Lure of Lightning, page 2
They all stare at me silently, knowing they can’t argue with my logic. Finally, they nod reluctantly, although Beaufort insists, “You can’t do this alone.”
“Then come with me, help me.”
“Briony, it’s not that simple,” Beaufort says, meeting my gaze with that steely expression of his. “We don’t even know where he is.”
“I do.” I lean my head back, squinting into the rain and whistling up to the sky, hoping the sound will carry above the roaring storm.
Blaze responds, spiraling down to the ground and landing with a thud on the soggy sand that brushes the lake’s shore.
He’s so big now, I barely remember the tiny, fragile creature that slithered from the stone all those weeks ago. He tosses back his head, snorting puffs of smoke from his nostrils. It’s hard to believe anything in the realm or beyond it could harm me riding Blaze’s back. Surely together we’d be safe.
“Kitten,” Dray tries, “Fox is a big boy. He’s fucking powerful. He doesn’t need you to go rescue him!”
“I have to go!” I scream, raking the wet strands of hair away from my face.
“Briony,” Beaufort pleads, trying once again to wrap me in his embrace.
I dodge his arms and dart towards the dragon. All three men move to block my path this time, caging me in a tight circle.
“Let me through!” I shout above the noise of the storm.
“Little Kitten,” Dray growls, all his usual casual nature turned dangerous, “we’re not letting you run after a bloodsucker, one we can’t even trust. Who’s probably been working with Bardin all this fucking time!”
“Move out of my way,” I say through gritted teeth, lifting my hands.
“Briony,” Thorne pleads, trying a more gentle tactic to his bond brother, “there’s no hurry. It’s too dangerous to fly, and if you go out there with all your magic blazing, Bardin will be waiting for you. For all you know, this could be an ambush. You could be stepping right into a trap. She’s going to be out for your blood, out for revenge.”
“You’re not going to persuade me otherwise,” I yell at them, desperate to get moving, desperate to be on my way, “so move out of my way and let me go!”
Fox is in danger. I don’t care what they say; I don’t care about the danger. I have to find him. I have to save him.
The rain smacks against my head like the beat of a warning drum, urging me on to action.
“Little Kitten,” Dray says, trying to charm me with one of his smiles this time instead, “come on now!”
I send a warning shot of magic towards his feet and he leaps away, swearing loudly as my light scorches and sizzles the sandy earth.
I take my opportunity and bolt through the gap in their formation, racing across the sand towards Blaze. He’s already lowered his head to the damp ground, and I scramble up his neck, swinging myself onto his back, and gripping his scales tightly in my hand.
“Briony!” Beaufort says, more desperation in his tone because he can see I’m serious. “I command you to stay!”
“What? As my protector?” I spit back.
“As Prince of this realm,” he roars, “I command you to remain here!”
I glare at him. He can go to hell!
“We’ll go to the Empress,” Thorne says, still trying to convince me. “We’ll get the permission we need to go after Tudor, and we’ll come with you. We’ll help you. Just please, please don’t do this.”
“I have to,” I say, the wind whipping around me like a wild thing, making me feel just as wild. The magic in my veins is wild too and desperate. Desperate to find Fox, desperate to rise up into the sky, and desperate not to leave these men behind. Tears I didn’t even know I was crying, roll down my cheeks and drip onto my chest. I don’t want to part on bad terms. I don’t want to leave them behind. I want more than anything for all of this not to have happened. My stupid plan – my stupid, stupid plan! It’s my fault Fox is in this position. “I can’t lose Fox!”
Blaze lifts his head and spreads his wings. He sweeps them back and forth until the air catches in the sinewy material and his clawed feet rise from the ground, lifting us higher and higher.
I stare down at the anguished faces of my mates.
Beaufort lifts his hand as if he’s about to strike me down with his magic. I brace myself, ready to strike him right back, but he thinks better of it, dragging his fingers through his wet hair instead. Dray attempts to jump into the air and grab at Blaze’s tail. Thorne stands still as a statue, dark eyes boring into me.
My heart rips right down the middle. But what choice do I have?
Chapter Two
Dray
“Briony!” I yell, cupping my hands around my mouth as the dragon lifts my little mate into the swirling abyss of the clouds up above, dragging her through my fingers and out of my reach. Damn that fucking dragon – I knew he was trouble. “Briony, fuck, Briony!”
Beside me, Beau scrubs his hands down his face, screwing up his eyes like he’s been physically wounded, stabbed in the heart, punched in the gut.
“Shit, Beau, what do we do?” I ask frantically, because every single second she’s being pulled further and further away from us. “How do we stop her?”
Beau doesn’t answer me. He doesn’t open his eyes. I feel the pull of my magic, the magic I placed inside her chest, whipping up into the sky, becoming fainter with every lash of the dragon’s wings.
I don’t know what to do.
For the first time in my damned life, I don’t know what the hell to do.
“Beau, Beau,” I say, my voice even more desperate. “What do we do?”
Beaufort always knows what to do. He always has a plan. He’s always calm, collected, cool. I’d follow him to the ends of the earth and back because he’s smart – smarter than me, though I’d never tell the asshole.
