Dragon Fire (10 page)

“I don’t know, but they aren’t dragons. Dragons don’t have shrouds of energy that pulse around them like some kind of halo.”

“I don’t know. I can’t see it. But maybe the shrouds you see are what’s blocking their röks,” Dvara said. “Like shields of some kind.”

“No. They must be some other kind of humanoid species. Didn’t you feel them this morning? They were manipulating particles we can’t even touch. And they knocked us to our knees with sound waves. No dragon can do that without manipulating matter first.” Rakan growled. “We should talk to Khotan about it. He might know how they’re doing it. Or at least have an idea what those particles were.”

“Why are you so stubborn?” exploded Dvara. “We don’t need Khotan’s help. Leave him out of this. Humans don’t have that kind of power. Dragons do. And there aren’t any other humanoid species. Which means that they are dragons. They’re just hiding. Work on figuring out how they make their shrouds, okay?” Dvara turned and stalked down the stairs.

“What does Draak mean in Tibetan?” asked Anna.

Rakan spun around to face her. “What?” He had been so preoccupied with Dvara that he hadn’t even felt Anna come up.

“You kept saying Draak or nak Draak or something like that. What were you arguing about?”

Rakan took Anna in his arms. If only he could be sure of being able to protect her. Because whatever they were, the void-trails would have no scruples in eliminating whatever was in their way. “I wish we were somewhere else right now,” he whispered. “Far, far away from here.” Away from the void-trails. His face touched the soft skin of Anna’s neck and
his fingers wandered down her back, feeling the ridges of her spine that he wished could morph into a spiked crest. His blood thickened and pounded in his ears. He could almost see Anna as a pale blue air dragon with the golden crest of a shielder. Anna’s natural smell of wild chrysanthemums increased as the temperature of her skin began to rise. He wished she was a dragon and that he could wrap his neck around hers and plummet through the clouds in a series of wild arabesques.

Anna let herself be pressed into him, her breath catching almost imperceptibly. Rakan leaned into her, bending her slightly backwards. He opened his mouth to bite her. To mark her as his. And then closed it again. “Maybe we should go have lunch?” he managed to say, painfully forcing himself to stop in spite of the way Anna was arching into him.

Anna nodded, her uneven breathing echoing his. Rakan felt himself being drawn towards Anna’s mouth. Her lips were the color of the sunrise. He tore his eyes away and guided her downstairs to the packed lunchroom.

Anna nudged Rakan. “Over there, with June,” she said. She pointed towards June who was waving to them.

“No,” Rakan said, pulling back. “She’s not alone.”

“I’ll introduce you. It’s just her boyfriend, Erling, his brothers and his sister.”

“No.” Rakan didn’t need anymore of an introduction than he had already had. “Over here.” He maneuvered through the crowded room to where two people were just getting up from one of the couches.

“What’s wrong?” asked Anna following him to the other side of the room. “You don’t like the look of the twins or something?”

“No.”

Anna laughed. “To be honest, I don’t either. But they aren’t that bad. Even if they look like mafia bodyguards.” Anna placed her tray next to Rakan’s on the low table in front of the couch. “Sverd is the worst. He looks like he could kill someone without giving it a second thought. And I wouldn’t want to be there if he did.”

Rakan laced his fingers through hers. “No, I wouldn’t want you to be there then either.” He let his mind-touch wrap around her. She was so fragile, so vulnerable.

Anna squeezed his fingers and smiled at him.

Rakan’s rök lurched. She was so trusting.

When she shouldn’t be.

T
HE NEXT DAY, THE HALLWAY WAS
filled with excitement as the students flowed outside just before noon to watch the sun rise for the first time in two months.

“You’re not going,” Rakan said in Draagsil. “You’ve never resisted the Call to Rise without a Kairök.”

Dvara scoffed. “And so? It can’t be that different. We need to see how Jing Mei reacts. No untrained whelp who has already awakened could resist it.”

“I’ll go,” Rakan said. “You stay inside.”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” Dvara said, her hands on her hips. “I’m older than you, remember? We need to observe all of them. It’ll be easier if we’re both there.”

