Dragon Awakened (2 page)

The knife tingled again as she gripped it in her sweaty palm. She spun around, searching for the orb. Not seeing it, she ran into the kitchen. Black smoke billowed in the upper portion of the room. The orb hovered between her and the door. The damned thing was keeping her from escaping!

She crouched, but the smoke drew closer to the floor. Soon it would fill the entire room. She readied the knife, held at her thigh and out of sight. One shot. That's all she had because there was no going back in the den. Another coughing fit seized her, and she gripped the edge of the granite counter to keep her balance. All the while, she watched the orb come closer, taking advantage of her weakened condition.

Like a sentient thing. An evil thing.

Sucking in a breath, she snapped upright and threw the knife. Arcs of electricity danced along the blade as it plunged into the orb. While it tried to eject the knife, she grabbed a pot from the hanging rack. Like a baseball batter, she swung her whole body into throwing it. She knocked the orb against the wall and dashed back into the foyer.

Sirens pierced the air. Someone had called the fire department. Thank God.

Or maybe not. Would the orb hurt the firefighters?

She couldn't see it as she dared a glance back while racing for the door. It flew open, crashing against the wall. Two firemen stood in the opening, clad in protective gear.

“Anyone else in here?” one asked her.

“My uncle!” She pointed, and at that moment, the entire wall where he lay collapsed in flames.

The force of it jerked her backward. No, that was one of the firefighters grabbing her as they retreated onto the front porch. She searched for the orb even as they scrambled to their feet. One firefighter led her farther from the house. She was a limp doll, all of her attention on the hellish nightmare come to life. Flames shot out through gaps in the roof and every window. If she'd still been inside, she'd be dead.

One of the men ushered her to a fire truck. A second truck pulled up, spewing men and equipment. Medics treated the small burn on her forehead, while all she could do was cough and look for the orb.

Had it purposely destroyed evidence? Yes, she was sure of it.

Orb.
She'd heard that word before, in the stories Mon created for her when she was a child: a hidden world of magick, with angels and people who turned into dragons.
Magick
with a
k
at the end, spelled differently because it wasn't the illusion type. The sorcerer-like Deuces could make orbs, instilling an intention like spy or fry.

She started shaking with the thoughts and questions bombarding her as she watched streams of water trying to tame the flames. The sounds of pumps, men shouting instructions, and spraying water filled the air. The answers were in the envelope, and it was burning away.

The white dove's alarmed coos drew Garnet to the window of her turret bedroom. “What's the matter, Opal? 'Tis not like you to be so fitful.”

She heard the sound then, far from the usual noises of the immense forest that surrounded the castle. Her gaze riveted upon what looked like black oil running along the ground, pouring around the trees as it advanced. Opal flew off with a distressed warble. Garnet knew of the dark magick in the kingdom, the creatures and dangers hovering beyond the environs of her safe little world. Her parents called it the Hidden.

As it reached the edge of the forest, the “oil” materialized into soldiers, coming faster than any normal humans could. She heard a grunt below her. One of their guardsmen fought a man bearing black horns and armor that resembled the beetles in the garden. Those horns stretched out like snakes and plunged through the guardsman's chest. He dropped with a gasp.

She spun from the window, intending to run to her parents' chamber. Footsteps pounded down the stone floor outside her room, and the door was flung open. Her father was still in his dressing robe, terror on his face. “I have inadvertently brought great peril to our land. You must hide, must—”

A clawed hand reached out and pulled him out of sight. “Leave her be!” Her father's voice echoed in the great hallway.

She ran to the doorway to help him but came up short as the kind of man-beasts she'd just watched below rushed up to block her. They bore blood on their armor, and she knew, somehow, that it was her parents'. And, by the glitter in the men's eyes, she also knew her blood would soon join it.

A scraping sound from the window behind her drew the startled gazes of the men. She dared turn to see what frightened them, these evil murderers. The sight of the creature sliding soundlessly to the floor on its clawed feet stole her breath.

