“Keep an eye on her,” he said to his man before crawling into his tent.
John whispered, “I can take the man at the fire from here.”
“No,” Cyril said. “Let’s wait awhile—let things get quiet.”
“We could go get her and be out of their camp before they knew what hit them,” Frank said.
“Perhaps,” Cyril said, nodding. “But I’m concerned about Nash. She’s here somewhere.”
“You thinking trap?” Hound asked, scanning the camp with renewed interest.
Cyril nodded, settling in to watch.
“If she’s even here, she probably doesn’t care about us,” Frank said.
Cyril stared at Frank until he began to fidget. “She wouldn’t have had Zack tied to a horse unless she was after us,” he said, “which raises the question: How exactly did you get us out of jail?”
“I told you, I know a guy who owed me a favor.”
“Looks like the guard is getting sleepy,” John said, drawing everyone’s attention back to the camp.
“I have an idea,” Ben said, offering his knife to Homer. “Take this to Imogen,” he said silently. “Go get Imogen, boy,” he said aloud.
“You know I hate it when you talk to me like a dog,” Homer said, taking the knife by the handle and vanishing into the darkness.
“You’re going to risk everything on your stupid dog?” Frank asked.
“He’s not stupid,” Ben muttered.
A few moments later, Homer seemingly materialized from the shadows, quietly placing the hilt of the knife in Imogen’s hand.
She lifted her head and craned her neck to see behind her, smiling broadly when Homer licked her cheek. Then she scanned the campground to see if anyone was watching. Satisfied that Enzo’s man was dozing by the warmth of the low fire, she went to work cutting the ropes binding her hands. A minute later she was free.
She started moving in a low crouch toward Enzo’s tent.
“Stop her,” Ben said.
Homer took Imogen’s pant leg in his teeth and tugged. She stopped, frowning at him.
He wiggled, wagging his tail and turning toward the wood line.
Cyril stood up and motioned for her to come to him.
She hesitated for a moment, looking back at the tent, then to the man nodding by the fire before finally following Homer.
When she reached the forest, Cyril took her in his arms, hugging her without a word.
She looked around, smiling at her family. “You’re all here.”
“Where else would we be?” Ben said.
“Will you help me kill Enzo?”
“I will,” John whispered.
Cyril held her at arm’s length and shook his head gravely. “I know you have cause to want his death, but we have more pressing concerns right now.”
“Like what?”
“Like your baby,” Cyril said, holding her eyes. “If we attack Enzo, the Dragon Guard will be alerted and we’ll be in a fight we probably can’t win. We have to escape without notice if we are to have any chance of rescuing my youngest grandson.”
She frowned but nodded.
“Good girl. Let’s go,” he said, motioning for John to lead the way.
They hadn’t made it thirty steps into the forest when Enzo’s man took notice of her absence.
“She’s gone!” he shouted.
Ben stopped to look back, just barely able to see him through the trees.
The man looked around wildly and shouted again. “Wake up, the bitch is gone!”
Enzo came stumbling out of his tent.
“Don’t call her that … she’s still my wife,” he admonished him. “And you were supposed to be watching her!” He picked up the severed bindings and held them in front of the man’s face. “They’re cut. She had help. Alert the Dragon Guard.”
Ben turned away from the camp and hurried to catch up with the others.
“Where to?” John asked.
“North,” Cyril said. “We have to get past the markers before they see us.”
“Wasn’t that stalker to the north?” Frank asked.
“Yes, I believe it was,” Cyril said.
“Why would we go toward that thing?” Frank asked, stopping in his tracks.
“Because that is precisely the path they will not expect us to take,” Cyril said without stopping.
When everyone else continued without hesitation, Frank hurried to catch up.
They reached the road just as a Dragon Guard mounted on horseback came around the bend, his dragon-fire rifle held in one hand like a lance, a tongue of blue flame a foot long burning from the barrel like the fire from a cutting torch. He saw them and charged with a battle cry.
“Take the horse,” Cyril said.
John loosed his arrow.
The horse squealed in surprised pain and terror, rearing back and nearly throwing the Dragon Guard. His rifle discharged, sending a cone of bluish flame a hundred feet into the air and igniting the fir boughs on either side of the road with a whoosh, flooding the area with orange light.
“Run!” Cyril said.
The horse reared again, then toppled over, throwing the Dragon Guard to the uneven pavement.
Ben didn’t look back. He focused on moving with as much speed as he could muster through the forest without tripping and falling on his face. He didn’t even see the markers as they fled into the wilds, heading first due north up into the hills and then turning west and traveling parallel to the road.
Angry shouts filtered through the trees from the road below. The fire burned itself out within a few minutes, leaving only a column of smoke rising into the night sky to mark the place where they had nearly been burned to death.
“Where are we going?” Frank asked.
“If I remember correctly, the old Pacific Crest Trail intersects with the road just east of Lake of the Woods,” Cyril said.
“That’s right,” John said. “It’s a bit overgrown these days, but it’s still an easier path than cutting a trail.”
“Then what?” Frank asked.
