Chasing Legends

by Pippa Amberwine

  “We gotta get down there,” Jevyn said.

  “What? No way. We need to get away. Why would you want to help that jerk anyway?”

  “Katie, we have to. If those SCAR people are in charge,” I nodded to confirm that they were, “then them capturing Nindock puts Dracos in jeopardy. He could lead them to my world, and they and the people who control them would bleed it dry if this planet is anything to go by.”

  All I could do was agree with him. It was such a simple, homespun truth. If SCAR and Gregori Industries and whoever the hell else destroyed Earth got to Dracos, it would be a disaster beyond imagination. And with Nova there too, this was my problem, not just Jevyn’s.

  “Okay, I understand. What do you suggest?”

  “We go back to Nindock’s town and help them get rid of those people.”

  “How?”

  “We fight.”

  A warm feeling came over me. It had been a while since I’d been able to get into a fight on anything like even terms with SCAR. Most of the time it was a case of running and hiding. Maybe this time I could stand and fight. I clenched my fists.

  “That’s the best thing I’ve heard all day. Let’s go.”

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Katie

  On the road back to Nindock’s town

  “LOOK, I AM really sorry, Jevyn. I didn’t know what else to do. I never would have put you in that situation on purpose.”

  Jevyn waved the apology away. I mean, I was embarrassed. I would never have wanted to do what I did, but it was in the past, and Jevyn seemed to not want to discuss it, so who was I to argue with him.

  We were heading back toward the gates into Nindock’s Town, sticking to the hedge that lined the side of the road to try and avoid being spotted in case the SCAR troopers were hanging around outside. As we got closer, there was no sign of anyone, so we took to the road for more speed.

  When we got to the gates, it was obvious what had happened because the remnants of them were scattered across the track into the camp, bent and buckled where they had been efficiently dissembled by the heavy vehicles as they crashed through.

  We set off at a jog to follow the tracks of the vehicles.

  As we finally caught up with the trucks, we heard the tail-end of the conversation the head SCAR honcho was having on the steps of the saloon with one of Nindock’s goons from earlier.

  “. . . so unless you want us to blast our way through this place, I suggest you let us through so we can go talk to the main man.” The SCAR man was tall but still had to look up to Nindock’s guy. The SCAR man was also musclebound and had a weapon pointing at the goon’s head.

  The heavy finally relented and leaned back to open the door to the saloon. The SCAR guy and most of his associates piled in. Twenty uniformed men were left outside to guard the vehicles while a crowd of people from the camp itself began to gather around as the local grapevine spread the news that invaders were on-site.

  Jevyn and I managed to stay hidden among the crowd as its numbers began to swell and ugly murmurs began to rumble through the people gathered there. I wanted to find out what was going on, so I grabbed Jevyn’s hand, and slowly we began to work our way through the crowd, away from prying eyes. Once we’d freed ourselves, I told Jevyn what I wanted to do, to sneak around the back of the saloon and try to hear what was going on.

  Jevyn saw the sense in holding off until we knew what was going on. For all we knew, SCAR were in on what was going on and were maybe just shaking Nindock down for protection money. It was not unheard of.

  It took a few minutes, but eventually we managed to get around the back of the saloon. We stood as close as we dared to the window by the side of a rear door to the building. Inside, voices were slowly rising in volume as the guy from SCAR talked with Nindock. Although we were close, most of what we could hear, even with my enhanced hearing for the time being, were loud murmurs and shouts.

  I so wanted to take a look inside, but when I went to poke my head above the sill, Jevyn pulled me back.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I wanna see what’s going on inside.” I thought poking my head up made it fairly obvious, but he seemed to not want to be seen.

  “Look,” Jevyn said. “If something kicks off here, we’re in big trouble. Nindock already is. These SCAR people clearly know about his camp now, so even if he kills all the government men, they will just come back with more and more people, won’t they?”

  I agreed with a flick of my head.

