In the Shadow of Dragons (Aftermagic Book 1)

by Sonya Bateman

  She’d make them listen. For Noah’s sake.

  Her heart in her throat, she scrambled back down the ridge, running back the way she’d come. She passed the mangled bodies of the patrol officers and still felt nothing but contempt. It didn’t matter that they were people with families. Whatever this place was, it absolutely was not in the best interests of the public.

  Not hidden in the middle of nowhere like this, with Julian hauling his unconscious enemies inside.

  She’d made what she figured to be a mile when she heard an approaching sound. An engine, but not the sandrail. It also wasn’t a jeep or a four-wheeler.

  It sounded like a motorcycle.

  With absolutely nowhere to hide, she sprinted out of the approximate path of the oncoming engine and flattened herself to the ground. And watched. If it was one of the Darkspawn, she’d get their attention — but if it wasn’t, she’d let whoever it was pass. For now. She had to conserve everything she could to rescue Noah.

  Swelling light, steady engine. She watched the vehicle come into view, a wide bike bearing a slab of stranger in a leather jacket, a bandanna tied around his head in place of a helmet. She couldn’t imagine why any biker would be out roaming the Badlands alone at this time of night, but she’d wait until he passed.

  Only he didn’t pass. He stopped the bike, not ten feet from where she lay. Dismounted and kicked the stand down. The headlight pointed in the direction she’d come from, but the stranger faced her hiding spot.

  “Teague,” he said. “I know you’re there.”

  What the hell…?

  “Come here, right now,” the biker snarled.

  She stared through the dark, and finally made out the silver chain around his thick neck with a skull charm dangling from it. Standing as quietly as she could, she hung back in the shadows. “Goddard?” she said.

  “So you’ve met him, too. Why am I not surprised?” The biker took a step toward her, reached back and removed the cantrip.

  Her jaw nearly unhinged. “Sawyer,” she breathed. “What … how?”

  “Tagging spell.” He pointed to her ankle, the one he’d grabbed during the fight. “Okay, now it’s my turn. What, and how?”

  Her stomach convulsed. She couldn’t tell him anything about the facility, couldn’t let him go anywhere near it. He’d probably join Julian in torturing Noah, or whatever the bastard was doing to him right now. Drunk or not, Sawyer had always been absolutely loyal. “Julian sent me to join the Darkspawn, as a spy,” she said, the words tumbling out as her mind raced to come up with something plausible. “What he said was all an act. I was supposed to hide out here for a few hours, and then head back to Bishop.”

  Sawyer released a harsh breath. “I was afraid of that,” he said. “I’m sorry, Teague. You don’t deserve this.”

  He raised a hand. Golden light raced down his arm and gathered in his palm.

  “Wait!” she cried. This didn’t make any sense. She told him she was on his side, and he wanted to kill her for it? “Did Julian send you after me?”

  The magic pulsed and faded slightly. “Why would he do that?” Sawyer said slowly.

  “Er. I…” Something caught her attention. Another glow — this one green.

  Coming from her pocket.

  Sawyer noticed at the same time, and his eyes narrowed. “You want to explain that to me?” he said. “You can’t possibly do that. Your magic is purple.”

  Absurdly, she was touched that he’d noticed. “It’s a medallion. From Goddard,” she said, drawing the metal disc out. It glowed a steady green on her palm. “It says I can trust you.”

  “Trust me with what?”

  She took a deep breath. “Julian has a secret facility, about two miles that way,” she said, pointing north. “He brought Noah there. And I’m trying to find my way back to camp, so I can get the others and go rescue him.”

  He stared at her for so long, she started tensing for the death blow. Finally, he lowered his arm with a spine-chilling snarl. “You have got to be kidding me,” he said. “So you’re with them, now.”

  “Well, I … want to be.” She shuddered and stared at the ground. “But you saw what happened, didn’t you? Julian blasted me, controlled me. Made me kill one of them. They aren’t going to listen to me, even if I can find them and tell them about Noah.”

