Dragon Mine (A Hidden Novella) (4 page)

I
heard you were working at an aerospace firm in Atlanta,” Elle said, trying to fill the silence once they were in the confines of her truck. She wanted to know about his life in Atlanta, all that trivial stuff. As long as he didn’t talk about still remembering her, the way she tasted…the words still made her tremble.

“I design parts for experimental aircraft for a government contractor. Some of it is top-secret stuff. And I get to climb around aircraft engines and get dirty.” He gave her a heart-stopping grin. “Checking up on me?”

“Lyra told me when I ran into her once, happy to share information about your life even though I hadn’t asked.” Nope, she hadn’t acted the least bit curious, telling herself she didn’t give a whit about what he was up to as she soaked in every detail. Not dating anyone seriously. Paintball champion. Pilot. Living a Mundane life, could she believe that? Elle suspected that Lyra was trying to get them back together, clearly feeling bad about her part in their breakup.

“A truck.” He looked around the cab, patting the door. “Wouldn’t have figured you for one.”

“I break and train horses at a ranch now, and I’ve got my own horse. A truck makes it easier to haul the trailer, hay, that sort of thing.”

“I remember how much you loved horses, and how you gave up a career working with them for your dad.”
The same way you gave up me for him.

Oh, yeah, she heard the unspoken words. He said she’d hurt him. He’d never told her that before. But of course now she could see that his anger had been covering his pain.

“The first time I broke things off was so you didn’t get fired, okay? You were getting great experience at the factory, and there was a possibility of you getting a job there after college. I didn’t want you to lose all that over our raging teenage hormones.” She held out her hand as his mouth opened. “I know it was more than that now, but I was seventeen. I had no idea what love was.”

“So you broke it off for me? To save my job?”

“Yes.”

“Well, you could have given me a choice. I would have chosen you.”

Zing
. There went the arrow right into her heart. “I had other reasons for breaking it off. We were both going to college soon, something an intense relationship like ours would interfere with. And a Deuce/Dragon match is frowned upon in Crescent society. Dating a Deuce would bring peace at home. All in all, I thought it was for the best.”

“And I liked working at the factory,” she added. “Did it make my heart pound with excitement? No. But I was okay with the compromise.”

“I suppose you believe men and women can be just friends, too.” He pulled his cell phone from his pocket and made a call. “Lyra, it’s me…Yeah, I’m in town. I ran into Elle and guess what? Her father’s missing, too, and that can’t be a coincidence. I’m staying clear of you for now because something evil is at play here…I’ll tell you when I know more…” His expression darkened as Lyra’s high-pitched voice squawked on the other end. “I haven’t abandoned you for Elle. You know where my loyalties are. I gave up
everything
for you and Pop, so don’t throw that crap at me. …Fine, I'll talk to you later.” He disconnected, his mouth in a tight line. His cheeks were flushed in anger. “She says she found something in Pop’s bedroom, but since I wasn’t sharing, neither was she. I think she’s bluffing.”

Elle’s voice came out soft when she asked, “Was I that ‘everything’ you were talking about?”

“Yeah.” He met her gaze. “You really don’t get it, do you? How much you meant to me. Dragons don’t love half-assed. When we choose a mate, we love with all that’s in us. We possess, consume, and we are possessed and consumed by the person we love.”

She took in those words, swallowing hard. He’d chosen her as his mate? The word twanged a primitive chord inside her. “What does that mean, ‘choose a mate’?”

“The Dragon part of us is like the beasts who roamed the earth many centuries ago. The ones that inspired all the legends and stories. They mated for life, fiercely loyal and insanely heartbroken when their mate died. Our Dragons often choose a mate, and mine chose you.”

“I’m not even a Dragon,” she said through a tight throat.

Kirin shrugged. “The beasts don’t always care about that, just like I didn’t care. It picked up my feelings and agreed that you were an amazing woman. And it doesn’t care that we aren’t together anymore. It’s made its choice, which is a real pain in the ass since we’re not together anymore.”

“Can’t it change its mind?”

He gave a slow shake of his head. “Our Dragons are very stubborn.”

“Well, tell it how its equally stubborn person betrayed me and that I am not changing my mind.”

“It heard you, but it doesn’t believe you.”

