Wings of Exile

by JD Monroe

  Contents

  Speak The Language

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  What Now?

  Also by JD Monroe

  About the Author

  WINGS OF EXILE Copyright 2019 by J.D. Monroe.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Mighty Fine Books, LLC

  PO Box 956

  Evans, GA 30809

  Editing by Gayla Leath

  Cover Design by Celtic Ruins Designs

  Book Design and Ebook Formatting by Katzilla Designs

  ISBN: 978-1-944142-24-7

  First Edition: 2019

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Created with Vellum

  The Dragons of Ascavar – the Kadirai – have their own language and customs. While all terms are explained in context, if you want to follow along with the language of the dragons and learn more about their culture, you can check out this link to the Kadirai glossary on my website:

  | SPEAK THE LANGUAGE |

  The brawny man unleashed an explosive barrage of punches on a collision course with Natalie’s face. Adrenaline surged through her as she dodged and parried, each time just fast enough to avoid disaster. He lunged, exposing an unguarded side and giving her an opening. She dropped into a low stance and slammed her shoulder into his belly. As he doubled over, Natalie followed with a hard punch into his side. Muscle shifted against her as he wound up for an elbow strike. Before he could land the devastating blow, she spun away from him, putting herself at arm’s length.

  Perry grinned as he wiped sweat from his tanned face. “That was good,” he said, breathing heavily. “Great, actually.”

  Pride swelled in her chest at the compliment. “Thanks.” She breathed hard from the exertion of the fight, filling her nostrils with the sharp smell of rubber and stale sweat.

  Sinew shifted on Perry’s muscular forearms as he removed his gloves and wrist wraps. Standing six foot four and built like a tank, Perry looked like an NFL coach’s dream.

  And a single twenty-something’s dream, for that matter.

  His shoulder-length dark hair was pulled into a stubby ponytail. Natalie had long been a fervent protestor of long hair on men, but she’d had to reconsider her stance when she met Perry. He was one of the elite few who could pull it off.

  Natalie caught herself staring as Perry peeled off his sweat-soaked shirt to reveal a set of abs that were as good as a full-page ad for the gym he co-owned. She averted her eyes before he noticed and jogged to the corner of the mat to check her phone. As she took a sip from her water bottle, she checked her notifications. There was an alert from Groupon, but nothing from her roommate Thea.

  “Did you hear from her?” Perry asked.

  “Not yet.” She opened the messages again to see if Thea had gotten her text that morning. The status still read Delivered.

  Natalie had sent the message about an hour ago, when she arrived at the gym to find Thea conspicuously absent. Thea and Perry co-owned Steelforged Fitness, a specialized gym. While Thea was occasionally a few minutes late because of a long drive-thru line for coffee, she would never miss an appointment entirely. When Natalie arrived that morning, she’d found two of Thea’s personal training clients standing at the locked front doors looking irritated. She had let them in and assured them Thea would be there any minute.

  But after thirty minutes of awkward reassurances, there was still no sign of her roommate. Natalie had texted Thea to check on her. Half a dozen scenarios had flashed through her head as she composed the text. Some were mundane, like a flat tire or a traffic jam. Some made Natalie sick to her stomach, like the gruesome image of Thea’s car crushed in a fiery heap on the side of the road.

  Then Perry had arrived. When he confirmed he hadn’t heard from her either, that hadn’t alleviated her concerns. He’d assured her everything would be fine and suggested a workout to distract them.

  Almost an hour after Thea was supposed to arrive, Perry no longer seemed so sure. After putting on a fresh shirt, he called her. His eyebrows arched as he spoke. “Hey, Thea.” Natalie’s heart leaped with hope. “It’s Perry. Me and Natalie were just wondering where you are. Call me and let me know what’s going on.” He shook his head. “Straight to voicemail.” He stuck the phone into the pocket of his loose gym shorts. “For now, pull a list of her appointments and I’ll cover them. Can you call the first few and tell them she’s sick? I’ll train them if they come in but if they’d prefer her, they can reschedule. If anyone gets mad, I’ll talk to them.”

  “Sure,” Natalie said. She grabbed her gym bag and retreated to their shared office at the front corner of the gym. As she passed the office windows, she groaned at her reflection. A halo of sweaty fly-aways surrounded her flushed face. Not that Perry was checking her out, but no straight woman wanted to look like hell in front of a guy that attractive. Natalie smoothed her hair back and made a mental note to visit the locker room and freshen up after making her calls.

