Claire slung her small handbag onto her shoulder and grabbed the handle to her giant, rolling suitcase of makeup. She was already dreaming of sinking into a nice hot bath once she got home. Her day hadn’t been that long today, but it had felt exhausting. Dealing with dragons would do that to you, she supposed.
As she’d expected, the hallways were deserted. She walked at a brisk pace, her soft leather flats barely making any noise as they padded along on the carpeted floor. She had just turned the corner next to the elevators when a flash of black caught her eye. She wasn’t sure why, but the sight gave her an uneasy feeling in her gut. Something about how quickly it had appeared made the sight suspicious. Frowning, and telling herself she was acting ridiculously paranoid, Claire let go of her makeup case’s handle and peeked around the corner.
She saw a man sticking his head out into the hallway. He was looking away from her, and from the little she could see she could tell that he had definitely been the source of the black flash she’d seen. He was wearing a black shirt and a black beanie hat.
That’s weird. It’s May, and unseasonably warm at that. Why is he wearing a winter hat? Claire’s heart had started pounding in her chest as she pulled her head back behind the corner wall before the man saw her. Something felt off, and she had a bad feeling about this, but she wasn’t sure what to do. Should she go to building security and tell them she thought she saw an intruder? She didn’t want to look foolish and sound any false alarms, but she didn’t want to ignore a real threat, either.
She could hear the man talking now, but his voice was too low for her to make out what he was saying. “Magicae audite,” she whispered, holding her magic ring up close to her ear. Instantly, everything around her sounded louder. She gritted her teeth against the barrage of noise and focused on the one sound that mattered: the voice of the strange man.
“No, I don’t see her anymore,” he was saying. “I think she was on her way out. I’m pretty sure she didn’t see me, either. I just double-checked up and down the hallway again, and I don’t see anyone or hear anything.”
There was a pause, and then Claire heard a second voice. This voice was squawking and less clear. It sounded like it was coming over some sort of radio receiver.
“Alright, if you’re sure she’s gone and didn’t see you, then proceed. But you better be certain. We need everyone to think this was an accident. The last thing we need is for the High Council to send those damn dragons sniffing down our trail again.”
“We’re good to go, I promise. Everything is set, and once this goes off everyone’s attention will be focused here for the rest of the day, at least. No one’s going to notice our guy slipping into the other building.”
“Alright,” the squawky voice came again. “And you have your protective shield on, right?”
“Yup, got my Superarma spell in place. This explosion isn’t going to singe a single hair on my body.”
“What the heck?” Claire whispered. “Explosion? A Superarma spell? Security definitely needs to hear about this.”
Claire turned to run toward the stairwell. She didn’t want to take time to wait for the elevator right now. If someone was trying to blow up the building, there might be precious little time to stop them.
She left her makeup case behind, even though she couldn’t exactly afford to lose all of her supplies. She could only hope that no one was prowling around looking to steal a bunch of foundation, blush, and mascara. Claire didn’t even think to be quiet as she threw open the door and ran into the stairwell. If she’d taken a moment to think things through, she might have tiptoed to avoid alerting the strange man in the black hat to her presence. In the end, though, it was good that she ran. In fact, it was the one thing that saved her life.
She had only taken two steps into the concrete stairwell when the explosion went off. The loud boom shook her very bones, and she started to scream. But her scream didn’t last long. Debris was flying everywhere, and a shard from a decorative table near the elevator hit her in the head, knocking her out. She slumped to the floor, covered in dust, with a trickle of blood starting to run down her forehead. She was wounded, but not severely. If she had still been out in the hallway when the explosion took place, she would have fared much worse. The stairwell had provided a shield that kept her safe from most of the flying wreckage.
The smoke filling the air saved her as well. Because of the awful visibility, the man in the black hat ran right past her without seeing her as he fled the scene. He might have stopped to kill her off if he’d noticed her, but he didn’t notice. He was too intent on getting out of there as quickly as possible.
