Finn

by Romi Hart

  That left the Novaks free to run their many businesses and keep raking in the cash without interference from anyone, not even their own people.

  Bumping into Claire snapped him out of his thoughts. He started to ask what was wrong, but she whapped her knuckles against his shoulder to silence him. She stood curiously still staring into the thicket. “He’s in there,” she whispered.

  He? She could only mean Dorian, so why didn’t she…..? Before he could form that thought, gunfire exploded out of the stillness. Finn ducked, but it didn’t touch him or Claire. It was coming from somewhere ahead of them.

  Claire charged forward. “Come on!”

  Before his very eyes, she launched herself parallel to the ground. She extended her arms into the woods and shifted. She vaporized right in front of him. She faded and disappeared like a cloud evaporated by the sun. She became air. The next minute, she wasn’t there anymore.

  Just then, a muffled boom blew out the shrubbery. Debris and twigs erupted at Finn and an orange plume of flame woofed outward. It set the trees ablaze. It thumped out a bubble of fire before it died. Smoke rose through what was left of the canopy, but before it could clear, a powerful gust of wind hit it and blasted it apart.

  Finn didn’t need to see anymore. Claire was over there. He couldn’t see her, but he could do something to help her. That was the least he could do.

  He rocketed off the ground streaking toward the spot and he let his dragon fury rip. His body and brain cracked asunder and unstoppable rage poured out of his mouth. He left the ground hoping never to touch it again. His midnight coils slithered between the tree trunks licking flame against his scales. He unloaded his wrath on the soldiers even before he fully recognized that that was who they were.

  He crashed through a cluster of trees and rocketed into a clearing barely big enough to hold him. Through the haze of adrenaline coursing through his veins, he spotted a large, muscular, well-built young man with sandy-blonde hair lying face down on the soggy Earth.

  Finn pounced on the boy and planted his feet alongside the stranger’s shoulders. He rotated to one side ready to do battle with the soldiers. He didn’t stop to check if they were the same men who attacked the truck. He didn’t care. He wanted death—their deaths.

  He rounded on them rumbling low in his chest. He swept his neck in all directions and spraying fire. They tried to pull the same routine as last time. As soon as they saw him, they retreated for cover. They shot covering fire at him with the same pathetic results. A few lobbed grenades. The first two bounced off his chest and rolled to his feet where nothing but empty air protected the young man from the blast.

  He saw the danger and reacted in a heartbeat. He dropped and smothered the grenades with his enormous belly. He shut his eyes and braced himself for impact.

  The concussion hit him a lot harder than he expected, but the pain tearing him apart only made him angrier. He shot off those grenades to see the soldiers leveling rocket launchers at him. They should know better than to bring a toy like that to a shifter battle.

  He flung out his wings and exploded booming in fury. He screeched his murderous vengeance. They shrank away to make a run for it, but at that moment, a hurricane wind struck the Quag. It howled out of the trees behind the soldiers and they ran straight into its screeching force. Leaves ripped from the trees peppered their cheeks and eyes. They floundered to escape, but they couldn’t make any headway against that wind.

  Finn saw the whole scene unfolding in a dream. This was his chance. He came to ground a few yards from the fallen man. He calculated his fire down to the inch and devastated those soldiers with every scrap of volcanic heat he could muster. He devastated them savoring their cries and their struggles, but they couldn’t flee through that wind. It pinned them in place so they couldn’t get away.

  They writhed in their death throes until not one body remained. Finn incinerated them down to the blood evaporating from the puddles of melted flesh. He kept it up until he destroyed all trace of them.

  He bit off his fire and surveyed his work. He grumbled in satisfaction, but when he turned around, he spotted Claire kneeling next to the fallen man. She hauled him up by the shoulders and rolled him into her lap. “Dorian! Dorian, answer me. It’s me, Claire.”

  His eyelids fluttered. “Claire! Are you here?”

  She petted his cheeks and gulped. “I’m here, Dorian. I’m here to take you home.”

  He looked sideways. “Isabella….”

