16

Kate

We set out early, or I guessed it was early. There was no night, or morning in this world. No way to tell time and it bothered me. I wanted to know how many hours I’d been away from Mama Lucy and if she was alright. If the kids were unhurt.

I itched to get back home and figure out if Forrest was right and I did have a role to play in whatever the hell was going on.

Or I was crazy, this was all inside my head, and I was currently living out this fantasy in an asylum. Both were possibilities as far as I was concerned.

I carried the sword since I refused to remove my bangle yet. Craig had relit his torch with the potion before we left the cave, and Forrest brought up the rear of our trio, traipsing as quietly as we could through this dying world.

I had no idea how far we walked. My mind was too cluttered with denial of who I was and what I remembered my father teaching me so many years ago. Why would I need to know how to fight?

But those men who came to the cottage… they weren’t men at all. Carefully, I shot a glance over my shoulder, but Forrest was too busy watching our surroundings to see me watching him.

Dragons.

Dragons had killed my dad and probably my mom, too.

“There it is,” Craig uttered, and I tripped over my feet trying to stop, running right into the back of him.

Forrest reached out to steady me with a worried look, and I flinched away from him.

Craig’s brow arched at it, but he didn’t say anything about it. “It’s more rundown than I thought and completely out in the open.”

I turned to see where he pointed, and my blood ran cold as a strangled noise escaped my lips.

“Kate?”

My eyes darted to Craig, but I still couldn’t get the words out. The temple, or what was left of it, had clearly been part of a much larger structure, like a castle perhaps. The same castle and surrounding landscape I saw in a vision.

“We shouldn’t be here,” I managed to whisper.

“We have to, we need to get home,” Craig insisted, but I shook my head harder and backed away again.

“No… no, we can’t be here. Do you have any idea what this place is?”

I blinked, and all I saw were the dead bodies scattered across the ground, bloodied and broken. The screaming intensified and when I blinked again, dragons flew in the skies, fire raining from their mouths against a shadow that only grew more and more despite their fierce attack. The rain that fell wasn’t rain. Oh no.

It was blood. I felt it hit my skin and rubbed against my arms, desperate to wash it off.

“How do you know what this place is?” Forrest asked sternly.

The beast he said lived within me reared its head, and I snarled at him, a fiercer growl than before, vibrating through my chest. His lips thinned, but he took a half-step back warily.

“I’ve been here before,” I snapped.

Craig half-smiled until he realized I wasn’t kidding. “You can’t have been.”

“I was, or I saw it,” I said and rubbed harder at my arms, but the vision of blood was gone, as were the bodies and the aerial attack that had been so vivid only moments before. “Dead, so many dead and the shadow. It was here.”

“You mean it is here,” Craig said, but I knew what I’d seen. “You’re not making any sense. How do you know all of this?”

I didn’t want to tell them, but maybe it would convince them we couldn’t go there. We had to find another way to get home, any way that did not involve being here where so many violent ends to life occurred.

“I saw a battle here,” I whispered, as if afraid somehow I’d get sucked right back into that moment. “I touched a dagger in that witch’s shop, and I saw this place, but it wasn’t destroyed, at least not completely.”

“You had a vision?” Forrest asked confused.

“No, maybe? I don’t know, alright! All I know is I saw this place and the shadow, plague whatever… I’m pretty sure it destroyed it.” I chanced a glance back towards the ruins and inwardly sighed in relief when no more dead bodies appeared. “There were people running and screaming as they died and an army of dragons in the sky trying to fight it, but we… we couldn’t.”

“We?” Craig asked with a worried look to Forrest. “What do you mean, we?”

I tilted my head as I whispered, “I was in the body of one of the dragons.”

“Wow,” Craig said, shaking his head. “This just hit a whole new level of insane.”

“You saw the final battle that ended this place? How is that possible?”

I ignored Forrest and only focused on Craig. “I don’t know. But I know that shadow was here, and it killed everyone. I didn’t have to see the end of the fight to feel that.” I rubbed my arms to try and chase away the sudden chill, but it lingered.

Forrest reached out as if to drape an arm around me for warmth and I pulled away.

“Don’t touch me.”

“What’s wrong with you?” he snapped. “I am your kin, and yet you show anger and fear towards me yet friendship towards the demon!”

“I have my reasons.”

“Like what?” he challenged, smoke trailing from his nose.

“It doesn’t matter. We’re going to get back home and then you both are going to disappear from my life.”

Craig cringed. “Not sure it’s going to be that easy.”

“And why the hell not?” I wanted to stomp my foot but resisted the urge. I wasn’t five, but decking them both for the hell of it, that sounded like fun. Sadly, I resisted that urge, too.

“That shard I have? You’ve got a strange connection to it,” he told me, “and the vision you told us about… I don’t think your part in this is close to being over. Whatever’s coming for all of us, it won’t just stop at the demon world. It’ll come after the humans, too.”

