In the Shadow of Dragons (Aftermagic Book 1)

by Sonya Bateman

  “Long as you return the favor.”

  “Great.” He knelt and parted the ropes. And still stood back as fast as he could. “Let’s try to start over here,” he said. “You’re Teague. I’m Noah. Consider us introduced.”

  “You mean your name’s not really Prophet?” Her lip curled slightly, and she crossed a leg over her thigh to rub her ankle. “This is a cave,” she said, looking slowly around the place. “With electricity. I take it we’re not in the Warrens.”

  “Correct.” This one, the first space off the main tunnel, was usually empty except for the lights strung on the walls and the canvas dropcloth hung over the entrance. They used it for sparring sometimes. Now it had a chair and an angry girl with magic. “Like I mentioned, the way we brought you out here was necessary,” he said. “If you don’t know our location, it can’t be tortured out of you.”

  He watched her for a reaction. Mentioning the possibility of torture was usually enough to scare off anyone who wasn’t highly dedicated to burning BiCo. But she only looked angrier. “Also, you don’t trust me,” she said. “Right?”

  “Honestly? No, we don’t. Not yet.” She took that calmly enough, so he went on. “Around here, trust is earned,” he said. “Everyone’s on probation for a while. The more you prove yourself, the more you get to know.”

  “Uh-huh.” She lowered her leg to the ground and crossed the other one. “What exactly is around here?” she said. “I mean, no one really spelled it out for me. You guys … you’re the Darkspawn, aren’t you?”

  His teeth ground together, and he reminded himself that was the only way people knew them. Through the name Julian Bishop had branded them with to scare the public. “We don’t use that name,” he said, trying to keep the anger down. “Actually, we don’t really have a name. But yes. We’re what they call the Darkspawn.” He raised an eyebrow. “Is that going to be a problem?”

  “Not at all,” she said. “You’re exactly the people I was looking for.”

  “Tell me why.”

  She shifted her leg down and leaned forward in the chair. Her eyes practically burned with rage. “Because I despise Julian Bishop, and I want to make him suffer,” she said.

  The fury behind those words took his breath away. Even knowing nothing else about her, he knew that statement was the absolute truth.

  It would have to be enough.

  “All right,” he said. “You’re in.”

  CHAPTER 27

  Madden Ranch

  August 9, 8:22 p.m.

  For the second time in her life, Naomi had woken up in Scott Madden’s arms. Only this time his arms were a lot higher from the ground.

  Somehow she’d managed not to scream when she came around to a centaur.

  He’d settled her in a chair by the back wall of the barn, with its whiteboards and strangely integrated bookshelves, and then he’d gone under the loft. Sometime later he returned with a mug of tea. She was still in a haze of shock while he made it, but she got the impression of a bizarre, kitchen-like area with a lot of raised platforms, high cabinets, a microwave mounted on a wall. Where someone whose arms were seven or eight feet up, who couldn’t touch the floor, could reach them.

  What he’d built out here had taken time and planning. This was why the house looked deserted. He must’ve been living in the barn for years now.

  Because he was too big to move through the house.

  She’d had to place the tea on the floor when he handed it to her. Now her hands had finally stopped shaking enough to pick it up and take a sip. It was the perfect temperature. “Chamomile,” she said. “My favorite. You remembered.”

  He nodded. “With one sugar.”

  From the chair, it was almost dizzying to look up at him. At least his face was still Scott. A little older, a little hairier, a lot more haunted. But familiar all the same. “It was the second Eclipse, wasn’t it?” she said. “Year One. When so many people…”

  “Changed.” Scott shifted and stepped back. Well, clopped back. It was surreal trying to get her head around the idea of walking around as a horse. “I’ve looked into that a little,” he said. “The people who transformed so quickly, the very first time the magic lasted longer than thirty seconds. Wylds.”

  She’d heard the term a few times, many years ago. “I thought they were all dead,” she whispered. “I mean, BiCo…”

  “Yes, that’s what BiCo wants everyone to believe. And most of them are,” he said wearily. “The few who survived are in hiding, like me.”

