Oh, My Dragon

by Lani Lynn Vale

  Macy, however, stiffened and pushed herself away from it, her face going deathly pale.

  “Be careful!” she pleaded.

  I blinked in surprise.

  “Why?”

  “Because they’re so sensitive. Anything you do to it, it does to the person who it controls,” she licked her lips nervously.

  I nodded my head.

  “Jean Luc was able to fix Wink right up after we got it from him. When we get yours from Robert, he’ll do the same for you,” Keifer promised. “But that doesn’t let either one of you off the hook.”

  “How are you going to get it from him?” Macy’s voice quivered with unshed tears.

  I looked over the blonde woman’s features.

  She looked much different now than she had the last time I’d seen her, although then she’d had a lovely bullet hole through her heart.

  How had I been so wrong about who killed her?

  That’d never happened before. I knew exactly who did what based on their DNA signatures.

  DNA was a simple thing.

  For me, anyway.

  I could see exactly who’d been in this room in the last forty-eight hours based on the skin cells that were in the room. If I wished to push further, I could even go as far as weeks past if I wished to dig that deep.

  I, however, didn’t.

  That took time. Time that I didn’t think we had.

  “As soon as we find Robert…,” Keifer started to say.

  “I can help you with that,” Farrow told us, standing up. “I can.”

  Keifer looked at him skeptically.

  “And how, exactly, do you plan to do that?” Nikolai piped in.

  Farrow stood up.

  “I can follow trails. All you have to do is lead me somewhere he’s been recently,” he nodded his head eagerly.

  “I think, after this, you have some explaining to do.”

  Chapter 23

  Mating: when dating goes too far.

  -Wink’s secret thoughts

  Wink

  Brooklyn, Blythe, Skylar, Merrick and I all looked at the newcomer with surprise. We were at the sanctuary, and we’d been having breakfast, when Macy was practically dropped into our laps.

  “Take care of her, Skylar,” Farrow pleaded. “Can you look her over…make sure that she’s okay?”

  I licked my lips, my eyes becoming calculating as I wondered exactly why she would need a checkup.

  She didn’t look sick.

  In fact, she looked perfectly healthy.

  She must’ve realized we were wondering why, too, because she smiled and took a seat across from us on the windowsill that overlooked the sanctuary’s backyard.

  By the time she was finished telling us about her harrowing experience, starting with getting shot, and finishing with being brought back to life by Robert, I was on the edge of my seat.

  “That’s amazing,” Brooklyn breathed. “That’s, in fact, beyond amazing. Wow.”

  I concurred.

  The whole thing was fantastical.

  “I…,” I hesitated when I realized how quiet it’d gotten. “Where did they go?”

  “Where did who go?” Blythe looked over at me.

  I turned around and scanned the big room.

  “It’s too quiet,” I stood. “Why is it so quiet?”

  “What do you mean it’s too quiet?” Brooklyn got up to stand next to me. “It’s loud. The TV is blaring, and the air conditioner is making quite a bit of noise. Quiet is not something that goes over well when you share a house with fifteen thousand people.”

  I shook my head and walked to the window.

  “Where are the guys?” I asked, starting around the couch to head for the door that led to the back yard.

  The house had like fifteen doors that led to the outside, and four of them were on the back wing of the house.

  The house itself, was shaped like a E, and we were on the top part of it that housed the great room, the kitchen, the breakfast nook, and a sun room.

  The back stretch housed all of the bedrooms, and apparently ‘wings’ as the others liked to call them.

  The entire place was fucking massive, and I found that there was always a buzz of activity.

  But today—right now—there was none of that buzz. It was only the TV and the quiet chatter of talking.

  “They said to go to the great room where y’all were—which is where Farrow took me, as you can see—and they’d leave once I was safe,” Macy explained quietly. “Was that bad?”

  “They left without us,” I murmured, freezing in the doorway. “Skylar…” I started, turning my head to her. “Do you have security footage of the hospital?”

  My eyes went to the mini clinic type structure that was housed on the ground floor with an exit to the side grounds, and I studied the area.

  “Yes,” Skylar stood up. “You’ll have to come to my rooms, though. I don’t know if I can figure out Nikolai’s system off of his.”

  “I can,” Brooklyn said. “But I still don’t see the problem.”

  “There aren’t any dragons,” I said. “And where are the staff?”

  “The dragons are on the back side of the property,” Shane—Merrick—said from the other side of the room. “They’re having a meeting.”

  “What kind of meeting?” I turned to my old friend.

  Mattie was at his side, and she had her fingers to her lips as she nervously bit away at her fingernails.

  “I don’t know,” he shrugged. “You just asked where they were, and I told you.”

  “You know where all the animals are?” I asked.

  He nodded. “I do.”

  “What else do you sense?” I pushed.

  He looked at me like he wanted to say something more—like an apology—and I shook my head.

  Now wasn’t the time.

  I wasn’t sure when that time would come, but right now wasn’t going to be it.

