“It’s almost time for us to get off the plane,” he said to the dog, “This will keep you safe.”
The dog barked and licked his hand.
“Why didn’t we stay minions of the Devourer when we were taken?”
Lucas scratched the dog between the ears. “The Devourer uses pieces of its organic self to embed itself in the synapses and curves of an organism’s brain. For whatever reason, it decided not to use that method on us, but rather an electronic control band.”
Lucas turned to me and drew me to him. “I need you to know something,” he said, his eyes as serious as they had ever been. I felt as if my heart were about to combust. I loved him, damn the future or whatever would come roaring out of the dark to snatch our lives away. He was mine.
Lucas leaned towards my ear so that I could hear over the near-deafening sound of the barking dog.
But his words were so loud, they seemed to shake something loose inside me. “I think this is a trap. The message said to come home. My mother never called the estate ‘home.’”
I drew back in surprise.
There was a flicker of wariness in his eyes. Did he think I was still controlled by the Devourer?
“A trap,” I echoed, weighing my words carefully. Because if I denied it, he would deny his worries about me as well. But how the hell would I be part of a trap?
Or maybe he was right. Maybe the Devourer had taken control of me, and I didn’t even know it. Who knew anything about the abilities or machinations of an alien monster that drove people like cars? It was within the realm of possibility, wasn’t it? My knowledge of immortal, magic-eating monsters from another world wasn’t as extensive as one would think.
Hatred, vicious and scalding, surged within me, from the armor, adamant that it would recognize the Devourer in all its forms.
Still. The Devourer masked its presence well. I had to protect Lucas. I looked at him. He had already shown me he would have no problems killing me if I was the Devourer. “A trap you walk into with eyes wide open is still a trap if you don’t know the details.”
“True. But I’ve got you to back me up. Remember, I’m counting on you to save me.”
You will never be strong enough to protect him. He will die trying to save you.
I swallowed hard and forced a smile. “I’ll do my best.”
All this crazy magic armor that had eaten my friend had to be strong enough to protect him.
Wait, why was the dog so quiet?
I looked over at the dog, who was fast asleep on her back, all four legs sticking up in the air.
“What did you do to the dog?”
“Gave her something to put her to sleep. Nothing that will hurt her.”
“How is she going to walk off the plane?”
“This plane isn’t going to land.”
My heart skipped a beat. Being on one plane that hadn’t landed properly was enough for a lifetime.
Lucas shook his head. “Sorry, bad choice of words. As large as my mother’s estate is, you know there’s no landing strip.”
The intercom chimed. “Mr. Randall, we will arrive at the optimal exit point in approximately three minutes.”
“Got it, Captain Levy. We’ll be ready.”
My heart began to race even though I knew the answer. “Optimal exit point? Aren’t we going to the airport nearby?”
“Nope. It’s easier just to jump.” He grinned.
“Jump,” I repeated dumbly. “With a parachute?”
He stepped back, stripped off his shirt, and gave me a sexy grin. “Come now. You know dragons don’t wear parachutes.”
10
I didn’t know about other people, but I always believed there were moments in life when no matter where you were, or whatever you were doing, the event would be imprinted in your very soul, defining you. Some were obvious, like graduation or getting your driver’s license.
But then there were others that just snuck up on you. You’re living your ordinary life, then there you are, riding a huge golden dragon in the middle of the night above a moonlit ocean.
With the salt-scented wind in my hair, the fiery heat of life underneath of me, and the resonant beat of his golden lined wings, I felt as if we could conquer life itself.
Lucas and me, together.
It was a memory I would hold close to my heart for the rest of my life.
However long that was.
The armor enhanced my night vision, and I could see the estate that had loomed so large in my life. The buildings seemed so tiny from up here. The dozen-bedroom mansion, complete with heated indoor and outdoor pools. Greenhouse gardens, an apple orchard, and then the small three-bedroom “cottage” where my mother and I had lived.
We landed on the driveway. Lucas knelt and I vaulted off him, then spun around to look at him.
The dragon stretched and expanded his magnificent wings, sparks following in their wake.
I realized my mouth was hanging open. “Show off,” I said, and pointed to the white square dangling from his claws.
A huge eye winked at me.
I blinked.
And there was Lucas.
In one hand he held a shopping bag with holes cut out for the dog to stick its head and legs into, and another, a small duffel bag.
Lucas grinned. “I told you it would work. Those reusable bags from Save-A-Lot are really strong.”
I rolled my eyes.
“Home sweet home,” he said, looking around.
I said nothing. I thought it was my home, until his mother had reminded me that we lived her on her sufferance. That was when I decided to find a place to live on my own terms as soon as I could.
The dog began to bark. Lucas set down the bag. “Hey, dog—”
The dog took off. Still wearing the shopping bag.
I took a step after her. “Wait!”
But she was gone, vanished into the dark woods surrounding the mansion.
Lucas put a hand on my shoulder, keeping me from going after the dog. “She won’t get far. There’s a chain-link fence surrounding the property.”
