Dragon Born 1: The Shifter's Hoard

by Dante King

  “That should keep us able to see,” the mage said with pride. “And it’ll scare away any bats. Urrrrgh, I hate those things…”

  “I kinda thought we were going to stay in the dark,” I said, fixing the young mage with my gaze.

  Riley just rolled her eyes. “God, you really are a horn dog, aren’t you? I’m trying to teach you magic, not hop on your cock! Now take a look at that wall over there and focus.”

  With a bit of reluctance, I did as she said. The ball of light over our head cast cold shadows across the stone, reminding me of the silhouettes of the shifters in the conference room. They made easy enough targets for me to focus on, my rage at being reminded of the threat to Soojin and Carli’s lives more than enough to get the power flowing through my veins.

  “Alright, you ought to feel both of the spells in your brain as physical pressure,” Riley explained, holding up her hands. “You want to open yourself to the first one, then the second one, but not both at the same time. You just have to concentrate and picture yourself casting the magic—”

  “I’ve used a spell before,” I said.

  “Yeah, to move some playing cards around.” I could feel Riley’s eye-roll, rather than see it. “These are way more powerful than that. Go on and unleash the first one—don’t hold back…”

  I threw my arms out in front of me, channelling the power. For a long moment, the air shimmered between my outstretched palms, stubbornly refusing to become anything but a weave of supernatural light.

  Then a ball of wriggling, writhing dots shot across the cave like a bowling ball. A thick mass of flies exploded from my fingers, bringing with them a sickly purple aura wherever they traveled. The ball hit the far wall and exploded, the flies dissolving in mid-air like they’d never really been there to begin with.

  “What the fuck?” I stared at the destruction I’d just caused. The poisonous aura corroded the rock face where it had touched, turning stone into sizzling streaks of foam. “Shit, those were bugs!”

  “I’d hoped you’d figure out that one first,” Riley said with evident pride. “That’s a very old spell that’s the basis of any damage-based mage’s kit. It’s called Zaagroth’s Devouring Swarm—and no, don’t bother asking me who Zaagroth is. I have no idea, other than he or she must have had a real yen for summoning clouds of bugs.”

  As Riley spoke, the purple aura faded. The wall looked damaged, but not catastrophically so.

  “So I can summon bugs?” I asked.

  “Not just any bugs,” Riley said smugly. “The Devouring Swarm is a cloud of rabid, blood-sucking insects enchanted with a draining, poisonous aura. They’ll do a small amount of damage to a target directly, as you’ve seen, but the real draw is the way their aura drains health and vitality. Seeing as you’re a Dragon Shifter, who likes to get up close and personal with those claws of yours, this spell will be a good way to soften up targets before you rip them apart.”

  It all sounded good. Yet I felt something inside of me that Riley wasn’t telling me. Maybe something she didn’t know herself.

  “That’s not all I can do with it, is there?” I guessed, thinking about the spell. “I feel almost like I could alter it somehow.”

  Riley’s eyebrows furrowed together. “It is a spell that tends to grow along with the mage—that’s the other reason I decided to give it to you. Some mages add lightning to the swarm, while someone who’s more into blood magic will have the flies bite their targets and bring some fluid back to the caster, restoring their own health. It’s really up to you—”

  With the Dragon’s energy flowing through my veins, I opened myself to the rage within and cast the spell a second time. The ball of insects soared through the cave, headed for the already-damaged wall—but now, each individual insect was surrounded by a wreath of flame. The darkened cave lit up as brightly as high noon as the ball of flaming flies exploded against the far wall, covering the stone in a gout of flame.

  “Oh holy fuck,” Riley yelled, jumping backward. “You put dragon’s fire all over them!”

  Suddenly, I found myself grinning from ear to ear.

  “Well that’s one way to grow it along with me,” I said, thinking of all the havoc I could wreck with this spell. Combining my mage and shifter powers created something stronger than either one could be by itself—an important lesson. One I’d have to remember.

  “Alright, let’s see this other one…” I said.

