Shadowed Threads (8 page)

The dragon had his back to me and again, I ran for him, jumping over his lashing tail and scrambling up onto his back. Uncoiling my whip, I snapped it loose. “Hold off, Pam!”

The shower of boulders on his head eased as I fought my way up to the juncture of his shoulders and wings. He turned his head, a shocked look rippling over his face, and then his eyes narrowed. I cracked the whip forward, the length of it wrapping around his neck, the handle giving me something to hang onto.

I smiled at him. “Come on now, let’s see what you’ve got, you big mother fucker.”

He snarled, a hiss of blood and spit splattering me. I didn’t even wipe it off, not caring anymore what happened as long as the others were safe. His blood was hot and stung the cuts in my face, making me grit my teeth against the sharp pain.

With a powerful launch he shot himself into the air. I gripped the handle of my whip as the dragon rolled in the air and found myself hanging from his back, the ground hundreds of feet below us already. Eve was fast, agile and talented in the air, could have tossed me a hundred times with ease.

She had nothing on this big boy.

He flipped back around, slamming my body into his back. As much as I wanted to ram my sword through his spine and end this, part of me held back. One, we were so far up, the fall would kill me. Two, I just couldn’t explain it, maybe it was some ridiculous Tracker trait or maybe it was just me, but I just couldn’t do it. Not yet.

Chapter 11

F
ighting the dragon
really wasn’t as scary as my brain was telling me it should be. And believe me, my brain was screaming at me that this thing below me was a big fucking monster and I should end it as fast as possible.

But, if I was being honest with myself, as he spun and bucked in the air, scales sparkling when random beams of sunlight hit him, I was kinda having fun.

Fun. Fighting with a dragon shouldn’t be fun. What the fuck was wrong with me?

On a brief respite between rolls, I slid my sword back into my sheath. “This isn’t going to end well for either of us. I don’t suppose you want to call a truce?”

Fuck off, Tracker.

I leaned my head back and laughed into the wind. While the other dragon had been polite, reserved and exactly as I would have thought a dragon would sound and feel inside my head, this one sounded a bit more—gods help us—like me.

He rolled again and I did everything I could to hang on, keeping my legs tucked in between his shoulder blades and wings. Power, there was so much power in him, and I could do nothing but hang on for the ride … .

Hours, maybe minutes, passed—I don’t know. We flew through winds and lightning and thunder, clouds, and even hail. He took me so high black dots danced in my vision and my breath came in gasps, then he dropped to the earth skimming the edges of a lake at the last instant, rolling so that I was plunged into the water. But I hung on, my fingers wrapped around the handle of my whip. I refused to let him win this. But how the fuck I managed to stay on, I couldn’t tell you.

Finally, after what felt like days, he flew back to the mock canyon, landing in a stumbling heap. I was still on his back and I wasn’t sure I wanted to get off. At least from my perch I was relatively safe.

“You ready to call a truce?” I fought to keep my voice steady, to keep my body from shaking with exhaustion. Every muscle I had was starting to cramp from clinging to him.

Get off my back.

“Do you mean that literally or more in a figurative way?”

His head spun around so he could stare at me, mouth dropping open, and I thought this was it, he was going to roast me.

Instead he laughed, a deep boom of a laugh that rolled out of him in a wave of sound.

Get off my back, you crazy ass Tracker. Now.

“You don’t seem to get it, I’m pretty comfy up here. I kinda like it.” I smiled at him, gave him a wink. Shouldn’t I be stabbing his eyes out with my sword? Hell, he was close enough that I could do it.

With a groan, he sunk to the ground.

The other dragon, the one with the commanding, grown up voice, spoke to us.

I believe you two are well matched. Otherwise, one of you would have made the killing blow.

I blinked and tightened my grip on the handle of the whip. “If I could have killed him, I would have.”

The dragon gave his head a sharp jerk up and down, agreeing with me, apparently.
Same here. I’m hungry and the Tracker would make a great appetizer. If I could have killed her, I would have.

The dragons sitting around us chuckled, laughing and exchanging looks I didn’t like. The kind of condescending looks of a parent seeing something the children couldn’t. Suddenly I wanted to be off his back. I untangled the whip from around his neck and slid off, stumbling on my numbed and cramping legs.

His tail whipped around, propping me up on one side, helping me gain my balance. What the hell?