A black Dragon, the size of a large horse, opened its fierce mouth and bared its fangs. It blew out not fire, as she'd read in the legends, but a black smoke that shot toward her. She would die with dignity, she thought, raising her chin. She would not cower, would not—

The stream of smoke passed her, knocking the three men back into the hallway. Their guttural screams echoed in the stone hallway and then grew silent.

The Dragon had saved her from them. Before she could thank it, it rushed forward and grabbed her with its talons. They scratched but did not puncture her skin as the beast pulled her against the cool scales of its chest and flew out the window.

D
espite Ruby's exhaustion, grief and terror kept ripping her from sleep. Well before dawn, she was scouring the Internet for stories about ball lightning. Turned out, ball lightning was a mysterious phenomenon having various shapes and colors. Though it could melt metal, it passed through windows and even screens without causing a bit of damage. It rarely killed a human, and nowhere did she find an account of one chasing down or lancing someone.

And what about the knives that seemed to exude some kind of energy…and affected the orb?

She'd told the lieutenant about the freak bolt of lightning from the storm, omitting most of the bizarre stuff like how it tried to keep her from escaping. Not that he'd have believed her anyway. Mon had said something about magick and Rule Number One, whatever that was.

Had Mon been rambling from shock? He'd been lucid enough to mention the envelope he'd told her to retrieve should anything ever happen to him. She figured it involved inheritance issues or business matters. That he'd mentioned it as he suffered an agonizing death meant it was way more important. Was there a chance it survived? Doubtful, but she had to try to find it. She also needed to find the
Book of the Hidden
that Mon kept in his office. While she had treasured the stories like a chest of jewels as a child, she outgrew them in her early teens and could only remember the essence of them.

The thought of going back to his house chilled her. What if the orb was there or the person who'd sent it? Had it chased her because she was a witness? Probably. How much did this Sin Tag know about her?

She had searched for variations of that name, too, thinking it was a company or government agency. No luck. Maybe SINTAG was a top-secret project and the orb some superweapon. Yeah, that made sense, except…how would her uncle get involved with something like that?

She pulled on old jeans and a T-shirt, stopping short at her reflection in the mirror over her dresser. A lock of singed hair curled in tiny spirals over her bandage. She lopped off the burnt portion, which made one chunk of hair shorter than the rest, so she evened them out.

Ruby called Nevin on the way to let him know she wouldn't be in. She'd given him the freak bolt of lightning story last night.

How did her grandfather fit into this? She had vague memories of awkward conversations with him, a man obviously not used to talking with children. Then waking up at Brom's after the boating accident, a gash in her head and no memory of anything that had happened after she'd been knocked against the cabin's doorframe. Brom broke the bad news about her parents in a pained, soft voice.

She was quickly settled into Mon's life. Neither man would even let her go home to get her belongings. Mon told her that Brom sank into a deep depression and had to go to a mental facility, where he'd been all the years since. From Ruby's memories, it appeared that he'd pretty much gone bonkers.

Her truck rolled to a stop in front of Mon's house. Even in the soft morning light, the house was a horror scene. A firefighter patrolled the edge of the rubble. She didn't want to talk to anyone, but his presence was comforting. The orb had seemed shy, disappearing the moment the fire crew arrived. Still, she searched for it or anything weird.

Its absence wasn't enough to make her feel safe. But her Smith & Wesson was. She pulled it from beneath the seat of the truck. Forget vases and knives. If that thing reappeared, she was shooting it. She hid the gun in the waistband of her jeans beneath her shirt. After making sure the lump at her back wasn't noticeable, she grabbed a couple of garbage bags and approached the ruined house. The stench of smoke filled the air. The firefighter met her halfway, ready to turn her back.

“I'm Ruby Salazaar. The man who…lived here was my uncle.”

The firefighter's bloodshot blue eyes made her think he'd been there all night. “I remember you from yesterday. I'm sorry for your loss.”

