by Alexis Davie
Though she couldn’t get a good image of whoever this man was, she was able to see enough. He stood tall and powerfully, with the lean, muscular build of a superhero. Even through the loose-fitting, white cotton shirt he wore, she could see the rather obvious musculature defined through the thin fabric that hung over his broad shoulders. Greyish tactical pants did a little more to cover him, but she could still make out the outline of strong legs and a slender waist. Outlined by the beautiful rays of sunshine that filtered through the tall tree and overlooking a cliff, he looked nearly godlike. She felt her center tighten and a longing to be near him. But wasn’t he the one who was likely the reason she had been kidnapped? She quickly tried to brush he thoughts aside.
Sebastian. Or another guy that just happened to be in the middle of nowhere and boasted an impressive physique, powerful presence, expensive clothes, on the phone next to a speedboat and a portal to some island. Her money was on him being Sebastian. This, she assumed was the man who had intimidated Ajax into not doing anything to her. This was the man who wanted to talk to her, but why? Who was he? He was a strong looking guy, but Ajax looked about as brutishly strong as it got. No, there was something else here. Sebastian was probably a dragon, though she wouldn’t be able to tell until she saw his eyes.
“Move it,” Ajax snapped at her, shoving her back towards him. “We don’t have all day.”
Ellie glared at the big dragon, but she shuffled towards Sebastian reluctantly. Her brain refused to figure out what was happening. Half of her body was dry from the mountain, and the other half was damp from the mist coming through the portal from the sea right next to her. She moved a little further away after she got the image of tripping and falling into an ocean. As a witch who could be considered an expert in ancient magic, it was an exciting experience to see history up close and personal. On the other hand, it was like being an electrician who came out to see wildly faulty wiring that was set to burn the house down at any moment.
Teneha carefully straightened her pants and made sure she looked presentable before striding out confidently in front of them. She cleared her throat they were within ten feet of the man, who stayed on the phone, talking in some dialect that Ellie didn’t recognize, which was surprising, since she was familiar enough with almost every dialect known to the magical communities, past and present, to recognize them.
“We got the witch, sir.”
The man finished up his conversation. If Ellie had to guess, she’d assume that he was speaking in some dragon tongue. She’d never been too interested in learning many of them. Runes, curses, old and modern spells, that was her thing. What dragons used to talk with each other was not a big deal to her. She’d talked to only a couple of them, and never in anything other than English, though she did once try to buy a car from a freethinking dragon on Craiglist who only spoke Spanish, and their communications were poor, to say the least, even though he was a nice enough guy.
Sebastian hung up his phone and slid it into his front pocket, turning to see them. Ellie inhaled automatically, startled by his appearance. She was a freethinking witch. Dragons and witches could get along and all the tradition of fighting was stupid, but as advanced as she was, she’d never thought she’d find a dragon as handsome as she did right then. A grey streak ran through his soft black hair, distracting her only for a second before her gaze drifted down to his vibrant, golden eyes, which instantly looked her from head to toe with the ease of someone who was looking at something in particular. What, exactly, he was searching for in her, she didn’t know, but she automatically wanted to possess it. He looked to his compatriots with just the hint of anger in his eyes.
“Why is she muzzled?” He reached around and unbuckled the bit from her mouth. Ellie spit it out as he removed it deftly and tossed it to the side. He focused all his attention on her, who suddenly felt rather small and nervous. “My apologies. They weren’t supposed to do that.” He threw a passing glance at Teneha. “Find out who is responsible and discipline them accordingly.”
Ellie opened her cottonmouth, trying to get some more saliva into it, which probably made her look like an idiot.
“Yeah, the whole discipline thing sounds about right. Any particular reason I was kidnapped, bound, and dragged here? Who are you? What do you want from me?” She swore internally. After all that, after all the planning of not smarting off to Sebastian, that was first thing she had done. Sure, she wanted to know the answers, but at the same time, it probably wasn’t the best plan to just be aggressive towards a man that probably would kill her. To her relief, Sebastian grinned at her response.
“You’re a brave little thing, aren’t you?" He stuck out a hand for her to shake. “Sebastian Rourke.”
Oh. Ellie’s confidence plummeted as Teneha removed the handcuffs. Sebastian Rourke.
“You mean… Sebastian Rourke, like the Rourke royalty, like you are…” She swore under her breath. “You’re that new king,” she breathed.
All of a sudden, a whole lot more things made sense. Why someone had kidnapped her with such quality equipment. Why Teneha and Ajax weren’t eager to piss him off. This was a Rourke, the most legendary royal family in dragon lineage. Even Ellie had heard of them. As famous as they were overwhelmingly powerful, the Rourke family was the undisputed champion of the dragon world. The oldest one had just passed away, and his son had taken over the reins. It wasn’t too far of a jump to imagine that the man standing in front of her was the prince that had just become the king a few months ago. She shook his bigger hand with something a bit like awe, distracting her for a moment from the fact that he was in charge of kidnapping her.
