Authors: A McKay
Noises came out of a cluster of bushes that formed a leafy barricade around the meadow they were in. Slade’s body tensed instantly as he grabbed his machete, Gargan grabbed a blade that he retrieved from the guy Slade killed in front of him. They stood there watching for a while, and then Phoenix approached the bush hesitantly, as she pushed the bushes aside, two humans popped out causing Phoenix to jump back, and Gargan almost releasing the blade until he recognized the face. “On the edge I see.” Zach smiled at Slade and then eyed the weapons ready to slay him,
“Bastard,” he sighed with relief, “where were you, didn’t you see the village burned down.”
"Not really, we came out of somebody’s hut in the county and we could see the smoke. The farmer then went bolting to the village, so we decided to do some snooping." Something in Zach’s eyes said they did more than snooping. Slade studied him, the look on him, the easiness of how he stood. The bastard screwed her, Slade turned to her. Her eyes caught his stare, her face has no concern, her shirt seemed out of place but she didn’t move it. It was as if she wanted to advertise it. Her hand than came up to her belly and rubbed down her skin. Her eyes still stared at Slade, her hand slid under her dress daring him to follow.
His eyes stared back to Zach, the innocent girl wasn’t so innocent after all as he waited with the other for Zach to continue but he just went over and sat on the ground by the fire and started to warm up.
"Well?" Slade said hoping something was found.
"Oh, we found nothing." Gabrielle said now sitting on the other side of the fire. Slade eyed her as she adjusted her dress that was more of a mess than before.
For the first time Slade couldn’t think of what to say, his brother lost his marbles.
Slade started to feel the hunger of the two-day walk. The land was slowly changing from lush green landscape to dessert sand. Gargan stopped several times examining the earth as they walked. Slade could feel his blood stirring for Phoenix, but he knew that was a forbidden lust. Dragons fucked other dragons, humans fucked humans, and they never crossed.
“O, gods have mercy,” Zach said aloud when he saw several men hung from trees by the path. Slade didn’t know why, but it didn’t bug him as much as he would think looking at the blood dripping down spreading in a pool on the ground. All he saw was the difference of the land; it went from dessert to lush greenery. Something or someone was casting a spell and they needed to find out what was doing it.
“Gargan… is… this…what I think it is,” Phoenix asked in a slow stutter.
“These men were destroyed” Gabrielle stated the obvious.
“It almost looks like a warning,” he said remembering when he entered a vampire lair with Sanctum that dried skeletons hung in the doorway.
"Aye” Gargan said not giving any other explanation. He walked up to the bodies and started to grab them.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Slade’s blood boiled in rage for the disrespect to the dead. Some rage from the night before, when Gargan burned the village at what he thought was brother. Gargan was cutting the bodies out of the trees, but he didn’t let them touch the ground.
Gargan went to the next victim and did the same thing. “If it is done in the right hand, blood magic is very dangerous.” Phoenix said eyeing Gabrielle when she stated it. Something was between the two and Slade wasn’t about to get involved. “Gargan is only putting the bodies to rest.” With that, the bodies erupted in flames in his hands before he put them down on the ground.
Slade watched as everything he was taught about dragons was in question. They weren’t savage beast like the agency thought. A savage beast wouldn’t take a body down and properly dispose of it like he did. A savage would of ate it, let it be. No they wanted to protect other and to respect the lost of the warriors, even if they might have been agents. There was a code they followed that Slade didn’t know yet. He wanted to learn this code, a code that even outshined the code of chivalry.
Gargan changed his direction and started to walk towards the vast land of sand. Phoenix followed, Gabrielle followed her, Zach’s eyes enlarged, and suddenly he heaved over vomiting the fluids out of him that he needed. Slade patted him on the back and helped him away from the scene.
“Come on sheriff, this is why we are here, we will find the ones responsible for this and slaughter them, the way they slaughtered these villagers.” Slade took one last glance and tried to see what Gargan gained by burning the bodies. He couldn’t see anything; he was protecting others, put the bodies to rest the only way that possible there.
The sand was hot, but it wasn’t the thing that was slowing them. The damn wind picked up and they were walking through a sand storm. The sky was covered and made it dark, but Gargan didn’t slow his pace. Phoenix was walking as if it was the clear, and Gabrielle was doing the same. Slade and Zach though were feeling every bead of sand, their clothes not protecting them from the extreme wind.
“What I would give for those dragon scale clothes you got.” Zach said, the dragons stopping and staring back at them.
“Relax it was something we bought, I think from a Wizard.” Slade said remembering the old man.
“We will have to talk to him about that!” Phoenix shouted back over the winds.
"Gargan you might be strong enough to get through the dust storm but I am afraid this might strip me to the bone." Slade could barely see Gargan when he spoke for the sand was blowing, whirling even harder. "I can barely see you,” Slade sputtered out before he coughed up several lumps of sand that had gone down his throat. It seemed like Zach’s eyes never left Gabrielle a want that Slade was fighting with for Phoenix. A want that he wasn’t sure that he wanted.
"Yes we will rest in the next town. Phoenix said with a grunt from Gargan on the comment.
They continued and reached a small village by sunset. The sand blew in the village but the buildings blocked the worse of it. Zach might have smiled but if he did, he quickly covered it with a straight face. Slade had no clue what he would be smiling about, but Gabrielle was talking to him and it looked like they were warming up to do another deed. Slade didn’t think it was such a bad idea, for he wanted to get it out of his system. His plan was to find another girl that quickly changed when he looked at Phoenix. Did dragons believe in a one-night stand?
