by Celeste Raye
A massive shifter with sprouted yellow wings stepped in holding Libby out by the neck. She wailed under his grasp and Christina began screaming and throwing her hands over her mouth. I could only hope her shrill cry alerted our security outside, if they were still alive.
“What's this about?” I said, stone-faced, refusing to give him the satisfaction of my inner panic. “Libby, what happened?”
“They’re all dead!” the blonde managed to shriek out before the shifter smashed her body hard against the wall.
The red shifter I had been speaking to stood quickly, and his rubbly skin gripped my throat from across the table. I could feel the rocky scales against me. I let off a few warning shots from my pistol before his thick tail whipped the weapon clean from my hand.
“You humans value honesty, don’t you?” the red shifter grinned, raising me from my chair and pinning me up against the wall.
I wanted to tell him ‘not really.'
Humans weren’t notorious ‘truth-tellers.'
But, I also wanted to live, so I cocked a brow at him that said he should continue.
“I’m not interested in a treaty,” he snapped and looked over at the shifter now standing in the door, holding a screaming Libby in his grasp while Christina cowered on the floor with her arms covering her face.
“You don’t say?” I croaked out.
“Nope,” he said. “But I’m really interested in taking your ship.”
Chapter 3:
Gandadirth
I watched as our rebel sect swarmed the ship in the distance and as the lights flickered on and off, I knew it was time I made an appearance on the human ship.
The inside of the starship was massive and bright, almost blinding. I shielded my eyes from the light and could see traces of blood pooled at the entrance. I wiped the dots away with my foot and stepped further into the corridors.
We’d stolen our fair share of human ships in our day, most having been found on other planets we’d explored looking for food. We brought them back to Dobromia and used them as we saw fit.
Most of their designs were similar, so I was able to find my way easily to the cockpit. Humans had always taken extensive precautions in never leaving any coordinates for their Earth around. My heart began to race as I looked down at their illuminated screens and saw the route homeward displayed plain as day.
I tapped the screen with my finger and scraped my fang along my lower lip with success.
“Boy, have I got news for you!” Tesyduss yelled, throwing his hands into the air as he entered the room.
“I know,” I said with a laugh, pointing to the screen. “We just got ourselves a nice ride to the Earth.”
“No,” Tesyduss frowned, drawing his brows inward almost comically. “I mean, yeah, that’s great! But I have something else to tell you.”
I snorted and stood with my back arched over, hunched down their tiny human screens with my arm extended to the ledge below me. When Tesyduss didn’t continue, I turned my profile to him and spoke of our captain as I asked, “Don’t you mean for Jadirel?”
“Relax,” the red shifter said, waving me off as though I had overreacted somehow. “You know as well as I do that everyone thinks of you as our captain.”
I laughed. “Then how come I’m taking order from Jadirel and you pitiful pricks are just standing around watching?”
“Ah, shut up,” he said with a chuckle, now leaning into the screen next to me. “You know we’re all family here. You want to take over; you just say the word.”
Of course, that wasn’t the case.
The rebel sect was revered as original Weredragons: fierce, powerful warriors. We were close-knit, like family. We were the stragglers of the Octantis Colony and would give our lives for one another.
I grinned at him devilishly and slapped him on the back, stepping away as he took a seat at the pilot’s chair and immediately started up the ship, jettisoning us up into the atmosphere as fast as he would with his own wings.
I clawed into the wall next to me and felt my nail do a deliberate scrape as the ship jerked from takeoff. “Hey, how nice,” I babbled sarcastically, pantomiming wildly with my hands as I spoke. “But I’m not about to start a rebellion within a rebellion. Now, I believe you had news before you decided to snap my neck with your pathetic piloting?”
“You want to fly this thing?” he mocked, knowing I couldn’t. “Be my guest.”
“The news?” I pushed.
“Yeah, yeah,” he said with a breath. “We got the girl.”
I leaned against the wall on unsteady feet before relenting to taking a seat next to Tesyduss, watching with my stomach in my throat as we raced out of the atmosphere, the sheer force of it making my stomach lilt and go white with thick air.
Shuddering against the sick exhale of gravity, I buckled in stubbornly and frowned at Tesyduss. “What girl?” I snapped dismissively, grabbing my twisted stomach.
“The… the girl!” he repeated, not taking his eyes off of the black void before us.
“Ooh!” I said with a raise in my voice. “The girl! Yeah, thanks, genius. That clears everything up.”
Tesyduss let out an impatient breath and said, “The human girl! The representative from Earth?”
I needled my eyebrows unsurely, staring down at the myriad of buttons and pulls laid out before us on the dashboard before using a quick flick of the wrist to slap Tesyduss upside the head.
“You left her alive?” I lectured. “Don’t tell me you brought her with us!”
“There’s three of them,” he said in protest, rubbing the back of his head with an annoyed laugh. “I thought they would come in handy, maybe?”
“Huh.” My mouth hung open, and I looked at him in disbelief for a second; my mouth was twitching and revealing a single fang as I thought on his words. I slapped him in the back of the head once more, causing his red mane to rustle. “And you’re coming to me? Go tell Jadirel!”
