Scorched s-1

by Mari Mancusi

  She realized Darius was still talking. “But purchase these now and you’ll get first pick of the next hatchlings. The ones born from our queen.” He gestured to Emmy, who was clawing at the inside of her cage, looking terrified. “Through her, the line will grow and strengthen, providing you with a never-ending supply of the strongest, most powerful, fire-breathing beasts the world has ever seen.”

  Emmy let out a horrified squawk, now thrashing wildly in her cage. Trin tried to send soothing thoughts to calm her down.

  I won’t let them do that to you, she promised. No matter what. Though, she had to admit, that was easier said than done. She turned back to the Dracken and his customer.

  “So do we have a deal?” Darius asked, clamping his hand on the man’s shoulder. “I must have your commitment now. We have many potential buyers waiting in the wings. It would be a shame to allow your enemy to buy your dragons and use them against you.”

  Don’t let him! Emmy begged. Stop him now!

  The man opened his mouth to speak. Trin gulped down her fear. In a moment, the deal would be done. It would be too late to do anything to stop it.

  You don’t want any dragons, she pushed, on sudden impulse. She didn’t know if it would work, but it was worth a try—if only to calm Emmy down. You want to leave. Now.

  She opened her eyes, focusing back on the man in question, whose face had clouded with sudden hesitation. Trinity grinned, realizing she’d managed to reach him in time. Totally worth the headache now stabbing at her skull.

  Sorry, Darius. No sale.

  “My apologies,” he said to the Dracken leader in a voice wrought with confusion. “I don’t think I want any dragons. In fact, I’d like to leave. Now.”

  Trinity waited, breath firmly lodged in her throat, as a shadow crossed Darius’s smooth face. For a moment he did nothing, said nothing, only stared at the man with growing realization. Then, without warning, he reached into his suit pocket and pulled out a gun, shooting the man square in the chest. The foreigner fell to the ground. Dead.

  “You can come out now,” Darius announced, scanning the room. When Trin didn’t move, the Dracken leader sighed deeply, then marched over to her hiding spot, grabbing her by the neck and yanking her out into the open. She yelped as his jagged nails dug into her skin.

  “Very clever,” he sneered. “Though very stupid. Had you kept quiet I might not have known you were here.” He tsked. “Very stupid indeed.”

  “Why would you do this?” she demanded, fighting to free herself but to no avail. “Why would you try to sell dragons to that guy? You’re going to end up destroying the world all over again!”

  “Actually,” he corrected, “we’re going to save it.”

  “What?” She stopped fighting, staring at him, confusion mixing with fury. “What are you talking about? You put dragons in the hands of these people—who want to wipe each other out—what do you think is going to happen?”

  “I think the fire will burn and the world will be purged,” he replied simply. When she gave him an uncomprehending look, he continued, “Don’t you see, Trinity? This is why we came back here in the first place—the Dracken have been chosen to do God’s work.”

  “What are you talking about?” she stammered, not sure she really wanted to hear.

  “It’s simple, really. Just as once upon a time the Almighty washed away the world’s evil by sending a mighty flood, so now we have a chance to cleanse it again—this time with flame.” He looked down at her, his eyes shining. “God’s word is clear. Only through destruction can we have any hope of salvation.”

  Holy crap. She stared at him, heart beating wildly in her chest. He was totally looney tunes! Could this really be the true reason the Dracken had come back in time? On some kind of insane religious crusade?

  “You can’t be serious!” she cried, though the look in his eyes told her otherwise. “You’d really burn down the world on purpose? Let millions of innocent people die?”

  “Innocent?” Darius repeated incredulously, for the first time losing his cool. “Innocent? Please. Have you watched your local newscasts lately? Spent any time on your Internet?” He loomed over her, his eyes darkening to angry thunderclouds. “Not a day goes by when there isn’t a bombing or a shooting or a kidnapping. Rape, torture, or war. Child abuse, drug abuse, not to mention a complete disregard for the environment.” He shook his head. “Just like Sodom and Gomorrah, the world has become a filthy, corrupt place—far beyond the point of redemption. And it only gets worse in the future.” He drew in a breath, as if trying to regain control of his emotions. “We are left with no choice but to raze the whole thing to the ground and then rise again, like a phoenix from the ashes. Except this time,” he added with a triumphant smile, “it will be on the backs of dragons.”