I ran my hands through my hair, messing it up as I paced around in a tight circle. How did I get dragged into this mess? “Fine, fine, I’ll work with you,” I finally said and pointed to Craig. Then I pointed at Forrest. “But not you.”

Forrest’s hands curled into fists at his sides, and his eyes glimmered in warning. “Explain.”

“No,” I shot back and crossed my arms. “I don’t owe you anything.”

“As far as you know. You might be part of my clan, and if that is the case then you are defying a direct command from your prince! That is treason.”

“Just drop it,” I seethed, but he glowered right back, closing the distance between us. “Back off.”

“No, I want to know right now why you hate your own kind so much.”

“Guys, maybe this can wait for another time,” Craig said in an attempt to break us apart, but Forrest growled at him fiercely.

“Don’t you dare go after him.” I shifted, so I blocked Craig from view.

“Stop protecting the demon! Tell me what you’re hiding! Tell me who you are!”

“Why? So, you can kill me too?” I yelled at the end of my rope. The words slipped out, and I couldn’t take them back now.

Forrest’s glare went from enraged to confused in a few seconds.

He stepped back. “I don’t understand. I would not harm another dragon.”

“Tell that to the dragons who killed my parents.”

Forrest looked as if I slapped him.

Craig’s jaw dropped. “Kate, are you sure?”

I nodded firmly at Craig and waited for Forrest to explain himself now. “Tell me why. Tell me why you would destroy a family, tear it apart. What did we ever do to you?”

“It’s not possible,” he whispered. “You must be mistaken. Someone else was responsible,” he tried, but I was already shaking my head. “Kate, please, we would not attack a family for no reason. It’s not done.”

“Ten years ago,” I told him fiercely, “people found me and my dad. I was told to run, and I did, hiding in the woods until morning and what I saw that night… what I heard… there was nothing left of my home. No dad, no body. No house. Nothing. It was obliterated in a bright white light accompanied by roars. Dragon roars.” I poked him in the chest hard enough to make him back up. “You tell me why you would kill my father. Why?”

Forrest’s mouth worked as he struggled to find words, but before he could say anything, Craig cursed and grabbed us both, dragging us to the ground.

“We don’t have time for this,” he whispered as the chill I thought was from my memories increased, making it so cold my teeth chattered. “It’s getting closer, and we’re running out of time.”

“Kate, please,” Forrest said in my ear. “I swear to you we did not kill your father, but I will help you find out who did. I won’t rest until they are avenged.”

I wanted to believe him, but a voice in my head told me I couldn’t trust him. I couldn’t trust any of our own kind. I grimaced at that sentence. I was clumping myself in with the dragon crowd now like it was the most natural thing in the world to do. I needed to get home before this got any weirder.

“I promise I won’t try to kill you, yet,” I replied. “Happy?”

“No, but it’ll do, for now.”

We looked to Craig who merely blinked and mumbled in some guttural tongue under his breath. “Great, this just keeps getting better and better.”

“What’s the plan?” I asked, hoping to get us moving again. I didn’t like sitting here but getting to the ruins meant crossing through an open field where we’d be completely exposed. If the shadow was nearby, the chances of it seeing us were high. I thought about the beast I saw in my vision, rising up like a swarming mass over the land and a shiver shot down my back. There was no way we could fight against it, not if an entire army of dragons failed at bringing it down.

They were weakened, Dad’s voice whispered through my mind. Weakened and betrayed.

I scowled at the ground, needing the voice to stop. Now was not the time to take a trip straight into Crazyville.

“Get to the temple without being seen. Once we’re inside, I doubt we’ll have long to find the portal and get it up and running before it comes for us.”

I rolled my shoulders as the beast inside me shifted again, lifting its head as if to say now was the time. The bangle glowed brightly on my wrist, but I quickly covered it with my other hand.

I noticed Craig glance at it, but he turned back to the ruins.

“When I say, we make a break for it,” he told us. “Stay low and keep moving, no matter what.”

Forrest and I nodded as the three of us pushed up and made ready to sprint for our lives.

My heart beat out an unsteady, painful rhythm in my chest as I attempted to keep my breathing regular and failed.

Craig peered around the clearing, and I heard him count out to three. He took off, and I followed, Forrest right on my heels.

I worried I wouldn’t be able to keep up with them, but the knowledge of potential death awaiting me if I stopped was a good motivator.

I pumped my arms, sucking in painfully cold breaths of air. The ruins grew closer, but the plain stretched on much larger than it first appeared.

Gentle hills rolled beneath our feet, and I tripped, skidding into the rocks we’d been crunching over.

But when I glanced down, it wasn’t a rock I came face to face with.

It was a skull. I scrambled away from it in a panic only to see more. The field wasn’t filled with rocks.

It was covered with bones. Piles and piles of bones.