[Dragon's Gift 01.0 - 05.0] Complete Series

by Linsey Hall

  “Fine,” Del muttered.

  I closed my eyes and called on my magic, reaching for Aidan’s signature. Crashing waves and the scent of the forest caught my senses as I mirrored his ability to shift into any animal. Warmth filled my lungs as I turned into a sparrow, my new preference for shifting. I was quick and small in this form, able to sneak around unnoticed.

  The world zoomed before me as I shrank and then took off flying. I caught the sound of Aidan’s wings flapping behind me as we approached the lights.

  They drifted farther away as we neared, and unease prickled my back. Were they trying to lead us from the castle? We couldn’t become distracted.

  I was about to turn back when they halted in the cover of a stone outcropping, where they were hidden from sight of the castle.

  I fluttered to a stop, landing on a big boulder and peering up at the lights. Aidan landed at my side. We didn’t shift as we watched the lights glitter brighter. They swirled until they coalesced to form the rough shape of a human.

  Magic vibrated on the air, followed by the scent of forest herbs. Something vaguely identifiable. Then it hit me. It smelled a bit like Connor’s potions workshop—a jumble of herbs and stones and magic.

  A moment later, two slender figures stood before us. They were dressed in dark cloaks, and their skin was so pale that it was nearly translucent. They were skinnier than humans, and their faces had the eerie, otherworldly look of the fae. I couldn’t determine their gender from their features, though did it really matter?

  The most important thing was that I didn’t feel any malice coming from them. If they’d wanted to hurt us, they could have done it already. They’d followed us for at least thirty minutes without us having any idea, I’d wager.

  “You can shift,” the figure on the left said. I decided the voice was feminine. “It’d be best if we could speak.”

  The other figure nodded.

  I glanced at Aidan. He nodded his head, which looked a bit odd, considering he was a bird, but I trusted his judgment.

  I called upon my magic, shifting back to human form in a flash. It was getting easier and easier, thank magic.

  “Why did you lead us there?” I asked.

  “We want to know your purpose at Vlad’s castle.”

  My brows shot up. “Vlad’s castle? As in, Dracula?”

  Both figures nodded.

  The one on the left spoke. “Yes. This was once his, though it lay abandoned for centuries after his death. What is your purpose here?”

  “First, who are you?” I asked. It was one thing that they hadn’t attacked us, but I wasn’t about to spill my guts until I knew what they wanted.

  “I am Aleres, and this is Reofeus. We are shadow sprites who live in this valley.”

  “We’ve had many good years here with our clan,” Reofeus said. “Until the Dark One arrived.”

  Twenty bucks that the Dark One was Victor Orriodor. I’d go so far as to bet my trove on it.

  “We want him gone,” Aleres said. “His evil seeps into the valley, poisoning us. But it is our ancestral home. The shadow sprites abandoned this land while Vlad lived here. His evil spread like the Dark One’s. After his death, we slowly recolonized this place.”

  I looked around, wondering if I’d missed something when we’d made our way up through this valley initially. “But I don’t see your settlement.”

  “No, you wouldn’t. We don’t exist as you do, in boxes for houses.” Reofeus shuddered slightly, his dark cloak swaying against the scatter of snow on the ground.

  “Why haven’t you done anything about it?” I asked. With their ability to float through the air as nothing more than glittering light, they could probably sneak right in.

  “We cannot.” Aleres reached out his hand as if he would touch the rock next to him. But his hand passed right through.

  “That’s a problem,” Aidan said.

  “Not normally.” Reofeus frowned. “We have no need to be truly corporeal. But in a circumstance like this, it is a problem. We cannot fight to evict them. We need a champion.”

  A champion? “Like us?”

  “If your goal is to harm the Dark One, which we think it is, then yes. Like you.”

  “Why do you think we are here to harm him…the Dark One?” Aidan asked.

  “You’re creeping around like thieves,” Reofeus said.

