“We could maybe modify a horse saddle. I have a feeling there will be a lot more battles like the one we fought yesterday. Every time you’re on my back, I can barely focus on what I’m doing, I’m so worried about you falling off.”
“Point taken. Maybe we can find an equestrian store along the way. Still, I have no idea how to modify a horse saddle for a dragon. They didn’t have any classes on that at Stanford.”
Xavier looked at her blankly and then burst into laughter. They chuckled for a moment together before finishing their coffee. Circe packed their things while Xavier rummaged through the house for additional items that might help their survival.
As the apex predator of all apex predators, Xavier didn’t need much to survive. He could hunt, fish, and start fires. He could protect them against almost anything, including Anu drones. But Circe was not an apex predator. She no longer had her best offensive spell. Even if she could still cast hexes, they took too long. She was a healer. She played a support role, a role she’d never played before. It made her uncomfortable, but she had to accept it.
Xavier returned to the living room with some small hand tools, a few cans of food, and a better backpack for Circe to wear while she rode. Traveling in dragon form meant all their supplies had to be strapped to Circe as she clung to Xavier’s back.
He set the backpack down in front of her, and she raised an eyebrow. She’d have to repack everything. She sighed. It was a better backpack, suited for hiking long distances. The one the ravens had given her looked as if it had once belonged to a teen girl, covered in Hello Kitty.
Xavier helped her pack their things into the hiking backpack. Once everything had been secured, he stripped off his clothes. Circe would never get tired of looking at Xavier naked. She resisted the urge to run her tongue over his firm pecs and bite his hard, pink nipples.
He folded his clothes and shoes into the backpack and zipped it before helping Circe heft it onto her back. It was heavy—nearly forty pounds. She frowned under the weight.
“I’ll be carrying you. It won’t be so bad,” he said, kissing her forehead.
Circe sighed and followed Xavier outside, glancing down at his hard, perky behind. As he stepped forward into the empty driveway, she slapped his bare bottom with a loud smack. He turned his head and gave her that boyish grin before shifting into a massive gold dragon.
Circe ran forward, the backpack bouncing behind her. She climbed up the dragon’s leg and slid into place near his neck. Xavier’s wings beat the air, lifting their heavy bodies into the sky.
Soaring over the wild green forests, Circe breathed in the fresh air. The smell of the sea and the scent of the mossy forest mingled on the wind. Damp air beat against Circe’s face as they shot through the sky. She tried to look for signs of dryads in the forest below as it started to rain. Forced to close her eyes and avert her face from the light but stinging rain, she rested against Xavier’s smooth scales.
Once the damp air passed, she looked up again and saw that the forest had grown older and taller and expanded over the vast land. Xavier swooped, dodging treetops as he inspected the forest.
“Do you think it’s here?” Circe yelled over the rushing air. She could feel the magic of the forest growing stronger. The ravens had said the dryad was near the Oregon border. From up here, she had no idea where or how far away Oregon might be. All she saw was miles and miles of deep green forest, massive redwoods, and the sea.
Xavier made a sudden jerk downward, and Circe held on for her life. He plummeted to the ground but landed gently in a clearing, somewhere deep in the forest. Circe slid from his back and unbuckled the backpack before letting it slip down by her feet.
Xavier stepped beside her, already in human form. He knelt in front of her to unpack his things. After pulling on his clothes and shoes, he stood and looked around. He sniffed the air and scratched his head.
“I could have sworn I smelled dryad magic,” he said, looking confused.
“I feel it too. It’s wispy, ethereal, and hard to pin down.”
Xavier slung the backpack over his shoulders, and they walked from the clearing and into the forest. Circe could sense ancient magic. Magic far older than her own. Magic that had existed long before the radiation pulses had enabled some humans to access it. This was the original magic. It radiated from the budding life that grew all around them.
