by Riley Storm
Sarah had been unaware of it of course, and it had been a tremendous effort on his part not to let his body language stray away from anything but her. He’d succeeded—it was relatively easy to show her that he was interested in her body as they drove, keeping her mind elsewhere, but more than once he’d nearly slammed his foot down on the accelerator and simply taken off in an attempt to leave the vamps behind.
But now he had them, and he could show his displeasure.
A light flicked on in a house across the street.
Dammit. Gotta remember the humans. And Sarah’s grandmother. She’s here, and vulnerable. If she comes outside…
“Yes. You understand now,” the lead vampire said, sensing his sudden wariness of what was around them. “Bring out your dragon. Please.”
Jax had no interest in doing any such thing. Nor did he want to fight the vampires here. Unfortunately, he couldn’t just escape himself. He needed to ensure the vampires were either destroyed or drawn away from the humans, especially Nancy Mingott.
He sent a thought out into the earth as a plan came to him. It was…wild. Reckless nearly to the point of suicidal. Yet in the instant, his brain on edge, it was all he could come up with that would work.
“Are you ready to play, then?” he taunted, calling upon the earth to aid him.
A blade as black as the night itself formed in his right hand, while in the left the onyx earthen metal spread wide from his forearm, a long rectangular shield.
In response, the vampires called the shadows to them. The one on his right formed a quarterstaff. He then, was the weakest of the trio, for the staff was the first weapon vampires learned. To Jax’s left, a two-handed greatsword appeared. That wasn’t good.
But the center vampire worried him the most. That one didn’t form a weapon at all.
Licking his lips, eyes darting around, Jax did his best to convince the vampires of his fear. It wasn’t hard, as all he had to do was think of Sarah buried in a hole in the ground, not knowing what was going on or why she was there, and the fear came to him naturally.
He fed that with the fear he’d experienced at her reaction to his true self. The fear of what he was going to have to do to keep the secret of his kind safe. That all mixed together, and he let it show. It had to be a convincing display if they were to buy it.
Rushing forward, he swung wildly. The vampires dropped back, letting him come. He did it again. Then again.
After that, the vampires tired of playing games. As Jax backed up rapidly toward the house, opening a gap nearly thirty feet between them, the vampires came at him. It was perfect.
Jax stood up straight, grinned at the vampires, and then the earth swallowed him as well. He ducked low as a shadow blade stabbed down through the earth, but it was angled and missed him by a mile.
Sarah’s fist, however, didn’t. It clanged against his metal skin painfully.
“Ow! What the fuck was that?” she shouted.
“Come on,” he rumbled, reaching out, his eyes seeing perfectly in the dark.
One of his hands closed around her forearm.
“What? We can’t go anywhere. It’s a solid hole, I tried that already, Jax,” she snapped, recognizing his voice. “What are you wearing? Ow, my hand.”
He didn’t have time to explain. The vampires wouldn’t wait long. Forging forward, dragging Sarah along behind him, they walked, the earth parting around them like liquid, responding to Jax’s command.
The ground angled down in front of them, taking them under a pipe.
“Going up to the surface now,” Jax said, ignoring Sarah’s repeated demands for information. “I’m going to pick you up, and then run. It’s going to be fast. I need you to not fight me on it. Can you do that?”
“Absolutely not! How dare you ask me that, after you magically put me into a hole in the ground, mister! Who the hell do you think you—garadhsd!” Her words cut off as he put a hand over her mouth.
“You have two options,” Jax growled, losing his patience with her hysteria. “One. We stay down here. The vampires get your grandmother. Two, you let me grab you and run, and you don’t fight me, and all of us survive. You have three seconds to decide on option two before option one is taken by default. What will it be?”
He didn’t actually know that, but he needed to get through to Sarah, to reach her rational brain, otherwise, they were going to be screwed. Time was of the essence here, and if the vampires thought to go after G-Nance before they surfaced, then their plan went out the window.
“Two,” Sarah said sullenly.
“Thank you.” The earth rose abruptly, and he scooped her up into his arms as the asphalt of the street parted and then flowed back under his feet, erasing any sign of the fact they had just come up through it.
Jax took a solid step forward, and the ring of his metal feet on the pavement alerted the vampires from their huddle on the driveway a hundred feet away.
By the time they started moving, Jax was already approaching the speed of a human runner. Three steps later, he was running as fast as a world record sprinter. He kept accelerating, not bothering to hold back.
Any humans who saw him now wouldn’t believe what they saw anyway, so he didn’t care. It was dark enough to hide, they would just assume it was a shadow, a figment of their imagination.
“We’re about to go up high. Don’t scream please,” he rumbled.
A moment later, Jax grunted, and his legs powered them up and over a fence, past a shed, and then down into a…
“Shit.”
The duo landed in the swimming pool with a splash, water going everywhere. Jax heard a startled shout from inside the house, but he was already gathering Sarah back up. Two long strides through the water brought him to the edge, where he jumped out, shedding water as he came.
“Sorry about that,” he said as Sarah spluttered some more. “Now, where were we?”