  “And we spied on your camp,” Aleres said. “If you vow to evict him, we will show you an ancient entrance to the castle. It is far down the mountainside, below the dome of his protection charms. It leads up into the bottom of the castle.”

  My brows shot up. “But we searched this whole area.”

  “You searched too close to the castle. The siege bolt-hole is farther away. Even the Dark One does not know it is there.”

  Oh, jackpot.

  “I vow to you that my goal is to destroy him.” The words were worthy of a superhero movie, but I meant them. “If we do not succeed today, we will continue until he is gone.”

  They both nodded, convinced by my vehemence.

  “Then retrieve your companions,” Aleres said. “And follow us.”

  Aleres and Reofeus led us far down into the valley.

  “You sure about these guys?” Nix whispered.

  “Yeah.” I stumbled over a rock covered by the thickening snow, cursing the foul weather. “I am. They said there’s a siege bolt-hole.”

  Nix grumbled, but kept up. It made sense that the bolt-hole would be far from the castle to allow residents to escape unnoticed by attacking forces.

  Down in the valley, the tree growth thickened. There were still short trees, but they were fat and gnarled like a fairytale forest of old. In the distance, I noticed other faintly glittering lights. Aleres and Reofeus’s clan members, perhaps.

  We wove our way single file between the tree trunks, skirting the side of the mountain. Finally, Aleres and Reofeus stopped at an area where the mountainside was particularly overgrown with vines.

  “Where is it?” I asked.

  Reofeus gestured to the vine-covered wall. “Here. But you must learn how to enter. We do not know how.”

  Shit. I’d really been hoping for an obviously marked door with a nice door handle. Perhaps even a sign that read “Secret Entrance.”

  No such luck.

  Aidan approached the vine-covered wall and ran his hands over it. I joined him, doing the same. Magic sparked beneath my touch, mildly prickly. The door was definitely under here.

  I turned to the shadow sprites. “Thank you.”

  They inclined their heads.

  “It is not guarded by the protective charm that covers the rest of the castle because it is so far away,” Aleres said. “You should be able to get through if you can determine how to open the door.”

  I touched the Penatrist charm in my pocket. “We will. Thank you for the help.”

  “Thank you for yours.” Aleres bowed.

  Reofeus did the same before they drifted back into the shadows.

  I turned toward my friends. “All right. Let’s clear off this wall and find the door.”

  “On it, captain.” Connor saluted me.

  I punched him lightly on the shoulder, then turned back to the wall and grabbed a handful of the vines. It was oddly slippery as I yanked it away. The vine resisted at first, but I was able to pull it from the wall.

  In half a second, another vine grew in its place.

  “What the hell!” Del exclaimed.

  I glanced at my friends, who were having the same problem. They tugged and yanked, throwing big hunks of vine over their shoulders. But as soon as they pulled the greenery away, more grew in its place.

  “We’re not going to be able to use the Penatrist charm if we can’t find the damned door,” Aidan said.

  He was right. And this made total sense. Of course a door like this would be hidden from the outside.

  Beside me, Emile whispered something to Ralph and Rufus. They leapt out of his pockets and scrambled acro
ss the ground, disappearing between the vines.

  I nodded after them. “They got a plan?”

  Emile nodded.

  I stopped tugging at the vines and watched the wall, my gaze scanning back and forth.

  Finally, after what felt like ages, a low creaking noise broke the silence. To my left, vines bulged out from the wall, snapping and breaking. A massive wooden door opened outward slowly, revealing a black chasm within.

  “Nice,” Del said.

  “No kidding.” I raised my hand, igniting the magic in my lightstone ring to reveal a long corridor leading upward. On the right wall, Ralph and Rufus sat on top of a large lever. They must have pushed it down and opened the door. Below them, dirt spilled from a small hole in the corner of the corridor. They’d dug their way in.

  “Good work, guys,” I said.

  Emile entered the corridor first, shivering slightly as he entered. He stopped, allowing Ralph and Rufus to jump onto his shoulders and scramble down into the big front pockets on his jacket.

  I was damned glad that Emile had come along.

