Witch's Reign

by Shannon Mayer

  Balder kept moving. He was used to leaving Batman behind.

  “That was very unkind of him,” Lila said. “I get picked on for being a runt. I thought you were very brave back there with my cousins.” She tipped her head against my cheek. I swallowed hard.

  “Those were your cousins?” I shook my head, reminding myself not to complain about Bryce ever again.

  “Yes, all dragons are considered cousins. My kind believe any weakness should be wiped out, and I am too small. The Gnat, as they called me.” Her big eyes blinked once, the lashes fluttering. She changed the direction of her words. “If you’ll let me, I can try to help you. Maybe if I do that, your friend Ish will let me stay with you. I have no home now. I can’t go back to Dragon’s Ground.”

  There was a connection between this little dragon and myself, I wouldn’t deny it. That was the world of the supernatural: when a friend came along, you held on tightly. Because there was no telling when you might need each other. Or like Darcy, lose each other. I was afraid to trust Lila, though. Maks wasn’t wrong when he’d said dragons couldn’t be trusted.

  How the hell he knew that was beyond me, but he had a point. Which meant I had to be careful and not let myself get too deep into caring for her.

  I lifted a hand and ran my fingers along the top of her head. “I think that’s a great idea, Lila. I feel like I’ve known you for years.”

  “Me too,” she whispered. “I like you, Zam. Not just because you saved me either. You’re what I want to be. Brave and fierce even if you aren’t the biggest supe.”

  I smiled, my heart swelling a little, but it was strained as I stared into the distance, thinking about all we were going to face. This was the beginning of the journey, far from home and going deep into enemy territory. “Though she be but little, she is fierce,” I whispered softly.

  “Shakespeare.” Lila bobbed her head. “I always loved that line.”

  I laughed. A dragon who recognized Shakespeare? “How about this one. ‘Hell is empty and all the devils are here.’ What play?”

  “Oh, please. That’s easy. The Tempest. How about, ‘It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.’” She scrambled off my shoulder and up Balder’s neck where she perched and faced me with a wide grin on her toothy face.

  I pointed a finger at her. “Romeo and Juliet.”

  Back and forth we went, throwing lines, trying to stump one another. I let Balder slow again and Maks eventually caught up but I ignored him. Because he was a human, a stupid, stupid human man who had no idea what this world was really like. I remembered something my father had told me, and it made more sense to me now than ever before.

  Zamira, there are times you must take a chance. You. Because maybe tomorrow, you might not be alive. Live for the moment. In order to get up each day and face the darkness—you need to embrace the moments of joy in life. One day, the inevitable will come for you and you will have no more todays.

  Death was always waiting, and I knew it better than most.

  Lila’s eyes narrowed and she flashed a wink at me before she turned her head to Maks. She waved one tip of her wing at him. "Out of my sight! Thou dost infect my eyes."

  “Oh, burn!” I turned my head to the side and raised an eyebrow at him. “Thou art a boil, a plague sore, an embossed carbuncle in my corrupted blood." Take that, human. Use all the F-bombs you like, you won’t beat Will when it came to put-downs.

  “Are you tossing Shakespearean insults at me? You two are out of your minds,” Maks said. “We have acid-spitting dragons looking for us, we’re racing to save Darcy, and have a killing winter ahead of us if the rumors of the Ice Witch are even half true, not to mention slipping past her three guardians. Do you recall these small yet rather important details? As in, we need to get the hell out of here? Not spend our time trotting out how many plays of yore you’ve read.” He continued to mutter under his breath and I chose not to listen. There might have been more than a few damned house cat mutterings and those burned my pride and hurt something deep inside of me more than anything else could have. He was right. I was just a house cat.

  Lila stuck her tongue out at him. “More of your conversation would infect my brain.”

  His face tightened and Lila howled with laughter, her whole tiny body shaking. I smiled. I might be stuck with Maks for now. But I had been right in saving Lila. She was a bright ray of light on what was otherwise a shitty fucking day.