  “Don’t worry about her. I’m taking you home. Daddy will take care of you.”

  He swallowed hard. Mire smeared his smooth cheeks and he searched her face. An ugly rip in his pant leg revealed a cruel gash in his upper thigh. A gory flap muscle dangled to expose the bone. A tear trickled out of his eye and ran into his hair. “I can’t go home. I need Isabella.”

  Claire flinched. “What did they do to you?”

  “That guy….” He stopped to swallow again. “He cast a spell on me to stop me shifting. I tried to shift to fly away from him, but he was too quick. He shot me and I…. I couldn’t shift. I tried a dozen times. Only Isabella can break the spell.”

  Claire looked up and she found Finn standing there. Her features contorted with emotion. “Dorian…. there must be a way to…..”

  His eyelids floated closed again. “Take me to Isabella’s house. Please.”

  He wilted in her arms. His hand flopped onto the grass and his head lolled on her knee. She gazed down at him, around the clearing, and everywhere else.

  Finn’s heart ached watching this. He didn’t want to go near Isabella or her house. No one in their right mind would want that. He understood why Claire wanted to grasp at any alternative.

  SeamStream Crest might be incredibly powerful. They might be ruthless and unscrupulous and mind-blowingly rich. They could do just about anything with their elemental powers—anything but this.

  She could look around all she wanted. She wouldn’t find any other way to help Dorian. If she took him home, they could heal his gunshot wound, but he would never be anything more than human. He would never get his power back until they broke that magician’s spell.

  Finn made up his mind in a second. He strode across the clearing and squatted down next to Dorian. “Give him to me, Claire. I’ll carry him.”

  She shook her head and bit her lip to hold back tears. She passed her hand across Dorian’s cheek, but he didn’t respond. “No. I’ll take him. I can carry him as well as you can.”

  Finn heard the words, but they meant nothing to him. He straightened up and looked down at her. Nothing could move him once he set his mind on something. “Follow me.”

  He shifted and rose to his huge black dragon form. He crouched over the tiny figures at his feet. Claire didn’t argue. She laid Dorian on the ground and backed away. Finn lifted one claw and picked up the limp body. He clutched it carefully. He applied exactly enough pressure to ensure he didn’t drop the man. Then he spread his wings and took to the air.

  13

  Claire materialized behind a bank of foliage. The huge black monster squatted there with Dorian stretched out a few feet away. The dragon seethed with heat and power. His sharp, pointed head bobbed back and forth peering through the trees, but Dorian looked as pale and inert as ever.

  She followed the direction of the dragon’s gaze. Another tiny, crumbling wreck of a cabin nestled in the undergrowth. Spanish moss dripped from its eaves and lichen covered the door slouching to one side.

  Claire couldn’t see anything but dark beyond the threshold, but that dark made her guts churn. This place wasn’t deserted. She could sense that through the air without even trying. The area vibrated with danger and not the kind that invited her to get into a fight with it.

  This danger came from something insidious, something evil, something that knew no compassion or human emotion. This danger didn’t even try to warn anybody away. It teased its prey to come closer, to fall into its trap to its doom. It spoke to her through the air
with the same treacherous voice. She had to get away from it before she succumbed to its poisonous influence.

  Finn’s voice startled her from behind. “She’s in there. Let’s go.”

  She lunged for him before she knew what she was doing. “Wait, Finn! Don’t go in there.”

  “We have to.”

  Claire’s teeth chattered in apprehension. She shook her head fast. “We can take him somewhere else. We don’t have to go in there.”

  His eyes widened. “You said you wanted to. Dorian wants you to.”

  “I made a mistake!” She bit back the urge to shriek in terror. “We can take him somewhere else. We can’t go in there. She’ll kill us all.”

  He straightened up. His eyes left nowhere for her to hide. “Well, it’s too late now. We’re here now, so let’s see what she says. The longer we delay, the worse it will be for him. She might not even help us and then we’re back to square one.”