There hadn’t been one in my youth.
I took a step, about to chase after the dog anyway, when I saw Lucas go still.
I turned to see what he was looking at.
A light turned on in the house that had stood empty and warded for the last decade or so.
In Kelora’s study.
The light went off.
“Well, that is bait, if I’ve ever seen it,” I said. “Are you sure it’s not just a light on a timer?” I asked.
“No. There are wards on the grounds that would prevent humans from trespassing.”
Lucas quickly finished putting on his clothes from the duffel bag.
I sheathed myself in scales.
He placed his hand on the ornate double-door handle. His voice was surprisingly light. “Are you ready for what we might find?”
Kelora had vanished chasing the Devourer. And now we were in this house at her supposed behest, which meant the Devourer might have already killed her.
Better to don Lucas’s mask of bravado than to think too much of the implications. “In your home? Never.”
The door unlocked after his fingerprint scan. “It was never really my home. Just a place I lived in.”
We walked into a cold, dark, empty foyer. The crystal chandelier was covered with a giant white dust cloth, as were the hall mirrors and table.
It was colder than I remembered, smaller too.
Motion-sensor lights flickered on in each room as we moved about, revealing dust-cloth-covered furniture. They were huge, white ghosts of the past, in a place that hadn’t been lived in for years.
I hadn’t been allowed here on my own, only if I were in the presence of my mother or Lucas.
And after I had gone, and Lucas sent to dragon school, Kelora kept my mother on as the caretaker of this estate until chemo made it impossible for my mother to do so.
Yet Kelora kept the checks coming
throughout my mother’s cancer treatments.
I reached for one of the heavy cloths as I realized that my mother might have been the one to place them, that she might have been the last one to touch them.
“I know my mother drove you away that night,” Lucas said from close behind me.
That night. The night I confronted Lucas about the strangers that visited his house. The winged monsters I saw.
The night he showed me what he truly was.
The night we shared our first kiss.
I should have faced him, but I couldn’t. “I’m sorry I wasn’t strong enough to stand up for us.”
Lucas squeezed my hand. “You were thirteen. You were in no position to do so.”
I squeezed his hand back. “For so long, I thought your mother was the villain of my past. And yet standing here, there must have been another version of her. Back at the casino today, she told me my mother was her greatest friend. Why would she do that?”
“Who knows what my mother’s intentions are. The way the other dragons speak of her, how she made the crossing to this world pregnant, then tended my egg for nine hundred years before deciding to hatch me in this time, they hold her up as a paragon of motherhood. And we both know she is not.”
Daniel had told me that story at one point. I frowned. “So, are dragons born or do you hatch from eggs?”
“Both. Some more than others.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“We are born in a live birth like humans. Within our first six months, our parents put us to sleep in an egg for further development.
“And your mother kept you in this egg for nine hundred years.”
“That’s what they say. I don’t really remember.”
I frowned. “Why now? Of all the different eras of humanity you could have been born in, why now?”
“I don’t know.”
We searched through the house and found no scent, no evidence of anyone. I began to wonder if the light I had seen was something I had imagined.
There was a creak. I paused, looking at Lucas. Clearly, he had heard it too. I kept my voice conversational as if nothing was wrong. “What was it again that your mother sent you here for?”
His voice matched mine, even as he suddenly seemed larger, bigger, as if the dragon were about to emerge. “Something that could help us in our next venture. Did you know my father wore the same kind of armor you have?”
Another creak. I stepped away from the direction of the door and silently extended a forearm blade. “Oh, really?”
A scent I couldn’t place. Lucas frowned, then gestured to the door. He was going to go in. “He had a…lucky pin of sorts. It gave him confidence. My mother said I should give it to you for good luck.”
I nodded at his motion. I’d follow. “Good luck, huh? I could always use more of that.”
We burst into the room.
And this time, we found Kelora at her desk.
She looked up from a book.
“Took you both long enough.”
“Mother,” said Lucas, straightening. “You escaped the Devourer.”
“No,” she said, closing her book and standing up. I glanced at the book. Dragon Tales for Children. “I took care of the Devourer, or at least the piece of it that attacked the Princess. It’s what I’ve been doing for the last fifteen years, as I said.”
“So why have you asked us here?”
She slid a box across her desk. “This.”
Lucas took the box and tried to open it. It didn’t budge.
“Give it to Lana. It may respond to her sym-armor.”
Lucas put it in my hand. I felt it warm to my touch. I opened it easily.
Within the box lay a weathered silver disc. Ancient, unearthly writing lit up blue across the disc and began moving.
“Pick it up,” instructed Lana, “and hand the box back to Lucas.”
Fascinated by the moving letters, I did as she asked.
A burst of green light exploded.
I saw Lucas, frozen in place, watched in horror as a mucous-y sheets enveloped him, hardening over him, more white liquid, as if he were a caterpillar in a cocoon.