At least he didn't treat her like a suspect. They had swabbed her hands, looking for accelerants or other signs of foul play. They had no idea just how foul it was.

She could only nod. “I need to see what I can salvage from his office.”

The man checked his watch. “We're not supposed to let anyone on the scene for twenty-four hours, but it's getting close. I'll have to accompany you though.”

“Great,” she answered too quickly.

She took in the house, her throat tightening and eyes stinging. She brushed away hot tears before they could slide down her cheeks.

“Be careful.”

She jerked around, thinking the firefighter had seen something.

He nodded to the floor. “You can't tell what's beneath the muck.”

“Oh. Yeah, thanks.”
Stop acting all scared and freaked out.

She stepped into the den. First order of business, find that envelope amid unidentifiable mounds and lumps. One was probably what was left of his massive desk. She searched for anything resembling the bottom drawer. All that remained of his files was a wet mess of ash. Paper disintegrated as she pulled things out.

The fireman hovered without intruding. He was probably making sure she wasn't digging up some incendiary device. How would a supersecret government thingamabob set a fire?

She turned to where the bookcase used to be and found burnt framed pictures of both her and the wife and daughter Mon lost years before she came into his life. Book spines, singed covers, ruined pages—she found nothing salvageable. Some of these books had been kept in a locked cabinet, but she'd glimpsed titles with words like
ancient spells
and
alchemy.

Beneath a slab of wood, she felt a thick leather spine and pulled out a chunk of blackened book. The wood had protected it somewhat, though half the cover and an inch of the outer edge of pages had burned away. She brushed away soot from the tooled lettering.

The Book of the Hid…

The Hidden.
She sank to her knees, pressed it to her chest, and whispered, “Thank you, God.” She flipped through the pages with trembling fingers, the charred edges crumbling at her touch. A cry escaped her throat. All of the sketches of dragons, Deuces, and angels…gone.

She grabbed another book from the muck that was in worse shape and opened it. The ink was still there. And another. Then she picked up
The Hidden
again. No more girl thrown into a dangerous world, no more Dragon Prince. She recalled her favorite picture of him as he danced with Garnet, spinning her round and round and into his dark spell. Black of hair and heart, he was darkly handsome, with chips of onyx for eyes and his mouth in a permanent snarl. It annoyed Mon that she'd been most fascinated by the villain.

To a girl who'd lost everything, a powerful prince who could whisk a girl out of danger seemed dashingly romantic. Then she'd grown up and discovered there were no princes out there, and men who snarled also bit.

Ruby placed the book in the garbage bag and gave up finding anything else. She headed to the unscathed separate garage and keyed in the code for the door. The front fender of Mon's old Rolls-Royce sparkled as sunlight hit it. She found nothing more than a few tools and some spare parts she'd procured in case he ever needed them.

The car's interior was as immaculate as its exterior. What she did find was his cell phone on the passenger floorboard. The main screen indicated a voice message. She scrolled down his sparse contacts list, finding one that made her heart jump: Cyntag Valeron. Yes, that could definitely be the name Mon had uttered. She went back to voice mail and called in, using the same code that opened the garage door to access his voice mail.
Bingo
.

Her heart seized as a velvety male voice said, “Cyntag, here. I see that you called but didn't leave a message. Have you finally come to your senses, you old bastard? Or is the Dragon beginning to show? I warned that you were playing with fire—literally. Call me. Don't make me track you down.”

Dragon? Was that some kind of code? She played it two more times but still couldn't make sense of it. She searched through the call log. First he'd taken a call from Brom. A short while later, Mon had called her and then Cyntag. Cyntag had called back shortly before she'd arrived. He'd tracked Mon down, all right.

If she couldn't go to the police, she had to take matters into her own hands. Someone had to pay for Mon's murder. She couldn't ask Brom, but she needed to find out who this Cyntag was.

She redialed the number. If he answered, she'd pretend to be someone investigating Mon's death.