“We go north” Cyril said. “I have a friend who lives on Mazama’s south slope. He’ll give us shelter.”
“That’s at least a full day on foot,” John said.
“More like two, given the terrain,” Cyril said. “Keep an eye out for a good place to stop for the night.”
Chapter 8
“Did you hear that?” Frank whispered.
“Probably nothing,” John said.
They had taken shelter under a thick stand of young fir trees crowded up against a cluster of boulders embedded in the side of a hill. It was cramped and cold, but Ben found himself dozing off, exhausted from the exertion and emotional ordeal of the day. The fear in Frank’s voice woke him up in an instant. He waited, listening to the darkness for any hint of danger.
“What’s out there?” he asked Homer.
Homer sniffed the air for a moment. “Nothing dangerous.”
Ben tried to relax, focusing on his breathing to slow his racing heart. Within a few minutes he was calm enough to sleep, but his mind had started working again, turning over all of the possible dangers that they faced, invariably going to the worst-case scenario almost immediately. When he realized that he was working himself into a needless state of fear, he began to practice one of the meditations that his grandfather had taught him.
He pictured his lucky coin.
He had learned that when he quieted his mind and narrowed his focus to a single object, it never failed to leave him feeling calm and centered—provided he succeeded in keeping his mind fixed to the image of the coin.
At first, he had struggled to prevent his mind from wandering, but over time and with much practice, he’d learned to hold his attention steady. As simple a practice as it was, Ben found that he’d developed the ability to concentrate on a subject to the exclusion of all else—something that gave him insight that others seemed to lack. Often he would find that he lost all sense of self when
he brought his mind to bear on a given object.
His grandfather called it “grace”—that state of being where subject and object became one. Ben had experienced it a few times, or at least he thought he had. It was an odd sensation since he only became aware that he’d achieved it after the fact.
When he’d told his grandfather about the experience the first time it had happened, Cyril had smiled with a knowing sense of pride. That alone was enough to propel him to continue the practice.
Now, many years later, he visualized the coin simply to calm his nerves and center his mind in the hopes that he might get a few hours of sleep before dawn and the grueling trek ahead of them.
He woke with a start, the fading image of his coin still in his mind. Everyone else had been startled awake as well. He could just make out the fear on their faces in the dim light of the coming day.
A howl in the distance transformed into an inhuman shriek.
“It’s answering the horn,” Hound said.
“Is that what woke us?” Cyril asked.
Hound nodded. “Sounded like it came from Lake of the Woods.”
“What are you talking about?” Frank asked.
“The Dragon Guard are calling a stalker to them.”
“What?” Frank said, his eyes going wide with renewed fear. Ben took a deep breath to settle his own nerves.
“I wondered about that,” Cyril said, gathering his bedroll. “We have to move.”
“Wondered about what?” Imogen asked.
“Whether the Dragon Guard could command the stalkers. Seems they can.”
“What are we going to do?” Frank asked.
“Run,” Cyril said.
“Sounds like that one used to be a wolf,” John said. “Won’t take long for it to pick up our scent.”
“I know,” Cyril said, hoisting his pack. “Gather your things. We don’t have much time.”
Ben didn’t hesitate, hastily securing his blanket to his pack. He didn’t know what his grandfather had planned, but he was certain that Cyril had something in mind. He was equally certain that any plan was better than nothing.
One by one, they emerged from the thicket into the gloaming of pre-dawn, equal measures of fear and fatigue on each and every face.
“We should get back inside the markers,” Frank said. “It’s our only hope.”
“Like hell it is,” Hound said, hoisting Bertha up like a trophy fish.
“You want to fight a stalker?!” Frank said. “Are you crazy?”
“Don’t be a pussy,” Hound said. “I got two grenade rounds and a few other surprises. So long as I see it coming, that thing doesn’t stand a chance.”
Frank opened his mouth to say something but nothing came out.
“Lead the way, John,” Cyril said.
Finding his voice again, Frank said, “We have to get back inside the markers.”
“Wouldn’t do any good,” Imogen said, her big brown eyes alight with the fear that everyone was feeling.
“Why not?”
She shook her head as if reconciling a memory with her inability to grasp the significance of it at the time. “I don’t know why it didn’t set off the alarm bells,” she muttered, almost to herself.
Cyril looked at her, encouraging her to continue with a gesture.
“When Enzo and I were married, the priest had a stalker lying in the corner of the room, like a pet. It was a full-grown mountain lion, which would have terrified me if I’d been in my right mind. Thinking back, it was so much more frightening than just a big cat would’ve been. It was wrong in so many ways—its eyes were completely black, and it was gaunt, like it hadn’t eaten in weeks.” She shivered, closing her eyes tightly. “I can’t explain it, but there was a darkness to it, an unnatural quality that makes my skin crawl just thinking about it.”
“All the more reason to get inside the markers,” Frank said.
“Don’t you see?” Imogen said, opening her eyes and fixing them on Frank. “The stalkers obey the Dragon Guard. They can pass inside the markers when commanded.”
Frank’s jaw dropped, a look of horror spreading over his face.
