by Amelia Jade
“Come out, or I’ll snap her neck.”
The man used his other hand to emphasize his point, putting crushing pressure on the back of her neck against her spine. Amber screamed in pain, but the noise was deadened effectively against his palm, barely carrying.
Zeke! Please. Hurry!
“Go ahead Severn, see if we care. Snap her neck.”
“Lorian?”
The pain on her neck relaxed suddenly as four more men emerged from the forest, all of them looking smug and entertained as they saw her.
“Yeah,” came the response as the first one, Lorian, spoke again, coming close to Amber. He ran his finger up the exposed front of her neck, until his fingernail hooked under the edge of her jaw and flicked off.
Her heart fell as it became completely clear that it wasn’t Zeke. There would be no rescue coming for her. She could see it in the men standing in front of her. The way they grinned, leering at her and the way she stood there, helpless to stop them from killing her, or whatever they had in mind.
It was clear in the way their eyes widened, and the sudden way they shouted that they were about to kill her and move on. There was no further point to her caring. The release of pressure on her neck signified the end was near, even as the hand fell away from her mouth. They were so confident now they didn’t care if she screamed.
Amber was already screaming. She could hear it.
But my lips are closed. And why do they look so startled?
Something wasn’t adding up in her muddled brain. Amber blinked and suddenly things moved in real time once more.
She spun at the sounds of fighting. Why were they fighting amongst themselves?
And then Zeke was there, crashing in their midst as he flung fists, knees, legs, elbows and anything he could in a vicious onslaught that left her assailants reeling.
“Run!” he shouted at her.
Amber couldn’t. Her feet were rooted to the ground as her body tried to catch up with her brain.
In that intervening time, the gryphons rallied and went on the attack. There were five of them. Even given Zeke’s training, strength, and vigor, the odds were heavily stacked against him. The gryphons began to open cuts and land blows on Zeke as he fell back in a fighting retreat.
“Run!” he screamed once more, just before Lorian produced a knife from somewhere and stabbed it deep into Zeke’s stomach.
The dragon shifter roared in pain, stepping into the attack, and blowing his fist up and almost through Lorian’s jaw, sending the attacker reeling. He grimaced in pain as she watched, yanking the knife from his abdomen and hurling it at another attacker, who threw up an arm to block it, and received the blade through his palm instead.
Her foot took a step back as she saw the blood streaming from Zeke’s side.
And another.
Zeke snatched the arm of an attacker as it crashed into his unhurt side, gripped it, stepped back on his right foot and pivoted.
The gryphon shifter left his feet with a look of shock on his face as Zeke spun him around and let fly. Four of the five shifters went down in a heap. The fifth, distracted by the commotion, did not see the follow-up right hook by the dragon shifter which dropped him where he stood.
“Time to go!” Zeke shouted, snatching her up over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry.
They darted through the trees, making a beeline for the edge of the forest. Amber tried her best to support herself on his shoulder, but her attention kept returning to the white shirt become soaked with blood.
“You’re hurt badly,” she told him, his shoulder bouncing uncomfortably into her stomach as he ran faster than any human could.
“Tell me something I don’t know,” he said, his voice pained.
“They’re chasing us?” she replied, stiffening in his grip as the first pursuer appeared behind them, gaining ground as they ran.
“Well, I suppose I didn’t know they were doing that for sure,” he grunted. “But I had a suspicion they wouldn’t give up too easily.”
They burst through the last of the trees and into the open grassy field beyond. Zeke could move faster here, and she held on as tight as possible as they suddenly accelerated again, no longer hindered by the need to dodge trees.
We’re going to make it!
Her hopes were dashed quickly as one, then two, and finally four shifters emerged behind them and began to close the distance quickly.
“They’re gaining fast, Zeke! We aren’t going to make it,” she said in a resigned tone. “Just put me down. You can still live. It’s me they want,” she told him, closing her eyes. “No sense in doing anything stupid.”
Zeke skidded to a halt and set her down. She gasped at the way his eyes blazed with fury and flame.
He turned to face the advancing attackers, who slowed as the fifth of their group finally emerged from the trees, still rubbing his jaw from where Zeke had hit him.
“They can have you over my cold, dead body.”
She watched as Zeke advanced toward the enemy.
Chapter Fourteen
Zeke
I need you. Now. If we don’t do this, they’ll get Amber.
His dragon tried to respond as he marched toward the five gryphon shifters and certain doom if he couldn’t summon the power necessary for what he wanted.
But it was hurt. The wound had stabbed deep into his side and his psyche, hammering his brain with pain. The focus he needed to ignore the agony in his side was also preventing him from reaching out properly to his dragon.
Please.
If anything was going to happen, his dragon would have to do it on its own. Without his guidance.
Do it for Amber.
The animal stirred as he shouted at it, unable to summon it but still able to just barely communicate through the haze of pain that surrounded him.
FOR AMBER!
The grass began to smoke under his feet as he walked forward, his footsteps burning black into the grass underneath. Flames licked out as he continued to stride toward the five foes arrayed against him.
The five who threatened Amber. Who wanted to kill her.