  “And once they get hold of the people here, what is likely to happen?”

  “They’ll disappear. Black sites.”

  “What is a black site?”

  “Camps. Out in the countryside where rebels and troublemakers are taken. Nobody comes back.” I hoped he understood the finality with which I’d spoken. I knew about black sites, and it was a death sentence.

  Jevyn stared at me, a look of disbelief on his eyes. All I could do was shrug.

  “Then Nindock has no choice. He will kill these men, and more will come. Then more and more until he is overwhelmed. If he leads them back to Dracos—”

  “Yeah, you said. So, what do we do now?”

  “The only thing we can do now is help Nindock fight these men. That will give him and the dragons here some time to decide what they’re going to do at least. I’m sorry, Katie, but there isn’t much we can do to help the humans.”

  I nodded. Too many. The best I could hope for was that word would spread and they would get out of there before SCAR arrived to round them all up like so many cattle.

  A loud shout from inside the saloon dragged our attention back, and this time I did peek in through the window. Nindock had the SCAR commander in a headlock and a weapon pointed at the SCAR commander’s head. Ten SCAR troops had their weapons pointed at either Nindock or the other half-dozen people in the room, all of whom looked at the soldiers with a steely-eyed determination. Nindock’s people clearly were not scared even though they were outnumbered and outgunned.

  “Where are Nindock’s weapons?”

  “He’s a dragon, Katie. Dragons don’t fight with weapons, or at least not the kind you would understand.”

  “What do you . . . whoa.”

  “What is it? What do you see?” He elbowed me to one side so he could look through the window too. I pushed back so I could see as well.

  “That,” I said, pointing at the man who was in the process of shifting into a dragon.

  “Ah. Yes. That should cause a bit of an upset.”

  Jevyn was the king of the understatement, because it didn’t cause an upset; it caused complete batshit-crazy chaos.

  Within a few seconds of the first guy inside shifting, the rest of Nindock’s acolytes did the same, and from facing a handful of ordinary looking guys, the thirty SCAR men who had all crammed into the saloon with their leader, found themselves face-to-face with five very pissed dragons.

  The SCAR leader was trying to say something that looked a bit like “Kill them all,” but the chokehold he was in seemed to be stopping him from speaking properly.

  Eventually a couple of them started to spray bullets around the room, and it was only then that I realized that not all the SCAR men were armed. They all had holsters with what looked like weapons in them, but even then, only another couple of them pulled them out and started shooting.

  What was even more surprising was that they ran out of ammunition quickly. Had SCAR been fooling us all this time? With their huge armored trucks and fancy uniforms, had they run out of money to arm the people who worked for them?

  We had both ducked when the bullets had started to zing around, but when they stopped, we stood back up. The dragons were unharmed!

  I looked over to Jevyn.

  “How?” I asked.

  “Thick hide and wings that absorb the force. That’s why there are no guns on Dracos and why we need to stop these people from getting there. If they ever did find a way to kill dragons, we would be wiped out in no ti
me. Come on,” he said and headed toward the door.

  “You want us to go in there?”

  “Yes. Come on, we need to go help the dragons.”

  The prospect of kicking some SCAR butt was very enticing, and since I was back to full strength, I was more than capable of doing some serious damage to them. Still, the thought of what Jevyn had said earlier came back into my head. He had said that Nindock would need to kill the SCAR men who were there. That meant I would have to fight with him.

  All my kickboxing training and the martial arts I’d worked through for years were all aimed at disabling and defeating an opponent. Not killing them stone dead. I didn’t know in my heart if I could do that.

  Fortunately, I didn’t have much time to worry about it, as Jevyn called to me while he held the handle of the door, ready to leap into the fray.

  “You good, Katie?”

  “I think so,” I said when I didn’t know for sure whether I was or not.

  “You sure?”

  I was impressed. Jevyn was making sure I was okay to head inside with him. Did that mean he was feeling protective of me? I couldn’t say that didn’t make me feel good.

