Fire Bound Dragon

by Elizabeth Rain

  “We’ve tried twice now to retake what’s ours. Our numbers have dwindled by a third, many dead or imprisoned below with the others. Would you have us continue until there is no one left and we are on the brink of extinction?”

  “I believe it’s our only...”

  Morei cut him off with a wave of a clawed hand, a collection of rings sparking on each old finger. The man liked his bling.

  “Enough. You’ve brought us teenagers and you think to accomplish what an entire clan of our kind could not? Ridiculous, and I grow weary of your blithering. I will thank you for bringing us sustenance. You may join the others.” He looked over towards a pair of vampires that stood head and shoulders above most of them. “Bring me the girl, I’m hungry.” He made to turn, dismissing Ab’et and returning to his seat.

  “No!” a calm voice spoke, the deep baritone vibrating off the walls.

  Morei turned along with everyone else in the cavern to note the owner of that voice.

  I struggled to breathe under the savage claw that gripped my throat and yanked me up against an unforgiving chest. I wriggled and used my fingers to grip and pull at the hand cutting off my breath, my fingers sinking deep as they melded into claws of my own, dark scales rippling along the back of my hands. His grip lightened just enough for me to breathe. I tried to call my fire, but the results were a pitiful puff of smoke. He shook me. Be still, trust me.

  Were those his words? Because I was sure he had said nothing. Well, now that was a new trick.

  “I can’t do that. They have Elise in the other dimension. If we don’t take the castle and rescue the captives, I’ll lose her. And you will lose your granddaughter.”

  Despite the steely grip, my eyes were working fine. The smallest glimmer of emotion flickered in the old vampire's eyes as he stared at Jorta.

  “Release her! I command it.”

  “No, and if you make any move to stop me, I’ll rip her throat out. Then nobody will dine and we will waste all that fine blood.”

  He meant it too. My bullshit detector wasn’t clanging in the least. I quivered and my knees turned to jelly as my body sagged. Was this what I was about? I was going to die in an alternate dimension and no one would even ever know. At least I wouldn’t be alive to watch them feed on my friends.

  Morei seemed to decide. “She is my daughter, Jorta. You are my son by marriage. If you weren’t, you would already be dead. Fine, if you are so willing to attend to this fool's journey, so be it. But you will do so with no help from the clan. You are on your own.” He waved his hand dismissively and turned his back on them, making his way back to the fire and his rocky throne. He had spoken. Ab’et moved on shaky legs towards them, his finger circling the air to show they should make tracks in the opposite direction. Jorta didn’t release me, instead he snaked an arm around my body and hauled me up until my feet dangled a good foot below his, the hand clasped around my throat never moving an inch. He walked us backwards out of the cave until we were up the trail a piece and out of site. When he released me I fell to my knees, gasping, taking in great gulping mouthfuls of oxygen as little red dots danced in front of my vision.

  “Bastard.” I hissed, voice hoarse and bruised from the force of his grip on my windpipe.

  “What now?” Nick asked, helping me up. But his voice said he already knew. Without the help of the other vampires, we were screwed.

  Jorta spoke up, voice flat and stronger than it had been before. “We do what we came here for. We take back Radmoor Castle, whatever it takes. I have a daughter coming into this world in less than two weeks. I don’t plan for her to live her childhood in a cave like some animal.

  He moved off down the trail, leaving the rest of us to follow. “Come on, we’ll make camp in the Hedgemon’s.”

  “Are you sure that’s wise? The Juggats...” Ab’et interrupted, alarmed.

  “I know all about them. It’s close to Radmoor and you can bet no Demon wolves will prowl there to look for stragglers.” Jorta stated, a tick working in his jaw as he ground his teeth.

  “That’s because they’re smarter than we are.” Ab’et growled beneath his breath.

  Thomas persisted. “What about the Juggats?”

  “Their lair. He wants us to set up camp in the middle of their playground.” Ab’et snarled, mood foul.

  I couldn’t blame him. No one smiled.

