by Willa Hart
Meanwhile, Ryen and Danic circled around and attacked from the back. Or the top. Or…well, however one attacked someone while flying. The other four enemy dragons weren’t sure which way to turn as their tight formation fell into chaos. They scrambled to fling themselves into the fray as claws slashed, jaws snapped, and jets of fire shot out left and right.
“Well, that settles that,” Hale said, smiling at the display that beat out the Blue Angels air show any day.
“Drama queens,” Ash replied, shaking his head. “Okay, let’s do this thing.”
Before I even had an inkling what he was talking about, the twins had moved away from me, their bodies twisting and shifting and melting away to make room for their long, slender, yet tremendously powerful dragon forms. Even though I’d seen Uncle Max, Rufus, and Danic change into dragons before, the sight still was enough to rattle me. I mean, come on! Humans turning into dragons? Yeah. It’s pretty freaking weird.
In a couple blinks of the eye, two lithe dragons stood on either side of me, their wings extended slightly, as if they wanted to be ready to take off at a moment’s notice. Their thick, ridged tails twitched in agitation, and I could tell they were eager to join the fight, yet they showed no signs of taking off. Warmth filled my heart with the understanding they would stay with me, protect me, while the Novaks engaged the herd of baddies.
As much as I wanted to watch every dip and dive of the fight happening above us, the Novaks didn’t need my help. But there was one dragon who did. And desperately. With the bad guys’ attention otherwise occupied, I saw my chance and I took it.
Sprinting around the truck, I ran to Enoch, dropping to my knees as I slid home next to him. His clothes still smoldered, faint tendrils of smoke drifting into the air above him, but a single twitch of his finger told me he was still alive. As I grunted and pushed and tugged until I managed to get him on his back, Ash and Hale stomped over to watch over us.
I gasped when I got a look at his face. His clothes were black, some spots turning to ash and falling away, and his exposed flesh was covered in blisters. Max had taught me that dragons were exceptionally immune to normal fire, and only another dragon could inflict that kind of damage. Tears welled in my eyes, the wetness evaporating almost instantly in the heat of the inferno thirty feet away.
“Enoch,” I said over the snap, crackle, and pop of the fire. I slid my hands under his back, needing to hold him in my arms, desperate to comfort him. “Enoch, talk to me. Stay with me.”
He groaned and his eyelids fluttered a bit. I found a spot on his right cheek that didn’t look completely scorched and laid my hand against it. He sighed and pressed into my hand, drawing more tears from my eyes. These didn’t evaporate. There were too many. His pain was my pain, and all I wanted to do was ease it — but for his sake, not mine.
After an eternity, his gaze met mine and my heart plummeted to the center of the earth. His brown eyes looked glassy, almost faded, as if he was looking at me from a great distance. It was already over. He was dying. Whether from the burns or the blast, I didn’t know. I just knew I needed to comfort him, to ease his passing as much as I could.
“Enoch,” I whispered, leaning in so he could hear me. “Focus on my voice, okay? I know it hurts, but if you just—“
Cracked lips opened and a hoarse gasp came out, but nothing coherent. He mumbled something else, but the syllables meant nothing. It was like listening to someone talk in his sleep. He probably didn’t even know I was holding him.
“It’s okay, Enoch. Just breathe. Stay with me.”
“Tight…us…” he finally managed. Where his previous babbling had sounded like just that, this sounded like actual words.
“What, Enoch? Tight what?”
His eyes pinched closed, as if he were frustrated I couldn’t understand what he was trying to tell me. I leaned in close enough my ear was just a few inches from his lips.
“Ti-tus,” he said again, this time more clearly. “Titus.”
“Titus?”
Sounded like a name, a name I might have heard before. Something about it sounded familiar, but I couldn’t concentrate hard enough to figure out how. And it didn’t even matter, because I knew instinctively who he was talking about.
