by Leia Stone
Sophie grabbed Nadine and stumbled backward.
Oops. I shook my hand and it stopped.
Sophie put her bullhorn up to her mouth: “Everyone step back. She needs practice.”
And practice I did. Over the next week I was either training on the course with Sophie and Isaac, meditating and learning about plants, or working with Logan on certain aspects of dragon magic. I could hit the paper plates directly from about ten feet away, but if they were moving I was less accurate. I’d also learned to tap into Isaac’s power and shake the earth a little, enough to make Dominic fall over. Isaac was able to tap into my power and make Sophie’s skin heat up. Hearing her scream “Stop!” in fear was one of the highlights of my training. So it looked like Isaac couldn’t quite conjure fire but he could make someone feel pretty darn uncomfortable and distract them. I didn’t think I was going to be opening any sinkholes soon, but shaking the earth was enough to give me the upper hand in a fight.
Early in the morning, a week later, Logan and I met for a lesson near the waterfall.
“I didn’t want to bother you with this before,” Logan confessed, “but I think you’re ready now, and it might help to strengthen your dragon.”
Strengthening my dragon was a good thing. I could feel her, but as I practiced the fire magic more and more, she seemed so far away.
Logan had a glowing-red druid blade in his right hand. He was wearing a glove, so I was curious where this was going.
“When a druid dies, all of the dragon magic he has taken leaves his body. If it’s not reabsorbed by a skyborn, it dissipates completely.”
I nodded. I remembered when we were in his house and he’d killed that druid. A fine green magical smoke had come up off of the druid’s dead body, and Logan had taken it into himself.
“I can’t take on any more dragon magic. I’m full, so to speak, but you, Casey, and the others can. If we’re going to war with the druids, we might as well get our power back,” he stated, looking at the glowing blade.
“Why do I have a feeling you’re going to cut me with that?” I eyed the glowing red blade.
He met my eyes. “You think I would ever hurt you?”
Never in a million years. “No,” I answered honestly.
He nodded. “I’m going to cut myself and release a small bit of dragon magic. I want to see if you can breathe it into yourself.”
I sat up straighter at that. “Can’t that thing kill you? Where did you even get it?”
Logan’s face looked dark. “It was found near Ruben. It could kill me, but only if stuck in me for a time. Not a small quick swipe like this.”
My mind flashed back to when he had died at the truck stop but I’d brought him back. It had been one of the worst moments of my life, and I was glad to be past it.
“Now, if your dragon isn’t ready, it will simply not absorb it into you, and it will be lost, carried away by the wind.”
“Seems easy enough…”
He smiled. “It is, and it’s a very powerful tool when fighting druids. For each bit of dragon magic we take back from them, the scales of power tip in humanity’s favor.”
“Alright, then. Do I need to prepare in any way?”
He shook his head. “You’re kind of either born to be able to harness the magic or not. It’s kind of like being submissive or dominant in a pack. Some people are just born with their own magic, and that’s all they can ever handle. Others are born to be able to take in large amounts of others’ power and hold it. That’s me.”
I grinned. “Well, I’m clearly not submissive, so I’ve got this.”
He chuckled, and I realized it had been a while since I’d heard him laugh, since we’d just had a carefree conversation like this.
“I love you,” I confessed. I didn’t know how much time we had together in the future. The days ahead were looking to be dark, and I knew from experience with my mom that when people died, you regretted not telling them you loved them more. Logan set down the glowing knife and reached up with his ungloved hand to tangle it in my red hair.
“Sloane, you have no idea how long I waited for you. How long I loved you before I even met you.” His lips brushed against mine and I couldn’t help the smile that spread across my face. Logan Sharp was a closet romantic. Some of the things he said to me belonged on a Hallmark card.
When he pulled away I felt heat pulse in my core, my dragon rustled with excitement. “Hmm, it’s too soon for my heat,” I told him.
He chuckled, giving me a devastatingly handsome grin. “That’s just my charm.” He winked.
