The Lost Dragon Princess

Chapter 3

That violet gaze roamed around the cavern, skimming over us, and I held my breath again. Even if my charm worked on a wyvern, a dragon might not be fooled. I’d scrounged and fought far and wide for my collection of protective magic, and most of the centuries-old trinkets hadn’t come with instruction manuals.

“Dysmay craymen, loreth.” The dragon’s deep baritone rang through the chamber with resonance that Darth Vader would have envied. “Craymen Xervanestaloqestal.”

The wyvern darted fully behind her stalagmite and hid, her pointed blue tail wrapping around the base as if she feared being torn away.

I touched another charm and mouthed the command word, hoping I could activate it without actually speaking. There was no way I was going to make a noise. Dragons could probably hear pins dropping on the moon.

“…and furthermore,” the dragon said, the charm translating the words in my mind, “you fled like a coward from your home realm, leaving the slain behind you to be discovered by their families.”

The wyvern was a criminal on more than one world? Not surprising. I was relieved to hear the dragon hadn’t come for me.

“You will return with me through the portal to be incarcerated until such time that you can be judged by the Dragon Justice Court. They will determine your punishment and your subsequent rehabilitation.”

Wait a minute. This guy wanted to take my target through a portal to another world? For rehabilitation?

Oh, hell no. The wyvern was going to die for the children she’d killed and the bones of the dead littered across the floor of this very cave. I’d been hired to kill her, not watch someone else cart her away.

I shifted Fezzik and leaned to the side enough to line my sights up with the wyvern’s head.

You can’t shoot her in front of that dragon, Damas warned. Don’t be fooled by his human form. He can kill you with a look.

I know. I’m going to need your help.

“I didn’t do it,” the wyvern called from behind her stalagmite.

“I see the lie staining your soul. Come with me now, or I will forcibly remove you from your miserable squalid hole.”

Please say the help you need isn’t for me to fight and slay the dragon, because that isn’t in my repertoire of abilities.

No, just lead him away. I’ll finish the job and sprint out of here. Sprint was an ambitious word considering the climb back up to the top of the cliff, but I would find a way. If he catches up with you, go back to your realm. I’ll call you back to Earth later when it’s safe.

You know he can follow me home, right?

I hesitated. Are you sure?

Dragons can do anything. There’s a reason they rule all seventeen of the Cosmic Realms.

They don’t rule on Earth.

Only because they don’t care about Earth. Damas watched as the dragon strode toward the wyvern. Correction: They haven’t cared about Earth in the past. For a dragon to come here, something must have changed. Or the wyvern committed an incredibly heinous crime.

She did. I rested a hand on Damas’s back. Please, lead the dragon away. I’m positive he’ll be too angry with me to chase you back to your realm.

That is not reassuring. He will kill you.

Not if I get away. Lead him far and lead him fast.

I don’t think you understand the power of dragons.

Then this next ten minutes should be educational. I waved him toward the tunnel entrance.

Just don’t die in the ocean. I don’t want my next handler to be a whale.

Blazing yellow light flared below, stealing all the shadows in the cave. Rocks shattered as the dragon hurled a magical attack at his foe. The wave of power pulverized the stalagmite, and dozens of others in the area, as it hurled the wyvern forty feet to the back wall.

An ominous snap erupted from the ceiling of the cave. Two stalactites plunged down, leaving my hiding spot on the ledge open and vulnerable. I could get killed simply by the raw power being hurled around.

The dragon lifted a hand, and the wyvern floated into the air and toward him. The winged creature spun, trying to flap her wings, her two legs flailing in the air, her lizard-like face panicked.

Now, Damas, I silently urged.

Damas didn’t argue with me further. He sprang from our ledge and ran toward the dragon, mouth opening as if he would take a bite.

Despite his magical stealth, the dragon sensed him coming. The wyvern thudded to the ground as he shifted his focus toward Damas.

The great silver jaguar sprang for his head. The dragon’s eyebrows twitched in faint surprise, but all he did was duck. Damas sailed over him, snapping at the dragon’s ear on the way by, but I could tell it was a feint. Even so, his snout bumped against an invisible shield and glanced off.

The dragon appeared more puzzled than afraid as Damas, a deadly creature that would make any predator on Earth quake with fear, sailed past him.

Damas landed and raced into the tunnel. It looked like the dragon would ignore him. My stomach sank.

Then Damas shouted telepathically, You hatched backward from your egg, you one-winged gimp.

The dragon’s violet eyes flared with furious light, and he whirled and started to sprint after Damas. But he paused in the mouth of the tunnel and looked back at the wyvern. His eyes flared even brighter, and yellow bands appeared around the wyvern, entrapping her and hoisting her in the air.

The dragon sprinted down the tunnel after Damas.

Be safe, my friend, I thought, hoping I hadn’t lied and doomed him to his death.

