by Ruby Dixon
I bolt upright in my bed, tossing the book to the floor. My heart thuds heavily, and I glance out the dirty window in my room. Something gold passes in front of the window, and I fling myself to the floor, panting in fear.
They wanted a dragon, and they got one.
Shit.
Weirdly enough, I don’t hear the guns going off. I guess it doesn’t matter—dragons can’t be hurt by guns. I pick up my knife, just because it feels terrifying to not have a weapon at hand, and move back toward the window.
Something heavy slams into the wall outside, and the building shakes. I peer out, trying to see, and in the next moment, I see a clawed foreleg move along the wall, and then a giant head descends. The dragon’s on the side of the building, and he’s trying to look inside.
Ten bucks says I know who he’s looking for.
Fuck fuck fuck. I fling aside the chair blockading my door and then race into the hall. The dragon lets out a roar, and the building shakes once more. Fear makes me sweat, and I wipe my palms on my jeans, desperately trying to think. Where can I hide? I head down the hall, trying to find the most secure place I can find. I know Sasha’s dragon didn’t hurt her, but I have no guarantees this one won’t hurt me.
I turn the corner and one of the nomads is there, waiting. It’s a guy named Tom, who’s got one missing tooth and one gold one and a scruffy beard. He lifts his chin at the sight of me and waves me forward. “Come on.”
Relieved that he’s going to show me to safety, I follow him…until I realize he’s trying to go down the stairwell. “We can’t go down—”
“We can, because you’re going to say hello to our dragon friend. Azar’s orders.”
“Wait, what? No! I—”
Tom pats his gun and gives me a stern look.
Fuck. “Why is everyone here so goddamn crazy?” I growl, and when Tom gives my shoulder a shove, I head down the stairs.
Death by dragon or death by gun. It’s not much of a choice. I grit my teeth, resisting the urge to run like a chicken when I push out the double doors of the hotel and into the sunlight. The dragon’s taken to the skies again, and I see his silhouette against the clouds as I shield my eyes and glance up.
“There she is. Bring her out here,” calls a familiar voice. Fucking Boyd. Why is it my brother who’s constantly trying to hand me off to someone dangerous? He’s like a plague on my ass. I’ve got to get away from him and this place. Not “someday.” Soon. Like tonight. It doesn’t matter if they come after me—if they’re sending dragons in my direction, I’m not going to live long anyhow.
Provided I live past this at all.
But the dragon isn’t attacking. It’s the weirdest thing. He circles overhead, and I’m shaking as I step forward into the courtyard. Boyd and the others have on helmets and flak jackets, guns at hand, but they’re not being attacked, either.
The dragon circles overhead again.
“She smells like perfume,” someone comments, nudging me forward another few steps with the end of his gun. “Anyone got a washcloth?”
Boyd holds a water bottle out to me. “Use your shirt and clean off, Emma. We can’t let that dragon get away.”
Throat dry, I take the bottle and stare at my brother. “Boyd…”
“Just do it,” he barks, nervousness in his tone as he glances up at the wheeling dragon overhead. “We don’t know how long he’s gonna be in a good mood for.”
He’s not wrong. I feel trapped. Angry, frightened, and miserable, I strip my shirt off, glad I wore my ugliest, most serviceable bra today. I soak the shirt in water and then scrub at my skin with it, glaring at my brother as I do so. I clean my neck, under my arms, and then—because hey, no humiliation is quite complete without a good public cooter scrub—between my thighs. Then I fling my shirt down on the ground with a wet slap. “Happy?”
“We’ll see,” Boyd says, backing off. “Might wanna crouch near the car so he can’t pick you up.”
Pick me up?! Motherfuck. I scramble over to a stalled car in the parking lot and huddle near the front tire, cursing my brother under my breath. Fuck Boyd. Fuck these nomads, and fuck Azar for thinking this is a good plan. I’m utterly terrified, and I’m pretty sure that I’m going to run away screaming if the dragon dives again.
“He’s coming in,” someone calls out. “Be ready!”
