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
Dragon Protecting
Torch Lake Shifters, Book 4
By Sloane Meyers
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Similarities to actual people or events are entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2017 by Sloane Meyers. All rights reserved.
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
Thank You For Reading!
More Books by Sloane Meyers
About the Author
Chapter One
The thing Clint Wallace liked best about the street he lived on was that he was the only one who lived on it. The out of the way cul-de-sac had six modest homes, five of which were empty. Clint had lived in the sixth home since he first moved to Torch Lake almost two years ago, when it literally had been all he could afford. Now, he could have bought a mansion, but he stayed on this humble street because no one else seemed interested in living here.
That was all about to change. A peek out the front window of his house told Clint that the loud screech of tires he’d just heard came from a moving van. Clint stepped outside to get a better look. A midsize truck with the words “Magical Moving” emblazoned on the side had just turned onto his street.
“You have got to be kidding me,” Clint said aloud to the small potted plant that adorned his front porch. The plant, as usual, made no reply. But Clint kept talking to it anyway.
“Today of all days! I should have known. I thought everything that could possibly go wrong already had.”
Despite the rain, the small moving van crept its way up the cul-de-sac. Clint couldn’t see the driver in the darkness, but whoever was behind the wheel didn’t seem to know exactly where he or she was going. For a moment, Clint hoped that this was all a mistake. Perhaps the driver had taken a wrong turn, although you’d have to accidentally take quite a few wrong turns to end up on this street. It was the only set of houses for at least a mile. The city of Torch Lake was funny like that. Everything here was so new, and had been built out unevenly. There were pockets of really dense housing, and then places like Clint’s street, where a crop of homes popped up seemingly in the middle of nowhere.
Clint cursed under his breath when the moving van pulled into the house right next door to his and then killed its engine. Then he whirled around and went back inside, letting the door slam shut behind him. He was not in the mood to meet his new neighbor right now. He wasn’t sure he’d ever be in the mood to meet the person who had so rudely ended his solitude, but tonight of all nights he was not going be going over with a welcome basket of cookies.
The coffee table in his living room was covered with papers, a few of which had coffee cup rings on them by now. Clint had been here since about three o’clock this afternoon, trying to find some clue as to how the Dark Warriors kept managing to outsmart his team at every turn. Clint worked as a specialist at the Dragon Utilization Department in Torch Lake, and he had been appointed to a special task force that was supposed to convince dragon shifters to move to Torch Lake and make it their new home.
Theoretically, his job should have been easy. Torch Lake was quickly becoming the most talked about city in the shifter-wizard world. Founded just after the end of the Great Dark War, the city aimed to be a stronghold of wizards and shifters who refused to allow evil any foothold. For a while, the town had been relatively quiet, but now, as word got out that the High Council here did not tolerate evil and fiercely protected its citizens, wizards and shifters were moving to Torch Lake in droves.
But despite the public’s confidence, Clint knew that the safety of Torch Lake was far from guaranteed. The Dark Warriors, an underground dark magic group, had been driven away from the city, but they had not forgotten it. They were waiting, biding their time until they were strong enough to attack.
Which was why Torch Lake desperately needed more dragons. Any city these days was only as strong as its dragons. Dragon shifters were tough, and were the hardest shifters to corrupt with evil. They made the best guardians for a city, but they were in short supply after the Dark War. Most of them were hiding in the human world, determined to avoid the chaos of the shifter world.
Clint understood. He himself had moved to a human town after the war, but a Dragon Recovery Specialist had convinced him that Torch Lake was the place to be. Now, Clint couldn’t imagine life anywhere else. Here, he was not a freak trying to hide his inner dragon. He was a respected member of the community.
Well, he’d thought he was respected. After today’s council meeting, he wasn’t so sure. The High Council had chewed him out in front of everyone, blaming him for the fact that every dragon who was found had suddenly disappeared after Clint’s agents were sent to talk to them.
Clint himself was baffled. He was convinced that some sort of dark magic was being used against his team, but he had no proof. And, with his limited knowledge of the magical world, he wasn’t even sure where to start looking. He’d asked a few of the wizards at the Dragon Recovery Bureau to look at his notes on the situation, but they were all busy and had merely promised to get back to him as soon as they could. Which meant never, as far as Clint was concerned.
With a sigh, he sat down on the floor beside the coffee table, leaning his broad back against the couch. He stared at the papers without really seeing them. His eyes glanced over newspaper clippings from the Torch Lake Times—articles questioning whether the town was doing enough to attract dragons. Then he scanned the piles of classified papers that held official records on which dragons Torch Lake had tried and failed to convince to move to Torch Lake. Each dragon had seemed so promising. But each time one of Clint’s agents tried to visit a dragon, the dragon disappeared before the agent had a chance to talk to the dragon.
