Dragon's Challenge

by Jasmine Wylder

  Maura put a hand on his shoulder, frowning all the while at Stephen. “Is this because of… developments that happened last night?”

  Was she asking him that he’d lost all hope because they slept together? “No. No, of course not. I mean… yes because we lost nearly everybody in our group last night but not because of…”

  “Wait. Wait!” Evan looked between them, his eyes growing wide. “Did you two do something while I was gone? Are you knocking boots now?”

  “Knocking boots?” Stephen repeated in disgust. “Say what it is. Sex. And yeah, we had sex. And no,” here he turned a glare on Maura, angry that she would even think that she’d turn him into a coward. “It’s not because we had sex that I’m suggesting this. I just don’t know what else we can do. It all just seems so damn hopeless. Even if we were able to get Patrick, Liam, and Eugene out of jail now, so what? We know nothing. We could get all the Shadow Ops and the Howling Ops out, too, and you know what? If we kept pushing this damn thing, we’d be the ones who ended up as terrorists. I mean, look what happened with Evan and that fucking bus!”

  Evan glared at him. “Hey, the bus wasn’t my fault! All I was doing was fighting off those bounty hunters.”

  “And how many people got hurt in that fight?” Stephen skewered him with his gaze. “Were you thinking about bystanders? Were the bounty hunters?”

  Evan’s shoulders hunched.

  “Stephen.” Maura grabbed both his shoulders. “I know. It feels hopeless. It feels like there is nothing we can do. But it’s not hopeless. We are going to find a way out of this. I have… a secret weapon. I was hoping that I wouldn’t have to use it but since it’s just the three of us…” Her gaze hardened, so much so that she suddenly looked like a completely different person. Like a ruthless war criminal. “I see that we have no choice. There’s a reason they decided to give the bounty hunters reason to kill me and not you. Load up. We’re heading back to the Academy.”

  What sort of secret weapon did she mean? Was she talking about exposing the operations out of the Academy? Stephen opened his mouth, wanting to ask, then closed it again. He started packing things up, telling Evan to just rest in the meantime.

  Whatever Maura’s secret weapon was, he had a feeling he was better off not knowing.

  Chapter Fourteen

  It took them longer than Maura wanted to get back to the Academy. They didn’t want to make their trail too obvious but also had to avoid using any public place where people would recognize them. They flew only a night, when there was less of a chance people would spot them, and when they discovered a few of those nights were full or almost full moons, they camped until the skies were darker once again.

  When they finally returned, they took up camp inside an old storage shed that wasn't as secure as their underground tunnels, but they didn’t know if Erica had told the cops about those places; there was no news about her at all, and all of Maura’s contacts had gone suspiciously silent. Not that they had a lot of time to reach out to them.

  The good thing about being in the storage shed was that it was close enough to everything so Evan didn’t have to find a new spot to do his hacking. Going through the tunnels into the theatre allowed Maura to splice one of Evan’s devices into the security feed. With that in place, he had eyes and ears all over campus.

  Another two days of observation told them that the movements of people on campus were still predictable. The security guards had the same rounds, students still kept to their barracks—because they were barracks, now, rather than dorms—and teachers couldn’t wait to leave at the end of the day.

  “Things sure changed, didn’t they?” Stephen asked, laying spread out behind Evan and Maura as they watched the video feeds. “I thought I had it bad.”

  Evan glanced over his shoulder. “You maxed out all your credit cards in a year. I know that things are worse for you than you’ve let on.”

  Maura turned to Stephen in surprise while Stephen rolled up, anger on his face. “What the hell are you doing poking about in my business?”

  “When you stopped returning my texts, I got worried. So I went poking around because I didn’t know if you were even still alive.” Evan narrowed as he turned around. “And yeah, I shouldn’t have. It was all sorts of illegal, but if you weren’t going to talk to me, I figured I could at least check up on you. Besides, Patrick asked me to. Nobody had heard from you.”

