by D K Drake
“Yes.” Micah’s voice shook. Droplets of sweat poured down his face. “Yes, I do.”
“If you kill me--”
“If I kill you, my father wins.” Micah placed his sword in Javan’s hands. The heavy sword knocked Javan off balance as Micah dropped to his knees and put his hands behind his back. “That is why you must kill me.”
I didn’t see that coming, Varjiek said. What are you going to do, young Collector?
◊◊◊
Micah lowered his head, closed his eyes, and waited for the steel to strike the back of his neck. But the blow never came. Perplexed, he looked up and found Javan standing in a frozen state of disbelief. “Go ahead,” Micah said. “Kill me. Take Mertzer. Win the throne.”
“I…I don’t understand.”
“It’s not hard. You need a Dusk Stalker. Mertzer is the last Dusk Stalker alive. The only way you can collect him is if you kill me.”
“I get that. What I don’t get is why. The deal you made with Omri involved my execution in exchange for letting the people of Keckrick live.”
“No one else was in that room.” Chills ran down Micah’s spine. “How did you know about that?”
“That’s irrelevant. What matters is that I know the real deal. So why are you changing the terms?”
“Because I found out what my father is doing with the humminglo plants.”
Chapter 60
Another Way
“W
hat Omri is doing with the plants changed your mind?” That’s not the answer Javan expected. He assumed Micah had learned about the Destroyer. “So it had nothing to do with the Destroyer?”
“What Destroyer?”
“Nevermind.” Javan shook his head, tossed Micah’s sword aside, and pulled Micah to his feet. “What’s Omri using the humminglo flowers for?”
“When the liquid from inside the web of the flower is consumed, it somehow cuts off a person’s ability to think for themselves. My father plans to use this substance to control the Land of Zandador. He won’t need an army to enforce his laws, and he won’t need dragons to inflict punishment. He’ll gain complete and total power over everyone.”
“Mind control?” Taliya had succeeded in reaching the roof and walked over to stand beside Javan. “Are you sure?”
“I wouldn’t be willing to die if I wasn’t sure,” Micah said. “And I am sure my father won’t bother destroying the people of Keckrick once he gets his hands on their entire supply of super humminglos. The flowers are more important to him than anything else.”
“This doesn’t make sense,” Javan said. “You like having control over people. You should be trying to harness the power of the humminglos for yourself, not be asking me to usurp your father.”
“My father is wrong. People matter. You taught me that.” Micah drew the stalker sword from the scabbard hanging on Javan’s right hip, pointed the tip at his chest and forced Javan to hold the handle by smothering Javan’s hands with his own. “But my father thought I was dead and didn’t care. My death should bother him. It will if you kill me and take Mertzer.”
Javan’s chest heaved up and down. All he had to do was push the sword in a few inches. Mertzer would be his, and he would be one dragon away from becoming the King of Zandador.
“Don’t do it, Javan.” Taliya put her hand on Javan’s shoulder. “You’re not a murderer.”
“What other choice do I have?” Javan kept his eyes glued on Micah’s. The man wanted to die. He wanted to die because he felt alone in this world. That was a terrible reason to die, especially if a worse fate waited for him in the next world.
Consider all your options, Mertzer said. I may be the last Dusk Stalker alive, but Protectors know how to find the eggs our females have hidden.
Javan shifted his gaze to Taliya. He thought of the book she had taken from Tulkar and the story she had told about Kisa’s birth.
“Javan, stop stalling.” Tears dripped down Micah’s cheeks. “Put an end to my agony. Please.”
“I will. But not by killing you.” Javan yanked his hands free from Micah’s grip, put his sword away, and reached out his hand for Micah to shake. “Join me. Be part of my team. Fight with me and Taliya to overthrow your father.”
“No. Mertzer can never be a part of your collection as long as I am alive. You need him.”
“No. I need you on my side.” Javan smiled. “I know of another way to collect a Dusk Stalker.”