  The Hedgemon’s was basically a gigantic rock pile; or maybe boulder pile was more the like. Jorta explained on how the Juggat dragons made their lairs beneath the earth in the vast warren of tunnels they dug, laying their eggs in the caverns they carved out deep beneath the mountainous terrain. They came out at night to hunt, usually. But if they were hungry and the hunting had been poor, they had been known to visit during the day as well.

  “They hunt in pods of five to eight females and one male. Juvenile males band together until one of them challenges the head male dragon for mating rites of the pod. It’s always a fight to the death.” Jorta Added. I shivered and kept my eyes peeled. I hadn’t forgotten our run in with just one of them.

  I couldn’t imagine there being more of them to deal with at the same time. “So tell me why we’re going to set up camp on their roof again?”

  Jorta’s face was grim in the waning daylight. Night was descending, along with our chances of setting up a place to hole up undetected from the monsters on the hunt.

  “Because it’s as close to the castle as we can get. Nobody else in the castle, wolves included, are stupid enough to wander into their hunting territory. Which is why we’re doing it. If we can hide from the Juggat’s long enough to come up with a plan and a way in, we don’t have to worry about the Demon wolves while we do it.”

  I wondered if he paid attention at all to what was coming out of his mouth.

  “Hmm... and how are we going to hide from them?” He didn’t answer. We’d arrived at the edge of the woods. From a small grove of trees we gathered. These differed from the impressive woods we’d come through earlier with the multi-lobed sharp-pointed leaves. In the past half hour they had phased out and become the scrubby and awkward bush like under-story trees we hid behind. I tried not to get to close to them. I’d been around thorny bushes and trees with sharp spiked branches before. But it covered the trunks of these in needle sharp protrusions that stung like the devil and drew blood if you brushed up against them.

  We stared out at an enormous expanse of ground that angled at a sharp incline to a rocky outcropping close to a quarter mile ahead. I had my first look at the Juggat’s den.

  Ab’et leaned close and whispered. “Fast. We cross that expanse of ground quick and hope none of them are emerging from their holes yet to hunt. If they catch us on that open ground it’s game over for all of us. Stay together and keep up. Are you ready?” He didn’t wait for an answer.

  And then we were running full out, all of us. It reminded me of track class and the crack of the gun when we started. Only there was no report and coming in second wasn’t an option. The vampires were fastest, easily out pacing even Thomas who was quicker than Nicholas or I. I had to drag Nick the last few yards when he fell behind.

  We reached the first rocky outcropping even as I heard a thunderous roar from the other side of the hill. Two more bellows, lighter than the first, answered. We stood panting, bent at the waist and trying to stay quiet.

  Ab’et and Jorta bent down and grabbed something off the ground. As they stood the scent reached me and I had to control the almost uncontrollable urge to gag. What was that smell?

  Jorta held it out to us. We stared at the foul mess as they shrugged and began rubbing it over their clothes and hair, anything that was exposed. “Never mind then. If they can smell you they can eat you.”

  “What is that?” Nick asked with a scowl of disgust.

  “What do you think it is?” Jorta asked, making a short retching noise of his own he barely concealed.

  What made a vampire want to throw up couldn’t be good. I bent down and grabbed a gre
at handful even as we heard the roar of the emerging pod, noses to the air and hunting. They sounded closer. Nick and Thomas swooped their hands down and grabbed handfuls of the foul offal. We smeared it on thick, breathing through our mouths and pinching our noses.

  We listened, terrified as two other booming growls joined the first three in answer, making a curious phlegmy whistling sound in between for what must have passed as some form of communication. Like, ‘Hey, smell that? I think it smells like it's over there? Dinner came to visit. Yeah, let’s go get some.’

  Ab’et motioned with his hand and we gathered in the recessed opening of a small rocky outcropping. He gathered us all close as we wedged into the compact space, skin to skin, crap covered clothing blending us into one solid ball of stink. “Two things about Juggat’s. Hearing and smell are first rate. They don’t see as well.” He held a finger to his lips and held it there.