I shook my head and looked up at him. His eyes widened and he snatched his tail away from me as if it burned him. Maybe it did. All I could see was that if I wasn’t careful, I was going to add to my circus act.

“Oh, shit. I can’t take on any more juveniles!” Jack was going to kill me.

I am NOT a juvenile.
His lips curled back over his teeth.

Blaz! You will not disgrace us.

The dragon, Blaz, hunched his shoulders and let out a suspicious hissing sound, not unlike a kid muttering under his breath.

Blaz turned his eyes at me and glared.
I’m not going to protect you.

“Who the hell asked you too?” I snapped, limping toward the last place I’d seen Pamela. Somewhere in the fight, I’d gotten my right leg thumped hard and already the muscles of that thigh were tightening up, banding into a Charlie horse that was going to a bitch to deal with.

ENOUGH!

The word was followed by a roar that made Blaz’s bellows earlier seem small in comparison. I fell to my knees, clapped my hands over my ears, and then something hard and warm wrapped around me, sheltering me from the wrath of the older dragon.

I glanced up to see Blaz over top of me, facing the other dragons, his teeth bared and his tail curled around me.

Piss off, old man, I will deal with this.
Blaz’s voice was distinct, deeper and more gravelly than the other dragon’s.

She carries the blood of the lost, she spilled your blood and you spilled hers, both mingled. The binding is complete. You are hers until the final storm comes. Do not forget this, Blaz. Do not disgrace our kind with your reluctance to be what you are.
With those words, the other dragons lifted off their perches in unison, into the sky, with a swirl of sparkling colors and wings, disappearing within seconds as if they had never been there.

I put a hand on Blaz’s tail, feeling something shift between us, and he let out a long sigh, rolling onto his back away from me.

Go to your friends and do not come back here. Ever. Or I will eat you.

That was clear enough for me.

“Nice meeting you too, Blaz.” I gathered up my weapons and ran to the front entrance of the mock canyon. There, peeking through the other side was Alex, his golden eyes taking up his entire face.

“Rylee hurt?”

“No, I’m okay. Where are Eve and Pamela?” Alex led me through the strewn boulders to see that the two girls were crouched in the ‘v’ of a boulder and the side of the mountain. Eve’s eyes were pain filled, but cognizant.

“How bad is it?” I knelt down beside her and moved her feathers so I could see the puncture wounds in her sides.

“I’ll live, the wounds will heal quickly, but I don’t know about my wings. I’ve never had broken wings before so I don’t know for sure.”

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. “The Beast can’t be that far behind with this delay; we have to find you a place to stay and either Alex or Pamela is going to have to stay with you.”

Pamela swallowed hard, her blue eyes as serious as I’d ever seen them. “Alex isn’t going to be able to help her much. And I think my arm is broken. I can stay with her.”

Already she was more grown up than Milly, a better person than Milly. I put a hand on her shoulder and gave her a smile, then eyed up her left arm. Broken for sure. Shit, this was bad. “Let’s go. Can you lift her again?”

With Pamela holding Eve up in a spell, we moved her down the edge of the mountain. We walked for close to an hour, moving slow both so Pamela could maneuver Eve, and so I could help Pamela manage the downed logs and other obstacles. This far south, it was a lot warmer than where we’d come from, and it didn’t take long to work up a sweat in my lined leather pants. Suddenly they weren’t feeling like such a good idea as I slowly broiled in my own sweat.

We found a small grove of trees where, thank the gods, there was a run-down shack that would provide some cover for Eve and Pamela.

I slipped out of the trench coat and laid it over a low hanging tree branch, then turned to Pamela. “Let’s get you out of that coat and take a look at your arm.”

I helped her out of the short leather coat, working it carefully down over her arm. Pamela’s face paled even more, and she swayed on her feet. I helped her sit down and then ran my fingers lightly over her arm. Broken, but clean. She sucked in a sharp breath as I prodded it.

“I feel like you’re always leaving me behind,” she said softly as I helped her out of her long-sleeved shirt.

With a flick of my knife, I sliced her shirt and twisted it into a sling, tying it around her neck in a loop we carefully settled her arm into.

“It won’t always be like this. There are going to be days when we go on a salvage that you’ll wish you were back here with Eve, hanging out in a piss poor shack.” I grabbed my short leather jacket and zipped it up, then slid the long trench coat over Pamela’s shoulders.