  Trinity shrank back, unable to speak as the enormity of what he was saying sunk in. Sure the world had its problems, she wanted to protest, but there were good people here too. People worth saving.

  “We never lied to you, Trinity,” Darius continued. “We told you from the very start we planned to use dragons to save the world. And that’s what we’re doing: saving the world from itself.” His gaze bore down on her. “You should feel honored,” he added. “You have been chosen out of millions as a pure soul, worthy of becoming part of our brave new world. You and the other Potentials—our own little Noah’s Ark.”

  Trin nodded grimly, everything sliding into a sick sort of place. That’s why they’d gathered representatives from every country. Just like Noah saved each species of animal. Her stomach churned and she suddenly knew what she had to do.

  Sorry, Emmy. But we have no choice.

  “You’re sick!” she declared, drawing up all the courage she had left inside of her. “Not to mention totally insane. And if you think for one second I’m going to play your little reindeer games, you’ve got another thing coming.” She crossed her arms over her chest and looked up at him with defiant eyes. “You might as well go ahead and do it. Kill me now and get it over with. Because I’ll never join you—no matter what you try to do.”

  She held her breath, her heart pounding in her chest, praying the Dracken leader would take the bait.

  Sacrifice one to save the world. Turned out it’d been her mission all along.

  Darius looked at her for a moment, then he burst out laughing. “Do you think I’m stupid?” he demanded. “Do you think I don’t know that Emmy’s life force is entwined with your own? If I kill you, she dies. Unless…” His lips curled into a smirk. “I de-bond you and bring in the backup.” He nodded slowly, as if coming to some sort of conclusion. “Yes, I think that’s the only thing to do at this point, seeing as you’re so unwilling to see the light.”

  Trinity froze. “Backup?” she repeated doubtfully.

  “My dear girl, do you think we came all this way without a plan B?” Darius asked in an incredulous voice. “Of course we kept a spare around, in case this kind of thing was to happen.”

  “You’re telling me you have a spare Fire Kissed just sitting on ice?” she shot back. The idea was ridiculous. But something in Darius’s eyes told her it was also somehow unfortunately true.

  “But of course. There’s usually one in every generation. And it can often be hereditary.”

  She gasped, what he was saying suddenly making perfect sense. “You mean my grandpa!” she breathed. Thank goodness Connor had him under his protection. She prayed he was far, far away and out of the Dracken’s reach.

  Darius raised an eyebrow. “No, no,” he corrected, giving her a cold, hard look. “I mean your mother.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Trinity stared at him, her mind reeling at his pronouncement. “That’s impossible,” she protested. “My mother is dead.”

  “On the contrary,” Darius replied smoothly, “she’s very much alive. Would you like to see for yourself?”

  Trin nodded dumbly—what else could she do? She tried to tell herself it was some kind of sick joke, a trick
Darius had concocted to screw with her head. Because her mother couldn’t be alive. Trinity had seen her body, her head blown to smithereens. Her beloved bunny slippers still on her feet. The emerald ring still on her finger.

  She twisted the ring in question almost violently, her stomach flip-flopping madly, this close to throwing up. How could she be alive? There was no way. No way on Earth.

  Except, what if there was?

  Giving one last longing look at Emmy, still stuck in her cage, she allowed Darius to escort her back to the staircase with the three hallways, this time taking the one to the left. The only one she hadn’t been down. She followed the light from the Dracken leader’s industrial-strength flashlight, her pulse pounding out her fear as she forced her feet to step, one foot in front of the other, down the featureless hallway. She wondered dully if she should try to escape. To overpower him and make a run for the elevator where Connor was probably still waiting. But Emmy was locked in a cage, and now more than ever, she couldn’t leave her behind. Not now that she knew what the Dracken were planning to do with her. She couldn’t even dare risk sending a message to Connor to let him know what had happened for fear Darius would intercept it and learn of his location.