Inside, his dragon responded at last, sluggishly stirring to life as it recognized the urgent need of its other side, and rose to meet the threat to its mate.
To Amber.
Zeke’s lips pulled back in an evil, feral smile as his hands rose at his sides in time with the flames that burst into being, rising up from the ground around him, forming the shield wall just as he had done earlier.
The gryphons all shied back as the red-orange flame whipped around him feverishly, controlled not by Zeke, but by his dragon.
All he was doing was helping focus it.
A spear tip of flame shot forward, catching one of the attackers in the side as he tried to dodge out of the way. Flesh dried out, cracked, and then split before turning brown and then black as the gryphon screamed in pain and collapsed. His entire left side was a mess.
The other four gryphons hauled their comrade back as Zeke stalked forward. His dragon lashed out with the flame once, then twice more. The others were ready for it now though, and they dodged out of the way, only getting singed by the intense heat.
Zeke’s dragon was flagging now. The wound was deep, and he’d lost a lot of blood. Although it was beginning to clot, he needed to conserve his energy. Somehow, after all of it, he still had to make his way back to the Academy with Amber in tow.
With a scream of rage, he and his dragon unleashed the flame entirely.
The rear hemisphere of flame disappeared behind him, and the front, now a shield in truth, flung itself forward as a solid wall. The inferno blazed incandescent as it plowed across the land, leaving the ground scorched behind it as it blasted the previously injured shifter and one of his friends aside before collapsing, its fury spent.
Zeke fell to one knee, breathing hard. He hadn’t known that shifters could do that.
The three remaining gryphons, including their leader, Lorian, and the
other one, Severn, assembled and came at him.
He rose up violently as they closed around him in a flurry of blows. Zeke spun, kicked, punched, whirled, and ducked, landing blows, avoiding others, and being hit by yet more. His opponents didn’t know what to do as he fought with every ounce of skill and every shred of remaining strength that he possessed. They reeled and regrouped, but it seemed that no matter how hard they hit him, he simply shrugged off the blows.
Zeke was an elemental force, unstoppable as he laid waste to those who would threaten the woman he cared for.
The woman he loved.
Anger welled up in him and his blows rained down harder and harder upon the three of them as he cast all sense of self-preservation aside, simply trying to do all that he could to take them with him so that Amber might escape unharmed. So that she might live.
It seemed to be working. They fell back before him, bruised and battered, trying to block his blows more than they were trying to land their own.
Then his foot slipped on a patch of his own blood.
Lorian darted forward, and his fist connected with the jagged rip in Zeke’s side.
He howled in pain.
“Amber, run!” he shouted.
“I’m not leaving you! Get out of there!” she cried from behind him. He could sense her anger at not being able to help.
“Dammit,” he yelled, the word turning to a grunt as he deflected another blow, but this time barely, the pain from his side hammering away at him and distracting him.
“Run!”
He hoped she would take the advice. Turn, and flee from there. Get as far away as she could, in hopes that someone else might come along. That perhaps a guardian might have heard the fighting, or that his fireball might have been visible to someone off in the distance.
“Zeke! I-I can’t!”
“Do it. Now!” he said as another blow rocked his head back, and Zeke saw stars for a moment.
“No.”
The change in Amber’s voice caught him by surprise, slowing his reflexes. She sounded firm. Confident.
And completely unafraid.
Which was a good thing, because the distraction allowed Severn to land a blow that sent Zeke toppling to the ground.
“Please,” he said, trying to crane his head up enough, his bloodied arm reaching out for Amber. “Run.”
“No Zeke,” she said, walking forward. “It’s their turn to run.”
He frowned, looking above him at the three remaining attackers.
His eyes went wide as Severn took a bolt of lightning to the stomach so quickly he almost missed it. One minute he was there, the next the body was flying through the air thirty feet away.
A ten-foot-long icicle suddenly appeared in the stomach of the man to Zeke’s left, impaled almost halfway through him. The man screamed and fell to the side, dead almost before he realized what was happening.
“What?” Zeke asked in disbelief.
The ground rumbled and shook.
The remaining shifter, Lorian, looked around, suddenly nervous.
“Get out of here,” Asher said as the snow-white dragon loomed up over Zeke, frost building in the corners of his mouth.
“This isn’t over!” Lorian snarled as he turned and ran, shifting into his gryphon once he was away and taking to the sky.
“Zeke, are you okay?” Dom asked as his giant blue head appeared above him.
“Yeah,” he lied, wincing as he got back to a seated position. “I’m gonna need a bunch of steak, a beer, several kisses, and a miniature coma. But I think I’ll make it,” he said weakly.
“You’re on your own for the kisses there, bud,” Asher said as he looked down at him. “But I can probably help with the rest.”
“I’ll take care of those,” Amber said as she ran up to Zeke and enveloped him in a big, gentle hug.
“Thank you,” Dom said with false relief. “I thought Asher was gonna say I had to. Zeke’s a cute guy, don’t get me wrong. But he’s not very kissable.”
“Agree to disagree then,” Amber said as she kissed him full on the mouth.
Hard.
Zeke immediately felt reinvigorated.
