Mari Mancusi - Scorched

To her surprise, Caleb started to laugh. She shot him an annoyed look.

“What?” she demanded. “What’s so funny?”

“It’s just that…join us?” Caleb repeated, his eyes dancing in amusement. “But you’re the one who started the Dracken in the first place!”

Trinity stared at Caleb, a clammy chill washing over her. “What?” she managed to scrape out in a hoarse voice. “What do you mean ‘started the Dracken’?”

“Um, pretty much just like it sounds. You made it all happen. Brought everyone together, back in the day. Well, I guess more like ten years from now if we’re being technical. You even came up with the silly name—the Order of the Dracken. Legend has it that it came from some video game you were into back then.”

“What?” Trinity froze. Realization hitting her over the head with the force of a ten-ton truck. Oh God.

The Dracken. That’s why the name sounded so familiar when Connor had said it back at the barn. Why had she not realized it before? The Order of the Dracken was a dragon-filled dungeon in the expansion pack of Fields of Fantasy . The very game that was probably still sitting under her grandpa’s Christmas tree waiting for her to return.

The dizziness welled up inside her again, this time not as a side effect of the gift.

“But hey, don’t take my word for it,” Caleb continued, reaching into his bag and pulling out what looked like a high-tech tablet. He pressed a button and the screen illuminated into full-color video. She stared down at it; at first she thought she was watching some sort of movie—a fantasy epic straight out of Lord of the Rings . That was until the camera zoomed in for a close-up of a young woman, sitting on the back of an all-too-familiar-looking green dragon.

Trinity gaped. The woman had shorter hair than she did and was at least ten years older, but the resemblance was unmistakable.

“It’s me,” she whispered, unable to help stating the obvious. She watched in a mixture of fascination and horror as the woman and the dragon soared through the skies, looking elegant and elated and free. She wanted to protest that the footage had been doctored somehow, but what if it wasn’t? What if Caleb was telling the truth? What if she really had started the organization? Connor had warned her about falling under the dragon’s spell. Emmy had told her they were destined…

“It’s a pretty great story, actually,” Caleb said, turning off the device after the video faded to black. “A beautiful young girl, giving up everything she had to save the world’s last dragons. Of course,” he added, “it doesn’t exactly end well.”

She flinched. No, it didn’t. She thought back to Connor’s vision—of fiery skies and fallen friends, dragons destroying it all. What could have possibly prompted her future self to want to save these evil creatures who saw nothing wrong with burning the entire world to the ground? She couldn’t imagine any spell that powerful.

“Don’t feel bad,” Caleb said, seeing her expression. “I mean, sure, things didn’t turn out exactly how you planned, but you tried. Your heart was always in the right place.”

“I don’t understand,” she protested. “Why would I form a dragon rights group? How would I even know about dragons to begin with? I mean, if the government took the egg immediately after it arrived at the museum the first time around, I would have never seen it again. I probably would have forgotten all about it.”

“You didn’t forget,” Caleb corrected. “And a bond like yours and Emmy’s is not easily broken. You heard her cries for years after they stole her, echoing through your head. At first you thought you were going crazy—like your mother had. It wasn’t until Emmy lured you into the desert and you found a job at the facility they’d taken her to that you finally realized the truth.”

“The truth?” Trinity repeated with encroaching dread. She turned to Caleb, trying desperately to swallow down her fear. “And what truth might that be?”

“That dragons have the power to save our world,” Caleb replied matter-of-factly. “If only you could first save them.”

Caleb stared out the grease-smeared window of their small, dingy motel room, watching the wind outside swirl up debris. Trinity had suggested the place because it was the type that took cash and didn’t ask for ID. Thanks to his little showdown at the diner, along with Trinity’s performance with Homeland Security, the two of them were basically fugitives. The TV announcer had called them armed and dangerous.

Of course this was nothing new to Caleb. He’d spent most of his life considered armed and dangerous down in Strata-D. And while his brother, Connor, had racked up the accolades for his merciless dragon slaughter, Caleb picked up demerits. Hell, he’d probably been only an infraction or two away from a lifetime in the mines before meeting Darius, who recognized his gift and gave him a job.

Not an easy job, by any means. But an important one. A very important one.

His eyes left the window to check on Trinity, who’d thankfully fallen into an uneasy sleep. Poor girl. It’d been a rough journey for her so far. And pushing the cop had pushed her body to its limits.

If only his stupid brother hadn’t gotten involved. Trin and her grandpa would already be reunited and the egg would be safe and sound at Dracken Headquarters, ready for hatching. But no. As always, the great and powerful Connor had to plow in and destroy everything in his path as part of his fanatical crusade.

And Caleb had almost lost Trinity—not to mention Emmy—because of it.

They still had a long way to go—both in physical distance and gaining trust. Sure, she’d been willing to listen to some of what he had to say, but he could see the disbelief reflected in her eyes. He didn’t blame her, he supposed. It’d taken him a while to get on board with the Dracken as well. In fact, he hadn’t truly believed anything Darius had said until the day he’d slipped the vial of dragon’s blood into his mother’s IV. The day she lived instead of died and the doctors called it a miracle.

The day, for the first time, Caleb was the hero, not Connor, even if no one knew it but him.

She was beautiful, he thought. The history texts did not do her justice. Sure, she had the same tangles of black curls falling down her back in waves, the same delicate features. But no photo could capture her long lashes, sweeping across freckled cheeks, or the way her lower lip plumped as she frowned in her sleep. And they certainly couldn’t capture the fiery passion in her black eyes, illuminating the spark that was so strong within her.

Trinity moaned in her sleep, tossing and turning. He watched the stress lines wrinkling her brow and wondered if he should wake her from her nightmares. He hated to see her in such agony and prayed he hadn’t been the cause of it. He’d never meant for everything to go so wrong, and the idea that she thought he was the bad guy tore at his heart.

“No one cares more about you than me,” he whispered. He sighed, then turned back to the window.

“Shut up!” Trinity shot up in bed, boxing her hands over her ears and letting out a piercing scream. “Just shut up! Get out of my head!”

Caleb flew to her side. “Trinity! Wake up!” He grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her as hard as he could, forcing her awake. Her eyes flew open, wild and unseeing. Her face was blotchy and stained with tears.

“Are you okay?” he asked, his heart pounding in his chest.

“The voices…” she mumbled, still half in a daze. “So loud…”

He flinched. Of course. Why hadn’t he thought of that before?