Legacy of Flames- The Complete Trilogy, page 50
part #1 of Legacy of Flames Series
“I can read it,” said Cori. “Shit. That’s weird.”
“No kidding.” I swiftly put the book in my pocket as a small group of people came around the corner, having forgotten other people were even out here. Humans, teenagers by the look of things, hunched in hoodies as though they might protect themselves from the monsters in the streets.
“Well?” Cori whispered. “Aren’t you going to read it?”
“Not until we’re somewhere safe.”
We returned to the basement via a different tunnel entrance this time. Luckily there were no undead, because I was a million miles away, soaring over mountains. Had I seen the present, or the past? Surely not the future—that wasn’t possible for any supernatural, as far as I knew. If the other dragons lived in the mountains, it’d explain why nobody had found them. But I didn’t get the impression they lived as a collective. If they did, who’d sent Cori and me to fend for ourselves?
Since when did the Moonbeam cause visions at all? It was a portal and it boosted shifters’ abilities, but so much about it remained shrouded in mystery. Maybe it’d awoken a memory. I’d been flying, but… I didn’t remember feeling my wings the way I did when I flew now. Had someone been carrying me?
Lost in thought, I jumped when Astor opened the door to the shelter from the inside.
“You lot make enough noise to wake the dead,” he commented.
“What did you do?” Will peered in.
“Just moved a few things around.”
All the furniture had been moved, blocking the broken window and most of the hallway.
“Are you trying to block the front door?” I asked him.
“What do you think?” said Astor irritably. “There were some downright suspicious noises outside. Gargoyles, probably. They landed on the roof a few times.”
“Wait, did you lose your weapons collection, too?”
He scowled. “Yes. I bet the mages confiscated everything they found in the house.”
“Probably. You can always get new ones. Were you really that attached to them?”
“I don’t have claws, darling.”
“Glad you don’t,” Cori put in. “Also, don’t call my sister darling. It’s creepy.”
“Hey, I’m your big sister,” I said. “Don’t worry. Astor can be a dick sometimes, but he’s on our side.”
“Hmm,” she muttered. “C’mon. Let’s look at that notebook before someone else steals it.”
I walked past him, Cori close on my heels. I’d rather find somewhere private to read the notebook, but considering the state of the upstairs, I picked the living room instead. After flipping the remaining armchairs the right way up, we gathered around the notebook. A nervous flutter of anticipation went through me.
It wasn’t like the others watching was a problem—Will and Becks had been around for almost every discovery Cori and I had made about our pasts, and Kit and Astor knew most of it, too. But reading the notebook—comprehending text I shouldn’t be able to understand—it felt different. Intimate.
I leaned over the notebook.
“Whoa,” said Will, who sat opposite me. “Your eyes went red then.”
“Like when you shift,” said Becks. “Cori—yours, too.”
We looked at one another. “Cori hasn’t shifted yet.”
“Yet.” She frowned at the notebook. “Okay. It says, if you’re reading this, you’ve fully shifted, and you know what’s at stake.”
“What is at stake?” I asked of nobody in particular, looking down at the text. “The invasion hadn’t happened when this was written… twelve years ago.” So, just before Cori and I showed up in London.
I write this using the old language so that you can come to understand it when the time is right to seek us out again. I don’t know how many of us will be left by the time you read this. It’s possible they may have reduced us to extinction.
“They who?” Cori fidgeted. “It feels like we’re missing something.”
“Like our memories.” I read on. If you want to know the full story, it’s too risky for me to write even in this language, in case the notebook falls into the wrong hands. However, it is unsafe for non-shifted dragons to survive amongst us any longer. I grow more pessimistic that there will be any of us left by the time you gain your fire. If you are capable of shifting and wish to know the truth, go to…
There was a name and address. Apparently this dude called Samuel could offer us advice on what to do next.
“But why?” I asked aloud—like I was a kid again, completely confused as to why someone had left my baby sister and me alone on a train, with nothing but a note. Okay, so the notes written in English said pretty much everything I knew about how and when we shifted, what effects would result from that, and how we differed from other shifters. But I’d hoped the other text would tell us where the other dragons were, why they’d erased our memories, and why they’d abandoned us.
And why they’d sent us to the home of the hunters.
Instead, they’d thought we were too weak to cope with being around the other dragons, and sent us away.
I flipped the page over, my hand suddenly shaking with rage. Fire burned in my chest, and part of me wanted to reduce this damned book to cinders for only giving me more questions than I’d had to begin with.
The next page: I apologise for my vagueness. I fear the enemy already knows our strategies and if they were to intercept you in your escape, your lives would be forfeit. It would be better for you to forget about us until the opportune time.
The hunters might have beaten us for now, but they can’t eradicate us all. We will rise, one way or another, and reduce them to cinders. But the journey ahead is long, and you can only resume your place within it with the true fire of a dragon.
I stared at the page. “I can shift, but…” Cori couldn’t.
“I’m not staying out of this.” Apparently she’d guessed my thoughts.
“But we still don’t know where they are. This guy we need to find is in London, but the dragon shifters… they must be somewhere else. They are the ones who sent us away.”
