dragons breath 02 - dancing with flames

by Illene, Susan

  They entered the castle, passing through the great hall. It was still early enough in the evening that it wasn’t too crowded yet, but a few shifters milled around chatting with each other. They continued past the large room and up several flights of stairs to the highest floor of the castle where the pendragon’s suite was located. Only one guard stood outside the large double doors today. Upon seeing Throm’s children, he opened the chamber for them.

  Zoran went inside first, ever quick to stand at their father’s side. The rest of them followed behind. Aidan had hoped to find the pendragon in the sitting area next to the balcony, but instead he saw Throm lying on his bed. A red camrium blanket covered him, and his head was propped up by matching cushions. Aidan and his sister exchanged concerned glances. It was unlike the pendragon to allow himself many comforts. He usually slept on a stuffed camrium cloth mattress with no blankets or pillows.

  “Come, children,” Throm beckoned, his voice coming out weak and scratchy.

  They gathered in a row next to the bed, with Zoran closest to the pendragon’s head. Aidan’s chest tightened upon seeing his father. Throm’s normally tanned skin appeared pale, his hands frail, and his gray hair had thinned even more in the last few days. Their kind tended not to show their age until they reached somewhere around a thousand years old. Throm was just over eleven hundred. Few shape-shifters lived much longer than that, though pure dragons could reach double or more years.

  “I’ve asked you here…” he paused to cough into his hand, “to tell you I am calling for the Bitkal ritual. It will take place in two weeks.”

  Phoebe gasped. “But father, it’s too soon. You still have time.”

  Throm gazed up at her with a hint of regret in his yellow eyes. “I wish that were so, daughter, but I cannot risk waiting any longer.”

  It was one of the reasons their father didn’t make many public appearances anymore. The pendragon didn’t want anyone realizing how fast he was declining. Throm’s own children were rarely allowed to see him except on his better days. This was only the third time Aidan had been allowed to visit while Throm was in bed.

  “I agree with Phoebe. Two weeks seems a little too soon,” Aidan said, catching his sister’s grateful look for supporting her. To be honest, though, he wasn’t ready to see his father die. The pendragon had his faults, but he’d been an excellent leader to their people and a pillar of strength for his children. Aidan couldn’t imagine the world without him.

  “Shut up, whelp, and respect our father’s wishes,” Zoran growled.

  His inner dragon roared, though no one else heard it. The beast knew they were short on time before they’d have to stop playing submissive, but they had to tread carefully. Too much was at stake. Aidan’s siblings had no idea of the dangers that lay ahead for their toriq, and they’d likely not believe him even if he told them.

  The pendragon gave his eldest son a hard look. “In my presence, you will respect each other.”

  “I apologize, Father.” Zoran bowed his head. It was an act, and everyone knew it, but it was enough to satisfy Throm.

  “Now,” the pendragon said, pushing himself into a semi-sitting position, “the elders’ council and I will be deciding on the seven most eligible candidates to rule the Taugud after I die. Three of those positions are mine alone to choose. In the next few days, I will be giving each of you a task. If you perform it well, I will likely nominate you, but if you fail, I will not—even if that means choosing a candidate who is not my child.”

  “You can count on me, father.” Zoran lifted his chin.

  “Whatever you wish, it will be done,” Ruari seconded.

  Aidan and his sister murmured their own agreements, though neither of them was as quick to pander to Throm. They left the groveling to their elder brothers.

  “Good, now go.” The pendragon waved them off. “I must rest.”

  Hesitantly, they all filed out of the room. As soon as the guard shut the chamber doors, Zoran grabbed Aidan and shoved him against the wall. His head bounced off the stone, bringing stars to his vision. He was so stunned by the move he nearly forgot himself and fought back. It was all he could do to quiet his inner beast’s growls and stand still. Gritting his teeth, he met his brother’s gaze.

  “Do not think for a moment you will be one of the three our father chooses.” Zoran’s yellow eyes were wild and filled with anger. “If I were you, I wouldn’t even bother trying to complete the task he gives you—not if you wish to live past the Bitkal.”