“I don’t know,” he whispers, finally looking at me with wide helpless eyes. I’ve never seen him look like that. Never. It has my head spinning.
She’s going. Briony is going to the demon realm and we don’t know how to stop her.
“Should I blast her out of the sky? Blast the dragon?” I ask next, scrabbling around for some sort of action.
“N-n-n-n-no!” he stutters. “You could kill her.”
“She’s going to get herself killed if she makes it out of the realm!” I snap.
“I know that!”
“We have to stop her.”
“I don’t know how,” he snaps right back, so viciously it has me freezing on the spot.
“If it were the other way ‘round,” Thorne says quietly, “if Briony were out there in the demon realm, would anything or anyone be able to stop you from going after her?”
“I wouldn’t be stupid enough to fuck off like that without a freaking plan.” Thorne stares at me. “Fuck off,” I snap because we both know I’m lying. Nothing would stop me, and I wouldn’t even hesitate. I’d be gone in a flash. We would all do the same.
And so I make up my mind. I’m going after her. I’m not letting her face whatever is out there alone. I will protect her. I will keep her safe.
Without another word, I transform, my body stretching, snapping and bending in a blink of an eye, and then my white wolf falling to his four great paws.
My gaze snaps up to the sky and then I’m racing away, following the dragon along the ground, trying to keep pace with him.
“Dray!!” I hear them call after me, but I’m thundering across the landscape as fast as my four legs will carry me, leaping over gorse bushes, smashing through thick heather, hurtling over the rough ground.
The dragon flies high in the sky, nothing more than a distant insect, and I’m resigned to squint up as best I can, my powers of scent useless when he’s so far away.
I see fire stream from his jaws, lighting up the heavy clouds. I see his tail swing like a whip behind him, and I watch him fall and lift in the sky.
Our mate is nothing but a doll, clinging to his back, so fragile, so small.
Mine.
My wolf feels it even more strongly, even more innately than I do. If he’d caught a hint of her scent that very first day at the academy train station, he’d have hunted her down and claimed her as ours then and there. We wouldn’t have needed Beaufort and his visions to tell us she was ours.
He’s frantic now and determined. He will rip the dragon to shreds for stealing her away from us. He will destroy every demon that even looks her way.
I race onward, the dragon nothing but glinting metal in the dark and vast ocean of the sky.
I won’t lose her. My wolf will swim across rivers, climb over mountains, and smash through forests to find her.
The hard earth, the rough stones, the sharp vegetation, cut and scrape at the soles of my paws. Soon they’re damp with blood, a trail of crimson paw-prints marking our path. My legs scream with agony, my muscles cramp, my joints ache.
Still, my wolf continues. Chasing after our mate, feeling that pull of our magic sitting in her chest. He won’t ever stop. She’s ours, and we will run to the ends of the universe just to keep her close.
Chapter Three
Fox
I regain consciousness and immediately pain hits me square between the eyes, vicious and violent. I groan, attempting to roll over, but I can’t. My body is restrained, and when I open my eyes, I find I can see nothing either.
A hood has been forced down over my head, my hands tied behind my back and my ankles bound together.
The ground I’m laid out on is cold and hard. No light penetrates through the cloth, so I sniff at the air instead, the action causing more pain to stab through my skull and down my spine. It’s dry and full of dust. The taste on my tongue is of something bitter and evil.
I close my eyes and try to drive the pain away, force it from my body.
I need to focus, to think, to remember.
Who am I?
Fox. Fox Tudor.
I was once from Slate, but now I am a creature of the night, with the ability to shadow weave.
Yes, shadow weave.
I feel for the magic. It’s weak and difficult to find, but it’s there.
I scrunch up my eyes, trying to think past the pain, to remember more.
There’s a girl. A girl with light dancing in her hands. A girl who smells of life and brightness. Who smells like heaven.
The girl is my mate. But when I try to recall her name, when I try to imagine her face, the memory flickers away.
What happened to me?
An ambush?
But that memory is even further away. I cannot reach it at all.
I summon the shadows forth in the hope that I can cut through these binds and free myself. But they will not yield, remaining stubbornly in my veins.
“If you’re searching for your magic, darling, you won’t be able to reach it. Those are deadening binds. They prevent weavers from using their shadows. Useful little things.”
The voice is familiar. A woman. Older than I am, I think, although my own age is a mystery to me.
The voice sends an involuntary shudder down my spine, a reflex I don’t understand.
The hood shifts around my ears and lifts from my face.
My eyes adjust to the darkness immediately.
I’m in a large stone room. A dungeon, perhaps. There are no windows, but far above us swirls a gray mist, dark shadows swooping in its midst. A dry wind swirls down and frisks the cloak of the woman who stands above me.
She is beautiful, elegant, and alluring. Her eyes glow in the darkness and her ivory-white fangs gleam.
“Veronica,” I say, “untie me.”
“I don’t think that would be a very good idea. I don’t know if I can trust you any longer, Fox, darling.”
I’ve been laid out on my stomach, so I strain my neck to lift my head and meet her gaze.
