Nite Fire: Flash Point

by C. L. Schneider

  Nite Fire

  Nite Fire

  Flash Point

  C. L. Schneider

  Copyright © 2017 C. L. Schneider

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 1542564999

  ISBN 13: 9781542564991

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2017900759

  CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

  North Charleston, South Carolina

  For all those who believe in myths and legends…and those who want to.

  Maybe the truth is out there, after all.

  Acknowledgements

  Though writing is a solitary craft, the creation of this book was not a journey I took alone.

  Bryan: I know it isn’t easy being married to a crazy writer. I couldn’t do this without your love and encouragement. Thanks for always being in my corner. Much love to my family for their unwavering support. To my dear friends: thank you for your unending patience. I disappear into my writing cave for weeks at a time, yet you’re always there to help and support, tie ribbons and lug boxes. XOXO to my dedicated beta readers, Dawn and Sara; no one works harder for vodka and coffee. You are positively irreplaceable. My editor at Otherworld Editorial, Marco Palmieri, has my deepest gratitude, as does Sara at The Right Words, for spit and polish. Thanks to my police consultant, J.A., and to Amy for speed reading and rum. A huge round of applause goes to my cover artist, Alan Dingman; a true talent. Love to the entire crew of the H.M.S. Slush Brain. You are my absolute favorite port in the storm. Thanks for the friendship and insanity. And to the many fellow authors I’ve been blessed to meet along the way. You are a constant source of inspiration.

  Contents

  Flash Point

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Epilogue

  Flash Point

  Prologue

  I’d almost forgotten what it was like to be afraid. I’d outgrown the nightmares of my youth long ago. Burying the events that sparked them, locking away the images, I’d dismissed the power they held over me. But I still remembered…

  Waking in my dark den, throat raw, fire spitting from my fingertips; in those first few moments before sleep released me from its clutches, I’d sworn the creatures’ hot breath was still on me, their barbed tongues darting out, smelling my fear on the air. In every shadow, I saw the black blur of their shifted forms, circling me. Every heartbeat bore the promise of pain as the razor-like teeth of the savage nageun shredded the meat from my bones. Every night, I waited for the creatures’ bites to penetrate, for their venom to flow in and my blood to spill out.

  Those moments were far behind me. The nightmares were gone. Experience had made me stronger and wiser. Determination and training had pushed my fear of their slender, stunted reptilian forms to the depths of my mind.

  Now they were crawling out.

  They were stepping from my past.

  The dark swarm was closing in, and the nageun’s pursuit of me was as real as the cold fear burning in my veins; twisting like a frozen blade with each pump of my legs as I ran.

  Shifting out of my human form, crimson scales erupted to spread beneath the malleable confines of my uniform, covering breasts, stomach, thighs, and back. Muscles increased in size as my slender nose widened. Rounded jaw hardened. Cheekbones and forehead became more distinct as my full lips darkened. I dropped to all fours, back arched slightly, and the forest floor sunk beneath my weight. Claw tips extended, digging in, releasing the aroma of damp soil and moldy undergrowth. With a rustle of leaves, I pushed off.

  Night birds scattered in haste at my swift trespass. Woodland creatures stirred and scurried. My unmistakable smell, an arousing amalgam of human female and dragon, had them skittish as I dove headlong into the clog of downed boughs and scrub. My agile hybrid form slipped through the labyrinth of timber with minimal effort. Arcs of fire crackled off the ends of my hair as it fluttered out behind me.

  I was too conspicuous. I needed to blend.

  Without breaking stride, I shifted the strands and their composition changed. From scalp to ends, human hair emerged, and doused the visible fiery heat wafting off the lengthy red waves. It wasn’t camouflage even close to what my pursuers were capable of creating. Their ability to shift into shadow, nearly erasing the edges of their bodies—little more than whip-like tails, long flat jaws, and serrated teeth to begin with—was one of the creatures’ greatest weapons.

  It wasn’t easy to kill my kind. Death by nageun was a long, tortuous mutilation there was no coming back from. Picturing it, I tore deeper into the forest.

  I tried to run and not think. But my mind was spinning, desperately seeking to understand, to conceive how a normal assignment on a normal day had landed me on the wrong end of an execution. With a single hesitation, my hopes, my future—my life—was over. The Guild was all I’d ever known. They’d plucked me from my den-mates, sheltered, fed, and trained me; promoted me to the coveted role of Executioner. They’d shown me the rewards of a life in service to our dragon elders. Dahlia Nite was a name respected in the ranks. I was known to all the tribes, decorated for fealty and bravery. Now, all had turned against me.

  I carried the order through. I did as I was told. I’d just needed more time.