“Smart.” He nodded seriously. His handshake was firm but gentle. She had no doubt that as a dragon, especially with his lineage, he could crush her hand like tinfoil if he wanted to. “Let’s get down to business. You have the exact skill set that I need for this project.”
“And you couldn’t just call me?” Fuck. She snapped her mouth shut again. This was how people ended up dead. “Why’d you have to kidnap me?”
He cocked an eyebrow. “You would have come to simply talk? Please. This was of utmost urgency, so drastic measures had to be taken. That portal you’re standing by is extremely volatile. As much as I’d love to waste time trying to negotiate with you, we didn’t think you’d come with us willingly, but we need your expertise, and we need it before the magic breaks down. You can’t know the location of this place, and besides, this isn’t your first run-in with dragons, is it? Consider this justice.”
Ellie glowered, wanting to find an argument with that, but the truth was that he was right. No, she wouldn’t have come with menacing dragon thugs to talk to the new dragon king about something mysterious and worrying. And it didn’t take a genius to see how unusual the situation with the portal was. As irritating as it was to admit, he wasn’t wrong. It was quite volatile. Was there a better option between calling her and kidnapping her? Of course. But there was still that kicker way back there in her mind that yes, when she had been young and stupid, she’d stolen some spell books from the Rourke dynasty. Now she’d never think of it, but at the time, it had made sense. Something about restoring the spells to the proper owners or whatever, but if she had been able to steal from the Rourke family and only get kidnapped, well, it had been worth it. Ellie, however, wasn’t willing to give up the battle that easily. He might be relatively justified in taking her if he’d known about the spell books all those years ago, and yes, it was of rather immediate urgency, and yes, she was the right person to call about unusual magical events like this.
“Fine, but don’t pretend you know anything about me, because I seriously doubt you do.”
Sebastian crossed his arms, looking rather amused at her spunk. “I don’t? Your name is Ellie. You graduated top of your class in your university. You’ve studied the arcane, unusual, and ancient magic arts for most of your life, even to the point where you wrote a book about it. Although a competent enough witch, your true ability lies
in being unusually gifted in understanding runes and curses, which is how you stole the books in the first place. You considered yourself a vigilante when you were younger, but you weren’t very good at it. Instead of tracking you down, we took the books back and waited to cash in on a resident expert for anything we might need you for, since you probably know that the normal punishment for theft is… well, more severe, for lack of a better term. You have no family, no significant other, no serious relationships of any kind other than professional ones. You work at a local museum, you live out of a 1961 Airstream that you’re fixing up, and you can read and understand almost any spell written in the past hundreds of years. Sounds about right? You let me know when I’m wrong.”
Ellie opened and closed her mouth before looking down. “1962. Not a 1961.”
He clapped his hands together to move the conversation forward. “Well then. Let’s skip the pleasantries and get to what I’m sure you want to know: what I want you to do.”
Ellie crossed her arms. “I think that’d be about great.”
3
Ellie ended up rethinking the idea of crossing her arms. Was it a sign of aggression? Would that be a bad idea? He was staring right at her, and her movements switched from automatic to manual. She wasn’t designed for this sort of pressure. She didn’t like this sort of interaction. She was the sort of person who would rather put her headphones in at the gym because she didn’t want to have to put up a happy face at seven in the morning. Of course, even an effortlessly friendly person would have a hard time figuring out what to do in the face of a dragon king. To add to her stress, Tehena and Ajax, whom she’d begun mentally calling Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dumbass, were still standing directly next to her, and she kept fighting the nerves that came from having two heavily armed, possibly malicious people that close to her. Sebastian seemed to see what she was thinking, so he wagged a finger at the two dragons.
“Give us some space,” he ordered decisively. They instantly obeyed his command and walked off to the Hummer, leaving just Ellie and Sebastian together. He squinted from the glare of the sun to the side of his face, then went into what she could only assume was his explanation. “With me recently becoming king, there wasn’t much of the empire that I didn’t know how to run, but some of my father’s secrets came to light when I took the throne.” She could see a glimpse of sadness in his eyes when he spoke about his dad, which provided a weird moment where she empathized with him. “Namely, this island. It’s been sealed off for at least a few hundred years. I’ve never seen it, and I’m close to 500 now.” He paused to inhale. “But I have heard of it. The—” He then proceeded to spit out some language that she didn’t understand, but before she could ask what the hell he’d said, he went on. “In English, the Isle of The Damned. We know essentially nothing about it, other than a few stories. It was once a prosperous community, but something happened. What, I couldn’t tell you. It drove out everything that survived, and the warlocks sealed it off for fear of what was inside.”
“And you want to leave it alone because it would be insane to want to go inside?” she asked, hoping it was the case and knowing it wasn’t.
He grinned at her response. “Not quite. Whatever’s in there has to have died off, and if anything is left, it can’t stand up to us. It could contain wealth, unused magical sources, and who knows what else.”
“Or…” She held up her finger in a hear me out sort of way. “It could be filled with horrible monsters that will kill us in terrible, unspeakable ways. I’m not doing that.”
“I couldn’t force you to,” Sebastian replied without hesitation. “It could be an unwelcoming place, but if you aren’t up to it, I understand.”
