Emma (Dark Fire) (7 page)

“A lot, but not enough,” Lydia agreed.

“Well, whatever happened, I’m glad you’re here. I thought you were still at Middleton Outpost,” Tyler said, motioning to the south.

“I was until a few weeks ago. When several of the border villages were attacked I followed the scum north,” Lydia said as a snarl curled her lip in anger. “We’ve been tracking the vermin, but can’t catch them. They’re using wizards to hide their movements.”

“Yeah, I killed a zombie not far from here, and Emma ran into Lester. Bernie attacked me and I gave him a good swipe in his mid-section. I also saw a girl, but she was too far away to tell if she was vampire or witch.”

“That doesn’t sound good, especially if Lester’s father, Lord Quarklin, is involved. As soon as I reach the fortress, I’ll tell General Maxwell. With everything else going on, having bloodsuckers so near the capital during school break will cause a complete uproar among the court peacocks.” She grimaced. “I guess it’s just as well I stopped at Minnie’s house for lunch.”

Tyler seemed to remember Emma and glanced down. “Minnie’s a distant cousin. We have the same great, great grandfather.” He frowned as another batch of dragons flew overhead. “I guess people must’ve panicked.”

Lydia snorted, propping a slender hand on her hip, she glanced between Emma and Keith. “That’s putting it mildly. Springville appeared in the middle of one of Earth’s villages. People started running and screaming. Martin Gulpenny was in dragon form when a horseless wagon smacked into him. I heard the metal wagon screech from two blocks away. People were shifting to dragon and gryphon, grabbing whatever child was nearest and taking to the air trying to escape. Parents were screaming for their kids. Then a group of teen gryphon showed up and started attacking the metal carriages. It was pure chaos.”

Tyler grimaced at her words then suddenly grinned. “Was Andrew home?”

“Your,” Lydia pointed at him, emphasizing the single word with a short growl, “miserable cousin was streaking through the air roaring as loud as he could and belching short bursts of fire. Shifting from dragon to wér, he’d drop onto roofs, and scream, ‘run for your lives! It’s the end of the world!’ When I get my hands on that heathen, I’m going to wring his neck. People automatically trust black dragons and he’s nothing but a menace.”

“It’s not entirely his fault. You know how much Minnie coddles him. He’s just young.”

“Young!” Lydia huffed in exasperation, throwing up her hands. “He’s half a year older than you. You weren’t that young five years ago.”

“Aw, come on Aunt Lydia, he never means any harm. You just don’t remember.” His mouth twitched, trying not to smile. “I’ve heard some of the pranks you pulled at our age. You had granddad pulling his hair out. As I heard, you filled the primary dark fountain with rose scented bubble bath and…”

Lydia’s growl cut him off. She glared at him. “I might be over four hundred, but I remember none of my pranks caused an entire village to evacuate in hysterics.”

“Whoa!” Keith interrupted with a stunned expression. “Did you say you’re four hundred
years
old?”

“Yes, why?” Lydia asked, shifting a bit closer to him.

“Four hundred years and you ask why?” Emma squeaked, mouth gaping in shock. “You look like you’re in your twenties! Does that mean you people are immortal?”

“Of course not, everyone eventually dies. Like all humans we live until we have a fatal accident or our mate dies,” Tyler said, a dark frown settled over his face. “Why would you even ask?”

“Humph!” Emma harrumphed. Clasping her arms across her stomach, she frowned at him. “This is Earth. We’re
normal
humans. You know mortals. I’ll live another sixty or seventy years max, before I grow old and die.”

Her words stumbled to a halt. Gasping, she clenched her hands tightly together as an ice-cold fire sweep through her, burning her and freezing her at the same time. Whimpering, she pressed a hand to the area above her heart as a feeling of desolation, of eternal emptiness, encased her chest.

No one paid her the least bit of attention.

The moment Emma said she would die, Tyler bent over double, cursing. An instant later, he threw back his head and roared. Despair filled the horrifying sound. He stumbled away, rushing toward the meadow. He shifted into dragon and flew away without a backward glance.

She whimpered softly. The icy feeling wasn’t the same as the vampire attack. The vampire’s glamour hadn’t made her feel lost, totally lost without hope and hollow inside. Yeah, hollow was a good description. She felt as if a big, chunky hole had suddenly appeared in her chest, a blank spot that hadn’t been there five minutes ago.

