Page 73 of Blue Embers
The dragon directed his body toward me and began to move forward as Keera finally reunited with the others. My heart was racing, and not in a good way. I backed up, uncertain what to do next, when another beast fell from the sky, blocking out the light like a storm cloud. Twice the size of the other, this dragon was covered in silvery-blue scales. Black spines formed a ridge down its back. They stood erect when he opened his jaws and bit down on the smaller beast.
I jumped away, avoiding the wide length of the dragons’ wings as their bodies tangled in conflict. Glancing toward the other side of the clearing, Everly, Keera, and Ronan were moving to put some distance between themselves and the tussle. A third, smaller dragon intervened, landing on the Blue’s back and slamming him into the ground.
“Lukan!” Keera shrieked.
As the three monstrous creatures rolled into an enraged quarrel, I took off to get out of their path, tumbling down a small hill to avoid the bursts of blue and orange flames that pulsed through the air. Gaining my balance, I looked up and was cut off by one of the dragons as it was tossed into my path, bringing down a couple trees with the impact. I spun to run the other way, hearing Everly’s voice calling for me against the noise, but the debris and commotion was beginning to disorient me. Then...I saw them.
Through the tree line came two figures, the man and woman with crimson hair. Tall, fiercely beautiful individuals with bright, fiery-red eyes. The ringing began again in my ears, bringing me quickly to my knees. The woman looked directly at me and the ringing became worse, like knives in my skull. I thought I was going to pass out before Lukan’s tail swept toward them, knocking the woman to the side so hard I almost heard her back snap when she hit the narrow trunk of a pine tree.
“Seph,” Everly’s exhausted tone pushed through the pain in my ears.
Looking over my shoulder, she was stumbling toward me, covered in filth and her own blood. She reached out, helping me to my feet.
“Your arm,” I said, realizing how much blood she was losing.
“It’s fine,” she assured. “We need to move. Come on.”
We both turned, ready to bolt, but our path was blocked yet again. It was blocked by something from my nightmares.Shestood in my way. The woman from the museum whose voice I could still hear in my head telling me to plunge that knife into my own stomach.
“I’m afraid I can’t let you do that,” she spoke in that same, odd tone that sounded as if her voice was in time with another. Something dark and obscuring.
30
Killian
. . .
Draven and I stood atop a large hill bordering what looked like some kind of prison. Three buildings were surrounded by a concrete wall topped with coils of barbed wire and metal gates marked two entrances into the facility. One on the east and the other on the west. Standing at a thick tree line looking over the compound, Draven and I observed the facility with diligence, trying our best to figure out how it ran, but for the past two hours, there had been little to no activity.
“You sure this hacker isn’t playing games with us?” Draven said on a light snarl.
“I’m not sure of anything,” I said.
Draven took a whiff of the air like a wolf tracking prey. “There are people down there,” he said. “Trucks. I can smell the fuel, but they must all be inside.”
I pointed toward the farthest end of the compound at two cylinders that stood almost as tall as the buildings themselves.
“See those?” I said. “They’re cooling towers. They’re running some kind of factory with machinery and equipment. They probably have more inside.”
“What kind of equipment?”
“We can’t know for sure unless we can get into the buildings, but I’m willing to trust our faceless friend on this. They could be manufacturing a lot of weaponry in there. I wouldn’t put it past the rebels or the Zephyre to be planning a full on assault sooner than we wanted to believe.”
“They know we fly overhead,” Draven said.. “So everything is enclosed. Maybe underground. They don’t want us to see what they’re really doing.”
“So?” I asked. “What do you propose?”
“We need an inside man,” Draven said. “If our mysterious friend was more of a team player, perhaps he could have helped us now.
“Hmf,” I snorted. “That’s an interesting statement coming from you, brother.”
Draven rolled his eyes, unamused. “The point is we look like Draak. We wouldn’t get two steps past their security without being spotted.”
“Are you...are you analyzing the situation?”
“So?”
“No, nothing. I’m just used to Draven Tempest being the ‘blow fire, ask never type.’ Caution is a new color on you.”