“There is no other way. You have to--”
“You have to shut up and trust me.”
◊◊◊
Micah cocked his head and narrowed his eyes. The Collector seemed sure of himself. What if he did know of another way to collect a Dusk Stalker?
Micah had to risk trusting him. Only it would make him an outcast, just like Karl. He thus wouldn’t be able to follow thorugh with his promise to speak to Omri on his brother’s behalf. Because he couldn’t return home. Ever. Omri wouldn’t allow it if he didn’t bring him more dragons, and Micah had lost the will to hunt the creatures.
So if Javan wouldn’t kill him, Micah had no choice but to join him. He would just have to find another way to repay his brother for helping him in Madai.
“All right,” Micah said, sealing his fate. “I’ll trust you.”
He stuck out his hand, grasped Javan’s, and shook, marking the first time in the history of the Great Rift that the Hunter Bloodline and the Collector Bloodline joined forces.
Keeping them united over the coming months would prove to be a far more difficult challenge.
END OF BOOK TWO
The beginning of book three is a page away.
Keep reading to follow the adventure!
Prologue
(Fifteen Years Ago)
Those eyes. Those green eyes. It had been dark, and the baby had only opened his eyes for a quick second, but she couldn’t stop thinking about the way those emerald eyes seemed to glow.
As Taliya dumped another handful of pebbles at the edge of the cave, she wondered how that baby was doing. She had helped her father and two other men get the baby through the portal five nights ago.
Apparently, the kid was special and would be back looking all grown up to collect dragons and overthrow the mean king. The strange part was that she was going to have to follow him. She could imagine a lot of things, but imagining that little baby as a man who would tell her what to do seemed like a stretch for her seven-year-old mind.
Taliya sat on a moss-covered rock and dangled her feet over the ledge. The sun would be setting in a few hours, but right now it made the waterfall to her left sparkle all the way to the clear lake a hundred feet beneath her. Grass and moss and bright green ferns covered the rocks all around the waterfall, except on the cliff beneath her. Because she wasn’t just sitting on a wall of rocks. She was sitting on the portal in South Zandador that led to Earth.
At first, hiding out in a cave above the portal waiting for her father to return seemed like a great idea. She thought she would have a chance to explore the woods and waterfalls all around them, but the man who stayed with her wouldn’t let her go anywhere or do anything except practice shooting rocks with a slingshot inside the cave.
He was a boring, serious man who made her work, work, work all day so she would be ready to fling rocks and create a distraction once the portal activated. She wanted to throw the rocks, but he said she was too little to throw them very far.
The worst part was that he was right. She didn’t like being tiny and had to stand on her tip toes to pretend like she was three feet fall. Taliya was sure she had stopped growing and was doomed to be this little for the rest of her life.
A crackle broke the silence of the afternoon, and the rock she sat on began to vibrate. “Finally!” She snatched her slingshot from her waistband, scrambled back into the cave, and loaded it with a pebble.
Kneeling on one knee, she hit her first target on the other side of the lake to signal the boring man that the portal had been activated. Then she
waited. The three soldiers that patrolled the area would be flying by on outies any minute.
Taliya kept her slingshot loaded and her blue eyes on the sky despite the portal flashing to life under her. No soldiers. No okties. Maybe her father and his dragons could get through before anyone noticed.
The vibrating, mossy rock she stood on began to get hot just as three figures appeared in the sky. The sight of the soldiers made her hands shake, and she suddenly realized it was a very bad idea to have a kid in charge of flinging rocks at grown men.
“Shoot, Taliya!” The boring man shouted at her from the ground. He sure did have a loud mouth for her to be able to hear him when she was up so high. “Shoot as many rocks as you can!”
“Don’t rush me, mister,” she shouted back. She still didn’t know the man’s name. He might have told her, but she refused to remember once he told her she would have to stay in the cave and couldn’t explore the area. “I have to wait until they get closer.”
