Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
SAM
I knew I needed to not be here. I knew it was dangerous—for them, not me. Or at least I didn’t think for me. It was hard to know with Lilith. I cringed. Just thinking her name made my skin crawl. There was always a chance I’d piss her off and suffer her rage. I wasn’t her favorite.
I wasn’t Everest.
Actually, there was a chance that being here could get Everest in trouble. That thought actually made me stop short, still hidden between the trees. If I turned around now, he’d be safe. I didn’t want to put his safety at risk. If I got there and found he’d told me the truth, there was a chance Lilith would see it, too, and then she’d know he’d deceived her. Then again, he did all kinds of things Lilith would be furious about if she knew and she clearly didn’t, which meant she couldn’t see what he was doing. That meant she couldn’t see what I was doing either, especially after he’d taught me how to block her out.
Truth was . . . I had to see it with my own eyes. The guilt was eating me alive. It was this constant nagging, like nails tapping on glass. I needed to know the truth, then I would walk away and never endanger them again.
With a deep breath, I pushed my shoulders back and held my head high, then stepped out from behind the trees. The safe house Jackson had brought me to looked exactly as I remembered it. From the outside it would appear as nothing more spectacular than a wooden cabin in the woods, but I knew better. I knew the inside would smell like Dora’s cooking. I knew it was cozy inside no matter the temperature outside. I knew every person who’d been living there with me. I saw their faces in my sleep every night.
They haunted me.
Please be alive.
Please be alive.
Please be alive.
My stomach was a tight knot of nerves and panic. I licked my lips and tasted the sweat on my upper lip. The Florida heat and humidity were just getting cooking, yet even now I felt the sheen of sweat on every inch of my skin. God, I miss it here. I missed a lot of things about Florida. About home. About MY life before all . . . this.
Focus, Sam. You need to get the hell out of here.
I shook myself, forcing all those emo vibes to the back burner. There was no crying in baseball, and this was the World Series. I’d cry once we defeated Grandmother for good. I forced myself to hurry over to the window that was cast in shadow from the massive oak tree beside me and peeked inside the window.
My breath left me in such a heavy rush I actually swayed on my feet.
There they were. All of them. All my friends. Dora. Everyone. They were all hanging out in the living room with bowls of popcorn being passed around as they watched a movie. He’d told me the truth. Everest told me he hadn’t killed them, and even though I trusted him, I still apparently hadn’t fully believed it. I’d been afraid to believe it. But there they were, all alive and well.
My eyes burned with unshed tears and a hot lump formed in my throat. My heart was suddenly pounding super past and hard. My ears throbbed. I bent over and focused on breathing, but the world spun a little, so I reached out and leaned my hand against the side of the house.
Rainbow mist billowed from beneath my palm instantly. It shot out in every direction, covering the house from soil to roof and everything in between. I cursed and scrambled backwards until my back crashed against a tree. My legs gave out, so I crashed to the dirt, except when my ass hit the ground, I realized the ground was cold yet the tree was hot. Like hot hot. I looked down and my heart stopped. Those weren’t tree roots.
Those were dragon talons.
With my heart in my throat, I looked up and froze. Towering over me was a brown dragon with blazing orange eyes. I’d seen this one before in Avolire. He had a spiked tail that’d done a ton of damage to the vampire team. Right now, he was just glaring down at me like I was a demon. He exhaled and a cloud of hot air slammed into my face.
I cursed and scrambled away from him on all fours, not my best look but panic did funny things to your mind. When I finally climbed to my feet and spun around—I gasped. The brown dragon was gone. In its place was a guy, though I couldn’t have said how old he was. Those orange eyes weren’t giving youthful vibes, but trauma and war had a tendency to age people. The rest of him was slim and fit enough to have been anywhere from seventeen to twenty-five. In the back of my mind, I registered he was attractive. The shaggy brown hair reminded me of the spikes on his tail.
He narrowed those orange eyes and snarled. “You shouldn’t be here.”
I held my hands up. “I mean no harm,” I said with a voice that shook too much for my liking.
“And yet . . .” he growled between clenched teeth.
My heart sank. “You’re right. I shouldn’t be here. I’m sorry. It was just killing me to not know if they were okay. But I won’t return or look for them . . . just . . . get them out of here. Please? I’m not the only one who knows they’re here. Please, take them home to Issale.”
He marched forward until he was an inch from my face, then growled. “We did. Now stop trying to shift.”
I flinched. “How did you know? ” I whispered.
“I felt it.” He tapped one finger on my chest, right between my collarbones. “Your King felt it too.”
“I didn’t mean to . . . I didn’t know how to . . . It’d never happened before?—”
“We know.” He growled through his teeth again. Brown scales popped up across his arms like he was losing control of his shift. “If not for Tegan, you would have.”
I gasped. I knew it. I KNEW IT. I’d realized belatedly what had almost happened to me and what Tegan had done to protect me. I’d been afraid to ask.
“And Tegan got Witch’s Shock doing it,” he said.
“ NO—”
“YES. ” He leaned back so he wasn’t in my face, which was a relief. “It is not only your life you endanger if you shift.”
“I understand?—”
“Do you?” He cocked his head to the side, then shook it. “‘Tis not a power you want her to know. You won’t be warned again.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but he spun away from me. He stepped into the shadows of the trees and out of sight. A split second later, his brown dragon sliced a dark silhouette in the night sky as he flew off.
My jaw dropped.
Had Koth sent him here to watch for me? Did he know I’d return here? I glanced back over my shoulder, then did a double take. They were gone. All of them. The house was completely empty. I raced back to the window I’d looked through before and found nothing but a cold, dark, empty house. It looked exactly the way it did the night I was kidnapped. That had been my orange hoodie draped over the couch in the spot I liked to sit in. My stomach turned.
And then they were back.
Just like I’d first seen . . . all of them watching a movie. I frowned and leaned closer to the window. It looked so real. My mind didn’t know which of these visions to believe. It could be either. Or neither. I bit my lip and pressed my forehead to the glass—the rainbow mist spilled out around me again.
I gasped and leaned back. Then it clicked. Rainbow was Tegan’s magic. Tegan had been here minutes before Everest showed up to kill everyone and kidnap me. Bentley, their psychic, had been with her. When Everest had finally answered my questions about my friends, he’d told me to think about who’d been here before him. I’d known he meant the Bishop siblings. He’d told me they were alive. I had no idea why I assumed they would’ve just returned to life as normal here in the safe house. That would’ve been stupid and reckless.
Of course Tegan set up a way to protect them from what Everest had to do.
Of course Tegan moved them to a safe location.
Of course Tegan made it look like they were still here.
I almost slapped my forehead like Homer Simpson. D’oh. That dragon, whatever his name was, had even said so just now. I’d begged him to take them to Issale and he’d said we did. They were all shifters, and while I hadn’t understood the reason they’d been in the safe house instead of in shifter home country, I shouldn’t have been surprised that after their near death, the King evacuated them to safety. I exhaled in relief and scurried back into the shadows of the trees. It was time to leave, to turn and never return to this place so Lilith and Sweyn would have no reason to suspect them alive.
I closed my eyes and pressed my hand to my chest, right over my heart. Thank you, Goddess and angels above. Keep them safe. No one should die because of me.