  I nodded to myself. “Though she be but little, she is fierce. And she’s my friend.”

  Chapter Seven

  Lila continued to throw insults at Maks even as the darkness began to fall around us on the edge of Dragon’s Ground. I was concerned for two reasons. One, we literally weren’t out of the woods yet, and two, the temperature was slowly dipping. That wasn’t good for any of us.

  “Thou art a boil.” She flew between us doing barrel rolls and then shooting up into the sky to scout for any incoming dragons.

  “You used that one already. Several times, in fact,” Maks drawled.

  “It’s a good one. You look like a boil. Ready to pop.” She flicked her tail at him, catching the edge of his ear in a hard snap.

  He clapped a hand over it with a grunt. “God save me from angry women, and even angrier lady dragons.”

  Lila landed on my right shoulder, preening. “There is a place up ahead we could camp, if you want to stop for the night? The dragons don’t like it, so they won’t come close. And yes,” she looked at Maks, “you should talk to your deity about saving you from angry female dragons. We all bite.” She stuck her tongue out at him again, flipping it back and forth. I bit back a grin.

  “If you have a place, then yes, lead the way, Lila.” I motioned with my hand for her to do just that. I was hoping for a trapper shack. According to Ish’s information, the old structures were still here and there, dotted on the landscape, left behind by the humans before they scattered as the wall went up. A trapper shack would be perfect, small and meant to blend in with the forest so the animals being hunted would never see it. An extra level of camouflage would not hurt my feelings at all.

  She pushed off from my shoulder and flew ahead of us, the glitter of her scales catching the last of the dying light. As soon as she was well out of earshot, Maks reached across the space between the horses and tapped my arm.

  “You really think we can trust her?” He kept his voice low. “It could be a trap. She could be working for the dragons, drawing us in. Looking for a way to get back into their good graces by bringing home dinner.”

  I snorted, the desire to rub my face with both hands high. “Really? We aren’t any special prizes here, Maks. You’re a human, and I’m a freaking house cat. Even Lila is no big thing to them. They sent juveniles to dispatch her, that is how little they thought of her. If she’d had any value they would have executed her publicly. And we aren’t here to steal anything from the dragons, we’re just passing through. Dragons can pick up on the intentions of those they’re around.” That last bit was a fib, but I needed him to trust Lila, because I wanted badly to believe she was one of the good ones.

  I rolled my shoulders and stretched my back with a big breath. Part of it was true, though, about the feelings. Lila had said she knew I truly meant to protect her, and because of that . . . well, I wanted to believe I had her loyalty. That I could trust her. I shook my head at myself. There was that T word again. Maybe this time, I’d be giving it to the right person. “I bet we aren’t even on their radar anymore.”

  Again, that last bit was more hope than truth. I didn’t need him freaking out about me being impetuous, or foolish, or indecisive. I was a grown woman and I’d survived in this world when a lot of people would have given up, lain down, and died where their spirits had been broken. But that was a cat for you, nine lives and all that shit. I’d keep going even when I wasn’t entirely sure I should be still alive. I wasn’t sure how many lives I had left after the last ten years hunting jewels for Ish.

 
Lila ducked into the trees, flicking her tail at us to follow her. She disappeared into the thick evergreens and I grimaced. I did not want to go into the Dragon’s Ground until we absolutely had to, but it looked like the place Lila had in mind for us to stay was exactly there, into the den of the beast.

  “See, yeah, that face you’re making right there, that makes me nervous,” Maks said. “This is a bad idea, isn’t it, following her?”

  “Not bad. But dangerous? Yes, I can say it would be that at least. To be fair, everything we do outside of Ish’s home is dangerous. And Lila obviously knows what she’s doing and she knows this place far better than either you or I,” I pointed out. “So, we trust her and keep going.”

  “You’re trusting a dragon you’ve known for hours. Hours. That’s freaking ridiculous. Stupid, reckless . . . just . . . I can’t even begin to understand how you can’t see just how bad of an idea this is.”

