In the Shadow of Dragons (Aftermagic Book 1)

by Sonya Bateman

  Thinking of him and last night’s bizarre phone call, she slipped a hand in her lab coat pocket and felt the shape of the heavy, antique wind-up pocket watch. It had belonged to her grandfather, stored forgotten in the attic since she and Roger had bought the house in Casper. Last night she’d debated for a long time before finally going up there to spend a long, dusty hour searching for the thing, believing the whole time that it was pointless, Scott was insane, and the watch was probably broken anyway.

  But when she found it and wound the delicate little knob at the bottom, the timepiece started right up. She’d even marked it against a timer app on her phone to make sure it was accurate. It was, to the second. She’d taken that as a sign.

  Of what, she had no idea. Still, she’d brought it to the clinic and made sure it read 11:38 when the sun went dark. And if the Eclipse did last longer than sixty-four minutes … well. She’d worry about that when the time came.

  Right now she had close to thirty people she hadn’t expected huddling in her lobby, regarding each other warily and hoping that no one turned into monsters before the sun came back. A few of them had looked pained or sick during the first two or three minutes. She’d watched them, but they settled back down fairly soon.

  It probably didn’t help that the atmosphere in here was less than calming. As usual, the Eclipse had shorted out the electricity, and the large room was lit only by small clusters of candles and a few flashlights she’d scrounged from the supplies — which occasionally flickered off and on. There was enough light to see, but the constant patches of moving shadows made everything feel like a carnival funhouse.

  A hand on her shoulder made her flinch. She turned from the window and smiled at Aileen, who’d elected to stay for the duration and help with the unexpected influx. Bernadette had gone home once everyone was treated. She didn’t blame her — the woman was seventy-two years old and deserved to relax in the comfort of her own home after the hours she put in here.

  “What’s up?” she said to Aileen, low enough that no one else could hear. “Is everyone all right?”

  “Far as I can tell,” Aileen replied in a similar tone. “Did you want me to make some coffee, or … something?”

  Naomi smiled. Aileen was practically wringing her hands, wanting to do something, keep busy. “Can’t do that without power,” she said. “But I think we’ve got plenty of water bottles and hard candies to go around. We might even have snacks. Didn’t we get a shipment a few days ago?”

  “Well, yes,” Aileen said cautiously. “But won’t we run out?”

  “It’s fine if we do. I’ll order more tomorrow.”

  “All right, then. I’ll get on that.” Looking slightly relieved, Aileen headed for the back and the smaller supply room, where they kept everything that wasn’t HeMo.

  Sometimes a little bit of normal went a long way.

  Naomi looked outside once more. Sawyer had come back, of course — she couldn’t be so lucky as to have him wander off to do whatever Knights did, like the last one had. If nothing else, he seemed to take his job seriously. When he wasn’t drunkenly answering phones. He’d returned fifteen or twenty minutes after he rode off, followed by a patrol car with four brown-clad officers to replace the two he’d dismissed, and arranged a crude but efficient cordon around the entire building.

  Now he stood on the sidewalk, arms folded and glaring down the empty, silent street. As if daring someone — or something — to come for him.

  Behind her, she heard the faint rumble of a crash cart. Aileen, coming back from the supply room. She turned from the window to help pass out refreshments, such as they were, and had gotten maybe ten steps away when there was a chorus of muffled shouting from outside. Followed by a long, unearthly scream.

  Gasps and murmurs moved through the people in the lobby. One of them, a man of around forty who was with his wife and two pre-teen children, stood at the sound and stared toward the front door. “What the hell was that?” he said, his voice more tense than angry. “A coyote?”

  A lone twenty-something woman seated in a corner folded her arms across her stomach and burst into tears. She started rocking back and forth, moaning, “I should’ve stayed home. Oh God, why didn’t I stay home? I should’ve stayed home…”

  “Be quiet,” an older woman across from her snapped. “You’re scaring the children.”

