Dragon Trial: Dragon Guard Series book 1

by Cassidy, Debbie

  The disc, I needed to get the disc. It fit in the palm of my hand, snug and ready. Just one step away now.

  “Anya, do it!” Bran shouted.

  Duh? What the heck did he think I was trying to do? Damn, almost lost my grip. Okay. Got it. The collar was so close, but where was the slot? There. Right in front of me. Eat disc, sucker.

  The Wyvern shuddered, swayed, and then began to topple to the side. Oh, shit. My boot snagged as I tried to scramble in the opposite direction to the fall to avoid getting trapped under the beast.

  And then I was being yanked off the creature.

  “I got you.”

  Dante fell back with me in his arms, kicking up dust that stung my eyes and tickled my throat. And was that a grin on his face? A feral, insane grin?

  Yeah. Yeah, it really was.

  He was enjoying this way too much.

  And then I was up and back in the game. One down, two to go. Where was Helgi? Helping Bran with one of the Wyverns. The other one was ... Oh, God. Was that Jasper in its jaws?

  “Don’t. Don’t look.” Dante turned me away, but not before I saw Jasper’s arm come away from its socket, not before I heard his horrific, blood-curdling scream. And then it was too late, I was already on the move, legs pumping as I ran toward the fallen Skin. The Wyvern’s jaws came back down for another bite. I skidded, dropped low, low enough to get access to the soft underbelly of the beast, low enough to grab the daggers tucked in my boots. And then the blades were dragging along that purple underbelly and it was the Wyvern who was screaming. It slammed into the wall, shuddering as new pain assaulted it—real, flesh-cutting pain. But my attention was on Jasper—on his mouth contorted in a silent scream, on his pale face and wild eyes. He was dying and it would be slow and painful. But I could end it now—quick and easy.

  He locked gazes with me, and in that moment I heard his plea. I had his consent.

  My daggers took one more bite, and the light in his eyes died. No time to feel it, no time for raging at the injustice. Had to stay alive. Something in the dust brushed my fingers as I made to rise. Metallic. A key. I pocketed it just as Helgi’s warning shout had me spinning toward her. She was down, but Dante was already on it, helping her up while Bran distracted the Wyvern. The one I’d wounded was still active, and it was headed for its friend. It was four against one and a half now.

  Much better odds.

  And then a shrill scream interrupted the crowd’s cheers. Something flashed in the periphery of my vision. The crowd erupted in bellows and exclamations. Something was falling into the pit. Past the barrier, which meant although we couldn’t get out, things could get in. This thing was barely four feet tall, and all these thoughts were running through my mind even as one clear, bell-like realization cut through it all.

  A child.

  A fucking child.

  My arms were out as I ran toward the flailing bundle, and the Bloods were screaming, yelling at the powers that be to do something, stop the Wyverns. To turn them off. The child slammed into my arms with the weight of a rock due to the momentum and distance, and a collective sigh went up. But my attention was on the tiny face, on the wide, frightened eyes and trembling lip of the boy I cradled.

  How old could he be? Barely seven years, if that? What mother would bring a child to this display of death and debauchery?

  A Blood. That was who.

  “Anya! Look out!”

  The ground vibrated. Something was charging me, and there was no time to act. No time to run. Instinct took the driver’s seat, and I curled in around the child, shielding him with my body as the Wyvern’s barbed tail whipped across my back. The breath whooshed out of my lungs, my vision blurred. I was airborne for a moment, my arms like a vise around the child, his screams an assault on my senses. And then the ground was hurtling up to grab us. I twisted my body, landing on my side, my arms scraping, skin tearing as the momentum took me along a meter farther.

  But the Wyvern wasn’t done. It was incensed, nostrils flaring, drool dripping in the throes of a new hunger.

  Bloodlust.

  This was bloodlust.

  Shit.

  Wyverns and Bloods did not mix. Wyverns had been bred to abhor Bloods, to kill, to devour, and I had one in my arms.

  I ran.

  “Over here!” Dante bellowed.

  He was running parallel to me. I pulled the boy close. “It’s going to be okay.”