“We need to go,” Asher said in a more serious voice. “Who knows how widespread this is. If there’s more of them, we’re going to be in deep shit.”
“Can one of you two carry Amber?” Zeke asked, still exhausted. “I don’t think I should be the one to do so.”
“I will,” Dom said, dropping low and giving her his wing.
“Thank you, Dom,” Zeke said as he moved apart from the others.
One more time. Please. So we can go home.
His dragon responded this time, though it was as exhausted and hurting as he was, but together they were a team. Together they would make the flight home.
His side screamed at him as he lifted off, and he almost fainted from the pain. But he gritted his teeth and loosed a group of invective curses that would have given anyone pause, and forced his way to the nearest thermal, riding it gently high into the sky.
The flight back was mostly a blur. He remembered very little, other than settling in next to Dom, while Asher brought up the rear, keeping watch on the skies. Amber’s eyes never strayed from his side. Never before had Zeke felt so comforted, so cared for. It was a powerful feeling to see the emotion in her eyes. He never wanted to see it again, but he was grateful to know that it was there.
“More of them,” Asher said as they drew near to the Academy. “To your nine o’clock.”
Zeke couldn’t see much in the darkness with the way his vision was blurred, but he heard Dom hiss.
“That’s a lot of them. They must really want the girl.”
“And us now too, I would suspect,” Dom said.
“Why do they want to silence her so badly?” Asher asked.
“Because I know what their plan is,” Amber said. “I know what they’re up to.”
“Oh. Well, that would do it,” Asher said. “We need to move faster, or they’ll catch us.”
Zeke couldn’t though. He tried, but he was done for.
“Go on ahead,” he said, his breathing labored. “Leave me.”
“No,” Asher said. “Not on your life.”
“It’s going to be your life too,” Zeke said as he finally saw the flight of gryphons, a solid dozen of them angling in toward their little trio. “I said leave me.”
“No,” Dom said, and once again Zeke noticed a change in his voice.
“Why must everyone defy me?” he asked plaintively.
“Because,” a deeper voice replied from above him. “You are trying to make commands without full knowledge.”
Zeke twisted his long sinuous neck around so that he could look at the speaker.
“Okay, now I’m hallucinating. You sure look a lot like Daxxton Ryker.”
The Gold Dragon gave him a quizzical look. “Did you ever consider, Hawthorn, that perhaps I am him?”
“Not really. Because he’s not at the Academy right now.”
“Neither are you.”
“We almost are.”
“And I am almost there too.”
“Okay, this is getting too confusing. Do we have to fight those silly birds?” Zeke asked, his brain spinning.
“No,” said another voice, a female voice.
“Hello Rhynne,” Zeke said as he saw the Red Dragon.
“Hi Zeke, how are you?”
“Not good,” he replied, and fell from the sky.
Chapter Fifteen
Amber
“Zeke!” she screamed, before abruptly holding on tight as Dominick dove after the Red Dragon as it tumbled for the ground.
To her other side Asher tucked his wings in and came with them.
“Hold tight” Dom roared at her, his words almost lost in the howl of the wind as they plunged after Zeke.
“What do we do?” she yelled at them.
Dom hesitated, and she feared then that neither of them had any ideas.
<
br /> “Grab his wings,” Daxxton said as he appeared between them. “The pair of you spread his wings wide. I will take his body.
She watched as the Gold Dragon pulled his wings flat against his body and dropped like a stone. Zeke’s wings were still spread, though they whipped around listlessly as he fell, so the larger dragon was able to fall faster and get under him.
Asher and Dom waited until Daxxton was roughly into position, and then they extended their talons and, with a nod at each other, latched onto Zeke’s wings and pulled them wide.
Their rate of descent immediately slowed and the White and Blue Dragons were forced to beat their wings awkwardly to adjust themselves to keep Zeke’s wings wide, even as they punctured them with their talons.
Below, Daxxton moved into position. His topside rested up against Zeke, and he began to beat his wings as best he could.
Amber watched, tears flowing from her eyes and whipping away into the wind as the three of them worked to save her man.
Her man.
It felt good to say that, to speak those words, even if they were only in her head. Zeke was hers, and that was that. End of story. Well, that, and she was his.
Daxxton hit the ground hard, and Zeke bounced off of him as Asher and Dom let go and came in for their own rougher-than-normal landings. Amber was bounced loose from her seat on Dom’s neck and she tumbled across the ground.
She shunted the pain aside though, and ran over to Zeke. “Zeke. Wake up!” she said, grabbing his dragon head in her hands as best she could and trying to shake it.
His eyes were open and sightless, but his chest still rose and fell in a very slow rhythmic fashion. He was alive, at least.
“What’s wrong with him?” she said as the three dragons formed a protective circle around them.
Farther out, she saw a Red and Green Dragon land, and in the sky a Copper, or maybe Brass Dragon circled. She couldn’t tell at this distance which color.
“He exerted himself too much. His mind is weakened, and possibly lost.”
“How?” She needed to know more.
Daxxton spoke after a moment. “I would suspect he tried to do too much with his dragon. The mental effort needed is not minor, and if he was already weakened, it could have torn his brain apart.”