A woman with a sultry radio voice answered. “Dragon Arts. How may I help you?”

“Dragon Arts?” That word again.

“We're a mixed martial arts studio, with classes in self-defense, cane, jujitsu, and tai chi. I can give you our website address if you want the whole skinny.”

“Sure.” The woman rattled it off; then Ruby asked, “Does a Cyntag Valeron work there?”

“You could say that, sugar. He owns the studio.”

Oh, great. He was probably in top shape and could whip someone's butt without breaking a sweat. But he had access to more powerful weapons than that, like supernatural orbs.

That's all right. I'm going to find out more about you, Cyntag Valeron. And somehow, some way, I'm going to make you pay.

Purcell stepped into the captain's office without knocking. The man bid the person on the phone goodbye and stood. The Dragon bristled at his territory being invaded without diplomacy, especially by a Deuce.

Purcell kept his singed palms out of sight. “Do you remember me? It's been fifteen years since the last time I was in your office.”

Recognition clicked in the embers of the man's eyes. “Yes, I believe you were identified as Mr. Smith. What can I do for you?” His words were clipped.

“You sent one of your best Vegas on that assignment for me.”

The man's expression shut down. “The yacht.”

“Are you sure he completed the assignment?”

“The man and woman were not a big deal, but executing a child troubled him. That assignment ruined him. He quit.”

“Quit? After how many years on the force?”

“He was a Ward.”

An orphan pledged to the Guard. “You're sure he killed her?” The child named Ruby.

“Yes.”

Purcell reached into his mind, just a little. Not enough for the man to notice. He seemed to be telling the truth. He was also angry over losing his Vega. The Guard tapped Crescent orphanages for their most promising Wards, mentoring them and luring them into service. Perhaps this man was the Vega's mentor. “What was his name? I want to talk to him.”

“We never give out the names of our employees.” The captain's mouth tightened with a hint of smugness. “I'm sure you understand, Mr.
Smith
.”

Purcell reached again, probing for the name now.
Sin.
Similar to the name he'd overheard in the conversation between Brom and Moncrief. He knew of a Cyntag, an old Dragon with a fearsome reputation who had served in the Guard many years ago. “Is his name Cyntag?”

People usually gave away their answer when you took them by surprise. The captain shuttered his expression but not fast enough. “As I said—”

Purcell raised his hand. “I understand. I had reason to suspect that perhaps he hadn't done his job. But you assure me he did, so I shall consider the matter closed.”

His hand was on the doorknob when the captain's voice stopped him. “Why was it necessary to kill a girl?”

“If we were trying to make it look like an accident, she would have been a witness to the fact that it wasn't.”

The captain gave a quick nod of understanding. “But why would it matter now? If she was alive, what could she do?”

“Loose ends, that's all.”

What
could
she do, a girl who had no powers? She could ruin everything, according to Brom's vision. Brom had referred to a granddaughter named Ruby who was destined to save thousands of Crescents. Purcell would not wait another eleven years to accomplish his goal.

His phone rang when he stepped out to the parking lot. His son, who was monitoring the scry orb he'd planted at Moncrief's property. “Yes?”

“The girl who showed up at Moncrief's returned, and you won't believe this—she
is
a Crescent. A Dragon. So she's probably Justin's daughter after all. I suspect Moncrief used a masking spell, which is why we couldn't tell yesterday.”

Purcell stroked his trimmed beard. “You are, as always, late with your revelations. I'm sure she's Ruby. You are continuing to monitor the scry orb?”

Darren's silence spoke the anger that the boy didn't have the guts to express. Finally he said, “Of course. She's driving to an area populated with Dragons. Wait. She's pausing in front of a martial arts studio, staring at it like she wants to incinerate the place. The sign says Dragon Arts.”

“Keep watching.” Purcell disconnected, then made a call that garnered the name of the proprietor. No surprise that it was Cyntag Valeron.