But there was a source. That ancient source of forest magic that lived in this old growth. Circe grasped with her consciousness, but her mind had little sway here. She had to use a different sense. Feelings were the only thing that could touch the quivering green vitality of the life force.
Circe reached into her heart space, imbuing it with the visionary powers of her mind. She reached into the center of her chest, past even her growing attachment for Xavier. In the core of her love, she placed her awareness.
With that awareness, she reached out into the forest. She let it guide her. It took her over hills and down ravines, through forest glades, and beneath underbrush. At the end of a fern-covered ravine, over a rocky creek bed, a massive redwood trunk thrust up through the forest canopy and into the sky. It was exactly how she had dreamed it the night she had slept in the truck.
She glimpsed the dryad’s shimmering form for a split second. It lived in the heart of a three-thousand-year-old redwood. Ancient magic had returned to the human race thanks to the destructive force of the Anu. The sequoia dryad lived in a symbiotic relationship with her tree. It was a relationship the forest had been awaiting for hundreds of years––a relationship with humanity that had been lost long ago.
“We’re close,” said Circe, opening her eyes. “It’s this way.”
“Should we fly?”
“I think it is best to walk. This is the dryad’s forest. Everything is in perfect harmony here. She looks after this forest, and her influence is growing. It expands further every day. Shifters like the ravens will have to comply or be pushed out by her magic. It’s stronger and more ancient than anything I’ve ever felt. I don’t think you should approach her as a predator that doesn’t belong in her forest.”
“How can a dryad be ancient? Dryads didn’t exist until the radiation mutated everyone,” Xavier said skeptically.
Circe gave him a sideways look and shrugged. She had never believed in anything paranormal before the war, but her experiences had changed her mind. She’d been a powerful witch for five years. Her mutation had allowed her to harness the innate power that already existed on Earth and in the universe. It wasn’t as if that power came into existence when the radiation pulses hit.
“Magic has always been here, Xavier. I’m not even sure magic is the right word for it. Magic, as we know it, is really about harnessing the vital energy that flows all around us all the time. The universe is alive with it. The dryad is probably a mutated human, but she was able to tap into a powerful, ancient magical source.”
He scratched his chin, looked up at the towering colossus beside the deer trail, and put his hand on the rust-red bark as if feeling its energy. He sniffed, his nostrils flaring.
“I can smell her. I think.”
“Good, let’s go. She’s very close.”
Circe pushed through a thick tangle of vines hanging over the deer trail and found a long-abandoned park trail. She jogged down it. A fluttering sensation started in her stomach and worked its way up into her chest. Usually, she would read it as nervousness, but this was something she couldn’t place. Not quite nervousness; perhaps anticipation.
She stopped short when the sensation grew and began to buzz in her ears. Turning to Xavier, who was striding down the trail behind her, she lifted her eyebrows in surprise.
“Do you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“My ears are buzzing.”
“Do you need more Solomon’s seal?”
“It isn’t that.”
She turned back around. The fluttering in her stomach turned to tugging. Breaking into a run, she charged down t
he trail. Xavier broke into a run and easily caught up with her, the backpack clanging behind him.
“What’s up?” he asked, his voice showing no strain from the run.
“I need to run,” Circe said, panting.
“Are you sure this isn’t a trap, Circe?”
She shrugged, looked ahead of her in the trail, then jumped over a small tree trunk blown down in a storm. She bounded down the trail, her running shoes pounding the hard-packed earth. Xavier had no problem keeping up physically, but he was weighted down with a cumbersome hiking backpack and heavy boots. With his impressive size and the additional bulk, he looked like a Mack truck barreling down the trail beside her.
When she crested a hill, she slowed and then came to a stop. She could see the forest below, and the trail curved through a clearing into a ravine. This was it. A weathered wooden bridge sat along the bottom of the clearing over a rocky creek. She pointed at the bridge below. Without speaking, she continued down.
Flashes of information from the many plants that populated the dense forest flew through her mind. She didn’t have time to stop and inspect them now. She needed to get there. She needed to get to her––the dryad.