I glanced skyward to find the battle drawing closer to earth. Only one of the enemy dragons looked familiar, and my heart sank at the sight. The Romanian dragon who’d attacked Crystal and who Ryen had fought off, who’d almost killed Archibald Thrush and who Danic had fought off, who’d hired Enoch and who the Novaks were fighting off.
His name was Titus. I knew it the same way I knew so many other things recently, as my keeper powers grew. The two bitter syllables hung in the air between us like poison as I watched the fight.
The twins pawed at the ground, their bright green gazes following every twist and turn of the battle. Kellum was busy with Titus while Danic and Ryen worked as a team to keep the other four dragons wondering which way was up. I gasped when Titus tried to sink his claws into Kellum’s back, but the eldest Novak rolled in the air with such grace that it could have been performance art. He folded his wings in and plummeted a short way before breaking free and darting back up to come between Ryen and the two dragons who were trying to corner him. It took Ryen’s attackers by surprise, and one of them went sprawling in the air long enough for Danic to rush in and fling his weight against the dragon.
The Novak brothers were holding their own. For the moment. But five against three wasn’t a fair fight, even if those three were Max Novak’s nephews. It couldn’t last forever. Someone was going to get tired, something had to give. I was about to tell Ash and Hale to go help, to leave me with Enoch, but I never got the chance.
Hale snarled, drawing my attention away from the man dying in my arms and back to the sky. Titus and two of his cronies had managed to separate the brother, squaring off with them one-on-one and effectively distracting them from what the other two dragons were doing.
Which was flying straight for us.
Ash — I could tell it was him because he still had the same scar on his upper lip…snout…whatever — screamed at the approaching dragons. Enoch moaned and I pulled him tighter. The twins unfurled their wings more and waited, their tails thrashing with anticipation. But Ash’s cry had alerted Kellum.
He belted out a roar to match Ash’s, calling his brothers to join him. If I wasn’t so terrified, the beauty of their next maneuver would have thrilled me. Working together like synchronized swimmers, they folded their wings tight against their bodies and dove fast. I worried they wouldn’t be able to pull out of it before hitting the ground.
Titus and his two buddies tried to follow, but they couldn’t keep up with the Novaks. In fact, the two who’d broken away stood no chance at maintaining their lead. Kellum, Ryen, and Danic overtook them long before they even got close to us. I wanted to squinch my eyes shut so I wouldn’t have to see the boys slamming into the earth and dying, like free-falling skydivers, but at the last second they spread their wings and beat against the wind, fanning the flames of the fire and stirring up enough dust to momentarily blind me.
I bent low over Enoch, protecting him from the dust and whatever else might be coming. I’d seen the fire flickering along the jaws of the incoming dragons. I didn’t honestly hold out hope my puny human body could keep those flames at bay, but I had to try.
Three colossal dragon bodies hit the ground in front of me. The rock and dirt under me shook from the impact of such unfathomable force. The sounds of dragons moving were enough to unnerve me, but then I opened my eyes to the most incredible sight.
The Novaks and Campbells had formed a tight circle around us, as if they’d practiced the maneuver a hundred times. Their horned and scaled heads touched, leaving all five staring down at me. Beyond them, I caught a quick view of Titus’s gang barreling toward us, their jaws open wide and fire dancing on their tongues.
I knew what death meant in that moment. No way would I survive. The boys might, si
nce they were built to, but I would be little more than a pile of ash by the time it was all over.
Then the mesmerizing sight of my imminent demise was blocked by ten massive leathery wings overlapping each other until a sort of dome had been formed. Not even a speck of light penetrated the barrier.
The next instant, hell unleashed itself.
Fire scream — yes, screamed — against the dome, penetrating every corner of my psyche until I matched the sound with my own screams. It was exactly what I did in my dreams, and it had about the same effect. The thick membranes of the boys’ wings glowed from the onslaught, but not a single tongue of flame managed to break through.
The heat certainly did though. I pulled Enoch tight to my body, rocking him as the temperature in the dome skyrocketed until I thought I might be cooked alive. I uttered soothing words in his ear and cooed like he was a baby, though no way could he hear me above the horror show rioting around us. Pressure build up all around me, pressing me into a space that didn’t exist. Soon I would cease to exist.
