by Lucy Lyons
Near the edge of the circle, I could see my wolves peering out of the stone doorways and windows, some of them still in full wolf form, others staring at the scene we created with a more human curiosity. With a small mental push, I reminded Ashlynn that they needed to escape before we found out if the circle was going to fail, and I saw her slip inside the doorway, her cinnamon coat glinting in the moonlight.
Vash had finally noticed me, and he screeched and lashed out, his talons sparking as they scraped across the shield. It held, and I released the breath I’d been holding and crept up to Agnarrson’s side. The shield was expanded a little more to hold us both, and I pressed my back against him, forcing him toward the safety of the clan. We almost made it too, but when the sky opened and lightning struck the ground at my feet, the rune it blew up destroyed my cautious optimism with it.
“Damn the Fae, and damn you!” I snarled, throwing Agnarrson out of the remains of the circle. Nick was already circling closer with his wife in his arms, ready to redraw the rune as soon as I could get Vash distracted, and I resumed my position on the far side of the circle, hoping that the lightning flashes were through. Instead, they became more frequent, devoid of thunder or the rain one would’ve expected with an electrical storm.
Vash finally attacked, and when he did I didn’t even have the chance to fend him off. I deflected the first clawed hand raking past my face, BUT then the world went white and I was knocked flat by a sonic boom. When the stars retreated to their assigned constellations from the backs of my eyelids, I was staring up at a man far too bright and perfect to be human. His hair glimmered as though the sun was shining directly on it, despite the dark of night.
He outshone the moon, and when I gazed up and our eyes met, I fell into blue pools that simultaneously buoyed me up and made me feel as though I were drowning. I knew there was something that I needed to be afraid of, but I couldn’t remember what it was. All I could think of was how badly I needed to obey the glittering, shining man in front of me.
Then those eyes were replaced by a reptilian set that startled me from the trance I’d been in.
“Don’t,” Vash hissed in a sibilant whisper. “Don’t let him capture your mind.” The prince hit me, and I realized it was the second time he’d slugged me in the face, using pain to literally beat back Fairy glamour. Someone called my name, and when I turned to find the person behind the voice, a small container flew toward me. A clawed hand reached out and caught it, and Vash sniffed the contents before handing it to me with a toothy grin and a nod.
I hazarded a glance up at the new Fae, still hovering, waiting for me to be broken down again by his power and submit to him. Instead, I smeared the protective mixture of herbs on my eyes, my ears, and my lips, just as I’d been shown. The Fae prince then dipped a claw into the goop and dragged it across my chest over my heart.
“What,” I gasped, and he pointed to his own chest.
“Lies that settle in cannot be easily removed. Better to avoid them altogether.” I nodded at him and looked back up at the levitating man, much less golden and mesmerizing than before. There was a cackle behind me, and I sighed in relief, turning to face my mentor as she greeted both her son and me from the outside of the broken circle. Caroline was at her feet, carefully reconstructing the rune that would seal the prison, and her husband had already opened a vein into her stone bowl for my sake.
“Vash, are you really in there?” I whispered, and the prince turned feral, curious eyes on me. “I need you to be in there because your mother wants to heal you, and we can’t do that with him hovering over us.” I snuck another peek at him, but no spells or Fairy glamour leaked from him. He was just a pudgy, thin-haired, old man with wrinkles between his eyes and gnarled fingers wrapped around the handle of a carved wooden staff with a looking glass adorning the top.
Look alive, folks. I think we just met the Fae king, I sent to my people.
Get out of there, my mate. Lock them up together and let them sort out their family drama.
Vash looked out of the circle toward his mother, and Portia stepped into view, holding her hand up to him like she was waving through a window instead of out in the open with him. Vash dropped his head, staring at his claws then the sinuous snake’s body. He shimmered and shrank, until he was just a prince, handsome and youthful, with silver hair and feathers braided almost to his ankles. Caroline pressed against my mind, an image of her finishing the symbols, and I felt the circle surge with power as it closed.
“Come now, human. You don’t think you can imprison me, do you?” The floating man laughed, and I felt the magic tugging at my eardrums, the sound of bells pushing at me the way my own power pushed against Agnarrson less than an hour before.
That was the trick. The king made himself seem larger than life, a god to be worshipped. But his magic was closer to mine than any other Fae I’d encountered. The Fae king had shifter blood, and if he was a shifter and we were looking at his human form, it meant there was another I could pull out of him.
I reached for him with my power and got slapped away, but lazily, as though he believed himself so powerful that he was untouchable by one such as me. His ego worked for me, and I mentally reached out to Caroline and Ashlynn.
