can grind them into powder with their back teeth.”
“They actually eat rocks?”
“Yeah. The herd managed to find an old coal mine once, and it took weeks of brushing to get their teeth white again.”
Alyssa laughed at the ridiculous image in her mind of Jael brushing Specter’s teeth, and Jael grinned at her. She was beginning to love that smile and the surprising flashes of Jael’s playful side.
“Because of their natural grazing nature, they still forage for minerals some, but we feed them hard cubes of phosphorus that meets their metabolic needs and their desire to chew hard stuff.”
She had so many questions. “So, they’re regular horses during the day and flying horses at night?” She jumped when Specter lifted his head and screamed.
“He doesn’t like to be called a flying horse.”
Alyssa massaged her ringing ears. “Stars. I thought he didn’t understand language.”
“He recognizes some words.”
“Okay, what should I call him?”
“He’s a dragon horse. The members of The Guard are dragon-horse warriors.”
“How do you get to be a dragon-horse warrior?”
“You must be born to it. Bonding with a dragon horse is dangerous, even impossible if your DNA doesn’t contain the correct strand to bond with the animal’s. Acceptance of diversity has brought peace and unity to the world, but it’s diluted any pure ethnic or racial bloodlines so that purebloods are rare today. The dragon-horse bloodline—at least enough to maintain The Guard—has been preserved through strict protocols.”
“Protocols? We’re not talking about arranged marriages, are we? We learned about those in history instruction. It was a barbaric, primitive tradition.”
“Marriages were arranged in the early days. Once science developed better methods, every generation has used in-vitro fertilization to ensure at least two purebloods from their lineage in each generation.”
Dragon Horse War Page 13