The smoke would not be a blessing forever, though. As it thickened, it went from being a convenient cover up to being a deadly fog of fumes. If Claire wasn’t rescued soon, she would suffocate.
Who would rescue her, though? The upstairs had been deserted as far as everyone knew, with all of the employees trying to spy on the dragon shifter television segment. And Claire had already clocked out of work. No one would think to check on her for quite a few hours.
No one that is, except the dragon whose interest she had captured an hour earlier. Claire was about to discover just how handy it could be to have a dragon in your corner.
Chapter Three
Seth had thought that the live television interview was painful, but the “informal” meet and greet that followed was even worse. Seth hated the games he had to play as a dragon shifter. He wanted to be a team player and support the government of Torch Lake. Truly, he did. But why did boosting public morale have to involve so many public appearances? Seth would have rather gone to fight some life or death battles with the Dark Warriors than appear on television. Involuntarily, he reached up to touch his cheek. He had expected the makeup on his face to feel strange. He’d thought it might feel like he had a layer of grease or oil on his face or something like that. But he couldn’t feel anything. Claire had done a good job.
He couldn’t help but smile when he thought of Claire. He probably shouldn’t have given her such a hard time about the makeup. It wasn’t her fault, after all, that he’d been ordered to get “TV ready.” But he was glad that she’d been stuck working with him. She was so goddamn beautiful, and he felt lucky that their paths had crossed. He’d feel even luckier if she actually used the phone number he’d given her—but if she didn’t he’d track her down. He wasn’t the type to give up easily when something or someone caught his interest. And Claire Marsh had definitely caught his interest.
“Mr. Morley, do you really believe the Dark Warriors can be held at bay by the few dragon shifters we have right now? Torch Lake is growing so quickly!”
Seth sighed as the question from an anxious citizen brought him back to the present. He’d been asked some version of that same question almost every day for the last few months. In fact, during the live television interview he’d just done, the news anchor had asked him the same thing. But Seth forced himself to smile graciously. Councilor Morgan had warned him that the meet and greet after the interview was just as important as the interview itself. It was Seth’s job to put the minds of Torch Lake’s citizens at ease. So Seth resisted the urge to roll his eyes, and nodded confidently instead.
“Yes, sir. I really believe that. We have some of the best—”
Seth never got to finish his sentence. In an instant, he was suddenly knocked backward as the ground he was standing on began to shake violently. All of the lights in the studio went black, and screams began to rise up all around him.
“Earthquake!” someone shouted.
“Dark Warriors!” others replied.
Seth hated to admit it, but he had a feeling that the ones crying out “Dark Warriors” were correct. The shaking in the ground had stopped, and the loud boom he’d heard sounded like it had come from some sort of explosion. He tried to stand to his feet, but he had to struggle against a crowd of people he couldn’t see, shoving around in a panic in the darkness.
“Everyone calm
down,” he bellowed out. Where were the emergency lights? Surely, this studio had some sort of emergency lighting installed? Unless that, too, had been destroyed in the explosion.
“Magicae lucis!” Councilor Morgan’s familiar voice yelled out. To Seth’s left, a light beam suddenly appeared, shooting out from Councilor Morgan’s magic ring. Thankfully, this action seemed to calm the crowd slightly, and to inspire other wizards to light up their magic rings as well. Shouts of “Magicae lucis!” rang out across the studio, and soon the darkness had been chased away by dozens of light beams from wizards’ magic rings.
What had not been chased away, however, was the fear many in the room were feeling. Seth could see terror written across many of the faces staring back at him, and he knew that it was time to take control of the situation. Someone had to inspire some confidence in this crowd, and quickly. Otherwise, things in here would turn into full blown chaos.
“Everyone remain calm,” Seth shouted, moving to stand on a chair so that his already tall figure towered over the crowd below him. “As long as you stay calm and remain with Evan and me, you will all be just fine.”
