Soul of Smoke Page 3

  The vast serpentine shapes were still there. Some bat-winged, some feathered, and some wingless, undulating through the sky like enormous flying snakes.

  Dragons. Freaking dragons. “Impossible,” she whispered.

  As one, the people around the fire sprang into motion. Ashem leaped over a log and charged up the hill. Darkness deeper than night coalesced around him then burst forth like a negative image of the sun. Where there had been a man, a sixty-foot dragon, black as pitch, roared a challenge to the star-encrusted sky.

  Chapter Two

  Of Dreams and Nightmares

  Rhys spared one glance for the human girl staring, mouth agape, into the sky. If she had sense, she would get down and be still.

  He glanced at Deryn and fought down a surge of anger at himself. He’d been the one to insist Ashem let her come. It was his fault she was in danger. He crouched in the beaten-down grass, bringing his face level with hers. “Deryn, Kavar may not know you made it back to camp. They won’t be looking for you. Go hide.”

  Her lip curled. “Get sundered!” She stood, wounded leg shaking. “I can still fight. I’ll transform and finish any of them that hit the ground.”

  Rhys bared his teeth. She could never just listen. “You have to stay safe. If something happens to me—”

  Her irises ignited, glowing turquoise. “You have to stay safe.”

  Ancients, she was going to hate him for this, but she’d left him no choice. One of them had to survive. Rhys stood, as well, and glowered down at her. He pulled power inward, focusing it until his blood buzzed and hissed, boiling through his veins. “Deryn, stay human.”

  “No!” Her injured leg buckled, though by now the bone should have healed nearly enough for her to walk alone. “Take it back!”

  Ignoring his sister, Rhys sprinted after Ashem and the others. Deryn screamed obscenities at his back, but he didn’t care as long as she stayed out of the fight.

  A tingle of magic and explosion of light signaled Cadoc’s transformation; a dragon the red-orange of flame clawed his way into the sky. Morwenna transformed next, then Griffith, Ffion, Evan. Six dragons ranging in color from mirror-like silver to midnight blue leaped from the hillside, beating the air with vast wings.

  Rhys fought through the buffeting winds of their takeoff. Reaching the top of the rise, he flung himself open, pushing himself higher and wider and more until he touched the fires that burned along the borders of his being. Flame erupted, consuming, reforming and expanding. The transition jarred, as always.

  Dragon.

  He opened his jaws wide, roaring, digging talons into the ground. Bunching his haunches, he spread his wings and leaped after the others.

  Less than five hundred yards away, a dozen enemy dragons swooped toward the meadow. Rhys strained his wings, pulling for as much altitude, as much advantage, as he could get. As the enemy formation approached, Rhys identified Kavar flying out ahead of the others. He should get close to Kavar and force him to turn home the way he’d forced Deryn to stay human. If Kavar abandoned the fight, the others might follow.

  But Demba, the dragon who had attacked Deryn earlier that day, flew just behind Kavar. Rhys’s lips pulled back from his long, needle-sharp teeth, anger burning all sense to ash.

  He would send Kavar flying with his tail between his legs. But first, he would char the dragon who had tried to kill his sister.

  The two lines of dragons collided. Ashem and Kavar crashed together in the center, clawing, biting and writhing until it was impossible to tell which was which. Cadoc twisted, spiraling below an oncoming Elemental and searing the blue dragon’s unprotected belly with flame. Ffion and Griffith raked past huge, bronze Demba, who snapped, nearly taking off the end of Ffion’s silver tail.

  Thought flew from Rhys’s mind until there was nothing but the night wind and the enemy and the fire scorching his gut. He roared, and the bronze dragon turned toward him. Demba roared a challenge in return.

  The enemy had engaged.

  * * *

  Kai shoved the heels of her hands into her eyes and rubbed hard.

  Again, the dragons didn’t go away.

  She let out a breath, her body so packed with adrenaline it felt like she might ignite. It couldn’t be real. None of this could be real.

  Wind from dragon wings struck her hard, and she staggered to one side. She couldn’t blink; couldn’t take her eyes from the scene from dreams and nightmares come to life. The full moon appeared from behind a cloud, and Kai stretched up on tiptoe. She spun, trying to see them all at once, straining toward the beasts that wheeled, swooped and roared over her head.