  “And you’ve been out here all this time? Alone?” Her heart constricted. “Scott, I’m so sorry. I should’ve tried to reach out to you sooner.”

  “No, please. Don’t apologize.” His sad smile returned. “I really didn’t want you to see me like this. But you have now, and maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe you can help me figure all this out before it’s too late.”

  She didn’t want to know, but she had to ask. “Too late for what?”

  “It’s a long story. I’ll get to it soon,” he said. “Omes … do you know that you’re a Null?”

  She frowned. Like Wyld, she’d heard the term, but she didn’t really understand it. Far as she knew, people were either magic or not magic. “I guess I don’t,” she said. “What’s a Null?”

  “It means you’re magic-intolerant,” he said with a smirk. “Basically the opposite of me. You can’t use magic, but it also doesn’t affect you. So, for example, the Knights couldn’t blast you to death. Unless they used bullets.”

  “So I’m what, impervious to magic?” She blinked at him. “How do you know that?”

  “Because you didn’t set off my alarms.”

  “What alarms?”

  “The magic ones outside,” he said. “If you were anything but Null — Wyld, Neutral, Blade — things would’ve lit up like Christmas in here. I haven’t figured out how to set alarms for Nulls yet.”

  “Scott … why do you need magic alarms?”

  “Come on, Omes,” he said gently. “You must know why.”

  She did, but she absolutely didn’t want to admit it. If the patrols or the Knights found him out here, if anyone reported him — they would kill him. Just like they did to everyone who changed during an Eclipse.

  Sawyer wouldn’t, though. She was almost sure of it.

  Somehow she doubted Scott would believe that.

  “Okay, so I’m Null, and you’re Wyld,” she said. “And normal people are Neutral. The other thing you said, was it Blade?”

  He nodded. “They can wield magic like a blade, but it cuts both ways. They change too, but very slowly. They’re mostly still human. And they tend to have Magesign. Sound familiar?”

  “The Knights,” she said. “All the Knights are Blades.”

  “Exactly.”

  She took a moment to let that sink in, crazy as it was. The magic, the Eclipse surges, all of it was supposed to be unknown and unpredictable. Almost completely random. It was why everyone relied on the Bishop Corporation and HeMo — it kept them safe from dangerous, unpredictable magic. But it seemed things weren’t quite as random as BiCo claimed. They must have been the ones to come up with all these categories, so they knew at least something about how it all worked.

  And magic didn’t turn everyone into violent, raging monsters. Scott Madden was living proof. Maybe he was a little paranoid, but with good cause. And he was doing fine. Apart from being a centaur.

  So what else was BiCo hiding?

  “Naomi, listen,” Scott said. “There are no words for how glad I am to see you again, but you can’t stay long. It really is dangerous. Let me tell you what I know, and maybe you can actually do something with the information.”

  She nodded. “I’m listening.”

  “I’ll start with HeMo.” He moved to the bookshelves, laid hand to a file, then changed his mind and let go. “I won’t try to show you all my notes, all the tests. Believe me when I say they’re extensive.” He blew out a breath. “I’m not sure exactly what HeMo
does to people, but I know what it doesn’t do. It doesn’t cure magic.”

  She was already shaking her head. “Yes, it does. I’ve read all the studies,” she said. “Scott, I’ve seen it work. Most of the time, it keeps people from turning—”

  “It doesn’t,” he insisted. He was calm, convincing. “It’s only masking the symptoms, like Magesign and physical changes. The composition is similar to an immunosuppressive, like BiCo’s original drug, though there are components I can’t identify. I’m almost positive it’s actually helping people accept the magic, the way methotrexate helps bodies accept foreign organs. Magic is absolutely foreign to the human body.”

  Cold chills penetrated her to the core. The theory made a horrible kind of sense, from a purely medical standpoint. “You’re sure about this,” she said. “You can prove it.”

  “Not concretely. There’s no body of research to refer to when it comes to magic.” He shook his head, pawed the floor with a hind leg. “But that also means the theory can’t be proven wrong. And that isn’t all HeMo is doing.”

  “What else?” she whispered.