  Hell, next year might be too soon, too.

  He chose to let me have that play, and closed his eyes, concentrating.

  I remembered when he used to do this when we were younger.

  I’d thought it was just him being a daydreamer. But low and behold, he’d had these abilities for almost as long as we’d been friends and had kept them a secret from Mattie and me all this time.

  And I found that it really irritated me.

  I would’ve never broken his confidence had he shared his news with me.

  Yet, he’d chosen to keep it to himself, deftly keeping Mattie and I out of that part of his life almost as easily as he’d kept his real identity at bay.

  “Forest creatures. Outside the perimeter. Nothing in here,” he murmured.

  “In here, where?” I interrupted him.

  “There’s a perimeter that rings the sanctuary about five miles out. It keeps all the baddies away,” Brooklyn explained, watching us with worried eyes.

  I turned my attention back to Shane—Merrick.

  Fuck, I’d never be able to get his name right in my head.

  Not when he’d been ‘Shane’ to me for so long.

  “What does it keep out?” I asked just as the room started to shake.

  “Not dragons,” Skylar said as she walked to the window and looked out. “Not dragons.”

  I walked with her to the window, and my breath stalled in my lungs.

  “Oh, shit.”

  Dragons of all shapes and colors started to file in over the sanctuary.

  One. Two. Ten.

  And they weren’t any I’d ever seen before.

  “Merrick,” someone said from behind me. “What’s going on?”

  I turned to find Merrick behind me, his eyes closed, and his body strung tight like a bow.

  “They’re not…right.”

  “What do you mean they’re not right?” I asked in alarm.

  “He means that they’re not right…like me,” Mac
y whispered.

  “What…,” Blythe started, but her words were quickly cut off by a startled scream that fell from her throat. “My babies.”

  Then she was running, and we were all running behind her.

  Chapter 24

  Put your laundry away or I’ll punch you in the face.

  -Note from Wink to Ian

  Ian

  “They’re not here,” Farrow said.

  I looked around, staring at the empty cages.

  They looked old and rickety, and not something that would’ve held any of our dragons.

  What do you think? I asked Mace.

  I think that you need to go home, he said easily.

  Why?

  Because all is not right, he replied.

  What’s not right? I pushed.

  Something.

  Shaking my head, I looked over to Keifer. “I need to go.”

  “Why?” He looked at me incredulously. “You have plenty of time to go do your thing.” He pointed to all the things I could go read. “You leave, we have nothing.”

  I shook my head.

  “Mace is telling me to leave. I trust his instincts,” I informed him.

  Keifer looked at Mace who hadn’t gotten any closer than the copse of trees that outlined the edge of the property.

  “Fine. We come back after we make sure everything’s all right,” he commanded.

  I nodded my head, and patted the side of Mace’s neck. “Home, big guy.”

  Mace lifted up with a rush of wind, the force of the move pushing me down into his back as he moved faster and faster away from the place we’d just been.

  You have more. I told him.

  I do not wish to discuss it.

  He’d found her DNA. He’d realized that she was there. Was being the operative word.

  New DNA looked different from old DNA. Fresher, more vibrant.

  I knew he knew with everything I had. But something was keeping him away. Something was telling him to turn back, and I trusted Mace more than I trusted anyone other than Wink. If he said we had to leave, we had to leave. There were no other options.

  It was when we were five minutes out from the sanctuary that something in the air changed around us.

  Something sinister felt like it was on the horizon, and I knew that whatever it was was going to be bad.

  And my fears were realized moments later when one second we were flying through the air as usual, and the next we were plummeting to the ground at an alarming rate of speed.

  I, like most other dragon riders, was taught when we initially started riding that the first thing we do in case of an emergency is get to our dragon’s feet.

  So, I climbed down his neck, and jumped.

  He caught me in midair, almost like we’d practiced a million times before, even though we’d never once done it, and he gripped me tightly in his claw.

  When we were going through training with Keifer, he’d taught us what his father had taught him. Dragons were large beasts that used their entire bodies to get airborne. However, when a rider was on a dragon’s back, they didn’t use the full force they were capable of so as not to hurt the rider with the wind shear and drag of their wings rising and falling.

  So during an emergency with the rider secured in the dragon’s feet, they were able to use all the power of their bodies to gain maximum speed, which was the reason riders were trained to move.

  My heart was sprinting at a million miles an hour, and I watched as the ground came at us, faster and faster.

  Just when I thought we were going to hit hard, something changed in the air, and suddenly Mace was able to fly once again.

  I looked over just in time to see Jean Luc pitch over sideways.

  “Catch him!” I bellowed, my stomach dropping when he started to go down in what felt like slow motion.

  Keifer was one step ahead of me, reaching out with one long arm and latching onto Jean Luc’s unconscious form before he could make it to the ground.

  While Keifer was busy catching Jean Luc, Mace was working at pulling us back up, cloaking us both with invisibility that would shield us from everyone else, even the other dragon riders.