“Well, tell it—oh, never mind. This is crazy.” She’d never gotten a handle on the Dragon Crescents having an entity inside them or the way their tattoos had a consciousness.

She pulled into an upscale neighborhood, then turned onto her nana’s street. Her house stood out with her untamed trees and bushes “kept in the natural state as God intended.” Like many Deuces, she had things hanging across the front entrance of her home. To the untrained eye, or rather, the Mundane eye, they looked like an eccentric assortment of tacky thingamabobs: dried herbs, plastic birds, crystals. They were always significant to the dweller, though.

Elle cut the engine and looked at Kirin. “You sure you want to do this?”

“I’m not afraid of the big, bad witch.”

“Stop that. You know Deuces don’t like being called witches unless
they
consider themselves witches.”

“I’ll play nice. Let’s get this over with.” He pushed out, shoving the door closed.

As they walked up the concrete path, the hairs prickled at the back of her neck. A rustle in the bushes made her jump, and she bumped into Kirin. His hands automatically closed over her shoulders and pulled her close.

The front door opened, and Nana’s face peered out of the crack, looking every bit like a Romanian gypsy with her large nose, dark eyes, and black scarf over her head. “Ellie! Have you heard from your—” She took in Kirin with flared eyes. Her voice lowered to a harsh whisper as she looked behind them. “Get in here quick. The cursed Brownies are out tonight, causing all kinds of problems. And I’m not talking about the ones selling cookies.”

A face peered through the leaves in the bush, eyes glowing. Kirin hissed at the Brownie, and the Elemental shrank back. As Elle passed, it grabbed at her ankle, its jagged nails scratching her skin.

Kirin reached into the bush, his hand going around the Brownie’s neck. It was still hidden in the bushes, so any Mundane who happened to look over would only see him throttling the bush. With a fierce expression. If her ankle didn’t sting like a bitch, she’d laugh.

The Brownie’s eyes bulged. She couldn’t hear what Kirin was saying beneath his breath, but when he let go, it scurried away. Kirin ushered Elle into the house, closing the door behind them.

“No, I haven’t heard from Dad,” Elle said in answer to her nana’s cut-off question. “Have you?”

Nana shook her head, but her gaze pinned Kirin before shifting to Elle. “Don’t tell me you and the Dragon boy have taken up again.”

Elle rubbed her forehead. This was how it had been when she and Kirin had dated. “This is about Dad being missing, Nana. Please be civil.”

Kirin’s nostrils twitched. “You’re bleeding.” He bent down and lifted the bottom of her pant leg. “The Brownie got you.” He stroked the skin surrounding the three scratches.

All of her focus was on his fingers touching her skin and not the sting of the scrapes.

Nana eyed them. “Must get the Earthen.” She moved fast for a woman who was, as she liked to say, old as dirt.

Nana returned with a brass bowl filled with a brown liquid and nudged Kirin out of the way. She dipped her fingers into the sludge and rubbed the nasty-looking stuff on Elle’s scratches. It looked and smelled like manure. That scent brought good memories of working in the barn with the horses, but most people didn’t get that nice connotation.

Like Kirin, whose nose was scrunched. “What
is
that stuff?”

Nana dipped her fingers in again. “It is a type of healing dust, mixed with shark oil, used to disinfect against all vile creatures’ attacks.” She flicked it at Kirin.

Elle shot a look at her. “Nana.”

The first time Nana and Kirin had met, he’d held out his hand, and she’d made a rude Deuce gesture. It had never gotten better.

“I don’t understand why you have brought him into my home,” Nana muttered, coming to her feet.

“And I don’t understand why you and Dad dislike Dragons so much,” Elle said. “I get the discord in general, but your feelings go deeper.”

Nana shrugged. “We have seen the beastly nature of them firsthand. They pretend to be fierce but they are cowardly. They pretend to be loyal but they betray those they love.”

“Hey—” Kirin started to say, but Elle cut him off.

“And yet, Dad married one.” Then had forbidden her from dating one. The teenaged Elle had thrown that bit of hypocrisy in her father’s face when he’d told her to break things off with Kirin. “So there
is
a real reason for your feelings.”

Nana’s face shuttered, as it did whenever the subject came up. “It is not my place to say.”

Elle let out an annoyed breath. This wasn’t the time to press, in any case. “I brought Kirin because his father is also missing.” Elle pulled the Oreos bag from her tote and held it out. “What is this?”