The men scatter, and I bite back my whimper of distress, closing my eyes. I wait for the end.
There’s a heavy thud on the asphalt, and then silence. I squeeze one eye open and I see a man crouching, all golden skin and long, windswept hair. He’s golden all over, with small horns on his head and spikes that jut out from his elbows and down his arms. As he straightens, I realize he’s naked. His gaze flicks on the others briefly before he heads toward me. His eyes are whirling the gold-on-gold that I remember seeing before.
He’s looking at me like Dakh did Sasha.
Like he wants to fuck me and eat me at the same time.
The dragon-man looks so wild and feral and untamed that I’m fascinated despite my terror. I don’t dare to move a muscle as he approaches, and he reaches down and caresses my cheek, his fingers burning. Oh. I stand, looking him in the eye.
He studies me with fascination, his strong, handsome features devouring me with a look. His nostrils flare as he takes in my scent, and then he touches his chest. “Zohr.”
The word is guttural and thick, and I know it must be his name. When he touches my chest, I blurt my own name out. “Emma.”
“Em-mah,” he murmurs, saying it like a caress.
Oh. No one’s ever said my name like that before. I don’t know what to think. Fascinated, I keep staring at him. I think he feels the same way I do, because he keeps studying me, gaze moving over me as if I’m the most interesting thing he’s ever seen and he doesn’t know what to make of it.
But then his expression shutters, and a look of anger flashes over his face. He crouches low, a scarce moment before three nomads tackle him.
I stumble backwards, shocked. Someone grabs me by the neck, jerking me off my feet, and I choke, flailing. “Got her,” snarls Tom. I watch, struggling to breathe, as he points at the dragon. “If you want her to live, you’ll stop fighting.”
I want to tell him that the dragon won’t understand English. That they need a mental connection to talk to people. But Zohr’s gaze darts to me, watching me claw at Tom’s too-tight arm.
And he bows his head.
Tom’s arm loosens enough that I can breathe, and I gasp, slapping at him with my hands. “Good show,” he murmurs in my ear, and I’m forced to watch as Zohr is trussed up in a collar and something that looks like a spiked vest, but the spikes are turned inward. I can guess what that’s for—if he transforms again, those wicked looking daggers are going to slice his wings to ribbons. He’s trapped in human form. Manacles are placed around his arms and legs, and someone approaches—Old Jerry, the group’s “doctor”—and shoves a syringe in his neck.
As I watch, Zohr’s eyes blaze with anger, and then he slumps to the ground, unconscious.
Everyone’s silent. We’ve done the impossible. We’ve captured a dragon.
No, I think. I’m not part of this crew. I had no choice in the matter. I grab a handful of Tom’s arm hair and twist, hard.
“Ow! Fucking bitch!”
He releases me, and I stumble forward, holding my bruised throat. “You…goddamn…asshole,” I cough. “What the fuck was that?”
“Shut up,” Boyd tells me, coming to my side and grabbing my arm, hauling me to my feet. “It’s all just part of the plan, Emma. Ain’t no harm.”
“You weren’t the one being choked!” I protest.
“If she fuckin’ tries that shit again I’m gonna put a bullet in her head,” Tom says, rubbing his arm. “The dragon can fuck her dead body for all I give a shit.”
“No one is going to touch the female,” a calm, quiet voice says, cutting through the argument. Everyone goes silent at Azar’s words. I look up at th
e creepy, too-pale leader and watch as his nostrils flare, just a bit. Just like Zohr’s did. His gaze focuses on me for a moment, and then he says, “We will have need of her to keep the dragon in line. You harm one hair on her, you answer to me.”
I…guess I’m safe. For now.
But I’m also more trapped than ever. I’m not leaving that poor dragon in these people’s hands. I think of the way he looked at me. Like he’d just seen the best thing in his life. Like he’d finally found a friend. There was joy there. Joy and hope and so much love that it makes my throat tighten just to think about it.
And I was the reason he got captured.
I can’t leave him. I’d leave Boyd in a heartbeat. But Zohr? It’s my fault he’s been taken and I’ve got to figure out how to free him. But how?
