by Eden Glenn
Caleb and Ethan’s voices sounded very far away. She couldn’t distinguish their words but recognized agitated tones of concern. Blackness descended on her blanketing her in a cocoon of pitch emptiness, blacker than darkness. It was absence of everything, utter nothingness. She had no sense of direction, no up, no down.
She couldn’t touch herself or feel any indication of sensation. She struggled to curl up her body in a vain hope of rolling into the landing, if she was falling.
Wren had no idea of how to find her way back to Caleb and Ethan. She couldn’t begin to know how to find her way forward to anything. Was forward even a concept?
She was in a place of complete non-existence. Yet it was not, because her thoughts existed. She needed to breathe. She was going to die, trapped in this nothing place. There was no air, suffocation clawed at her mind
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Ethan’s amusement for what their protégée had unexpectedly managed to do turned to grave concern in the course of moments.
“Caleb tell me what the fuck just happened and where hell our…” He wanted to say mate but the title wasn’t his to use officially as she’d not claimed either of them yet. “…our woman is?” Wren had disappeared from the room after lighting up like a glow stick.
“I didn’t do anything. Whatever happened originated from her.” One minute she was there smiling, then she looked like she was fading the way old photographs do when they age. Beams of light erupted from her dragon necklace momentarily encasing her in the center of a vortex of blinding whiteness. Then, she vanished.
Caleb sank to the ground. “I can’t find any sense of her, Ethan, I can’t feel her at all.” Their connection to her had increased exponentially in the past couple of days. Even without the shared bonding complete there was a constant presence in their mind that was Wren. That sensation was glaringly absent.
“I’ve never seen anything like that before. What does it mean Ethan?” Fear laced Caleb’s voice. “I’m guessing it was a magically induced portal the way her necklace lit up.”
“That would be my guess. But she didn’t have any arrival coordinates for the other side, did she?”
There were several kinds of conduits between the dimensions. Ethan and Caleb had an established passage from their home here to their apartment in Wyrmarach, which remained open at all times.
“I wouldn’t think so. We’ve not described anything specific enough for her to latch onto to form an anchor for the destination. I don’t know what the consequence of opening the passage way without a place to go would be.”
A temporary one could be activated with stones like Wren wore around her neck, but you had to know a destination, a place you’d been to before. The difference was like taking an elevator compared to flying a plane. He wasn’t sure Wren knew the dynamics of how portal’s worked.
Then there was the manner in which she vanished. That wasn’t like any portal opening he’d ever seen. Of course, the Goddess split the veil and walked through a few days ago, from what Izzy described. He’d never seen that before either. Caleb’s worried expression didn’t make him feel any better.
“I don’t either but we’re going to find her. I refuse to accept that she doesn’t exist anymore. She is somewhere and we’re not stopping until we fucking find her.”
Where should they start? The essence that was Wren was gone without a trace.
≽∞≼
Little pin points of light emerged in the darkness. They seemed real rather than dots from lack of oxygen. The lights were more like stars in a constellation, yet they weren’t. Some of the points were larger and brighter than others. One in particular felt familiar, an essence of someone she knew called to her.
Emotions reached her in a searing shaft of desperation, embroiled with complete and abject hopelessness mingled with a compelling need to protect, latched onto her and pulled with a gut twisting yank.
The weird non-feeling of free fall floating changed to a rapid spiraling rush downward as she became a spinning top pulled in accelerating speed down a shaft toward a small pinpoint of distant light. In the space of seconds the experience was over.
She smashed to the ground without the hoped for concussion-absorbing tuck-and-roll grace she had strived for in the nothingness. Her sword went flying out of her grasp. She didn’t even remember having the thing in her hand.
The landing robbed her of what little remaining air her lungs had managed to hold onto through the overpowering absence of everything. She lay in the dirt unable to do more than gulp for life giving oxygen. Instead of clean sweet air she inhaled dust and the decayed smell of things long dead. The putrid taste layered on top of the whirling vertigo twisting through her.