The soldiers noticed the active portal and began flying straight down to her.
“They’re close enough. Shoot!”
“Fine.” The hickory handle of the slingshot felt cool in her left hand. That calmed her nerves as she loaded a jagged rock in the stretchy vine and pulled back with her right hand. She squinted and aimed through the Y of the sling at the nose of the soldier in the middle. “Bet you won’t be expecting this.”
She released the weapon, but her hand wobbled at the last second, and she lost the rock in the waterfall. “Oops. Better try that again.”
“Jolt blasters ready,” the middle soldier said, pulling a gun from his side. “Stun anything that steps through that portal.”
“I’m not gonna let you stun any dragon my father brings here,” Taliya mumbled. She loaded her sling, fired. Loaded. Fired. Her first few shots hit the wings of the okties, disrupting the flight pattern of the soldiers. Her barrage of shots after that added to the confusion and forced the soldiers to focus on staying alive rather than pay attention to the portal traffic.
After her sixteenth or seventeenth shot, the glow from the portal vanished, and she heard her father’s voice. “Taliya, enough! Get down here. Now!”
“Coming.” Taliya shot one last rock in the direction of the flailing soldiers, tucked the slingshot in her waistband, and untied the thick vine tied to a branch near the cave entrance. She’d been waiting to fly out of here since the boring man explained the escape plan.
With a big smile on her face, she wrapped the end of the vine around her waist, gave herself a short running start, and jumped.
She dropped faster than she expected, but that made the fall even more fun. She swayed across the lake, back toward the portal, across the lake, and landed when her father snagged her foot as she swayed back in his direction in front of the now dormant portal.
“Hello, father.” Taliya gave him a kiss on his bearded cheek. But when she looked around, she didn’t see any dragons. He had taken two eggs with him through the portal and should have brought two baby dragons back with him. “Where are the dragons?”
The boring man cut the vine with his sword. “Get her in the wagon. We have to go before the soldiers recover and can track us.”
Her father carried her down the rocky hill to a leaf-covered wagon attached to a red, four-legged beast with a long, blue horn sticking out of its forehead. “That dragon got big fast,” Taliya said. “And I didn’t know they had horns.”
“That’s not a dragon,” her father said. “That’s a unicorn. The dragon is in here.”
He pulled back the leaf cover and pointed. “That’s a dragon.”
A shivering white creature with a long nose and big round black eyes stared at her from the wood floor. “Ksss,” it said, wrapping its tail around its small body and oversized claws.
“It’s so cute,” Taliya exclaimed. “But why aren’t there two of them?”
“The other one didn’t make it,” her father said. “This is the Dawn Stalker. She’s going to be your responsibility until the Collector comes back to claim her.”
“My responsibility?” Taliya looked at the dragon through widened eyes. “Why? What’s her name? How long will it take the Collector to come claim her?”
“Enough with the questions,” the boring man said. “We need to leave.”
“You’ll figure everything out in due time.” Taliya’s father dropped Taliya in the back with the dragon, and the two men took their seats up front.
As the wagon took off over the bumpy ground, Taliya studied the dragon that was almost as tall as her. “What should I name you?”
“Ksss,” the dragon said again.
“That’s not much of a name. How about…Kass? Kiss? Kisa?”
The dragon’s tail thumped against the floor at the last suggestion.
“Kisa it is, then.” She reached out her hand, but the dragon shied away. “That’s okay. I don’t need to pet you to protect you.”
She would keep this dragon safe. No baby with glowing green eyes was going to take her Kisa away from her. Ever.
Chapter 1
The Protector’s Perspective
(Present Day)
The lights from the freshly activated portal that connected the city of Nahat in Keckrick to the city of Japheth in Zandador faded as Taliya wove her way through the crowd searching for Javan. He should have returned by now, and she was hoping he had snuck his way through the portal along with the soldier who had just arrived from Zandador.