The High Council blamed Clint, since he was the one working with the Dragon Recovery Bureau to track down the dragons. Today when Clint told the High Council that he believed dark magic was to blame, they had laughed him out of the council room and told him that he couldn’t blame every job failure he had on dark magic.
Clint put his head in his hands, trying to stave off the headache that was slowly beginning. Perhaps if he was silent and still for a few moments, the throbbing in his temples would subside.
But no sooner had he closed his eyes than a loud bang startled them open. A sharp wave of pain from the offending sound shot through his forehead, and he groaned. Was his new neighbor actually going to try to unload that moving van tonight? It was dark, and pouring rain!
Clint stood and went to peek out the front window again. The new neighbor, who was definitely a woman
, had let down the ramp on the back of the moving van. That must have been the loud bang he’d heard. Now, she was carrying an oversized box down the slippery ramp, which already had two small rivers of water running down its edges. The woman wore a bright yellow rain poncho, which, judging from the amount it flapped about in the wind, was not doing much to actually protect her from the downpour.
Clint cursed again, then went to grab his own rain jacket. As unhappy as he was about someone moving in next door, he wasn’t going to stand here and watch a woman struggle to move in on her own in the rain. His conscience wouldn’t let him rest unless he went to help her.
“Time to meet the new neighbor,” he grumbled to himself as he stormed out the front door and into the monsoon.
Chapter Two
“Need a hand with that?”
The woman on the ramp jumped, and almost dropped the box she was carrying. It was the second box she’d taken out of the truck. The first one now sat at the bottom of the ramp, the cardboard turning dark and soggy as the rain pounded against it. Clint frowned as he glanced at it.
“I hope there’s nothing in that box that isn’t waterproof.”
The woman, who had just recovered her balance, managed a slight shrug even though her arms were occupied with the second giant box.
“I’ll just perform a drying spell on it. I need to get all of the stuff off the van and return it within the next hour, or I’m going to be charged an overtime fee. It took me a lot longer than I thought it would to find this place.”
So she was a wizard. Clint squinted through the rain, trying to get a good look at the woman. The hood on her poncho had blown off, and her dark hair was now plastered in wet ribbons against the side of her head. But even with her “drowned rat” look, and even in the darkness, Clint could tell she was a beauty. In fact, she might be the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. This realization only made him angrier. A beautiful girl like her was bound to be the popular type. He could already envision his tiny cul-de-sac crowded with cars when she threw big parties, and he grunted as he thought about the steady stream of boyfriends she was likely to bring over. His hope of continuing his peaceful solitude was evaporating more with every second. Still, he was too much of a gentleman to let this poor girl unload the truck by herself.
“Let me help you,” he said, reaching to take the box from her. “Although, if you want to get this truck back in an hour, you’re probably out of luck. It takes at least a half-hour to get back to town from here.”
“That’s why I have to hurry. I’m just unloading everything and leaving it in the driveway. I’ll come back and actually put it inside later.”
“Your stuff is going to be ruined,” Clint said as she let him grab the box she was holding. “Wow, this box is really light. What did you pack in here, feathers?”
She laughed, and Clint was startled by the musical sound of her laughter, which drowned out the dreary patter of the rain for a few moments. “No, I put a weightlessness spell on it. Just like I’ll put a drying spell on all my stuff when I get back from returning the van. Nothing will be ruined. Honestly, you shifters. How do you live without magic?”
Clint bristled a little at the question. “I seem to have managed thus far. You really want me to just leave this box in the rain?”
“Yup, just pile it there next to the other one. If we both work together we should definitely get this truck unloaded in time. Thank you so much for your help. I’m Sunny, by the way.”
“Clint.”
“Nice to meet you, Clint,” Sunny said as she went to grab another box. Clint set down the box he was holding and hopped up into the moving truck, not bothering to wait for Sunny to finish walking down the ramp with her box. He tentatively tried to lift another box, and found that it was, of course, as light as air. He had to hand it to Sunny. Weightlessness spells did come in useful when moving. He held the box firmly and hopped off the truck in one quick leap. After leaving the box in the growing pile in the driveway, he hopped back into the truck. There weren’t actually that many boxes, and at this rate they’d probably be done unloading in about fifteen minutes. Maybe less.
Good. Then he could get back inside and back to working on the Dark Warriors problem. Maybe he could even manage to avoid getting too friendly with Sunny. After all, they were rushing to move boxes. No time for small talk, right?
Wrong. At least, wrong if you asked Sunny. She seemed thrilled to have someone to talk to.
“So have you lived in Torch Lake long?”
“Almost two years now.”
