by Lola Gabriel
“I know that kind of love is inside you, Dax. I can feel it, and I can see it in your eyes right this moment.”
Dax lowered his gaze. “I was wrong about you.”
“What?”
“I was wrong about you. I was under the impression that all witches were evil, from personal experience.”
“I can understand that. Your family’s track record isn’t very good when it comes to relationships with witches,” she said with a slight smile.
“Or relationships in general, it seems,” he muttered.
“You’re a good man, Dax. You just need to realize it and give yourself a little more credit.”
Dax smiled. “Thanks, Lucinda.”
“I’ll try calling Becca again. Maybe she’ll answer when she sees it’s me.”
“Let me know when you talk to her,” Dax said and turned around. He marched out of the room, passing a suspicious looking Mira, but he paid her very little notice. He had to get to his car, quickly. There was much to do.
As he stepped outside, he spotted a black Lamborghini, just like his own, parked a few yards down the street from his. He frowned and stood on the sidewalk for a few moments.
“What are the chances?” he mumbled to himself.
His eyes widened when he suddenly remembered how Becca had lashed out at him for driving like a maniac and almost getting her killed. He didn’t remember driving in this part of town on the night in question. In fact, he was pretty sure that he wasn’t even in the area that night. It could also just be a coincidence, but how many people had a car like his?
He brushed off the uneasy feeling inside him and walked to his car. He opened the door, climbed in, and shut the door again. He dialed his mother’s number and placed his phone in the dock on his dashboard.
“Liris Veskovic.”
“Hey, Mom,” he greeted her with a smile. It was nice to hear her voice, even though asking his mother for help was an all-time low. But she was the best woman for the job, so he had no choice.
“My baby! How are you?”
“I’m fine. I actually need your expert opinion on something,” Dax said as the engine of his car roared to life.
“Dax, I’ve waited a long time to hear those words coming from you. What do you need to know?”
8
A pulsating headache ripped through Becca’s skull as she regained consciousness. It was dark around her, and she could hear the faint sound of dripping water. There was no light coming in from anywhere around her, and it was too painful for her to move her body. The darkness scared her, and her heart started to race.
“Hello? Is anyone there?” she called out, but there was no one.
Becca pushed herself up on her arms, trying to see something, anything around her, with no luck. Pulling herself into a sitting position, she felt something around her ankle. She blindly reached for her it and felt the cold metal around it. There was a chain hanging from it, and when she slowly followed it, it led her to a nearby wall. Becca yanked on the chair desperately.
“Is anyone here?” she cried. “Can anyone hear me? I need help!”
She wasn’t sure how long she had been chained up inside this dark place which reeked of dampness and stone, but it had to have been for a couple of days. Or weeks?
No, it couldn’t have been weeks. She wouldn’t still be alive if it had been weeks.
The last thing Becca remembered was the black Lamborghini that had tried to run her off the road, then stopped dead in front of her. She could still hear the screeching of her tires as she slammed on the brakes to avoid a head-on collision. She remembered the anger she had felt when she’d thought it was Dax.
Fear suddenly filled her to the core when she recalled the woman who had climbed out of the car, her dark eyes and the deep throaty voice she spoke in. Becca had accused her of being sent by Dax to find her, but she hadn’t been.
Who had sent her then?
A scraping sound came from the far side of the darkness, and Becca held her breath as a beam of light in the shape of a door appeared. The door opened slowly, casting a light on Becca’s surroundings. Her eyes needed a few seconds to adjust, but as soon as she was able to see everything around her, she started to panic. It looked like an underground prison, and she was in one of the cells. It was fairly spacious, not like the tiny cells people were locked up in any of the movies she had watched.
But this wasn’t a movie. This was real life, and she needed to find a way out of there. She didn’t have her phone with her—it was probably still in her car, where she had left it before being abducted by that crazy bitch.
Her car! Where the hell was it? Still in the middle of the road? She highly doubted that.
“You sure think a lot, don’t you, Rebecca?” a voice pierced the silence, and the dark silhouette of a woman appeared in the doorway. Becca couldn’t see her face, but she knew it was the same woman who had abducted her.
“Who are you?” she demanded in a throaty growl and yanked on her chains again.
“You don’t know who I am? Well, that’s a pity. I know exactly who you are.”
“How?”
“I know a lot about you.”
“What do you want with me?” Becca growled, quickly growing very tired of this woman’s vague answers.
“It’s not you I want, Rebecca—”
“Can you stop calling me that? My name is Becca, you stupid cow!” Becca shouted.
“Temper, temper. You wouldn’t want to upset the baby, now would you?”
Becca narrowed her eyes as the woman slowly approached the cell gate and hissed, “How do you know about that?”
“Oh, don’t you worry your pretty little head about that,” she said and stepped into the light. Becca could clearly see her face, and her suspicions were confirmed. “I saw Dax today. He was looking really good,” her kidnapper said.