  And then I threw him.

  He flew in an arc and Dante caught him neatly. The Wyvern adjusted trajectory, the lower half of its body swinging toward me, pushing me up against the wall. If I didn’t move, then it would crush me against stone, but if I acted at the right moment, then ... My shoulder brushed Wyvern scale, and I grabbed on, twisting my body and slapping my boots against the wall. A second, that was all I had to climb the wall and swing up onto the beast’s back, but it was enough. Only problem was, I was facing the wrong way.

  “Anya!” Bran threw another black disc my way.

  It glanced off the fingers of my right hand, but I caught it with my left, using my thighs to hold on to the Wyvern. Yeah, thighs of fucking steel. Below me, Bran and Dante and Helgi played pass-the-Blood while being chased by two out-of-their-mind Wyverns. Jets of mucus spattered the ground, missing the Skins by mere inches.

  Using my fingers as hooks, I pulled myself up the creature’s body and slammed the disc home before rolling off onto the ground. Pain lanced up my shoulder and jarred my teeth, but it was worth it. The Wyvern was down, and I was back on my feet.

  It was four on one now.

  “Anya!”

  I turned in time to catch the child Helgi threw at me. The final Wyvern was right behind my friend, almost on her, its attention on the Dragon Blood child in my arms. And then the ground opened and swallowed the venom-spitting beast.

  Silence.

  Absolute deafening silence, so thick it was as if someone had wrapped my head in a blanket.

  I raised my head slowly to look up at the faces staring down at me—pale smudges against an azure sky. Then they rose like a rippling wave, their cheers and applause a deafening cacophony of sound that burrowed into my brain and made my head spin.

  My legs gave way and my knees hit the dirt. Tentative arms wound round my neck.

  Someone somewhere was shouting a name. “Larson, Larson. Oh, God!”

  The child was torn from my grasp.

  “Anya, it’s over.” Helgi took my hand and hauled me to my feet. “It’s over.”

  “Yeah. For now.”

  Chapter Seven

  Unit four was gone, either dead or taken elsewhere by the Bloods. Only the mercs in unit seven remained. And then there was us: Helgi, Bran, Dante, and me. I clasped my hands together to stop the tremor. They’d stripped us of our weapons before throwing us back in our cell, leaving us back at square one. Now that it was over, now that we were back in our cell, the heat of adrenaline was gone and the shock was setting in. I’d done my fair share of killing in the name of righting wrongs, to save an innocent life or protect a child, but this ... this had been a senseless and barbaric act wrapped in the facade of a sport.

  Gustov was a monster that needed to die.

  The key I’d found burned a hole in my pocket. It had to be Dunstan’s key. The one he’d stolen from the mercs. It had been on the edge of the arena, in the spot where Dunstan had lost his life ... where I’d ended Jasper’s life. Death, fucking death. Common decency dictated that I hand the key to Bran, but common decency was a gray area in my line of work, and my gut screamed finders keepers. Damn, the rogue in me was strong right now, teased to the forefront of my consciousness by all the carnage. It reminded me that once we got out of here, this key could provide the payday Helgi had been dreaming of. Best to squash the voice of morality that muttered at me to hand it over, best to focus on Helgi and her ministrations as she examined my back.

  Helgi adjusted my ripped tunic, bunching it up into a knot snug against my upper spine. The Wyvern’s
tail had torn a huge gash in the material, rendering it pretty much useless, but it covered my breasts well enough. Thank goodness the scales had saved my flesh from damage. They’d protected me from serious harm. Armor was about the only thing the unsightly things were good for. The mattress under my butt felt way too good and the urge to just lie down and close my eyes was almost too much, but Jasper’s face, twisted in agony, played over and over in my mind. I’d barely known the guy, but watching him be torn to shreds, having to end his life ... The images cut into my mind again and again like a wicked scalpel.

  “You did the right thing,” Helgi said as she finished adjusting my top. “You ended his pain.”

  She’d always been adept at picking up on what I was feeling. Her intuition and empathy were what had drawn me to her as a child. Usually, her words made me feel better, but not this time. This time they raised the nausea a notch.