  He bent over and picked up Dorian in his arms. He positioned the young man’s head against his shoulder and braced his back supporting Dorian’s weight. “You hang back. Let me go first. That way, you can…..you know. You can do something.”

  She nodded again. She didn’t say so, but she understood what he meant. They couldn’t put all their eggs in one basket. If Isabella attacked Finn, at least Claire would be here to….to do something. She didn’t know what she could do against Isabella, but some class of a plan was better than nothing.

  He waded through the branches and emerged into the open. He hesitated in front of the cabin. He cradled Dorian in his arms, but he didn’t approach the cabin for what seemed like a long time. He observed the apparently deserted building. Nothing moved. Not one breath of wind disturbed the moss.

  At last, he took a deep breath and set off for the lopsided steps. Claire rubbed her shaking hands against her thighs, but she couldn’t scrape off the cold sweat. Her nerves screamed at her to grab Finn and Dorian and get as far away from Isabella as she….

  At that moment, the cabin detonated in a blazing ball of fire. A deafening boom blasted across the clearing. The shockwave hit Finn and catapulted him clean off his feet. He staggered, dropped Dorian, and slammed down on his seat. He bounced and came to rest staring at the cabin flickering in flame.

  Claire tried to scream, but she couldn’t make a sound. She couldn’t breathe. Fire consumed the cabin. It rippled in the heat, but no matter how hard she gawked, she couldn’t make it stop burning.

  She froze in shock. She couldn’t move. After all the effort to convince herself to bring Dorian to Isabella, this had to happen.

  Finn recovered first. He leaped to his feet. He cast one last open-mouthed stare at the cabin slumping into the fire. Then he spun around and yelled over his shoulder. “Follow me, Claire!”

  The next instant, he burst out of himself to become the wicked black dragon again. The monster slithered around Dorian, picked him up in its claw, and vaulted into the air.

  Finn soared around the burning cabin and didn’t look back. He flew away somewhere and left Claire to take her elemental form. Her mind vanished so she couldn’t think. She became pure will with one object: follow Finn.

  She overtook him miles above the Quag. He climbed into the clouds holding Dorian in his talons. She swirled around him hugging him in her formlessness. He purred under his breath, but he didn’t stop flapping his wings. He soared over hundreds of miles and landed in a different patch of Quag somewhere northeast of Lafayette.

  He touched down in an open, bare yard surrounded by thatched huts like something out of darkest Africa. He laid Dorian on the ground and shifted. Claire resumed her own form at his side. “What is this place?”

  He inspected the crude houses and the ragged people appearing everywhere. The strangers stared at the couple. Finn murmured under his breath. “Stay here and guard Dorian. I’ll handle this.”

  He strode into the village. He marched up to a tall man and stuck out his hand. They shook hands and conversed in low tones for a long time. A few other men and a couple of women sauntered over. They listened to the exchange and even added a few things. Then they all nodded and Finn hugged the first man.

  Finn came striding back. “It’s all good. Come on.”

  “What are we doing here? Who was that?”

  Finn knelt down next to Dorian gathering him up one more time. He shot Claire a mischievous grin. “You mean you don’t know? It’s Lincoln Manning. He can help us.”

  Claire frowned. “Manning? The Mannings are wolf shifters. How can he help us?”

  Finn grunted hefting Dorian off the ground. “I thought you knew everything about everything going on in Anarock. He can’t help us, but someone else here can. Come on.”

  He headed for the village. Claire hung back. She didn’t want to go in there any more than she wanted to go near Isabella’s house, but she trusted Finn. Besides, he had Dorian. What was she going to do—snatch Dorian away from him?

  He was taking Dorian somewhere to help him. She never doubted that for a second. Lincoln belonged to the Prometheus Crest, so the rest of these people, whoever they were, must belong to the Prometheus Crest, too. Her clan knew about the Prometheus Crest’s hunting camps in the Quag so this must be one of them.

  Claire never thought she would ever actually see one with her own eyes. She certainly never planned to enter one of them. She didn’t want to. She wanted to keep her distance. Her family always held the other Crests at a distance. Did they do that to protect themselves from the other Crests or to protect the other Crests from themselves?