I need a subtle spell, one that will create blindness and disorientation. Can you use Ashlynn’s power to focus it on a shifter then send it to me and I’ll do my best to recreate it?
Caroline answered in the affirmative, and I watched her reach out for Ashlynn’s hand. They clasped their hands together, and Caroline’s lips moved, but Ashlynn never took her eyes off me. The Fae king scoffed at us and batted at me again with his power. I let him bowl me over, not expecting his son to get between us and block me from attack. Vash had finally found his sworn enemy, and even the damage to his mind couldn’t block out his purpose.
Caroline sent me the spell, and I hesitated, gathering up my power, every last bit of magic and strength I had left in me. Then I did two things simultaneously that I didn’t believe I could do. I swung out with my arm, shifting as I did so and slammed it into Vash, sending him stumbling sideways toward his waiting mother and sister and their protection. As I swung my arm, I focused on the Fae king and hit him as hard as I could with the spell Caroline had crafted, taking the image she’d sent me and visualizing it before my eyes then pressing into that image with every last ounce of my magic.
The king cursed and fell from where he’d been hovering a few feet above my head and crashed to the ground, yelling in a thin, high voice what I could only assume were obscenities in his native tongue. I raced for the edge of the circle only to have my ankle swept out from under me. I landed on my face and pushed up slowly, spitting out dirt and checking for broken teeth as the gnarled fingers held fast to my ankle.
“You will not win this day, husband,” came a booming voice I’d never heard from Maria before. I was picked up and cradled in a wind and set down gently next to my wife. The circle closed with an almost audible snap when my feet touched the ground, and the king was left raging inside the circle we’d created for his son. I spun around to check on Maria and Vash, and they were gone. I looked around at my people and then back at the king, screaming at us at the top of his lungs.
Maria was long gone, probably through the big wooden doors she could apparently call at will. Portia was gone—I hoped with her mother to protect her from her son. I gathered my people, and Fin asked us to wait as he and the rats showed us what they’d done. He hit the detonator switch, and I looked on as the ground disappeared all around the market, leaving the circle in the middle the only solid ground. The King screamed in a language I was happy I didn’t understand as we backed away from the glowing dome that imprisoned him. I signaled the remaining members of our clan to evacuate and hoped that somewhere, Jasiri was recovering and would hear of our victory. After all his time shouldering the burden he’d carried, I was glad to have lightened his load.
Nick and the vampires took off by air to ready the jets that w
ould take us home, and I wondered if Simi and Somayo had made it to civilization with their greenie hunters as we headed down the mountain all of us in our animal forms with the exception of Agnarrson, who had disappeared with Onyxis and Dominique.
In a few surreal hours, we were on the jet, waiting for it to taxi and takeoff, the horrendous and earth-shattering days we’d just spent in the jungle behind us—creating new shifters (when I’d promised myself I would never do just that), saving a Fae prince from the prison that humans had created for him, and, at least momentarily, trapping the king of the Fae light court. The last was the reason I was happy to be leaving and terrified to turn my back on South American.
“I wish she’d told me how long that thing will hold,” I mentioned to Ashlynn as she tucked her face into my shirt.
“It was long enough for us to get away,” she sighed, clutching my clothes a little tighter as the landing gear was stowed in the belly. I kissed her and felt her mouth open to me, giving and soft. I finally pulled away to catch my breath and sighed at the beauty of the woman in my arms.
The trap had held long enough for us to leave, but the Fae king would escape eventually. He would come for us and raze the earth to end us. Instead, we’d meet him at his home, the land of milk and honey itself.
Vash had been taken before we could assess him, and we had a friend on the other side, hopefully regaining the use of his limbs. But it didn’t matter. We were going to find access to Fairy and take back Fairy from the king. I felt a quickening of the wild hunt in my chest, agreeing with my choice. I held Ashlynn closer and kissed the top of her head.
We’d fought the strangest battle of our time on foreign soil, and once we got home, we were going to start a war on a foreign plane. It was the time of the shifter, and all of Fairy would somehow be open to us. It was the time of the shifter, and I was going to do whatever it took, to bring all the Fae people together and heal the rift in Fairy, the only way to keep humanity truly safe.
END OF BOOK
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Captured by The Dragon
K.T Stryker
© 2017
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Thank You!
© Copyright 2017 by Persia Publishing - All rights reserved.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address below.
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Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER ONE
Astrid
The matron, Mrs. Park, stared at Astrid and Jane sternly. “We have very strict rules here in regards to our prisoners.”
