by Riley Storm
“Administration, like you said. I oversee the daily operations.” She snorted. “I guess that’s a silver lining.”
“What do you mean?”
“If I don’t get out of here, I never have to go back into work,” she chuckled. “Don’t have to put up with the dicks I work with.”
He smiled, proud of her for trying to put a positive spin on everything. He was about to ask her more, to tell him some more about her job, but she interrupted him.
“What about you, Asher? What can you tell me about yourself? Or your family?”
“You want to know about me?” he asked, surprised.
She leaned back to look up at him, but to his surprise she didn’t let go of him. “You live on a mountain in seclusion, and you have a treasure vault,” she pointed out. “Yeah, I want to know more about you.”
“Oh. Um.” How did he explain to her that his days were spent guarding a magic Gate that never did anything—well, almost never—and that it was incredibly boring, but also incredibly important to the survival of the human race? That if dragons as a race were either killed or disappeared, creatures from the Otherworld would flood through and take over?
Strictly speaking, he couldn’t tell her any of that.
“Well? Any day now?”
“Right. Um. We just prefer our privacy,” he said.
“That’s an understatement,” she said. “For all of you. I mean, most residents of Five Peaks know of your family, and the others. But more through myth and legend. Nobody that I’m aware of has ever actually met one of you.”
“We come into town,” he explained. “But we usually keep a low profile. Try not to use our last names unless absolutely necessary. It just generates too much attention.”
“You know, if you were less weird and suspicious, then people wouldn’t care as much,” she pointed out. “They would wonder less and be far less likely to invade your privacy if you showed yourselves from time to time. Just a suggestion.”
He considered telling her that many of the younger dragons felt the same way, that they chafed at being mostly being restricted to the mountains, unable to walk among humanity, but again, how could he explain that to her?
“Our parents are…they are a different breed,” he said, chuckling to himself over the play on words. “They don’t believe in us…integrating ourselves. Some of us feel differently though,” he said with a shrug, leaving it at that.
“So, you’re saying, with complete and total honesty, that your family and the other families, are just really, really, really, really-really, private? That you aren’t actually criminals running a drug cartel or something?”
Asher choked on his own spit. “What?” he yelped. “Why do you keep circling back to us being criminals?”
She tilted her head back again, giving him a long look. “Seriously, dude? Remote mountain hideaway? Treasure vault filled with untraceable valuables? Huge desire to stay out of the “system”? Come on, that screams criminal. Don’t act like it doesn’t.”
He sighed. She had a bit of a point, he supposed. There was a bit of shadow surrounding the secrecy.
“Okay, maybe I see what you mean. But no, we’re not criminals. We just—”
“Yeah, yeah, don’t like banks. For the fourth time.” She sighed, obviously frustrated at not getting more from him. “But why not?”
“It’s a long story,” he said, deflecting attention as best he could.
Emma sighed, and this time she slipped from his grip and walked away, back toward the middle of the room. Asher grimaced, knowing that she’d left because he wasn’t opening up to her. She wanted to know more about him, and he was holding back, getting almost snippy about it.
But what else was he supposed to do? He had a secret to protect. It was as simple as that.
“So what are you going to do about this?” she asked, gesturing at the empty room. “About your missing treasure?”
Asher growled. “When I get out of here, I’m going to track down the people that did it, and then I’m going to make them—face justice,” he added swiftly, changing his words.
He didn’t know how his vault had been found, but that didn’t mean much. Humans were always prying into dragon business. They had been for hundreds of years. Thousands, even. Wherever his people went, a small group was always not far behind. Poking into their business, prying into their secrets, trying to figure out who they were, what they were.
This time, it seemed some of them had gotten lucky, having tracked down his vault and gotten away with the treasure. His treasure.
Not for long, he promised, staring upward past the lights, to the darkened ceiling above.
To their exit.
Chapter Ten
Asher
Hours later, he continued to watch the ceiling. One spot in particular.
The vault was dark now. He’d turned off the lights nearly an hour ago, in an effort to help Emma get some sleep.
Although their situation appeared dire to her, he’d still known that she would end up falling asleep relatively quickly. With all the adrenaline that had been passing through her system, a little darkness, his shirt bunched under her head as a makeshift pillow, and she had passed out with relatively little pushing on his part.
Now he was just waiting to ensure she was fast asleep before he made his move. If she woke up while he was getting them out of there, it would be, well, awkward didn’t cut it.
He held in yet another sigh, thinking back over the past few hours. They had chatted some, mostly about inane things that didn’t matter before the topic always returned to their predicament. After about the third time or so, they had sort of drifted into a comfortable silence.
Both of them turning their thoughts inward. Asher had spent much of his time replaying his interactions with her. The taser incident. His hug. The inescapable feeling of…interest?—that surrounded Emma. He wasn’t sure that word was correct, but every time he found himself wishing none of this had happened, he was forced to confront the unpleasant truth that if it hadn’t, he would never have crossed paths with her.