  If the child hadn’t been there, if I hadn’t…

  What? I thought bitterly. I still didn’t know what happened. Only that her emotions had been strong beyond explanation. They’d been tangible, slithering over and in me, affecting me in an impossible way. I hadn’t been merely sympathetic to the human child’s terror. Her panic had brought me to my knees. I’d felt the violence of the moment, the violence I’d been sent to inflict, in a way I never had: as a victim. I’d seen it, growing around her ankles like a black wet fog. Stunned, I’d lost hold of my fire and faltered. Pausing, even just a moment, had created a memory; a record of my uncertainty, and, therefore, a death sentence.

  In a society where not even our thoughts were private, no mistake was overlooked. No performance could be embellished or hidden. Our mission reports, our kills, were pulled straight from our minds by the highest authority: Naalish, the Exalted One; mother of all firedrakes and Queen of the Elder Dragon Tribes of Drimera.

  Telepathy was common in female elders, but Naalish was said to possess a superior mind. It was also rumored she’d ripped the heart from her predecessor and ate it, consuming her soul to gain her power. I’d never believed it. Naalish was the most beautiful and majestic of all the dragons. Even hours ag
o, standing before her wrapped in chains, I’d been in awe of her presence. Deference and pride had kept me silent as she ordered my execution. I hadn’t even thought to plead for mercy. I was better than that. I was a hybrid, a shifter, a lyrriken. The product of a human female and an elder male in human form, both human and dragon existed within me. It was by the grace of the elders alone that I lived. They had every right to judge and punish me.

  It didn’t matter that I’d gone before the Queen confused, that I’d needed help and she’d called for my arrest. Mercy was a not a common dragon trait, and I would never have shamed either of us by begging. I took her condemnation with my head held high.

  It was after when my outlook changed. After, as I sat in my cell, with the blood of that human child drying on my hands, as I dissected my actions and tried to comprehend—I watched the walls go inexplicably fluid and gray. And I saw her. I saw it all again: the clearing where her home sat, the woods surrounding it, the charred body of her headless father on the ground. Stretching out like a hand from the grave, the child’s terror, stronger than anything I’d felt before, had gripped me anew. It dominated everything. My status, my honor, my duty to die as commanded, had no value. My squad, not even my lover mattered. Suddenly and inexplicably, I cared for one thing.

  Survival.

  No one had challenged my escape. They had no reason to expect such a bold move. Even facing execution, no Guild-trained lyrriken would dare defy the Queen. We would stay and take the death that was given us.

  Yet something had crawled inside me that didn’t want to die.

  Something that wanted to live more than it wanted to obey.

  Now the coin had flipped, and I was the target. I was the one striving to outrun the oncoming death on my heels, clinging to life even knowing the odds of surviving. Fleeing was foolish. My impulse to do so was puzzling, but I couldn’t stop. Even now, with my cell in the depths of the Citadel far behind me, with the lights from the City of Spires dim in the distance, the sounds of the child’s scream rang as strong as the wind in my ears.

  I’d left her alive too long. Her noise had brought the nageun out of the forest. My hesitation, my compromised aim when I recovered, had left her not quite dead when the horde descended. She’d watched them swarming. Felt their teeth puncture and tear. I’d backed quietly away, out of their view, listening to the foul crescendo of the cracking of bones and the slurping of organs as soft human bodies were reduced to strips of meat and puddles of viscous matter.

  They were to die, anyway. It had been my duty to kill them.

  But not like that.

  I’d botched the entire job, and I still couldn’t fathom how. How could one little human melt away my years of training, one mistake label me weak and untrustworthy?

  Now, in fleeing, I’d earned another brand. Traitor.

  Stilling my breath, I glanced back into the murk of the forest. My vision had long since adjusted, and through the lattice of branches, dark scales glimmered. Flashes of teeth and bobbing yellow eyes caught the sporadic flash of the twin moons’ brilliance. I counted the sets of eyes as they approached. I stopped at fifteen and ran faster.

  Instinct screamed for me to stop, to fight, to kill them.

  Fear screamed louder.

  Ending up in one of their burrows, pumped full of venom, drifting between peaceful ignorance and agony as my body was slowly depleted—my blood and tissue becoming nourishment for their suckling young—I’d lived through that hell once. Never again.

  Limbs slapped against my face, snagging the edges of my scales. My shoulder blades itched. Wings wanted to burst forth and unfold, but the scrub was too thick. Even if I burned it away I wouldn’t gain clearance fast enough to escape their reach. The nageun had no wings, but their lightweight bodies could scale the tallest trees as swiftly as any rodent.

  At a snap in the branches above my head, I froze. Glancing up, I spotted the form of a small, scaled lyrriken perched within the green. She was squatting on a sturdy limb, clutching its bark with her clawed feet. I recognized her immediately. Brynne was one of several novices recently assigned to my squad for apprenticeship. Immature, barely passing her lessons, this one had yet to be given a position, or even tested. Being caught with me would ensure she never did.

  Anger pushed my whispered words out fast. “What are you doing here?”

  “Dahlia,” she whispered back in relief. “I saw you leave the city. I wanted to…”

  “What were you thinking, following me? You need to go home now.”