  Aidan ground his jaw. His brother was merciless in a duel, and Aidan had no idea if he could win against Zoran in a fight. In the Bitkal, it was up to the fighters to decide whether to battle to the death or to allow the loser to submit. If the two of them fought, only one of them would come out alive.

  “May Zorya be with you,” Aidan said. For if it came to it, he’d kill Zoran before allowing himself to die. He had to survive the coming months at any cost.

  Chapter 5

  Bailey

  I paced around the living room, debating what to do. Since waking up in Aidan’s house—or lair as he usually referred to it—I’d been feeling restless. My days were usually filled with physical tasks that kept me busy. When I wasn’t hunting dragons, I was often foraging for food and supplies. On the days I didn’t go out, I helped build outhouses, worked on the neighborhood gardens, or collected water from a nearby creek after it rained. The only time we settled down at Earl’s place was in the evenings when the dragons were active. Then we’d read by candlelight or tell stories to each other. I’d grown used to that and didn’t know what to do in a house by myself.

  First thing I’d done that morning was make some oatmeal for breakfast. The place was far enough outside of town that it had a propane tank with a line to the stove. After that, I’d spent two hours on target practice with the spare crossbow Aidan kept here. He actually maintained a full supply of weaponry in a storage room off the kitchen, not just for my training, but also as backups for himself. His cousin told me once that they didn’t only have to worry about fighting pure dragons. There was danger from within their clan as well, though neither of the shifters talked about it much.

  Stepping out onto the porch, I noted the sun high in the sky. The hot rays beat down relentlessly on the earth below, turning much of the vegetation a sickly brown. It had been a couple of weeks since the last storm came through. Assuming the dimensions colliding hadn’t screwed up normal weather patterns too much, the temperature would be cooling soon, and more rain might come. I looked forward to that even as I dreaded the arrival of winter. The only good thing about that was the dragons would be hibernating during the coldest months.

  But what about the missing children? Wounding Matrika last night might have slowed her down for a little while, but I doubted I’d stopped her. Not to mention the children she’d taken recently could still be alive. For all I knew, I was their only hope of ever getting back to their families.

  I stared down the gravel road—the only way out of here. Even though I couldn’t return to my neighborhood and friends right now, there was one place I could go and maybe get help locating the children. It was a nearby house safe from the dragon threat. I might not have my truck at the moment, but I still had two perfectly good legs. A two-mile walk wouldn’t kill me.

  I went back into the house, grabbed my water canteen—that magically refilled itself every hour—and a sword, then headed down the gravel drive toward Lindsey Street. Aidan’s lair sat a little south of where the road ended, close to Lake Thunderbird, which was to the east. I couldn’t see the water from his place, but I knew it was somewhere just beyond a thick canopy of trees and vegetation.

  Filled with renewed purpose, the walk through the high heat didn’t bother me as much as it might have. I headed west, passing farmhouses and ranches along the way until I reached the area where a sorceress lived. My mind was a little fuzzy on the exact placement of her house, but I was certain it had to be close. The damn woman had a nasty tend
ency to hide her home from me unless she wanted something.

  “Verena!” I called out, spinning in a circle in the middle of the road. “Show yourself!”

  No response—unless you counted a flock of doves flying off a nearby fence.

  “I need to talk to you,” I said, scowling at the endless pastureland.

  She still didn’t reveal herself. This had to be some kind of test of my patience. The sorceress enjoyed playing games with me, and I wouldn’t have put it past her to see how hard I’d try to reach her. Moving off to the side of the road, I sat down cross-legged and pulled out my canteen to drink some water. I could wait as long as it took for the sake of those children.