  Could it be her Crest wasn’t as powerful as they thought they were? Finn brought Dorian here. If Finn hadn’t been with her, Claire would have taken Dorian back to Anarock in defeat. She couldn’t help him without Isabella. She didn’t know anyone in SeamStream Crest who could help him.

  Was it possible the Novaks’ seclusion worked against them? Was it possible their precious isolation proved to be a liability rather than the advantage they thought it was?

  Finn didn’t wait for her. He carried Dorian into one of the houses. Half a dozen people accompanied him, including Lincoln. They smiled and nodded at Claire when she entered with the rest, but none of them spoke to her. What did they really think of the SeamStream Crest? Was it possible they didn’t view SeamStream Crest with adoration and reverence as the Novaks might like to believe?

  Finn halted in a good-sized room utterly devoid of all furniture. The whole house was one bare empty box. The others arrayed themselves around him and Lincoln knelt down.

  He pried a plank out of the floor and laid it aside along with three others just like it. When he opened a hole big enough, Finn descended a ladder into the dark underground. Lincoln waved Claire forward. He motioned her down the hole, too.

  She didn’t want to go down there, but she didn’t want to let Dorian out of her sight—or Finn. She mustered her resolve and swung into the gloom. She discovered Finn standing in a dank cellar under the hut. A square of white light radiated down on him to illuminate the chamber.

  Lincoln hopped down to join them, but the others remained above. Claire didn’t know what to expect, but Finn stooped and laid Dorian on the cold, unforgiving dirt. Only then did Claire notice a grate of iron bars anchored in a solid block of concrete.

  The minute he put Dorian down, a skeletal hand darted through the bars. It hovered over Dorian’s chest and quick, husky gasps of breath came from the shadows beyond the bars. The longer Claire spent down here, the more her eyes adjusted to the light. She became aware of a figure huddled behind the grate.

  Finn and Lincoln drew back and left Dorian lying there alone. The light shone on him and that otherworldly hand. It passed up and down his torso and someone snorted. Then, from the gloomy interior, a primal face thrust into view.

  Claire gaped at a tiny girl, or maybe it was just a very small woman. Sharp fangs jutted from her cracked lips and a mop of straggled hair formed a halo around her dirt-smeared face. A tattered remnant
of rag barely covered her wasted body, but she had shriveled, malformed breasts so she couldn’t have been that young. She squatted in a cramped concrete cage barely big enough for her to sit in a hunch position. Her head touched the top and the bars separated her from the rest of the world.

  Glowing eyes reflected the light and gave the creature a horrible, animal appearance. She passed her hand back and forth over Dorian’s sternum until, all at once, she slapped her palm down on his ribs. She let out a spine-chilling snarl and yanked her hand away as though the touch burned. The next minute, she snapped her bony fingers over him and retreated into the dark.

  Claire stared in wonder at the torn flesh of Dorian’s thigh. The bloody edges knit themselves together, the scab vanished, and perfect pink skin took its place. The instant that queer being disappeared, Dorian blinked and looked around.

  Claire darted forward, but Finn caught her. “Hold it. Not so fast.”

  He bent down and took Dorian’s hand. He helped the young man to his feet and drew him away from the cage. Lincoln vaulted up the ladder and away. Finn propelled Dorian after him. Finn stayed in the hole to let Claire go first.

  Finn climbed out and Lincoln replaced the floorboards. Dorian blinked all around him. Finn jerked his chin at him. “Are you all right?”

  Dorian nodded. “I feel fine.”

  “Can you shift? If you can, fly on home to Anarock. Tell Bernard we’ll be along in a little while. Tell him Finn Weeks sends his regards.”

  Dorian kept blinking and nodding at everything in wonder. He ran his hand through his hair. Then he started to dissolve. He disintegrated and became a cloud of vapor. The next minute he was gone.

  14

  Finn sauntered out of the hut and his gaze locked on Claire a few yards outside the village. She observed him from a distance, but her expression gave him no clues what was on her mind.