Astrid nodded. She had learned all of this during training, but Mrs. Parks acted like the newest addition to the Hawthorn Facility didn’t know a thing. This was maybe due to the fact that Jane, the other new addition to the prison facility, seemed so nervous and unsure of herself.
“Yes, ma’am,” said Astrid. Mrs. Parks looked at her over the tops her glasses as if Astrid was a naughty child speaking out of turn.
“These prisoners are very dangerous. While their iron shackles bind their magic, they still retain the evil seductiveness of their voice and their gaze. And don’t”— and here she struck the top of her desk with a bamboo back scratcher, causing both Astrid and Jane to jump— “Don’t look directly into their eyes! This is why you’ll wear these whenever you tend to the dragons.”
She handed them what appeared to be pairs of glasses, which had special lenses that obscured dragons’ direct gazes. Astrid had handled pairs of glasses like these during her training. They had a blind spot in the middle that forced your eyes to look around its edges to see. Mrs. Parks handed them sets of earbuds, which blocked off sound, but also allowed communication with their partners and the technician in the security booth.
“Remember, look into the monitors above the cells. They’ll display what the dragons are saying to you. Do not take the ear buds off for any reason. They view humans as playthings, and will do anything to trick you. Since you are new, they will try all their games. But keep the upper hand! Remember your training. Now put on your glasses and earbuds. For this evening I will go with you, but after this you both will guard the dragons during the third shift. You should be grateful for this duty, as they are more active and restless during the day. Come along, now, it’s dinner time. Jane, if you will push that cart there. It has their food.”
“How many are here?” asked Jane with trepidation.
“Currently, three,” said Ms. Parks. “We had four. But we executed one this morning. Our new Prime Minister has no patience with these unrepentant abominations.”
Jane sighed with relief, which, in Astrid’s eyes, marked the young woman as a coward. One did not sign up to work with dragons if you did not have the backbone to face them. But it was the cool pride in Mrs. Parks’ voice at the Prime Minister’s actions that shocked Astrid. Sure, housing and feeding for their extraordinary long lives was a hot political issue. But Parliament had decreed that no dragon would face death at the hands of humans, that is, until the newly elected Prime Minister pushed for the “just punishment” of the crimes of dragons, many of whom were convicted of murder.
“Which one was executed?” asked Astrid breathlessly.
Mrs. Parks eyed her with suspicion. “You aren’t one of those dragon lovers are you?” she asked coldly.
“No, no,” denied Astrid. “It’s just in school I studied all the cases.”
“All the cases?” said Mrs. Parks with an arched eyebrow.
“I majored in exopsychology, with a minor in draconology.”
“Oh?” said Mrs. Parks with obvious disapproval, as if Astrid’s particular choice of university degree was an affliction.
“Well, when I started there was that big kerfuffle about possible alien contact, remember? And there was a big push to train exoscientists and that got me a full scholarship. Only that whole thing turned out to be a big fat dud, so I minored in the one non-human sentient species we have on the planet. Otherwise, I would have lost my funding.”
“Oh, right then,”
said Mrs. Parks grudgingly.
“And as you know, there aren’t many jobs for someone with my qualifications.” Astrid said this last a bit of hauteur in her voice, but Mrs. Parks was seriously annoying her. If the government thought her studies were worthy enough to fund the four years she took to get her degree, then a prison matron had no business questioning it.
Mrs. Parks snorted. “Well, I’m so glad you deigned to join our ranks, Ms. Davis,” she said scornfully. “We don’t always get someone with your, er… qualifications. I do hope you don’t find it beneath your education to work with dragons.”
Actually, Astrid was thrilled. Since she was a little girl and her grandmother had told her stories about dragons, she was fascinated with them. And her love for the tales grew beyond what her grandmother told her. Astrid loved any story, real or myth, about them. It was sad that they were so often painted as demons or murderers. To Astrid these last stories seemed concocted, the product of human fear, despite there being few instances of dragon criminals.
“No, of course not,” said Astrid. “I’m happy to take any work that fulfills my obligation to the government for funding my education.”
“Uh, huh,” said Mrs. Parks with a doubtful tone. “Well, the executed shifter was the one who used the name Austin Drake.”
“Oh,” said Astrid. Sick disappointment filled her. Austin, before he was arrested, had a distinguished military career. He did, that was, until a records match found another Austin Drake who served in the First World War. That was soon after the Reveal, when a prominent London newspaper reported the news that dragons lived among humans. Any piece of evidence that pointed suspicion that a person was a dragon resulted in witch hunt. Austin’s crime was treason, which carried a death sentence until Parliament stayed all of them. But now that had changed. And a beautiful golden dragon was no more.