“Was he?” Becca tried her best to sound as unfazed as she could. She was convinced that this woman was just saying all these things to get a reaction out of her, make her doubt everything she had ever been sure of in her life, and Becca wasn’t going to allow that. Her mind was strong—or so she had always believed and told herself—and she refused to be broken.
“He was wearing that light blue shirt that he looks so good in. It really brings out his eyes,” the woman continued. “Don’t you think?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Oh, come on, Becca. I know you do. Those eyes of his are so sexy, especially when he looks at you so intently that you feel like you’re about to explode.”
“What do you want? I don’t have money, okay?”
The woman laughed and shook her head. “I don’t want your money. I have my own.”
“Then what do you want?”
The woman placed both her hands on the steel bars of the gate and cocked her head at Becca. “I spent thousands of years following Dax around, hoping he would see that I was loyal to him and would do anything for him, but he was too preoccupied with himself. All the nights we spent together didn’t mean anything to him. He just fucked me like I was nothing to him.”
Becca bit her bottom lip to refrain from saying anything she might regret. She knew that Dax had a past, and a long and dark one at that, but she didn’t want to hear about it from the woman he had spent nights with. She didn’t even want to think about it.
“Then he met you,” the woman snarled, “and you made him fucking crazy. I could see that now I was even more invisible to him.”
“And you think abducting me is going to change his mind? He clearly doesn’t want you!”
“Shut up!” she screeched, tapping her heel on the floor. “He will want me.”
“No, he won’t. Not as long as I’m alive.”
“Exactly.” The woman smirked. “I’m going to keep you here until your baby is born. Then I’m going to kill you, take the baby to Dax, and tell him how I saved his child but couldn’t save you. I’ll be a hero, and he will finally see me in a different light.�
�
“It won’t work. Dax will see right through your deception.”
The woman laughed again. “You underestimate my powers of persuasion, little dragon. You see, smoke and mirrors are my thing. And people have never been able to resist me, not even your precious little prince. He’s got this whole tough guy facade going on, but deep down inside, he just wants one thing. You and I both know what that is.”
“You can’t do that.”
“Of course I can, and I will. Plus, I know what your weakness is, Becca. It’s water. That’s how your parents died, and you’ve been plagued with it ever since.”
Becca gasped, terror seizing her heart and squeezing it. “How the hell do you know that?”
“Like I said, I know a lot about you. Did you know Dax is a water dragon? You two couldn’t be worse suited for each other. He’ll be the end of you.”
“No, he won’t! You’re wrong about him!” Becca fumed. Her breathing became ragged, unable to comprehend how this woman could possibly know so much about her, or the way her parents had died, or about Dax.
“I’ve been around longer than you have, little princess, and I will be around long after you,” she taunted.
“You can’t do this!”
“Well, I better get going then.” The woman turned away slightly. “I wonder if Dax is home and if he is still wearing that blue shirt of his. The fabric is so soft, so comfortable, especially against my naked skin.”
In an instant fit of rage, Becca jumped up, rushed to the gate, and grabbed the two vertical bars.
“You stay the hell away from him!” she growled.
“You are a feisty one,” the woman chuckled.
“Fuck you,” Becca said through gritted teeth.
“Call me Mira.” With a wink, Mira turned on her heel and headed back to the door. Before she walked out, she turned back to Becca and said, “Oh, I almost forgot.” Mira slipped something out of her pocket, and it started to glow an ominous green color. “This should keep you calm and detained. Bye,” she said with a sardonic tone and left, closing the door behind her.
A tear ran down Becca’s cheek as the darkness engulfed her again, except for the green stone Mira had placed on the narrow stone mantle. Becca glanced at it and took a few slow steps to her left, trying to get a closer look. The closer she came to it, the brighter it glowed. She didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
Suddenly, a ringing erupted in her ears so intensely that it made her cry out in pain. The green stone flashed violently, and a strange yet familiar feeling rose up inside her. She hadn’t felt it in a long time, and she was afraid that it would be too intense now.
She felt the dragon blood inside her pulsate through her veins, and her shoulders tensed. Her nails grew into large claws, and bright purple scales formed on her skin. Two wings protruded from her back, tearing her clothes apart. Her body contorted, and she dropped down on all fours. Her dragon form took over completely, but instead of feeling powerful and majestic, she felt weak and understated.
The cell was large enough for her in her dragon form, but the shackle around her ankle seemed to grow along with the size of her leg. A rumbling, warning sound formed in her throat, and she lowered her head, backing away submissively. A whimper followed as the nauseated feeling returned, and the same sharp shooting pains she had experienced when Mira’s eyes had flashed on the motorway ripped through her skull. She growled to herself, knowing that no one would hear her. She could feel she wasn’t anywhere close to Vancouver.
Even in her dragon form, the world started to spin once again, and her body went limp. She fell to the ground in a cloud of dust, making the ground beneath her grumble. Falling in and out of consciousness, she wasn’t sure whether the world she found herself in was a dream or real.
The sky was filled with gray smoke, swirling up in large clouds, and the screams in the distance were so haunting that Becca was riddled with goosebumps. The grass around her was being blown to pieces, but she couldn’t see the enemy. When she tried to run, her short legs failed her, and she fell down onto the grass.
