Flames and Blood (Dragonblood Dynasty #15)

1. Chapter 1

Kalli

The van hits a rut in the road, and my teeth click together. We’ve been jolting along this route for long enough that my jaw feels like it’s rattling loose.

I run my thumb along the inside of the wrist cuff, the way I’ve done at every stop since they loaded me. Finding the join. There’s always a join.

Not this one.

The metal’s a single piece, cold enough to burn, and the chain off it runs to a ring bolted through the floor plate. I give it a short pull toward the wall. No give. Same at the ankle. Whoever fitted this van out knew their work.

Fine. Then not the cuffs. Something else.

There’s always something that might have a weak spot. That’s not hope talking. I don’t waste energy on hope.

My grandmother used to say every trap has a maker, and every maker has a habit.

I press my palms flat to the floor and try to pick up what I can about the road. The seams in the surface come evenly, every few seconds. Old concrete, not asphalt. The vehicle slows down through a pothole and then picks up again. Does the same a few minutes later.

He knows this road.

The engine drops a gear. My ears tighten, then pop. Climbing. The driver rides his brakes into every curve and holds steady coming out.

Slow man. Slow men are careful men. Careful men are told to be careful.

Told by whom?

I let that one go. I don’t have enough information to make an educated guess, and I’m not wasting energy on guessing games either.

My dragon moves within me.

She’s been doing it since the loading bay. Over a year I’ve held her down—every day, on purpose, teeth gritted, because a dragon in a warded cell is not a patient creature. She hated it. She never fought me for it.

In that loading bay back at the facility, she surged up before I could even reach for her.

I still can’t say what did it. My head was down.

Boots, shouting, a gun somewhere behind me, doors slamming on the trucks ahead.

I knew the rules: eyes on the concrete. But my neck turned.

I never chose it. Half a second, maybe less, my chin coming up toward something, and then the truck was lurching forward, and whatever she found out there, she’s kept to herself.

What did you see?

Nothing. Heat, sitting behind my ribs where she’s been waiting. She’s not telling me.

“Great,” I mutter to the dark. “You pick now to keep secrets.”

The heat doesn’t move. Over a year of silence, and now she has her voice back, she won’t use it.

The van slows. Stops. Rolls forward a length. Stops again.

What—?

Rolls. Stops. Something under us, taking the weight in pieces.

Oh. A scale. I’ve been on one before, at intake, back when things were still new enough to surprise me. Onto the plate, wait, off the plate.

They’re weighing the truck. They’ll subtract the truck from the total, and somewhere in a ledger, the difference will be me. Cargo.

A voice outside, flat with boredom. Another answers it, shorter. The cab door. Paper moving.

I settle back and stare at the empty bench across from me. There should be people on it. I know why I do this: counting seams and doors and voices keeps me from thinking about how I got here.

Nobody in this pipeline walked in willingly. Some were trafficked. Some were tracked down by the Syndicate. Others were on the losing side of a clan skirmish.

I was betrayed.

Somebody in my own clan put me here. Only one of ours could have done it.

I just don’t know who.

I’ve turned it over a thousand times since the day I woke up in the dark with my mouth bitter and my head ringing, and it comes out the same every time. I still can’t put a face on the ones who sold me. I can’t think of anyone close who’d do it.

Or maybe I don’t want to.

I push it away again.

An old story, for a worse night.

The cab door again. We roll off the scale and climb.

My ears pop twice before the engine finally cuts. Boots on gravel, both sides. The doors come open, men standing beyond them, and the air reaches me before the light does.

Thin. Cold. Cold the way it only gets at high altitude.

I take a full breath before I catch myself. Scales shift beneath my skin.

Stop that.

Home air. Wrong mountain. The clan spends winters in air exactly like this, and my body knows it before my head can stop it. I pull the breath back down where it belongs and let them take my arms.

New guards now, stationed here. Two of them walk me out across open ground. I count before I mean to: guard on the near door, guard across the yard, a third voice behind a wall somewhere left of us. That’s all.

That’s all?

The last compound would’ve had ten times that. Fewer guards should mean a better chance of getting out. It doesn’t feel that way. It feels like a place that doesn’t need guards, and I can’t work out why yet.

The building ahead is new. Concrete still pale, edges still sharp. Quiet. No trucks idling anywhere. No voices. A site this size should have noise on it somewhere.

“Eyes down,” says the one on my left. It isn’t rough. It’s procedure.

“They usually are,” I say.

“No lip from you.”

The one on my right blows into his free hand. “Tell me again why there’s two of us on this.”

“Because it’s the roster.”

“Six weeks I’ve been on this site. I’ve patrolled an empty yard.”

“Then it’ll be an easy winter.”

“It’ll be a long one.”

“Sounds like a good job to me,” I say.

“Nobody asked you.”

“I’m only saying. Free coat, mountain views, no work.” I tip my head at the dark windows above the door. “You could bring a book.”

The left-hand one snorts before he can stop himself. The right-hand one doesn’t, and his grip on my elbow doesn’t loosen at all.

“I told you, we don’t need your lip.”

Then the left one leans in behind my shoulder, his voice pitched for his partner only.

“It’s her.”

“So?” There’s bravado in it.

Her. Everybody in the trade knows what I am. That’s old news, and it doesn’t bother me.

What bothers me is that normally my sass would’ve got me a crack to the back of the head by now. These ones are being careful.

Why?

I slow my stride half a beat. Testing. Their grips stay at my elbows without tightening, and neither man corrects me. They match my pace instead.

Interesting.

At the last compound, a lagging step bought you a shove. These two adjust to me.

“Keep moving,” the right-hand one says at the doorway when I slow again to be sure.

“What does it look like I’m doing?” I brace myself for a kick or a shove. Nothing.