  And then there was her mother. If she was really here somehow—really alive—there was no way Trin could just walk away. Not without knowing for sure.

  They stopped in front of a door at the far end of the hall—a simple door made of wood with no fancy locks to keep it secured or closed. Darius wrapped his hands around the knob and pulled it open, gesturing for Trinity to enter. She did, stepping into a small bedroom.

  It was stark and barren, with none of the luxuries of her own room upstairs. A plain twin bed, lodged up against one wall, fitted with crisp, hospital-cornered sheets. A washbasin and toilet sat against the other, simple but recently cleaned.

  But it was the back of the room that pulled Trinity’s gaze. A lone figure, silhouetted in the darkness, rocking slowly in a small wooden chair. From here, Trin could just make out the woman’s long, stringy black hair and emaciated frame, a dingy white tunic dress hanging from her shrunken flesh.

  She stepped closer to get a better look, her mind a crazy tangle of hope and fear. She wanted it to be a lie but she wanted it to be the truth all the same. As she approached, Darius flipped a switch and light flooded the room.

  Trin gasped, staggering from the shock. It couldn’t be.

  But it was.

  “Mom?” she whispered

  The woman in the chair—her mother—did not respond. Instead, she continued to rock herself slowly, as her vacant black eyes stared into space. Trinity ran to her, dropping to her knees, peering up at her, waving her hands in her face. But it did no good. Her mother did not respond.

  “What’s wrong with her?” she demanded, turning back to Darius. He shrugged.

  “She’s in the Nether,” he said simply. “It’s where she prefers to spend all her time these days. It’s more pleasant in there, I suppose, than her everyday reality.”

  Looking around the room, Trinity couldn’t blame her. Slowly she rose to her feet. “She was dead,” she protested weakly. “I saw her body. And the coroner confirmed it. Fingerprints, DNA. It all checked out.”

  “All bought and paid for,” Darius replied. “You’d be amazed at how little the coroner charged us for the false identification. He had no idea how valuable she really was.”

  “But why?” she asked, staring down at her mother, feeling out of body and disconcerted. The last two years she’d had to deal with the horror of walking in on her mother’s corpse. Only to find out now that it belonged to someone else entirely. “I mean, why go through all that trouble to fake her death?”

  “The space-time continuum is a fragile thing,” Darius explained. “Your mother did die the first time around—she accidentally mixed up some pills and took too many of the wrong kind—the day after spending Christmas with you. Because of this, you were sent to live with your grandfather, where you bonded with the egg. We still needed that to happen, but we wanted to save your mother’s life this time around, just in case. So we went in a day early and replaced her with one our own—a Dracken woman who didn’t survive the trip back in time. We simply dressed her in your mother’s clothes and used her as a stand-in. Thus, the important threads of the timeline remained largely unchanged. We did unfortunately have to change the cause of death, seeing as keeping her face intact would have given the game away. But with her history of mental illness, it didn’t seem too farfetched to have her blow her head off.”

  And Trinity had believed it. Believed her mother to be capable of such a horrible thing without even questioning it. What kind of daughter did that make her?

  “Oh, Mom,” she whispered, reaching down to embrace the woman who’d given her life. She was cold and stiff, but Trinity clung to her all the same as tears streamed down her cheeks. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. I didn’t have any idea!”

  She thought back to all the resentment she’d allowed to build up inside of her over the last two years. Believing her mother had broken her promise. Had abandoned her on Christmas Eve forever.

  But that had never been her mother’s intention. The Dracken had stolen the last day of her life. Ripping her from reality and imprisoning her all alone, in a dark lonely room—as backup in case her daughter didn’t meet their expectations. It was all too horrible, too much to even contemplate, and she felt guilty as hell for every bad thought she’d had over the last two years.