  “Goddamn it!” Sawyer roared. Every line in his body clenched tight, and he spat out, “I know where the camp is. And they’ll listen to me.”

  Her gush of relief was short-lived. “You should go without me, then,” she said. “Tell them where he is. They’ll never come if I—”

  “You’re coming. Get on the goddamned bike.” Sawyer whirled and stalked back to mount it himself.

  As she approached warily, he slipped the cantrip around his neck again and became the biker. “My name is Rook while we’re there, understand? And if you ever tell anyone I go by that name, I’ll kill you. Slowly.”

  She believed him.

  CHAPTER 60

  BiCo Ground Zero Facility; Hell’s Half Acre, Wyoming

  August 14, 9:00 p.m.

  There were no visions this time between blacking out in the sandrail and waking up in the dark, but Noah still had something on his mind when he came around. Royce Bishop. Just the man’s face with no context, like a half-remembered dream. Julian’s comment about his father’s knife in his back must have stuck with him.

  There was also considerably more pain. The throbbing in his taxed, burned shoulders and the soreness through his ribs, he expected. Not so expected was the bone-deep ache in his lower right leg, as though someone had mistaken it for a rock and taken a core sample.

  He was lying on his back on a hard, flat surface, and his wrists and ankles were tied down. His feet were bare, his arms uncovered. That was all he could tell. And there was nothing he could do about it, either. He almost laughed remembering the way Teague had blasted her way out of the ropes when they first brought her to camp, how she’d only been pissed because she had to use magic.

  He couldn’t do anything like that. The restraints didn’t have minds he could force to let him go.

  The only sound in here was a muted, steady ticking, a second hand on a clock somewhere in the dark. He listened for a while, until he could only hear his life draining away, then tried to tune it out in favor of more pressing matters.

  What pressing matters?

  The thought dragged a rueful smile from him. His choices had come down to whether he’d die fast or slow, if that choice was actually on the table. Even if he did tell Julian what he wanted to know, which he wouldn’t, the man would probably draw this out anyway.

  So the most pressing matter he’d face, for the rest of his life, was how hard he should try not to scream.

  Eventually, after he’d managed to stop listening to the clock, there was the sound of a door opening. He closed his eyes, but the bright explosion of light still made him wince. He wouldn’t look just yet.

  Someone came in and closed the door. Whoever it was didn’t speak, but he heard footsteps, the sound of a drawer opening, metal rattling, the drawer closing. He decided it would be worse not to see what was coming, so he forced his eyes open and blinked through the glare.

  Julian, with scissors.

  He was in some sort of lab. Or possibly a morgue. Chromed steel counters, glass cabinets, sterile surfaces. Metal cuffs holding him to metal table, the kind they put bodies on for autopsies. At some point he’d been stripped of everything but his shirt and pants.

  And now Julian. Grabbing the collar of his shirt, cutting the fabric down in a straight line. Still without a word.

  He didn’t speak until he’d cut the shirt away and put the scissors down somewhere. Then he stood over Noah, looking down at the ink-blue Magesign on his chest. “It’s a shame you joined the rebels,” he said. “You could’ve been a Knight.”

  That was cold, even for Julian. “You know I never would.”

  “Right. Because I killed your wife.�
� Julian shook his head. “Only she wasn’t your wife anymore, was she? I really don’t understand why you Darkspawn keep trying to pretend you’re people.”

  Noah had nothing to say to that.

  “All right … Noah,” Julian said. “Let’s start with something simple. Who’s the big man with the white magic?”

  It was almost nice to know that he did have a few decisions left to make. Mocking sarcasm, or no answer. For now he chose no answer.

  “The big man with the white magic,” Julian repeated. “Who is he?”

  Oh, good. Another decision. He’d stay with option B.

  Julian held something up. A slender piece of metal, a wedge with a sliver-thin pointed tip. “Who is the big man with the white magic?” he said patiently.

  Time for option A, just to mix things up. “Am I supposed to be afraid of your sliver?”