I don’t get a chance to help Zohr right away, though. Things get crazy around camp for a while. One of the nomads—some guy low in the pecking order named Tate—helps them kidnap someone nearby, and I’m shocked to see it’s my friend Sasha. It seems that Azar’s interested in getting more than one dragon, and Tate somehow knew that she had one.
It takes a few days, but I help Sasha escape. Even as we’re breaking out, the dragons are breaking in. Sasha’s dragon and one of his friends raid Azar’s headquarters and in one blood-filled night, kill about half of the nomads…including Boyd. I’m too shocked to grieve.
Sasha offers to take me with her. She promises to keep me safe.
I want to go, more than anything.
But Zohr’s stuck, and I won’t abandon him. It’s still my fault that he’s here. I’ve been in bad situations before, and I know I can worm my way out. It feels wrong to abandon him.
So I stay…but I hope I’m not making a mistake.
4
EMMA
“Hold still,” a gruff voice tells me. “Yer squirming.”
“Sorry,” I say meekly, and cringe when Old Jerry pushes the needle through my scalp again. Glad I can’t see what he’s doing. I force myself to sit still in the chair, eyes squeezed shut as I try to ignore the fact that the pain’s getting worse as it gets “fixed.” “Fucking hurts, that’s all.”
“Next time, don’t get taken hostage,” Old Jerry tells me in a curt voice.
Har de har har.
He tugs on my head, and then I hear a snip. A moment later, a thick bandage is wrapped around my head. “There you go. Good as new.” He laughs at his own joke.
“Thanks, Jer.” I get to my feet, wincing. My head feels all tight from the stitches, and it throbs like the dickens. I guess I shouldn’t have told Sasha to hit me in the head quite so hard, but at least it’s believable. Tom was the one who found me on the roof, my head split open and bleeding. In a way, I guess it’s a good thing that Sasha nearly brained me within an inch of my life. No one’s questioned my loyalty, especially not since I’ve spent the entire night weeping over my injuries…and the loss of my douchebag brother.
I hated Boyd, but Boyd was safety, in a sense. He was family. He was the devil I knew, and while he was a piece of shit and a half, I could handle him. I knew what to expect when he was up to his tricks, and he’d keep me relatively safe as long as it suited his needs.
Now I’ve got no one. Nothing.
I don’t even have my friend Sasha. I had the chance to leave with her and the dragons and I stayed, even though I hate that I did.
It wasn’t a choice, though. Not really. Sometimes you have to do what you feel is right rather than what’s safest.
I can’t think about that right now, though. I can dwell on that stuff later. Time to pay up. I know how the wheels are greased in a nomad band, even with Boyd gone, so I pull a couple of old granola bars out of my bag and offer them to Old Jerry as payment for the stitches. His weathered face lights up, and he beams at me, his smile full of gaps. Jerry’s the nicest one in this gang of nomads. He’s still a bloodthirsty killer, but sometimes there’s a hint of a fatherly attitude with him. Sometimes.
He snatches up the bars and gestures at my head. “You tear those stitches open, you come see me again.”
“I will. For now, I guess I’d better get back to work, though.” I pat the bandages on my head, feeling a bit like Frankenstein. At least being gross will help me avoid unwanted attention. I sling my pack over my shoulder, then head back out the door of the little building Jerry’s set up as his infirmary.
The moment I step outside, a wave of smoke hits me in the face. I cough, but that sends a shockwave of pain through my aching head, so I wince and try to avoid breathing in the sooty air. Even though it’s been hours and hours since the dragons left our camp, the place is still in ruins. Everything’s chaos. Buildings are smoking, others nearby completely destroyed. When Dakh and his buddy came to rescue Sasha, they didn’t play around. This end of the old city is trashed. There’s ash on everything, and I see a dead body facedown nearby. Actually, there are dead people everywhere, and I heard from Old Jerry that Azar lost about half of his men in last night’s raid. That’s bad for me, because he’s going to be on a real rampage over the next while, and since I’m his personal chef, it’s not like I can hide.
