There’s only one left. We got the other two already. Unless you can smell more? As far as I knew, I had the telepathic aptitude of a smooth, dull rock, but when I responded in my head, Sindari always heard me.
The tiger’s nostrils twitched. There is only one. This will be a disappointingly boring battle. His head cocked slightly. Ah, but it is a female. Good. Females are more challenging.
Lucky us.
Yes.
Before we headed in, I took my phone out once more, this time to play the video I’d saved. Shaky footage that someone had recorded in Thousand Acres Park outside of Portland rolled for me.
Three blue wyverns, their leathery wings flapping as they came out of the trees, dove down and attacked children playing on the Sandy River beach. Some of the kids got away. Others were pulled up into the treetops where the wyverns feasted. Four children and a mother had been killed that day.
“Let’s do this,” I said grimly, replacing the phone and pulling Fezzik out of my thigh holster.
The compact submachine pistol had similar features to a Heckler & Koch MP7, but Nin had made it from scratch, and the elven half of my blood recognized the magic emanating from it and from the individual cartridges in the magazine. The gun was almost as powerful as Chopper, the longsword I’d won in battle long ago and that I wore sheathed on my back. If this went to hell and the wyvern got close before I could take it down, I would switch to the blade.
Sindari led the way. Normally, I wouldn’t let someone else go first, but if he was grievously injured, he could instantly return to the safety of his realm to heal.
We crept down the passage, rounding bends, and the roar of the surf grew fainter, replaced by drips and trickles deeper within the cave. Soon, we were close enough to the lair that my own ability to sense magic, one of the few powers I’d inherited from the father I’d never met, let me feel the aura of the wyvern.
The tunnel widened into a chamber twenty feet high and twice that deep. We had gone back far enough that I guessed we were under the spot where I’d parked my Jeep. A hundred feet under it.
Stalactites leered down from above, and stalagmites interfered with the view ahead. I couldn’t yet see our target, but I could smell her. More bones littered the floor in here. Some were deer and some were human, with blood and gristle still clinging to them.
My grip tightened on Fezzik, anger simmering as I wondered how many people this intruder in our world had killed in addition to those caught on the video.
She is resting behind those stalagmites, Sindari said. Your mongrel aura is weak, but you should cloak yourself.
It’s subtle, not weak. Just like me.
You are as subtle as those massive steel orbs on chains that pummel the sides of your buildings.
Wrecking balls, yeah, yeah. I touched the powerful cloaking charm, another hard-won prize, and faded from the sight and smell of others. My aura, my signature to those who could sense magic, also disappeared.
Sufficient, Sindari said.
Knowing I would prefer to attack from a distance and the higher ground, he led me toward a natural ramp creeping up the side of the chamber to a ledge. Just as the blue scales and folded wings of the dozing wyvern came into view, Sindari halted. His tail went rigid, and he whirled back toward the entrance.
Certain he’d sensed a second wyvern, I also turned, pointing Fezzik at the tunnel. I didn’t see or hear anything.
We need to get out of here. Sindari took a step but halted. No, we can’t go that way. He’s coming that way.
My ferocious battle tiger, the same tiger who’d been worried the wyvern would be too easy an opponent, looked around, nostrils flaring in fear as he sought some back exit from the cave.
I started to ask why, but then I sensed it. Something with an aura so great that even I could feel it from far away. And tell that it was getting closer.
He’s coming, Sindari groaned into my mind.
What is it? I’d never sensed anything like this.
A dragon.
2
A dragon?
I wanted to be skeptical and dismissive. Dragons didn’t come to Earth, not anymore. A thousand years ago, they might have, but they’d left long before the elves and dwarves had disappeared.
It was hard, however, to be skeptical when I could sense the incredibly powerful aura coming closer and closer. It—he?—was in the tunnel. And shape-shifted into something small? How else could a dragon fit in here?
We must hide. There’s no way out unless we run past him. Sindari backed farther up the ramp. Which I do not advise. Your weapons will do nothing against him, and my fangs will be like toothpicks if he shifts into his natural form. Even if he is in human form, he’ll be impossible to kill.
I followed Sindari, trusting his assessment. My only experience with dragons came through stories from other magical beings who had encountered them in their native worlds.
We scooted back to the deepest corner of the ledge. Below, just visible between two stalactites, the wyvern stirred for the first time.
Her head came up, snout opening to reveal long pointed teeth dripping with poisonous saliva. Her wings spread as she rose on her two legs to sniff the air. The wyvern was a distant relative of a dragon but much smaller, much less dangerous.
She shifted to peer around a tall stalagmite. I found a spot where I could watch her and also see the tunnel. Her talons flexed nervously on the rock floor, and she glanced around the chamber. Looking for an escape?
Her yellow-eyed gaze raked over us, and I held my breath, worried my charm wouldn’t be enough to keep me hidden. Sindari, his kind masters of stealth, had innate magic to camouflage himself. He wouldn’t be the problem.
But the wyvern’s gaze didn’t linger. It ratcheted back on the mouth of the tunnel as a human figure in a black robe with silver trim strode into view.
He had a tall, broad build and olive skin, a tidily trimmed beard and mustache, and short, curly black hair. My senses told me he was the dragon, even if he’d shape-shifted into this form to blend in. Not that he would blend in. That robe looked like something out of a Lord of the Rings movie, the silver slippers like something from Oz, and the dragon-shaped gold amulet on his chest was bling that Mr. T would have loved. Lastly, the violet eyes that glowed with inner power were nothing contacts could have achieved.
That violet gaze roamed around the cavern, skimming over us, and I held my breath again. Even if my charm worked on a wyvern, a dragon might not be fooled. I’d scrounged and fought far and wide for my collection of protective magic, and most of the centuries-old trinkets hadn’t come with instruction manuals.
“Dysnax crayell, loreth.” The dragon’s deep baritone rang through the chamber with resonance that Darth Vader would have envied. “Crayell Zavryd’nokquetal.”
The wyvern darted fully behind her stalagmite and hid, her pointed blue tail wrapping around the base as if she feared being torn away.
I touched another charm and mouthed the command word, hoping I could activate it without actually speaking. There was no way I was going to make a noise. Dragons could probably hear pins dropping on the moon.
“…and furthermore,” the dragon said, the charm translating the words in my mind, “you fled like a coward from your home realm, leaving the slain behind you to be discovered by their families.”
The wyvern was a criminal on more than one world? Not surprising. I was relieved to hear the dragon hadn’t come for me.