Blazing the Trail: The Dragon Diaries

  “We’ll figure it out,” Garrett said.

  I had a thought and leaned across the table. “Isn’t your mom surprised to have the guys here?”

  They all clearly thought this was funny, because their eyes danced with mischief. Meagan grinned. “Garrett told her that we had an assignment together, that he and Liam were new here and needed extra tutoring.”

  “You beguiled her,” I accused Garrett, and saw the truth in his quick smile.

  “Just a little. For the greater good.”

  “But what about later?”

  “We’ll guard from the roof,” Liam said.

  I shook my head. “You’d better ask Jared for some spell protection. They’re out there and they took other shifters last night. I don’t want to lose you guys.”

  “I’ll ask him,” Meagan said, and pulled out her messenger to do it. “He can teach me the spell and we’ll weave it together.”

  “Does Jared know the four notes?” I asked. “Or one of them?”

  Meagan shook her head as she kept tapping. “I already asked.”

  “That part is up to us,” Garrett said.

  It was like a riddle, but one I had very little chance of solving on my own.

  There was an optimistic thought to end the day.

  “Has anyone heard from Derek?” I asked, ever hopeful, but they shook their heads as one. Everyone had messaged him, so now I tried, too.

  I seriously hoped I hadn’t offered up the next sacrificial victim.

  I SLEPT WITH SKULD’S shears under my pillow, one hand locked around them.

  Just in case.

  Chapter 10

  I shivered in the night, feeling the cold chill of snow slip down the back of my shirt. I tugged the comforter up higher, trying to block the icy fingers of the wind, and squeezed my eyes shut. I held on tight to the shears. I really didn’t want to visit Skuld and her sisters. I thought maybe I could ignore the whole dream interlude.

  No luck. A finger poked me in the shoulder. Hard.

  “You think I can’t tell when you’re awake?” There was a thread of humor in Skuld’s tone. “Come on, Wyvern. You have work to do. No ShadowEaters will get you on my watch.”

  I felt her move away, obviously expecting me to follow. The absence of her presence was as formidable as the weight of her gaze on me. I felt a huge yawning void behind me, dared to be relieved that she was gone, then caught a whiff of carrion.

  It wasn’t her absence that made the air seem still.

  It was that the wind had completely stopped. I sat up and looked.

  Skuld was gone.

  I think. The thing was that I couldn’t see very much clearly. I was surrounded by a blanket of white fog, fog that glistened slightly, as if illuminated by a source I couldn’t see. I stood up with reluctance, the hairs standing up on the back of my neck. That smell of rot was pervasive and troubling. I recalled Skuld’s affection for battlefields and had an idea where I might be.

  I looked down and yelped. I was standing on a pile of corpses. There was blood staining the ground, the smell of putrefaction in my nostrils, gaping wounds and spilled guts and eyes staring at nothing everywhere I looked.

  Suddenly, being without Skuld didn’t seem like such a good idea. I thought I heard something ahead of me and to the right, so I ran that way. I winced as bits crunched under my feet, knowing they were bones and teeth and skulls.

  For my once in my life, I wished I’d worn boots to bed.

  My bile rose along with my panic. My state was such that spotting Skuld, striding through the detritus as if she were going to pick up the mail, was a relief. I raced after her, and she must have heard me coming, because she paused and turned to watch me approach. There was humor in her eyes, as if I were the crazy one.

  I gagged when I saw the eyeball impaled on the end of her knife.

  She laughed at me, then ate it off the tip of the blade, chewing with gusto. “Thought you were too tired after your day of doing nothing,” she said, arching a brow.

  I had to look away, look anywhere but at her with her gleaming eyes and those squishy pink eye bits between her teeth as she smiled.

  “I didn’t do nothing today,” I protested, trying to defend myself. “I fought the ShadowEaters even before the sun was up.”

  “But not when you could have beaten them,” Skuld said, giving me a significant glance.

  “They could have captured me with their spells if I’d gone into that glamour. It would have been reckless and stupid.”