  At first, the second spell seemed somewhat ordinary. I reached for it, channeling the power through my fingers, and watched as a kaleidoscope of sparks exploded before my vision. Something like a rainbow on LSD erupted from my chest, bathing the cavern walls in a multitude of lights like an entire fireworks display was in full-swing.

  For a few long moments, I couldn’t see a thing, and had to wait for my eyes to readjust.

  Riley was stunned as well. “Oof, I wish you’d warned me before you did that,” she grumbled, holding her forearm over her eyes. “That’s the support spell I told you about.”

  I blinked away the colors. They remained on the backs of my eyelids for some time, like the afterimages you got from staring at the sun for too long.

  “What the hell is it?” I grunted, disliking the sensation intensely. “A portable acid trip?”

  “It’s called Prismatic Spray,” Riley said, the corner of her mouth curling in a smirk. “Some of the older mages like to say it’s most excellent. That god-awful feeling you’ve got in your vision right now is the point. Normally, you point the spell at your enemy, not yourself.”

  That made a certain amount of sense, I supposed. A spell like that could be disorienting—especially if I let it off in a shifter’s face, the way I’d done with my fire spells back in the Celesta. I may not have liked looking at it, but that was kind of the point. Prismatic Spray was a nauseating, eye-searing spell, exactly the kind of thing to throw an opponent on the back foot before I ripped their rib cage open.

  Together with Riley, I practiced each spell a few more times until I got the hang of them. The Devouring Swarm, I quickly learned, could be given rudimentary commands like ‘arc in this direction’ or ‘swarm all over this object’, opening up all sorts of potential avenues for griefing my foes.

  I was careful not to look directly at Prismatic Spray a second time. Used sparingly, it turned out to be a most impressive method of disabling an opponent. By the time I gained a little experience with both, I understood why Riley had chosen these two spells to loot and make an offering of. Both of them would augment my already considerable combat skills nicely.

  “So you want to join my team,” I said as the two of us wrapped up. “And yet you don’t want any of the rest of it?”

  Riley gave me a sideways glance, narrowing her eyes. “I hardly know you, Derek. I realize I’ve been prickly to you up until now, but you did start our relationship by tackling me in a stairwell…”

  “You were stalking me,” I said with a shrug. “And not knowing the first thing about me hasn’t stopped women before, believe you me.”

  “Oh stop!” Riley said, giving me a punch on the shoulder.

  Some of the icy exterior she’d shown to me had begun to melt. I sensed I could slowly work this woman into becoming more of a team player with my other girls. If she wasn’t so achingly hot, I might not have bothered, but the idea of having a cute eighteen-year-old mage calling me ‘Daddy’ as she joined Soojin and Carli on their knees was hot enough that I was more than willing to wait a little while to enjoy it.

  “Whatever,” I said. “Let’s get back—before my ladies think the two of us are doing something untoward.” I punctuated the statement with a smug grin that sent a blush covering Riley’s cheeks.

  The ball of light followed us across the cave, lighting our path as we walked back to Carli’s apartments.

  As it turned out, my girls weren’t waiting for me in lingerie—but neither were they fighting. Soojin and Carli sat on the couch, peering at a large book Soojin had in her lap. The th
ing was larger than one of my college textbooks, like a grimoire from some fantasy novel. It looked the part of an ancient magic tome.

  “What’s that?” I asked as we stepped back into the living room. “A little light reading?”

  “A package showed up while you were gone,” Soojin murmured, not lifting her eyes from the page. She devoured the tiny columns of text as if they were written in gold, while Carli looked Riley up and down as if trying to discern whether the two of us had fooled around at all while we were deeper in the cave. “From Carli’s mysterious benefactor.”

  “Ah, yes,” I said, plopping down next to Soojin. “We’re going to have to find out exactly who this benefactor is one of these days. What’s this book?”

  Soojin lifted the cover for me to see. The words PATH OF THE DRAGON were written across the front in an ornate silver font. My eyebrows rose at the sight of it—clearly this book concerned me intimately.

