Page 34 of Cast By Flames (Dragon's Breath)
The guy I’d had to chase down barred his teeth. “None of your business.”
“Did your people have anything to do with that explosion a few minutes ago?” I asked. He’d certainly looked pleased about it when we were outside.
He sneered. “Like I’d tell you.”
“Are you sure about that?” Freya asked, wrapping her fingers around his neck.
When we first started looking for the instigators, we’d agreed to do what it took to resolve the issue quickly. With war coming, we couldn’t afford to waste a moment. They’d taken it to another level when they began trying to kill people and burn homes. I didn’t stop her as she continued to hold the man’s throat in a tight grip. It didn’t even bother me that it hurt him. There was a time when it would have, but I’d grown colder during my years as a slayer. The people I loved received most of my remaining warmth.
He grimaced as his skin reddened, but his gaze stayed angry. “It doesn’t matter what you do to us,” he said in a raspy voice. “We won’t tell you anything.”
I glanced at his buddy, who remained awake, finding him stone-faced and resolute.
“Check his skin,” I ordered, suspicions rising. Something about these guys felt wrong.
Freya used her free hand to jerk up his T-shirt. There was a small dark spot on his skin right below his sternum, and we had no doubt what it meant. He’d been infected by dark magic. In the early stages such as this, we couldn’t sense it even if we were close. Only those who’d carried it a long time had to do something to shield and hide it to avoid detection from a distance.
I stepped closer to him, my sword pointed near his stomach. “I got him. Inspect the others and see if they have it, too.”
The shifter turned to the unconscious guy first, finding another small dark spot on his chest. The third man tried to push her hands away. She knocked him to the ground, pressed her boot to his head, and ripped his shirt away. Underneath it, he wore a thick black vest of indeterminate fabric.
Freya found it too tough to rip—even for her super strength—and had to pull it over his head while he struggled and cursed at her. After rolling him back over, we gasped at the dark swirls covering his skin. The magic had progressed far more for him and covered half his torso. With the protective covering gone, I could sense the dark spell, making my stomach turn. Bile rose up my throat.
While I understood some humans refusing to trust dragons—even shifters—I couldn’t fathom what would drive them to turn on the Taugud and hurt innocent people when we all needed each other to survive the coming horde. Now it made some sense—dark magic.
The Kandoran were trying to undermine us from the inside. Who knew how they pulled it off, but they had to have agents sneaking across the border. The coalition intelligence videos I witnessed months ago had confirmed that the enemy forces controlled tens of thousands of humans for their army.
It appeared they were already recruiting in our territory ahead of their arrival. While I understood the reason for waiting to raise the shield, we needed to get it up soon, or more people would turn against us by the day.
“Go get Javier and tell him it’s an emergency. We need help moving these men to jail cells and extracting the dark magic.” I positioned myself to better guard all three, including the one starting to stir to wakefulness. “Something tells me they won’t walk there on their own.”
The powerful sorcerer was our best bet for getting the job done despite his busy schedule.
She stood, then hesitated. “Will you be okay on your own?”
“I’ve fought multiple dragons simultaneously,” I assured her. “These three will be easy, but if they give me any trouble, I can always kill a couple of them. We only need one to interrogate.”
I hated to take it that far since they might be innocent without the dark spell on them, but I wouldn’t risk my safety or anyone else’s. If they got away, they could report back to the rest of their group, which would undermine our hard work to catch them. We needed to know how many others there were and if those were infected as well. The sooner this problem got resolved, the sooner we could get back to war preparations. Time was running out.
“I won’t take long,” she vowed.
Not wasting another minute, she left the building. From the broken doorway, I caught a glimpse of her flames as she shifted. Freya would get there faster by flying, hopefully finding Javier quickly.
***
Two hours later, we had the three men in prison cells. The old jail in Norman had been destroyed, but they’d built a small one in a building near the courthouse that could hold up to twenty people. At the moment, there were only two other inmates.
“Do they have any idea when Javier will return?” I asked.
Several of his people—not sorcerers—had come to assist us. They’d brought potions that knocked the three men out, and we’d transported them with a wagon. It would be a few hours before they woke up, so they lay passed out on mattresses on the floor for now.
A woman in her thirties with short brown hair shrugged. “He and a few others left yesterday evening. They’re establishing the new section of the shield in Shadowan territory, and it’s a lot of ground to cover. It will be at least a couple of days before they return.”
That was just my luck. We’d missed him leaving, and now I’d have to track down another sorcerer to do the job. They were all busy lately, and it wouldn’t be easy. The last time I spoke to Morgan at the fortress, he said all the ones there hadmajor projects consuming every waking moment, and they’d be unavailable for a while.
“Maybe Danae can help us,” I said, thinking I could stop by her house. It was evening now, so she might have gone home after performing a shift healing people at the medical center.
The brunette gave me a quizzical look. “Didn’t you hear? The hospital was attacked today—maybe from the same group as these men.” She gestured at the ones in the prison cells. “They blew up the front entrance and part of the emergency room. I didn’t hear that she got hurt, so she’s probably caring for other victims.”