  My jaw ticked because what he was saying was true and I knew it. But he was a human and that meant there were things he just didn’t grasp in his little pea brain. I whipped around to face him. “You don’t understand this world, human. Saving someone’s life here is no small thing. You don’t turn on them, no matter what, until at the very least that debt is repaid. No matter if it costs you your life or the life of someone you love, if it costs you your marriage, or your brother’s respect, your values or anything else you might hold dear. You do not turn on them. You just don’t. You repay the debt, and that’s all there is to that, Maks.”

  His eyes widened. I pulled back, and yanked my hood over my face. I had not meant to say that much to him, but once the words started they didn’t want to stop.

  He was silent after that which was a blessing in and of itself. Minutes later, we crossed the tree line and walked into Dragon’s Ground. Yes, we were farther north, but we were still at least fifty miles from the boundary line we needed to cross before we would be on the Witch’s Reign. And that’s when things would get interesting. That’s when we needed to be especially careful.

  As if facing the dragons we’d seen already wasn’t interesting enough.

  I sighed, feeling the weight of this journey on my shoulders like a living creature, one that wanted to strangle me if I let it have its way.

  We had a long way to go, and a long way back, and a time crunch on top of all that, and a lot of lives at stake. I sighed again as I let Balder pick his path through the trees, but it wasn’t long before we were forced to stop.

  In front of us was a high fence made of . . . spears, it looked like, if I was seeing things right. They were old and rusted, shattered in places, and pieced back together in others as if they’d been there a very long time. I frowned and slid off Balder’s back. Lila lighted on the top of one of the spears, balancing carefully on her two clawed back feet. “Here, we can camp in here, against that building back there I think is best.”

  I looked past her at the stones in the ground, the markings on them, the stone building she pointed at with the tip of one wing. “Lila, is this a . . . graveyard?”

  “Yeah, but not for dragons; for the supes that used to live in this forest before the dragons. It’s way older than the wall and hasn’t been used in hundreds of years.” She flicked her wings behind her and hopped off the spear and to the ground. She trotted forward on her four limbs like a tiny dragon horse. “Come on, there’s a shelter not far from here, that building, like I said, I think is best.”

  I looked at Maks who just shook his head. “It’s a good thing I . . . care for . . . her. I wouldn’t do this for anyone else.”

  “You mean Darcy?” I tipped my head to one side. It was almost like he’d forgotten her name.

  “Of course, I mean Darcy,” he snapped, his eyes unable to meet mine.

  Funny, but his words seemed stilted, like he knew he should say something about her. Like he hadn’t really been thinking about her at all.

  Easy on the suspicious aloysius, Zam, I told myself.

  “Me either. Hanging out in graveyards isn’t my idea of a nice night out,” I muttered and stepped Balder through the opening that led into the graveyard. Fingers crossed it was a dead graveyard. Like really, really dead.

  A chill flickered over me as I crossed an invisible barrier that had nothing to do with the cold weather around us. Like I’d inadvertently set off an unseen alarm for the spirits of the dead. The hair on my arms rose the farther in we went. Safe from dragons, but what else was here that wasn’t so safe for us?

  Ghouls were known to haunt graveyards, spirits of the dead, of course, and then there were worse creatures. Vamps for one, and even werewolves were known to stick close to the dead. I grimaced and reminded myself that, at least, a vamp would go for Maks first. The wolf would come for me, smelling what I was. Cats versus dogs and all that.

  My lips twitched and Maks must have caught the edge of my smile because he frowned at me which made the twitch bigger. Of course, the smile was more nerves than anything else. Within seconds, I could feel my sixth sense dropping into overdrive, picking up on every noise, every smell, every creak that was anything but natural. The dead were restless, and they knew I could sense them.

  Double damn.

  Lila ducked behind a couple of bigger tombstones and then stopped in front of the old blocky house she’d pointed at from the fence. Twelve feet in height and about the same distance across, the carved stones were huge and would have been a monumental task to move. The front of it was peaked and drawn forward a solid six feet into an overhang that was covered in tiny figures. The more I looked, the more the figures looked as though they were writhing in pain, skeletal, and in some state of decomposition across the board.