  It was terrifying, yes, but exhilarating. The most incredible, beautiful thing she’d ever seen: dragons blazing through a star-dusted sky.

  They battled over the meadow with noise like the heart of a storm, all roars and shrieking wind. Someone is going to hear this! Juli would, or the rangers, or random campers. The guys at MonsterChase would have enough to do a month’s worth of shows. Pan would go nuts.

  Metal crashed behind her, and Kai whirled to see Deryn clutching a sword. The girl limp-hopped her way up the hill like she was trying use the blade as a crutch—so much for a broken leg. Her hair flew every which way, and she shrieked words Kai couldn’t understand.

  An ear-splitting bellow from above dropped Kai to her knees. Fear wormed cold through her stomach. One of the dragons buzzed feet over her head, and Kai threw herself into the dirt. A gust of whistling wind flattened the grass all around. Holy hell, is this real?

  Terror replaced wonder. She needed to escape. She raised her head, then pushed herself onto hands and knees to see above the madly waving grass. Dragons were everywhere. There was no way to reach the ravine now.

  Kai scanned the field, looking for another way out, but her gaze caught on Deryn instead. The idiot was limping right into the middle of the fight.

  “Deryn!” Kai stood. Unable to take her eyes from the sky, she stumbled up the hill. “What are you doing? You’re going to get killed!” She caught up to the taller girl and tried to yank the sword from Deryn’s hand. Deryn snarled and shoved her back.

  “Run!” Deryn’s shout was barely audible above the noise. Her turquoise eyes pulsed with light. “There’s nothing you can do here but die. Go, before they notice you!”

  Kai hesitated, staring at Deryn’s brilliantly glowing eyes before glancing in the direction of the ravine. She should run. Or at least hide. Instead, she looked up at the massive beasts that roared and battled above, her heart jamming her throat. Feeling exposed and insignificant, she ran back to the fire.

  The swords Cadoc had dropped were still there, gleaming in the dim light. Kai bent and hefted one, surprised by its weight. The sheathed blade lay heavy in her hand, its hilt winking with rubies and milky white stones. Standing there with dragons in the sky and a sword in her hand, Kai nearly laughed.

  I must be insane.

  Dragon roars deafened her, the snap of jaws and whoosh of wings thrummed through her skull. Around her, long grass undulated like a mad ocean. The air was bitter with lightning and burnt with fire. The damp scent of earth slammed into her nostrils as two dragons crashed screeching to the ground, their talons gashing deep, soil-bleeding gouges into the meadow.

  Reality broke over Kai in a wave as she watched a blue dragon rake its claws across a green dragon’s hide not fifty feet away. The green dragon roared, blood spurting from half a dozen long gashes in its flank. A tiny silver dragon zoomed past, unleashing a spear of lightning from delicate jaws and scoring a direct hit on the blue, which jerked and fell twitching to the ground. The crackle of electricity made the hair on Kai’s arms stand on end.

  This is real. The thought sank in for a long moment, only to be interrupted by an angry shriek. Deryn had reached the top of the hill.

  I can’t j
ust let her die. Kai sprinted after Deryn, the unfamiliar weight of the sword pulling her to one side. Still, she reached Deryn in less than a minute.

  “Turn around!” Kai grabbed for Deryn’s arm, but the tall girl shrugged away. Frustrated, Kai slammed her sheathed blade between Deryn’s shuffling feet, putting the girl’s life above her injured leg. Deryn went down with a shout of pain.

  Kai wrenched the sword free and pointed it at the sky, where black dragons spewed clouds of yellow vapor. “Freaking dragons!” she shouted.

  One of the dragons bellowed, and Kai clamped her fists to her ears, knocking herself on the head with the pommel of the sword and swearing.

  Deryn tried to stand, but another dragon swooped low overhead and Kai threw herself on top of the other girl, sending Deryn’s sword flying. Luckily, none of the dragons seemed interested in them. Not at the moment, anyway.

  “What is going on?” Kai yelled.

  “They’re trying to kill us!” Deryn shrieked back.

  “They’re dragons!”

  “Yes, they are! Get off me!”

