Tala Phoenix and the Dragon's Lair

by Gabby Fawkes

  "A chance to be burned alive," Axel said dryly.

  "Come on," Kian said, patting my shoulder. "We got the badass-est dragon shifter around. Dragon shifters don't scare us."

  Axel looked at her, then me, long and hard. Finally, he said, "They should."

  It took another few days of planning, coaxing, and re-planning before we set out. Although we tried to gloss over just how dangerous this upcoming mission was, Jenna made sure word got around. The result was that, on the day we were to leave, everyone freaked out and tried to convince me not to go. (“Tala, please, I’m begging you!” Tamarin actually shrilled, dissolving into tears, going as far as to volunteer to join.)

  My only grudging supporters were Kian, Demi, Persephone, Dion, Apollo, Artemis, Jeremy and an unexpected Sammy. Although, after a heart-to-heart with the latter about her unpredictable powers (she’d set a snowstorm on Aphrodite after she gave her a funny look), Sammy had grudgingly agreed that her staying behind would be for the best.

  A few brave younger kids demanded to come along, and it took long hours explaining to them the dangers and why they’d be more of a hindrance than a help.

  Worst of all, though, was that Jenna insisted on her and Tania tagging along.

  Apparently, Jenna was certain we’d just ditch her and the other kids back in Olympus, so she was coming along to make sure she didn't get left behind. Tania, back pain and all, had been bullied into coming too. I had been all for outright banning them from coming, since they were basically useless with no powers whatsoever (Tania’s fairy wings were still ‘in development’) and just plain annoying. But Aphie, who we’d left in charge, had downright refused to deal with Jenna. I figured the kids had enough negativity without Jenna’s daily proclamations of doom and gloom. Who knows, if we left her alone, she might’ve even been stupid enough to try to go public with our story, and take some naïve kids with her.

  Unfortunately, I was going to have to keep my friends close, but my enemies closer.

  That morning, as we gathered by the headless cherub fountain, no one was in much of a talking mood.

  Only until Artemis, who was randomly patting a stag that had showed up out of nowhere, spoke up. "Nesting season for dragons started a few days ago. So they’ll be less likely to be out. We might get lucky and not encounter any."

  "But if we do," Axel said, swinging his blade left then right, "We’ll have about ten seconds to get the hell out of there before they decide whether they want us rare or raw."

  "Thanks, Captain Positive," I said, trying to force a smile. "Would it kill you to not predict the worst?"

  "Oh, I'm not going to let the worst happen," Axel said with a dazzling smile. "Any sign of dragon shifters, and I'm grabbing you and booking it."

  I leaned in and, in a low voice only he could hear, said, "You forget that I'm a pretty powerful shifter myself."

  Our gazes caught. His flickered to my lips. I swallowed back a groan. Damn it, now was not the time for me to want to kiss him! No way did I need an audience seeing us doing what we’d been doing in the privacy of the forest almost every day since the rescue.

  "Guess we'll see then," he said, pausing.

  “Good,” I said, turning on my heel.

  I exhaled with relief. Saved – this time. Looked like that was that.

  The details of us taking Dion's jet had already been arranged. Although no one had really mentioned the specifics of the whole landing in Syria and what to expect once we got there part.

  Over the next half hour, the jet trip there consisted of:

  Go Fish game with everyone but Jenna and Tania

  Jeremy and Axel swapping hair tips, and

  me telling my overexcitedly chanting PV – We’re going to the Badlands – the Badlands – the Badlands – to shut up.

  I only realized we were there when Dion's jet started to lose altitude. A look out the window as the landing gear kissed what looked like a rubble-stream runway made my façade of confidence crumble.

  Yep, devastated slumps of buildings, far-off gunfire… this was definitely a war zone. Or appeared to be one, anyway.

  "So those bombs…" Jeremy said.

  "Aren't real," Persephone said with a yawn, as if she'd explained this a hundred times before. As the jet lowered to the ground, she jumped out nimbly. Then, sticking her thin hand into a fire, she waved it at us. "See?"

  "Wouldn't that have happened even if it was a real fire?" Kian pointed out. "I mean, with your whole godly protection thing and all."