The faces below him still looked panicked, but the crowd seemed to at least be listening. He needed to get them out of here before they remembered to be scared. Seth pointed to the large exit doors at the back of the studio, which were made visible by the light of a hundred wizard wands.
“I’m going out that door. Follow me, walking slowly and carefully. No running or shoving, okay? Evan will bring up the rear to make sure everyone gets out safely. I promise, as long as you stay calm and stick with us, you will be fine.”
Seth had no way of knowing that his promise was true. Another explosion could go off at any moment, or a crew of Dark Warriors might come rushing in with attack spells already blazing. But if the people in here started thinking about things like that, Seth was never going to be able to get them out of here. Not wasting a second, he jumped down from the chair and made his way toward the exit. To his relief, the majority of the people in the crowd managed to remain calm as they followed him. Within minutes, the entire crowd had evacuated and was standing a good distance away from the building. Smoke curled out of the upper windows, but Seth couldn’t see any actual flames. Emergency vehicles were everywhere, and news reporters were chirping excitedly in front of video cameras that were recording live footage of the catastrophe.
As soon as Seth was satisfied that the crowd from the studio was standing a safe distance away, he started looking around in the other groups of employees that had gathered around. He scanned the faces for one that he knew would be familiar to him: Claire Marsh. Even though he’d only met her this morning, he felt protective of her. He wanted to make sure she was safe.
But the longer he looked, the more panicked he became. Where was she? He couldn’t find her anywhere, and the groups of employees standing around were starting to give him funny looks, like they thought he was a little bit crazy. Seth didn’t care. Let them think what they wanted. He needed to find Claire.
When several more minutes of searching proved fruitless, Seth returned to the spot where Councilor Morgan stood. Councilor Morgan was huddled with several important-looking men in business suits, talking in low tones. But he looked up when he noticed Seth approaching.
“Seth! Thank you for taking charge back there. Thanks to your quick action, it appears everyone made it out safely.”
“I’m not sure everyone did.”
Councilor Morgan raised a concerned eyebrow. “What do you mean?”
“Have you seen Claire, the girl who was doing makeup earlier? I can’t find her.”
To Seth’s disappointment, Councilor Morgan did not seem at all concerned by this news. “I haven’t seen her, but I wouldn’t worry just yet. There’s a large crowd of employees over there. Odds are good she’s in that crowd and just hard to spot.”
“She’s not there. I checked.”
Councilor Morgan was starting to look slightly impatient. Seth couldn’t blame him, he supposed. The city had just suffered what appeared to be a large, blatant attack by the Dark Warriors. The Head Councilor had more important things to worry about than the life of one makeup artist.
But to Seth, that one life felt supremely important.
“I’m going back in,” he declared.
“Seth, no!” Councilor Morgan said. “You can’t just rush back into a building where a bomb has gone off. We don’t even know for sure whether there is fire on the second floor, but there’s a lot of smoke so something up there must be burning. It’s dangerous in there, and I can’t afford to lose a dragon right now.”
Seth took off at a run, ignoring Councilor Morgan’s warnings. He had a gut feeling that Claire was in danger. She wasn’t anywhere in the crowd, of that he was certain. He had searched every face, and breathed in deeply to try to catch her scent with his sensitive dragon nose. But there was no trace of her in this crowd, which meant she was trapped inside somewhere. He felt his heart twisting up in worry inside his chest. He hoped she was still alive, and not badly wounded.
He forgot to worry about his own safety as he ran into the smoky building. All he could think about was finding Claire and keeping her safe. He never stopped to consider how strange it was that he was so overcome by worry for her. After all, they had just met, and he didn’t know much about her other than her name and the fact that she did makeup for a living. But he was drawn to her, and right now his heart was screaming at him to go find her.