What the crap had Tyler done to her?

She didn’t doubt it was his fault. She’d been fine until he blew a gasket. His freaked-out reaction was too much of a coincidence.

“Okay,” she said in a long drawn-out voice, trying to make sense of Tyler’s actions. “What was that all about?” asking the obvious, anything to take her mind off her own aching body.

She glanced at her uncle, but refused to say anything about the frigid place growing inside her. If he realized she felt weird, he’d have her at the hospital so fast her head would spin.

Her earliest memory was of curling up on a chair in the emergency room, and knowing her daddy wasn’t coming home. Nope, no way, no how was she going to the hospital. She hated them.

“That boy is mentally unstable,” her uncle said firmly. “Emma, I don’t want you anywhere near him.”

“It’s not his fault.” Lydia’s face blanched of all color, looking sick. Her voice filled with anxiety. “Oh God, Keith, how old are you?”

His eyes narrowed as he answered her. “I’m forty-seven. Why?”

Lydia’s lip trembled. Turning her head away, her voice sounded strangled as she admitted. “Tyler thought Emma might be his mate.”

“Mate?” he asked, giving a fair imitation of Tyler’s growl. “She’s seventeen. Mate sounds a bit too permanent. We, the people of Earth, don’t have mates. We date and sometimes we marry, most of the time the marriage ends in divorce.”

“Divorce?” Lydia shook her head. “The word doesn’t translate. What do you mean?”

“No word for divorce? How can any society function without divorce?” Keith demanded.

Knowing divorce was a touchy subject for him, Emma eased forward. “Maybe we’re misunderstanding each other. On Earth, two people date for a while and then sometimes they either live together or get married. I think people plan to stay together, but the majority of couples eventually,” she sighed and shook her head, “well, either one of them cheats or they just stop getting along or no longer love the other one. For whatever reason, they leave each other and go their separate way. That’s divorce.”

By the time Emma finished, Lydia looked horrified. Her mouth had opened in a wide snarl, clearly showing her canines. Her teeth looked like Tyler’s, but Emma was getting a really up-close and personal view of Lydia’s sharp arsenal. “We don’t have divorce on Tuatha. We have one mate and only one mate.”

“And when that wonderful mate cheats?” Keith snapped at her, his face a mask of anger. “What happens? Do you just look the other way?”

“I would never cheat on my mate!” Lydia shouted, her face twisted, mirroring the sound of her revulsion. “No one would. The misery reflected in our mate mark would be unbearable.”

“You totally lost me,” Emma said, butting in before Keith could snap at the woman. “What’s a mate mark and how can it see emotion?”

“A mate mark can’t see anything. Once a mate is marked, the mark reflects their mate’s emotions.”

“You mean like if Tyler bit my neck or something?” Emma asked, drawing on her wide reading experience of how mates marked each other.

Lydia snorted. “An animal might mark a mate with a bite, not people. After mates meet for the first time, dorcha energy activates, heating an area of our body until the skin is warm to the touch. The energy pooling under the skin soon appears as a skin marking. Once complete, the dorcha flame reflects the emotions of our mate.”

“That doesn’t explain why you don’t have divorce,” Keith said obstinately, glaring at her.

She shook her head, frowning. “You don’t understand. The mark doesn’t simply reflect our mate’s emotions. If I had a mate, and I touched my mate mark, I would feel everything he was feeling. A rejected mate feels nothing but desolation inside them.”

Desolation? The word snapped Emma to attention. Oh, crap. A really bad feeling started building in the pit of her stomach. He wouldn’t do that to her... would he?

She shivered, trying hard not to freak-out. Feeling another person’s emotions was too weird for words. She was human, a mortal human. She liked Tyler, but not enough to mate with him.

Her racing thoughts paused.

She couldn’t see her entire body, but on the bare skin she could see, she didn’t notice any visible marks. No, wait, the mark was supposed to appear later. Slowly, so not to draw attention, she touched the bare part of her belly, neck, arms... she froze, not daring to move. Her wrist was warm, feeling as if it had fever. Add the fevered skin together with the black hole that had taken up permanent residence and she didn’t like the answer.

Desolation was a perfect word for the Black Hole.