  A boy of around ten got up, even as his mother tried to grab him. “I ain’t scared. And that ain’t a coyote,” he said, pronouncing the word in a two-syllable backwoods drawl: kai-yoat. “It’s a monster. I bet I could kill it. I’m gonna be a Knight—”

  “Brandon,” his mother hissed, practically yanking him back to his seat. “Sit down.”

  The boy pouted. “I could kill it,” he muttered.

  Another terrible scream erupted outside, mingled with the sounds of a scuffle. This time the murmurs and gasps were louder, a rumble of discontent. Naomi met Aileen’s panicked gaze across the room. Things in here were going to spiral out of control fast, unless she did something.

  She put a hand in the air and walked toward the laden crash cart. “Everyone, please calm down,” she said. “I’m sure they have everything under control out there. Now, we have water and candies, and I think some granola bars and breakfast pastries. Isn’t that right, Aileen?”

  “Yes, that’s right,” Aileen replied with almost insane cheer. “Plenty to go around.”

  Just then the overhead lights flickered on, held for a moment and started glowing brighter, emitting an ominous buzz. It lasted for long seconds. Then glass shattered, sparks flew, and the lights went out abruptly.

  The young woman who’d been crying let out a shriek. “I have to go home!” she shouted, bolting from her chair and trying to stumble toward the door. “Please, I have to go home,” she sobbed. “Can’t someone help me?”

  At once, the room erupted into motion. A man in his fifties helped the young woman straighten and offered to take her home. The forty-something couple started arguing. Brandon the would-be monster killer raced away from his mother, shouting that he would go out there and protect everyone. The older woman who’d shushed the younger one brayed at everyone to sit down and be quiet.

  Someone opened the front door and left. A few others followed, and more headed in that direction.

  “Stop!” Naomi shouted, trying to push her way to the entrance. “You can’t go out there!”

  No one listened.

  Three more got outside before Naomi reached the door. She stood in front of it for a moment, glaring back into the lobby. “Do not go out this door until the Eclipse is over,” she said, firmly enough to shut most of them up. “I’m going to get the rest of them. Be right back.”

  “Naomi, don’t,” Aileen called in a quavering voice.

  “It’s fine. Just … try to get everyone calmed down, okay?” She didn’t wait for an answer. If she didn’t go now, her nerves would fail her. She opened the door and stepped outside.

  The first thing she noticed was the people who’d left. They hadn’t gone far. Six of them, including the young woman and the man who’d offered to take her home, clustered on the front walk about ten feet from the building.

  Beyond them in the street, three patrol officers were preparing to remove the bloody, misshapen body of a … troll, or something. Whatever it was, it still wore torn fragments of a brown BiCo uniform.

  So those screams had come from one of their own.

  Squaring her shoulders, Naomi approached the huddled group of escapees and circled around in front of them. She waved a hand in the air to get their attention. “Come on,” she said as gently as she could. “Get back inside, now. If we all stay inside, we’ll be fine.”

  Gradually, they shook free of the shock and started wandering back. The shell-shocked woman was crying again, and the older man supported her as she stumbled up the walk.

  Naomi watched them for a moment, turned to make sure that was all of them — and encountered a furious Sawyer, who was str
iding angrily across the street from the abandoned professional building on the other side. “Get back inside,” he shouted as he walked. “Right now, damn it!”

  Bristling, Naomi strode out to meet him. He may be a Knight, but she wasn’t going to let him treat people like that — like animals to be rounded up and herded back into the barn. Not when they were already terrified.

  When she reached him, she planted a hand on his armored chest. “Hold it,” she said. “They are going back inside.”

  He stared at her hand in disbelief, but made no move to touch her. “Why the hell did they come out in the first place?”

  “Because they’re scared,” she said evenly. “This isn’t a shelter. We’re not equipped to distract them until it’s over, and they hear everything that happens out here.” She deliberately didn’t look at the body lying just a few feet away. “Plus there was a power surge, and a few lights exploded. That freaked them out.”

  Sawyer relented a little. “Anyone hurt?”

  “No. Not yet, anyway.” She lowered her arm and sighed. “I don’t think anyone will try to leave again. At least for a while,” she said.

