by J Thompson
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Also by J Thompson
About J Thompson
Also by Mina Carter
About Mina Carter
DRAGON FIRE AND PHOENIX ASH
J THOMPSON
MINA CARTER
NEW YORK TIMES & USA TODAY BESTSELLING AUTHOR
Copyright © 2018 by J Thompson & Mina Carter
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Also by J Thompson
About J Thompson
Also by Mina Carter
About Mina Carter
CHAPTER 1
F reedom, a dream. Her reality, a nightmare.
Sula moved her clawed feet a small step to the side and back again. That was all she could do in the confines of the cage she had called home for the past five years. It was only three feet by three and a half feet, which meant her movements were kept to a minimum with no chance of stretching her wings.
Could she still call them wings? Since her incarceration, her captors had taken more than just her freedom. If they had been kind enough to place a mirror near her, she knew she wouldn’t recognize herself. She now resembled a balding parrot instead of the magnificent phoenix—the bird of legend—she really was. That was the issue.
She was a rare phoenix shifter, and that came with complications, ones that made her wish she was something else, anything else but a mythical bird with valuable properties. In the last five years, she had been kept in her bird form constantly so they could slowly remove her feathers, take her tears and steal her blood. Her incarceration had been most of her life, having been captured when she was only a few months old.
One feather from a phoenix could fetch more than most earned in a single year. Two tears could heal a whole family of disease and could also bring in a fortune. Her body was no longer her own. She was a gold mine, used to make a fortune for others on the black market for paranormals.
Sula was not so naive to believe that other shifters would think twice about treating one of their own this way. In fact, it was the opposite. They were quite happy to exploit anyone and everyone for the chance of being rich. Most would find her situation shocking, but this was the only life she knew. She could barely remember her parents and had only brief recollections of them. Instead she had only the vile creature that brought food to her cage and plucked her feathers. She didn’t have many of those left, and she hoped maybe, just maybe, he would free her when he finally had them all. Scars littered her weak body, visible in both of her forms. She was a broken shell, not worthy of being fixed.
Sula shook her head and let the tears fall to the floor of the cage. Freedom for her wouldn’t be outside this cage. It wouldn’t be walking across a sandy beach watching the waves crash. It wouldn’t be soaring above the clouds with the currents lifting her into the heavens.
No.
Freedom for her would be death. But even then the bastards would make a profit from her corpse.
No, she would never be free.
Sula closed her amber eyes and prayed to whatever gods were listening for release from the hellish life she had to endure. A small part of her, the part that fought every time they took a feather, prayed for retribution. She wished for a being powerful enough to make them pay, to burn them into oblivion and for once give her hope that her life wasn’t for nothing.
“Sula!” Marcus’ voice filtered through to her cage and she stiffened. Not again. “We have another order, my dear,” he continued as he stalked into the room.
On instinct she moved to the back of her cage. It wouldn’t make much difference, but she refused to just give in.
“Now, now, petal. You don’t want to make this difficult, do you?” Marcus sneered as he opened the cage. The rusty hinges squeaked and echoed throughout the room, showing how much time had actually passed since she had last been allowed out.
Sula lifted her beak and glared at Marcus, even when he wrapped his meaty paw around her featherless neck. The only thing stopping him from breaking it was the metal clamp that he used to chain her. Sula did what she did every time. She fought as best as she could to get free. In the past she had succeeded in hurting Marcus. Once she had even managed to get free and fly for the door, only to be knocked down by a bolt of electricity. That was Marcus’ favorite toy and he had not held back from using it.
Being dragged from her cage was not the worst thing that had happened to her. Having her feathers brutally taken from her body was nothing new. Being forced to cry for her tears was nothing new.
“Come and meet your new co-owner,” Marcus said, bringing Sula from her inner thoughts.
That was definitely something new, and new was never good. New meant pain, along with her blood, sweat and tears—literally.
Sula swallowed as much as she was able. Being carried around by the neck wasn’t what she would describe as comfortable, but it was her owner’s way of controlling her. She was unable to fight back. Well, unless you could call pecking his hand fighting.
As she was thrown onto a hard table, she looked around and was met with the sympathetic stares of other creatures that had fallen into the hands of Marcus and his band of cut throats and arseholes. Cages lined the room almost to the ceiling, all of varying sizes. Their occupants ranged from eggs that had yet to hatch all the way to larger beings. She had heard enough from Marcus and had seen the comings and goings to know the different varieties of shifters. Marcus liked his shifters rare, though—rare and profitable. He also preferred them compliant. If not, he wasn’t bothered at all about having a dead shifter. Sometimes he could make more money. By selling off everything, he could get rid of the evidence and make a decent profit.