Now it was my turn to laugh. “Okay, let’s do this dragon magic thingy.” I gestured to the knife on the ground.
Logan peered at me with his arresting green eyes. “Alright, just close your eyes and take three deep breaths, then open them.”
I obliged. On the third breath I opened my eyes to see Logan’s forearm had been sliced and a green mist was creeping off of the tiny cut there.
Whoa, he was leaking dragon magic.
“Alright. Breathe it in and see what happens,” he coached me.
When we’d talked about it before it seemed fine, but now that I was faced with breathing in my mate's essence, it was kind of weird.
“Any day now … losing magic here,” Logan told me.
Right. Whoops.
I leaned forward near the stream of green power leaking out of Logan’s cut and inhaled.
Please work. Please be a badass dominant dragon, I chanted to myself.
As I inhaled, the green smoke deviated from its path toward the sky and headed for my nostrils. The moment I breathed it in, a rush of adrenaline hit me and my dragon shook awake, pushing my druid magic aside to step forward and receive it. It was hard to explain ... it was like I’d just drank four coffees, but at the same time, as if I was well rested from a three-hour nap.
Logan lowered his arm; the cut was healing and he was grinning ear to ear. “I knew you could do it. Keegan owes me twenty dollars.”
My mouth popped open. “He bet against me? How dare he?” I folded my arms.
“Feels amazing, doesn’t it?”
It was my turn to grin. “It does.”
It felt like for the first time in a long time I was more dragon than druid.
He was about to say something when my phone went off. I rarely kept it around these days, especially since Isaac said it messed with my Nwyfre. Looking at the screen, I saw it was one of the dozen skyborn we’d contacted from my mom’s address book. They’d said they were going to be making their way out to us from Vermont over a week ago but needed to wrap things up first. It was a young guy named Dylan and his sorcerer girlfriend—M something. Marisa?
“Hello?” I answered.
I’d barely talked to this guy or any of them really. It had been awkward phone calls and video chats, where we gave them our location and asked if they wanted to join us. I’d plugged each number into my cell, but since we’d been with Casey, Lynn, and the baby, I’d honestly forgotten about all of the others. Some hadn’t even agreed to come but had asked for time to think on it, I never heard back from them. I didn’t want to be too pushy.
“Sloane, it’s Dylan and Maggie,” he told me, sounding panicked. Maggie! That was it, but the anxiety in his voice had me standing quickly.
“What’s wrong?” I could tell something wasn’t right.
He sighed. “We’re about an hour away from you and just stopped to get some food. There’s a redheaded female druid on my ass now.”
My adrenaline from inhaling the dragon magic was nothing compared to what was flowing through me now. “We’re coming!” I told him, and asked for his location.
Logan stepped in front of me. “Keegan and I will handle it,” he said loudly.
Dylan must have heard that. “No way. I don’t trust anyone else. I’ve been at this too long. I only trust you Sloane, or Lily.”
Lily, my mom, was dead.
“I’m coming to get you, Dylan. Don’t worry
.” I hung up as a text came through with his GPS pin and mile marker.
“You want to stay back? Do the splitting up thing again?” I asked my mate. I wasn’t sure what Logan and Keegan had worked out in the event there was another druid attack.
Logan looked like I’d slapped him. “No way. Look how well that turned out before.”
True. But together we could be killed. Apart we couldn’t—or so Isaac had said.
“I wish he’d let me come and bring him in.” Logan told me.
I shook my head. “These people have been running from druids their whole lives. Only one person has ever tried to help conceal them and that was my mom. She gave all of them my picture, setting me up for this role. I wouldn’t trust anyone else either.”
Logan groaned, “But I’m a freaking skyborn!”
“They don’t know that. Come on, let’s go,” I told him, and started jogging. One thing I was sure of was that Logan and I were better together than we were apart.