  Awesome.

  “A crypt? Are you serious?” Maks snorted. “You can’t be serious. Tell me you’re joking, little dragon. That this is just a very bad sense of humor.”

  “The dragons don’t like it here. I never knew why. They won’t even talk about it. Certainly, not to anyone who isn’t an elder, so it’s really the best place. Unless you want to make camp somewhere they could easily find us?” Lila sat on her haunches like a well-trained dog, her wing tips trembling. The cold must be getting to her. We needed a fire for all of us.

  He glared at her. “This is a bad, bad idea. If dragons don’t like this place, then we are fucking stupid to be here,” Maks muttered even as he dismounted and loosened Batman’s cinch, giving the horse a scratch on his neck and slipping him another mint.

  I wanted to disagree with him, but the sensation of being watched, of not being welcome on this land, grew inside me with each passing second. I didn’t dismount.

  Balder stomped his front foot and there was a resounding crack. I looked over his shoulder to the ground at his feet. He’d snapped a bone that lay on the ground, as if it had been placed there. Not a speck of dirt marred the creamy white bone. My lips curled into a silent snarl and my body tensed. I forced myself to breathe through the sensation. “Maks, do you feel anything . . . out of the ordinary?”

  “Cold and hungry and fucking irritated that no one listens to me because I’m just a human. You wouldn’t treat me like this if I were a supe. I’ve had no say in all of this, and my life is on the line too,” he grumbled. I ignored him and his complaint when another time his grumbling would have made me laugh.

  “Lila, you feel anything?” I looked at the little dragon.

  She shook her head. “I hate to agree with him but cold and hungry are about all I’ve got going on.” Except that her wings still shook even though the wind had subsided and, while I wanted to believe it was just the cold, I wasn’t so sure. Her jeweled eyes locked with mine and she shook her head ever so slightly. She did feel something but didn’t want Maks to know. And if I was right, she was as frozen in place as me. Why was she hiding it from Maks? An ego thing? Possibly, dragons didn’t like to be known as weak, and that would be a struggle for one so small as Lila who was already fighting an uphill battle. Or maybe like me, she knew he’d make goo
d cannon fodder if the situation demanded it.

  If the spirits turned out to be more than just restless.

  The two horses shifted their feet in tandem. I forced myself off Balder’s back and slid to the ground, still holding onto him in case I needed to leap back into the saddle. As soon as my feet touched the earth, the sensation of being watched intensified. As if someone stood right behind me, breathing down the side of my neck, which was impossible, seeing as I still had my hood up. Sweat broke out along my hairline and trickled down my back. I stood there and did my best to breathe through it, knowing it for what it was.

  Finally, Maks noticed. “What’s wrong?”

  “Felines are sensitive to the dead.” I was trying to talk normal but it came out as a whisper. “And the dead know it. They tend to . . . want my attention. I was hoping this place was old enough that the spirits would have moved on by now.”

  Maks came around Balder to my side. “Then we have to go if it’s not safe.”

  “This is safe, at least from the dragons, if Lila is right,” I said, and my stomach rolled with the thought of staying more than another few minutes. “I just . . . I won’t sleep is all.” Or eat. Or relax. As it was right then, the need to whip around and tell the spirits to back the fuck off was strong enough that I had to work to hold in the words and fear. Because saying those things would do me no good.

  I was no medium trained to handle spirits. Certainly, not pissed off spirits of dead supes crawling around the graveyard looking for attention and trying to draw me out to them. Some spirits could steal your energy and take you into a coma, and that’s if they were playing nice. That was shit I did not need when Darcy was depending on me. I touched the ring that rested against my chest, taking strength from it.

  I drew a breath and let it out slowly, still fighting the sensations that wormed around me. “Get a fire going. It’s safer here than out there.” I repeated those words, needing to believe them.