She rolled up onto her hands and knees to vomit with a retching coughing spasm that left her feeling turned inside out. She collapsed back onto the ground to embrace the blackness of unconsciousness.
Wren came back into awareness, muffled by a sluggish fog, telling her she had been out for a while. She sat up in a dark musty room that reeked with the fetid sweetness of waste and death. Gradually moving her arms and legs, she determined the extent of her injuries. Okay, bruised and battered but apparently nothing broken.
Where was she? How much time had passed since she fell into this place? If fell could quite describe what had happened to her. Caleb and Ethan were probably very upset. She couldn’t reach out for them. She felt like her mind was muffled with cotton locking her within herself unable to extend even a minute psychic feeler.
Wren’s head throbbed with an intense excruciating pain. Somewhere a concentrated cacophony of deep throbbing sound beat against her mind. The pitch of the noise was so low that it became a pressure more than an actual sound.
Her ears vibrated with the deep resonance creating a density on the edge of her awareness that pulled at her in a twisting wrench of something physical that her body evidently didn’t know how to respond to. Her heart slowed to pace the measured throbbing beat. The sound drove sharp spikes into her brain shredding her thoughts like shards of glass.
The swirling spin started up again and she emptied the rest of her stomach across the dirt floor in violent projectile spew. She tried to breath past the pain and dizziness. She crossed her palms over her chest below her neck and concentrated on breathing. Her arms brushed against her icy cold naked skin.
The metal of her torque warmed under her fingers. The heavy bass beat faded from her fore conscious mind. The physical unsteadiness seemed to ease. Where was her sword?
Not ready to get up, she stretched out her hand feeling around in the dirt and brushed the metal hilt with her fingers. She rolled onto her side to capture the blade. Holding it stabilized her more, decreasing the symptoms incapacitating her.
She reached out with her thoughts trying to find the guys. Caleb? Ethan?
When she felt Caleb’s soft mental touch crooning with worry and fatigue, she started crying in relief.
Wren, are you hurt? Do you know where you are?
No to both. She tried to breath and regain some sense of rightness inside her head. Despite the scare, she’d done something wonderfully magical. She’d transported herself from one place to another. Was she in Wyrmarach? Does your world smell like dead animals?
Fuck Baby you’re not making any sense. Caleb, focus on her location, find her right fucking now.
Ethan, I don’t seem to be hurt really, but I am a long way from all right, and I have no idea where I am. Would you please just turn on your mojo and come find me quick. Am I in Wyrmarach?
Caleb’s voice emanated soothing tones in her head. Don’t move. Neither one of us could feel you anywhere. We’ve been searching for you for four hours. Where ever you are is a black hole for psychic energy. It was like you no longer existed. Now it’s clearer and we have a fix on you maybe we can find you. Just don’t move.
Ethan joined him, don’t you fucking move. You stay put until we can fucking get to where you are. Do you hear me? Are you listening to m
e Wren. You scared the fucking shit out of me.
Yes, Ethan was upset. He spoke the word as if he liked the crisp way it rolled off his tongue as a barometer of his distress.
Their fatigue poured through the psychic link. They had been searching for her for four hours with psi-energy and not feeling her presence anywhere. No wonder they were exhausted and Ethan was cursing.
I was unconscious, that’s probably why you wouldn’t feel me.
Unconscious for four fucking hours. What the hell… He shouted in her mind.
There is a low throbbing noise. I have a splitting headache, I’m dizzy, throwing up and you’re not helping me by shouting at me.
A screeching mind rending bellow echoed from somewhere in the complex. What was that?
Ethan and Caleb’s exclamation, Dragon! Gave a name to the sound.
Dear Goddess, there’s a dragon here? Again the roar sounded. Somehow she did recognize the tones as a distinctly dragonic bellow of pain echoed through the complex.