He ran forward again, clearing the fence into the next yard, and then they were back out onto the street. The vampires were closing the distance, but Jax didn’t care. He was faster. He had to be faster.
They ran on, and on.
“Do me a favor,” he said, thinking frantically. “Reach into my pocket. Get my cellphone. We need to call ahead. To warn the others.”
“Call ahead? Where are we calling ahead to?” she asked, though to his relief she started digging into his pocket. “The police? Do you want me to call 9-1-1?”
“No!” he yelped. “No. They aren’t equipped for this, Sarah.”
“Sure, they are. They can come get me. Take me to the hospital, where I can get on some drugs and stop these hallucinations.”
“I’m sorry, but you aren’t crazy. Everything you’ve seen is one hundred percent real,” he said.
Sarah snorted, cellphone in hand. “That’s what a crazy person’s mind would say.” But she didn’t dial the police.
Jax hoped against hope that it meant she still believed in him, even just a little bit. If she wasn’t completely convinced she was crazy, then maybe, eventually, he could get her to come around, to accept that her world wasn’t as normal as she thought it was.
Maybe I won’t have to do something I don’t want to…
In the meantime, he kept running. The houses rushed by, and soon the miles began to evaporate as well.
“How long can you keep this up?” she asked, looking around, eyes narrowed to slits as the wind rushed over them. Her hair was flapping out behind her head, but the speed of their passage was rapidly drying it.
“Long enough, thankfully,” he muttered, not looking forward to having to run back to Drakon Keep.
But changing back and flying the rest of the way didn’t seem to be in the cards. He doubted Sarah would be able to handle it. Not yet.
He had Sarah dial one of his contacts. The phone rang several times before it was picked up.
“Drakon Residence,” a bored-sounding Francis answered.
“Francis. Jax. Got a bit of an issue here,” he
said. “Wake the other three. Tell them I want a bright reception at the front gate. I need to banish the shadows.”
The sleepiness vanished from the steward’s voice. “ETA?”
“Thirty.”
There was a click, and the line went dead.
“What the hell did you just say to each other? Those were English words, but I don’t understand them.”
“We don’t talk about the truth of things over an open line,” Jax explained. “Too easy for the government to intercept. So, we talk in code if we have to reference our other halves.”
“Right. Of course. Yeah. Totally. Um.”
He just ignored Sarah, and she slowly grew silent again, holding onto his neck.
“Hey, do you need to keep up this…this…whatever the hell it is with your skin?” she asked a few minutes later. “It’s really scary, looking at a copper bust of your face.”
Jax focused on his head for a moment, and the armored layer retreated back into his skin.
“Okay that was creepy as fuck, but thanks,” she said, her eyes focusing on his head now. “At least I feel…I don’t know what I feel. This is all just so fucked.”
“I know,” he said somberly as the last of the outskirts of Plymouth Falls faded away, leaving nothing but open road ahead of them, and three frantically chasing vampires behind them.
“I know, and I’m sorry.”
This was all his fault.
Chapter 26
Sarah wasn’t sure what else to say. Jax didn’t seem like he was willing to explain anything just yet and they were currently running at an inhuman speed and endurance away from Plymouth Falls.
And she had come with him willingly.
What the hell is wrong with me? Why do I keep trusting him? Why do I feel safe, of all things, in his arms? This makes no sense! The man is a monster!
Or could turn into a monster. She didn’t really have time to debate the difference. They were rapidly closing in on his estate, she knew that much.
Movement behind them caught her eye. She focused, peering out behind him.
“What is it?” Jax asked.
“I…nothing.”
“Tell me. Anything,” he ordered.
“I thought I saw movement. But I think it was just shadows,” she said as Jax’s feet slapped the asphalt below them, speeding them along.
“Shit. It’s them. They’re catching up. Bastards are quick ones,” he snarled, but he didn’t seem worried.
“Shouldn’t we do something then?” she wanted to know, though exactly what was well beyond her. After all, if her befuddled brain remembered what he had said correctly, then they were being chased by vampires.
A dragon being chased by vampires. Now there was a thought she’d never expected to have in a million years outside of a movie.
“They left it too late,” Jax said confidently. “They’re using the shadows to speed them along, but they can only do so for a limited time. Far less time than I can keep this pace up. They’ll catch us, but they had to time it right. Too close to the city, and they won’t have the shadows to do it. Too far away, and well…you’ll see.”
“The shadows?” she asked, but her attention was distracted as she realized they had arrived.
Jax skidded to a halt in front of the massive gate to Drakon Keep, pivoting a full half-circle as he did, so they looked back the way they came.
The shadows she’d seen moving parted and the three men from outside her grandmother’s house appeared. She shivered at the way they moved. It was too still. Too unlifelike. Something was wrong with it, but she couldn’t tell what.
“Have you given up?” one of them asked, obviously not realizing where they were.
She hoped.
“Hardly,” Jax snorted in reply, not bothering to move.
Sarah’s eyes narrowed as a section of stars in the sky behind the vampires was blotted out. A moment later, Jax moved, leaping sideways over the gate in a dazzling display of strength and acrobats.