  “Come back with me,” she begged.

  “I can’t.” I glanced behind me. There was no time for this. “Focus on your training,” I said sharply, trying to get rid of her. “Work hard. Obey the elders. They will teach you well.”

  “You were meant to teach me.”

  “They’ll assign another.”

  “But the retrievers will hunt you. They’ll bring you back. Naalish will—”

  “Do what she feels is right. Just as I am. Now hush,” I whispered with force, “they’ll hear you.”

  Before she could speak again, I was gone.

  Pushing my muscles faster, I scanned the terrain ahead. I needed to remain deep within the tangle. It was my only hope of staying alive, of someday returning home and changing the Queen’s mind. Hope, I thought, cursing my human side for entertaining such madness. Forgiveness was not found often among my kind. Once earned, a stigma was rarely lifted.

  Dead, it would never be lifted at all.

  I took a sharp left and headed toward the cliff at the edge of the woods. I knew what was there, far below in the ravine. I’d discovered it not a day before. On my way to kill the human, I’d skirted the gorge, and the air stung my nostrils. It was a telltale sign of a nearby exit. Unaware of any off-world activity in the area, I’d stopped to investigate. Glancing down had revealed a strange dark mist hovering over the lake at the bottom. Flashing within the black fog, were spinning flecks of color. The peculiar prisms of light were an anomaly I knew only from the elders’ descriptions. Though, coupled, with the acrid smell, I realized quickly what I’d found: a passage between worlds.

  What baffled me was how. Such ‘visible tears in the invisible’ existed on a plane only a true dragon could see. The inferior eyes and mind of a lyrriken weren’t built to visually comprehend such a complex phenomenon. Yet, somehow, mine had.

  I’d felt it, too. A strange force had emanated from the exit as I stared into its depth. The sudden explosion of sensations had knocked me to the ground. I’d thought it some sort of energy discharge. Now, after the human girl, I understood.

  What filtered out from the passage was similar to what I’d felt filtering out of her. Misery, trauma, pain, human pain; it all lie on the other side of the exit. So did their world.

  The passage must have been newly formed. All exits were guarded. Unauthorized off-world travel was forbidden. I’d planned to report the exit’s birth when I returned to the Citadel. New discoveries had to be mapped and explored, their destination and danger level verified by a Guild scout. But I didn’t need this one verified. I knew exactly where it led: to the only other world where I had a hope of blending in.

  Abruptly, the tree cover thinned. The space between trunks widened. Able to travel more quickly, soil and shredded leaves scattered as my hands and feet stirred up the forest floor. I refused to look back at the shadows on my tail. The volume of their slobbering snarls told me what little lead I had was dwindling.

  Jumping a small stream, I spied the edge of the foliage. Beyond was darkness and empty air. Below was the ravine. Within the mist-covered water was refuge, the unknown—the coward’s path. I’d never walked it before. I’d never defied the wishes of the elders. Not once had I chosen my own desires above theirs. Until now.

  Bursting from the trees, I pushed my wings out from the slender slits in my uniform. Unfolding in an instant, fire smoldered along their variegated edges as I skidded to a halt at the rocky lip of the bluff. Searching f
or the lights in the heavy fog blanketing the ravine, I caught a single colored twinkle. It was enough to gauge the exit’s position.

  My target in sight, I paused. I had never taken a mission to the human world. Still, I wasn’t ignorant of their ways. All lyrriken were taught their primary languages and a degree of their culture. We were half human, after all. Naalish once said humans were superior in what they build and create. Their weakness was of the soul, a lack of enlightenment. She said: It’s what makes them dangerous. It’s why we follow their progress so closely. Why we continue to keep the truth of our existence hidden. For if they were to learn of the riches of our worlds, or the power we possess, they would seek to make it their own. And no worlds would escape such an undertaking unscathed.

  Naalish also spoke of great wonder and beauty in the human world. She insisted it was there if you knew where to look, if you wanted to find it. And I did.

  I have to. There’s nothing left for me here.

  I took one final glance at the twin moons high above, fearing I would never again glimpse their beauty. I poised to jump—and shadow descended. Searing pain cut across the back of my legs. Blood spewed as nageun teeth ripped through my scales. Whipping my head around, I released a blaze with my defiant scream. I had no idea if I hit them. Flames clung to the trees and I dove off the cliff’s edge, parting the mist as I fell.

  Ninety-seven years later…

  One

  Fire dripped like rain from my scaled fingers. Gliding past my jean-covered thighs, then boots, the flaming beads breached the puddle beside me with a hiss. A last stubborn burst of light flared bright, illuminating the red pool for a breath before it sputtered out.

  The pattern repeated: drip, flare, hiss, sputter, drip, flare, hiss, sputter, as I stood in the abandoned train depot; counting the circles of blood that overran the pockmarks on the fractured concrete floor. Each bloody puddle corresponded to a body hanging upside down from the rafters above my head.