by Jessica Krueger
Atalya Compound, Honduras
Present Day
Later, after Ma’lak had helped clean up and was walking back to his office, a jungle drum ringtone blasted into the night. Ma’lak fished his phone out of his pocket. His daughter’s name flashed across the front.
“Buenas noches, Sofia,” he said, smiling for the first time since receiving the news.
“Hola, Papá. How are you doing tonight?”
“Great, now that I’m talking to you. You’ve been gone far too long.”
She chuckled. “I miss you, too.”
“How is Imani treating you?”
“She’s a strong but fair chief. The transfer went well. My apartment in Chicago is quaint, and I have an interview at the Chicago Hospital next week.”
“You’ll do great.” You always do. Even after three centuries, you still make me proud.
“I’m not very worried about it.” She yawned. “Has anything changed at the territory?”
“Ramon got the government to sell more of the preservation.”
“How is the clan handling everything?”
“Not well. You know how hard it is for us to regulate our dragons, especially the children. Controlling when and how often we shift. It’s not a long-term solution. I need to find us a permanent home. A place where we can let our dragon side free.”
“Why don’t you ask Keiran for help with an Illusion?”
“You know why.” He squeezed the bridge of his nose. “Ellnia left the Illusion to protect the codex, but also the Illusioned land for our people.”
“You’re still as stubborn as ever. Ellnia left you an impenetrable cave system housing a supposed ancient book—codex—what-have-you. You’ve been chasing after that book even before I was born, but you’ve never stepped foot outside Honduras.”
“Why would I?”
“To see the world? I don’t know. You’re not just a guardian of the cave. You deserve to go on the adventures you read to me as a child.”
A phantom ache for those childhood stories—tales of distant lands, forgotten treasures, and the vibrant tapestry of the world beyond these borders—resonated deep within him. It was a yearning he had long since learned to suppress, a luxury he could never afford. “I can’t when I know my people are suffering.”
She sighed. “How do you even know the codex will give you the location of the secret city or that it even exists?”
Because my instincts say so. And there was hope that the impenetrable cave system might meet its demise. He considered telling her about the novel that Daxton, a chief from the U.S., had sent him, but thought better of its childish contents.
“Papá…you’ve always been able to find a solution. Just like you did after that Tattered One attack when I was younger.”
Her words struck straight to his heart, which bled over innocent lives, and nearly his daughter’s. Because he had failed to incorporate humans in guarding positions in the past, an Tattered One was able to convince a gang to attack their base. While they were defending their lands from the humans, the Tattered One entered their capital, intent on taking out the dragon children.
“You changed your protocols since then, and everything’s worked out,” she continued.
“I know…” I just can’t let that happen again.
“Boss.” The garbled word emitted from the walkie-talkie on Ma’lak’s belt.
“Can you hold on a minute?” He grabbed his walkie and spoke into it. “What’s wrong?”
“We have…a disturbance…at L-3.” Edgar’s voice came in breathy.
Ma’lak’s internal beast reared its head, alert and ready. This must be the Fallen Daxton warned me about.
“Sorry, Sofia, I have to go,” he said into the phone. “I’ll call you back when I can. Love you.”
“Love you too, Papá.”
He hung up, lifted the radio, and said over the line, “What’s your status?”
“We have her restrained,” Edgar said. “The fucking humans couldn’t see her.”
His mouth dried. Holy, Ellnia. Daxton was right. “Bring her here.”
Adrenaline flooded his system, and his lips quirked at the sides. He strode into his office and headed to his desk, where a comic book lay on the otherwise clean cedar surface. He lifted the book he’d received from Daxton. Heavy strokes of color muted the figure on the front, so it was impossible to discern if it was male or female. Still, the wings with white feathers depicted an angelic image.
A Fallen angel.
A creature forced to reincarnate as a human as punishment, who could separate into a spirit form to hunt demons.
How had she gotten past his guards? According to the position Edgar gave, they stopped her three meters from the entrance, meaning she had snuck past twenty-five dragon and human sentries.
Ma’lak had believed Daxton was just making up an elaborate tale, like the prankster he had been since Ma’lak last knew him.
“Haven’t you always wondered where the Tattered Ones come from?” Daxton had asked him over the phone a week ago.
“A Fallen killing another and becoming evil? I just don’t see how we’ve never seen or heard of them before. I’ll believe it if she gets here.” Ma’lak had hung up to the sound of Daxton’s laughter.
“Let’s see how real you are, Miss Thea Aurum.” He stowed the book away in the drawer and took a seat in his brown leather chair to wait.
Tapping his mouse, the computer screen awoke. Eight black-and-white camera feeds popped up, surrounding the largest frame in the middle, which showed the cavern entrance from a high vantage point. Foliage ran rampant around the slanted ground leading down to a flat rock face; one that no drill or dynamite could break through. Ellnia had made sure no one could get inside to find the codex.