The wyvern spit and hissed, struggling against the magical bonds, but she couldn’t unfurl her wings, and her talons dangled a foot off the floor. With half of the stalactites turned to rubble on the ground, I had no trouble lining up my shot.

I hesitated, wanting Damas to get the dragon as far away as he could—the full mile that he could be parted from his figurine—before I killed the wyvern. I had no doubt the dragon would know when his would-be captive was dead, and I needed time to escape.

The honorable part of me regretted sniping the wyvern when she was defenseless, but I’d learned long ago that facing magical creatures in fair battles got humans killed. And this wasn’t an arena. This was justice, and it was my assignment. The wyvern had committed a crime, and I was the executioner.

I fired, Fezzik’s boom thundering in the enclosed space. The magical bullet left a trail of blue in the dim air as it thudded into the side of the wyvern’s head.

She shrieked but didn’t die instantly. Startlingly, the magical bonds holding her aloft evaporated, and she dropped to her feet. Without hesitation, she whirled, unctuous gray-red blood dribbling down the side of her head, and flew up to my ledge. I shot again, but the bullet barely sank in, her feathered torso protected by some magical armor.

As the wyvern landed, she flung a psionic attack at me—at my mind. A powerful urge plunged into my thoughts, a command to drop my weapons, fall to my knees, and expose my neck for a swift kill.

Growling, I shook it off.

Once, that might have worked, but since I’d started carrying Nightshade, it had grown easier to combat mental attacks.

The wyvern advanced, her large sharp beak snapping. Powerful leg muscles bunched, and she sprang toward me, talons extending toward my face.

Forcing myself to remain calm, I flicked Fezzik’s selector to automatic and held down the trigger. A thunderous rain of bullets slammed into her chest. Her wing flaps faltered, but momentum carried her forward, and she landed right in front of me.

Bullets riddled her chest. Crazy with fear of death—or fear of the dragon—she was somehow still alive, still attacking.

I jammed Fezzik into its holster and tore Nightshade from its sheath. As the wyvern lunged, beak snapping, I stabbed at her chest like a fencer. On the narrow ledge, with the wall looming to my right, there wasn’t room for sweeping blade work.

A wing swept in as she reversed her lunge and tried to deflect the blow. I was too strong—the sword cut into the blue leathery membrane and crunched into bone.

I have to tell you guys here, that once I had turned sixteen, my Dad had gifted me a sword and said that after one years of fencing and sword fighting lessons I would be given the family heritage and inheritance which rightfully belonged to me. It would have given to any son who would be going to war but since that was not happening, and there was a chance that I might be going in the Army my father figured that this would be the best way to prepare me for whatever comes next.

My friend Min had said that naming a weapon gives it far more power and it connected the weapon to your intent and to your soul and that made things really interesting for me, so I called it Nightshade because the blade was dark. It was a different kind of metal and my father had said that there was a myth revolving around the sword, that if I fed the sword my blood then it would be more attached me and not anyone else’s.

Needless to say I had done that as soon as he had left the room.

Blood spattered, and I jerked back, but not before droplets hit my hand and sleeve. Like acid, they burned through my clothing and into my skin, acrid smoke wafting up.

I snarled and lunged in again, this time feinting high for that sneering lizard face. She whipped her wing up to block, but I was already shifting my attack to one of her unprotected legs. The blade sank deep, and she shrieked.

In my mind, I saw the children she’d killed, their crumpled bodies on that blood-drenched beach. I stabbed again and again, varying the targets, and finding her heart. Finally, she fought no more.

As the wyvern tottered, on the verge of falling, I swept my blade across her neck, not caring when my elbow clunked against the stone wall. Her head flew off, thunking to the ground far below.

My blood was roaring in my ears, my heart pounding, but I didn’t pause to recover. I sprang over the body as it fell to the ledge, and sprinted for the tunnel. Already, I’d taken too much time.

Through my link with Damas, I sensed him swimming—he hadn’t been able to climb the wall, so he’d leaped to the sea far below. I also sensed the dragon shifting into his natural form—four legs, black scales, great wings that blotted out the sun when he flew—and swooping down after the jaguar.

I raced down the tunnel, jamming my uncleaned sword into its scabbard with a wince. There was no time to wipe it down, and I couldn’t climb with it out.

Only the knowledge that I wouldn’t survive the fall if I tumbled into the sea slowed me down. Carefully, I picked my way up the damp cliff, my fingers shaking.

Wind gusted, needling me through my sweat-drenched clothing and trying to tear me from the cliff. My rope jerked and twisted like a snake on a handler’s tongs. It taunted me as the end flapped against the rock to the left of my reach.

Rock gave way, and my foot slipped. I caught myself, heart lurching wildly.

A roar came from the ocean—a menacing baritone sound that made my very bones quail. The dragon.