  My eyes went around to the others, and one by one, each pair of dragons and riders disappeared behind their own cloaks of invisibility.

  Keifer was the final visible rider to blink out, and with one last look behind him, he and his dragon were cloaked.

  My eyes returned to the horizon, and I swallowed.

  “I think we need to drop down,” I pointed at Mace. “Just in case that fucker uses those powers again.”

  I obviously wasn’t the only one with that thought, because the moment we touched down on the ground, I heard the others talking.

  “It’s another skin walker,” Jean Luc assured us. “There’s nobody else on earth who has those kinds of powers.”

  I ignored them, continuing the walk to the sanctuary without waiting to see if they followed.

  I’d just stepped over the line that denoted the boundary of Dragon Rider territory when I felt it.

  Something was not right.

  What’s going on? I sent my thoughts to Wink.

  I don’t know, Wink growled. I just know that something is happening. Something. There are other dragons everywhere, but they’re not doing anything but flying around.

  I made my way to the clearing ahead, and froze when I saw the dragons flying over the sanctuary. There were at least two hundred of them.

  At least.

  “He can’t control them,” Nikolai murmured at my side. “The way the shield works is that all powers can’t be used inside the boundary lines. Well…ours can. But all outsiders can’t. I worked everyone’s blood into the shield. He might’ve made it through, but there’s literally nothing he can do to us, power wise, besides be in here and do any physical damage he’s capable of. Look.”

  He gestured to the boundary line I could see, and I watched as one of the dragons who’d been unfortunate to re-cross the line was struggling to get back into the boundary.

  But the dragon was losing.

  That also might have to do with the fact that the dragon was emaciated to the point that she looked like skin and bones. As if she’d not eaten in a very, very long time.

  Though that’s what all of them looked like in some way, shape, or form.

  The silver dragon, the one struggling to get back across, was worse than the rest, though.

  I’d just decided to step over to see what I could do when Mace shot out of the cover of the trees, all signs of cloaking gone, and missiled toward the dragon that was struggling.

  And it was then that it occurred to me.

  That dragon was the other half of his bonded pair, his mate.

  Daya.

  Mace was only inches away from her when a sudden push had Daya slipping even further over the line.

  And that’s when I shouted.

  “Help her!”

  Dragons from all over dropped down from the sky, and I looked over in awe.

  But they all weren’t moving just to save her.

  Some were circling the man attempting to recapture her, preparing to move in for the kill.

  The problem was that when they got too close to the line, they started getting sucked in, too.

  Smart enough to know that I couldn’t go through the throng of dragons, I started running, being careful to hug the edges of the sanctuary boundaries as I went.

  The moment I got close enough, Robert, the man from the park who’d tried to take me down, only days prior, was standing there with an intense look of concentration on his face.

  And dead human bodies littered all around him.

  I watched in horror as he plunged his dagger down into the heart of another human sacrifice, killing her instantly.

  Her life blood began to ooze from her and pool around them just as he uttered another word.

  A word of power. />
  “Come!” he bellowed.

  I hit him like a ton of bricks, taking him out like a linebacker sacking a quarterback.

  One second he was standing, and the next he was on the ground, my fist pounding into his face.

  Robert tried to fight back, but the rage I was feeling through my bond with Mace, combined with my own, had me spiraling out of control.

  What did snap me back to myself was the knife through my left thigh.

  Pain burst through my body as the realization that I wasn’t paying enough attention poured through me.

  But my reaction time, as well as recovery time, was a whole lot better than most.

  That was a plus to being beaten a lot by various foster parents and street thugs when I was a kid into my teenage years.

  Before he could think to remove the dagger from my leg, I yanked it out, and thrust it down into his heart like he’d done to the young woman just moments before.

  His eyes widened, and his mouth started to part at the edges.

  “I’m one of many,” Robert coughed. “You may have killed me, but you won’t be left alone. Not anymore.” Robert’s grin was filled with blood as his eyes started to go distant.

  I looked at Keifer, who appeared at my side.

  Keifer had heard Robert’s words.

  “Don’t.” Keifer shook his head.

  I froze with my hand on his chest.

  “If I heal him, we could get more out of him,” I informed him.

  Keifer cleared his throat.

  “Jean Luc shared his fears with me. I think we know what’s going on.” Keifer’s eyes went to the bodies lying in the grass all around us. “What a fucking mess.”

  “I think everyone needs to be enlightened to just what in the hell is going on,” Derek growled from beside us.

  I concurred.

  “I agree,” I stood up, my leg screaming.

  I’m coming

  No.

  Yes.

  I sighed as I saw her start our way, weaving in between dragons who’d collapsed onto the ground in exhaustion the moment they were free of whatever Robert had done to them.

  “Let me see,” she ordered, snapping her fingers at me the moment she was within a couple of feet.

  “What, do you want me to drop my pants in front of everyone?” I drawled.

  She turned her glare at me.