Ben sympathized with his brother. He’d known that they were in trouble from the moment the Dragon Guard had taken them, but the full extent of their plight was just beginning to settle in, and it was terrifying.
But along with the fear, a sense of moral outrage began to build within him. He’d never put the two together. Now it seemed so monstrously clear—the stalkers were agents of the dragon, created for the purpose of terrorizing people into accepting the protection, and hence the rulership, of the dragon and his minions.
“Seems like the real question we have to ask is will they set the stalker loose to hunt us on its own or will they use it to lead a squad to us?” Hound said.
“That probably depends on how intent they are in returning Imogen to Enzo,” Cyril said.
“His family is powerful in Rogue City,” she said. “The priest—” She stopped talking, her eyes losing focus as horror and disgust spread across her face.
“What is it?” Cyril asked.
“The priest … he’s not human. At least not anymore,” she said. “Why didn’t I see it before?”
“You did, it just didn’t matter to you at the time because his magic was clouding your mind,” Cyril said.
“What do you mean, he’s not human?” Frank asked.
“His eyes were bright yellow and catlike, his fingernails were claws, and his skin was scaled like a snake’s.”
Cyril nodded. “A side effect of drinking dragon’s blood. The priests become mules, transformed into something more than human but less than dragon. It sounds like this one is in the early stages of the transformation, which is fortunate for us, all things considered.”
“How can that possibly be good?” Frank asked.
“As the transformation progresses, his power will grow. Right now, he’s still more human than dragon. That’ll make him easier to defeat, if it comes to that.”
“You want to fight him? Didn’t you hear Imogen? He has a stalker for a pet,” Frank said, clearly exasperated.
“He also has my grandson,” Cyril said.
Frank was again rendered speechless.
Ben considered the forces arrayed against them and measured them against the life of his newborn nephew … and he found clarity. He knew that he would do whatever was necessary to help Imogen get her baby back. It wasn’t even a choice. The child was family. The child was innocent and helpless. But more than all of that, his conscience demanded it of him. Through all of the fear and doubt, a calm gentle voice offered him the one honorable path before him … and Ben resolved to walk that path, no matter the cost.
“What’s his name?” he asked softly.
All eyes turned to him.
Imogen blinked tears onto her cheeks. “Robert,” she whispered.
Cyril closed his eyes tightly, nodding to himself with a sad little smile.
“Lead the way, John. We have work to do.”
John set out through the sparse forest, picking a path that was at once easy to follow and hard to track. If their pursuers were human, they would have a hard time of it … a wolf was another matter, and a stalker something else entirely.
Ben had heard stories about the creatures when they first started hunting in the area around K Falls. They could smell and see and hear better than any living animal. They were fast and tireless, vicious and relentless. Once a stalker was on the hunt, its prey could either kill it, find refuge within the markers, or be run down and ripped apart. Until now, it had always seemed odd to Ben that they didn’t eat their kill. New understanding of their true purpose cleared up that point of confusion.
A howl ripped through the morning air, half wolf and half something else. This time, it came from the south. Everyone stepped up the pace. An hour after full light, they came to the trail and turned north. While the path was easier to negotiate than the forest, it was also steeper, asc
ending toward the east face of Mount McLaughlin.
“Why do you think the old man has been holding out on us?” Frank quietly asked Ben while they walked.
Ben shrugged and adjusted his pack. “I’m sure he has his reasons.”
“He obviously knows more about magic than he ever let on. What possible reason could he have for keeping that from us? We must have asked a thousand questions about it over the years.”
Ben shook his head, though he had a few ideas. Magic was just the sort of thing that Frank would be drawn to—easy power. For Ben, magic had always been a source of wonder and mystery, but he honestly wasn’t sure what he’d do with it if he possessed it. Until yesterday, he’d never wanted or needed anything enough to warrant the use of such power.
“He was probably just trying to protect us,” he said.
“Step it up,” Hound said from behind them.
The trail rounded a bend and the ground fell away to the right. A steep slope of jagged rocks and boulders defined the landscape for several hundred feet to the forest floor below. To the left, the slope continued up toward the mountain.
Loose rocks littered the narrow trail, making the path treacherous. One wrong step and it would be a several-hundred-foot tumble to the bottom.
Another howl shattered the morning calm, much closer this time.
Ben froze. He wanted to run, to flee the danger, but thankfully he couldn’t move. He had to remind himself to breathe, slowly and deeply.
“Out of the way!” Frank shouted from behind, panic and terror rushing his words as he shoved Ben, toppling him toward the edge. It seemed as if the world tipped over, the level ground hundreds of feet below rushing at him with terrifying clarity and detail. The moment stretched on, expanding in his mind, a thousand thoughts filling his awareness—all of them ending with a briefly painful, head-over-heels race to the ground, culminating in his inescapable death.
And then, just as quickly, he was yanked back from the brink and thrown against the upward side of the slope. Safe. Hound had grabbed his pack with one hand and tossed him like a doll on his way to stop Frank from his panicked flight.
The Dragon's Egg (Dragonfall Book 1) Page 7