Inside, the sharp, acrid smell of smoke filled his nose. The visibility on the bottom level of the building was still relatively good. Seth peered through the haze, looking for any signs of life. He didn’t see any. All around him was evidence of a quick exit. Handbags and briefcases had been abandoned at random throughout the hallways and rooms, and in the offices he walked by, chairs had been pushed aside and papers strewn about. Seth had no idea where Claire even worked. Hopefully not on the second floor, where the explosion seemed to have come from. But the more he looked on the first floor, the more the feeling of dread grew in his heart. She wasn’t in any of these downstairs offices, which meant she must have been upstairs when the blast occurred. Trying not to think about the gruesome sight that might await him, Seth ran to the first set of stairs he saw and took them two at a time to the second floor. Up there, the smoke was nearly unbearable. It seemed to seep into every available breathing space, and it hung heavy in the air. Seth gritted his teeth and pulled his shirt up over his nose in an attempt to block out some of the stench.
He walked quickly down the hallway, searching inside each of the large offices he found. Here, unlike downstairs, there were no signs of a quick exit. The desks held neatly stacked piles of paper, and the chairs were pushed in carefully. Seth frowned. Not many people had stayed up here during the live program in the studio. Everyone had wanted to sneak down to get their own peek at a real live dragon. Had Claire gone along with them? But no, Seth hadn’t seen her in the crowd that had evacuated the studio, and he’d checked carefully. She had been up here, and had perhaps been the only one up here.
Seth felt his heart beginning to pound with fear. Despite his attempt to shield his nose with his shirt, he could feel his lungs burning from the smoke. If Claire was trapped up here somewhere, she must be in an awful state.
But perhaps Councilor Morgan had been right. Perhaps she had escaped and he hadn’t seen her, and this rescue attempt was a fool’s errand. Just as Seth was about to admit defeat and leave the building, though, the sight of a large black suitcase caught his eye. Curious, he went to look at it, wondering who it belonged to and whether it was tied to the explosion somehow.
When he reached the suitcase, the first thing he noticed was the name “Claire Marsh” written on the attached luggage tag. Seth glanced around, hoping for some other clue as to why this suitcase had been left here. He didn’t know what he was searching for, exactly. He just wanted to know that Claire had made it out of here okay. It was hard to see
in the middle of all the smoke, though. To make matters worse, the lights up here were starting to fail as well. The lights had still been hanging on, unlike the ones in the downstairs studio that had immediately gone out. But some combination of the smoke, and perhaps fire, was getting to these upstairs lights now, too. Many were flickering, and many more were going out completely. To make matters worse, Seth was almost positive that he could smell actual fire now. Somewhere up here, there was an actual blaze. He had to find Claire and get her out of here before that blaze grew any larger.
By feeling around in the smoky fog, Seth finally managed to determine that the spot near Claire’s suitcase was a waiting area right in front of a bank of elevators. He felt along the wall until he found the call buttons for the elevator, and he pushed both the up and down buttons. The buttons didn’t light up, and nothing seemed to be happening. Seth waited by the elevators for several long moments, but never heard any beeping or saw any doors open. His fear grew. Surely, Claire had not been foolish enough to try to flee using the elevator after an explosion! An event like this could quickly cause an elevator to stop working, as it had here. Seth could only hope Claire wasn’t stuck in one of these elevators.
A loud boom sounded out, and Seth jumped at the sound. Was there going to be another explosion? Or had that merely been some sort of side effect of the fire? Perhaps some piece of furniture had finally given way to the flames engulfing it, cracking and collapsing. Whatever the case, the situation up here was getting worse. Seth needed to find Claire and get out, now, or it was going to be too late.
Seth walked along the wall, wondering how long he should stay up here before giving up. The situation was growing more dangerous by the second, and he didn’t have any solid proof that Claire was still in the building. She might be in the elevator, yes. Or perhaps she had escaped long ago, and her bag here had merely been left behind in the rush. He had no way to know.
Dragon Discovering Page 2