Tyler must’ve rejected her as mate before the dorcha had time to do its thing, whatever that ‘thing’ was supposed to be. Maybe when he rejected her, the dorcha ripped part of her soul out or something. She fought back a building sob. That had to be why she now had a huge, aching hole where her heart used to be.

Fear edged into anger. What the crap had he done to her?

“What if a dragon mates to the wrong person?” Emma asked worriedly, trying to get her question out before her scowling uncle could blow-up at Lydia. “Are they stuck with each other?”

“Stuck with each other?” Lydia growled. “We don’t look at it that way, not ever.”

“I mean, I’m mortal. Why would Tyler think I’m his mate?” Emma asked, unconsciously rubbing her chest. How dare he form some kind of freaky-weird bond with her and not tell her anything. Then the stupid jerk snatched the bond away. She didn’t think she could stand the icy feeling for the remainder of her life.

Lydia sighed, shaking her head. “We don’t choose our mates.” She growled at Keith’s mocking laughter. “We don’t! Our bodies choose the perfect mate for us and each person only has
one
perfectly compatible person to spend their life. We spend our life searching for our mate. If you’re his mate, you will be the only one he ever has.”

Wrapping her arms around herself, Emma’s palm touched the warm flesh of her wrist. Not simply warm, her lower arm felt hot to the touch. Her fingers tightened around the spot and she recognized a flash of Tyler’s fury. The alien emotion only lasted a split-instant, before it disappeared. That microsecond of time was more than enough to realize she was in so much trouble.

Sweat popped out on her brow and she shivered.

Oh, boy, having a dragon angry with her was an entirely new experience. She was very glad she wasn’t in front of Tyler. She might find out what toast felt like.

So much for her theory that he had marked her then took it back.

Once Tyler’s angry emotion disappeared, the icy ache increased. The empty feeling was nearly overwhelming in its intensity. She swallowed and grasped at anything to pull her mind from the hollow void.

Shifting from foot-to-foot, Emma blurted, “But why did Tyler freak-out? He scared the crap out of me.”

“If you’re his mate, he just found out you’ll die in less than a hundred years,” Lydia said softly, her eyes glancing at Keith.

“Don’t I have anything to say in this mate thing?” Emma huffed.

“You can refuse him, but I’ve only heard of one woman who refused her mate. And, well, he didn’t live long after she refused him. Once we find our perfect mate, our lives revolve around each other.”

“But I’m not
perfectly
compatible for Tyler. I’ll be dead in sixty years. If he only gets one mate, what will he do when I die?” Emma asked. Frustration colored her voice.

She jerked her hand away from her arm, putting an abrupt stop to feeling his sporadic emotions. At the loss of his emotions, she shuddered. The black hole grew bigger, its icy edge shoving its way through her.

Well, darn it. She obviously didn’t have a choice; it was either bombardment by his emotions or get sucked into an icy void. That was just fantastic, she thought sarcastically.

“We don’t live past the death of our mate,” Lydia said, frowning at Emma as she rubbed her chest. “Once a permanent bond is established, and whenever our mark is touched, we feel every emotion our mate feels. Having a Chélah, a beloved mate, die is more than our mind can handle. He’ll die when you do.”

Lydia glanced up at Keith. “Once we bond, we aren’t even attracted to another person. There is no such thing as divorce on Tuatha Dé Danann.”

Emma knew there would be no waiting to see if Tyler was her mate. A dragon had marked her. She was his mate. Yeah, she wasn’t too excited over that fact. If she could feel his emotions, he could feel hers. Did he care that her heart felt like he’d ripped it in half? That she could feel the horror and disgust that he felt for her?

“On Earth, you don’t go around telling someone you are mated,” Keith said stubbornly, folding his arms in a defiant gesture.

“On Tuatha, it’s what every person yearns for. Maybe having someone who loves you more than their own life is more than your poor mortal brain can comprehend!” Lydia snapped back, glaring at him. Her deep throated growl breaking the peace of the meadow as she stormed away.

Chapter - Cavern Springs

The next day Emma wished she’d stayed home. Every TV channel was covering The Arrival and she could be watching the live news coverage.

Instead of staying home, she was on her way to the small town of Cavern Springs, Arkansas. The twisting two-lane highway, with tall trees bordering either side, was the only road between Beaver Dam and town.

“The sheriff should’ve put up a sign telling everyone the road is under water,” Emma said, wondering how long it would take to reach town.