When she made it to the bridge, she stopped again. Xavier was right there beside her, not asking questions. His expression was calm and alert as he inspected their surroundings.
The buzzing in Circe’s ears grew louder. The tug in her stomach was almost unbearable. Crossing the bridge with careful, measured footsteps, she emerged into the fern-covered ravine she’d seen in her vision.
The rocky, verdant walls of the ravine shot up fifty feet, encasing them in the narrow gorge. A creek ran through the center of the snaking gully and twisted out of sight. Circe continued along the creek bed toward whatever was pulling her. She felt the intensity soften. Warmth pooled in her belly, soothing her.
She grasped Xavier’s hand, and he squeezed hers back. Her heart did a flip-flop. Why is this affecting me so much? It was Xavier they were here for, not her. The wind picked up behind them and whistled down the gorge, pushing them forward. It whipped through Circe’s hair, blowing it around her in long auburn tendrils. She brushed it out of her face and strode on.
The strange anxiety whirled around her like a living thing, twining through her limbs and fingers and hair. She could feel it growing like a vine. She brushed at her face as the strange energy covered her eyes, causing the world to look brighter, tinged with green.
Circe and Xavier turned a corner in the ravine and came to a long stretch that led straight to a giant sequoia––forty feet wide and as tall as a skyscraper. Circe’s heart jumped. The wind played with the giant tree’s branches, rustling them and sending green needles sparkling into the sunlight as they fluttered to the ground. Circe couldn’t see the dryad but could sense her presence as strongly as she could see the light glinting on the creek.
When they were within twenty feet of the ancient trunk, the wind lashed. An abundance of needles and leaves, bits of fern, rocks, and droplets of water were all caught in a whirlwind. The materials twirled in the slow cyclone as if gravity had stopped working and floated toward the trunk of the ancient sequoia.
The materials came together, writhing and reeling. Circe stopped breathing. Xavier squeezed her hand and made a low growl in the back of his throat. The whirling stopped. The materials had formed a woman. She lifted her head, her gleaming gray eyes fixed on them. The dryad spread her arms wide.
“Welcome,” she said. The word was like a drop of rain falling on leaves.
“We were told to find you,” Xavier said, clearing his throat.
“Yes, dryad-born dragon.” Her voice tinkled, high and soft like a child’s.
“Can you help us?” asked Circe, winded, her heart thumping hard in her chest.
“Of course. I know what you seek.”
Chapter 25
The dryad held out her hands. Circe and Xavier stepped forward and took the offered hands. They felt like smooth bark, cool against Circe’s skin. An instant later, the forest disappeared and she was floating in black space.
Circe gasped, no longer feeling the dryad’s hand. She couldn’t see Xavier anywhere. She couldn’t see anything. Weightlessness, silence, and darkness deprived her of physical sensations. She felt panic rise in her belly, but the soothing warmth of the darkness calmed her quickly.
“Where am I?” she asked, not even hearing her own voice. She lingered for an indefinite period. Time became meaningless in the motionless, dark space. It could have been days, weeks, years. She had no idea. All her worries faded. Concerns for the world, her sister witches, Cassie and the shifters—none of it seemed to matter here. She let it all go. Her identity began to slip away. Memories of her human childhood flashed before her mind and melted into the vast blackness of empty space.
As soon as the last of it was gone, her mind clean as a blank slate, the world reappeared. She stood in the ravine next to Xavier, who blinked in astonishment. The dryad’s bark-and-fern lips curved into a smile.
“What was that?” asked Xavier, his voice low, calm, open.
“You’ve been washed of your egos. But they will come back to a degree. Those things always do.” The dryad laughed like the rustling of wind through autumn leaves.
Circe felt clean, her mind clearer than it’d ever been. Her heart, her love, compassion, trust felt so strong that they encompassed her whole being. She knew Xavier felt the same way. Then she remembered they were at war and looked back at the dryad for an explanation. How could they lead a battalion of dragons against the force of the Anu while being so open and heart centered?
