I glanced up at the sky. “Does the sun not rise here?”
“Nope, never,” Craig replied. “It used to, a long time ago.”
“That’s if you know where we actually are,” I stated. “And you could be wrong, which means we would have no idea where we are or how to get back.”
He poked a stick into the tiny fire I’d created to keep the chill away.
Kate sat near the fire, but well away from both of us, staring intently into the flames. She hadn’t said a word since we decided to take Craig’s suggestion and climb up here.
I hated to admit it, but it’d been a good one. The beast had come back, singed fur and all, with four more, but they hadn’t been able to climb up and get us.
My father always said even the tiny victories were worth celebrating. I counted this as a very tiny victory since we were currently trapped in an unknown world with dangerous creatures and I was unsure if Craig was going to try and kill me or not.
“Why don’t you just open up another portal and get us back?” Craig suggested. “Like the other guy did.”
“It’s not that easy to make a portal.” I refused to meet his gaze when it narrowed on my face.
“Seemed pretty easy to me.”
“Well, it’s not. We’ll just have to find another way.”
He barked a laugh, pointing the charred stick at me. “I knew it! You’re weaker here, aren’t you.”
I lifted one shoulder. “I was able to shift, that’s what matters.”
“But you weren’t able to use your magic, so we’re screwed. Stuck in The Burnt World until we find our way home except... oh wait,” he announced brightly, “there is no way home!”
I rolled my eyes. “if there’s a way here, then there’s a way to get out of here.”
“Not how it works, at least not with this place.”
“That doesn’t make sense! We landed her, didn’t we?”
“Because the witch’s magic interfered with another portal,” he explained. “It created a pocket for us to slip into, but unless we recreate it all exactly the same way, I doubt we’ll get back the way we came in.”
I was good at fighting, always had been, but magic and spells were beyond my skill set. That was the reason I had Jensen around. I needed to find him, get a portal open, and take Craig to my father. And Kate, too. Kate who should have been with her kin since birth, but wasn’t.
“Seriously?”
I flinched at Craig’s abruptness. “What?”
“You’re already plotting against me, I can see it in your eyes. Can we worry about surviving first?”
“I said I wasn’t going to kill you.”
“That makes me feel loads better.”
I held my hand to the flames, and they washed over my fingers. “It should.”
A strange sound came from Kate’s side of the fire, and we both turned, confused. Her head was lowered, and she shook uncontrollably.
I worried she was having a fit of some kind, maybe this Burnt World as Craig called it was affecting the bracelet and her ability to change.
But when she lifted her head, her cheeks were flushed, and she burst out laughing hysterically. She laughed so hard, she cried, holding her sides as she rolled backward into the dirt.
Craig and I exchanged a concerned look as she kept it up, not close to stopping anytime soon.
“Ah, Kate?” Craig tried, but she only laughed louder.
“I fail to see what’s so funny,” I said, and she sat up, wiping the tears from her face.
“What’s so funny,” she said in between gasping for air and more bouts of giggles as if she were a child, “is that you’re apparently a demon of some kind and you,” she said, pointing at me and laughing harder. “You’re a dragon! You changed into a dragon right in front of me!”
I stiffened. “I still fail to see the humor here.”
“And then,” she went on as if I hadn’t spoken, “then I find out Mama Lucy, who I thought was a witch, is actually a freaking witch! With powers, real powers! And we get sucked through a portal to land in this… this dark, terrifying place where apparently monsters really exist too! This, this is hysterical!” She was back to laughing as if she’d heard the funniest story in the world.
Craig grinned and chuckled with her, but there was nothing about our current predicament that was funny at all. “You two are insane,” I stated.
“Yes, yes, I’d have to be to believe this was all real,” Kate agreed. “That’s it, I’ve completely lost my mind, and this is all in my head.”
“No, it’s not, and you need to pull yourself together,” I snarled, tired of her attitude.
She might be a dragon on the inside, but this was not how we reacted to situations. We did not have mental breakdowns and laugh in the face of such dire circumstances.
“Forrest, come on, give her a break,” Craig said. “This is a lot to take in.”
“We need her focused. How do you think we’re going to get out of this mess if she can’t keep herself together for five minutes?”
Her laughter slowly quieted as she turned from me to Craig. “Please tell me I’m really crazy?”
“You’re not crazy,” I said as Craig said, “Maybe a little.”
We glared at each other.
“No, then that would mean… at the house, all of that actually happened?” she whispered, and all humor died from her face. Finally.
“Yes, it did—”
She threw herself at me over the fire, and we rolled back into the bushes.
“You asshole! What did I ever do to you?” She drew back her fist and punched me right in the nose before I could react. “You hurt Mama Lucy! And the kids! There were kids in that house!”
She tried to hit me again as Craig sat by and watched with glee.
“A little help,” I muttered as I dodged another hit and tried to catch her hands. “Craig!”
“Sorry, think you deserve this.”
“damned straight he does!” She tried to hit me again.
I managed to throw her off and pushed to my feet.
“You could’ve hurt those kids and Mama Lucy! If your guys hurt her before I get back, I’ll kill you!”
“Those guys weren’t all mine. Ask Craig.”
She blinked once then twice and turned to face Craig, holding up his hands as she stalked towards him next, while I stood by and watched.
“Now hold on just a second,” he said, struggling to find his feet and back away before she could hit him next. “They were only there because they followed Forrest. Mama Lucy said it herself, they couldn’t track me once I was inside the house because of the charms.”
Kate drew back her fist anyway, and I had to hand it to Craig, he took the hit like a champ, letting her deck him twice before he swiped out his foot and she fell to the ground with an oomph. Her arms flung out to her sides, and she just laid there, staring up at the sky.
“All of it happened,” she whispered, and we both nodded. “Will they hurt Mama Lucy and the kids?”
Craig’s shoulders sagged, and for the first time since meeting him face to face, I felt sorry for him. Slightly.
Craig made a half grimace. “Mama Lucy seemed pretty powerful. I don’t think my cousin and his hunters will stand much of a chance for long against her.”
“You’re really good at not answering questions,” she mumbled, still on the ground.
I walked over and held out my hand for hers. She eyed it warily, but Craig did the same, and together, we pulled her to her feet.
“I thought you knew,” I said and frowned when Craig started shaking his head frantically.
“Knew what?”
“Knew about our world, about what I was because of what you are.”
Craig groaned and turned away, hands clasped behind his head.
“And what am I?” Kate asked sharply. “An idiot for trusting him and for not realizing the man I ran into on the street was dangerous?”
“No, because you’re a dragon, too.”
Kate’s jaw dropped, and she stepped backward as a strangled sound escaped her mouth. She clasped the bracelet on her wrist, mumbled something about the dreams being real and then keeled over a second later.
Craig managed to catch her before I could and cradled her head on his leg.
“Nice going,” he growled. “She didn’t know what she was.”
“How could she not know?”
“It’s a long story.” He gave her a little shake, but she didn’t wake. “Right. I’ll take first watch. Get some rest. When she wakes up, I’ll wake you.”
“Or we both stay watch.” I sat down with my back to the fire and faced the trees surrounding us.
A foreboding feeling sank into my gut as Craig whispered, “Whatever you say, scale-boy.”
I rolled my eyes at his words and focused on my task, pondering all the while how someone could grow up and not realize a beast lived within them.