  Nix hurried into the corridor, hesitating slightly at the entrance, before conjuring two small bits of cheese that she handed to the rats.

  “Nicely done,” she whispered to them.

  Their little noses twitched as they took the cheese with tiny paws.

  I stepped into the corridor, hit immediately by a sense of sadness and desperation. It clung to the place, like dark magic or misery that couldn’t escape.

  “Something bad happened in here,” Aidan murmured from beside me. “The place is soaked with it.”

  “No kidding.” Del’s voice was nearly soundless. “Vlad was busy in here.”

  I shined my light all around, noting the scratches in the walls and the dark stains on the floor. I shuddered hard, trying not to imagine what had made those marks and left behind such a sense of misery.

  “Let’s get going,” I said.

  “Agreed.” Nix grimaced. “I can’t get out of here soon enough.”

  We set off up the corridor, winding our way through a narrow passage studded with boulders and dipping around natural protrusions in the rock. The passage climbed ever higher through the mountain. It must have taken centuries to carve out this escape hatch.

  “This goes on forever,” Claire muttered a while later. “You sure about this?”

  “I think so,” I said.

  The dark and the cold had nearly drained the strength from me by the time we reached a set of steep stone stairs leading to a ceiling.

  “Finally,” Del whispered.

  I reached out with my magic, feeling for the signatures of other supernaturals. I didn’t know where this stairway led, but it’d be just our luck to appear beneath the garrison or something.

  But I sensed no magic other than my friends’.

  “It’s clear,” Aidan whispered before he quietly climbed the stairs. At the top, he ducked and placed his hands on the ceiling, slowly pushing upward.

  The ceiling didn’t give.

  He climbed back down and said, “It’s not blocked by magic. But I don’t want to force it and cause a commotion. If I flip over furniture in the room above, someone might hear.”

  Del stepped forward, her skin turning blue. “I got this.”

  It was handy to have a phantom around. She climbed up the stairs and straight into the room above, never ducking her head. My heart pounded as I waited for the trap door to open. Sweat began to trickle down my spine and everything that relied on the success of this mission ping-ponged around in my head.

  There were prisoners up there who needed us. Kids, probably. And Victor’s arsenal of magical artifacts.

  And now Del was up there, too. Possibly captured.

  I fidgeted as I glanced around at my friends, all huddled at the end of the corridor. They all looked as nervous as I felt, gazes darting and brows furrowed.

  “Do you think she’s okay?” Nix whispered.

  I didn’t have anything good to say, so I didn’t say anything at all. I was about to try my comms charm to contact her when a faint cracking noise sounded from above. Then another, and another.

  The ceiling shifted as the trap door opened, and Del’s transparent blue face peered down.

  “All clear,” she whispered.

  Silently, we climbed up into the little room. Around the entrance to the hatch, the thick wooden floorboards had been torn up.

  “Pried them up with my sword,” Del said. “Looks like someone redid the floor at some point and hid the escape hatch.”

  “No wonder Victor never found it,” Connor said.

  “Our luck,” Emile said.

  I looked around the room, taking stock of the few items stored down here. A broken chair and mangled broom. A cradle that was nearly falling apart. It was some kind of storage space. There were no windows, which didn’t surprise me. We were deep inside the castle at the lowest level.

  “Let’s go,” I whispered, leading the way to the door.

  Carefully, I pushed it open, peeking out into the hallway. It was narrow and dark, lined with stone and floored with wood. I stepped out, followed by Emile.

  Light, rapid footsteps sounded down the hall and I stiffened. Before I could lunge back into the room, a massive dog appeared at the end of the hall. He was nearly the size of a horse, white with massive brown spots. He halted, his jaw dropping low to reveal large white fangs.

  When he raised his head as if to howl, my heart dropped.

  Emile stepped forward.

  A second later, the hound lowered his head, his dark gaze meeting Emile’s.

  They were speaking telepathically. Aidan stepped out of the room and joined me, followed by the rest of the gang.