As if reading Circe’s mind, the dryad began: “Long ago, before humanity was human, the Anu came to this world. They found creatures here, creatures that lived within the all-encompassing rhythm of nature. They were at one with that flow, never taking more than they needed.
“The Anu are a race of collectors. They enjoy obtaining dominion over other races, interbreeding with them so the Anu can control multiple worlds and use them as fuel. Interbreeding of prehistoric man and the Anu happened hundreds of thousands of years ago. The Anu began with a small group of hybrids, and those hybrids spread out through all their prehuman relatives, creating the human race.
“A select group of hybrids never interbred with prehumans or humans at all. They retained their original bloodline. They have the closest genetic relationship to the Anu.”
“Pyramid Corporation,” Circe said.
“All those soldiers can’t be original hybrids,” said Xavier.
“You are both correct. Most of the top-level Pyramid Corporation executives and military leaders are from the original hybrid line. The rest are hired humans, corrupted by the promise of money and power.
“As the human race developed, it moved further and further away from its natural origin. Humanity forgot the cycles of nature and integration with the earth. Those humans who traveled furthest away from hybrid strongholds in Egypt and Europe held their relation to nature the longest. They could see and use the magic flowing through the world.
“The humans who remained near hybrid strongholds were brainwashed into serving the hybrids and their ultimate masters, the Anu. Knowledge of magic, of our place in nature, of the vast ocean of energy available from the universe was washed out of humanity.”
“Why did they irradiate us?” asked Xavier.
“Ah. This is a good question. The Anu not only enjoy collecting other races’ worlds. They feed on the blood and the fear, anger, and chaos they are able to cause. For thousands of years, they were content with simply feeding on human negativity. But they became greedy.
“They saw the opportunity to take the human race into its next level of development. They want to feed on negative energies in the fourth dimension, which are far more substantial. They are breeding a new race of human hybrids to achieve that goal. To do that, they needed to wipe the slate clean. They couldn’t hybridize humans in the old world. Too messy. So they cr
eated a war, the domes, and The Program.
“The radiation pulse did exactly what it was meant to do—kill most of the human race and mutate the rest. The Anu still need your fear to feed on. What could be more distressing than mutation, zombie hordes, losing your humanity?
“Anger and fear are fuel for the Anu, but that does not mean they can be disposed of with peace. They will never leave our world while they live. They must be destroyed, because they will never concede. They will never give up control of a world they’ve come to depend on for sustenance. I have given you a glimpse of an egoless mind. You can take this memory into battle. Work from a place superior to your base human instincts. You were bred to be negative, to feed the Anu. Fight them, but don’t feed them.”
“But we still don’t know how to cure the dragons,” said Xavier.
“Yes, of course, the dragons. The dragons are an interesting problem. They were created to strike fear into the remaining mutants, just as the zombies were. You are massive predators who can devour even your bear and wolf cousins in one bite. And being trapped in an aggressive, animistic mind can’t be pleasant for those who were once human.”
“What is it like for you?” asked Circe, suddenly curious how this woman had adapted to being a collection of twigs and leaves that disintegrated into the wind.
The dryad laughed, like the tinkling of a brook. “The dryads are free of fear. We are the lucky ones. We remain above the fray. I don’t think the Anu expected us to adapt so well, but we are at one with nature. Nature protects and provides. Our magic is strong.”
“And you don’t mind the… body thing?” Circe asked.
The dryad laughed again. “Who needs a body when you have the world? Dryads live in spirit form. We inhabit the world when we see fit. This conglomeration of materials is not my body. I have no body. It gives a great deal of perspective.” Her high, childlike voice twittered with humor, as if what she said should be obvious.
“So mutation is cool for you, but not for the dragons,” Xavier said, getting back to the matter at hand.