  “Good. Think you can keep them calm?”

  “I don’t seem to have a choice.”

  He frowned. “Listen, Dr. Talbot, I’m sorry about this,” he said. “I know it won’t help to hear, but it wasn’t my call. It was Julian’s.” He spat the name, and his eyes narrowed briefly. “Anyway, I appreciate what you’re doing.”

  Well, that was unexpected.

  Before she could thank him, one of the officers shouted, “Sawyer! We’ve got incoming. A lot of incoming.”

  Sawyer looked toward the voice. Naomi followed his gaze to see what looked like a large gang — or a small army — of no-longer-humans headed down the middle of the street, coming straight for them.

  “Damn,” Sawyer said. “Go back inside. Please.”

  That seemed like a very good idea. “Thank you, Mr. Volk,” she said as she started away.

  He actually smiled a bit. “Call me Sawyer.”

  “Fine. Sawyer, then.”

  “Much better. Now go.”

  He was already sprinting toward the Changers. Naomi nodded absently and hustled back toward the clinic, hoping the fight would be far enough away that no one inside would hear it. That wouldn’t help anyone calm down.

  This was going to be the longest hour of her life.

  CHAPTER 11

  Casper, Wyoming

  August 8, 11:58 a.m.

  The north side detail had the siege mostly under control by the time Teague got there from the university area, where she’d just helped Heath and his new mentor take down a rampaging ogre. Between the non-stop comm chatter and running all over the city, she was ready to quit right now and shove this ‘promotion’ up Julian’s ass.

  But like it or not, she had a job to do.

  When she rode up behind the barricaded patrols on the sidewalk, Brax and Brynn were in the street, double-teaming what was mostly a troll. Brynn’s sword hung from the creature’s side, and Brax was fending off swings of its club-like arms, distracting it while Brynn snuck up from behind.

  Across the road was an overgrown parking lot with a handful of abandoned vehicles and the scattered corpses of the ones they’d already taken down. More Changers crouched behind the cars, occasionally darting out to haul a corpse away or throw blasts of magic.

  Teague dismounted, ordered one of the patrols to hold her horse and grabbed her crossbow, aiming at the troll as she walked. Her arrow sunk in its chest. While it bellowed, Brynn made a final lunge and managed to retrieve her sword.

  Brax took the opportunity of distraction to behead the creature in a single swing.

  He glanced at Teague, panting. “Thanks,” he said. “This one didn’t want to go down.”

  “Yeah, no problem.” She checked on Brynn, reloaded her crossbow. “How many — look out!”

  Brax whirled toward the Changer-teeming lot, just in time to catch a fiery blast straight to the chest. He grunted and staggered back as his armor diverted the blow into hissing side streams. “Damn it! That stings.”

  “I’ve got it.” Teague scrambled onto the body of the troll, raising her angle just enough to put an arrow through the heart of the goblin who’d fired the blow and dove behind a rusted SUV. “Where’d this bunch come from?”

  “The Warrens.” Brynn came up beside Brax, sword in hand. “Nice shot.”

  With a vague nod, Teague scanned the lot. Four, maybe five, still hunkered down too deep to hit. “You’ll have to flush the rest,” she said. “It’s too close in there. Any ideas?”

  “Already on it,” Brax said, gesturing to the building overlooking the lot where an armored figure stood on the roof. “Whitney.”

  “Oh. Good.”

  Seconds later, illusion-fire rippled across the back of the parking lot, spreading like actual fire. And one by one, the Changers began to move away from the false flames.

  “Here they come.” Grinning, Brax cocked his sword. “We got this, Teague.”

  “All right. I’m out, then.”

  Leaving them to mop up the rest, Teague jogged back toward her horse. Just as she swung into the saddle, Zen spoke in her head.

  “Teague, you still at Brynn and Brax’s location?”

  “Yeah,” she said, and then snarled in frustration. Zen couldn’t hear her talking. Yes, I’m here, she thought loudly.