And just like that, the sound shut off. Cool air brushed across my skin like a lover. I could breathe again.
Peeking one eye open, I watched as the boys folded their wings and looked up to the sky, giving me a perfect view of the retreating covey of dragons. Only Titus flew straight, while the rest of his cohort weaved and bobbed as they tried to gain their balance. Smoke wafted from their wings and bodies as they hissed and snarled in pain. Without having seen what happened, the best I could guess was that the boys’ dome had somehow reflected the flames back on the attackers, hurting them far more than it did us. Kellum roared loudly, and I didn’t even need to speak the ancient dragon tongue to have a pretty good idea of his meaning.
Fuck off, assholes!
It was over. I took a deep, shuddering breath and started to smile at my saviors. But I wasn’t the only one to take a sharp breath. Enoch’s chest was still swollen with one final taste of sweet, cool air. His eyes caught mine, and I couldn’t help noticing they were less glazed over than before, delirium flickered in them. He opened his mouth and I leaned close again. This time I understood his words perfectly.
“Thank you, Mother.”
Then his body went limp in my arms and I wept.
Chapter Twenty
I experienced grief almost every night in my dreams, but I hadn’t felt fresh grief since I was a child, and the tempest took me by surprise. My shoulders shook violently as I sobbed over Enoch’s lifeless form. The tracks of my tears cooled my overheated cheeks, then fell onto his slack face, almost as if my tears belonged in his eyes, marking his own sadness. But Enoch was no longer capable of mourning his own life. I had to do it for him.
He lay heavy in my arms, a broken, limp shadow of a man. No matter how many times I murmured his name, I knew deep in the swell of my aching heart he would never wake up to answer me.
Enoch Trinkas was gone. And though I’d hardly known him, or really even liked him, his passing hit me as hard as if he’d been a member of my own family. I was riveted to this singed spot of earth by some ancient force I had no strength to resist. I cried for him and his brother and Crystal, all of whom loved this man, despite his many flaws. I cried for him as if I’d loved him, as if he’d meant something to me, as if I’d been charged with keeping him alive and was somehow responsible for his death.
My logical mind tried to scoff at the thought, but my heart wondered. I’d accused him of calling for backup. Wrongly, as it turned out. So how had Titus and his cluster of dragons found us so soon after arriving at the ramshackle building on the edge of the strawberry fields? The only logical answer was that they’d followed us.
Or rather, me.
It was my fault Enoch had died. The blame lay firmly on my shoulders. The toll fell on my conscience, the mark in my ledger. It was never my intention, yet it was still my responsibility. The pain was almost too much to bear.
Distantly, as if through a long tunnel, I heard the boys talking. They must have shifted back into their human forms while I cried over Enoch.
“Here,” Ash said, his voice almost too faint to cut through the pain.
“Such a Boy Scout,” Ryen commented, the sounds around me growing louder again as I returned to myself. “Always prepared.”
The animal part of my brain receded enough for me to realize Ash was probably passing out spare clothes to the rest of them. The sound of fabric brushing across skin confirmed the thought. They were rushing to cover themselves before anyone else descended on the scene. Smart. We really needed to leave, but the mere thought of leaving Enoch lying in the dirt alone curdled my stomach.
“Favor,” whispered Kellum.
I shook my head, still clinging to Enoch’s lifeless body. They weren’t sure what to do with me, with my grief. Me neither. I was as confused as they were. I barely knew Enoch, and I didn’t even like him. We weren’t friends or family. I simply hated that a dragon had died in my arms and I couldn’t do anything to save him.
Someone touched my shoulder. A big hand. Kellum’s. I knew that much.
“Come on, Favor,” he said softly, but firmly. “Time to go.”
“I-I c-can’t…” I squeaked, pulling away to brush the wetness of my tears from Enoch’s cooling cheeks.