For some strange reason, that option was always presented as a negative in his mind. But he couldn’t see why. The current path had him losing at minimum two-million dollars. That was assuming he got his treasure back as well.
Glancing over at Emma, he listened to her slow, rhythmic breathing.
She was fast asleep.
Standing up, he rolled his shoulders. This part always took more focus than his usual change. Turning his mind inward, he called out to his other half, using pictures and simple thoughts to show his dragon side what he wanted.
Unhappy about being confined in human form, the lizard half of him tried to show its disdain by pushing the entire change through him.
Asher was ready for that though. His dragon half wasn’t sentient, but it was, in a sense, alive. He had dual sides to him, dual instincts and desires, and he had to work hard to ensure that neither one ruled him in its entirety, as did every other dragon.
Harnessing the power of the change, he pushed it through into the one area he wanted. His shoulders bulged and the blades grew lumpy and uneven as they stretched his skin, nodes forming over the bone.
Then all at once, the bumps erupted and a pair of ochre-membrane wings burst from his back, spreading out wide and then folding into his sides as Asher brought the dragon part of him under control.
Brilliant crimson scales spread across his shoulders, disappearing back into human flesh partway down his arms and torso. Not that he cared. The wings were far more conspicuous, even without his shirt on.
Taking another breath to harness his other half, to prevent any unnecessary flapping or noises that might wake Emma, he spread his wings and leapt into the air. He winced at the gusts of air that were swept down with every beat of his wings, but it was unavoidable. Asher needed to get higher, past the lights, and up to the peak of the cave.
He also needed to move with some speed. Once he reached t
he top, his wings would actually hinder him. So, it would be all about momentum.
As he neared the top, he pulled his wings in tight and reached out. He coasted the last several feet before gravity started to pull him back down, but by then he was close enough. Fingers closed around the bar mounted into the rock, put there for this very reason, and his wings folded back under his skin as fast as he could revert the change.
Hanging there, Asher stared at his escape plan, the air ventilation shaft hidden up among the darkness. It was really quite simple but explaining to Emma how he’d gotten up here would be, well, impossible. So, he’d decided not to.
Pulling open the grate as quietly as possible, he slipped into the air ducts and swiftly made his way along them until he emerged outside into the side of the mountain. Like the entrance, the air grate was also well concealed into the mountainside, hidden by several fake boulders.
Stretching wide, he almost called upon his wings to fly him back to the cave opening.
Almost.
Then he remembered that the door wouldn’t have closed itself. It was designed not to do that. Someone had to have not only shut the door but activated the lock. Which meant someone was still out and about. He couldn’t risk being spotted.
Which meant he had to walk.
“Perfect,” he muttered, setting off, eager to get back to the cave, free Emma and get her on her way back to Five Peaks. She didn’t deserve to be stuck in the vault for another second more. This wasn’t about her.
As he neared the cave opening though, Asher knew that it wasn’t going to be quite that easy. The sound of voices reached him when he was fairly far out. He picked up two distinctive tones, one deeper, older, with a bit of that raspy age to it, while the second was younger, but not young.
His supernatural eyesight soon after caught sight of the campfire the two of them had going. It wasn’t large, but in the mountains, without any of the light pollution from a nearby town or city, it was more than easy enough to spot.
Asher crept closer, reminding himself that he needed to learn as much as he could before throttling these two idiots, as much as his temper wanted him to storm out there and simply wreck their shit.
He crouched in the bushes nearby, watching the two. They were hunters, he decided, or at least dressed the part. Camouflage jackets and pants, bit boots, and a muddy pickup truck parked behind Emma’s little car.
Humans. Asher’s lips peeled back in a silent snarl. He hated humans, and this was why.
The two men were talking.
“That was so easy. I honestly thought it would be way harder,” the younger one chortled, his thick cheeks dancing as he laughed.
“Yeah. Not much of a challenge. And for the amount we’re getting paid? Easy money,” the older one drawled. “What are you going to spend your share on?”
“New truck. New gun. Maybe guns. I don’t know. You?”
The older one shrugged. “Sad as it is, probably retirement savings. I’m getting to the point I need to start worrying about that sort of thing, you know?”
Not if I have anything to say about it you won’t, Asher thought to himself.
Jumping up he strolled out into the firelight. “Are you two done slacking?” he growled. “Or are you gonna finish the job instead of sitting around in here?”
The two men jumped up in shock at his sudden appearance, and the way he was talking to them as if he was on their side.
“Who are you?” the older one asked.
“I told you Mr. Wilson didn’t trust us,” the younger one moaned. “He sent this dick to watch over us.”
Asher smiled to himself. He hadn’t even had to threaten them yet and now he had a name of their employer, of the person who had sent them to kill him and Emma. It was almost too easy.
“And it’s a good thing he did,” Asher said, glaring at the older one. “Since the two of you are clearly useless. Get in there and finish them off already. Stop gloating.”
The two men exchanged glances at each other. Asher knew he’d screwed up when the older one started to look at him in shock.