  “Got a runner from a shelter. Four blocks west of you.”

  I’m on it.

  She wheeled the filly west and urged her into a gallop.

  The runner was still changing. Into a dwarf, it looked like. He wasn’t very fast, but he’d managed to crash through the window at the back of a warehouse before Teague could stop him.

  She halted the horse by the door near the corner of the building, far enough from the broken window so the filly wouldn’t step on the glass. No sense trying to ride through the place — she’d be faster on foot. At least the warehouse would be deserted except for the dwarf. All businesses were closed during the Eclipse, most for the entire day.

  The horse snorted and stamped impatiently as she dismounted. This one liked running. “Easy, girl,” she murmured, grabbing the end of the reins to tie them to the railing of the steps that led to the entrance. “I’ll be right back. Promise.”

  With the horse secured, she ran for the broken window and climbed through. Of course, the power was out inside. There was just enough muddy red light to make out the confines of a room, some kind of office, and the door across from the window that had been kicked open. So he’d gone into the main warehouse somewhere.

  Teague snagged the night-vision goggles from the pouch at her waist and strapped them in place. At least they worked most of the time. Julian’s lab people had designed the goggles with minimal tech, using solar-charged cells to power the image-intensifier tube. The rest was all specialized lenses and coated screens. She clicked the button on the side, and the goggles whined faintly as the blackness in front of her sorted itself into shades of green.

  She unslung her loaded crossbow and moved quietly through the busted door. Beyond was a short hallway to the left, toward the back entrance, and straight ahead, a platform with wide metal steps leading to the main warehouse floor. Pallets of shrink-wrapped boxes ran down the center of the area, and rows of steel shelving stacked with more boxes ran the length of the building on both sides.

  For a moment she stood at the top of the steps, watching for movement, still not sure what she was up against. Magic affected everyone differently. Most people were Norms — normals, or neutrals. A Norm who wasn’t taking HeMo to stop the process would change slowly, usually into a ‘normal’ creature. Something familiar. Goblins, trolls or ogres, dwarves or elves. The magic surge during the Eclipse often pushed a handful of Norms into rapid transformation. They could use magic, but not much and not very well.

  Less common were Blades like her, and most of the other Knights. Able t
o use magic, very slow to transform, and Magesign was usually the extent of the physical changes. At least so far. And a small fraction of people were Nulls — largely unaffected by magic, both internal and external.

  During the first year or so, there’d been another type: Wylds. People who Changed completely and almost instantly when they were exposed to magic. Most of that happened with the second Eclipse, since the first wasn’t quite long enough to make the changes permanent. There’d been widespread panic and violence that day, when no one knew there would be another Eclipse, let alone people suddenly turning into homicidal magic-wielding creatures.

  She wouldn’t think about that. All the Wylds were dead now.

  A sound from the warehouse caught her attention, a scraping shuffle. She spotted a figure disappearing down one of the aisles to the left, about halfway across the building, and headed down the stairs.

  In response to the sound of her footsteps, she heard running. Saw a pile of boxes tumble from shelves and crash to the floor. She sprinted in that direction.

  She was four or five aisles away when the CB unit on her belt let out a buzz, and Zen Tomlinson’s voice came from the speaker, crackling with pops and static. “Harlow, come in. We’ve got a—”

  The voice stopped when she gave the volume knob a savage twist. More running feet, her target getting further away. Bad timing, she thought angrily, trying to get Zen to pick up on her brainwaves, or however she did her thing. In the middle of something here.

  “That’s great. Sawyer needs help.”

  She rolled her eyes, moved out to the wide main aisle and scanned the area. No further movement. What the hell does Sawyer need help with? she thought back. He’s just guarding a goddamned clinic.

  “A small horde of Changers. Direct quote. He also claims everything is fine.”

  Teague snorted inwardly. Movement just ahead caught her attention, and she brought her crossbow up just as a figure darted across the center aisle, maybe thirty feet ahead. She fired, heard a strangled cry as the arrow struck something — but the Changer kept running and vanished into the shelving on the other side.