Scorched

by Mari Mancusi

  Walk away, walk away, she pleaded silently. Please walk away.

  Her stomach lurched so forcefully she almost threw up right on the cop. With effort, she forced the smile back on her face. What was going on with her?

  Keep it together, Trin. Just a little longer.

  What are you doing? Caleb hissed in her head. It took her a moment to realize he wasn’t speaking out loud. Like Connor back at the barn. Another part of the gift?

  Shut up, she tried to send back, feeling a little ridiculous at her first attempt at mental telepathy. To the cop, she added, “I can’t believe they make you work on a holiday!”

  The cop glanced at his watch. “Actually I worked the nightshift,” he told her. “I’m off in a few minutes.”

  “Going home to the family?”

  Go home, go home, go home.

  Pain stabbed at her forehead. Her vision swam. For a moment she thought she was going to pass out. What was wrong with her? This was so not going to help her case with the cop.

  Thankfully, he seemed oblivious to her sudden distress. He reached into his pocket for his wallet. “My boy’s one year old,” he boasted, handing Trinity a picture of a chubby-faced cherub that looked a lot like his dad. “First Christmas!”

  “Aww,” she managed to choke out. “He’s so cute.”

  She handed the photo back, the sick feeling intensifying. If she screwed this up, that adorable baby boy would have to grow up without a father—just as she had.

  She had to make this work. Somehow. Some way.

  She lowered her eyes demurely. It was time to go in for the kill. “I don’t suppose we could just forget the taillight—in the name of Christmas and all? I’d promise to get it fixed the second we get home.”

  The officer’s smile faded. “Now you know I’m supposed to at least run your plates, ma’am. It’s protocol. I could get in trouble.”

  “Oh, I don’t want you to get in trouble!” Trin protested. Damn it. “I just want you to be able to get home to your baby!” This time, she did bat her eyelashes, desperate for something to work.

  The officer stiffened. She’d gone too far. “Why don’t you just give me your license and registration? We’ll get it done fast.”

  “Okay.” She closed her eyes, realizing she’d failed. Epically failed. Slowly, she reached for the glove box, her heart filled with despair. In a moment it would all be over. The cop would see Caleb’s gun. He’d reach for his own…

  Caleb’s fingers grabbed her hand. He turned to her slowly, his expression unreadable from behind the sunglasses. “Allow me,” he said in a low voice, reaching for the glove box.

  Trinity forced herself to nod. A trickle of sweat dripped down her back.

  Please walk away, please walk away… she silently begged the officer one more time as sharp pain stabbed at her skull like knives. For your son’s sake, just please walk the hell away!

  The glove box started to creak open…

  “You know what?” the officer interjected, his face breaking out into a big smile. “You’re right. Who wants to give out a ticket on Christmas?”

  Caleb pulled his hand away.

  “Thank you!” Trinity cried, relief coming in a flood. “Thank you so much!”

  “Merry Christmas,” the officer said, giving her a small wave. “And get that taillight fixed.”

  And with that, he turned back to his car. A moment later, he was pulling off the shoulder and passing them on the road, leaving their lives forever. Trinity waited for him to disappear over the horizon, then stumbled out of the pickup truck, falling to her knees and vomiting on the side of the road, clutching her head in agony.

  Caleb followed her out of the truck, clapping his hands slowly. “Wow, you really are Fire Kissed, aren’t you?” he remarked, sounding impressed.

  She looked over at him blearily, her stomach still roiling. “What are you talking about?” she asked, annoyed that he looked so pleased when she felt so terrible. “I just sweet talked him a little, something I learned from my mother.”

  “Trust me, no amount of sweet talk was going to make him drive away,” Caleb insisted. “You pushed him—harder than I’ve ever seen anyone do. Which is probably why you feel like hell. Using the gift can kick the fleck out of you, especially without proper training.”

  “The gift?” Trinity looked up, confused. “You’re saying I have the gift too?”

  “Do you think a dragon would bond to a reg?” he replied, ripping off his sunglasses. His eyes shone. “Seriously Trin, I cannot wait to get you to the Dracken. They are going to be so excited to see you.”