  “It’s an infection by itself. Some kind of blight, recoding proteins, changing people at a cellular level. The more HeMo builds up, the further the infection spreads.” He stepped to the wall, pulled down the last whiteboard in the row and handed it to her. “The Eclipse isn’t doubling every year,” he said. “It’s increasing with HeMo saturation. More people infected with HeMo, longer Eclipse. And this year was just the beginning.”

  She stared at the whiteboard, at the graph he’d plotted. Time on the left side, years along the bottom. A curve that took a sudden, sharp bend up between the points marked Year 5 and Year 6, and ran in nearly a straight vertical off the graph to the top of the board.

  “Next year, the Eclipse won’t last two hours and twenty minutes,” Scott said. “If the rate of infection stays where it is now, it’ll last nine hours. The year after that, three weeks. And in another year, maybe two … it’s never going to stop. We’ll lose the sun, and the magic surge will stay. Forever.”

  Her first instinct was to deny it. Violently. But she made herself stop and breathe, actually consider the horrifying possibility. And it was possible. If Scott’s tests were exhaustive as he claimed, he could be right, or at least on the right track.

  Finally, she said, “We have to tell Julian Bishop about this.”

  “Absolutely not.”

  She reeled at his sharp tone. “He’s the only one who can stop it,” she said. “I mean, he can’t possibly know all this, or he wouldn’t have released HeMo. Not if it’s going to destroy the world.”

  “What if he does know?” he said. “What if he’s making too much money to stop?”

  Naomi shook her head slowly. “He’s a hero. I mean, he’s an arrogant ass — but he saves people. He killed a dragon.”

  “Did he?” Scott said in raw tones. “We only have his word on that. The two witnesses are dead. And Julian Bishop killed one of them.”

  She set the whiteboard aside. “This is insane,” she said. “I mean, this is like Conspiracy Theory Extreme stuff here, Scott. You really believe that Julian Bishop knows he’s destroying the world … and he doesn’t care?”

  “If it’s not ignorant, it’s intentional,” he said. “Either way, Julian won’t be the one to stop it. You have to get this information to the Darkspawn.”

  Her mouth fell open. “They’re terrorists. Murderers.”

  “Right. And who’s the one telling everyone that?”

  “Julian Bishop,” she rasped.

  “You have to find them, Omes,” he said. “I doubt they know exactly what HeMo is doing or how it’s tied to the Eclipse, but they’re already trying to destroy it. Read between the lines of the news. You’ll see — the Darkspawn only kill HeMo.”

  She tried to nod, to speak an agreement, but she was already plagued with doubt. What he was talking about wasn’t just timing Eclipses or slipping people placebos. This was flat-out rebellion.

  And she wasn’t sure she could handle this level of involvement.

  CHAPTER 28

  The Badlands

  August 9, 9:00 p.m.

  Up until now, Teague didn’t think she could ever be angrier at anyone than she was at Julian. But Noah was on track to proving her wrong.

  He’d obviously made the decision to have her drugged and tied up. She knew this, because he’d informed her that he was in charge around here. The Darkspawn leader. The only good thing was his proclamation that she was in.

  Then he started pouring on the bad news.

  She couldn’t leave camp for the first few weeks. Weeks. This was supposed to be a short-term mission. In and out. Find the operation, report back to Julian, wipe out the problem and move on with her life. But now she had to live in a bunch of caves with a bunch of strangers, who were also terrorists. Unless, of course, she wanted to risk finding her way through God-knew-how-many miles of wasteland alone, somehow not get caught and manage to find civilization. Even if she did that, she still wouldn’t have the one thing Julian had sent her here to get.

  Noah had taken her on a fleeting round of dismissive introductions. There was Darby and Sledge. Isaac, a tall quiet man who seemed close to Sledge and no one else. Silas and Indigo, who were brother and sister. She’d had an incredibly hard time not reacting to the huge pair of wings growing from Indigo’s back. A sort of part-mechanic, part-mad scientist guy named Oscar. Pale and pretty Peyton — a nature mage, whatever that was. Young and cocky Blake.