“We have to,” Danic said, none too gently. “Gotta get out of here before the cavalry arrives.”
Another hand fell on my other shoulder and calm smoothed the rough edges on my emotions. Taking a deep breath, I slowly raised my eyes to meet theirs. Worry shone in their eyes. I knew it was for me, not Enoch.
How selfish of me to not realize these men needed me more than Enoch did. Enoch was gone now. It was time to let go, as crazy-hard as it might be. Time to brush off the dust of battle and rejoin my new family.
I cradled his head as I lowered him back to the ground, then reached up and grasped Ryen’s hand as the others helped stabilize me for a moment. My knees threatened to give out as the pain I’d been feeling rushed out of me like water through a funnel, but my resolve strengthened them until I could finally stand on my own.
“You okay?” Ryen asked, more somber than I’d ever seen him.
“Fine,” I said, sniffing back my remaining tears. “Sorry, I just got…overwhelmed for some reason.”
Hale reached out, his fingers skimming my arm, as if reassuring himself that I was okay. “Why? You were ready to tear his head off in there a minute ago.”
“I wish I knew,” I muttered, sighing heavily with exhaustion. “I just… He might not have been a good guy, but he wasn’t evil. He didn’t deserve what happened to him.”
Kellum moved in front of me, tipping my chin up with his finger until I could look nowhere but into his bottomless blue eyes. “It wasn’t your fault, you know that, right?”
I didn’t know that. Yet…I did. Whatever I’d thought in my inexplicable grief, it wasn’t true. I saw the truth in Kellum’s gaze.
“I know,” I finally admitted, giving him the tiniest bit of a smile.
Pulling away, I glanced around at the others and choked out a surprised laugh. Ash must have had a cache of spare clothes in the bed of his truck, none of which fit the Novak brothers very well. At least Danic’s too-small sweatpants didn’t say Sassy Bitch this time. Ryen smirked at my amusement. Danic didn’t, which only made me smile.
“How did you know?” I asked, getting back to the matter at hand.
“Know what?” Danic asked.
“That we needed help. How did you get here so quickly?”
“You called,” he said, as if that answered my question.
“What are you talking about? I didn’t call any of you.”
Ryen stepped up next to Danic. “You did. I don’t know how, but we all felt it. Right, Kellum?”
The eldest Novak nodded gravely. “I don’t really understand how, but we all felt you calling us. In our heads, in our hearts. So we came.”
“But…” I stopped, thinking hard to my interrogation of Enoch. I
hadn’t called for the Novak brothers, but I had vaguely wished they were there. But surely that couldn’t have been enough to summon them.
“At least now we know you don’t even have to be in the same room to yell at us,” Ryen said, tipping me a mischievous wink.
My head spun as I tried to figure out how the connection between us worked, but the conversation rolled on without me.
“What did Enoch tell you guys?” Danic asked the twins.
“Not much we didn’t already know,” Ash said.
“Basically that the Romanian guy who beat up Archibald was the one who hired him to steal the ruby in the first place,” Hale finished. “Said he had no idea why the guy thought it was the wrong ruby.”
“Apparently he heard about the thrashing ol’ Archie took and hid out here…” Ash looked at the still-burning pile of rubble that had once been Enoch’s hideout, then shrugged. “Well, what ‘here’ used to be.”
Another pang of guilt stabbed at my heart. “And we led them right to his front door.”
Ryen wrapped an arm around my shoulder and I leaned into him, grateful for his support.
“Did he give you a name?” Kellum asked.
The twins shook their heads, drawing a disappointed sigh from Kellum. Whatever stupor I’d been in since the insanity of the attack faded away. I finally had something to offer, an answer that might help us bring the man responsible for Enoch’s death to justice.
“Titus,” I whispered.
Five heads swiveled in my direction, silently asking for more information. I swallowed hard before continuing.
“He whispered the name to me just before he died,” I explained, leaving out the babbled nonsense about him thinking I was his mom. “He said the name Titus three times. He was very clear.”