Behind a rocky outcropping, two casually dressed guards, Edgar and Abel, jumped into a Gator utility vehicle. He squinted, unable to see her.
Everyone else continued to patrol in their positions as if they hadn’t witnessed the disturbance.
“Edgar, did any of the humans notice you fighting?” Ma’lak asked into the walkie when the vehicle moved out of the camera’s view.
“Negative. Abel brought her around the cave.”
Ma’lak sighed. Their wrestling with something invisible would be difficult to explain to the human guards.
Twisting the walkie’s knob, he switched to a channel that included both dragons and humans. “I need two guards to take position at the front while I deal with Edgar and Abel.” He added a hint of heated dragon dominance to his voice. “Everyone think twice before you get into petty quarrels over women.”
“Understood,” said another dragon guard, Eva.
On the camera feeds, Eva and another dragon left their post and headed to the cave entrance.
A loud bang sounded at the front of his office. His back grew rigid. Outsiders rarely reached Atalaya, the dragon capital of Honduras, tucked within the thickest of jungles and difficult terrain.
Honduras didn’t have an Illusion dragon, so they relied on the dwindling nature preserve to hide their scattered treehouses and the cave system. For the poachers or ranchers, the guarded cave entrance that appeared more like a firearm dealer’s base was enough to make them think twice before trespassing. But that hadn’t bothered their intruder.
Ma’lak’s men struggled to drag their trespasser into his office. Edgar bled from his already crooked nose while a scruffy-looking Abel limped on his right leg. That said something when they were both trained fighters with dragon instincts. Ma’lak turned his attention to the woman and paused, sucking in a deep breath.
She was wild.
The fierceness of her presence whacked into his being. Her leather trench coat slipped open and closed as she fought, exposing flashes of a shapely body. Long legs made her as tall as the two males pushing her. Her long hair swept to the left, revealing shaven hair on one side. Dirt and debris clung to her bleach-blond tendrils. A smile graced her dirty face even as her lip bled. Excitement lit her expression as they shoved her into the chair in front of his desk. Her liveliness stretched over him, making him twitch with anticipation.
Edgar stepped forward, sweat beading on his large forehead, and dropped a belt on the counter. Ma’lak raised an eyebrow at the .45 caliber pistol and sheathed short sword.
Interesting.
“You guys the mafia or something?” she asked and huffed as they held her down. Her bent shoulders suggested the fight had left her.
Still, Ma’lak’s muscles stayed coiled and ready.
Edgar wiped his bleeding nose. “I could only see her using my dragon’s senses. But my Insight can barely detect her.”
That answered how she had gotten so far. Ma’lak had more human guards than dragons. Edgar was right that she barely emitted a scent. His Insight, the sixth sense of their kind, picked up the subtle spirit energy of innocence, guilt, and metal—not the normal basic signature of a human.
“Excellent work,” Ma’lak said. “Fill the others in. But to the humans, we’ll play it off as if you got into a fistfight and I nearly suspended you. You two take the open positions. You are dismissed.”
The men released her.
Tension in his gut eased, and Ma’lak’s muscles loosened.
She stayed in the chair but twisted to wink at Edgar. Ma’lak’s beast side growled—an act of defiance that hadn’t happened to him in years. His arm flexed as the dragon tore for control of his limbs. His other side wanted to wreak havoc on the male who received such attention from her, even if it felt like she marked Edgar for future retribution.
His territorial behavior made little sense. He caged his beast with his ironclad discipline. He didn’t have time for disobedience or misplaced allegiance.
This was the woman Daxton had spoken of—the hair just as he described. He hadn’t expected her to try to break into the cave, though. Surely Daxton had told her that Ma’lak would work with her.
“Miss Aurum,” he said, speaking English.
“Glad you know my name already,” she murmured, twisting her wrists, as if looking for a weakness in the restraint. “There’s no need for introductions then.” He tried not to gawk as she wriggled her arms behind her, presenting the ample curvature of her breasts.
“You know you’re in dangerous territory?” Ma’lak said, wanting to instill fear even if she’d come prepared. “Women go missing in these parts daily.” Never in his territory, but she didn’t need to know that. He’d let her decide whether that was a threat.
“And you know I could call in some higher-ups to look into the operation going on here.” Her green eyes glowed like the jungle surrounding his office.
He stood, pulling the machete from the sheath on his belt. She eyed the blade. Her calm composure and broad grin suggested more anticipation than fear. As he touched the smooth skin of her hands, an unfamiliar sensation flowed through him like the zing of touching one’s tongue to a battery. What the hell?
The hitch in her breath reached his ears.
He moved her wrists apart, and with a clean slice, he freed her. “Better?”
“Yes.” She rubbed her wrists and sat back like she owned the place.