  Maura tried to focus back on the screen, but her mind was in a whirl. She had talked with Stephen for quite some time about finding him a proper job. When he suddenly cut off communication, she assumed it meant he didn’t want to talk with her anymore. That he’d gotten a job—he was so skilled and smart, after all.

  Was he in trouble? Maxing out credit cards in a single year… that was bad. That was really bad. Had he been without a job all this time? Or was there something else going on? How bad had his debt been before?

  “Stephen,” she said quietly, interrupting before the discussion could get more heated, “Can we talk about this? I don’t mean right now, I mean later.”

  A beat of silence answered her.

  She looked over her shoulder, finding Stephen deliberately avoiding her gaze and sighed. “Please?”

  “Fine. When we don’t have more important things to worry about, we can talk.” Stephen didn’t look at her, still scowling.

  It wasn’t ideal but it was better than nothing. Maura nodded once, then looked back at the screen. Whatever was going on with him, they couldn’t just resolve it here and now, not with everything else going on. It worried her that it would get to the point it was with him anyway, but she wasn’t even sure what that point was.

  Focusing her mind, she turned and gathered up the dark clothes they’d picked up for this mission.

  “You ready to put it into a loop?” Maura asked Evan.

  “Yeah, as soon as you’re ready to go.”

  Maura nodded once. She was doing this alone, as out of all of them, she knew her way around the Academy the best. Stephen had argued against it, citing the bounty hunters, but they hadn’t seen any evidence of bounty hunters since Evan had escaped them. If she was caught, at least they could get away.

  Soon enough, she had slipped from the storage shed. Evan’s voice was in her ear from the makeshift radio they’d put together—the dragons had one burner phone, she had another and she was on call with them while wearing a single Bluetooth earbud.

  The path to her office was familiar and it rankled to think that it was now someone else’s office. The door was locked, as was expected, but she picked the lock and was soon in.

  “Never pegged you for someone who could pick locks,” Evan chuckled in her ear. “Where did you pick that up?”

  “I wrote a thesis on the prison system and spent a lot of time with people who had been incarcerated. They taught me a few tricks.”

  It had never occurred to her at that point that one day she was going to have the threat of jail hanging over her head. She had been horrified by what she’d seen in those prisons. Now, she might end up in one herself. If she wasn’t murdered by bounty hunters first. Although she had no doubt that, where she’d be put, she wouldn’t be able to survive long anyway.

  Everything had changed in her office. She took a moment to mourn her oak desk, replaced by a monstrosity that might as well have been gilded in gold, before moving to the window. Two feet to the left and she peeled back the corner of a tacky inspirational poster and popped open a secret compartment.

  Laying inside, sealed inside of a Ziplock baggie, was a flash drive.

  “Mission successful,” she murmured as she tucked it into her pocket.

  “Wait, really?” Stephen sounded confused. “All this for a USB?”

  “It’s what’s on the USB that’s important, obviously,” Evan said, then gasped. “Wait! Where did that guy come from? Maura, someone’s coming up on the office. You’ll have to go out the window—what the hell?”

  The door burst open, chunks of wood spinn
ing off the frame. Maura grabbed a paperweight off the desk and hurled it through the window, smashing it. As she grabbed a second weight, the intruder grinned. Sharp fangs glinted in his mouth, and Maura’s heart sank.

  “Winston. It’s been a while since I’ve seen you.”

  “Been a while since you ran me out of my home, you mean.”

  Maura rolled her eyes. “You were preying on my students, what was I supposed to do? Let you?”

  “I didn’t kill any of them.” Winston edged to the left.

  His skin glowed pink in the dim light, a sign he’d recently fed. Her stomach churned. Who was the unlucky bastard to have given this vampire his lunch? She very much doubted that it would have been a consensual feeding—not with this guy. But it also meant he was at his highest strength. Evan was calling at her through the phone, but she pulled out the earbud. No use in having distractions.