  "Good point," Persephone said. "Why don't you come over here and find out for sure?"

  "That's okay, I’m good," Kian said. She unfurled a tube of black lipstick.

  "New color?" I asked.

  She made a face. "It’s Nosferatu Demon Baby Lethal Lipstick. From Dion. Apparently, he thinks this emo monstrosity will look good on me."

  "You're actually humoring him?" Demi asked incredulously, her almond eyes wide.

  "Please note how I'm wearing this in the crazy Badlands zone, and out of the public eye," Kian said, careful not to move her lips much as she applied it.

  "That might be the last lip color you wear, though," I said.

  Kian jabbed the point of her black lipstick at me accusingly. "You're the one who's been saying this whole time that we've got this. That we’ll be fine."

  I shrugged. "Just saying."

  I could only bear a few seconds of poker face before I cracked up.

  "Joking, okay? I'm sure the black will look lovely."

  "Yeah, yeah," Kian said, heading toward the door and applying the last of her lipstick at the same time.

  As she disembarked, I overheard Dion exclaiming, "Lips! You’re wearing it."

  And her grumpy reply, "Don't."

  "You ready?" Axel asked, coming over.

  "Not really," I confessed.

  "Good," he said. "It'll keep you watchful."

  "He’s usually in a better mood, right?" Jeremy asked me as Axel stalked off.

  I said "Yes" at the same time that Demi said “No."

  I turned to her, frowning. "Seriously?"

  "You think he's bad now," Persephone said, sidling up too, "you should have seen him centuries ago, before. One time, he ripped off a guy’s leg because he accidentally stepped on his foot."

  I gulped. And this was the man I was crushing hard on?

  "So," Demi said in what was clearly a purposely cheery tone, "I wouldn't look outside if I were you."

  It was already too late. I wasn’t just looking outside, I was walking straight damn into it.

  This was basically the picture of what you'd see if you typed into Google: ‘war zone’. Buildings were crumbled into each other, rubble littering the street like an obstacle course. That was only what we could make out through the thick, acrid smoke. A small green-orange fire flickered in the distance, and I was pretty sure I saw a soldier crouched in the shadows, his gun pointed at us.

  When I stepped outside, the noise hit me. The buzzing, like thousands of drones overhead, coupled with the hammering of gunfire far off and closer, stopped me in my tracks.

  At the bottom of the walkway, Axel was looking grim but not concerned. Not yet.

  "You're sure that this-" I said nervously.

  "Isn't real. Yes, I'm sure. Just a smokescreen, a series of well-done enchantments. I told you.” He waved his hand at the soldier whose gun was definitely pointing at us.

  "Hey! Over here!"

  My mouth fell open as the soldier opened fire and Axel just stood there, untouched.

  He smirked with one side of his face. "Do I have to come up there and get you myself?"

  "No," I said quickly, keeping my gaze on him as I walked down. I could hear Jenna and Tania bitching about something behind me, and there was no way I was going to let them see me chicken out.

  Still, all the noise, and the smoke. My eyes watering, I coughed.

  "The faster your friends come, the faster we can actually get into the Badlands," Axel said. "Wh
ich are much more dangerous than this illusion."

  "Glorious," I said.

  But what is life without a bit of danger, am I right? PV said, smacking its lips.

  -Crazy dragon voices can't go live somewhere else if they’re perpetually unwanted, can they? I asked it faux-innocently.

  A sniffle, and I realized that I’d actually hurt my PV's feelings.

  -Okay, okay, I'm sorry, I told it. I'm just hella stressed right now.

  Count that two of us, it said.

  "Should I push them?" Persephone asked.

  Jenna and Tania were taking their sweet time lingering at the edge of the staircase.

  "Whatever," Jenna said in a wavering voice. "We're totally coming."

  "And I totally wish they weren't," Kian muttered beside me.

  I hadn't even noticed her there, I'd been on such high alert from our insane surroundings.

  "At least we can say we've been to Syria now," Demi said, as if that was any sort of consolation for the danger we were putting ourselves into.

  "Everyone off?" Apollo asked.

  "Yeah, yeah," Dion said.