  I squeezed my eyes shut. “None of this should be happening. We should be in the Outlands. We should be free.”

  Helgi leaned in and whispered in my ear, “Big Red seems awfully interested in your back right now.”

  A distraction on her part, no doubt, but it worked. I arched a brow and turned my head to catch Dante staring. He didn’t bother looking away. Instead, he tore his gaze from my scales and locked onto my face with a strange intensity that had my toes curling and my gut screaming at the same time.

  “You want a closer look?” My words were acerbic. I hated it when people stared at my mutation. I’d been lucky it was easily covered, but having it exposed for all to see right now added a sharp edge to my tone.

  “Yes. I would, actually,” Dante said smoothly.

  Well, I hadn’t been expecting that. Helgi snorted and moved out of the way to allow Dante better access. The heat of his body entered my personal space and a shiver ran up my back. Pleasure, sweet and fresh, lanced through me. It bloomed warm and throbbing at the apex of my thighs. What was this? What was he doing?

  “Silky,” he said softly. “They are tough yet as smooth as silk.” His voice was a sigh, a caress that shivered up the nape of my neck and spread across my scalp like questing fingers slipping through my hair.

  Oh, God. He was touching me. He was running his fingers over my scales, feather-light, and I could feel it. How was this possible? My back had been a dead zone on my body for as long as I could recall, and now .... now, I could feel ... him. My heartbeat kicked up, and my pulse throbbed in my throat.

  I pulled away. “Enough.”

  His heat retreated, and he moved back to his spot against the bars to my left. He was staring at the side of my face now. His regard was like the sun, warm and inviting, but there was no way I was looking at him, not when my body still throbbed and my face probably screamed arousal. He couldn’t know how he’d affected me, not until I’d figured out why. How could his touch filter through my impregnable scales?

  “You’re lucky your back is armored,” Dante said.

  I straightened, conscious that the golden mass on my back was still partially on show. “Luck has nothing to do with it, it’s a mutation and it came in handy today. Now quit staring at me.”

  Dante averted his gaze. “Apologies. They are mesmerizing.”

  Helgi made a choked sound, and my neck heated. Mesmerizing? No one had ever called them that before. My stomach did a little flip. Shut it. Now wasn’t the time to get all goo-goo eyed. He’d called the scales mesmerizing, not me. Not that it mattered what he thought of me.

  “What are the Bloods going to do to us now?” Bran asked, bringing the focus back to our current predicament. “What more are they going to do?”

  The mercs in the cell opposite stood up against the bars, apart from us yet still part of the gang. They were as battered as we were, as tired as we were, and the other Skins in the cages that hadn’t yet had a turn in the arena listened in rapt attention, probably looking for any bit of information that might help them when they were dragged off to face the Wyverns.

  “They’ll do whatever they want,” Dante responded, his tone bitter. “They stole the Wyverns—plucked them from the battlefield somehow.” He slid to the ground in a crouch with his back to the bars. “Who knows what else they’ve stolen from the Dreki.”

  “Machines of war,” Helgi said. “If these collars can subdue a Wyvern, make it do what they want, turn it against the Dreki, its original masters, then they can turn the tide in their favor.”

  “They could break the stalemate,” Bran said. He shook his head. “I have no love for the Dreki—they tried to enslave humanity, after all—but I have even more derision for the Bloods and their methods.”

  They were right. This was all part of a bigger plan. We were part of a bigger plan.

  “Anya, what are you thinking?” Helgi asked.

  “I’m thinking we need to find a way to get these collars off. Without these, they haven’t got shit on us. If we can get them off, if we can get to some weapons, we can fight our way out.”

  Dante’s brow crinkled. “And how would we do that?”

  Good question. “The metal is solid, there’s no breaking it, so we need to switch off the remote connection to their main hub. There must be a way to turn them off.”

  Dante’s face contorted in confusion. He really didn’t follow tech speak very well, but then not many Skins did.

  “We disrupt the wireless connection,” Helgi clarified.