  The dark was almost absolute. The only thing I could see on any of us was the faint glimmer of our preternatural eyes, with the two vamp's eyes glittering silver as they froze.

  I held my breath as all five Juggat’s rounded the corner, snarling and snapping at each other. The smaller male brought up the rear, looking more like a tag-along than a member of the group. I wondered if they let him eat.

  I didn’t plan on volunteering to be part of the meal plan to find out.

  The largest female stopped in the small clearing, breath chuffing from her maw of needle-like teeth in thick pants of smokey air. Her reptilian eyes moved with her head as she tested the air and found the remnants of our scent. Unable to tell where it was coming from, she blew a frustrated breath straight at us, the gagging scent of spoiled meat and sulfur drifting over us in a rush. Nicholas’ eyes widened to unbelievable proportions and I waited for him to lose it in spectacular fashion all over the lead female’s clawed feet. A fine bead of sweat formed on my forehead and dribbled down and into my eyes, stinging. I didn’t dare blink.

  After what seemed like forever, she gave a high trilling cry, several flaps on the side of her neck I hadn’t seen before fluttering as she sounded off a signal for the others to follow. With a whirl of that long spiked tail that missed Thomas’ knee by inches, she ran down the hill towards the open land to our west. We waited for several minutes longer before we moved.

  Ab’et shot Nick a disgusted look. “Better get it together. We don’t have time to babysit your delicate stomach. You would have killed us all if you’d lost it. Juggat’s might not have great eyesight, but they eat what they see.” He hissed, voice barely audible.

  Nick said nothing. I felt bad for him. It could have been any of us. We’d gone into this thing hopelessly outmatched and out of our league. I had to wonder what any of us had been thinking.

  “What now?” I whispered, pulling his attention away from Nick.

  He looked at me, considering. “We wait. And we plan. Without the others our options have changed and we need to make new ones.”

  I nodded and wondered if we were already fresh out.

  BY MORNING WE WERE no closer to having a solid plan than we had been. The best we’d been able to come up with was for Ab’et and Thomas to cause a diversion top-side, while Jorta, Nick and I snuck below and tried to release close to forty prisoners, three-Fourths of whom were starving vampires and would probably try to eat us the moment they were freed. If we could even get close enough to the castle without being seen to get in.

  The only advantage I could see to the entire mess was that it was Jorta and Ab’et’s home. They knew all the secrets to the castle. Hidden doors and entrances, secret passages. All kinds of cool stuff I would have loved to explore if I weren’t busy just trying to stay alive.

  Amid creaking joints and aching muscles, unused to the abuse we were subjecting them too, we emerged from our concealment and edged along the west face of the Hedgemon’s.

  We paused along the edge of a huge boulder. I looked over Jorta’s shoulder as he indicated a deep black crevasse barely visible bisecting the plane we stood on. It led to the outline of a massive set of buildings too far away to be distinct from the distance.

  I had my first look at Radmoor Castle. “What’s that?” I asked, nodding towards the dark line.

  “Old river bed. Runs all the way to the woods that surrounds the castle,” Jorta said.

  “If we can get to that, it offers a bit of concealment from whatever might watch from either end. Still dangerous, we aren’t the only ones that travel it. But better than in the open.” I looked at his concerned expression and had to ask.

  “Do the Juggats travel along it?”

  “Of course.” Came the last answer I wanted.

  AS WE DUG IN AND RACED across the uneven ground towards the crack in the earth, I realized another detail. That old river bank would make an impressive place to trap the unwary. I hoped that wasn’t us.

  We made the edge of the embankment and never looked as we slipped over the edge and down the steep bank to the bottom, following Ab’et and Jorta as they scrambled for purchase ahead of us. Standing in the middle of the creek bed, I dusted off my jeans and wrinkled my nose. The night air had dried our clothes and muted the smell of the Juggat crap we’d smeared over our bodies to mask our scent. The exertion of our mid-morning run had freshened it. We were ripe.