Ellie let out a sigh of relief. If he was willing to kidnap her, she’d been more than a little worried about getting dragged along onto some cursed old island of death. She started walking slowly back towards the Hummer, curious if he’d stop her. “Thank you. So, I’ll just be headed back to my house—”
“Not quite.” His voice stopped her in her tracks. “This is something of a plea bargain. We have proof that you stole sacred texts from us. If you aren’t willing to help us, you’ll go through the proper, legal sentences. Based on what you took and how you did it, I’d guess jail for at least eight to ten years. And that’s perfectly fine if it’s what you choose to do. We aren’t going to force you to potentially risk your health. You have the option to legally atone for your crimes against my family. But, in light of your skillset, I’m willing to forget about the whole thing… should you do this favor for me.”
Ah, fuck. There it was.
Ellie closed her eyes and let out a low groan. Eight to ten years… She’d been young and stupid, but being young and stupid wasn’t enough of an argument to keep her from getting locked up in the slammer. Option A: take the relatively safe route, go to jail until she was in her late thirties, miss out on meeting a good guy, get branded a criminal, miss some of the most exciting years of her life, buy a cat, slowly descend into a life of alcoholism and depression from the poor choices from her youth, buy a cat, watch her friends have families while she was still single, buy a cat, try to start a new job but be rejected because she was legally a thief, buy a cat, get really into knitting, buy a cat, and so forth. Or, option B: do something risky and probably come out fine, never become a cat lady, and go on with her life.
In a word, fuck. Fuckity fuck.
She collected herself, tried and failed to think of a way out, and resigned herself to the fact that she’d been outsmarted, bamboozled, stuck between a rock and a hard place. Neither option here was a good one. She turned around and faced the island through the portal. She’d never been to prison before, as anyone who had spent more than five minutes with her could easily guess, but no part of it whatsoever attracted her. At no point in her life had she woken up and thought it would be fun to get arrested. She watched the birds fly around the tall peaks of the island far in the distance over the deep sea. There was a time where she’d wanted to be an adventurer. She used to dream of being like Indiana Jones, pulling off crazy rescue missions and risking her life for the pursuit of things amazing and old. But then she’d been forced to face the reality. If she got attacked by a human, she could handle herself just fine with her magic, but if something big, inhuman, and fast came at her, well… it wouldn’t end well for her.
Ellie took a rambling path back over to Sebastian before running a hand through her short hair and moistening her mouth. “So, let’s say I did this project. What should I expect?”
He leaned up against the tree and studied the island through the portal. “I’m not sure.”
“Would everything on the island be trying to kill me?”
“I’m not sure,” he said again.
“Is it cursed?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Is there any reason to believe that we won’t be instantly mauled upon stepping through that portal by whatever they locked up?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Well,” Ellie muttered, “you’ve sold me on it.” She met eyes with the king. The one, teeny weeny, minuscule bit of good news was that she was talking to the man. This was a Rourke, and not just one of them, the king himself. If he said they would drop the charges, he wasn’t blowing smoke. He could clear her name. “If I did it, and it’s a big if, you’d make sure I didn’t get arrested?"
He nodded, maintaining eye contact. He had her, and he knew it. “It would be as if the books had walked off by themselves.”
“And you need me just for my knowledge? What reassurances do I have? How do I know I’ll be safe with you three?”
He thought about it for a second. “We’re dragons. You couldn’t pay for better security.”
She let out a long exhale. “I don’t know how to exactly say this without pissing you off, but I think Mr. Muscles over there wouldn’t mind if I died on that island.”
Something flashed behind Sebastian’s eyes, but before Ellie could figure o
ut if it was anger, disappointment, or something else entirely, it was gone. He met her gaze firmly, his golden eyes taking away her ability to think rationally but giving her the ability to see his genuine thoughts beneath.
“Your safety will be one of my personal priorities. I can’t guarantee your safety, but if you die, it’s because something already killed me.”
Ellie wasn’t great at making these sorts of decisions. She’d gone back and forth half a million times when trying to decide what color backsplash to use. This kind of thing was like a nightmare, but to her surprise, she knew what she wanted. Her adventurer’s spirit ordered her to take the risk. It wasn’t every day that something like this popped up, and even if she didn’t know exactly what she might be getting into, she’d hate herself for not giving it a shot. Even if she got put away for a few years and returned to her normal life, she would always wonder what she might have gotten to experience. A once in a lifetime opportunity was staring her in the face, and Sebastian was right. If she had to go onto a deserted island with no concept of what else might be there, bringing along three alpha predators to keep her safe was the way to do it. She wanted more time to think about it, so she asked the last question she wanted to know.
“How long of a trip is this going to be? Do we have any supplies?”
“A few days,” came his no-nonsense answer. “I want to see what lives there, if anything worth getting is still there, and find out if there’s a safer way to get in.”
“Okay.” Ellie bit her lip. “So, a brief camping trip of death, translate some things, do some investigation, and then I return, and I’m free to go? No loose strings? No problems? No hard feelings?”