Chapter 4
We packed one of the buses full of shifters in under five minutes. Keegan’s pack was inbound to the pindrop location while Logan, Danny, Eva and I were in my car following. We’d asked Isaac to stay behind with the rest of the pack to protect Lynn’s family and Casey. If bringing over twenty shifters to rough up one rogue druid was too much, we didn’t care. No more mistakes. We’d go overkill every time if we had to. I’d told Dylan and Maggie to circle the route, leading the druid away from Isaac’s land and drop a new pin if shit went south. Shit must have gone south, because I got a new text with a new location and all it said was –We’re out of gas–
Crap! Something so simple as running out of gas could be the end of this man’s life.
“We’ve got a new location. They’re out of gas!” I shrieked to Logan, who was behind the wheel, as I forwarded the text to Keegan, and also tried to map how far we were from it.
“Get off!” I screamed, when I realized almost too late that the exit we were passing was the one they were off of.
Logan slammed on the brakes and cut the car to the right, careening us into the exit lane. The bus holding Keegan and the pack was ahead of us and would have to take the next exit and circle around. My fingers longed to be wrapped about my staff. My mother’s necklace was nice, but I just wasn’t used to it yet. The staff had been grounding, and made me feel safe just wrapping my fingers around it. The necklace just sort of lay there at the base of my throat, a constant reminder of my mother. But now that I knew it was feeding energy to the other skyborn necklaces mom made and helping conceal them, I couldn’t take it off.
“Go left! There’s a road past the truck stop that they’ve stalled at.” I pointed for Logan to turn the car in the direction of the pin on my phone.
Please be okay. Please be okay, I chanted in my head.
We’d pulled off into some small town with nothing but trees and one truck stop. It was midday but the truck stop was bare of people. I was guessing it wasn’t a popular place to gas up. Flying past the stop, I indicated for Logan to make a left on Capella Road, which would lead us to Dylan. Reaching down, I pulled off my shoes and socks, ready to ground my feet to the Earth and blast this druid out of the sky with my purple fire. Dylan had previously asked us if his girlfriend Maggie could come to the land too, but had said she wasn’t a powerful witch, only a quarter pure. I wasn’t sure what kind of magic that gave her, but I was hoping it was enough to keep them both alive. As we turned down the street and took in the scene before us, I gasped.
Dylan was in his full dragon form. A stunning emerald green dragon. Maggie was throwing some type of smoke spell to cover up where they were, but surrounding them were over a dozen druids. Not hunters. Full-on druids. Tattooed and all.
Eva growled. “This is war.”
Those words chilled me to my bones. War. This wasn’t one druid going after one dragon in the hopes of getting a little power kick off his magic. This was the slaughter of a species. That was their intention. Why else would they come like this, in such great numbers?
Logan slammed the brakes and the car screeched to a halt, drawing the looks of several of the druids, and I recognized the redheaded female from the bar fight that nearly killed Dom. The moment she saw us, she threw a glowing red dagger right at Dylan’s green dragon.
Eva and I erupted out of the car at the same time. Flowing out from the sorcerer’s hands was a yellow geometric magical sphere. I had to push my dragon down because she wanted to shift and fight by Dylan’s side, but right now I needed to allow my druid magic come to the surface. This bitch would burn. She would burn alive.
The druids fanned out, the redhead meeting my eyes, grinning ear to ear.
She pointed to me. “She’s mine.”
Suddenly water bubbled up underneath me; my feet sank into the mud as suction pulled me down, locking my ankles in place.
Water druid.
Isaac had prepared me for this. Told me about the different tricks they could use. Logan was a few steps ahead of me, running full blast at Dylan and Maggie, while popping off gunshots wherever he could. It didn’t look like the redhead’s knife had hit Dylan, and for that I was grateful. The druids had all created a red shield around themselves, but it seemed Danny and Eva had no problem popping them like bubbles.
I didn’t panic. I didn’t struggle. I took a deep breath, finding my inner Zen, and allowed the Earth to pulse her grounding magic through my feet, while I felt my connection to Isaac suddenly flare with strength. He was tuning into me through our master-apprentice bond, or whatever it was, and I knew what I needed to do.