But I’m glad Sasha and Dakh got away safe and sound.
I won’t think about Boyd or the fact that he’s dead. I’ll just start crying again and that piece of shit isn’t worth the tears. I don’t even miss him. Not really. I think I’m just…sad for the past. He was my last connection to it. Boyd was the only member of my family who survived the Rift. He was the only person from before things turned to shit.
Now I’m truly alone.
I can’t think about that, though. If I do, I’ll lose it, and an emotional Emma is a dead Emma.
Instead, I study the smoking surroundings. The old hotel is mostly intact, but one side of the building is charred. Several of the windows have broken and even more of them are covered in soot, but overall, it could be worse. A few other buildings are still on fire, and a few of the nomads rush around, trying to save what they can or moving their motorbikes out of the way of the flames. Azar stands near them, looking like a displeased ghost. I shudder at the sight of him and slink away to the hotel entrance.
Last thing I want is Azar’s attention right now. He’s sure to be in an ultra-pissy mood, and he scares me enough when he’s normal. I don’t want to think about him when he’s furious. I’ve never seen him raise a hand to anyone, but he scares the shit out of me just the same. There’s something downright unnatural about him, no matter how hard he tries to hide it.
It’s his dragon side. And if he’s anything like Zohr, or Dakh, I don’t want to get on his bad side.
I push through the double doors of the hotel and instead of heading to the kitchens, I turn down a side hall, toward the area that was once an indoor pool. I think about dragons. And I think about Zohr. I think about how trapped we are. Sasha’s words of warning are ringing in my ears.
Emma, there’s only one way to make a dragon un-crazy. You know how.
Oh boy. I’m either the biggest idiot in the world or…well, no, just the biggest idiot. There’s no “or” out there. Of course I know how to make a dragon un-crazy. I’m not keen on the thought, but…
But I have to do what I feel is right, and none of this feels right.
Sasha hinted to me a while ago that she and Dakh didn’t have a real “bond” until she became his girlfriend. She hid the whole “mental” communication thing for as long as she could, because she wasn’t sure if she could trust me. And that mental bond, she let me know, only happened after they happened. I can put two and two together. Somehow, the dragon has to claim her sexually in order to link with her mind.
That’s how you make a dragon un-crazy.
Just thinking about it freaks me out, but I’m low on options.
I push my way into the indoor pool area. The room here is huge, and because air conditioning is a thing of the past, it’s also muggy as shit. The windows are filthy but mostly intact, and the room is wide open and spacious. The
pool itself is empty, like a giant concrete bathtub. In the center of the pool, chained to the bottom, is a man.
Zohr.
Just looking at him, you know he’s definitely not human. His eyes are currently as black as night, and the bared teeth he’s flashing are sharp fangs. His entire hulking body is covered in the same scaly pattern that Dakh, Sasha’s dragon, has. His arms and legs are spread-eagled, held down by cuffs. He can barely move his body, and I know he has to be in agony. The bindings are designed so that he can’t change forms, of course. The moment he tries to change back, he’ll decapitate himself or shred his wings—or both. Azar’s taking no chances. The terrible-looking contraption around his head and neck looks excessively painful, and I don’t like to think about the spiky things pressing into his golden back. I doubt he can get comfortable, and it makes my heart ache.
I caused this.
He smelled me and came looking for me. It’s my fault he’s here. I’m responsible.
As if he can sense my thoughts, Zohr’s gaze locks on mine. I close my eyes when he begins to struggle against his bonds, because it makes me hurt.
One thing at a time.
Nearby, one of the nomads is sitting in a folding chair. He’s got his assault rifle cradled in his arms and gives me a weird look when I come in. Kurt’s guarding the dragon-man’s “prison.”
I enter the pool room and gesture behind me, as if this is no big deal. “Hey, Kurt. Azar needs more volunteers to put out a fire in one of the outbuildings. Told me to come in here and watch the dragon since I’m no good right now.” I gesture at my massive head bandages and grimace. Guess this knock on the head is a great cover story.