  Julian grabbed Noah’s hand and forced it up at the wrist, jamming against the cuffs so his fingers were splayed and pointing up. Well, that definitely hurt.

  But not nearly as much as when he pushed the metal sliver under his pinkie nail, working it down into the meat until he felt the point break through at the base of the nail.

  The pain was beyond anything he could have imagined.

  On the bright side, it hurt too much to make a sound. Noah’s eyes watered hot, and his throat clogged with the breath he thought he’d never be able to take. But he finally gasped through it and lay there, shuddering.

  Instead of removing the splinter, Julian produced another one and bent his wrist back again. “Who is he?”

  Noah laughed.

  As if he were being courteous, Julian waited until the wild, desperate fit ended to force the new splinter under the nail of his ring finger.

  At least now he knew why Julian had taken his boots off.

  He decided there would be no more words. It turned out to be an easy decision to enforce, since by the time Julian finished the first hand, he couldn’t articulate anything if he wanted to. No words — but there were plenty of screams.

  Noah only realized he’d passed out when the blurred metal-grate fluorescent lights of the lab became the blurred hidden spotlights of a hallway moving past him. No, he was moving. Not the spotlights. The table had wheels, and Julian was moving him.

  The splinters were still in him. Every finger, every toe. And none of it hurt any less than when he’d first jammed them through. This unspeakable pain wasn’t going to stop.

  But by the time Julian pushed him headfirst through an automatic double sliding doorway, he could breathe a little. Think something other than a scream. Even make observations, though they were fuzzy and slightly jumbled.

  This was a room with large glass cubes along the back wall, a single row, like oversized monkey cages in animal testing labs. Each cube was big enough to hold a metal autopsy table. Noah knew this, because there were already tables in all but the second cube, where Julian pushed his into.

  “I’ll be back soon,” Julian said. “And I’ll want that name.”

  A thick glass door slid closed at his feet, sealing the cube shut.

  Noah closed his eyes and drew several slow, shallow breaths, until he heard the doors to the room shut. And then several more, until he thought he could look around a bit without vomiting.

  First, straight up. The cube ceiling. There were small, round holes in the glass — or possibly Plexiglas — about the size of golf balls. Two groups of five, arranged in patterns like the five-side on dice. The room ceiling, more sterile industrial tiles, was a few feet above the cube ceiling.

  When he figured he could turn his head, he did so to the right, down the row of cubes. The walls between them had the same air holes, two groups of five. Four cubes, each with an empty steel table outfitted with metal restraints.

  He turned slowly to his left, toward the single cube on that side.

  And nearly screamed when he saw a face looking back at him.

  There was a man on the table in the next cube, dressed in a stained white hospital gown. Thick, snarled hair grown into matted dreadlocks, several feet of beard in the same condition. A strangely shaped face with a protruding brow. Wasted, skeletal body — so thin it was painful to look at. No one should look like that and be alive.

  But he was alive. His eyes were open, burning fever-bright, but focused. And he tried to smile.

  Noah was too horrified to smile back.

  “I don’t suppose you know any escaping spells?” the man said.

  Noah swallowed, steadying himself to speak through the pain. “Unfortunately, I don’t.”

  “I thought so. You look more of a cleric.” The strange man sighed. “Ah, well. We can talk if you’d like, until he’s through killing you.”

  A deep shudder moved through him. “Who are you?” Noah whispered.

  “Oh, I’ve forgotten to introduce myself again.” The man gave a wan smile. “My name is Orrin Bhasvaa,” he said. “I’m … not from around here.”

  Noah gaped at him as he remembered Diesel’s fits, the nonsense word that might have been a name.

  The Orrin.

  CHAPTER 61

  The Badlands

  August 14, 9:22 p.m.

  Sawyer brought them straight to the camp, but the trip took far longer than Teague had hoped. Thirty, maybe forty minutes, every one of them decreasing their chances of rescuing Noah.

  At least she was following his advice. Not rushing into things without a plan. But it killed her to wait, to be patient, because whatever was happening in that facility couldn’t be pleasant. Julian hadn’t brought him there to freshen up after the battle.