  The Dracken. Trinity shivered. In her relief at escaping the cop, she’d almost forgotten she was still trapped, still a prisoner—her life still in danger. Slowly, she rose to her feet, gripping the side of the truck, trying to regain her composure. The nausea was starting to fade, but she still felt overwhelmingly weak—not unlike how she felt after her trip to the Nether. As if she could sleep for a week.

  “You know, I don’t know what these Dracken people want from me, but I can tell you right now, they can just forget it,” she managed to spit out, forcing herself to meet his eyes with her own. “It’s not like I’m going to suddenly join them or whatever, just because you dragged me to their secret headquarters.”

  To her surprise, Caleb started to laugh. She shot him an annoyed look.

  “What?” she demanded. “What’s so funny?”

  “It’s just that…join us?” Caleb repeated, his eyes dancing in amusement. “But you’re the one who started the Dracken in the first place!”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Trinity stared at Caleb, a clammy chill washing over her. “What?” she managed to scrape out in a hoarse voice. “What do you mean ‘started the Dracken’?”

  “Um, pretty much just like it sounds. You made it all happen. Brought everyone together, back in the day. Well, I guess more like ten years from now if we’re being technical. You even came up with the silly name—the Order of the Dracken. Legend has it that it came from some video game you were into back then.”

  “What?” Trinity froze. Realization hitting her over the head with the force of a ten-ton truck. Oh God.

  The Dracken. That’s why the name sounded so familiar when Connor had said it back at the barn. Why had she not realized it before? The Order of the Dracken was a dragon-filled dungeon in the expansion pack of Fields of Fantasy. The very game that was probably still sitting under her grandpa’s Christmas tree waiting for her to return.

  The dizziness welled up inside her again, this time not as a side effect of the gift.

  “But hey, don’t take my word for it,” Caleb continued, reaching into his bag and pulling out what looked like a high-tech tablet. He pressed a button and the screen illuminated into full-color video. She stared down at it; at first she thought she was watching some sort of movie—a fantasy epic straight out of Lord of the Rings. That was until the camera zoomed in for a close-up of a young woman, sitting on the back of an all-too-familiar-looking green dragon.

  Trinity gaped. The woman had shorter hair than she did and was at least ten years older, but the resemblance was unmistakable.

  “It’s me,” she whispered, unable to help stating the obvious. She watched in a mixture of fascination and horror as the woman and the dragon soared through the skies, looking elegant and elated and free. She wanted to protest that the footage had been doctored somehow, but what if it wasn’t? What if Caleb was telling the truth? What if she really had started the organization? Connor had warned her about falling under the dragon’s spell. Emmy had told her they were destined…

  “It’s a pretty great story, actually,” Caleb said, turning off the device after the video faded to black. “A beautiful young girl, giving up everything she had to save the world’s last dragons. Of course,” he added, “it doesn’t exactly end well.”

  She flinched. No, it didn’t. She thought back to Connor’s vision—of fiery skies and fallen friends, dragons destro
ying it all. What could have possibly prompted her future self to want to save these evil creatures who saw nothing wrong with burning the entire world to the ground? She couldn’t imagine any spell that powerful.

  “Don’t feel bad,” Caleb said, seeing her expression. “I mean, sure, things didn’t turn out exactly how you planned, but you tried. Your heart was always in the right place.”

  “I don’t understand,” she protested. “Why would I form a dragon rights group? How would I even know about dragons to begin with? I mean, if the government took the egg immediately after it arrived at the museum the first time around, I would have never seen it again. I probably would have forgotten all about it.”

  “You didn’t forget,” Caleb corrected. “And a bond like yours and Emmy’s is not easily broken. You heard her cries for years after they stole her, echoing through your head. At first you thought you were going crazy—like your mother had. It wasn’t until Emmy lured you into the desert and you found a job at the facility they’d taken her to that you finally realized the truth.”

  “The truth?” Trinity repeated with encroaching dread. She turned to Caleb, trying desperately to swallow down her fear. “And what truth might that be?”