“We wasn’t paid to kill nobody,” the hunter said. “That’s not really in our nature, you see. Animals, sure, but humans? No, we don’t do that. Find someone else if that’s what you want. We’re here to do as told, and we were promised nobody would die. Trap them in there, then let them out once they’re weak, but before they die. That’s our job.”
Asher was silent. None of this made any sense. Why would someone trap them in there, but then let them go free? It just didn’t add up. He was missing something.
He returned to the present to see the two hunters staring at him.
“You’d have known all that though,” the older one said, eyes narrowing in suspicion. “If you was really sent by Mr. Wilson. So maybe you wasn’t. Which means you aren’t on our side.”
Faster than he’d thought possible the two men pulled out their rifles and pointed them at him.
“I thought you didn’t kill people?” he asked, hoping to avoid violence.
“Well when they show up unexpectedly, without invitation to our parties, and threaten to get in the way of our moneys? Well, that’s totally different, now isn’t it?” the older one said.
Asher sighed. “Put the guns down, okay? Otherwise somebody is going to get hurt.”
The two hunters laughed. “Yeah,” the younger one said maliciously. “And that somebody is ‘gon’ be you!”
Growing tired of their antics, and not wanting to leave Emma in the vault alone for any longer, Asher made his move.
To their credit, though the hunters didn’t appear to hold much in the way of intelligence even combined, they were no slouches with their guns. The barrels tracked him and fired, neither of the humans hesitating to use deadly force on a stranger.
Or they tried to, at least.
Bullets whizzed past him as he crossed the clearing, both of the hunters quickly running dry, spent shell casing clattering as they hit the ground and each other. Asher hadn’t even come close to being grazed. Dodging a bullet was beyond him, or any dragon for that matter.
Keeping himself moving faster than the two very human hunters could track and therefore fire was plenty easy for him, however, and he stood up straight as they both tried to reload.
He wasn’t going to give them time for that. Closing in, he grabbed both rifles by the barrels, enjoying the heat from the metal as it washed over his skin, warming his fingers. Both hunters clutched their weapons tightly, pulling back.
Asher yanked hard, then shoved the stocks backward. The hunters reeled, crying out in pain as both of them were hit in the face by their own weapons. He casually snapped the weapons in half over his knee and hurled them deep into the underbrush.
“You dare to threaten me?” he growled, reaching down and hauling the younger one up by the scruff of his neck, like a mother cat would her young.
“H-hey man, we’re sorry, we—”
“Save it,” Asher said, flinging the man backward into the side of their truck. The vehicle rocked back violently, and the hunter fell to the ground, stunned and out of breath from the impact.
The older hunter tried to sneak past him to the truck and perceived safety, but Asher nabbed him.
“I’m not done with you,” he said calmly, dragging the hunter across the ground by his collar, then depositing him on the hood of the dirty pickup. “You see, we have a conversation to have still.”
“About what?” the hunter asked, eyes wide enough for Asher to see the whites as he stared in pure terror. “I’m sorry, man!”
“I don’t care about your apologies,” the dragon shifter barked. “I only care about one thing, and one thing only. Who sent you?”
The elder hunter cringed at the question.
Asher’s fist came down, slamming into the metal of the hood, denting it. “Tell me!” he roared, giving the man a shake. “Who sent you?”
“Lars,” the man yelped.
“I don’t
know that name. Who is he? How do I find him?”
“I don’t know, man. I don’t work for him. I never met the man!” The hunter looked away, expecting another blow.
Asher rolled his eyes. “Then how did you come to be here?” he asked, trying to keep his calm.
The less he terrified them now, the sooner he could hopefully be rid of them. The stench of urine was growing stronger by the moment. Asher didn’t have to look down to know what had happened to the hunter.
“We were hired through Mr. Wilson, man. He called us. You know, on a phone. That’s it. Never met him.”
Asher rubbed his face. “Let me get this straight. You were hired to do this job for Lars by Mr. Wilson over the phone? You never met any of them. Yet you agreed to do this job? Without even knowing if these guys were the type to actually pay you?”
The hunter cringed. “It was good money.”
“Was,” Asher emphasized. “Now it’s going to cost you. Give me the number.”
“Please don’t kill me,” the hunter cried, shaking in fear as he handed over a cellphone.
Asher memorized the number and then crushed the device in his hand.
“You were ready to kill me a minute ago,” Asher said conversationally, returning his attention to the hunter. “I doubt you’d have felt any remorse if you’d succeeded. Do you think I want to die?”
The hunter was wisely silent, but his shaking and tears didn’t stop.
“You’re lucky it’s not in my nature to kill humans,” Asher rumbled. “But you had better get into that truck, and keep driving till you’re a long, long way from Five Peaks. Because if I ever see you back here, I won’t be so kind a second time. Got it?”
The hunter’s eyes widened even more, which Asher hadn’t thought possible, then he nodded violently, latching onto the fact that he was being offered salvation.
“O’course man. O’course. We’re gone.” He turned his head to the younger. “Git your ass in the truck. Now!” he hollered, sliding off the roof under Asher’s watchful gaze and getting in.