  Whatever Emile said to the dog, the animal liked it. It trotted toward us, suddenly not so vicious. It was still huge and bore a striking resemblance to a hellhound, but its eyes were friendly and locked on Emile. The dog smelled of brimstone and flame, so I could check Met a hellhound off my list.

  “This is Pond Flower,” Emile said.

  Pond Flower? Looked like a Killer to me.

  “She chose her own name,” Emile added. “The men here call her hound. She doesn’t like it.”

  “Hello, Pond Flower,” I said. It was exactly the kind of name I’d expect a dog to choose, though I couldn’t say why.

  Emile held out a hand for her to sniff, then scratched her head. “She’s a guard dog. Along with a dozen others. Though she’d like to live somewhere else.”

  “Can’t say I blame you, Pond Flower,” Aidan said.

  “We’ll help you with that,” I told the dog.

  Her clever eyes met mine, though I wasn’t sure she understood. Beside me, Emile’s magic swelled, smelling like grass. A moment later, Pond Flower’s tongue lolled out of her mouth in what I would swear was a smile. Emile must have translated for her. I didn’t know where the hell I was going to find her and her twelve hellhound siblings a home, but I’d manage.

  “Ask her to help us find the FireSouls and the artifacts Victor stole. A chalice, a cauldron, and a gemstone. When we’re done, we’ll get her out of here.”

  Emile nodded and turned back to Pond Flower. The dog stared intently up at him, then turned in a tight circle and headed back down the hall, her footsteps clicking on the wood.

  “She can take us to the FireSouls, but she doesn’t know what the artifacts are or where they’re stored.”

  Fair enough. One out of two wasn’t bad, anyway.

  We followed in a line, Emile at the front and Claire at the rear. I stuck behind Emile, with Aidan at my back. Every creak of wood beneath my feet or disturbance in the air made me stiffen. We were a massive group of people, just strolling through this castle without a single nook or cranny to hide ourselves in.

  I’d like to try to use my power over illusion to conceal us, but it was too risky. Even if I didn’t blow us up, my signature might go out of control and alert the guards to my presence. So I did the
only thing I could—I crept along behind Emile and tried not to freak out.

  Eventually, we reached another staircase. It was only slightly wider than the one leading up to the storage room, though not by much. The stairs were worn down in the middle, the evidence of thousands of feet over hundreds of years. This was definitely an older castle.

  Pond Flower padded up the stairs, trailing the scent of brimstone behind her. We stayed close behind her.

  The next level of the castle was as barren and creepy as the one below. But if I reached out with my magic, I could just pick up the sense of other supernaturals. Demons, mostly. The smell of smoke accompanied the shadow demons I’d seen earlier on the ramparts, and the unidentifiable signatures of the other species.

  We reached a corridor that veered off from the one we were in. Pond Flower turned, heading down that way. In the other direction, a set of stairs led upward. I’d bet anything that Victor kept the artifacts up there, with him. This dungeon basement was too horrible for him to want to hang out in.

  “Time to split,” I whispered to Aidan.

  He nodded. I gestured to my friends, indicating that they should follow Pond Flower and Emile. They nodded and set off, while Aidan and I headed for the stairs.

  We’d decided that the larger group would go for the FireSouls, since the prison wouldn’t be as heavily occupied as the rest of the castle. It helped that Victor had a habit of using magic rather than live guards to control his prisoners.

  Aidan and I were headed for the artifacts, which we assumed were probably stored in a more densely populated part of the castle. A big group would only draw unneeded attention, and if Aidan and I got in a bad way, we could shift and fly away.

  I held out a hand and stopped Aidan for a moment, then tried calling on my dragon sense, focusing on the image of the artifacts in my mind. The familiar tug pulled tight around my middle, directing me to the stairs.

  Excellent. I hadn’t been sure if my dragon sense would work inside the protective barrier, but it seemed to. I called upon it again, this time focusing on Victor Orriodor.

  I got nothing.

  Damn.

  He wasn’t here. But at least we could still go after the artifacts.