The Island Of Dragons: A Paranormal Shifter Romance (16 page)

Warren, who’d been sitting a little hunched over on the edge of the loveseat, as if just waiting to spring up to do some castle flattening, now finally sat back, seeming to relax a little. “Please. Go ahead.”

Also seeming to relax a little, Dalton took a deep breath before speaking. “Ellie’s and my father, who I always called Harold, was one of the men who created this island. I’m sure you probably remember him from those early days, though I know that back then, none of the scientists and computer guys went by their real names... something funny about they were all supposed to keep their real identities secret, even from each other for security purposes or something. That whole thing didn’t last long, from what I heard, but you probably knew my father Harold as Robert O’Dowd, I think was the phony name he went by, but, anyway. The story of why the island is now set to self-destruct really begins back in the States, in the early eighties.”

Outside, castle repairs were still going on, and a series of loud booms from somewhere nearby interrupted Dalton, and he waited for the noise to die down before continuing, ever so lightly drumming his fingers on the arms of his plush chair while he did so. He drummed his fingers pointer to pinkie, then pinkie to pointer, then back the other way, over and over, the movement so slight it was almost imperceptible. I realized in amazement that my father had used to do this exact same thing. When he began speaking again, Dalton continued the movement of his fingers, not seeming to even be aware of the action.

“So, back in the early eighties, Harold was a computer scientist with a background in quantum physics. The government enlisted him to help create shifters to use as weapons in the cold war. At first, he thought attempting to make shifters would be a colossal failure and didn’t want to try it, but he was as greedy as he was talented, and they offered him fifty million dollars, so he ultimately said yes. However, once he’d helped to create this island, and once you shifters were created, Chief Knight, a problem developed.

“You shifters all seemed to retain your humanity and personalities, meaning, you all didn’t exactly turn out to be the ice-cold, zombie-like fighting machines that the government wanted. So, once Harold couldn’t fix this, and being that he’d been the primary creator of you shifters, the government decided to abandon all of you and the island without even telling any of you why. They told Harold they were going to refuse to pay him since he didn’t create the fighters that he’d said he would.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I gave Warren a sidelong glance to see if he was as intrigued as I was and found him listening to Dalton with rapt attention.

“So, wanting to destroy his creation so that the government could never change their minds and use the shifters without paying him, Harold set the island to eventually self-destruct by folding in on itself basically via the lake, thereby closing the wormhole that this island and the surrounding ocean exists in. However, he could only do this through a blend of occult magic and physics... stuff so complicated even I don’t even understand it all... and before he left the island, he realized there was a problem.”

Feeling like a little kid around a campfire, I sat back against the loveseat, realizing that I’d scooted to the edge of it. “What was the problem?”

“Well, our father did some experiments and realized that the lake was so toxic with black magic that it would create supernatural creatures if anyone went in the water, whether they were shifter or human, and this is what eventually happened when some folks from the island strayed too far and got pulled into the lake. They became what I gather everyone on the island calls the Gray Forms, or
called
the Gray Forms,
before they were destroyed, which was unfortunate.”

Now beyond intrigued, I spoke up again. “Why? Why was it bad they were destroyed?”

“Well, the Forms were actually ‘protectors’ of the island, bizarre as that sounds. See, even though Harold was able to create the lake to be a vortex into which the whole island would eventually fold in on itself, after what he’d done using black magic and very complicated physics to create the lake, he couldn’t get some of the ‘glitches’ out, the main one being that the supernatural creatures would ‘plug’ the lake in order to stop the folding-in on itself of the island. And if these supernatural creatures were ever destroyed and none replaced them, the toxicity of the lake would even turn stone to a supernatural creature, which is what happened with the golem.

“Unfortunately, Chief Knight, you and your men trying to fill in the lake with rocks only made the golem bigger in the end. Which...” Dalton cast his gaze to the side for second, face reddening slightly. “Which I kind of suspected was going to happen. My examination of many rocks and shells on the island pretty much told me it would. With each day that went past, and with each additional rock and boulder you and your men put into the lake, I could see subtle changes happening to the various items I was studying... things like a very slight change in the striations bisecting a particular cluster of sedimentary rocks. Even the shells got into it a little with different little color changes I was noticing day-to-day.”

I had to know why, and so I asked. “And I really mean
how
. How did the little changes in the rocks and shells make you suspect that all the rock-piling at the lake was actually making a golem, and a bigger one than he might have been otherwise?”

“Well, it’s hard to explain, but short answer, the bigger and stronger the golem got, the more his existence began to ‘pull’ on inanimate, semi-organic matter on the island. Because the golem was a supernaturally-created creature, it was almost as if he had the ability to pull other matter toward him, to continue to make him bigger, as our father expected he might do.

