Branded (3 page)

“There's a bridge here,” Snakes said. Asher’s eyes snapped open at the words, only to narrow as they found the mentioned bridge. It consisted of two large dead trees lying across the gap side by side.
No fucking way.

“I'm not crossing that,” he stated out loud.

“What,” Stoner said, grinning at him. He jumped up on one of the trees and put his hands on his hips. In Asher's imagination, he was already lying at the bottom of the cliff, guts spilling everywhere. “You scared?”

“Fuck you,” Asher said. There was nothing wrong with not wanting to end your life as a smashed open corpse.

“Maybe it’s time to spread your wings.” Stoner took a few steps, walking backwards over the makeshift bridge, and Asher almost willed him to stumble.

“You see any fucking wings on me?” Asher threw his hands up. What was wrong with these people? “I'm staying.” He planted his feet firmly on the ground, arms crossed in front of his chest. There was no reason to go with these people. He would find another way home, one that didn't involve cliffs and bridges.

“C'mon, we don’t have time to dawdle.” Snakes reached out to him. Not wanting to be touched, Asher slapped her hand away. Something stung his wrist in midair. The burn spread up his arm faster than a wildfire.

“You bit me!” Asher jumped back. “You fucking bit me!” The same snake that had shown him its tongue before hissed at him. Its eyes twinkled even as Snakes herself shot him a horrified look.

“Don't panic!” she said, waving her arms. Asher's vision blurred, and black dots crept in from the sides.

“Shit!” Unable to stop himself, he fell over backwards and braced himself for a harsh meet-up with the ground. It never came. Instead, he fell against someone's chest. It was a man's chest. Blind Guy's.
Stronger than he looks
, Asher thought before unconsciousness claimed him.

***

A dark sky greeted him when he woke again. It was still warm, though. He blinked and a flickering light caught his eyes. He was lying close to a campfire. Wait. Campfire? Where the hell was he? He sat up as memories rushed back to him. He was dreaming. No. If this was a dream, he would have woken up by now.

“Morning,” someone said.

Asher glanced to his side and found Blind Guy sitting a few feet away from him. As he looked farther he spotted the other two freaks asleep behind him. Around them, tall earthen walls blocked them from the outside world as if the ground itself had risen up to protect them.

“What happened?” Asher said, instead of returning the greeting.

“We crossed the bridge without any of us dying and set up camp here for the night. I made a fire and Jonas built those walls. We switched for guard duty.”

“How did he… No, forget it.” Asher could imagine the answer: Magic. He almost snorted at the thought. Magic was not something he'd ever believed or even been remotely interested in, but this world seemed to run on it.

“Where are we?” he asked instead. “This whole freakish place, I mean. How the hell did I end up here?”

“This place is called Altasia,” Blind Guy said. “And I don’t know, sorry. I was just taking a walk one day and the next moment, I’m here.”

“How long have you been here?”

“About a week, maybe a little longer. It’s hard to tell.”

“And you haven’t found a way back, yet.”

“No.” Blind Guy pressed his lips together as if Asher was blaming him for failing to do so. Asher wasn’t interested in playing the guilt-game, though. Shifting blame around never got you anywhere.

“This is too fucking weird,” he said, looking up at the sky. The sun was beginning to rise in the distance, spilling purple light over the horizon.

“You hungry?”

Asher glanced back at Blind Guy. “What can you offer?”

“There's still a bit of dried meat left…” Blind Guy said. Asher watched him rummage through his bag. His hair fell over his face and the soft light cast shadows on him that made him look like someone out of a painting. Everything looked nicer illuminated by flames, but Blind Guy seemed designed for viewing in that light. As if the fire didn't only burn next to him, but inside of him too. For an instance, Asher was insanely jealous—and slightly turned on. Then Blind Guy frowned, spoke, and the moment passed. “You're gonna take it now?”

Take what? Oh, the food. Asher hadn't noticed the outstretched hand. He grabbed the strips of meat from Blind Guy and bit into one. Salty. “Tastes like shit.”

As he chewed, he kept looking at the fire and the other man. The rising sun made Asher wonder how long he'd been out for. About to ask, his mouth stuck half-opened when Blind Guy reached directly into the fire to take a flame out of it as if it was a regular object. He threw it back and forth between his hands, like a juggler playing with a ball.

“Howdoyoudothat,” Asher said, words leaving him in one rush as his brain caught up with him.

“Excuse me?” The flame vanished. Asher felt his jaw drop.

“Don't do that!”

Blind Guy raised his eyebrows at him.

“Don't make it disappear!”

Blind Guy laughed. “Oh right,” he said. “Pyro.” He shook his head and stood, stretching. His shirt went up to reveal a bit of tanned skin and Asher wondered what the rest of him looked like unclothed—and whether it was up for the taking. Well, only one way to find out.

“Are you into guys?”

Blind Guy froze. He looked like he didn't know how to respond. Had the question not been simple enough? “I'm not into assholes,” he said eventually.

Asher tilted his head. “Not into actual assholes or people assholes?”

“Feel free to make your own interpretation,” Blind Guy said. “You’re out either way.” He turned to walk and left the walls that surrounded them through a small opening to their right.

Asher rolled his eyes at him as he stood up and followed. In bed, what did it matter whether he was nice or not?

“How did you find that opening so easily?” he asked Blind Guy. The man was moving a little too smoothly for someone who really couldn’t see.

“Heat signatures,” Blind Guy said.

“For real? But you still run into trees.”

“This is new to me, okay?”

Before Asher could open his mouth again, something small and bright soared through the air over their heads and stopped to float beside Blind Guy. The little bitch was back, wherever she had gone before. And it looked like she was still not speaking to Asher. Someone else with an aversion to assholes. Great.