  “Bold,” she said, bending to examine a corpse. The person had been decapitated, and Skuld showed a keen interest in the severed head. She slit the rotting skin, poked her knife into a fissure between the bones, and used it to widen the gap. I nearly retched.

  “It would have been stupid,” I said.

  “It’s stupid to forget your assets.” She gave me a steady glance, munching on a treat from the decapitated body. The corpse’s staring eyes seemed to look at me, too. “I’m going to stop giving you gifts if you forget to use them.”

  “Where are they now?”

  “Hovering.” She peered into the distance, chewing. “They prefer to hunt when you’re all asleep, but that will change as they get stronger.” She finished her snack and tossed the head like a baseball before turning to stride on. I glanced after the discarded head and caught my breath.

  Because it had landed beside a corpse that looked just like Derek.

  I charged through the debris with purpose, needing to know for sure. I dropped to my knees in front of the body, not caring about the muck anymore.

  It was Derek, and that truth made me whimper. His pale blue eyes were wide open, staring up at the sky. His heart was silenced. I touched his shoulder, unable to believe my eyes, but his skin was cold. His hoodie was torn and I looked down to see that his chest had been ripped open and his guts were spilled on the ground.

  Then I did puke.

  “You’ll know this one, too,” Skuld said with an ease I wasn’t nearly feeling. She seized my shoulder when I didn’t move and dragged me through blood and bodies to another corpse.

  Garrett, frozen forever in a grimace of pain. As still as a sculpture. His body was shredded, just like Derek’s. I saw with horror that he cast no shadow.

  “No,” I whispered.

  “Sure,” Skuld corrected me easily. “Take a good look at the future, Wyvern.” She strode away then, content to leave me to take it all in.

  They were all there. It didn’t take me long to find them. King and Mozart and Jessica, Liam and Garrett and Nick, Derek and Kohana. They were all mixed up, their bodies tangled with one another and various parts torn away. There were other corpses mingled with them and I guessed that these were the shifters of their kinds, the ones I didn’t know. I saw the kid brothers of Liam and Garrett and Nick, too, the Pyr who were just coming into their powers. I saw all of the older Pyr I knew and loved, every single one of them slaughtered and dead.

  So many dead shifters. The future was a battlefield covered with fallen shifters. It had to be all of them, really, except for me. I had to put my head between my knees for a minute at the prospect of being all alone.

  When I opened my eyes, I saw a dragon talon severed from the claw. It was so covered in blood that I couldn’t even identify the original color.

  I pushed to my feet and shouted after Skuld. “Why? Why are you showing me this?”

  My cry echoed and I realized that the air was ridiculously still. There was destruction in every direction, fog obscuring the distance, but the only movement came from me and Skuld.

  The only life.

  She turned to peruse me, still chewing. “Because you let it happen, of course. Do you think I show you these things for my own amusement?”

  “I wouldn’t put it past you. There are a lot of livers here.”

  She smiled and sighed, nudging a body with her boot. “And more than one good soul.” She gave me an intent look, as if I were missing something important.
>
  That was when I saw that the corpse she poked was me.

  Impossible!

  I marched to her side in terror and denial, forcing my way through the fallen, needing a closer look. It was me, wearing my fave black jacket and boots, silver rings on my fingers and my earlobes, my body ripped open and my guts spilled on the ground.

  Utterly still.

  One hand was missing.

  That had been my dragon claw I’d found twenty feet away.

  “What did I do?”

  She shook her head. “No, Wyvern. The question is what didn’t you do.” With one last searing look, she spun on her heel and walked away. She moved really fast, covering distance in a major way with her long strides, but I tried to run after her.

  “But what was that?” I shouted. “Does this have to happen? What can I do to prevent it? You have to tell me!”

  Skuld was a hundred feet away, on the verge of being swallowed by the fog. “I don’t have to tell you anything,” she said softly, her words carrying to my ears with a ghostly echo. “But let me ask you this: What would you die for? What would you die to save, Wyvern? Is there anything that matters that much to you?”