  I looked around. When he’d said river bed, he hadn’t been kidding. Whatever had run through here had done so a long time ago. No sign of any flowing water remained. But it was steep and dark, long vines and roots trailing down along the edges to the rocky bedrock below. It would be rough going and if we encountered anything along the way, we’d have no way of escaping.

  Ab’et didn’t wait but took off at a ground-eating lope in the castle's direction, hopping from rock to dirt to fallen dead-fall with nimble precision. He’d have been a shoe-in for lessons in parkour. We followed the winding path of the dried river, covering the distance at a fast clip without talking.

  All of us kept our ears open for the sound of any crumbling gravel that wasn’t created by our own feet. We counted ourselves fortunate to have escaped any run-ins with the Juggat dragons when we rounded a sharp twist in the river bed and emerged into an opening the size of a small football stadium. The remnants of a dried-up lake. All that remained was the muddy pond in its center. Where all the Juggat dragons came to drink. There were four. Our luck had just run out.

  We stood in the opening and stared as all four heads snapped up and turned in our noisy direction, struggling to focus from several hundred feet away. Water dribbled from their snapping jaws as they stared at us, nostrils flaring wide as they breathed us in. The largest female took a stumbling lurch in our direction, and then together they charged. I didn’t wait for a second opinion. I ran, pulling my bow as I skirted boulders and dead-fall with enough skill to make any gymnast proud. We didn’t run far, just enough out of sight to find a defensible position to fight from. None of us were foolish enough to imagine we could outrun them and exhausted we’d be unable to fight. I waited for the first dragon to round the corner. I didn’t wait long. its reptile eyes widened with hunger as it spotted us laid out before them for the taking.

  I wasn’t going down easy. I let the first bolt fly and watched as it bounced off her charging snout. She shook her head at the sting, but she never stopped coming as I notched another bolt. Dammit, terror had made me forget how tough that hide was. I hadn’t forgotten how poisonous their bite, though. As she drew abreast of me with that snapping jaw I slid sideways past her, moving fast. Her size sent her slipping several feet beyond me as she whipped out that razored sharp tongue, hoping to slice me open. The toxin in that tongue would have left me paralyzed.

  She turned slower than me, but still fast for a half-ton lizard, preparing to come at me again. I needed a shot at that tender underbelly with my poison tipped bolt. I felt the hair along my arms crackle with energy. My magic wanted to come out. I let it bubble to the surface, ending at the ends of my throwing arm in a small flickering baseb
all sized fireball. I wondered if she liked to play fetch.

  I drew back my arm, waggling my hand to gain her attention as she charged. I sent it flying in a slow, lazy arc just out of reach of those grinding jaws above her head. Her eyes tracked it and as it flew nearly abreast, she lurched off the ground to snap at its fiery glow. It wasn’t much. Just how high could something of her size leap? But for all of a second I had a slim cream target and I took the shot, celebrating the thin crimson stain that ripped the length of her underside.

  She screamed her rage and forgot the flaming orb, coming down on all fours and charging me, eyes vicious in that granite skull. I hadn’t missed, but my heart was in my throat as I back-pedaled away from that maw of teeth heading straight at me. She was within yards when the poison took effect, coming to a thundering dead slide bare feet from my Skechers.

  That was one down, but the other three Juggats were faring better against prey that didn’t have a long-range weapon like mine.

  Nicholas and Thomas were working together against a Juggat nearly as large as the first female. Even as I watched, Thomas loosed his bolos and I watched them twine about its nose, burying those spiked orbs deep in the tender underbelly of its snout and cinching her mouth closed. She was already working the twine loose when Jorta dove in, Thomas’ long wicked knife in his hand. He slit the length of exposed underbelly from groin to sternum, eviscerating her before leaping out of the way as the bolos loosened. But it did the damage as she writhed in the dirt, clawing and snapping at the air as she died.

  We were down to two. Nicholas was holding his own, but just. He was using his staff and sending fiery bolts of blue electricity along its length, dancing off the ends and holding the smallish male Juggat off as he snapped at the blue fire racing over his nose and front feet every time he came too close. But Nicholas was tiring and I looked for an opening as they danced.