  He was apparently peeved that he had to leave his beloved jet here at the edge of the Dragon Badlands. Luckily, Kian's magic had advanced to a level where she was able to make things invisible to the eye simply by touching them. Including Dion’s jet, which now melded seamlessly into the landscape. At least now we wouldn’t have to worry about being tracked by the DSA, much. Or arising suspicion by having an Olympian’s jet randomly hanging around a smokescreen enchanted no-man’s land.

  I made a mental note that it was near a wreckage that had an orange metal grate twisted amongst the debris. Hopefully I wouldn’t need to remember that – I never had been stellar with directions or positioning (I still hadn’t admitted to my friends that one of the reasons I’d been late to gym back at school was that I’d legit lost track of where I was going and ended up on the wrong floor), but you never knew.

  Ahead of us, Axel was approaching a green-flamed low-flickering fire. I took a long, deep breath and steeled myself for what was coming. “Here goes.”

  “Don’t sound so excited,” Kian said, not quite deadpan enough to obscure the edge in her voice.

  “Don’t worry,” Demi said airily. “Apollo’s here if we do get hurt. Plus it’s only fire – Tal likes fire, right?”

  She calls this sneeze of heat ‘fire’? PV said with an offended sniff.

  Although, even as I saw Axel walking through the flames, I wasn’t so blasé about this whole let’s-step-into-fire thing. If it wasn’t real fire, then why did it look, feel, sound – hell, even smell – third-degree-burn real?

  “You coming?” Kian asked.

  I hadn’t even realized I’d stopped.

  She and Demi were watching me carefully, gauging my reaction. Behind us, Jeremy and the others seemed to be doing the same thing.

  Although right now I felt like nothing more than making some unlikely excuse and beating it back to the jet, this wasn’t about what I wanted. This was about what the group – and all the kids back at Olympus – needed.

  They needed a home – and someone willing to do just about anything to get it. And, for better or for worse, I was that someone.

  “This is it,” Demi said quietly as we stopped directly in front of the fire. She didn’t sound so breezily confident now.

  My friends’ and my hands found each other’s.

  “This is it,” Kian said, squeezing our hands. “Hey, don’t go dying on me, all right?”

  “Hrmph,” Demi said.

  “I’ll do my best,” I said, tentatively extending a sneaker into the scalding heat. “Let’s do this.”

  We stepped in.

  I exhaled with surprise as my sneaker touched down.

  Inside, the flames weren’t hot. They were cool, like glacier water sluicing across my skin.

  As I stepped in fully, the hiss, gunfire and explosions of the battlefield ebbed away. I inhaled deeply, the now smoke-free air a relief to my lungs.

  “Now you can see why humans don't stumble into the Dragon Badlands anymore," Artemis said conversationally as we passed through it.

  "Yeah, that would do it…" I said, my stomach turning even as I craned back to look at what we’d just made it through.

  Although I had been raised pretty differently from the average reggie – boarding school for crazy orphans and all, common sense said not to walk into raging flames. Or any flames for that matter. And dragon shifter powers be damned, that was one hard habit to break.

  As I continued through the enchantment, the landscape grew woozy, swelled, then reasserted itself.

  We were standing at the edge of a completely transformed landscape. The Dragon Badlands. And Badlands they were. I could see the upjutting rock formations as far as the eye could see. No dragons, yet. Unless…

  "What do other dragon shifters look like?" I asked whoever was beside me, which happened to be Apollo.

  "There are all types," he said. "Gigantic ones, tiny ones. Scaly ones. Green-blue ones, and streamlined ones."

  "Creepy, black, overgrown ones," Jenna said with a pointed look at me.

  I scowled. Now that she mentioned it, I’d never really gotten a good look at myself in my dragon form. Not that I was sure I wanted to – what was I going to do, ask one of the others to take a dragon selfie of me during one of my rampages?

  Pfft, PV said with a snort. My beauty would frankly astound you.

  "Oh, don't sulk, Jenna," Kian said, ‘accidentally’ bumping into her as she passed. "I'm sure you'll shift into something too eventually. Something fitting, like a rat, maybe.” She tapped her lower lip, her Latina eyes suddenly lighting up. “Or a mosquito."