Inside smells of fresh paint over concrete, and nothing else. No cooking, no smoke, no people. One desk, one bulb, and a hallway behind it with the lights on in half the fittings.

The man at the desk has a book open in front of him. New book. Stiff pages, uncracked spine. He opens it to an empty page and writes one line on it.

“Anything to report?” he asks the guard.

“Driver says everything went as planned,” the guard replies.

“Meals?”

“Two on the road. She ate both.”

“Good.” He makes a mark. “She’s on the sheet from tonight. Anything else goes to the office, not to me.”

The man at the desk closes the book, then he jerks his chin at the hallway and turns away.

They walk me down the hall he pointed at, and I add up what I’ve got so far.

At the last stop, a woman in a white coat gave me a brief examination, then told the guards she was satisfied. The food I was given on the drive was better than anything I’ve had in months. The escorts handle me carefully. Not gently. Carefully. Somebody will be in trouble if I arrive damaged.

Something’s changed.

Somewhere, someone is expecting me in good condition.

The hallway smells like the yard, cold and new, and it’s lined both sides with bars still bright at the welds.

Every cell is empty.

Not emptied. Empty. No cots pulled apart, no blankets, nothing under the frames, nothing on the floors but the dust off the concrete. Doors standing open on rooms nobody has ever used. A whole block, both sides, and our boots are the only sound in it.

I look into every one as we pass, because I can’t help it. Nobody looks back.

Last time I had the little wolf girl on the other side of the wall. I told myself not to make anything of it, but when she was gone, it gnawed at me. My own fault for getting attached in a place like this.

I don’t get the choice this time.

This place is like a morgue.

My skin prickles all the way down my arms.

They stop me at the last set of bars. The ward-work reaches me two steps out—pressure behind my teeth, a bitter taste, raw and new. I stop before it touches me. It hums.

Not yet.

Nobody’s tried this ward against a dragon, I’m certain of it. When somebody does, it’ll be on a night I choose.

The cell has a cot and a drain. On the wall beside the bars, there’s a board. A schedule, already filled in. Draws, twice a week, the way they always were. My cell number’s written at the top. Like before.

Not so different then.

The escorts hand a folder to someone new. Young. No lines in his face. Jaw shaved clean this morning, one missed spot under his ear.

“Careful with that one,” the outgoing man tells him. Not me. Him.

“I’m right here,” I say.

Nobody answers. The bars close, and the young one sits at the desk outside them and opens the folder, pen already in hand. He initials something.

Then the pen stops.

He reads. Keeps reading. When his head comes up, he’s not looking at the folder anymore. He’s looking at me, and he’s on his feet and a step back before he knows he’s moved.

There it is.

I haven’t stirred. Hands loose at my sides, exactly where they were.

“You can keep going if you want some space,” I tell him. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“I need to—” He stops. Stands there holding the folder flat against his chest.

“It’s okay, I haven’t eaten anyone. Recently.” I grin at him.

The door swings open, and an older man walks in with a clipboard against his hip. He’s been on shift since before this building had a roof, by the look of him.

“What’s going on here?”

The younger man’s mouth opens and closes.

“Oh, we were just getting acquainted.” I aim my grin at the newcomer.

He doesn’t look at me. He looks at the desk. “Did you initial the top sheet or the second one?”

“The top.”

“Both. Every time.” He sets the clipboard down and reaches past the kid for the folder. “You initial one, the night man misses something else, and somebody up the chain comes to me asking why it’s not done right.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Goddammit.” He mutters it as he fixes the sheet himself, pen moving briskly. “They keep hiring out of the valley, and you all keep arriving with clean boots.”

“Sir.” The kid doesn’t respond to the insult. “The file says two men on the floor for every blood draw.”

“It does.”

“It doesn’t say why.”

“It doesn’t have to.” He turns a page. “This is an asset on a schedule. It eats, it gives blood twice a week, it sits there. You’ll be bored inside a fortnight, and bored is exactly what we’re paying you for.”

“It hears you,” I say.

He glances up like a chair has spoken.

“No communications with the assets unless absolutely necessary.”

“Was that necessary?” I lean a shoulder on the bars. “Because from in here it sounded like a whole speech.”

Nothing moves in his face. He goes back to the sheet.

“How many are in this block?” I ask him.

“You’re not to be answered.”

“It isn’t a secret. It’s observation. I walked past all of it on the way in.” I tip my head at the hallway. “I make it one.”

“Don’t answer it,” he tells the kid.

“Give him a week,” I tell the kid. “He’ll be bored again, and you’ll have the desk to yourself.”

Neither of them pays any attention to me.

“Fine. Nice to meet you both.”

He hands the folder back, picks up his clipboard, and leaves the way he came in.

The kid goes back to his desk. He doesn’t sit down until the door swings shut. I wink at him, and his throat works.

He straightens the folder. Straightens it again.

“Is it true you can’t shift in there?” he says. He says it to the desk.

“You’ve got the file. What does the file say?”

“It says the security systems handle it.”

“Then the security systems handle it.”

He nods twice and doesn’t look happier.

“You could ask him,” I say. “The one with the clipboard. He knows everything, apparently.”

“He’d write me up.”

“He’d write you up for asking a question?”

“He’d write me up for talking to you.” His pen taps once. “I’m doing it right now.”

“You are.” I sit down on the cot so he can take a breath before he explodes. “Relax. I’ll deny it.”

He pinches his lips together and turns away.

He’s a rookie. He’s never been near one of my kind before. And the place is brand new. Nothing here has been tested against someone like me. These are good things.

What’s not good is how carefully I’m being handled. They didn’t put me in a compound. They built a room, cleared a block around it, and staffed a mountain for one prisoner.

Something’s changed.

They’ve got something planned for me.

I’m one step closer to finding out what.

And I’m not sure I want to know.