  Kai rolled off, stunned at the confirmation that someone else was seeing what she was seeing. Deryn scrambled to her feet, digging her nails hard into Kai’s shoulder for leverage. A thunderous roar of pain sounded from above. Kai looked up only to be blinded by a column of fire.

  “Stop!” Kai blinked the afterimage from her eyes in time to see Deryn reach toward her sword. “They’ll kill you!”

  Deryn ignored her.

  Kai lunged. She reached the weapon first and threw it back toward the fire pit, still clutching her own.

  “I have to help them!” Deryn shouted, stumbling after the weapon.

  “They’re freaking dragons!” Kai shouted back, clamping a hand around Deryn’s arm. “They don’t need you!”

  “I’m a dragon! I have to help!”

  “You look pretty human to me!”

  “Thanks to Rhys,” Deryn growled. Her eyes flicked across the sky then widened. Kai followed her gaze.

  One of the dragons had spotted them. At first, Kai thought it was Ashem. He had turned into a black dragon. But then she heard Deryn’s strangled whisper.

  “Kavar!”

  Kavar, the black dragon, dove straight for them, silver eyes flashing. Deryn stiffened, her mouth wide in wordless terror. Kai’s entire body went numb, freezing her to the spot.

  With an audible thud, a dragon whose scales glittered like blood slammed into the black dragon, knocking it off course. Kavar recovered, twisting in the air like a cat. The crimson dragon swiped at the other with wickedly long claws, but missed and overbalanced.

  Seeing an opening, Kavar darted forward and buried his teeth in the red dragon’s shoulder.

  “No,” Deryn whispered. The fear and pain in that single syllable filled Kai with dread. “Rhys! No!”

  Rhys, the crimson dragon, let out a howl of agony. He convulsed and plunged earthward like a dropped stone.

  Deryn screamed.

  Instinct took over. Kai seized Deryn’s arm. With strength born of adrenaline, she hauled the taller, heavier girl out of the way. They made it several yards before an earth-shaking crash sent both of them flying. Kai lost her grip on Deryn and landed on the sword, the hilt driving into her stomach and knocking the wind out of her.

  “Rhys! Rhys!” From the volume of Deryn’s cries, she was having no trouble breathing.

  Kai coughed and gasped, seconds ticking away while she tried to catch her breath. The earth shook as the black dragon landed between them and Rhys, the vast nothingness of his inky hide not a dozen feet from where Kai gulped for oxygen like a landed trout. He was so close she could hear the sibilant hiss of scales when he moved.

  Air trickled into Kai’s lungs, dry and slightly musky, a scent that could only be dragon. She scrambled to her feet, dragging the sword with her.

  Deryn hobbled toward Kavar, screaming a war cry. Exasperation warring with paralyzing fear, Kai yanked the sword from its sheath and ran after her, expecting at any second to see Rhys’s red scales on the other side of the black dragon’s bulk.

  She caught up to Deryn and skidded to a stop. There was no red dragon, only Rhys the man, unconscious. His shoulder was a blood-covered mass that looked nauseatingly like raw hamburger. Kavar was curling one clawed foot carefully around him.

  “Rhys, wake up!” Deryn screamed. “Make Kavar go!”

  With a brain-rattling roar, another red dragon swooped from the sky, aiming for Kavar. Kai felt a moment of relief. This dragon would save Rhys; she wouldn’t have to do anything.

  Then an emerald beast with rainbow-feathered wings slammed into their would-be savior in mid-air. Both spun out of control, crashing into the ground a hundred yards away. The red dragon struggled, but the feathered dragon had him pinned.

  Kai’s heartbeat boomed in her ears.

  Thump-thump. The red wouldn’t get to Rhys in time to stop the black dragon.

  Thump-thump. Unarmed, Deryn wouldn’t be any help.

  Thump-thump. None of the other dragons had noticed Rhys, outnumbered and too caught up in their own survival.

  Thump-thump.

  Time slowed; sounds fell to silence. The sword’s jewel-studded hilt was slick in Kai’s sweaty hand. Helpless tears streaked Deryn’s face as Rhys lay motionless on the churned earth, trapped in a constricting cage of two-foot talons.

  Help was not coming. It had to be her.