  Humming to herself, she opened the gym management software and ran a report of the day’s personal training clients. Natalie had begun working for the gym before it even opened. She’d taken a boxing class from Thea at the Y a few years earlier, and they’d struck up a friendship as Natalie became a regular. Their friendship had blossomed over Thursday night smoothies. As Thea’s dream of opening her own gym became reality, she’d asked Natalie if she was interested in using her graphic design background to create a logo for the gym. After that, Thea had asked her to design the website, and then to set up the billing software. Before she realized it was happening, Natalie was running the administrative side of Thea’s brand-new business.

  The steady pay from the gym was nice after the uncertainty of freelance design work, and she was in the best shape of her life. She also enjoyed spending her days with Thea and Perry. When Thea purchased a house six months ago, she’d offered to rent a room to Natalie. It was a hell of a lot better than the outrageously overpriced apartment she’d been renting for almost two years. Some of her friends had warned her against living with a coworker, but it had gone well so far.

  It took her twenty minutes to call all of Thea’s clients scheduled until three in the afternoon. She cross-checked it against Perry’s list and canceled anyone who was scheduled for the same time, offering a gracious apology. Two of Thea’s clients declined the offer to work with Perry, which was too bad for them. Then again, Natalie was still intimidated after six months of working with him. Perry was one of the nicest people she’d ever met, but it was hard not to feel self-conscious and ugly when you were sweating
and straining in front of a guy like that.

  When she finished her list, Perry was writing a workout routine on the whiteboard at the opposite side of the gym for the lunchtime class. She and Thea had come up with the Lunchtime Quickie, a short but intense workout that had brought in a spike of new clients from the nearby office parks.

  Natalie brought Perry the list and explained her color coding. “Thanks,” he said. He tilted his head. “You okay? You look really worried.”

  “I am,” Natalie said. “I feel like a horrible friend. She went out last night, but I’m not sure she came home. My allergies were going nuts, so I took a Benadryl and practically went into a coma. I would have slept through a tornado.” He laughed. “So, if she came in, I didn’t wake up. And she wasn’t there when I got up.”

  “She told me she was going out last night. Maybe she met someone.”

  Natalie frowned. “That’s not her style.”

  Perry raised an eyebrow. “People can surprise you.”

  She scowled. “Not Thea. I know her better than that.”

  “If you say so.” He glanced at his watch, dismissing her concerns. “Well, we’ve got to work today, even if she’s playing hooky. Can you put those drinks in the fridge and hit the music?”

  With a motto of Fight for your best life, Steelforged Fitness combined martial arts training with functional movements and strength training. Free weights lined one of the mirrored walls, but most of the floor space was occupied with sparring mats and boxing gear. A row of heavy punching bags hung along another wall, swaying slowly. Both Thea and Perry offered personal training, in addition to teaching group classes.

  After cranking up the sound system, Natalie got to work restocking the cooler with drinks from Perry’s early morning Costco run. The repetitive work of slicing open plastic-wrapped cases let her mind drift to Thea.

  Perry’s comment about people surprising her didn’t sit well. In the time they’d lived together, Thea had only stayed out all night a few times and had always texted to let her know. As far as Natalie knew, they’d all been with Perry, supposedly because she’d fallen asleep watching a movie at his place. Natalie wouldn’t call her out for it, but by some miraculous coincidence, they were both in exceptionally good spirits after one of those all-nighters. Must have been some great movies. They had a weird relationship; both of them insisted it wasn’t a romantic thing, but to Natalie’s knowledge, neither of them dated.

  As she placed a final red drink in the cooler to create a viscerally satisfying rainbow, her phone buzzed on the counter. She grabbed it. The notification was an Amber Alert. “Dammit,” she muttered. A pang of guilt prodded her for being annoyed about a missing kid. She checked her message again, but her last text to Thea still read delivered.

  With the Amber Alert on her brain, Natalie hurried to the computer and searched how long to wait before filing a missing person report. The first result said, “You do not have to wait 24 hours.” But if she called the police only to have Thea waltz in the door with a reasonable explanation for her absence, she was going to feel stupid. Natalie sighed and poked her head out of the office. Across the gym, Perry was spotting a client on the bench press. Interrupting him now would be a terrible idea.

  When they’d first moved in together, Thea had shown her a sealed envelope and a small notebook that she kept in her nightstand. “I’m sorry. This is morbid, I know,” Thea had said in her melodious voice, clipped by an unfamiliar accent. She opened the leather notebook. There was a name with several phone numbers on the first page. “This is my cousin. If something ever happens to me, I want you to call him. If I’m in the hospital, or…well, you know what I mean. Call this number before you do anything else.”

  Natalie had protested, but Thea was adamant. Not for the first time, she’d wondered if Thea had some kind of sketchy crime connections that made her want to avoid the police. Was there drug money stashed in their attic, or a mobster uncle financing the gym from the shadows? But Thea hadn’t elaborated, repeating the request to call her cousin. After she’d spoken to this cousin, then they would tell Natalie what to do next.