  “If what I’m reading in this tome is correct, your brand new clan is even more different from most shifter clans than I realized.” Soojin looked profoundly stirred, the book in her lap opening up a whole new vista of knowledge. “The power of the Dragon gives you the authority to forge your clan in a sacred ritual—one that, if I’m reading this right, binds the members of your organization to you for all eternity. Body and soul.”

  Sounds kinda like what I’ve done with you two already, I thought, but didn’t say.

  Instead, I leaned over Soojin’s couch cushion, peering down into the book.

  “Interesting,” I murmured, scanning the tiny lines of text. “I thought the Majordomo of the Council had to formally create a clan. Isn’t that what all that stuff in the lobby was about?”

  Soojin glanced up from the book. “Legally speaking, yes,” she said, a veil lowering over her eyes. “But that’s a little bit like saying you have to go to the county clerk and get a marriage licence. This is more like being wed by a priest—the real, primal thing, like God himself was watching.”

  “Wow,” I whispered.

  Next to Soojin, Carli nodded eagerly. This stuff sounded… serious.

  Was I really ready to do something like that?

  But Soojin and Carli had clearly already been talking about it while I was off practicing my new spells.

  “I think I’ve learned enough to pull off the ritual,” Soojin said, slamming the book closed in her lap. “It’s not a terrifically complicated procedure, despite the seriousness of it. If you’re willing to do it, Carli and I will gladly make formal our loyalty to your clan.”

  I looked into Soojin’s eyes, then Carli’s. Both of them couldn’t have been more clear that they wanted this. Not if they’d been on their knees with their mouths open and their tongues out, eagerly begging for it.

  “What are the benefits?” I asked.

  On some level, all of us knew this was a fraudulent question. I didn’t give a shit what the ritual would do for me—I already knew it would bind Soojin and Carli even closer to me. That was what I really wanted.

  Soojin just shrugged. “I’m not really sure,” she admitted, flipping through the remainder of the pages of the book she hadn’t read yet. “Apparently there’s some sort of task you have to perform in order to officially take up the mantle of the Dragon. The book itself is light on details, but you’re supposed to recognize it when you see it.”

  “And I’m assuming taking up this mantle will make my draconic powers even stronger?”

  “Oh yes,” Soojin said, her eyes lighting up. “By an order of magnitude.”

  I nodded, already having decided. “Killer. Let’s do this.”

  I stood up from the couch, then pointed over at Riley, who’d watched this exchange with a mixture of awe and fear on her pretty young face.

  “Are you in, or are you out, little girl?” I asked. “Now or never—I know you’re scared to see what I could do to you in the bedroom, but this is what you claim to have wanted. If you’re going to join us, this would pretty much seal the deal.”

  Riley rolled her eyes. Damn, but she was good at that.

  “I don’t have to be in bed with you in order to join your clan,” she said, her eyes narrowing. “I’m… thinking about it, though. You’ll have to give me a little more time. But haven’t I proven myself so far? With the info, and the spells?”

  She had me there.

  “I don’t think you’ll be able to resist me if you’re bound with me this hard,” I said with a shrug. “It’s on you, though. I want you—all of you—but all I really need is loyalty. The rest can come later.”

  I heard Riley gasp at the boldness of my declaration.

  Was it really all that shocking, though? She was an utterly gorgeous young mage—the kind of woman whom men fell all over themselves to try to bring back home from a bar or club.

  As much as I’d begun to shed the trappings of my ordinary human life, I’d started thinking of all the absurd barriers we put between us and our desires as just that—absurd.

  From now on, if I wanted a woman, I was going to let her know.

  “In that case… I’m in,” Riley said, glancing around the room for support. “A mage joining a group of shifters. God, the supernatural realm is going to have conniptions.”

  “They might,” Carli said, gesturing at the book. “But as far as we can tell, the Dragon won’t. There’s nothing in this big-ass tome they sent us that says only shifters can serve the Dragon—in fact, it implies that just about anybody can join a legendary Dragon’s clan. Mages, Shifters, other supernatural creatures… the Dragon accepts them all.”