  Kai charged, leaping through the clinging grass before her brain registered she was moving. She tightened her slippery hands and raised the sword high, praying one of the “good” dragons would notice what was happening and do something.

  It occurred to her at the last instant that she didn’t even know if Deryn and the others were “good” at all. Then her blade flashed down, met resistance, and plunged through midnight flesh. It hit bone, and the impact reverberated through Kai’s shoulders. Then the blade slid to one side and sank to the hilt. The tip came out on the underside of the dragon’s clawed hand, gleaming dull and red in the moonlight. Everything around her blurred but the blood-stained blade. She let go and stumbled back.

  Thump-thump.

  Huh. Dragons bleed red.

  Kavar jerked his injured limb away, wrenching the sword out with his other claw and hurling it away. Sound came rushing back as he let out a grinding, shrieking roar. Kai threw herself to the ground, barely dodging a rake by the dragon’s good foreclaw.

  Flat on her back, she could only stare at the car-sized head that hovered above her, luminous silver eyes filling her vision. Black lips curled back in a snarl, revealing a gaping maw full of pointed white teeth as long as her forearm and covered in slimy, yellow spittle.

  Something pushed against her mind, the pressure growing until her brain felt it would burst like a smashed grape. She screamed, her fingers clawing into the dirt as if she could use the earth to anchor her sanity.

  “That’s right, ape. Scream.” A voice oozed through her brain, dirty and wrong. It forced its way into her mind, prying her open. Almost idly, it began flipping through memories. Her vision doubled as her true eyes watched silver ones loom closer while random images from her past flashed through her mind. She squirmed and gagged, bile climbing into her throat.

  “Kai Monahan.” Its mental voice was oddly flat against her brain. Black nostrils flared. ”You smell crunchable.”

  The pressure in her head doubled. Kai thought she screamed again, but wasn’t sure. The black head darted toward her, jaws gaping wide.

  A groan. A man’s voice, rough with pain, but strong. “Go back to Cadarnle, Kavar. Now.”

  An ear-splitting roar. Voices that bounced around inside her head.

  Everything went blessedly dark.

  * * *

  Kai was cold. Her head th
robbed. She rolled, the earth hard and uneven beneath her. The movement triggered a sensation like a knife twisting in her brain.

  Holy hell. Where am I?

  Vision blurring, she lifted her head. She was on a shallow slope surrounded by dark, narrow pines and carpeted with their prickly castoffs. The dim, gray light of dawn filtered through the forest. Ten feet away, several people huddled around a figure on the ground, speaking in the mystery language.

  Images flashed through her brain. Finding Deryn. Trekking through the weird fog. Deryn’s brother, Rhys, and his fire-blue eyes.

  The battle came flooding back, and her stomach lurched. Dragons. Freaking dragons! The last thing she remembered was Kavar popping her mind open like an oyster. Had he brought her here?

  Kai jumped to her feet but immediately fell forward on hands and knees, dead pine needles digging into her palms. Her heart drummed against the back of her ribs. Black hair fell in sheets on either side of her face. She closed her eyes and froze, wishing she hadn’t moved. It would only draw their attention.

  Taking short, shallow breaths, Kai hooked her hair behind one ear and turned to look at the dragons. She blinked, trying to force her eyes into focus. Her vision cleared enough to show her five figures bent over something on the ground.

  “I couldn’t put out the fire.”

  Kai nearly fainted in relief when she recognized Deryn’s voice. The tall girl separated from the group, led by the tiny woman who had offered to walk Kai to the ravine before the dragon attack. As they moved, Kai caught a glimpse of the prone figure at the center of the circle.

  Red hair. Rhys.

  Deryn’s hands were curled into tight, white-knuckled fists. “I couldn’t put out the fire, Ffion. He’s dying and it’s my fault.”

  Kai’s stomach lurched again and she swallowed bitter bile. She’d tried to save him. Had she risked her life for nothing?

  “You were injured,” said the tiny woman, Ffion. “We all did our best.” She pushed Deryn gently forward, a look of calm surety on her face. “Come on, bach.” Her voice was chirping and bird-like, “We’ll get to the waystation and Ashem will make the anti-venom. Rhys is strong. He’ll make it.” Though Ffion’s face was composed, her voice wavered on the last sentence.