“This is Sula,” Marcus announced.
She turned to look at the newcomer, not liking the way he watched her. Even though she was in bird form, he made her skin crawl as though she was in her human form.
She didn’t like him and didn’t even attempt to hold back the shudder as he stroked a large hand over her head and down her back, plucking a feather none too gently as he went.
“Hello there, Sula.” His words felt slimy as he used her priceless feather to pick his teeth.
“We are going to become great friends. Aren’t we?”
Sula shivered once again. Yeah, new was definitely not better.
THESE PLACES GAVE him the heebie-jeebies and pissed him off all at the same time.
Damian Black stood in the middle of the concrete floor of the warehouse he’d just busted and looked around. Crates and cages were stacked high around him, soft sighs and sounds of misery fueling the darkness inside. Product for the traffickers, they were piled nearly to the ceiling as they waited to be loaded onto the cargo containers on the docks outside and then onto the ships that would arrive to transport them to be s
old.
Creatures… people… snatched from their homes and families just because something about them was valuable to someone—their skin, fur, scales or claws… fire for dragons… hell, even their bones in some cases.
Gritting his teeth, he attempted to keep the fury down. All those things had a value to someone, and assholes like the ones who ran this warehouse knew it. Capitalized on it. Profited from it.
Not anymore. Not here. Not as long as he drew breath.
“It’s okay. I promise. My name is Damian Black, and I’m here to ensure no one ever hurts you again,” he said into the dim light, knowing the occupants of the cages would hear him. Whether they believed him was another matter entirely. He’d been in their place, been in the cages, heard all the promises only for the promiser to turn around and abuse him just the same.
Forget gold, trust was the most expensive thing on the planet. Once gone… it was near impossible to get back. Especially in the shadows of the world where a child could be snatched from his nursery and his parents killed, all because he was born a different color from the rest of his line.
“Bring the lights up. Check the perimeter before we start getting them out,” he ordered Vane and Blake, his two trainees. The two broke away, splitting off to do his bidding. He watched in approval at their swift and decisive movements as they blended into the shadows.
Both were good men, loyal dragons and deadly fighters. If any of the assholes running this place were still lurking in the shadows, they’d meet a grisly end at the hands of the two blacks. Like him, both had been rescued from cages just like these, so they would show no mercy.
“Just bear with us a little longer. I promise we’ll have you all out of there soon,” he continued talking as he walked the length of the warehouse. A desk sat in the middle of the central walkway, tatty books on its surface calling to him.
Stopping in front of the battered wood surface, he reached out and flipped the books open, quickly scanning through the entries. His expression tightened the more he read. The fury of his dragon inside made the creature coil and roll within him, surging up to press against the inside of his skin. For a moment, the imprint of his scales showed on the bare skin of his arms.
Behave, he hissed in a mental undertone to the creature residing within him. Unless you want to freak out everyone here. Remember, they’ll have been told we just want them for snacks, capisce?
The eggggg… his dragon hissed back, surging upward to look out of his eyes and study the entries in the journal at the same time he did. Damian sighed but let it. His dragon was, frankly, an asshole at times and none more so than now.
His dragon hoarded eggs. Jeweled eggs. They didn’t have to be fancy name-brand ones. Pretty junk caught its attention just as well as those costing more money than Damian would ever see in his life. Thankfully. It meant he could palm it off with baubles without bankrupting himself to feed its habit. A habit that had never interfered with his mission to destroy as many of these trafficking rings as he could… until now.
Last week they’d liberated another warehouse, freeing all the occupants bar one. There had been one cage at the back. It had been empty apart from the shards of an egg left behind. But it had been no ordinary egg, the gilt shards bringing his dragon out of sleep quicker than the word Fabergé.
An egg meant a chick. A chick they hadn’t found. A chick that was out there somewhere suffering who knew what.
He found a list on one of the pages—all addresses downtown, of which Damian would be checking out. That would take time, though, and time was their enemy. As soon as they started hitting locations on this list, these assholes would have time to move their other “stock”… including the chick.
There… His dragon drew his attention to an address listed near the bottom of the page.
Yeah? What was special about it? Damian had no clue, but at times his dragon spotted things he didn’t. Let’s do it then.
SULA WAS TIRED. No, not tired. It was more than tiredness. Tiredness could be dealt with by a couple of lie-ins and lazy days. This was not tiredness.