Eve bobbed her head in agreement with me. “Rylee is right. My mentor, Eagle, he told me much the same. We are young yet, we will not always be in the midst of the battles. Not until we are ready. If we try too soon, we put not only ourselves in danger, but those that are there to teach and protect us.”

Damn, and why again had I brought the whole crew with me? Gut feeling … right. Slowly, I was learning that sometimes I had to just run with things. Even when I turned out to be wrong. Then again, Pamela had saved my ass with Blaz. Or maybe I just needed to meet him? Maybe our paths wouldn’t have crossed if we hadn’t gone back for Pamela and Alex? In my world, there was little in the way of coincidences. For some reason this was all happening as it was. I just had to figure out why.

“Eve, what was that all about, with the dragons? Do you know?” She’d lived in Europe in her early years and had more knowledge about the creatures specific to the area than I did.

Her beak stuttered with several sharp clacks before she answered me. “My mother told me that the dragons were too tied in their prophecies. That instead of living each day, they were always looking to the future.”

“And the blood mingling? How problematic is this going to be?”

She settled onto the ground just inside the shack. “According to what my mother told me, I would think not that big of a deal. They see signs and prophecies in the smallest details. In things that don’t really matter.” Eve attempted a shrug, then winced as her wings shifted.

I pushed all that away, had to. Whatever ‘mingling’ of blood Blaz and I had, it was clear he wanted no part of it, or me. Which was just fine. And if Eve was right, it probably meant nothing anyway.

Pamela moved to my side, her eyes serious. Crap, she wasn’t going to let this go.

“Alex gets to go with you,” Pamela said.

“You volunteered to stay, remember? And Alex isn’t a child,” I said, adjusting my weapon straps. “He might act like one, but he isn’t. Whatever his life was before, he was a grown up when he was turned into a werewolf.”

Alex nodded his head along with my words. “Alex grown up.”

I lifted my hands in surrender. “See?”

Pamela gave me a smile, a small one, but a smile nonetheless. “So as I get older—”

“I’ll take you with me until you beg me not too. You take care of Eve; that is just as important as me and Alex going after O’Shea. We’re a family; we take care of each other. No matter what kind of shit is thrown at us.”

Her grin grew and she carefully put her good arm around me. I hugged her back. Alex hugged our legs and Eve reached out a talon, which I took in my hand. Though I’d said the words on a whim, they were no less true.

We were a family, messed up, supernatural, getting chased and hurt, but a family no matter what.

Fuck, that was sappy.

“Alex, let’s go.” I untangled myself from Pamela’s arms, pushing her gently toward Eve.

We left them behind without a backward glance. Worst case scenario, they would have to wait for Eve to heal up and then they could fly to Jack. He would help them.

We, on the other hand, were most definitely on our own. I picked up a jog, and Alex kept pace with me easily, sometimes stopping to bite at a bush or a wayward stick. He was, as always, oblivious to the danger we faced, to what was coming behind us. That was, as always, a part of his charm.

For two hours we ran, not full tilt, but close to it.

Just before noon, we stopped on the outskirts of a town, or more accurately, a big city.

From the signs, we were still in France.

From the sounds of the ocean, and the heat that was making me sweat like a pig in my lined pants, Blaz had brought us all the way to the southern region. Shit, this was not going to help when O’Shea was in the north east. I Tracked him to be sure and got nothing back, not even a fuzzy signal.

Jack was right, we were running out of time.

“Alex, we’ve got to get a car,” I glanced down at him, and he rolled his eyes up to mine.

“Yupsies. Feets are pooped.” He waved a paw as if cooling it off.

It didn’t take me long to find a car I wanted to drive. The black 911 Porsche was pristine, just sitting there waiting to be snatched off the side road it was parked on. Fast, sleek, it would have us moving at a clip that would no doubt have our time cut in half. I slid my hand along the body of the car.

“Too flashy,” I muttered, hating that I was right. A car like that would get noticed and the last thing I needed was the ‘politzia’ looking for a missing Porsche.

Three blocks over, I found the car that would do the job, though I cringed at the sight of it. An older mini, painted white by hand, with perfect rust holes added for depth to the areas where the white paint hadn’t peeled away to show the original red color.