  The minutes dragged by slowly. Since the dragon apocalypse, not many people came down this way, so there wasn’t any traffic. A horse wandered into a nearby field, grazing on grass. I idly wondered if I should try catching the animal and riding it back to Aidan’s place, but then what would I do with it? One thing I’d learned growing up on a ranch was that unless you wanted responsibility for an animal, you didn’t mess with it. I’d had horses growing up and loved them, but if I took on the care of one now, I’d feel horrible if something happened to it. The animal seemed to be doing fine on its own. No point in messing that up.

  Almost an hour—and a bucket of sweat later—the air glimmered around me. I squinted up the road. A house and barn were taking shape there, slowly coming into form. I stood up and started moving that way.

  “It’s about time,” I said when Verena appeared in front of her driveway. She stood there wearing khaki shorts and a peach tank top.

  “You chose to visit at an inconvenient time,” she replied in her lilting Irish accent.

  The sorceress was a slim woman with brown hair highlighted with strands of gray. She usually kept it in a braid down her back, but it flowed freely in the breeze now. Verena appeared to be around forty years old, but according to her, she’d been put under some kind of sleeping enchantment for a thousand years while the dragons were gone. She didn’t wake up until the spell separating the dimensions started to weaken. That was two decades ago, so she’d been a young woman when she came out of stasis and into the modern world.

  “You could have at least acknowledged me,” I pointed out, trying not to sound too annoyed since I needed her help.

  Verena shrugged. “If it was important, I knew you’d wait.”

  Danae stepped out of the house. The former combat medic had shoulder-length blond hair, toned muscles, and at 5’10” stood half a foot taller than me. As she walked across the lawn, I couldn’t miss the strut in her steps. Danae was self-confident and unapologetic about it.

  We’d become friends soon after she joined me and some other refugees in the Bizzell Library at the University of Oklahoma. That was where we’d lived until dragons burned down the place a little over a month ago in one of their rage-filled attacks. Those of us who weren’t killed moved to a nearby neighborhood in Norman where one of my stepfather’s friends, Earl, lived. That’s where I’d been staying until yesterday.

  Danae still lived there with our other friends, but she had begun coming to Verena’s at least a couple of times a week. Just like I’d discovered I was a dragon slayer during the apocalypse, she had discovered she was a sorceress whose powers had been latent until recently. Someone had to train her in how to use her magic, especially since Danae had an affinity for healing. A rather handy skill now that hospitals were shut down. At the moment, Verena—who was raised in a family of sorcerers all those centuries ago—was the only one who could help her.

  “Sorry, Bailey,” Danae said, coming up to give me a hug. “Verena wanted to finish my lessons for the day before letting you visit.”

  I gave her a weak smile. “It’s okay. I knew she’d let me in eventually.”

  Danae took a step back and looked me over, noting my wounds from the day before. “Conrad told me Aidan stopped you in the middle of a battle yesterday. What’s going on?”

  “Apparently, I attacked some sort of dragon princess,” I said, scratching at a scab on my arm. I’d removed the bandages Aidan put on me as soon as the wounds started to close. “He says I can’t kill her, despite the fact she’s taking children, unless I want her entire clan after me. Even just attacking her has got them angry, and now they’ve got my scent.”

  Her expression hardened. “He told me about the children. Anything I can do?”

  “Nothing yet. First, I’ve got to find out where the dragon is taking the children.” I turned to Verena, addressing her since she’d proven good at finding people before. “Any chance you can help me with that?”

  She waved a hand. “Bah! I won’t have anything to do with it.”

  “What? Why?” Danae rounded on her. “These are children we’re talking about.”

  Verena pursed her lips. “I’ll do no more favors for the slayer until she repays me her debt.”

  “Then tell me what you want,” I demanded. Every time I saw her, I asked about it only to be put off. I’d decided the woman enjoyed holding that favor over my head like an ax that could come down at any moment. God only knew what she wanted and what it would cost me.

  “It’s not time,” she said, heading toward her house. “You’ll be the first to know when it is.”

  I started to go after her. “But this can’t wait…”

  “Enough!” Verena put up a hand.