“Becky,” a soothing and familiar voice said beside her, and she felt a pair of arms wrap around her, lifting her off the ground.
“Mommy.” Becca buried her face in the soft fabric and held on for dear life.
“It’s okay, baby. It’s okay,” her mother kept whispering to her as she ran.
“Annabeth!”
Her mother stopped abruptly and turned around. Becca glanced over her shoulder and saw a handsome young man approaching them, and she felt her arms reach out to him. “Daddy!”
“It’s okay, sweetheart,” he said to her. “Are you two all right?”
“We’re fine. What is happening, William?”
“We have to move. A pack of unknown dragons is heading our way, and they are destroying everything in their path,” her father answered.
“Why are they doing this?”
“Father said something about a failure to negotiate a peace agreement.”
“If they wished for peace, why are they declaring war upon us?”
“They are barbaric. They always have been.”
An explosion went off close to them, and Becca’s ears rang from the impact. Her mother and father started to run again, and she felt the frantic pounding of her mother’s heart against her ear.
She didn’t know how long they ran, but after a while, they stopped. When Becca looked around her, she noticed the tall reeds surrounding them. Her mother whispered to her to be as quiet as a mouse, and she obeyed. They spent another long while between the reeds, hiding for their lives.
The noise started to die down, and the air was eerily quiet.
Her mother and father’s bodies jerked forward suddenly, and Becca slipped out of her mother’s grasp. They all fell down on the grass, and Becca rolled down into the murky water. It wasn’t very deep, but she laid perfectly still, out of sight.
There were two men dressed in a strange uniform, with a lightning bolt embroidered on the breast pocket. She watched in horror and complete silence as they grabbed her mother and father, shoved their heads into the water, and drowned them before decapitating them. Becca pressed her hands against her mouth in order to keep quiet, knowing the men would hurt her if they found her. She closed her eyes and waited, either to be discovered and killed or to live through this.
She just wasn’t sure which.
Becca had never understood what had truly happened, but now things were starting to make more sense. She wished she would have read what was in her file instead of living through this horrible dream that seemed to last a lifetime. Maybe that was the way it had felt for her as a child. She could not have been older than five or six. Her past was a blur.
Night soon fell, and Becca was still in the water, shivering violently. She heard the quiet voices of women and saw the fuzzy lights from lanterns. A young woman approached her and scooped her up in her arms. She wrapped her in a warm blanket with the help of the other women, and they took her to a small village nearby. Their words were muffled as Becca slipped in and out of consciousness, but she knew they were not speaking her native tongue.
She had been rescued by a group of unknown women, the wives, daughters, and sisters of the men who had set ablaze their world, killing them all, including her parents. They kept referring to her as dochka knyazya, and she had no idea what that meant or what they would do to her. She only knew that, for the moment, she was warm and safe. She was alive.
Her vision blurred once again as visions of the rest of her life flashed before her. The dark times she had gone through when she was a teenager. Her life on the streets, being involved with all the wrong people. The nights she had been held at knifepoint, the days she had spent stealing to stay alive. The screams of all the people she had killed, accidentally or out of sheer desperation, their screams and pleads filling her mind. The people who had betrayed her, their voices and angry words echoing in her mind until she screamed out i
n anguish.
Her eyes opened abruptly, and she glared at the green stone, still resting on the mantle. Her violet eyes flashed weakly as she slowly pushed her dragon body up from the ground and stuck her snout through the bars. She slowly opened her mouth, a glowing ember forming in her throat, and she spat out a ball of fire. In a direct hit, it smashed the green rock into a million pieces.
Becca immediately felt the effects of the ominous green stone fade, and her dragon form slowly melted away. Within a few moments, she was back in her human form. She gathered her torn clothes and tied them back together rather skillfully. She had learned how to do it in the past, since she hadn’t had the resources to buy new clothes every time she had taken her dragon form. She was just relieved that the green rock was now destroyed and she could finally think clearly.
Her past started to unfold before her. Her parents had been murdered by unknown men who had been involved in the destruction of her home. How did these men overpower her dragon parents? What did dochka knyazya mean?
Now she was desperate to know what those words meant.
But first, she needed to get the hell out of here.
9
Dax sped through the streets in his Lamborghini and listened to the sound of the phone ringing through his speakers.
“Come on, Lucinda,” he muttered. Eventually the call connected.
“Hey, Dax,” Lucinda answered. “Sorry. I was just in the middle of something.”
“That’s okay. I got your message. You said you found something?”
“Yeah. Can you meet me at my house?”
“Of course. I’m in the area.”
“Okay. I’ll see you in a bit.”
It only took Dax about ten minutes to reach Lucinda’s house, and it was everything he had imagined a witch’s house would be. From the inside, at least. Outwardly, it looked like a modern home in a trendy neighborhood, but on the inside, it was something entirely different. The rooms were all decorated in a strong bohemian theme, and it smelled of incense and sage.