“It was all in his notebooks... these hundred-some-odd spiral-bound books with every page just filled even beyond the margins with all sorts of formulas, plans, and calculations... some of them having to do with shifters and the island itself, and some of them about the lake specifically. A lot of it was almost impossibly complicated quantum physics, but some of it was just black magic ramblings. Even with our father’s help, it took me a few years before I was even able to make a small amount of sense with the equations.”

Dalton fell silent, seeming to pause for a bit of breath. A warm breeze blew in through the open windows, and while it caressed my face, I sat thinking, just trying to digest it all. Stunned as I was by everything Dalton had said, I had to admit that a lot of things having to do with my father made perfect sense now; things such as his secretiveness about his job, his coldness, and his constant distance, both emotional and geographical.

Now I knew that my father had probably just been preoccupied with occult magic and quantum physics. He’d probably been often busy pondering whether the supernatural island he’d set to self-destruct actually eventually would. He’d also probably been preoccupied with his secret son and the woman he’d had an affair and a child with. All topics of thought one probably wouldn’t be inclined to share with a little girl.

After a long moment or two of silence in the sun-filled, stone-walled living room, Warren suddenly spoke to Dalton in such a menacing, hostile tone that it startled me. “So, if I’ve understood you correctly, Dalton, you’re saying that you knew—
full well
—that we were just making the golem bigger, and more powerful, and more destructive, and you didn’t even say anything. Is this true?”

Now that Warren had made the point, I suddenly felt a little hostile toward Dalton, too, actually, more than a little. Joanna, Davy, and I all could have drowned because of the golem, and countless others in the village could have been hurt. A few shifters who’d fought the golem alongside Warren
had
been hurt.

Staring Dalton down, I folded my arms across my chest. “I’d like to know as well. Is what Warren said true?”

Wincing, Dalton had turned red when Warren had spoken, and now he turned an even deeper shade of scarlet. With the slightest of funny little twinges in my heart, I realized that uncontrollable blushing was a sibling thing from our father. I often had difficulty stopping my face from seemingly bursting into flames at different times, too. And as mad as I was at Dalton, this made me feel just the tiniest smidgen sympathetic toward him just then. It made me feel just the tiniest bit of some sort of a sibling bond for some reason. I
was
his big sister, after all, and that fact made me think, or at least
want
to think, that he had to have some good explanation as to why he hadn’t alerted Warren that piling rocks in the lake was only leading toward a more powerful golem.

But even if he did have some good explanation, it didn’t seem like Warren was going to hear it. Before Dalton could respond to either of us, Warren stood, fists balled and eyes like slits. Without lifting his gaze from Dalton, who was now sitting wide-eyed, clutching the arms of his chair so hard his knuckles were white, Warren spoke to me in a low voice with just a hint of a tremor in it, like maybe a tremor of barely-controlled anger. Or rage.

“Please step out, Ellie, and wait for me outside.” With a vein in his forehead beginning to bulge, he paused, rolling up his shirtsleeves. “Dalton and I need to have a private talk.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

Without even thinking, I leaped between Warren and Dalton. “Warren, please! Don’t hurt him!”

“Ellie, I’ve asked you to step—”

“He’s my little brother!”

Warren spoke through gritted teeth, eyes still narrowed. “He’s a grown man, and one who put everyone in this community, yourself especially included, in serious danger.”

“Well, he made a mistake! He made a very serious mistake; I’ll admit it. But if we don’t listen to him, if we don’t even give him a chance to explain himself—”

“Ellie. I’m not going to ask you again. Please leave. Wait outside. Maybe a good ways away... out of hearing distance.”

“No! I’m not leaving so you can beat Dalton to a pulp!”

“Then I advise you duck and cover your ears, unless you want to hear this punk scream like a little girl.”

I glanced from Warren to Dalton, seeing that his formerly red face was now white as a sheet. He sat cowering in the big overstuffed chair, seeming like he was actually shrinking into it, becoming even smaller-framed than he already was. Warren, on the other hand, had only seemed to increase in size in his anger, his towering form now appearing to me as much taller than six-foot-three.

Becoming desperate, I gave him a little shove, my fingers connecting with the rock-hard wall of muscle that was his chest, though I didn’t even move him an inch. “I won’t let you do this. You’re scaring him, and—”

“If he’s a big enough boy to put
children
in danger, Ellie, then he’s a big enough boy to take an ass-kicking like a man. Now, for the final, final time. Step. Aside.”

Not knowing what else to do, or how else to cover Dalton with my body to keep Warren from attacking him, I hopped onto his lap and threw my arms around his neck. “How’s this for stepping aside? Now if you want to punch Dalton in the face, you’re going to have to punch me off him, too. And how would that make you feel? Would that make
you
feel like a man?”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, you know I could never harm a single hair—”

“Look what you’ve made me do, Warren. You’ve turned me into one of those women who go on those trashy talk shows on TV. Today’s episode... ‘Grown woman forced to sit on secret half-brother’s lap in order to stop rampaging boyfriend from kicking his ass.’ Look how trashy you’ve made us, Warren.”