“Wow, that’s a while. Wasn’t the town only founded about three years ago?”
“Yup. I was one of the earliest citizens. But certainly not the first. There’s a group that’s been here even longer than me.”
Clint reached to test the weight of a small sofa. He lifted it with one hand as easily as if it were made of paper.
“I’m new here,” Sunny said as she walked by him with a treadmill in one hand and a bar stool in the other.
“I never would have guessed.”
Sunny apparently missed the sarcastic note in his voice, though, because she brightened up at his words. “Really? Do I seem like a native?”
Clint sighed as he set the couch down beside the boxes, wincing as he watched rainwater starting to pool on the leather cushions. He hoped Sunny’s drying spells worked as well as she thought they would. Otherwise that couch was ruined.
“No one here is a native. Except maybe the High Council, I guess, since they started the town. But even the High Council members are just a mix of wizards and shifters from different clans that were destroyed or displaced in the War.”
“Yeah, but still. People who have been here since the beginning seem like natives to someone like me. What kind of shifter are you, by the way?”
Clint gritted his teeth. He already knew what was coming, once she realized what he was. But there was no way to avoid it, unless he lied, which he did not want to do. And, anyway, even if he lied, she was bound to find out the truth eventually. He might as well get it over with.
“I’m a dragon.”
She dropped the television she was carrying, and it shattered into large pieces, but she didn’t seem to notice. “You’re a dragon? I’m going to be living next door to a dragon? My landlord didn’t even tell me.”
So she’s renting. Good. Maybe she’ll leave when her lease is up.
“Yes, I’m a dragon. But we’re pretty much just normal shifters, just like everyone else. No need to flip out about it.”
“Normal? You guys aren’t normal and you know it! You’re freaking dragons! The closest thing to magical you’ll find in a shifter. This is awesome. I feel so lucky. And there aren’t that many of you in town, right?”
“Not yet. We’re working on getting a few more to move here.” Clint turned his back to Sunny under the pretense of searching for another box. He didn’t want to let her see the annoyance in his face, or the unease. She had no idea what a sore spot she’d just hit on. There weren’t that many dragons in town, no. And the High Council blamed him for that, even though it should have been obvious that some sort of dark magic was at play here.
“Huh, yeah. Well I hope you do get more soon. One of my friends over in Falcon Cross told me not to move here. She said she doesn’t understand why everyone is so gung ho about Torch Lake when your general population is growing so much faster than your dragon population. There are a lot of rumors that the town isn’t going to be safe if things continue this way. People are saying there won’t be enough dragon shifters to hold back dark magic.”
“That’s rubbish. Torch Lake is perfectly safe.” Clint whirled around with another box and jumped off the truck, resisting the temptation to hurl the box across the driveway in anger.
Sunny had stopped unloading and was stroking her chin thoughtfully as her rain poncho flapped uselessly around her. She finally shrugged. “Oh well. I’m not scared of dark magic, anyway. I can protect myself whether or
not there are dragon shifters around.”
Clint gave her a sidelong glance. She was tall, curvy, and beautiful, but she definitely didn’t look tough. She definitely didn’t look like the type who could protect herself if need be. But he resisted the urge to give her a lecture on the dangers of not taking dark magic seriously. All he wanted right now was to finish unloading this truck and get back inside his warm, dry house. His warm, dry, quiet house. So he changed the subject.
“Looks like you might be needing a new television,” he said, pointing to the pieces of television scattered around Sunny’s feet. She glanced down and seemed to notice the debris for the first time.
“Oh, shit. Magicae sarcio.” She pointed her magic ring at the mess while speaking the repairing spell, and within moments all of the pieces came back together and reassembled themselves. Clint stared for a moment, a bit surprised. He knew, of course, that repairing spells existed. But he’d never seen anyone other than the High Council members put back together something that had shattered into that many pieces. All of the tiny crystals of glass that had scattered everywhere came back together perfectly on the television screen. Sunny must have noticed him staring, because she laughed.
“I’m pretty good at putting stuff back together. I’m such a klutz that I have to be. I’m always breaking stuff.”
Clint nodded, and went back to unloading the truck. But something nagged at the back of his mind. Sunny may have laughed off her magical abilities, but she had sounded a little uneasy when she did. Almost like she didn’t want to talk about her magic. But why? She was good at spell casting, and wasn’t shy about using spells to make her life easier. Some wizards Clint knew would have considered using weightlessness spells to make moving into a new place easier a form of “cheating.” They were always concerned with appearing tough to other people, and with not using magic as some sort of cop-out. But Sunny seemed completely comfortable in her own magical skin.
Dragon Protecting (Torch Lake Shifters Book 4) Page 1