  “I’m sure. Come on, these people need our help.”

  He pushed down the handle and swung the door toward himself before leaping inside. I followed closely behind.

  When I got inside, Nindock was laughing, standing over the body of the SCAR leader. His head was at a right angle to his neck, so I assumed that was what did him in. The four dragons were already taking on the soldiers in what was proving to be a very one-sided battle.

  Their thick skins had protected them against the bullets, and they were taking their revenge on the people who had shot at them. It was not a pretty sight. Jevyn had explained that dragons sourced their powers and magic from the elements, and it was pretty clear that of the four dragons in the room, three were fire dragons, because they were burning up their opponents with hot blasts of flame while they cowered behind the tables, setting the wooden tops on fire and forcing the men to escape their cover rapidly.

  Once they had been forced into the open, if it could be described as that, the other dragon was blasting them with sprays of scalding hot water. The screams of the recently broiled filled my ears, and it took all my willpower to not slap my hands over my ears in horror.

  I couldn’t do that, because almost as soon as we had walked into the saloon, a half-dozen SCAR soldiers had headed toward us, and while they didn’t have guns, they did have stout wooden batons that I’d seen SCAR use on people before. They were vicious bone breakers, and I didn’t want to get on the wrong end of one of those.

  Time seemed to stand still as Jevyn and I joined the fray. On the countless occasions when Nova and I had trained together, he’d always said that learning martial arts was good for self-discipline, but when it came to street fighting, his maxim was to keep it simple. No fancy moves or elaborate footwork, just concentrating on putting your opponent down for good in as few moves as possible.

  I kept that thought at the forefront of my mind when the first baton-wielding thug reached me. He threw his baton back over his shoulder, intending to crash it down on my head, no doubt. He had left himself wide open, so I kicked him between the legs. He went down as if someone had cut his legs out from below. He wouldn’t be getting up in a hurry, and I hoped he’d already had all the kids he wanted, because chances were . . . he wouldn’t be having any more for a while at least. Just to be sure he stayed down, I aimed a heel kick at his ribs. The sound of bones snapping was loud music to my ears.

  I ducked instinctively at the sound of whistling air, and another baton passed over my head by a whisker. As I turned to face the threat, the guy was off-balance and stumbling, half-turning toward me. A sharp punch to his kidneys left the thug groaning on the deck. I grabbed his arm as he fell, relieving him of his club and then bringing down a foot on his elbow, snapping the tendons and making his arm bend the wrong way. It took me a second to realize that he didn’t scream because he was out cold.

  Jevyn shouted a warning, and I swung around to find the next guy almost upon me, arms outstretched to grab me around the ribs and crush the life out of me. As he lunged forward, I cracked him a solid punch to the jaw, and he was eating dirt before he knew it.

  I turned back to thank Jevyn for the warning just in time to see him being taken down by a huge soldier. The guy pinned Jevyn to the ground with his weight and then pulled a thin cord out of a pocket and wrapped it around Jevyn’s throat.

  For a second, I was shocked into stillness, unable to move at the sight of this huge soldier slowly starting to tighten the cord as Jevyn struggled beneath the man, unable to get enough leverage to twist or stand up.

  Panicking, I leaped on his back, hammering my clenched fist into the back of his shorn head. With a deep, throaty roar, he twisted and swung one meaty arm at me, swatting me away like a particularly annoying fly. His hit sent me rolling across the saloon floor, crashing through some chairs, and ending up almost at the feet of the last few SCAR men who were still fighting.

  I quickly scrambled away, rubbed the back of my head briefly where I’d smacked onto a chair leg, and then looked around for something I could use as a weapon. The club I’d taken off one of the other soldiers had flown out of my hand when he had batted me away, and I couldn’t see where it had gone in all of the melee that was going on around me.

  The only part of Jevyn’s face I could see was bright red, and I could hear him gasping for air.