I’d intended to try to insert a bit of humor into the situation in an attempt to get him to just relax a little, but it didn’t seem as if it had worked. The vein in his forehead was still pulsing, and his large hands were still curled into fists. If anything, the sight of me on another man’s lap, even my own half-brother’s lap, was seeming to only make him angrier. He was now breathing heavily, making the faintest of low growls on each exhale.

I knew I had to de-escalate the situation fast, or else I’d soon likely find myself being picked up, carried to the front door, and deposited outside. Then, Warren would unleash on Dalton, maybe even killing him. And I just could not let that happen.

Knowing any further attempt at humor wasn’t going to cut it, I changed tacks and got off Dalton’s lap and took Warren’s fists in my hands, still between him and Dalton. “Listen to me. You have to stop. Kicking Dalton’s ass won’t solve—”

“He put us all in danger. He put
you
in danger. You could have been hurt or killed, and just the thought of that—“

“But I
wasn’t
hurt or killed. I’m fine. Got over my fear of swimming in the ocean to boot.”

“But you shouldn’t have had to be put in a position to where you had to risk your own life—”

“I’m fine, though. I’m
fine
.”

“But—”

“Please just listen to me. I don’t like unnecessarily violent men, Warren. I don’t like men who swing first. And I know you’re really not one of those men. I know you’re the type of man who only fights to defend and protect, the type of man who doesn’t physically harm someone just for revenge. You even told me yourself that you wouldn’t have Dalton tortured to find out if he was a spy, even though some of your men wanted you to, because you’re just not that kind of a leader. Remember? That’s not the mindset of an unnecessarily violent man. That’s the mindset of the man I love and trust. That’s the mindset of the man I trust to take good care of me, and keep me safe, and maintain a civilized community where people don’t go kicking other people’s asses when they’re angry.”

Shifting his gaze from me to Dalton, then back to me, Warren made an almost imperceptible scoffing noise, and his eyes were still narrowed. However, they appeared to be un-narrowing just slightly. Heartened, I kept going, saying something that I couldn’t believe had only just occurred to me.

“And besides... if you kick Dalton’s ass and put him back in the hospital, he probably won’t be able to tell us any ideas about how we might be able to prevent the self-destruction of the island. And I, for one, definitely want to hear those ideas. I, for one, definitely don’t want to die. To be completely honest, I think I’d much rather like to continue living with you here on the island indefinitely. Indefinitely and alive. And if you feel the same way, which I have a hunch that you do, I think we should all sit back down and hear what Dalton has to say.”

That finally did it. And I knew that because Warren’s fists had finally uncurled in my hands. After one last glare at Dalton, he slowly began backing up to the loveseat, taking me with him. “I’d better
like
what he has to say.”

Once we were both seated again, Dalton surveyed us both with watery eyes, still white as a sheet. It looked like Warren had really scared the living hell out of him, which I was sorry about, though I did understand
why
Warren had been so angry. I was still a little angry about the golem thing myself, and I hoped Dalton would say something that would make it all make a little more sense. At the very least, I hoped he’d apologize and truly mean it, and in short order, he did.

“I’m so very sorry... to both of you. I’m so very sorry to everyone in this community.”

He still looked like he might actually cry. His eyes were still shiny and pink, and his expression was so clearly one of genuine remorse that it made my heart ache. This feeling intensified when he continued speaking in a voice that sounded unusually thick, as if he had a lump in his throat.

“At first when I arrived on the island, I was just here to do a mission for my father. It was his wish that the island be destroyed since he was never paid what was promised him for his work, and I thought he was in the right about that. For some reason, it made sense to me how he explained it at the time. He made it seem just and fair. So, being that he had me convinced, he made me promise that if he weren’t able to ensure that the island wormhole had closed during his lifetime, so that the government could never use ‘his’ shifters, I would find a way to come over here and see it done.

“Then, after he drowned, I decided that I’d do just that. I’d fulfill his greatest wish to honor him. I thought I’d come, ensure that things would be set in motion by encouraging that all lake creatures be destroyed and maybe even helping that along with science in some way, and then leave the island before the last lake creature was destroyed and the thirty-day countdown began. But then I learned that all the Forms had already been destroyed and you island folk had already begin filling in the lake crater with rocks, so I knew a supernatural rock creature would soon emerge. Then I figured, same plan, just a different creature. I’d just wait to make sure that it looked like the creature would be taken care of, and then I’d head back through one of the island portals, knowing that soon the creature would be destroyed, and then, unbeknownst to you all, the island would self-destruct in thirty days.”