“He said to bring it to you!” Tesyduss argued. “’Said he wants you to interrogate her.”
“Now?” I asked with annoyance, and he shrugged, not looking back at me any longer.
“They’re on the deck below us, with Jadirel,” he dismissed.
“Then he can deal with them,” I said, tired.
We sat in a comfortable silence for some time before Tesyduss began turning his head to me at slow-motion speeds, giving me a humorous grin as his gaze slowly reached mine. He raised both brows so they shot up his forehead and made a ‘shoo’ motion with his fingers as our eyes met.
I laughed and unbuckled myself from the chair, standing up and, for good measure, smacking the back of his head once more before taking my leave to the lower decks.
The halls were sterile and clean looking, save for several spots of blood. I bristled at the sight of it and hoped that the bodies had been disposed of outside before takeoff. I didn’t like human bodies.
When a Weredragon died, they looked like they were sleeping; a serene peace overcame their expression, and their bodies went limp. Like they would return to the ground at any second. Organic.
Humans kept expressions: went cold. They twitched and contorted in strange ways that made my stomach flip uncomfortably.
I sighed inwardly. Now we would have to deal with these prisoners to top everything off.
“Try this!” Jadirel shouted ecstatically as I stepped in through the sliding doors of the lower deck. He raised a glass of brown liquid to my lips and forced the glass back, tipping it so that half the drink flooded my mouth and the rest went flowing down my neck.
I choked on the spicy liquid and pushed him away from me with a laugh.
My eyes went wide as the strange taste flooded through my lips. A burning hot swallow that my mind couldn’t establish as either warm or freezing cold. I exhaled, closing my throat and attempting vainly to scrape my esophagus with my tongue.
“Alcohol,” Jadirel said and took another chug from the bottle with a hearty laugh.
&
nbsp; Jadirel was a hardy dragon; thick and muscular. He had yellow scales and red, oversized eyes. His wings were small and slick, giving him impeccable speed. He had a massive jaw and was built more like a dragon than a man.
I traced my tongue across my bottom lip and shook my head with an embarrassed chuckle.
“Not for me,” I said.
We’d all heard of alcohol. The human ‘Queen’ of Dobromia raved about it and had it brought in when she could. It made everyone fools and burned unpleasantly. But, Jadirel had certainly taken to it.
“The only things those humans ever did right!” the yellow shifter would always say.
“And that’s really saying something,” I quipped, but he didn’t read my sarcasm.
He raised a brow and raised another glass to me. “The girls are downstairs,” he offered.
“Roaming free?” I asked with some hesitation.
He pushed his lips together and made a noise that was interrupted by spit. A noise that said: ‘What am I? Stupid?’ and I laughed at his suddenly sloppy speech.
“Yeah, have another one there, ‘Jade,” I teased.
The yellow shifter leaned far back in his chair and set his massive feet on the table in front of him.
“They have cells, if you can believe it,” he explained further, raising his brows drunkenly and continuously pointing at the floor. “A prison set up and everything. Like the tower.”
“I guess they were anticipating an interesting arrival,” I snorted. “Convenient for us, anyhow.”
“Go have a look,” Jadirel said, suddenly serious. His eyes focused on me then like he was calculating something: testing my loyalty. The way he said it made me wonder whether or not he actually wanted me to listen to him.
My eyes darted back and forth from his, carefully monitoring his desires through a single look. His eyes wrinkled at the sides as he watched me back and he said, “They’re something to see.”
“I’ve seen enough,” I said.
“Go see,” he insisted, still watching me as though I’d just done something dire simply by walking into the room.
This was why I didn’t like the alcohol. It made everyone drinking it view the rest of the world as untrustworthy. Hard to read, even though I’d known the shifter my whole life.
I nodded slowly and stood, blinking him off and giving him one last look before disappearing into the lower decks.
Sometimes I wondered how much of Tesyduss' jesting was actually false. How much the crew really thought of me as their leader, their backup. The shifter waiting in the background to take over.
I was second-in-command to Jadirel; he was like a father to me. He was ten times my age and had existed long before me and would likely continue on long after I was gone.
I was born as our resources first started dwindling, making young dragonlings an excellent source of protein for desperate Weredragons on Dobromia.
Jadirel found me in the glowing aquamarine egg cave, hatching onto the rocky surface and quickly falling victim to a harvest. There were banished Weredragons, and slithering ground creatures called the Zay'eer battling to decide which of them would have the privilege of eating me alive.
The yellow shifter killed them all, so he said, and scooped me up into his arms. I hadn't been away from his side ever since. He brought me back to life, and so I owed him my every breath.
I stepped down into the cells and peered around the corner hesitantly. I could feel the cold hum of metal underneath my bare feet; the breeze from the ship was hitting my scales like ice.
There were humans in cages, lined up beside one another. Two of them were crying; wailing into the air. The only other one I could see from the hall was a lanky brunette.
Her skin was a deep tan that looked creamy and young. She had long curly hair and a long, pronounced nose. Thick brows and oversized lips. There was something strange about the way she looked. Something feral: feline.
I felt a deep want pulse in my lower stomach, and I set my jaw. The girl stood in the cage and the other girls suddenly hushed.