If you want to take my codex, you have another thing coming. He sat on the front corner of his desk, facing her. “A cordial knock would have been appreciated instead of the theatrics. I do believe we have the same goal in mind.” You opening that solid Illusion like Daxton thinks you can so I can retrieve Ellnia’s Codex.
“I doubt it. I’ve been to enough of these showdowns to know men like you stomp around, demanding everything is theirs. You’d use me and take the codex and everything else, leaving me to go home empty-handed.” She crossed her arms.
She wasn’t wrong on that front. He didn’t know that he’d let her walk away with anything. Especially when the local Keeper dragons also had dibs on any of the dragon artifacts in that cave system.
“We can work something out so that doesn’t happen, Mrs. Aurum,” he said. “Our mutual friends said we can help one another out, so let’s talk through the details and negotiate what we want.”
“I’ll stop you there and cut to the chase,” she said. “You and I both know there’s no way through that Influence sealing off the cave. I’ll be rotting my years away like you, trying to get through. But I will offer you a trade.”
Influence? Right. That’s what they call Illusion. He tried not to let disappointment weigh him down. So much for Daxton’s theory that she might find a way through the barrier. Hope still lingered, her frozen expression hinting at a talented bluffer.
“A trade for what?” he asked.
“I really don’t think you want feds snooping around your site. So, if you answer a question of mine, I’ll leave without incident.”
Boiling anger rose. How dare she threaten my land and people. “And what if I just keep you here so you can’t alert your feds?”
She whipped a phone out of her coat pocket. “I have them on speed dial.”
Even if the government was looking for any way to take his land, he had enough hands in federal pockets that he didn’t care to call her bluff. But he would call her on the other. The sparkle in her gaze and slant to her mouth, as if she perpetually tried to hide her smirk of exhilaration, spoke the truth. She could pass the Illusion. That’s why she wanted to leave. To have another chance at the cave without his presence. And he was going to let her. If only to follow her afterward.
“What is your question?” he asked.
She slid her phone back. “How old are you?”
He stilled, taken aback. She can’t be serious. “I’m forty-two.”
“That may be the age you appear to be, but I know you’re a dragon.”
Fire burned his throat and behind his eyes. Her offhand way of speaking about his secret roused his defensiveness. He had an entire clan to protect from outsiders.
Damn you, Daxton. She wasn’t Marked as dragon trusted, and yet, she wielded knowledge about them. “What has he told you?”
“Boytoy? Nothing. Bookworm did. But I’m not your average Joe either.”
Boytoy? Bookworm? Were those some new terms he wasn’t familiar with or just odd—
Enormous wings sprouted from her back.
Enraptured, he leaned back as he took in the view, chest constricting.
Where did she hide them? The mangled appendages expanded across the width of the room. Only a handful of feathers clung to their outline.
He blinked. She really is a Fallen angel. Ma’lak wanted to raise hell for fear of his people. Her kind was the origin of a Tattered One, but his instincts didn’t consider her a danger. The innocent part of her energy flowed to his dragon Insight, reassuring him.
“I won’t spill your secrets,” she said. “There’s no profit in it for me. Now, answer my question.”
For some reason, he believed her. “I’ll be coming into my eighth century within a few years.”
Her wide, toothy smile was as much genuine as feral. She shot to her feet, wings disappearing from view, and headed for the exit.
He stood up from the desk. “Where are you going?”
She stopped at the door, casting a look over her shoulder. “Told you I’d be out of your hair.”
Her stare scorched him.
She tossed a wave in his direction and left. He rubbed his beard as a tentative grin snuck onto his face. That woman is something else.
Unable to explain why he needed to see her again, he pulled up the camera feed and rewound the video. Twenty minutes prior, he stared at something invisible knocking the crap out of his men. Confused, he reversed it again, and this time flooded his eyes with the energy of his dragon.
Thea had sauntered between the two with the confidence of a prowling cat. Abel made a sudden grab for her, and she froze. He tugged at her arm, and Thea yanked free. But Edgar shoved her into Abel. Unbalanced, she fell into him, and he grabbed her arms to restrain her.
A growl erupted from Ma’lak’s chest, and he paused the video. Not understanding his dragon’s protectiveness, he shoved his beast back into a cage of duty. My job is to protect my men and Ellnia’s legacy. His dragon should’ve been proud that his sentries had taken care of a menace. It quieted, but in no way was it pacified. Its tail twitched back and forth like an agitated feline.
He started the video once more. She was an agile fighter, landing targeted attacks to escape her captors. The two men nearly failed to capture her, but with one last tackle, Abel zip-tied her.
When she sat across from Ma’lak, she didn’t look like someone caught red-handed, as if she’d learned her lesson. Instead, she looked like she had found her Christmas presents and couldn’t wait to tear into them.
This wouldn’t be the last time he’d see Thea Aurum. She’d return, and when she did, he’d be waiting.