“Of course they did.” Cori was apparently taking this better than I was. “Who else would? What’s got you rattled?”
“The hunters might have beaten us for now. But they’re not in London. There were hunters in the same place the dragons lived in?”
“There have been smaller branches all around the country for decades.” Astor watched me from behind the others, an unreadable look on his face. “The main base is here, but they were working on expanding across the country. They already recruit from across the UK, so it’s not too much of a stretch to imagine they’re the reason the dragons went into hiding.”
“But—” I looked at the notebook. “I’m pretty sure people would have noticed if there were dragons swooping around. It sounds like the hunters are the reason they abandoned us. Not warring, or whatever. Yet… they sent us into the main city the hunters are based in.”
“Because it’s the easiest place to hide?” Becks suggested. “You don’t fly into a fury at the full moon, either, so it’s not like you’d give yourself away to humans. You had no memories, and the underground network in London is second to none.”
“Before the faeries, this was one of the safest places for shifters,” Will added. “The hunters only started showing up in larger groups afterwards.”
“But this is London,” I said. “Why not send us to rural Wales or somewhere remote?”
“Oh, the hunters were in Wales,” said Kit. He’d melted into the background as though he wore glamour. “They were hauling shifters in when they caught me.”
“Shit.” I looked back at the notebook. “I realise the hunters weren’t technically based in the capital, but did they seriously have outposts across the country?”
“They did.” Astor said. “I’m not certain whether they’re still in use, considering it’s much easier to find supernaturals these days. Before, even if a dragon lived alone in a human town, the hunters would be able to find signs and isolate the person…”
“And send in the Moonbeam.” I looked at the notes again. “But—these notes don’t mention the Moonbeam at all. That must mean there’s another way to transport ourselves to wherever the dragons are hiding. This Samuel person. We need to find him.”
“Not now,” said Becks. “It’s getting late. I don’t know about you, but I don’t particularly want to sleep in a room with broken glass all over the floor. This place needs some refurbishing.”
“It does,” said Will. “First, who wants to come on an ingredient-gathering errand with me?”
I looked at him. “You sure?”
“We’ll go out through the tunnels,” he said. “This is my house. I’m not going to be afraid to live in it. Assassin dude?”
“What?” asked Astor.
“Want to come and carry some witch props?”
“No thanks.”
“Think he’d be a bit conspicuous,” I said. “I’d come, but we need to have someone on zombie watch back here.”
In the end, Will and Kit went alone, while Becks and I combed the tunnels nearby for any wayward undead and possible leads on where they came from. But the results were frustratingly inconclusive. They’d left little trace, and the rotten smell filled the whole tunnel, making it impossible to tell which direction it had started from. Becks transformed into cat form to explore some of the narrower tunnels, but came back with no answers. The hunters might have been killed here or aboveground, but there were no traces of evidence on who’d raised them from the dead, let alone where.
We moved one of the broken chairs from the house and I tore it up with my claws, using the pieces to cover the hole in the tunnel floor, though it wasn’t a permanent solution. Neither was the house, whatever Will said. The gargoyles knew we lived here. So did the witches. Both had turned on us at one time or another, and it was clear the list of people we could trust was as dwindling as ever. Considering we’d deceived the mages, too, there was a good chance we might have to leave the city—which meant it was all the more urgent that we found this Samuel character.
If the hunters hadn’t got there first.
It took considerable effort to keep the guilt off my face when I met with Lord Smyth the following morning, and I wasn’t sure he didn’t see through me all the same. I’d seen, with my own eyes, proof that the dragons still existed—or had done so. And the Moonbeam… it wouldn’t work unless I got it out of the mages’ warded room. Which was impossible.
I didn’t even want to be here, but it’d look downright suspicious if I took off without keeping my appointment. Lady Clare wasn’t anywhere in sight. Small mercies. I’d been hidden with glamour, but I was sure she’d easily be able to work out that we’d broken into the Moonbeam’s room yesterday, whether she read my mind or not.
Lord Smyth, however, looked tired. “There have been no new developments,” he informed me—my friends stood behind me, though Kit had glamoured himself because he was a self-proclaimed terrible liar. “The necromancers are looking for anomalies, but the whole city is built on anomalies. There’s ancient graveyards, plague pits, bodies underneath our feet… if it’s underground, it effectively can’t be tracked.”
“So it’s a great place to hide a summoning circle,” I said. “Do you want me to check the other tunnels? I know them pretty well. I take it the gargoyles aren’t using them anymore. There’s a giant hole in the floor now anyway.”
“There have been no more bodies discovered,” said Lord Smyth. “However, if you’re serious about working for the mages, you’ll have to earn your keep.”
And that’s how my friends and I found ourselves clearing out the mages’ storeroom. I didn’t kick up a fuss, mostly because we needed to stay in the Mage Lords’ good graces, and it’d divert suspicion about what we were doing all day. Not to mention the sort of money the mages offered would pay for a full restocking of our spell collection and repairs on Will’s house.