She was too short to see the soldier over the heads of the sweaty folks around her, but she could hear his haughty speech to the people of Keckrick. “King Omri is pleased with the super flowers you’ve been sending, but he wants more. I am here to oversee these valuable shipments and make sure none get left behind.”
“Those are my flowers,” she muttered between clinched jaws. She had planted them with her grandmother shortly after her arrival with Kisa in Keckrick fifteen years earlier. After her grandmother had died in a sudden volcanic eruption, those fields and fields of humminglo flowers had allowed Taliya to feel connected to her grandmother long after her passing. Now those fields had been decimated because of King Omri’s greed.
The thought of her precious flowers sitting in storage shelters waiting to be dissected by his physicians made her blood boil. She wanted to stick every one of his soldiers milling around the city of Nahat with her poison-tipped darts to keep them from taking any more of her humminglos. She started to pull one from her hip pouch when she spotted Javan.
“Javan!” Taliya grabbed Javan’s hand and pulled him out of the crowd to a quiet spot under the dock. “What happened in Zandador?”
“Micah hasn’t told you yet?”
“No. He said he would make an announcement after he brought Mertzer back. He was looking for you, too. He won’t tell us anything without you present. I was worried when I didn’t see you return with Micah.”
“I got hung up but found someone willing to help me return.”
“So what happened? Micah said Omri was willing to negotiate. Is that true?”
“Yes, but things are more complicated than Micah realizes. I need to talk to him before he makes that announcement. Where’s Varjiek?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t seen him.”
Javan cocked his head and squinted his eyes. That’s the look he got when he was listening to his dragon’s thoughts. She envied that ability.
“Varjiek?” Javan ran out from under the dock and looked around. “Where are you?”
The Noon Stalker must have made himself invisible and answered because Javan glanced up to the top of the building attached to the dock they stood beside. Without a goodbye or word of explanation to her, he took off toward the building.
He didn’t offer her an invitation, but she followed him anyway.
◊◊◊
Although it required serious upper body strength, Javan pulled himself onto the roof from the handrail of the dock. He lay in a heap on the hot mud ro
of and addressed his invisible dragon through strained breaths. “Thanks for the help, buddy.”
You didn’t need my help traveling to Zandador. You shouldn’t need my help to climb on a roof.
“That’s why you’re upset? Because I went to Zandador without you?”
You are my responsibility. I cannot keep you safe if I do not know where you are.
“I thought you were my responsibility.”
Nonsense. I became responsible for you the moment you landed on my back. That’s what makes our relationship work. It does not work when you disappear without telling me where you are going.
“Ah. Okay.” Javan stood and brushed the dirt off his clothes. Varjiek felt left out. Javan could fix that. “Sorry I took off without you. I would have told you, but you weren’t back from eating. I saw an opportunity to follow Micah, and I had to take it at that moment.”
Varjiek snorted.
“It’s a good thing I went.” Javan didn’t like arguing with an invisible dragon. He couldn’t tell if Varjiek was still upset. Since he wasn’t responding, Javan kept talking. “I learned some things I need to tell Micah about. We need to go find him before he finds us.”
Too late.
“Too late? What do you mean?”
I mean he is here.
“Javan!”
Javan turned to find Micah yelling for him atop the bridge. He was sitting on Mertzer, his Dusk Stalker, and demanded the hushed attention of everyone in the vicinity. “Javan, stay right there. I have news for you and the people of Keckrick from the King of Zandador!”
Before Javan had a chance to respond, Mertzer sped down the bridge.
◊◊◊
The speeding Mertzer stole Taliya’s attention from the edge of the roof that she couldn’t quite reach from her precarious perch atop the rail of the dock. The sleek white Dusk Stalker moved with ease through the parting crowd and delivered his rider to Javan by allowing Micah to jump straight from the dragon’s back to the rooftop where Javan stood.