  Then she was gone, her marching figure swallowed by the fog. I yelled and raced after her, squinting my eyes shut as the fog took on a brilliant radiance. It shone on all sides of me with fierce white light and turned hot, as if I had stepped into the middle of the sun.

  And with the heat, the ground beneath my feet softened. I sank down, knee-deep in corpses and blood. I tried to shift shape but my shimmer was AWOL. I tried to manifest elsewhere but no luck.

  Meanwhile, the muck was pulling me down. It was like quicksand, sucking at me, dragging me deeper. The more I struggled, the faster I sank. Everything I could reach to grab for support was part of a body, soft and putrid.

  The smell of rot assailed me. I fought as I sank deeper and deeper, to my waist, to my shoulders. In no time, the sickly soup of corpses was right beneath my nose, and I knew my next breath would be disgusting.

  How long could I hold my breath?

  How could I escape?

  Why couldn’t I shift shape?

  I shouted for Skuld, fearing she wouldn’t help me.

  I was right.

  I WOKE UP, PANTING AND terrified in Meagan’s room, my fists clutching the sheets.

  I was safe, but that was by no means a permanent situation or a guarantee, given what Skuld had shown me. Meagan was sleeping soundly. I looked out the window and I saw the glimmer of purple spell light spun by Meagan and Jared, wound around the house.

  I thought I could see zillions of ShadowEater eyes gleaming in the darkness behind it.

  I got up, shut the drapes, and perched on the side of the bed. What would I die for? I thought of my afternoon adventure with Jared and knew that I had chosen wrong. I hadn’t entered the glamour because I’d been afraid, afraid for my own survival. I’d been more worried about myself than for my friends and the world around me.

  Yet Meagan and Jared had spun spell light to protect me while I slept.

  Thanks to Skuld, I now knew what I’d die for.

  I could only hope I hadn’t missed my last chance to get it right.

  MEAGAN’S MOM WAS FREAKING BY the morning. The body count was up—four more bodies had been found. Meagan was surreptitiously checking her messenger, trying to determine whether they were all Mages and apprentice Mages, or whether the ShadowEaters had gotten any shifters, too. Nick and Liam were okay, and headed off to guard Isabelle for the day.

  I didn’t want to send Jared a message in the morning, even though I was determined to see him. Actually, it was because I was determined to see him that I didn’t ping him. Experience had taught me that Jared blew me off when I sent him a message. I didn’t want to warn him that I was looking for him and have him disappear.

  Again.

  It was entirely possible that this time would be different, that this time he would hold his ground and wait for me, but there was too much at stake for me to bet on that. Jared came to me when it suited him, or he disappeared. I needed to find him before he could take off.

  So I asked Meagan where he was staying and she told me that he was crashing at a hostel popular with musicians. It wasn’t that far away, so I decided to go there first thing.

  I’d chosen my acid-green wrap, the one I’d been wearing the first time I’d met Jared, and knotted it around my neck. I told myself that I’d grabbed it because it was warm, but I also knew it makes my eyes look greener.

  Black jeans, black jacket, black sweater, black boots, black eyeliner, purple gloves, lots of silver jewelry, and I was ready for anything. Pretty much. At the last minute, I rummaged in the bottom of my overnight bag and got the red rune stone Granny had given me in a dream almost a year before. Who knew if I might need it again? Skuld’s shears had a place of pride in my backpack.

  Meagan nodded when I met her at the door, and I knew she knew what I was up to. We drove in silence together.

  At least until Sigmund showed up.

  “Message for you,” he said, suddenly leaning over the seat from the back. His head was right between us, and I was so surprised that the car swerved.

  “What’s wrong?” Meagan asked, reaching for the wheel.

  “You need to stop doing that,” I complained.

  “What do you mean?” Meagan asked. “We’ll end up on the sidewalk!”

  “Not you. Him.”

  Sigmund chuckled.

  Meagan shrank back, leaning against the car door as she stared at me. “Who?”

  “Sigmund.”

  Then she took such a careful survey of our surroundings that I knew she couldn’t see Sigmund. “And where exactly is Sigmund?”