  In desperation, I grabbed one of the broken chairs and stamped it into pieces, grabbing a sharp, broken leg, and whipping around to take the four paces over to the man with the stupid grin and look of triumph on his face. I didn’t bother to beg or plead. Instead, I kept it simple and rammed the sharp, splintered end of the leg straight into the man’s eye and pushed with all my might.

  Goop and blood sprayed out, spattering the front of my clothes while the man looked at me with his one good eye and slowly toppled forward, his dead weight pinning Jevyn down again. I could hear his hoarse gasping for breath as I grabbed a fistful of the huge man’s uniform and levered him off.

  Jevyn was still gasping but was unmoving. I wondered briefly if I had gotten back to him too late. To make sure he didn’t choke on his own vomit, I pushed up one of his legs and laid him on his side. I checked around to make sure we were in no danger of another attack, and then I knelt beside him, gently rubbing my fingers through his hair.

  It took a minute for his eyes, then bloodshot red, to focus on me.

  “Thank you,” he managed to croak out.

  I grinned. “We’re even. If you hadn’t shouted out, I’d be lying on the ground with my head caved in.”

  “You’re welcome,” he said, his voice weak and raspy. “Give me a minute, and I’ll be good as new.”

  I could see a livid red mark where the cord had bitten into the flesh of his neck. He didn’t look like he was going to be okay anytime soon.

  “Take it easy,” I said. “It’s nearly all over.” No sooner had the words passed my lips when a loud scream echoed around the room as the last SCAR man standing was reduced to a pile of flaming ash by one of the dragons.

  Silence fell across the saloon, broken only by the occasional groan from one of the wounded and the maniacal laughter of Nindock who didn’t appear to have moved from his spot next to the SCAR leader’s body.

  I turned back to Jevyn, hearing him stir, ready to nag him into staying on the floor for a little while longer.

  I blinked when I gazed at him. The mark around his neck was a barely visible light-pink line. The bloodshot whites of his eyes were back to normal, and his voice sounded like he had a slight head cold rather than had almost died.

  “What. How did you do that?” I asked, pointing vaguely at his face.

  “I healed,” he said matter-of-factly.

  “Well, I can see that, but how did you heal so quickly? Injuries like that would take days, if not weeks, to he
al for humans. Even vamps would need a few hours.”

  “It was quite slow for me.”

  “Yes, but it was extremely quick by human standards.”

  “For me, it was slow, and that can only mean one thing, Katie. I need to go back to Dracos to replenish my strength.”

  “So, I just saved your life, and now you’re going to disappear and leave me here all alone?” Suddenly tears sprang into my eyes. I turned away so he couldn’t see me, and I wiped them away before I turned back.

  “I’m confused, Katie. You said we were even. What is there to stop me going back to Dracos?”

  I wanted to yell, “Me!” at the top of my voice, but I could see in his eyes that he couldn’t fathom why I had reacted as I had and why I was standing, facing him, hands on hips, my eyes blazing.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Jevyn

  Nindock’s town

  WHAT IS THE matter with Katie, I thought to myself as I stood looking at her. Her hands were on her hips, and her eyes reminded me of my mother’s when something didn’t go her way. I’d never seen Katie look like that before. In fact, I didn’t think she could look like that. I shook my head in bafflement. All I’d said was that I needed to go back to Dracos for a short time to recharge. My healing had taken twice as long as it should have. That meant I needed Dracos’s food and drink and a day or two of downtime to get me ready for what was to come.

  “You’re leaving?” she asked.

  “I have to.”

  “Were you planning on coming back?”

  “Of course,” I said, and Katie’s face softened slightly. “I need to come back to get Nindock away from this planet permanently.” Her face double darkened.

  “Really? No other reason?”

  I shrugged. There was another reason, but it was pointless trying to explain it to her because it could never happen, and talking about it was never going to make it any better or easier.