As the redheaded druid stalked towards me, I sent my energy forward and gave it a push, using Isaac’s earth magic as he’d taught me. The ground suddenly shook; tree leaves rattled and the redhead stumbled and fell.
Yes!
Next, I sent that energy below me, shaking up the mud and water that held me, to loosen it, I asked the Earth to absorb it and free me. It was a bit slower going than I hoped, but the mud slid away from my ankles, which were soon free to move. It was a good thing too, because redhead was up and holding a fiery ball, looking pissed as hell. With a little effort, I pulled my left foot fully out of the waterlogged mud, and then my right. Stepping onto dry land, I met the druid head on just as she threw that red energy ball. With a shout, I brought my magic forward and thrust it out, spraying the oncoming ball with fire, it dissipated in my flames. But just as easily as I’d done that, a ball of water doused my flames and the front of my shirt. She was powerful. And fast.
Looking up, I saw the redheaded druid grinning at me, water dripping from her hands. “You’re a fire druid! I’ve always wondered how a fire and water druid would fight.”
Okay. Burning her seemed like a less likely option, but I had other ideas, things that would make Sophie proud. “Oh, I’m sure we’ll figure something out,” I told her while I pulled a twelve-inch hunting blade from my leg holster. She pulled a blade too, a glowing red one, and again that sick grin dotted her face.
With a quick glance behind me, I saw that backup had arrived. Keegan was running out of the bus with his shotgun in hand. I spun back around just in time to see a flicker of fear cross Red’s face before she lunged at me with a cry.
I dodged her easily. Her move was sloppy, lacking grace. I swung out with my knife hand in a wide arc, cutting into her exposed upper arm. She shrieked and stumbled, but caught her footing before righting herself and coming at me again.
If Sophie had taught me one thing about knife fights, it was that I sucked at them, and would never win one. I had short reach and was slow. So I did what she’d told me to. I took the druid to the ground with one hard kick to her knee, hearing the satisfying crack of bone. A roar of pain flew from her lips as she tumbled backward awkwardly. Then I whipped out my gun. It had been tucked into my lower back. I hadn’t wanted to use it until I had her right where I wanted her. I put my finger on the trigger, holding the barrel over her chest and … faltered. Was I a killer
? Like this kind of killer who just shot people in the chest while they were on their back?
My moment’s hesitation was too much. Out of nowhere she threw a red ball of druid magic right at me. I didn’t have time to block it, or spin out of the way, not even hold my breath. It crashed into my stomach, shoving me back with the force of the blast—just as I popped off two shots into her chest. I hit the ground hard right on my ass and the breath flew out of me, a searing pain igniting in my abdomen. My dragon shrieked and pushed against the surface of my skin. I’d always wondered what getting hit with one of these little things felt like. Oh, it hurt like a mother, but I wasn’t dead, so I was assuming I was going to be okay. I gingerly sat up and surveyed the scene before me.
Red was dead, lying in a puddle of blood with her eyes fixed on the sky. I stared at her chest for a good thirty seconds to make sure there was no life left in her. The ultimate proof came when green magical mist began to rise up off of her body. Dragon magic. I scrambled to my feet, unwilling to let one drop of my people’s magic be wasted. I stepped into the green haze, inhaling it into my every pore. Power pulsed through me and I felt my dragon swell inside, catching and filtering the magic. I stood there for half a minute breathing in the green mist, and let my eyes roam around the scene ahead.
Dylan was now in his human form, bleeding with a harpoon stuck in his shoulder, and Logan was in dragon form, standing before Dylan and his girlfriend, roaring fire onto anyone who stepped near them. These druids were powerful; there had been a dozen of them before and it looked like only half had been killed. A good amount still remained, and even though we’d brought a shitload of shifters, these druids were raining fireballs at them and taking cover in the trees.
‘Are you okay?’ Logan spoke through the bond.
I didn’t want to lie, but I also didn’t want to distract him while he was fighting. My stomach hurt something fierce, but I’d keep that to myself.