Nana’s eyebrow arched. “A bag of cookies that smells very bad.” She slowly reached for it. Her nose twitched, and her voice dropped to a fearful whisper. “Shadow Magick ash.” She ran to the kitchen and dumped it down the drain, running the disposal and chanting under her breath.

“What does that mean?” Elle yelled over the noise.

Nana cut the disposal and came back to the living room. “Driftwood is used in ceremonies in which a god is summoned and Shadow Magick is performed. The ash retains the scent of magick. I was only present at one such ceremony, and I still remember that smell. Where did you find it?”

Elle’s stomach was getting tighter as the pieces came together. “At the factory.” She pulled up the pictures on her cell phone. “We found this on the floor.”

Nana’s eyes widened. “Summoning symbols.”

“I think I know what was being summoned.” Elle described the creature that Kirin fought, remembering the fear and shock she’d felt as it hovered over him.

Shame tightened Nana’s face, no doubt at the thought of her son Conjuring. “He may be off somewhere trying to find out how to destroy it.”

“I found this, too, in the ashes.” Elle held up the photograph fragment. “I can’t see what it was. My magick won’t go deep enough.”

Roz took the piece and closed her eyes. “It has the essence of Shadow Magick, too. Only powerful Deuces can reach past the barriers. I see…” Her eyes blinked beneath her closed lids, and they snapped open. “Nothing.”

You lie, Nana.

“Try again. Please.”

With an impatient sigh, Nana closed her eyes. The moment her eyes blinked, Elle grasped her arm. The photograph flashed into her mind, too.

Elle gasped and dropped her hand. “Stein?”

Nana’s expression grew stern. “You have opened a can of worms by bringing him here. But he is here now. The worms are free.” She wiggled her fingers.

Elle wasn’t going to hide evidence, not like
some
people she knew.

Kirin pushed away from the desk and came closer. “Huff was burning a picture of my father while doing some dark magick?”

Nana’s hands shot out, one toward Elle, one reaching for Kirin. “I need to see the creature.”

Kirin eyed her gnarled hand. “Through some kind of Deuce sorcery?”

Elle clasped her nana’s hand. “If we put ourselves back in the scene, she can experience what we did.”

His eyes widened. “She’ll invade my mind?”

“A scary thought, no?” Nana smiled. “You must trust me, boy.”

Kirin’s mouth tightened, but he took her hand. That simple gesture took Elle’s breath away.

Nana closed her eyes. “Be in that moment again.”

Elle pulled herself back to seeing Kirin fighting that thing, of summoning her energy into her orb and throwing it. She heard Nana’s intakes of breath as both of their memories and feelings bombarded her at once.

A couple of minutes later, Nana pulled her hands free as though they were getting burned. “The entity is a tulpa.”

Elle asked, “Is that the same as a thoughtform?”

“Both are created by the intense concentration of a powerful mind. A thoughtform is more like a ghost. Even Mundanes have been known to create them. Tulpas, in terms of the Hidden, are created with Shadow Magick and, as you saw, are more physical in nature. For a while they do their creator’s bidding, but eventually they break free. They feed on the energy in which they are made and continue to act on it.”

Elle said, “I remember you telling me about a Deuce who brought back his dead wife’s spirit and then died soon afterward. You were trying to dissuade me and my friend Gina from using dark magick to contact her dead brother. I thought maybe you’d made it up.”

“It happened, child. The bereaved man created the tulpa with the intention to resurrect the visual form of his wife. For a while, the tulpa obeyed. Others even saw the wife’s image. The man’s lifeless body was found sometime after that. They figured that when the tulpa broke free it fed on the man’s desperation and grief. Given the timing, it probably took three days for the tulpa to suck his life’s essence out of him.”

Kirin clenched his fists. “Lyra said our father’s bedroom was a wreck, as though someone—or something—attacked him. Huff created that tulpa to kill my pop.”

Elle hated the thought. “No. He wouldn’t go that far.”

“Think about it, Elle. It holds angry energy, and it wants to kill.”

“But if that’s true, where is his body?”

His mouth tightened. “That’s what we have to find out.”

She turned to Nana. “What happened to the tulpa? They must have gotten rid of it.” What she really wanted to know was, how could they get rid of the one at the factory?