“You’re not going outside,” said Rakan, raising his voice in the now empty corridor.

“Yes, I am.” Dvara marched towards the stairwell.

Rakan tackled her and they tumbled to the ground. She growled as she twisted out from under him. They circled each other, waiting for the other to attack.

“Well, well,” T’eng Sten said. His long coat swirled behind him as he strode towards them. “This is hardly the time or place for that.”

Rakan twirled to face T’eng Sten just as Kakivak and Angalaan appeared, walking as they materialized two steps behind their Kairök. But Angalaan wasn’t wearing her dragon dress. Instead she was dressed in fuchsia body armor that covered her chest like a leotard and her black fighting pants.

“The Meet hasn’t even started,” snarled Dvara. “Why are you here?”

“I told you. I protect what’s mine and the sun is about to rise. You’ll answer the Call with me.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you,” Dvara said.

Steps echoed up the stairs and they all turned to see Anna appear behind T’eng Sten.

“No,” Rakan said. He shifted between Anna and T’eng Sten without thinking.

“Pemba.” Anna pulled up short. “How did you get here? You were just…”

T’eng Sten laughed. “You’ll have to erase her mind now. Humans can’t deal with it.”

“Go back out,” Rakan said to Anna. He put his hands on her shoulders to block her view of the others. “I’ll be right there.”

Anna shook her head. “How did you move so fast?” She tried to get around Rakan. “What’s going on? Who are they?”

Rakan felt T’eng Sten run his mind over Anna. She backed up, shaking her head and trying to block the Kairök’s mind-touch. Rakan threw up a shield, but he was too late. Anna stood perfectly still, frozen in time.

“Well, at least I understand your interest in her,” said T’eng Sten, raising an eyebrow.

“Let her go,” growled Rakan. He tried to undo whatever it was that T’eng Sten had done. But he couldn’t, not without a risk of harming her. “Free her,” he snarled. He threw himself at T’eng Sten’s throat.

“Your manners truly are appalling,” said T’eng Sten, flipping Rakan over his shoulder and immobilizing him on the floor. “You should say thank you – I erased her mind. She’ll snap out of it as soon as I leave and she’ll have no memory of my time here. Or of you shifting so foolishly right in front of her.” He got off Rakan and turned to Dvara. “Will you honor me by answering the Call to Rise by my side?” His voice was firm.

Dvara tilted her chin up. “Leave now and I’ll join you.”

T’eng Sten came and stood directly in front of Dvara, but without touching her. “If you’re playing with me, I’ll have your hide. Is that clear? This isn’t a game, Dvara.”

“Then you should leave,” she said coldly. “Now.”

T’eng Sten gave her a terse bow and disappeared with his bodyguards in tow.

* * *

Anna felt a sudden wrenching pain in her head and put a hand out to steady herself. The tension around Pemba and Dawa was electric. Pemba spun around as if she had just appeared. He flung his arms around her and squeezed her so hard she coughed. “Anna, Anna,” he repeated. He put his hands on her face and searched her eyes. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she said, pulling away from his touch that vibrated anxiety. “Why are you acting so worried?” Anna took a step back. “Don’t you guys want to see the sunrise?”

“No.” Dawa spun around and went the other way.

“Wait…” Pemba said, letting go of Anna. She wobbled on her feet and he steadied her before running after his sister. He grabbed Dvara’s arm and pulled her to a stop just as she reached the stairwell. “Don’t go,” he said.

“I’m doing this for you,” she snapped. Then added more gently, “Just let me go. Okay? I’ll be fine.”

Pemba watched as Dawa ran up the stairs and disappeared around the bend. He turned to Anna, but he wouldn’t meet her eyes. “Let’s go.”

They walked down the stairs and outside in silence.

“Uh, Pemba, what’s wrong?” asked Anna as they crossed the schoolyard to join the rest of the students on the hill overlooking the fjord. But Pemba didn’t answer.

Anna jumped in surprise as a small jolt of electricity ran up her leg. “Hey.” She turned to see what she had stepped on, but there was only a piece of paper.

Pemba grabbed her by the shoulders, grinning. “You felt it.”