More banging and hammering noises started up from the construction work being done outside, and Dalton waited a few seconds, appearing slightly more relaxed, though still a little pale and tense. He looked down at the bare stone floor, and when he lifted his gaze to Warren and me, his eyes appeared a little shiny with tears once again.

“Chief Knight, you were right about me when I first came here, obviously. I came here as a spy of sorts, but then I had a change of heart. I came in expecting that all you shifters would be sick of living on the island and warring among yourselves, as my father had implied that you might be. I came in expecting that my hastening the self-destruction of the island would be helping in a mass ‘mercy killing,’ as absolutely sick as that sounds to me now. I don’t have any excuse for thinking that, other than ever since my mother passed away, I’ve been terribly depressed, and I just don’t think I’ve been able to think clearly in some areas. I really expected to find you island folks fairly miserable after all this time, and maybe even wishing it would all just be over.

“But then I got to have a good look around the village, and I saw what kind of people you all are. I got to see that there are children here, which I wasn’t quite expecting, because my father hadn’t mentioned that little fact. I started feeling a bit conflicted about my plan, to put it very, very mildly. I started to think that whatever was between my father and the government, with the people who hired him not paying him, that was between him and them. I realized that killing all you shifters and destroying the island won’t fix anything; it won’t make it right that my father was cheated.”

Pausing for a deep breath, Dalton shifted his gaze from Warren to me. “Also, accidentally bringing you with me, Ellie, put some complication into my plans as well, obviously. At first, I thought I might be able to simply bring you back to the ‘real’ world with me through the portal, but then when you and Chief Knight began a relationship, I highly doubted you’d agree to come back with me.

“Ultimately, after a lot of thinking, I decided to come clean about everything, and I was about to, right before I fell and hit my head on the rock. I was going to tell you that by destroying the golem, a thirty-day countdown to the island ‘folding in on itself’ would begin, and I was going to have you tell Chief Knight this immediately. I was going to have you tell him to try only to continue to send the golem back to the lake and contain it,
not
destroy it. But then, when I came out of my amnesia after my coma, to my horror, I realized that it was too late. The golem had already been destroyed, meaning all possible portals and exits had closed for good, as designed by my father, and the countdown to the island’s destruction had already begun.”

With the wheels of my mind turning a mile a minute, I just immediately voiced exactly what I was thinking. “Well, we’ll just put more rocks in the lake. We’ll just allow the lake to create another golem. And then, we’ll just fight it off into perpetuity, and—”

“No.” With his expression one of sadness and resignation, Dalton shook his head. “No, that won’t work. Another golem is not what you need. If you want to go down a route of trying to save the island by allowing the lake to create more supernatural creatures to live in it, thereby ‘plugging’ it from folding in on itself and destroying the whole island in the process, another golem is definitely not the path I would take.

“I mean, think about it realistically, Ellie... a several thousand ton stone monster? I think Chief Knight and his men were at their very limit dealing with the golem at the time he was destroyed, and very understandably so. A thing like that can’t be easily kept at bay indefinitely. See, if it were me, and if I could choose, I’d try to create more of the Gray Form things. From what I’ve heard, it seems that aside from periodic flareups, they were more of a nuisance over the decades they existed than anything else.
Those
creatures seem like they’d be much easier to keep at bay indefinitely without ever destroying them, much easier than a stone golem.

“But even taking that easier route, you still have one major problem, considering that from what I’ve heard, all the murderous, enemy shifters that were here on the island are dead. One of my guards told me that all those wolves have been killed. And this is why I didn’t bring up the possibility of creating more Forms in the first place. This is why I don’t think there’s any hope to avoid the self-destruction of the island.”

I didn’t get it. Not at first, anyway. But I suddenly realized exactly what Dalton considered the one major problem with creating more Forms, and I realized this the exact moment that Warren spoke, beating me to it.

“Everyone left on the island is either a peaceful shifter, or a woman or a child. There’s no one evil-hearted left to fight off. There’s no one we might send into the lake with the slightest clean conscience.”

I glanced at him, swallowing, then looked at Dalton. Both of them appeared just as deflated, sick, and vaguely panic-stricken as I felt. The three of us sat without speaking for several long moments while the quiet sounds of very distant castle repairs continued to come in through the windows. It was the sound of children shrieking and laughing somewhere semi-nearby, maybe down on the beach that seemed to shake at least one of us out of our collective silent thought.

Warren looked in the direction of the front window that the happy sounds had seemed to come from, and then he turned his gaze to me, inexplicably and alarmingly just about as pale as Dalton had been earlier. “I’m so sorry, Ellie. I truly wish for your sake, you’d never fallen in love with me. Now you’re going to be so deeply hurt, and I can’t help it.”