  I grinned at her. She’d been paying attention in our class of two. “Yeah. There has to be a switch, a control panel, or a computer somewhere that has the ability to shut down the connection.”

  “What about stopping the power to the building?” one of the mercs in the cell opposite asked.

  “All great ideas, except we’re stuck in this fucking cell.” I slammed my hands against the bars, frustration a real writhing monster in the pit of my stomach. What use was my uncanny tech knowledge if I was a prisoner? There would be no escape while we were herded in pens like cattle. No escape with the guns trained on us as they transported us to and from the arena. My heart sank as it accepted the fact that without a miracle there would be no escape. But the tiny bird of hope that lived in my chest fluttered its wings, defiantly insisting that there had to be a way. It reminded me that we had a plan. We just needed an opportunity to execute it.

  The doors on the far side of the room opened and Sophia strode in pushing her meal cart. Her head was down, and she worked quickly, pushing trays through the hatches until she got to us. Here she slowed down a little.

  She had something to say.

  “My mistress wishes to extend her thanks for saving her son.”

  Her mistress? “The boy that fell into the arena is your mistress’s son?”

  “Yes. She wishes you to know that she is grateful to you for saving Larson.”

  Larson, the tiny boy who shouldn’t have been at such a horrific event. Anger ignited in my chest. “Yeah, well, you can tell her that it’s her fault he almost got killed. What the fuck was she doing taking a child to a spectacle like that? What kind of mother is she?”

  Sophia balked, and then her jaw tightened. “Do not speak of that which you know nothing. My mistress is good, kind, and loving. It was the commander who insisted that his son be exposed to the bloodshed. He believes that the child should be desensitized to death in order to become a good soldier. My mistress abhors what the Bloods are doing.” She pressed her lips together, her eyes going wide as if she’d revealed too much, and she had.

  She’d exposed another possible ally. Now to get her to elaborate. “Your mistress sounds like a decent woman.” I sighed. “If only more Bloods shared her sentiment ...” I left my sentence hanging to encourage the loosening of her tongue.

  Several silent seconds ticked by, and Helgi caught my eye with a shake of her head. Maybe Sophia had said all she was going to? But then the silence was broken by her shuddering sigh.

  “My mistress is a gentle soul. This unnecessary bloodshed makes her sick to her stomach, b
ut she must put on a show for the people. She is, after all, the great Commander Royce’s wife.”

  The commander ... Larson was Commander Royce’s son?

  “Motherfucker,” Helgi cursed softly.

  I silenced her with a look, and she clamped her mouth shut and nodded. The last thing we wanted to do was spook Sophia, who was unwittingly becoming a fountain of information.

  Sophia pushed the final tray through the slot. “My mistress is just as much a prisoner as you; the only difference is that her cage is gilded with the illusion of freedom, and there are many others like her—others who do not agree with Gustov’s methods.” She turned away.

  Others? “Wait. If your mistress hates what the Bloods are doing, then why doesn’t she do something to stop this? There must be something she can do to get us out of here.”

  “There isn’t,” she said curtly.

  Sophia kept her back to us and slid the tray to the opposite cell, but her neck was suddenly stiffer and her shoulders tighter. She was hiding something.

  “Information, then,” Dante said coaxingly. “She can provide us with information, surely. For example, what do they intend to do with us now? Where will they take us? And what controls the collars?” He gently grasped the bars, his back to Sophia. “Where is the hub of power that runs this complex?”

  Good, yes, all great questions.

  Sophia finished feeding trays through to unit seven. There were only the two mercs now and so they had a tray each.

  “Sophia? Please, will you ask her?” Helgi pleaded.

  Sophia sighed. “There is nothing she can do for you, and the answers to your questions will not help you. Just ... just stay alive.”

  She exited without a second glance our way, and the curses that followed her were far from soft.

  * * *

  The darkness was almost absolute, but there must have been some light coming into the room from somewhere for my night vision to kick into gear. Maybe another lamp hidden from my view? Helgi always admired my exceptional night vision, but having never known anything less, it was hard to appreciate the difference.