Stepping deeper into the narrow room, I noticed that one of the caged prisoners, a soldier, was deceased. The girl in the cage next to him must have thrown her jacket over his body in respect because the man was covered up.
I felt a shiver run through me then: a wave of disgust as I stared down at the body. I wouldn’t admit as much to the shifters in my crew, but the sight of it made me feel bad for the females. To have to sit there and look at that must have been a morbid top-off to an already trying day.
I scraped my lip with my teeth and stepped further into the room, causing two of the girls to cower and whimper.
The brunette blinked at me, taking me in. I walked up to the cage next to her and stared down at the deceased. I swiped the keycard given to me over the red light on the cage’s sliding door, and it disappeared into the walls. I walked in and picked the man up gingerly and carried him out of the room.
“Where are you taking him?” the brunette asked. Her voice was smooth like oil and a lower pitch than I would have imagined. She enunciated without even trying, and it made me turn back to her.
“Did you want me to leave him here as a reminder?” I snapped.
“No,” she swallowed. “I just want to know what you’re going to do with him.”
I pitched a brow at this. What else could I do with him besides bring him to another room?
“What do you think I’m going to do? Eat him?” I offered with annoyance.
“I guess you’d rather keep that a mystery, considering you’re not answering my question,” she barbed.
“I’m going to put him somewhere that won’t terrify you when you wake up in the middle of the night,” I argued, taking one dangerous step backward and stretching out my wings in a show of assertion. “Is that okay with you?”
She clenched her jaw to me and her eyes grazed over the body pitched over my arm before looking down to the floor. She said nothing and I took my leave, stopping in the doorway just long enough to hear her small tone surface.
“Thank you,” she said.
I said nothing back, but her words burned in my head for the rest of the journey to the Earth.
Chapter 4:
Fiona
Everything had been quiet since our ship was overthrown. We were brought the meager supplies of food and water each day by the orange shifter. None of us would say anything when he walked in. We would all be overtaken by an acrimonious silence that would hang there until the man left.
I looked to my right at the cage where Benjamin had been placed and then quickly taken and felt a sick pang run up through my body. He was the last of security left to protect us, and they had taken him down like he was nothing.
It would have been almost silly how quickly they’d disposed of him if it weren’t so haunting.
I assumed I wouldn’t be getting much sleep while we were held prisoner. It had been a week now since we’d been put in the cells and the silence was almost maddening. I could tell the shifters didn’t know how to use light switches since we’d been sitting in perpetual brightness since we landed. I could feel my eyes were bloodshot from the lack of dark: the lack of feeling settled.
Libby broke out into a shrill sob suddenly, as she did mostly at night. Christina’s swollen eyes barely looked across the cell at the blonde girl. Libby was huddled in the corner of the bed in the fetal position, pulling her legs close to her chest and heaving. Anxiety and space travel didn’t go well together.
Her deep sobs cracked into the air, and my ears twitched back at the sudden sound.
“It’s okay,” I hushed and reached my hand out across the small path that separated our cells.
“She’s not even listening,” Christina offered, pushing her wet hair out of her eyes.
I shrugged and continued to watch the blonde embrace her meltdown. “I know,” I said. “We have to think of something.”
“Like what? Do you have some laser cutters handy that I don’t kn
ow about?” Christina griped.
I rolled my eyes and looked at the girl in the cage next to me, our eyes widening as we heard footsteps tromping nearer to our corridor. The white door slid open, and the same shifter who had taken Benjamin appeared.
He had a spattering of blue and yellow scales that trailed down his built arms. He had black eyes with tall slits for pupils and a crooked nose. I traced my tongue side to side on the back of my front teeth and watched him with trepidation, as though I would take to flight as soon as he spoke.
The shifter walked deeper into the jail, chair in hand, and walked in front of my cage, locking his tired eyes with mine. He thumbed in Libby’s direction and pinched the bridge of his nose in annoyance at her screams.
“That,” he pointed, “has got to stop.”
I frowned at his callousness and shot him a look of disgust. “Sorry her pain is so inconvenient for you.”
“Seriously,” he mused almost in a comedic tone, which just pissed me off even more. “I can’t sleep, I can’t eat, I can’t think. Okay, I’m lying. I can do all of those things,” he grinned, which quickly fell from his upturned lips. “I just do them with a dull throb in my brain now, and I’d really like that to stop.”
Libby didn’t even hear him. She continued to do a melded scream-cry into her pillow. My eyes flicked down to the stacks of food trays that she had left on the floor, still packed with food.
The blue-and-yellow shifter cringed again, turning his profile sharply behind to look at Libby. Then he set down the chair he was carrying and faced it backward so he could sit and use the backing to rest his arms on.
I thought it an odd choice for him to sit. If it were me, I would have stood to assert my authority. But, there was something casual about him. If his appearance didn't frighten me so much, he might have seemed friendly.
“You’re killing me,” the Weredragon said with an impatient sigh.
“Well, she’s scared!” I argued with a deep frown. “What do you expect?”
“Silence,” he offered. “So, what? She’d be more comfortable out of the cell?”