  “I take it you’re here for the bounty on me?” she asked slowly.

  “You take it right. But since I abhor killing, I’ll give you and your dragon companions the chance to come in quietly. Otherwise….” Winston drew his finger over his throat, laughing darkly.

  Maura rolled her eyes. “Must you be so dramatic?”

  Winston shrugged. “I’m a vampire. Of course, I must. Or do you think living in the shadows is an existence that suits the mundane? Now hand me that phone so I can tell your dragons to submit to the people I’ve sent for them unless they wish for you to die.”

  Glaring and hating that this happened, Maura handed over the phone. As Winston lifted it to his ear, though, a thunderous roar sounded outside the window. Winston jumped, a curse flying from his mouth as he turned toward the window.

  Maura took her chance. She grabbed a second paperweight off the desk and hurled it at Winston’s head. The weight connected solidly. As Winston wheeled back, she dove out the window. The glass snagged her, tearing through her sweater and biting deep into her arm. Hot blood gushed out, but she refused to let that stop her. She shifted into her leopard form, managing to bounce off a tree before rolling on her impact.

  Pain shot up her arm, but she took off away from the administration building. Winston let out a howl behind her. Ahead, the abandoned shed was engulfed in flames. A good half dozen figures swarmed in and out the flames while above them, dragons soared.

  One of them broke off, diving for her. Maura shifted back to human form, grabbing her pants and the flash drive inside before Stephen grabbed her. He took off into the sky; as they left the Academy behind, alarms started blaring and people poured from the buildings, shouting to one another. Maura pressed herself against Stephen’s hot belly, snarling under her breath as the ground drifted away below them.

  Fuck. Could this get any worse?

  ***

  As soon as they set down, deep in the forest with only trees to protect them from the biting wind, Stephen shifted to his human form. He pulled his shirt off as Evan sat to one side, checking over his laptop. Maura pulled on the offered garment gratefully. It was a little loose, which surprised her—she had thought that something that fit Stephen so well would be tight across her chest at least.

  “Since when do vampires exist?” Stephen demanded as she pulled on her pants.

  Maura took a moment to make sure she hadn’t lost the flash drive before she looked back up at Stephen. “Well since vampires’ bones don’t survive the fossil record there is no way to know for certain, but I imagine they evolved alongside humans and shifters.”

  “You know what I mean. Vampires?”

  Maura sighed. “There’s a lot that you don’t know about, Stephen. And yes, vampires are one of them. I’m sorry, I don’t really know what to say to you right now. Vampires aren’t our problem.”

  “They are when they’re attacking us,” Stephen spat out. He paced around the little clearing they’d found, digging his hands into his hair. “Where did they even come from? How do we know they’re not creeping up on us right now? Can they turn into bats?”

  Maura held up her hands. “Stephen, please. I don’t know that much about vampires myself. But I do know that we have this now.” She fished the flash drive from her pocket and held it up. “And as soon as certain people also know that, we’ll be able to get them to agree to our terms in all of this. Got it?”

  She reached out and grasped him by the shoulder. Before she could continue to soothe him, though, a sudden crashing made them both jump. Evan let out a long burst of flame, melting the remnants of his laptop, which he had just thrown into a tree.

  “Damn thing was smashed,” he said when both Stephen and Maura let out exclamations of disbelief. “Now they can’t get anything off it if they find it.”

  Maura marched over, staring at the smoldering remains in dismay. “But I was counting on that laptop to be able to contact the people I need to—” she cut herself off before she could say the word.

  “Blackmail?” Stephen asked.

  She flinched, but Evan took no notice. “We’ll just have to figure out another way. Come on. Those vampires moved crazy fast. We gotta get out of here before they track us down.”