  Was this incident worthy of calling the mysterious cousin? If this was some misunderstanding, then Natalie didn’t want to provoke a storm of family drama for Thea. But if something bad had happened, time was critical. She gritted her teeth and called Thea.

  The phone rang four times before going to the automated voicemail. “Thea, it’s Natalie. Please call me back. I’m really worried about you and I’m about to call the cops. So, call me right now. Please.” She followed it up with a similar text, then stared at the phone.

  Come on. Ring.

  By the time Perry’s last training appointment of the afternoon ended, she still hadn’t heard from Thea. Natalie had made up her mind. She sent an email to the gym’s members to cancel Thea’s evening class with a profuse apology for the short notice. She gathered her things and hurried out to meet Perry on the gym floor. “I’m going home to see if she’s there, and then I’m calling the cops.”

  He left the row of kettlebells he was straightening and repeated the process Natalie had, first calling, and then texting. “Nothing,” he said. “Do you want me to come over?”

  “Not yet,” she said. “Stay here and I’ll keep you updated.”

  She left him fretting over his phone and hurried out to her car. The small parking lot was filling with early arrivals for Perry’s cardio boxing class. Women in spandex pants and pink boxing gloves gathered in pairs, chatting as they walked in. For obvious reasons, Perry’s classes were very popular with the ladies. Natalie and Thea had figured out early on that sending him to community events to advertise in a strategically small Steelforged shirt was the best advertising money could buy.

  But today her mind was on Thea, not Perry’s ridiculous physique. Natalie tossed her bag into the back of her car and eased into traffic. It was just before four, so rush hour hadn’t started yet. Even so, the traffic felt unbearably slow as she headed home.

  Despite knowing each other for several years, Natalie didn’t know much about Thea’s history. When they were first getting acquainted, Thea had explained she was from a small country in Eastern Europe. “One of those former Soviet ones,” she’d said with a forced laugh. “Things were not good there. I like it here.” A shadow passed over her face when it came up, so Natalie hadn’t brought it up since. She didn’t have enough friends to take the risk of endangering a good friendship over her curiosity.

  Hope swelled in Natalie’s chest as she turned into their neighborhood. Maybe Thea would be home, with a logical explanation for being out of touch all day.

  Their neighborhood was small and a bit dated, with most of its houses pushing thirty. Unlike the new, cookie-cutter neighborhoods further into the suburbs, the trees had grown high and created a cozy patchwork of shade and sunlight across the twisting streets.

  Natalie’s hope lasted until she turned onto their street. Their two-story blue house in the middle of the cul-de-sac was dark, with its driveway conspicuously empty.

  After pulling up the driveway, Natalie called Thea one last time. “Okay, this is it. I’m really worried about you, and I’m about to call the cops,” she said. She sent one more text to drive home the point with an excessive number of exclamation points.

  The house was dark and cool. It was still in a way that only came from being empty for hours. There was no white noise like running water or a rumbling dryer to indicate someone had been here recently. She dropped her keys on the coffee table in the living room, still clutching her phone. “Thea?” she called. “Thea!” The silence almost had a sound of its own, a pressure that pushed back on her.

  She headed to the master bedroom. Thea’s bed was still pristine from the day before. As she surveyed the quiet room, a cold chill washed over her. If something had happened to Thea, then she could be in danger, too.

  Heart thumping, she backpedaled out of the room and ran upstairs to her own bedroom. She knelt and pulle
d a small gun safe from under the bed. Pressing her thumb into the sensor, she opened the lockbox and took out the small handgun. Natalie was born and raised in Texas, and she’d been shooting since she was twelve. The gun had been a gift for her eighteenth birthday from her late mother, who’d said she felt a lot safer with Smith and Wesson as her guardian angels when she wasn’t around.

  Natalie held the gun at her side and hurried back downstairs to Thea’s room. She called for Thea again. It would be just her luck that her roommate would come in now and startle her. God, she must look crazy creeping down the hall with a gun like she was playing cops and robbers.

  But there was still no response. Natalie placed the gun on Thea’s neat white bedspread, then inched toward the nightstand like it was a rattlesnake. Until now, she’d been able to convince herself nothing was really wrong. Once she made that call, she had to accept that things were not okay.

  Natalie took a deep breath and opened the drawer. The notebook was a gorgeous leather-bound book tooled with angular symbols. She untied the leather laces around the cover and opened it to the middle. Both pages were filled with notes written in the same symbols engraved on the cover.

  “Huh?” She was no linguistic expert, but she recognized a few other alphabets like Arabic, Thai, and Korean. This was nothing she’d ever seen. She flipped back to the front. The first page was written in English.

  Call first: Erevan Sulkas — 555-981-2348