She scrambled onto her knees releasing her hold on the torque. The external noise pressure increased in volume and intensity drowning anything else Caleb or Ethan would have replied to her mentally into white noise of the incessant deep pulsing beat. As the pressure increased the bellow escalated into mind shattering screams.
The emotions that had snared her from the nothing place washed through her. Pain, despair, protectiveness.
The notes of sound reverberated across her ear drum in a cascade of pain. What could possibly be causing it to make those hideous sounds? She clamped her hand over her mouth biting back the urge to moan.
Her sword tingled whispering Dragon Guardian to her senses and she felt knowledge from outside herself revealing answers to her thought questions. Someone was hurting the shifter, a male dragon shifter. The noise was not an accidental sound. There was power enough to entrap a dragon shifter?
Caleb! Ethan! There is a dragon shifter being held prisoner here and he’s being tortured. Oh No, No dear Goddess, Caleb and Ethan were on their way into a trap and she had no way to warn them.
≽∞≼
She was naked, lost, afraid and the only person who could stop the dragon from suffering. Wren struggled to her feet. With little to no solid information, she needed a plan. The noise had decreased allowing her to clear her head a bit to think.
Windows boarded shut, only allowed slivered shafts of light to peak through, giving her barely enough visibility to feel her way through the maze of primitive pressboard rooms. She stumbled and fell to her knees on the hard packed dirt floor. Getting up for what seemed like the dozenth time she noticed a complete absence of sound.
The quiet was a welcomed relief. Now her every movement echoed through the hollow empty structure. Had she been too loud stumbling along? Did she make too much noise and alert whoever held the dragon that they had company? She looked around hoping it was only her fear stalking her in the dark.
If she could just see a little better or figure out the logical strategy for the layout of the building. The dragon had to be contained in a larger room of the complex. It appeared that she was in some kind of warehouse. The smell of death and animal manure permeated everything.
An overhead conveyor rack ran disused along the ceiling connecting all the rooms. Fear rode up her throat with bile and she paused, leaning up against a door frame fighting the nausea triggered by her senses. She froze hearing the sound of a vehicle starting up outside the building. Someone was leaving.
She wound her way through another series of rooms that unexpectedly opened into the center of the complex. She ducked down to hide from anyone that might be in the room.
Massive speakers mounted in the ceiling pointed the sound waves toward the holding area below. The throbbing bass beat must be doing something that interfered with her communications and the dragon physiology.
The guys had said it was like she was in a black hole of psi-energy. Whoever orchestrated this private hell must be giving it a rest. Somehow she had to stop that sound or when Ethan and Caleb arrived they would be snared.
The quiet was broken by a low moaning sound of agony laced with despondency. A mountain of dark hide, big as a mid-sized moving truck rose up in the middle of the room in front of her.
So, that was how freaking big a dragon really was. The massive body lay stretched out like a bug pinned in a freakish entomology collection.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Phaux’s tongue thickened in his mouth unable to produce an infinitesimal amount of saliva to allow him to swallow. Surely death was not long in coming to him now. Groaning matched the trembling in his brain and organs. His vitals fluttered long after the low pulsing sound waves had been decreased.
The human had kept the sounds throbbing at the peripheral of his draconic limits, paralyzing him. He couldn’t remember the last he had anything to eat or drink. He couldn’t remember. He couldn’t… what was that sound? The brittle scurrying sound of movement. Had the rats returned enticed by the heavy aroma of his blood? There again.
The man inside the beast screamed as a human hand made contact with his haunch.
“Here dragon, dragon. Let’s make a deal. I’m not going to hurt you, so you don’t hurt me, okay?” A delicate fairy knelt by him.
He had already warned her away once, no twice. Or was he hallucinating? She was a woman but something more. An elusive aroma of someone the man almost remembered was covered by the heavy scented musk of male dragons.