  It was true. She tucked the flash drive safely back inside her pocket. Once Stephen shifted again, she climbed onto his back. They took off, not having a destination in mind and only one plan. And Maura hoped that this would work. Because if it didn’t, with vampires coming after them, they were in a much worse situation than Stephen or Evan knew.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Maura told him and Evan that it was too risky to have vampires coming after them and they had to move as quickly as possible from here on out—and apparently that meant taking greater risks than stealing the equipment that Evan would need in order to get a laptop connected to the internet in the middle of nowhere.

  Stephen scowled as Maura busily worked at the library computer. They both wore disguises, including a beard and mustache for Maura and a dress and full makeup for him, but he didn’t like being out in the open like this. Even if the majority of the other people here in the library were kids playing Minecraft, he couldn’t rule out that someone might recognize them despite the disguises. He sat in a chair next to Maura, as though they were looking at the same thing.

  He was right about one thing, though. It was blackmail. He didn’t recognize the name that Maura sent the email to, but the content of the message was more than threatening. And when she attached a file from her flash drive, he let out a surprised huff—why was his name on this thing, too?

  Maura glanced at him but didn’t say anything as she sent the email. Then, she packed up their few things, turned off the computer and nodded at him.

  They were out of the library within seconds. The bus took forever to get them to where Evan waited with the car they’d stolen from a home with several newspapers on their front step.

  From there, they drove out of the tiny town, ditched the car in a rest stop with a note explaining that it was stolen and left a wad of cash under the passenger’s seat to pay for impound lot fees and flew off again. They went as far as they could before his wings were too tired to keep moving and settled down in a clearing. From there they walked until it was too dark and cold to keep going.

  They set up their one tent, unrolled their sleeping bags, hung what was left of their food outside and went to bed. Maura lay curled against him, tucked in close to his chest as she had been sleeping ever since they had made love.

  Part of Stephen wished he could tell Evan to go find somewhere else to sleep. He longed for that connection, that feeling that everything was going to be okay. Even just holding Maura helped, but here in the darkness, knowing that his name was on that flash drive and also knowing that it contained blackmail material…

  He didn’t know what to think. And he needed to know more than he did now, otherwise, his brain was going to fill in all sorts of awful scenarios he knew weren’t real. Like Maura faking the bounties and being the one behind this herself. For some reason that he knew was nowhere in the realm of logi
cal possibility.

  His brain could be an awful fucking liar, though.

  “Maura?” he murmured. He knew Evan wasn’t asleep yet and hated to bring this up with him here, but what other choice did he have?

  Although telling Evan to take a hike would allow them that privacy. And Stephen knew that if he was just able to make love to her again, all his doubts would fade away. He was pent up, in more ways than one and needed some sort of assurance. When they had made love before, he had felt closer to her than he’d ever felt to anybody else. And if he could just have that again, maybe he wouldn’t feel so lost.

  “Maura?” he repeated.

  She sighed. “Shouldn’t we be trying to sleep?”

  Did she know what he was meaning to ask her? “I know you’re tired, but this is important.”

  “I thought if you were going to ask, you’d have done it already.”

  Evan rolled over. In the small tent, they really didn’t have enough room and now Evan’s elbow dug uncomfortably into his back. “What are you guys talking about?”

  Both of them were silent. Stephen was unwilling to admit to what he saw on Maura’s flash drive. What if there was a perfectly reasonable explanation for it? Saying it to Evan would only make him suspicious and with Adam, Karey, and the two wolves having had taken off, they couldn’t afford to lose anybody else. Maybe he had been mistaken—maybe he hadn’t seen what he thought he saw.

  Maura let out a heavy breath, almost a sigh, almost exasperated, almost guilty. She tensed in his arms and he tensed in response. “I have built information on the people I deal with. I learned long ago that I need to cover my ass when dealing with situations where people want to remain anonymous. It’s how I have the information I need in order to get us out of our predicament. At least, hopefully get us out.”

  A moment of silence and then Evan murmured. “I thought that was obvious.”

  “It was,” Stephen agreed. “But I just want to know why our names were on those files, too.”