  “That dragons have the power to save our world,” Caleb replied matter-of-factly. “If only you could first save them.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Caleb stared out the grease-smeared window of their small, dingy motel room, watching the wind outside swirl up debris. Trinity had suggested the place because it was the type that took cash and didn’t ask for ID. Thanks to his little showdown at the diner, along with Trinity’s performance with Homeland Security, the two of them were basically fugitives. The TV announcer had called them armed and dangerous.

  Of course this was nothing new to Caleb. He’d spent most of his life considered armed and dangerous down in Strata-D. And while his brother, Connor, had racked up the accolades for his merciless dragon slaughter, Caleb picked up demerits. Hell, he’d probably been only an infraction or two away from a lifetime in the mines before meeting Darius, who recognized his gift and gave him a job.

  Not an easy job, by any means. But an important one. A very important one.

  His eyes left the window to check on Trinity, who’d thankfully fallen into an uneasy sleep. Poor girl. It’d been a rough journey for her so far. And pushing the cop had pushed her body to its limits.

  If only his stupid brother hadn’t gotten involved. Trin and her grandpa would already be reunited and the egg would be safe and sound at Dracken Headquarters, ready for hatching. But no. As always, the great and powerful Connor had to plow in and destroy everything in his path as part of his fanatical crusade.

  And Caleb had almost lost Trinity—not to mention Emmy—because of it.

  They still had a long way to go—both in physical distance and gaining trust. Sure, she’d been willing to listen to some of what he had to say, but he could see the disbelief reflected in her eyes. He didn’t blame her, he supposed. It’d taken him a while to get on board with the Dracken as well. In fact, he hadn’t truly believed anything Darius had said until the day he’d slipped the vial of dragon’s blood into his mother’s IV. The day she lived instead of died and the doctors called it a miracle.

  The day, for the first time, Caleb was the hero, not Connor, even if no one knew it but him.

  She was beautiful, he thought. The history texts did not do her justice. Sure, she had the same tangles of black curls falling down her back in waves, the same delicate features. But no photo could capture her long lashes, sweeping across freckled cheeks, or the way her lower lip plumped as she frowned in her sleep. And they certainly couldn’t capture the fiery passion in her black eyes, illuminating the spark that was so strong within her.

  Trinity moaned in her sleep, tossing and turning. He watched the stress lines wrinkling her brow and wondered if he should wake her from her nightmares. He hated to see her in such agony and prayed he hadn’t been the cause of it. He’d never meant for everything to go so wrong, and the idea that she thought he was the bad guy tore at his heart.

  “No one cares more about you than me,” he whispered. He sighed, then turned back to the window.

  “Shut up!” Trinity shot up in bed, boxing her hands over her ears and letting out a piercing scream. “Just shut up! Get out of my head!”

  Caleb flew to her side. “Trinity! Wake up!” He grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her as hard as he could, forcing her awake. Her eyes flew open, wild and unseeing. Her face was blotchy and stained with tears.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, his heart pounding in his chest.

  “The voices…” she mumbled, still half in a daze. “So loud…”

  He flinched. Of course. Why hadn’t he thought of that before?

  “Did my brother show you something?” he demanded. “Some kind of vision?” When Trinity reluctantly nodded, Caleb frowned. “I thought so. He probably opened up some doors by mistake. They’re hard to shut if you haven’t had the proper training.” Stupid Connor. Always botching up people’s heads.

  “No,” she protested. “I…I heard them earlier as well.”

  She said the words hesitantly, as if she was embarrassed to admit them aloud. “At the museum and then again at my grandpa’s house.” She moaned loudly, squeezing her eyes shut in agony. “God, I’m one shotgun blast away from becoming my mother, aren’t I?”

  “Oh, Trin.” He gave her a sorrowful look, remembering exactly how it felt, how horrible and confusing and maddening it had all been. It was all he could do not to reach out, pull her close, and wrap his arms around her in an attempt to draw out her pain. But he knew in his heart she’d only pull away, rejecting any comfort from his touch. To her, he was still the enemy. The one who had tricked her and stolen her away. He had a lot to prove to her before she would trust him. And there was no better time to start then now.