Sarah gaped in astonishment. Not because of that, but because of what happened as they moved.
The shadow in the sky revealed itself to be a dragon just as incandescent fire belched forth from the giant lizard’s snout. The vampires noticed too late, and though she watched them somehow call shadows and darkness into being, the fire began to burn straight through them.
A second later, the darkness failed completely, and the trio of vampires shrieked as their skin began to melt. Jax held her tight while they watched through the bars of the gate, the heat almost making her want to retreat, it was so strong even at this distance.
The fire cut off suddenly, and the dragon disappeared into the darkness of the night sky. Sarah had lost her night vision, but she didn’t need to see it for what happened next.
A torrent of water hit the waxy figures from another direction, coming out of the sky like it was shot from a massive hydrant. A second later, a lightly glowing blue shape of a second dragon was visible to her eyes.
The water coated everything, stilling the wax melting, and the vampires stood still.
Abruptly, the sky went bright white as a hailstorm of white ice flowed overhead. Sarah ducked into Jax’s arms but he didn’t flinch, and she watched as the ice coated the vampires.
“My turn,” Jax said, kneeling down, letting go of her with one arm.
Sarah gasped. As his hand hit the ground, it disappeared into the earth like it was thick water. Out near the vampires though, a massive hand formed from earth poked free, grasping the frozen figurines in its palm.
“Good riddance,” Jax snarled, and the hand abruptly clenched. She heard ice shatter as it disappeared inside the grip.
Then Jax pulled his hand free, and the ground outside settled back into itself. All sign of the vampires was gone, except what had been indelibly burned into her memory.
“Holy shit,” she muttered, unable to believe what she had seen. “Holy shit, holy shit.”
“Come on,” Jax said, wrapping both arms around her, somehow filling her once more with that sense of comfort and security that she couldn’t believe was feasible now she knew what he was. “Let’s get you inside. You’ll have some questions.”
Sarah nodded, but she remained numb and quiet the entire walk in. The powers that had been so casually displayed this night were…unbelievable. How could she possibly hope to win free from such stupendous beings?
She was well and truly screwed.
By the time she came to this conclusion and her anger began to rise, Jax had set her down on a chair in a room and departed. Coming slowly to her senses, the adrenaline wearing off at last—returning logical thought to her brain—Sarah stood up, not wanting to sit down. If she did, she might fall asleep. That couldn’t be allowed to happen.
“Jax!” she called, heading toward the door.
She frowned when she realized there was no door handle on the inside.
“What the fuck!” she shouted. “Are you serious? Did you imprison me? Am I in jail?”
She growled angrily. “Unbelievable. Un-fucking-believable. Jax Drakon! You get your ass back in here right now!”
After ten minutes or so, she subsided, not wanting to waste her voice. She was in prison. In jail. Jax must have decided that, because she’d run away the first time, he couldn’t take any chances now, and had to lock her up.
She sat sullenly on the couch, not really sure what else to do. Running away didn’t seem viable. It hadn’t worked well the first time, and she’d seen how fast he could run. Even the idea of stealing another car didn’t provide much hope for her. Not anymore.
Resigned, she sat back, arms crossed, pouting at her inability to do much of anything.
The next thing she knew, she was coming to as the door closed. Jax was in the room now, looking at her.
“How dare you do something like that to me again,” she shouted as he opened his mouth to speak.
Coming to her feet, she stormed right up to him, raising a finger, not caring that he
towered over her by nearly a foot and outmassed her by an easy hundred pounds or more.
“Do you hear me? Do not ever throw me into a hole in the ground again. Ever. Ever,” she howled. “Am I clear?”
“You’re clear,” Jax said, holding his hands out wide in a universal gesture of surrender. “I’m sorry. I didn’t have much time to think, and my priority was keeping you safe, not your comfort.”
Her mouth slammed shut. Somehow, in managing to apologize and be contrite, he’d diffused her of her anger. “Just don’t let it happen again,” she muttered.
“It will be easier if you aren’t so determined to run away from me,” he said. “I can keep you safer that way. Without having to bury you in the ground.”
“Let’s not forget the little fact that you can make the earth do your bidding,” she said. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten about that either. You have a lot of explaining to do, mister. Like why am I in jail?”
“I know,” Jax admitted. “But until you calm down, there isn’t much I can do. About any of it.”
Sarah’s anger peaked again. “There isn’t much you can do? How about you let me go! Try doing that!”
Slowly he shook his head, refusing to meet her eyes. “I’m sorry. I can’t do that. I have to protect my secret. No matter what.”
Her eyes boggled as the implications of his heavy tone sank through the sheen of her anger, penetrating her brain. “Wait a minute. Are you saying that you’re keeping me here against my will?”
“If I must,’ he said heavily. “I can’t risk you telling others.”
“Like who?” she snorted.
“A therapist. The police. People at the hospital. Anyone you would go to, to get yourself looked at, after what you’ve seen and experienced tonight,” Jax said calmly. “You know you’ve thought about it. You think you’re hallucinating, going crazy. You want to be better. But if you start talking about us, then the word gets out. I can’t let that happen.”