“Trust me? You were the one who fed me lies about the trial, Veronica.”
“Yes, because your infatuation with that girl has warped your mind.” She frowns. “Did you really think I didn’t know about your little plan? Your girl is not terribly bright, is she? She came to my office, broke into it, stole from me, left her scent everywhere for me to find. And then you come to me – willingly for the first time in years – scrounging after your scraps of information. You must think me a fool!”
“I don’t think you’re a fool,” I say. I think she is mad. I’ve known it for a long time. It just took me time to see it, seduced by her attention and her sophistication.
“But I have been a fool, Fox,” she crouches down and strokes her fingers through my hair, “I’ve let myself be fooled by you, just as you have been fooled by her.”
“You were the one who fooled me.”
I was a kid. One from Slate. She was glamorous, older. I allowed her to flatter me, to make me feel special, and when she offered me glimpses of an alternative life – an easier, more comfortable, and, yes, richer one – then offered me a way to make that life mine, I was powerless to resist.
“How did I fool you?” She pouts. “All I did was love you.”
“Is this how you treat all the people you love, Veronica?” I say, struggling against the ties.
“You used to like it when we played like this, darling,” she says, tugging on the strands of my hair and then rolling to stand and pressing the point of her heel on the center of my back. “Remember all the fun we had. I bet your little girl never dreamed of such things.”
“It wasn’t fun; it was abuse.”
“Is there a difference?” she asks, licking her tongue down her fangs.
“A very big one.” I strain my neck back further, trying to make out what lies beyond the mists above us. Loud screeches permeate the walls of whatever this place is, but they sound like no creature I know of. “Where are we, Veronica?”
“We’re hiding. For the time being. And you are my guest.”
“You mean prisoner.”
She laughs. “Once again, I see no difference.”
“Where are we, Veronica?” I grunt.
“Some delightful place called Crow’s Fault.”
I stare up at her. I’ve never heard of such a place. “You can’t keep me here forever.”
“Would you prefer I kill you, Fox?”
“You can’t. I’m immortal.”
“We both know that is a lie. There are ways I could kill you.” I growl at her, and she smiles at me. “But don’t worry, darling. I’d much prefer to keep you alive. You’ve always been my favorite. It’s why I’ve planned for a little re-education, Professor. To help you remember who you really are, what you really are, and where your true alliance lies. You’re going to be mine again, Fox.”
“No,” I say simply.
“It’s okay. There’s no hurry. Unfortunately, I suspect our stay here is going to last some time, which means I have all the time in the world, you see. And time is a funny thing to us immortals. So many of those humans come and go and we’re still here. It teaches you patience.”
“Then I hope you have a lot of it. Because I will never give myself willingly to you again.”
“Such valiant words, darling. Let’s see how long they last.”
She twirls her hand through the air, and then I understand what those shapes are that swirl up in the mist, what those sounds are.
Demons. They come swooping into the room, hurtling towards me and my last sane thought is, I hope she doesn’t come for me. The danger is far too great.
Chapter Four
Briony
My heart rips right down the middle, the wound more and more painful the higher we rise into the stormy sky, and the further Blaze soars away from the black lake below us.
Fate is trying to tell me something. I’m not meant to be away from my mates. But my mates include Fox Tudor. Whether I stay or go, this pain in my heart will persist because this little circle we’ve formed, this strange little family we’re becoming, will be incomplete.
I don’t have a choice in the matter.
The air still gasps in my lungs. My body continues to shake.
I kick my heels against Blaze’s broad rib cage, urging him onwards, pleading with him to fly faster. He struggles against the storm, buffeted around by the strength of the wind. The rain drives into both our faces, and I’m forced to screw up my eyes, squinting against the onslaught.
The wind becomes more violent, whipping around my face, punching us this way and then that. Blaze grunts and wrestles against the force, the wind howling over his out-stretched wings. I grip him more firmly, the clouds rolling like waves around us, gray and black and sinister.
The gale lashes us up high and then drops us a moment later. I scream but then the wind catches in Blaze’s wings again and he’s plowing onwards. The muscles in his back ripple beneath me and I can tell how hard he’s working.
And then a clap of thunder roars right around us as lightning crackles millimeters from Blaze’s flank. He jolts in alarm, and I’m bolted from my seat, almost slipping from his back completely, only stopping myself from tumbling to the ground by my fingertips.
“Blaze!!” I scream, desperately clinging to his wet scales as my grip begins to slide. “Blaze!”
I swing my legs desperately, trying to propel myself back up onto his back.
It’s hopeless.
He rumbles back at me. He knows I’m in trouble. But still the storm knocks him this way and that and he’s struggling to help me.
I search for that magic in my veins, beckoning it forth. However, I don’t know how to use it to help me. I’ve only learned a few spells, only picked up one or two more. I don’t have the instinct the Princes do; this is all too new to me. I can’t work out how to use my magic to save myself.
I make the mistake of peering down at the ground. It’s far far below me. The Princes are somewhere in the distance now. They won’t even see me fall.
Around us more bolts of lightning spike through the sky and the very air rumbles with each clap of thunder.