I tried to run to him but found myself frozen in place. There was horrified screaming, and I realized it was me.
The green rolled across his mother’s eyes. “There,” she said in a chillingly feminine voice, the voice of my nightmares. “Much better now.”
The Devourer.
Kelora was the Devourer.
11
My armor was gone. She had thrown a green glow that ripped it from me, scale by scale.
And now pain seemed to comprise the entirety of my existence.
“I had been planning on taking your mind like any other human the first time,” said Devourer Kelora. “But then this host suggested something else. An experiment.”
“The mind-control bands,” I said slowly.
“Oh, that wasn’t the first time. But that was another suggestion on the part of this host.” She turned away as if speaking to herself. “A ploy I knowingly consented to.”
The first time.
My voice was raw. “How long have you had this host?”
“Fifteen years,” said the Devourer, with Kelora’s grin. “I have been inside her collecting data, seeing just how long one could sustain dual personalities within a dragon.”
Fifteen years.
You will never be strong enough to protect him.
She had been right.
“I have to admit, I was surprised at how long this host could exist, how strong she was. The number of times she tried to kill herself…” Devourer Kelora shook her head.
“But now she is nearly gone. And I will proceed with a new experiment on the progeny.”
Through the stinging tears in my eyes, I saw Lucas, frozen in the pod. There was a shimmering outline of light around him, but one that was slowly diminishing.
He was dying.
He was dying because I hadn’t been strong enough.
I’m counting on you to save me.
My scales floated next to Kelora, captive in a hovering green ball. They kept spiking and bristling like magnetic liquid metal I had once seen in a museum, but no matter what it transformed into, the glow held steady.
The green glow vanished from Kelora’s eyes. She looked at me in horror, her hand to her mouth.
In my hand, I still held the silver disc. I clutched at it, thinking hard, trying to get it to respond like my armor.
Kelora ripped it out of my hand. “No!” she said, as if I were a naughty dog. “Not yours.”
I saw her staring at the pod. She raised her hand, and more of that viscous grey white membrane appeared from nowhere.
I had nothing left. No armor, no strength, no power, nothing but my mind and my memories.
“Ms. Randall.”
Devourer Kelora turned to me.
“You carried Lucas in your womb across worlds. You tended his egg among the rise and fall of nations. Is this what you meant for your son?”
Kelora stood over me, a frozen rictus of a grin on her face.
“Do you remember Lucas’s fifth birthday? He wasn’t sure you would actually be able to make it. And then, when you walked out holding his cake, saw his joy, you cried. He slept with the stuffed octopus you gave him for years.”
“I don’t know where it is,” said Devourer Kelora uncertainly.
I had no idea what she was talking about, but her attention on me meant she wasn’t killing Lucas.
“Last time I saw the blue octopus, it was missing an eye.”
“He cut it off by accident. Couldn’t control his dragon, which is why he had to be sent away.”
I felt something flicker inside my wrist.
I dared not look.
A single remaining dark scale.
I still had armor within me. I could replicate it, like I had for Lucas.
Replicate. Replicate. Replicate.
The response was faint, p
erhaps even imaginary.
There wasn’t enough blood.
Goddamn it. Wasn’t the average human body like eighty-percent liquid or something like that?
Take mine.
The single scale spoke in my head, as it never had. Death will result. You will have fifteen seconds.
Fifteen seconds. I couldn’t kill the Devourer in fifteen seconds.
I looked at the egg.
But I could try to save Lucas.
Death is imminent! I’m going to die anyway. Don’t you want to kill the Devourer? We cannot let it win.
The anger and hatred sparked heat inside me, burning, painful, matching the pain on my flesh, but with it, something else.
Power, rising, roiling.
I had one shot with this.
I leapt to my feet and nearly blacked out from the effort. Spikes shot from my heads. The Devourer dodged.
I flung myself at the membrane covering Lucas.
The scales swirled off me. I dropped to the ground.
One by one, the scales began to explode and crack the membrane.
I heard a scream from Kelora. “You’re killing him!”
A black liquid spike shot through the green glowing ball.
Lucas’s egg began to crack.
Devourer Kelora hurled the green ball at me.
The armor exploded, covering my skin. I fell to the ground.
Kelora scraped at her face with long nails. She stopped and looked at me. “Are you strong enough to save him, Lana?”
And in that moment, I finally understood. She had kept me from him and made herself the villain so that I could do this.
I made my arms into spears and shot myself toward her chest.
She didn’t fight me; she just let me pin her to the wall. “Detonate me,” she whispered.
The scales slid off me, onto her.
She exploded into tiny sparks of light.
There was a dragon-like roar behind me, but I had no energy to look.
I heard someone screaming my name, but it fell away quickly as darkness swallowed me.
12
Gray mist surrounded me again.
A woman with long brown hair wearing a black leather jacket sat on a red park bench in front of me. I couldn’t see her face, but I knew who it was.
Belonging to the Dragon: Lick of Fire (Dragon Lovers Book 2) Page 9