  “I’m so sorry, Mom,” she babbled, burying her face in her mother’s lap, sobbing uncontrollably. “I’m so sorry I ever accused you of letting me down.”

  But her mother did not answer. And soon the guards arrived to take Trinity away.

  PART 5:

  BURN

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Caleb trudged down the mall corridor toward his bedroom, his heart heavy and his legs feeling like lead. He’d been a total duffer to believe his brother. He should’ve known better than to leave the headquarters on a wild chase for a dead man. But the idea—the slightest possibility—that Trin’s grandfather wasn’t actually dead was too much to pass up. If he’d been able to find him, to bring him back, he would have finally proven himself worthy of her.

  Instead, he had only proven himself pathetic.

  He was so wrapped up in his own misery, he scarcely noticed at first all the shouting and banging coming toward him in the opposite direction. Finally it registered and he looked up to see what all the commotion was about. To his shock, his eyes fell upon none other than Trinity herself, being dragged roughly by two Dracken guards. She was struggling and fighting with all of her might but they refused to let her go. Furious, Caleb stepped into their path.

  “Have you gone mad?” he demanded. “How dare you treat her like this? She’s the Fire Kissed.”

  “Not anymore,” the first guard said with a smirk. “Now step aside and let us through.”

  “No. You release her now. Or Darius will hear of this.”

  “Darius was the one who ordered it,” jeered the second guard. “Go talk to him if you have a problem with it.”

  His heart stuttered. “He wouldn’t do that!” he protested. But something in their mannerisms told him he was wrong. He shot an anguished look at Trinity, taking in her bruised eyes and scraped face.

  “Trin!” he cried, rushing to her, not caring what the guards would do. Before he could reach her, the first guard shoved him back with the butt of his gun, sending him sprawling into a wall. For a moment he was too dazed to move, the wind knocked from his lungs. The guards regarded him with satisfaction before continuing their march down the hall.

  “Trin!” he repeated, desperate and afraid. Ignoring the pain in his head, he dashed forward again, grabbing her this time before they could stop him, squeezing her hand with all he had. Send! he begged her. Send it all!

  And so she did.

  Caleb staggered, dropping her hand and hitting the groun
d hard, stunned and dazed by what she’d sent him. Their touch had only lasted a second, but it had been enough—enough to see the mutated dragons. The seedy arms dealer looking over the merchandise. Darius—his beloved mentor, Darius!—informing her of the Dracken’s true intentions.

  “No,” Caleb whispered, rocking on his knees. “It can’t be.”

  Darius had saved him. He’d rescued him from a life of crime and impending imprisonment. He’d promised Caleb a chance to become a hero. A chance to save the world. And yet all along, he’d been plotting to destroy it.

  Somehow Caleb forced himself to stagger to his feet. While he could no longer hear Trinity’s whimpers of pain, they ravaged through his head all the same. He’d brought her here. He’d promised her peace and safety and a place to raise her dragon. Instead he’d put them both in danger.

  “Caleb, there you are.”

  He whirled around to find Darius walking slowly toward him, his lips curled into a self-satisfied smile. It was all Caleb could do not to smack it off his face.

  “What’s…what’s going on?” he demanded, barely able to speak past his horror.

  Darius gave him a pitying look. “There has been a complication,” he said, reaching Caleb and placing a fatherly hand on his arm. Caleb bit his lower lip hard, forcing himself not to jerk away from his touch. “The Fire Kissed’s mind, it seems, has been unable to accept the dragon’s bond.” He shook his head slowly. “We knew it was a possibility from the start. But we had hoped…” He trailed off.

  What are you talking about? Caleb wanted to scream. You’re the one who’s been selling dragons as weapons. The one with the sick plan to burn down the world. How many people were in on this? All of the other Dracken? Had they known all along? Had they been laughing at him behind his back this whole time? Stupid, gullible Caleb, so desperate for someone to love him, he’ll believe anything you tell him—do anything you ask.