The village was made of sand stones reaching only one story high for the most part, only a few were taller. Slade wasn't really surprised by the town's smaller size, the building and living in the smaller city was hard with food and water. Children played in the streets as the villagers traveled among the people visiting the cities. Before Slade caught what Gargan said, he took off to a small inn, Zach and Gabrielle went in the opposite direction, Gabrielle mumbling something. Phoenix was walking toward a very small market area. Slade thought he would be able to get some answers from Phoenix. Not only about feelings, he was bouncing around with but also what the deal was with her and Gabrielle.
He caught up to the dragoness "Phoenix I need to talk to you."
"Talk," she said walking into the shop. The shop was a blacksmiths shop full of weapons that Slade couldn’t believe a small city would need. After she looked at a few, she walked out and headed to the next shop. "Speak, or be gone."
"Well," his tongue seemed to be tied as she looked at another small merchant's cart that had some food on it. She grabbed two legs of what seemed to be ham and handed Slade one. She paid the man the coins and she continued on back through the village. "Thanks,” Slade took a bite, tasting the saltiness of the meat. He was taking his time to ask a question about something that he wasn’t even sure really happened. She took a bite of her ham and looked at Slade waiting for a question. Slade quickly thought of another question. "Gabrielle, something is definitely not right about her,” he said not knowing where that question came from but it just jumped out.
Phoenix took a big gulp, and took awhile before she answered the question. "Why do you think that?" Then she paused and looked around and changed her answer. "If you want to know, follow me." She said heading to another inn that the village had that Gargan wasn’t in.
They approached one of the couple two-story buildings in town. They opened the door, and a girl who reminded Slade of his mother who stopped her dusting when she noticed them standing in the door. She had slanted violet eyes. Her luxurious, wavy, gray hair was medium-length and was worn in a utilitarian, severe style. She was tall and with a voluptuous build. Her skin cream-colored, her mouth curved into a smile above a pointed chin.
"Welcome, Welcome, one room I assume," She spoke a thousand words a minute; the two couldn't even get a word in. "Aren't you a cute couple," she rambled on about how they were so cute and how old the inn was as Slade searched the small room with his eyes. The walls were plain, a large table sat in the middle with chairs around it, but that was about it. No wonder it seemed vacant, it wasn't a dump, but the size would scare anyone besides a dwarf away. Phoenix was handed a key and the lady stopped long enough to put her hand out and waited for the money. Phoenix gave her two coins and the lady checked them. "Very good go on up."
Phoenix led the way up the steps, "Dinner will be served at sunset." She watched the two rather large guests until they made it up on the second floor. They walked to the where the room was and Phoenix opened the door. The room was clean and had a bed in the middle of the room, and walls all around. A window at the head of the bed, but that was about it. Slade sat on the bed as Phoenix shut the door and locked it. Slade took a gulp, the private room not helping him clear his mind to figure out what he felt for her.
"We have silence here, and I can answer all the questions you have now. There are just too many uncertainties outside." Phoenix came over and sat on the bed next to Slade, and stared at him waiting for Slade to turn more to her he assumed. He hadn’t felt this nervous since he tried to ask his first girlfriend out.
"Gabrielle is how to say this in human language since I see that she captured one’s heart.” Slade stared at her for awhile, not surprise she knew that Zach fell for her. “She is a demon that I first thought you two caught. I thought she was your capturer, now I see she is Zach’s lover. She should be killed, and that is what Gargan is planning now.”
Slade wasn’t expecting her to say anything like that; he was very distraught about the accusation. “Why would you say that?”
“You say, that she happened to be the only girl by the library when the Sanctum showed up,” Slade was about to say he could have chosen somebody else, but he couldn’t remember if he saw another person out there. “You say you didn’t have to convince her that much to help you, she was willing to go through that portal like she was used to one, she walked through that sand storm without a mark on her skin.”
“I didn’t get a mark, Zach didn’t get a mark, Gargan didn’t get a mark, and you didn’t get mark,” Slade defended Gabrielle.
“We are not just human, like she is supposed to be.”
Slade tried to think back to everything they have seen her do, “No,” he couldn’t see her being so dark, “she’s so nice. Plus Zach, Zach would of said something, he isn’t that naive.” The like as in they past the time by fucking their brains out while they think no one is watching.
“Tell me Slade; didn’t you get a feeling from her that she was hiding something? That something was wrong about her?” Shit, he did when he first met her; it was telling him to run.
She stared at Slade reading his eyes, “How would I not of been able to see it with my sunglasses, or feel it like I felt you.”
“She is using her magic to protect her. That was why my brother and I could see it. Magic does not affect dragons. We were not sure at first but this sand storm proved it.” Slade took a deep breath taking it all in, “Right now Gargan is seeing if there are agents in the main inn, if he spots them, she will be killed before we continue.”
An alarm went off in his head, “Zach,” she looked at him for a second before he shot up from the bed. “We need to,” he was cut off with shouting from outside; he shot to the window instead to see what the shouting was for. A sour feeling hit him square in the stomach. Phoenix looked at Slade, as they heard a great growl. Her eyes grew in width as she bolted to the window next to Slade.
For a brief moment, it looked like she was going to dive through the window but she stopped and looked at “Gargan,” Slade said quietly, he had something around his neck, a device that reminded Slade of what the animal control used on dogs. This one was different, perhaps made with magic for Gargan was not fighting he just walked forward his hands bound in front of him.
Gargan was pushed to the ground but looked up and locked eyes with both of them. He looked straight ahead then and shouted, “If I get out of this enchanted device, I am going to destroy you and your agency.”
“Brother,” Phoenix said behind the window quiet, nothing they could do would save him and they both knew it. There were too many if Gabrielle was the thing they thought she was. The bitch was going to be able to stop them without breaking a sweat.
“Captain, these two were just on the other side of the building,” Zach and Gabrielle being pushed forward. Zach looking straight forward like Gargan, Gabrielle was almost looking like she was innocent of Phoenix’s charge until a smile crept on her face.