The downside was that we didn’t get out of the mages’ place until mid-afternoon, which left us with limited time to go back and check on the house before we took our ill-advised trip to find this Samuel person.
First, though, we needed to ensure beyond all shadow of a doubt that we wouldn’t be tailed there. I didn’t want the mages to know about our mission. So we headed back to the shelter to fetch more of Will’s spells.
Astor wasn’t waiting behind the door this time. He’d been acting oddly since yesterday—hardly speaking to me, and generally being bad-tempered. Which wasn’t that far out of character, really. So when I mentioned our excursion, he narrowed his eyes at me. “You’re following a note written by a stranger. Haven’t you learned?
“Excuse me? The note was written by a dragon shifter. One of us. I have to find him.”
“Malkin translated the text first,” he retaliated. “Are you absolutely certain he wouldn’t have followed the instructions himself?”
“No,” I said. “That’s why we need to go. If he’s captured or killed this guy… he has links to the dragon shifters.”
“And he’ll doubtless be waiting for you to show up.”
“He’s had weeks, Astor. He translated the text while we were in jail. Besides, it sounds like his new focus is amateur necromancy. We stand more of a chance of tracking the League this way than by fishing bodies out of the river.”
Astor’s arms folded. “It’s a fool’s errand.”
“You don’t have to come,” said Cori. “Some of us would prefer it if you didn’t, actually.”
Astor looked from me to her. “I thought you might be more sensible than your sister is. The League is likely to have left a trap.”
“Then we’ll fly in,” I said. “They can’t set up a trap in the air. Right?”
“No, but—”
“That’s sorted, then,” said Will. “I’ll fly with Becks. Want to come, Kit? I can’t promise epic car chases this time, but I can guarantee at least one fight and possibly some fire-breathing.”
“I’m not staying behind,” said Kit, with an imperceptible look at Astor. “I don’t like this plan, either. Did Malkin have an exact copy of the text? How’d he translate it?”
“Probably got someone else to do it,” I said.
“It’s okay.” Will tossed a spell into the air and caught it in one hand. “Malkin might be a prick, but he’s unimaginative as all hell. We can take whatever he left us. Remember, he has no way of knowing we’d choose now as the right moment to come looking. I doubt he’s there in person.”
“Exactly,” I said. “I vote we find this Samuel person, if we can, and then at least we’re one step closer to figuring out our history.”
Astor’s mouth thinned. “This is a foolish move. Malkin wouldn’t have read the text and then done nothing about it.”
“These are dragons we’re talking about,” I said. “I nearly scorched his head off the last time I saw him. Also, they’re definitely linked with the hunters. What if it’s all tied together?”
“There’s a slight problem,” said Will. “I don’t have any shadow spells. If I brew them up, we’ll have to wait until tomorrow.”
“Shit.” I looked at the others. “Is there anywhere I can shift without being seen?”
“No,” said Will and Becks at the same time.
“It’ll be easier to find the address from the ground,” Cori said. “But we don’t have a car.”
Will jerked his head in Astor’s direction.
“Oh, for god’s sake, fine,” he ground out. “But I’m not stealing another car from the mages.”
Ten minutes later, we piled into the small black car that Astor pulled up into the road outside one of the tunnel exits, waiting for us so nobody would steal it if he left it. The fact that it smelled strongly of cigarettes and air freshener, and that someone else’s keys were in the front, suggested it hadn’t been his first pick.
I didn’t ask how he’d known it was abandoned. Kit glamoured the car, because you weren’t supposed to fit four people into a seat made for three. This seemed to irritate Astor, but then again, so did everything else. Including the fact that I was stuck in the front seat with him because nobody else wanted to take it. I pretended to be watching for gargoyles in the wing mirror, which in fairness, were a strong possibility, while Kit opened the sun roof and kept up an ongoing commentary on any strange clouds he spotted as we took a circuitous route around the city to avoid mage territory. I held my breath all through the areas controlled by the gargoyles, but the skies were unusually clear. Calm before the storm, more like.
No gargoyles showed up, and we left the city centre without incident. There were a few red buses around, some black cabs, and a handful of cars. Astor seemed to know where he was going, to the extent that I’d forgotten it was Cori and I who were supposed to be leading the way, until we pulled up into a street lined with terraced houses.
A metallic roar sounded, followed by splintering wood and crashing. My heart sank. It was one of to the League’s automatons.
7
“I knew it,” growled Astor, reversing so abruptly that my head jerked back and the others in the back seat fell into one another like dominoes. Various yelps and ‘ow’s followed, drowned out by the mechanical noise.
The metal-plated monstrosity lumbered around the corner. The road trembled underneath its steps, and it swung around, slowly, to face one of the houses on the right. The one listed as Samuel’s address.
“Screw it.” I released my seat belt. Astor put the car in reverse again, but even in a quiet neighbourhood like this, abandoned cars and debris made reversing a hazard. As we rattled over a pothole, I opened the door and leaped out.
My claws came out, though I held back on fully shifting. I didn’t know how many other people were here, after all. But the automaton would draw their attention soon enough.