  “Look, Trin,” he tried, raking his aching hands through his hair in an effort to give them something else to do. “I can help you. But you have to trust me. Just close your eyes, okay?”

  Her frown deepened. Her eyes remained open—stubborn as she was beautiful. “I know it hurts. But just do it, okay? I swear it’ll help stop the voices.”

  “Fine,” she said, snapping her eyes shut. “Happy now?”

  “Ecstatic,” he muttered. She was good at making things difficult, that was for sure. But he wasn’t going to give up on her—as everyone had once given up on him. “Now listen. I need you to do a little visualization. Imagine each voice you hear attached to a person and each person standing at a doorway at the edge of your mind.” He closed his own eyes, trying to remember how he’d been taught by Darius. “They’re all trying to push past one another to enter.” He paused. “Can you see it?”

  She was quiet for a moment. He peeked an eye open and saw her squeezing her own eyes shut, a tormented look on her face. “Yes,” she said at last.

  “Good. Now slam those doors shut.”

  Her eyes flew open. “This is stupid.”

  “Do you want the voices gone or what?”

  Reluctantly she shut her eyes again. “Okay, fine. I’m shutting the door…blocking out the big bad—”

  She gasped. He opened his eyes. She was sitting on the bed, a shocked look on her face. “Oh my God,” she murmured.

  “Told you.” He couldn’t help a small smile.

  “How did you do that?”

  “You did it. I just showed you how. Don’t worry. It gets easier with practice. Soon it’ll be as natural as breathing.”

  She looked at him wonderingly, her eyes liquid pools of ebony. “How did you know? Are you cursed with voices too?”

  “I told you: it’s a gift,” he corrected, though, in truth, that was not always the case.

  She screwed up her face. “Some gift. My mother shot herself in the head over this so-called gift.”

  His heart squeezed at her words. At the naked pain blasting across her face.

>   “I’m sorry,” he said simply. “It can be overwhelming for those who don’t have proper training. The voices can get so loud they block out everything else.” He thought back to one particular torment-filled night of his own, when he’d been sure he wouldn’t live to see the break of dawn. “In any case, I won’t let that happen to you. I can help you control them. To shut them out until you need to listen.”

  She started to nod, then winced.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “There’s still this one sound,” she admitted, looking up at him, her face ghostly white. “This horrible, high-pitched sobbing. No matter how hard I try to block it out, it keeps slipping through the cracks.”

  Caleb’s shoulders relaxed and he gave her a small smile. “Oh right,” he said. “I almost forgot about her. She’s going to be a little tougher to tune out.”

  Trinity cocked her head in question. “She?” Her eyes widened as Caleb gestured to the egg, resting between two pillows on the adjacent bed. “You’re trying to tell me the egg is crying?”

  “Not the egg,” Caleb corrected. “Emmy. She can sense you’re upset and it’s scaring her.”

  “She can sense my emotions?” Trinity asked, rising from the bed and walking curiously over to the egg. Caleb watched, breath caught in his throat, as she reached out hesitantly, then dared pull the egg into her arms. The bond was growing. He could see it in her face. Her touch. She was fighting it, but still….

  “I feel like I should…I don’t know…comfort her or something?” Trin dragged her gaze from the egg to Caleb. “But that’s stupid, right?”

  “Actually it’s about the smartest thing you’ve said all day.”

  She gave him a withering look but turned back to the egg, stroking it softly with her hand. A moment later she looked up, her face mirroring her surprise. “She stopped crying!”

  “She can feel your warmth. It’s comforting to her.”

  Trinity stared back down at the egg, her face warring with mixed emotions. “I shouldn’t be doing this,” she murmured more to the egg than Caleb. “You’re an evil dragon. I should be trying to destroy you. And yet…” She looked up at Caleb. “How did it all happen?” she asked slowly. “How did it go from this egg to a raging apocalypse?” She paused, then added, “And how do I fit in with the whole thing?”