“She says we should get going soon,” Blind Guy related. “The lizards found a way into the forest.”

“Where exactly are we going again?”

“Home, I hope. Eventually. But it looks like we'll have to get to the other side of the continent. She says there's someone there who'll help us.”

“And you think that'll work.”

“Do you have a better idea?”

Asher kept quiet, not having anything to say. For a moment all that could be heard was the crackling of the fire.

“You should try flying.”

“I still don't have any damn wings.” Never mind that flying was about the last thing he wanted to do, second only to falling.

“I told you, you have to transform.”

“And I still have no idea what the hell you're talking about.”

Blind Guy took a deep impatient breath. Beckoning Asher to follow, he walked out onto a clearing. “Come here and close your eyes,” he said.

Frowning, Asher did as he was told, even when it made him feel ridiculous.

“Breathe in. Hold your breath.”

Asher inhaled and stopped and glared at Blind Guy. What was this supposed to accomplish?

“Feel that?”

Feel what? He was about to ask when he did feel something. It was subtle, but with every beat of his heart, small ripples of an undefinable energy ran under his skin, through his body.

“What is that?”

“Magic.”

“For real?”

“Try it.”

“How—” Asher started, but stopped himself. The simple act of thinking was enough to cause a reaction in his magic level. The energy he’d felt before hadn't been powerful, but as he tried to draw on it, the feeling overwhelmed him. He'd only touched the tip of the iceberg. Eager to discover all of it, he delved deeper into the stream of power until it enveloped his body in a warm glow. He lost his sense of being in the sensation. A rush of energy flooded his consciousness like a primal force, threatened to sweep him away. A roar sounded through his ears. It wasn't until he closed his mouth that he realized it had been him.

He blinked as the world came back into focus. The ground seemed a good bit farther away than it had been. ”Whoa,” was all he could think to say. He wasn't himself anymore; he’d become a beast. Claws had replaced his hands, red scales covered his reptile-like body and—he did have wings. Spreading them was not a problem. He could move them like any other part of his body. He even had the feeling that he knew how to fly, but the ground was far enough away already. No reason to overdo it.

“Alright, I can transform.” His voice sounded strangely deeper than he was used to. “But you can forget about flying.”

“Scared?”

“Just not fucking insane.”

Blind Guy sighed. “Well, at least you make a good alarm clock.”

Now what was that supposed to mean? Asher wondered about it until he looked past Blind Guy to see the other two freaks come wandering up to them.

“Is that Asher?” Stoner said, rubbing sleep out of his eyes.

Asher turned away from them and faced the trees to their left. It was time to try something. For a short while as a child when he'd believed in this sort of shit, he'd thought dragons were awesome—for one reason only. He drew a deep breath into his lungs. His heart stopped beating in his chest as he blew a storm of fire out of his mouth. The feeling was pure exhilaration.

Flames shot toward the trees, burning through the air, closed in on their goal—and with a puff, they vanished. Asher roared. Stomping his claws on the ground, he whirled around. “What the fuck?” He stared at Blind Guy. It must have been him!

“Sorry,” Blind Guy said. “No senseless acts of arson while I'm around.”

“Go to hell.”

“Those aren’t simply trees, remember?”

The memory of the moving branches flashed through Asher’s mind. Okay, maybe it wasn’t so bad that he’d been stopped. He closed his eyes and made himself shift back. The dragon form was drawing on his energy, and there was no sense in being an overgrown reptile when he couldn’t set stuff on fire. The transformation made him feel light headed for a moment. Patting himself down he realized that his pants were back. Turned out magic could be pretty handy.

Snakes frowned at him. “Can you fly?”

“What’s with you people and your obsession with flying?”

“Hello?” she retorted. “Has it slipped your tiny mind that there’s evil magic creatures chasing us?”

“That’s not my fault.”

“No.” She put her hands on her hips. “But it will be when they get us because you refused to spread your wings.”

Asher stared at her open-mouthed. “Fine then,” he said eventually. “It’s my fault. Whatever. You know what? I don’t even care.”

“Of course you don’t.”

“Let’s just get going,” Blind Guy cut in before Asher could say any more. “Standing around and arguing isn’t going to get us anywhere.”

Chapter 3 - Off the Cliff

They never made it out of the forest before setting up camp for that night. Asher studied his nails as Snakes and Stoner tried their luck fishing at a small lake.

“C’mon, we’ll make ourselves useful,” Blind Guy said. It took Asher a second to realize Blind Guy was talking to him. He glanced up.

“If you just want to kill time I can think of something to do.” At least, since Blind Guy was blind, Asher didn’t even have to work at a suggestive smile.

“We’ll collect firewood.” Blind Guy acted as if Asher never said anything.

Asher leaned back against a tree, inspecting a crack in his clear nail polish. “You’re not the boss of me.”

“If I were I’d fire you.”

“You can fire me anytime.”

Blind Guy was quiet for a moment. “If you help, I’ll let you light the campfire,” he said then.

Asher looked up at that. Now they were talking. Asher hadn’t been able to ignite anything all day, what with Blind Guy and his trees-are-our-friends attitude. Combined with the nicotine withdrawal, it was making him antsy.

“Alright,” he said. “Let’s go.” The faster they got the wood, the sooner he’d get his fire. He stalked off into the trees and a colorful bird fluttered away overhead. Then he heard Blind Guy fall into step behind him.

“Why isn’t the little bitch helping?”Asher asked.

“She’s scouting the area.”

Hah!
Blind Guy had forgotten to frown at Asher’s language. Asher snipped a bug off a fallen branch on the ground and picked it up. “You’re blind, how will you help?”