She was exhausted, worn out down to the bone from the constant fight to stay upright. To stay awake and not let them see any sort of weakness.
Instead of being placed back in her tiny cage in the back room, she was now in a dark box in the office of her owners. No longer in sight of anyone, she was kept in there until they wanted something from her. She was weak. She hadn’t eaten in days. They were starving her, which meant they planned to use her corpse to make even more profit.
If she’d had any energy at all, she would have attempted to shift, but even that was out of her reach. Plus, she was scared. Even if she did have the strength, she was worried what they would do with her if she did in fact shift. Being a bald parrot was better than them realizing she’d grown to adulthood in captivity. But then again, she was positive she didn’t look even a tiny bit attractive anymore.
Sula sighed and turned her head to the side from where it rested on the bottom of the box. The fight to stay on her clawed feet was lost, but she didn’t care. She could just close her eyes and rest.
Rest was good, but it wasn’t going to happen, not with the sound of banging that had started. At first she hadn’t noticed it. Then she had thought it was all in her head, but now its force alone was so strong it shook the floor of the room she was in. It echoed off the concrete floor under the box, and every now and again her small home jumped.
In the dark she didn’t know what was causing it, and to be honest, she didn’t want to know. Usually things that made that amount of noise were not of the friendly type. Her box shook this time, the loud sounds reverberating around the office and filtering into the box. The box was smaller than her cage, and the previous owner had obviously died by the lingering smell. Sula could swear the banging would bring the whole building down.
Good, Sula thought. Maybe then she and the rest of the creatures captured would finally be free in some way or another.
Roars, growls, and screams rang through the building, making Sula shudder as she huddled into a ball. Without her feathered wings, she was unable to hide her head. So when the top of her box was ripped off, exposing her to bright lights and more sounds of death and torture, all she could do was curl up, making herself as small as possible while feeling exposed.
Fear like nothing she had ever known froze her limbs as the screams became more audible. The screams would no doubt stay with her in her nightmares.
A face, shadowed from the lack of light in the office, peered at her, his brows drawn together as if curious. He made no sudden movements, merely watching her. Was this her new owner come to finish her off and sell her parts?
She finally looked up to meet his gaze and became lost in the most beautiful set of dark eyes she had ever seen. They glittered like black onyx as they looked back at her and over her tiny form. For some unknown and strange reason, she felt safe.
Her body started to shake as her wilting energy failed her. From the tips of her claws to her bald head, she shook, but she managed to croak a small squeak before she let her eyes close completely. She could only hope this being with the beautiful, glittering eyes was a friend and not a foe.
CHAPTER 2
They’d hit pay dirt with the address his dragon had nudged him toward. The assholes had been caught on the hop and hadn’t had time to clear out before Damian and his team had hit them.
And hit they had—hard and fast with all the brutality that black dragons were known for. The three of them spearheading the entry, with the recovery teams bringing up the rear, they’d ripped through the building like wildfire.
Within a few minutes of chaos and destruction, the traffickers had been rounded up into the center of the main room, the stench of fear rolling from them.
Damian’s nose twitched. Urine. One of them had pissed themselves. Great, just fucking great.
“Vane, get them out of here before they stink the place out,” he ordered, turning in disgust b
efore he did something he’d regret later. Like rip their spines clean from their bodies. They were all shifters, pedaling the flesh of their own. That sickened him right down to his soul. If they were dead, though, they couldn’t provide any information on the network they worked for. He wasn’t dumb enough to think they’d caught any of the major players.
The egggggg… his dragon reminded him, and Damian headed toward the nearest of the containment boxes. The top had been ripped off a couple of them, and the first few he looked in were empty. The last one though, was occupied.
At first glance, he thought the creature, some kind of bird, lying on the bottom was dead. Sadness filled him that it had died alone and scared in a cage. But then, unbelievably, the tiny creature moved, opening an eye to blink up at him.
Fear oozed from its pores and it made the tiniest of sounds. A cry. Of fear or for help, he didn’t know, but he couldn’t leave the little thing in the cold, damp box. It didn’t even have a blanket or any straw to cushion its frail little body against the wood.
“Shhhh, it’s okay,” he murmured, keeping the deepness of his dragon out of his voice as he reached for it. “I’m here to help you. I won’t hurt you. I promise.”
It shivered as he wrapped his fingers around it as gently as he could and lifted it from the box. It was so tiny and frail he felt like a brute touching it, but the way it huddled into the warmth of his cupped hands strengthened his resolve.