  “In the backseat.” I had to lean around his head to make eye contact with her. Meagan flicked a glance at the road, and I focused on driving.

  “There’s nobody else in the car, Zoë,” Meagan said with care.

  As if she were talking to a crazy person.

  Sigmund chuckled. “Told you,” he said, gloating.

  I could have slugged him, but I spoke to Meagan. “I’m not losing it. My dead brother, Sigmund, is here, in the backseat, trying to make me think I’m going nuts.”

  Meagan looked pointedly at the backseat. “Did you get enough sleep last night?”

  “No. But that doesn’t change the fact that he’s here.”

  Sigmund was killing himself laughing by this point—no pun intended.

  “Do you often talk to dead people?” Meagan asked.

  “Just Sigmund. He’s kind of irritating like that.” I thought for a minute. “And the Wakiya elder.”

  Meagan nodded, considered it, and clearly decided to go with it. “So, is there a point to his being here?”

  “He has a message, apparently.” I stopped at a red light, then turned to Sigmund, ignoring the triumphant glint in his eyes. “You’ll notice that she doesn’t think I’m crazy.”

  “Yet,” he acknowledged with a grin.

  “Who’s the message from? And what is it?” We were about a block from school, at the corner where I’d have to turn left to go to the hostel. Meagan would go right to the school, which we could see. Kids were arriving slowly, some being dropped off at the curb by their parents, others driving their own cars into the student lot.

  I stopped at the curb, parking there for Meagan to get out, then turned to look at Sigmund. Meagan watched me, expectant.

  “This is so good,” Sigmund said. He winked, then got all gooey. Really, he could have been melting. His hair and his eyes and his face softened, like wax from a burning candle. I couldn’t help but stare. Everything about him dripped and morphed and slid into something else.

  Right before my eyes, he became Kohana.

  “Well, if you’re not going to tell me, I’m going to class,” Meagan said, and opened the car door.

  I kept staring into the backseat, fascinated and horrified. Sigmund-Kohana grinned, that provocati
ve grin so characteristic of Kohana, his dark eyes glinting. “Hey, Unktehila,” he said, and waved two fingers at me.

  Was this another glamour? Was I talking to Sigmund or Kohana?

  If it was a glamour, who had created it?

  Or was Kohana dead, too?

  I must have looked shocked at the idea, as shocked as I felt.

  “Zoë?” Meagan asked, concern in her tone as she leaned back into the car. “Are you okay?” I didn’t know what to say, not until Sigmund-Kohana delivered his message.

  To my astonishment, he tipped his head back and sang a single note with all his might.

  It vibrated in my ears, so resonant and clear that I knew I’d never forget it. The glass globe on the exterior light of the apartment building next to us exploded suddenly, and Kohana’s singing stopped.

  He winked and disappeared.

  Just like he’d never been there.

  “Oh, my God!” Meagan cried. “How did you do that?”

  “I didn’t.” In fact, I couldn’t believe it had even happened. I turned off the car and got out, going to the lamp. The glass was broken, all right, shards all over the concrete walk. I looked at the matching light on the other side of the apartment building doors. It was still vibrating slightly. When I leaned close, I could even hear it moving in the fixture.

  “Is that cool or what?” Sigmund whispered in my ear. There was no sign of him or of Kohana, and Meagan was looking at me as if I were bonkers.

  Maybe I was. I was a bit freaked myself by the way Sigmund had changed into Kohana.

  No. Meagan had heard it, too.

  “But you heard it, right?” I asked Meagan. She nodded, then looked determined. She pushed up her glasses, eyed the broken light fixture, then emitted a perfect echo of the note Kohana had sung. She held that note as I watched the globe on the second fixture vibrate with greater and greater intensity.

  Then the light shattered just as the first had done.

  I was no less shocked the second time.

  “It’s mathematics,” Meagan said matter-of-factly. “The result of creating a sine wave that induces a vibration. The oscillation can be too much for the physical item that is echoing the frequency, like that old bridge video we saw in physics class. The wind set up a resonance that vibrated the bridge apart.”