She felt her way up his body, touch aiding her in the poor light. Her hands slipped in wet oozing ichor when her palm skimmed the massive open wound on his back. He groaned, there was pain yes, but also some relief that he would not die alone. This tiny sprite would know of his passing.
≽∞≼
Wren couldn’t take time to examine the suffering dragon closer. First the sound had to be stopped. She looked around. The collection of speakers pointed at the floor carried the pounding rhythm of the sound waves focused on the dragon. She stopped. Not just a dragon. That was a person who shape shifted into a dragon.
The thought made her a little sick. The sounds grated against her nerves. She scooted to the side of the room searching for the source of the noise. There a wall of electronics and speakers. Everything had to have power to run no matter the complexity of the equipment.
There, that seemed to be the power cord from the sound system in front of her. She jerked the electrical plug from the wall. The sound ended with an electronic pop. The relief was instantaneous.
She checked the black dragon. In the dim light his color dulled to a lack luster shade of grey edged with what looked like bluish tones. It was hard to tell in the poor light. She was relieved to hear the chains binding him clank with the small movement of his exhale and hoped it wasn’t his last.
Next, she either needed the key or something that could break the iron trapping the dragon’s legs and neck. She searched the work table. A large piece of soft dark leather like cloth lay across the bench. The fabric was the texture of a large chamois and buttery soft under her hand.
At least it was clean and she could wrap that around her body to cover her nakedness. If… no stay positive, when she got clear of the building she didn’t need to be bare assed trying to flag down help. Wren laid her sword on the table.
She held up the bath sheet sized swath and did a quick wrap around her chest, and with a knot over her breasts made a dress out of the soft leather. In the filth of the room the luxurious cling coated her in the scent of wild tangy herbs that made her think of tansy and sage.
Wren kept moving looking quickly for keys or any tool she could use to free the dragon before his captor returned. On the nail, the ring of keys, hanging conveniently by the door, maybe one of them would fit the locks.
≽∞≼
The fairy must realize he was too weak to resist her magic, odd that the tiny thing didn’t seem to fear of him. On a good day he could crunch her down with one bite. The dragon portion of his mind
was lost in delirious wandering.
The man he was remembered his last good day of freedom-- a day he spent with Wren Aldridge. He had clung to thoughts of that day. Her memory became a living flame that he used to concentrate his focus. He had woven the few remaining shards of his sanity around memory of her for safe keeping.
He could almost smell her scent now on the small fae woman. He must be hallucinating. Wren?
The throbbing beat, the relentless questions, the searing pain always pain. If he could only grasp his memories better, oh she’d smelled like jasmine warmed by sunshine. He wanted to recall that fragile aroma now. Yes, he could smell it clearly over the dust and decay of the room.
Despondent that he had never voiced his desire to claim her. It would have been a simple life with a human wife, away from all the politics of Wyrmarach. She would have been a way for him to have escaped.
He would go to the fields of glory and search for his reward. Pray to the keeper of the Spirits for the Goddess, because what lay beyond this plain of existence could not be Gla’hera, without Wren’s laughter, her fiery red hair and lush womanly suppleness. Focus. He concentrated on the memory until it was so bright he could imagine her here before him.
The soft dulcet tones of her voice echoed in his memory and in the chamber. “Easy, big guy. I’m here to help you.”
The delusion always started this way, a dream of freedom, with his lady coming to his rescue offering release from this hell. Maybe a million times before, in his vision he was in an open meadow full of flowers and light. She’d been clothed in gossamer lace spun from spider silk.
The blooms had turned to vines that held him in place, unable to move, barely able to breath. He shook his head rattling the very real chain around his neck.
“Please, please Mr. Dragon. Don’t eat me. Do you understand? I’m trying to help you?”
This wasn’t the way the vision was supposed to go. He froze. Wren?. . . here, not a hallucination? She leaned in to stroke along his dragon jaw-line. Why did she smell of bull dragons? She struggled with the keys in the locks of his leg shackles.