  "Mosquito sounds about right," Persephone said, bumping into Jenna too as she followed.

  "Look who's talking," Jenna snapped finally. "At least I'm not married to some creepy death lord guy-"

  A flash of movement and Jenna was pinned to the ground by a vine of thorns, thrashing and howling. "Ow!!"

  As Apollo went to help her, I couldn’t help giving Persephone an impressed look. "So, your thing is thorned vines?”

  "My thing is whatever I want it to be," Persephone said with a don't-mess-with-me mean mug.

  Demi pursed her lips sympathetically as Persephone stalked off. "I think she's been taking the separation poorly.”

  "Uh, yeah," Artemis said. “The other night I caught her having a blue bonfire."

  I crinkled my brow, unsure if I’d heard correctly. "A blue bonfire?"

  "Yeah, she was burning anything that was blue. Flowers, blueberries, I think one of my old gel pens…"

  I looked at her incredulously. "You guys have gel pens?"

  "Guilty as charged," Artemis said. "Admittedly, collecting them wasn't my most interesting hobby. But immortality means you have to fill your time somehow. A few years back, I’m pretty sure I had practically every color ever made."

  "Coming?" Axel asked from up ahead. I cast one last unsure look at Artemis before I turned to him – still not sure whether she was just messing with me. "Or rather hang around so any dragons patrolling will spot us?"

  "Dragons patrol?" I asked.

  "Only if a clan is on the move," Artemis said. "They scout ahead to make sure the coast is clear."

  "Check the skies for any airborne monsters, got it," Kian answered briskly.

  I glared at her. "Watch who you’re calling a monster."

  "Ah, right, that might be your Great Uncle Gerard or something," Kian said, smirking.

  "Don't be pissed at me that your whole Mathusalem idea went up in smoke," I replied.

  Kian opened her mouth to retort, then shut it.

  Loud footfalls sounded. Turning around, I couldn’t help but smile.

  “Oh, Jer.”

  To think that I'd once been terrified of Jeremy's bear form. Now he looked like an overgrown (albeit slightly murderous) teddy bear, with how he was frolicking about with his merry wagging
head and paws.

  "Yeah, that totally won’t attract attention," Jenna sneered. "A giant, freaky bear storming around."

  Before I could tell her off, Axel said, “She's right."

  I choked on sandy air. "Excuse me?"

  "About us attracting attention," Axel said, ignoring how Jeremy was now growling at him. "Our group is too big. We should split up."

  "We should not split up," Apollo said. "If we chance upon dragons, we’ll require all the help we can obtain."

  "If we run into dragons, we won't stand a chance," Demi said airily.

  Everyone twisted around to look at her.

  "You're not serious," I said.

  She blinked. "Sorry, that's just what Cassandra said back in Olympus."

  So that was where Demi had been the few times Kian and I hadn’t found her in her beloved fields. Axel had warned me to stay away from the wind-chime-infested thatched hut at the top of the waterfall, that the ‘seer’ inside was completely delusional. Guess Demi hadn’t gotten that memo.

  Apollo shook his head, his hand going to his bow instinctively. "I wouldn’t listen to anything that woman says. According to her, Pandora's box should be opening any day now."

  "Oh, she's right on that one," Persephone said, striding ahead of us.

  "Oh?" Kian said.

  No one responded. Olympus had been buzzing with talk of Pandora’s box opening for the past few months. Axel called it superstition that Zeus was gone, but I wasn't so sure. Even the witch sisters had mentioned it when we were in the Flying Narwhale that one time.

  "I say we split up," Axel said.

  "I agree," I said.

  "This is a poor idea," Apollo said.

  "Not completely," Dion said.

  He wiped a dribble of wine off his lower lip. Apparently, his stress thing was, surprise, surprise, turning to his handy dandy gorgeous gold flask. It took all my self-control not to ask to look at it… and make a diversion… and stash it in my pocket… and lie about knowing where it was… and take it out late at night to stroke and admire it…

  So far, Kian’s requests for Dion to drink less weren’t working. Especially after he’d rightfully pointed out that he couldn’t get liver cirrhosis and die or anything.