“For a minute I thought it was another trigger,” she said. “But it’s nothing.”

“What do you know about triggers?” he asked, his voice dropping.

“Nothing. I mean… we should join the others.”

“Anna, tell me.”

Her Firemark throbbed, as it often did when she was near Pemba. She closed her fist. Pemba saw the movement and slid his hand down her arm. He took her hand in his and opened it gently. “How did you get this?”

“I don’t know. I was with June and my stone…”

Pemba placed his other hand over the Firemark and searched her eyes. Anna stared back, mesmerized. She had never noticed that his eyes had orange and copper flecks. “Your eyes… are beautiful.”

Pemba turned away. “We’ll miss the sunrise if we don’t hurry up.”

Anna scurried after Pemba, wishing she didn’t always blurt things out. They stopped at the top of the hill, slightly apart from the crowd. Anna stood awkwardly next to Pemba whose immobility made her feel even worse. She didn’t want to watch the first sunrise with anyone else. But she wasn’t sure Pemba wanted to be with her.

Little by little the sky ignited until finally the edge of the sun managed to pull itself up above the horizon. The darkness slipped from the town into the fjord and a cheer rose from the crowd, unified by a primordial response to the return of the sun. The teachers walked around, distributing the traditional custard rolls called sun buns that marked the occasion. Anna felt an incredible warmth spread through her as the sun’s rays caressed her cheek for the first time in two months. She closed her eyes and raised her face to the sun, basking in its gentle touch that she had almost forgotten. The sun tried valiantly to inch its way up into the sky, but after about ten minutes it sank back down again. As if the effort had been too much, leaving behind a pale gray sky in its wake.

Pemba stood behind Anna and pulled her against his chest. “I’m sorry.” His voice choked as his heart pounded against her back. “I really am.”

Anna put her hands on his arms and didn’t say anything.

* * *

Rakan sat in class wishing he could shift elsewhere. His trigger shouldn’t have left a Firemark on Anna’s hand. It hadn’t been set up that way. And yet he had been filled with inexplicable joy when he had seen it. It marked her as his. When she couldn’t be. She was a human. Rakan writhed silently as his rök twisted in agony, desperately trying to get free. Resisting the Call to Rise with Anna next to him, and knowing she wore his Firemark, had been an act of sheer will power. He hadn’t even been able to observe Jing Mei or the void-trails. He had failed Dvara. She had left with T’eng Sten to free Anna and all he had to do was observe Jing Mei. And he hadn’t. His rök lurched wildly in his chest. The room closed in on Rakan. There was no way he’d make it to the end of class without exploding. He eyed the door. Could he even make it that far? A wave of peace rolled over him. Another dragon was nuzzling him. He looked up in surprise. June watched him from across the room, her cobalt blue eyes open and friendly.

Rakan was flooded with an aching desire to respond, to nuzzle her back. A different ache flared up inside him, an ache he had always refused to acknowledge but which he could no longer deny: the ache of loneliness. Wave after wave of pain came back up, choking him with years of unacknowledged suffering. June wrapped him in warmth, easing his pain. Little by little, Rakan’s rök calmed down until he was once again in control. The wailing of his rök turned into a whimper, but he knew it wouldn’t last. He needed to join a Cairn.

The rest of the afternoon Rakan sat, watching June. Unable to even pretend he was doing anything else. He ached to merge with her, to know what she was thinking, to become part of her Cairn and share in a way that only dragons linked through the same Kairök could share. Rakan struggled to maintain control of his rök. Dragons didn’t heal each other unless they were members of the same Cairn or shared a blood tie. Jing Mei had no reason to touch him, and he couldn’t figure out why she had. But his rök didn’t care. It just wanted her to do it again.

The bell rang and Rakan hung back, letting everyone else run out of class. He lingered at his locker, confused, until the hall was empty. According to Code, he should have acknowledged Jing Mei’s help. But how could he thank a dragon he might need to kill? Especially when all he really wanted was to throw himself at her in a desperate attempt to merge with her – either by giving her his rök or taking hers. He flung his backpack over his shoulder and headed for the stairs. He felt June coming back up and froze. His body tingled in apprehension.