  I hit an invisible wall, smacking my face into it. She huffed and walked away. Rubbing my abused nose, I watched her go into the house without so much as a backward glance. She seriously didn’t care about anyone except for herself—unless she had something to gain by it. No wonder Aidan hated sorcerers so much and had reacted to Danae so badly when they first met. If the others he’d come across were anything like Verena, I couldn’t blame him.

  “Dammit, how am I supposed to find these kids without her?” I asked, exasperated.

  “Come on,” Danae said, taking my arm. “I’ll give you a ride.”

  Left with no other choice, I didn’t argue. The afternoon was waning, and dragons from Aidan’s clan would be roaming the skies soon. Walking wouldn’t be a good idea. They might not attack humans, but I still tried to avoid them as much as possible. They might notice that I was wearing some of their special fire-proof clothing and want to know where I got it.

  We got in the white Ford Taurus that Danae used whenever she had to leave the neighborhood. The car wasn’t hers, but the woman who owned it didn’t like driving since D-day, so she loaned it out to whoever needed it.

  “I don’t suppose you could tell Conrad to bring my truck back to me,” I said after telling her to head east.

  She glanced over at me. “He was already planning on it, but they needed his help today finishing up the wall project.”

  Right. The brick perimeter wall we’d been building around our neighborhood, which consisted of three square blocks of houses. Everyone within it worked together to gather food and supplies as well as protect each other from human gangs, random thugs, and dragons.

  “How much did Conrad tell you about yesterday?” I asked.

  Her hands tightened on the steering wheel. “Everything up until Aidan took you away. So how do you know that dragon might be stashing the kids instead of killing them?”

  “For one, if they want to eat people, they would go for adults since we’ve got more meat on our bones. For two, Aidan and his cousin think the dragon might have issues because she can’t have her own babies. It’s the only reason she’d take them alive like that.”

  Danae cursed. “That’s just twisted. I don’t even want to consider how she’d go about taking care of them—but it does mean there’s a chance we can save them.”

  “Yeah, if we can find them and sneak past however many dragons might be guarding the nest. That’s why I’m going to need all the help I can get to pull off a rescue.” If Matrika was some kind of princess, I was willing to bet she lived in a large den with a lot of other dragons. By myself, I
’d end up getting distracted in the battle and never reach the children.

  “There might be someone who can help,” Danae said, sounding hesitant, “but I’m going to tell you now I have my reservations about him. If it weren’t for the kids, I wouldn’t mention him at all.”

  I glanced over, noting her tight expression. “Who?”

  She took a deep breath. “There’s a sorcerer named Javier who has taken over most of downtown Norman. From what I can tell, he’s rather powerful.”

  “Downtown?” I tried to visualize the place in my head and failed, which was enough to send my alarm bells ringing. How could I have forgotten something like that? Hell, I couldn’t even remember what it looked like or how long it had been since I last passed through there—probably not since before D-day.

  “Yeah, I couldn’t picture it either until I started working on my powers with Verena,” Danae said, sighing.

  “Is this sorcerer…Javier, somehow blocking people from thinking about it?” I asked.

  “Yeah.” She nodded. “After I realized what he was doing, I went and stood at the edge of the zone he claimed for himself. People are walking around like there’s no danger and dragons aren’t a problem, but I think there’s a lot more to it. Verena told me to stay away from there.”

  “You probably should,” I agreed, “but I’m going to have to take the risk.”

  “I could go with you,” she offered.

  “No. If I don’t make it out, you’re the next best chance those kids have of getting saved.”

  Danae slowed as we reached the end of Lindsey Street, marked by a blank red sign with a wall of trees behind it. I indicated that she should go north up the gravel road to Aidan’s lair.

  “When will you see Javier?” she asked, parking next to the house.

  “Tomorrow morning after Conrad brings me my truck. Make sure he comes early so I can go out while the dragons are still asleep.” These days it was a real hassle getting around town once they were up and flying about since I got the urge to kill every single one of them I saw. It made focusing on hunting for food and supplies rather difficult.