  Finally, there was a huge bear of a guy who looked like he bench-pressed boulders and ate them when he was through. His name was Diesel, and when Noah informed them both that she’d be sharing a room — actually a cave — with him, the lethal look he gave her drove away all thoughts of falling asleep the entire time she was here.

  And when he’d finished telling her basically nothing, beyond the fact that she was a prisoner here, Noah left her standing in the main cavern like an idiot and went outside with Diesel right behind him.

  “Well, thanks for that,” she muttered at the closing door flap. “I guess I’ll just … go to my cave, or something.”

  She wasn’t alone in here. Though Darby, Peyton and Oscar had gone off together somewhere, Sledge and Isaac sat at the long table off to the right, playing some kind of card game. Silas and Indigo were building a small fire in a pit, near what looked like a kitchen area. They all studiously ignored her, except Blake, who was staring at her from his seat on the couch. From a carpeted living room setup. In a cave.

  Before she could start for the back tunnel where the cave-rooms were, Blake got up and approached her, grinning. “Is your name really Teague?” he said. “I’ve never heard of anyone named that before.”

  “Yes.” Her birth name was Teagan, but no one ever called her that. Not even her parents. “Uh, Blake?” she said. “No offense, but I’m pretty tired. I think I’m just going to turn in.” Mostly she wanted to be alone, to be furious in private for a while before her murderous new roommate came back.

  “Well, okay,” he said, still smiling. “I just thought you might want to know where the bathrooms are. And the hot springs.”

  That got her attention. “Hot springs?”

  “Blake,” Sledge called from the table with a warning edge. “Don’t even try it.”

  Blake waved a hand at him. “Rest easy, faithless heathen. Her virtues are safe with me.”

  Teague picked up on the undertones and smirked. “Damned straight they are,” she said. “You’re what, nineteen? Maybe twenty?”

  “Twenty-four, actually. But who’s counting?”

  “I am.”

  Sledge laughed. “All right, never mind,” he said. “Knock yourself out, Blake. Enjoy the little-brother zone.”

  “Hey, you never know.” He looked at Teague again. “Coming?”

  “Lead the way.”

  She followed him to the back of the cavern, into the tunnel, past the so-called room
s. Now that she’d calmed down a little, she could admit this place wasn’t actually filthy, cramped and horrible. It was well lit, pleasant-smelling, with a decent amount of room and a few comforting touches.

  Not that any of it made her want to stay here. But maybe it wouldn’t be hellish.

  Just ahead, a ladder spiked to the rock wall of the tunnel led to a hanging blanket. “What’s that?” she said.

  Blake glanced back to see where she was pointing. “It’s Noah’s hole,” he said. “He sleeps up there so there’s more room for the rest of us. I don’t know how he does it, though. I mean, there’s zero space. Has to be like sleeping in a coffin.”

  Not exactly the behavior of a fanatical terrorist leader, is it? a small voice in her mind whispered. She ignored it. “Hey, Blake,” she said as the tunnel narrowed slightly and started on a decline. “Can I ask you something?”

  “You can ask me anything,” he said. “I might not answer, though. There’s rules and all.”

  “Right. Well, I don’t think this is breaking the rules.” She sighed and glanced at the rock ceiling. “Who’s Diesel? I mean, what kind of person is he? I have to share a room with him, and he seems … a little unfriendly.”

  “Oh, damn. Now I feel sorry for you.” Blake laughed. “He’s kind of crazy, but he’s all right. He doesn’t usually bite.”

  “Usually?”

  “Sorry. That was a joke.” Blake slowed to a stop and waited until she caught up. “The bathroom’s here,” he said, lifting yet another heavy flap covering fastened to the wall. There was a light on inside, revealing a decent-sized cave with three rough wooden stalls at the back, and a small countertop cabinet to the right with folded towels and bottles of hand sanitizer on the surface. A noticeable smell, chemical-sweet but not unpleasant, hung in the space. “It’s outhouse-style in the stalls, but at least they’re real toilet seats,” he said.

  “That’s a plus.” She wasn’t going to ask about waste disposal. They must have some kind of system, since it didn’t smell like a cesspool in there.