  She was still having trouble wrapping her head around Sawyer knowing the Darkspawn. Even more shocking, he was apparently on their side. Sawyer Volk, drunken celebrity playboy Knight — and Darkspawn spy. He was the last of them anyone would suspect of sympathizing with the rebels.

  Which, she’d realized, was probably the exact reason he acted the way he did.

  But right now she had no time to ponder the nature of Sawyer.

  He’d driven the bike straight into the tunnel leading to the motor pool and armory cave. He’d known exactly where it was. Now they’d reached the entrance to the main cavern, and Teague wanted to turn back. Head for the armory, load a jeep with all the weapons she could fit, and storm the facility kamikaze style. She’d rather do that than face the people she’d come to respect and trust, maybe even love, and endure their hatred.

  The only thing keeping her from choosing the suicide mission was the fact that it wouldn’t save Noah. But going in there might.

  She glanced at Sawyer, who was still wearing a biker, then pulled the camouflage flap back and stepped through.

  A gun went off. The bullet plowed into the ground inches from her feet, spraying rock fragments and dust.

  “Get the hell out of here.” Darby, seated at the table with Sledge, Isaac and Diesel, the gun she’d just fired trained on her. “And forget the way back. Last warning.”

  Already shaking, Teague moved forward without a word, giving Sawyer room to come in behind her.

  Sledge pounded the table with a fist and stood, extending his other arm. “You brought a stranger here?” he shouted. “That is it. You’re—”

  “He’s not a stranger.” Diesel got up, took a few steps from the table and stopped to stare at both of them. “That’s Rook,” he said. “One of him, anyway.”

  “At least someone here isn’t a complete idiot,” Sawyer rumbled. “One more gunshot and I’ll blast you all into sludge.”

  Darby swallowed audibly and put the gun down.

  “All right,” Sawyer said. “Tell them.”

  Nodding, Teague pulled herself together. “I found where Julian took Noah,” she said. “There’s a BiCo facility in the Badlands. I’ve never heard of the place before … I don’t think anyone has. But he’s there. We have to go save him.”

  Their stares ranged from disgusted to furious. No one moved or spoke.

&n
bsp; Finally, Diesel stepped forward again. “Let’s go, then,” he said.

  “Are you insane?” Darby shouted. “Oh, wait, I forgot. You are.”

  He glowered at her. “If Noah’s still alive—”

  “He’s not,” Sledge cut in flatly. “I mean, come on. Even if she’s telling the truth about what she saw, you really think Julian didn’t kill him?”

  “He’s alive. I know it,” Teague said.

  Darby shoved her chair back and stood. “Really. How do you know?” she said. “Did you see him alive?”

  “No,” she admitted hoarsely. “I couldn’t get close enough. The place is crawling. But—”

  “But nothing. You are a goddamned Knight.”

  “Yes. I was.” Teague met the shorter woman’s hot glare. “And I know Julian, how he thinks. I can get us in there to save Noah, because he is alive. But I need your help.”

  “I believe you,” Diesel said, and turned to the others. “Are you really going to let Noah die because she can’t produce photos and sworn testimonies?”

  Sledge clenched a fist. “She killed Blake—”

  “No, she didn’t. Julian did.”

  “So you keep saying,” Sledge ground out. “Damned convenient, since it was her arrow through his heart. But the point, which for some reason needs repeating, is that she’s a Knight. You’re asking us to trust a Knight, who wants to bring us to Julian Fucking Bishop!”

  “Enough.”

  The booming word came from Sawyer. He stepped up beside her and gestured. “I believe her too,” he said. “I don’t suppose that’s going to convince any of you narrow-minded people. No? Of course it’s not.”

  They all stared at him.

  “Goddamn it!” He rolled his eyes and reached for the cantrip. “We don’t have time for this,” he said. “Noah did something for me, and I owe him a life. So I guess it’s going to be his. But I swear to God, you’re all going to die horribly if a single word of this gets out.”