  No, I thought, smiling internally. He dominates them.

  I understood on a deep, instinctive level why there were no guardrails toward membership in the Dragon’s clan. The Dragon wanted to control everything.

  As Riley and Carli made the other preparations, Soojin drew an intricate pattern on the floor of Carli’s living room. The rug beneath the coffee table got tossed into the cave, along with the coffee table itself.

  Soojin sat cross-legged before the developing pattern, adding intricate flows into the drawing she sketched across the bare rock floor.

  “Impressive,” I said, nodding at the design. “I didn’t know you had so much artistic talent…”

  “Hush,” Soojin said, though she was smiling. “All of you sit around the circle. We’re going to perform the Dragon’s Chant. Once it’s complete, the task you need to perform in order to gain the mantle of the Dragon will make itself clear.”

  My pulse thrummed in my veins as I took a seat in front of the highest point on the circle. Soojin and Carli took positions at my flanks, like the advisors of a king sitting on either side of his throne. Riley waited near the perimeter, both frightened of the pure power in the room and desperate to add herself to it.

  “This should only take a minute,” Soojin said, slipping her hand into mine. “Then you’re going to be the person you were always meant to be.”

  Mom will be proud, I thought, grinning. I kind of wished Raya were here to see this, to watch me take control of my destiny. But it might have been a little bit awkward, surrounded by all these beautiful women who wanted to jump my bones.

  Soojin cleared her throat and flipped to the first page of the chant. All around the apartment, the lights dimmed as if darkened by magic.

  When Carli suddenly sat up straight with a cry, I realized Soojin’s ritual had nothing to do with that darkness.

  An alarm in the ceiling of the hideout went off, splitting the air like a siren.

  We had company.

  Chapter 25

  “Intruders,” Carli growled, springing toward the front door of the hideout. “Shit, they found us!”

  I didn’t have to wonder who they were. Next to the security door leading to the hideout’s stairway to the surface, a closed-circuit television blared to life. It showed a view of the warehouse that sat atop our hiding place in monochrome, the dusty shelves and the scrape across the concrete that practically gave away
the location of Carli’s secret hiding place.

  Three shifters were poking and prodding around that specially marked section of wall. Three bear shifters. They might have looked mostly human, but each was wearing a vest with a roaring bear head embossed into the back.

  “They must have followed us from the Celesta,” I realized. There could be only one explanation—these shifters belonged to the same clan as the Alpha bear I’d tossed off the seventeenth floor of the hotel and casino. Somehow, they’d managed to track us back to Carli’s hideout. Now they wanted revenge.

  “Everyone get ready,” I commanded, keeping one eye on the door. “Those three might just be the vanguard of a much larger force.”

  The three shifters conducted a methodical search of the warehouse, like they knew we were down here and just needed to figure out how to get under the floor to where we hid.

  Another surprise—all three shifters were female. Each of them had quite a bit of muscle, but still managed to look feminine despite all that. Like sexy superheroes, or extras from a Wonder Woman movie. Their skin ranged from chestnut to golden wheat, and each had long trails of hair leading down to their asses like manes. They wore the same vest and tight leather pants combo the shifters at the Celesta had favored, which made their asses look incredible even in the shitty surveillance camera footage.

  What are you thinking, Derek? I chided myself. That’s not like you at all.

  Maybe not old human me. But dragon me? Yeah, I definitely thought like that.

  Suddenly, one of the shifters peered up at a camera and mouthed something.

  “Does your camera have audio?” I asked Carli, and she nodded. “Go ahead and turn it on.”

  “Alpha,” one of the bear shifters grunted. “Please let us in. We do not wish to fight.”

  I shared a look with Soojin and Carli. Alpha?

  “Keep an eye on each other,” I said, reaching for my powers.

  To either side, I could see Soojin and Carli embracing their animalistic natures, while Riley thrummed with magical energy. Fighting against three foes would be chaotic in an environment like this, but I had confidence we could win the day.