Could she leave? Go out into the night? She thought of Felix, at home in her apartment, all alone in the darkness. Her building was only six blocks from the library. If she could traverse those six blocks, she could make it back to her own place. What then? She didn’t know what she would do next. She just knew she had to get away from the pulsating fear of the other librarians.
She went through the emergency tool kit that had been spilled across the lounge table and grabbed a handful of flares and a lighter. She shoved them in her purse and headed for the door.
“Are you leaving?” Harriet asked her from the armchair. She hadn’t moved this whole time. The candlelight reflected in the tears streaking down Harriet’s face.
“I need to go home.”
“Are you sure you want to go out there?”
“I have to go,” Lucia said, opening the door. “Take care, Harriet.”
“You do the same, kid. Don’t get yourself killed.”
The door clicked closed behind her, and she was in the pitch darkness of the library. She grabbed a flare from her purse and broke it open, activating the light. It illuminated the hall, and she could continue on. She could sense other people in between the stacks. She could feel their minds and sense their presence. Quickly skirting around the corner to the stairs, Lucia made a run for it. She took the stairs two at a time and hurried through the lobby and out of the building.
On the street, the wind blew cold from the bay. Lucia shivered and gripped her free hand into a fist, pumping it for warmth.
A building burned down the block, the bright flames lighting the street. Lucia started to run in the opposite direction, toward her building. Usually she took the bus, but from the looks of the street, she didn’t think she’d be taking one again anytime soon.
People had left their cars stalled in the street. The sidewalks were full of desperate souls, wailing and running aimlessly around. A woman grabbed Lucia’s arm and begged her for answers. She just shook her head and yanked her arm away, running off down the street. She had to get away from the swirling mass of panicked minds or she would go mad.
Her own mind was ablaze with new sensations she couldn’t understand and couldn’t control. It was as if every desperate person who passed her screamed inside her head. How could that be? She had never had any psychic ability. She had never even believed in such things.
How else could she explain this? Was she hallucinating? Why wouldn’t her heart stop throbbing in her chest as if it wanted to fly out to sacrifice itself for the dying world? She ran on, skirting around stalled cars as she crossed the street. She veered into the middle of the road and ran faster. There were fewer people than on the sidewalk but she had to weave between the dead cars.
When she’d run three blocks, she started to feel winded and her flare had started to dim. She slowed her run and then stopped, bending over to catch her breath. She held the flare in her hand as she sucked air into her burning lungs. When she stood up, finally feeling able to go on, she saw several dark figures approaching from a dark street.
Their shadows were black against the blacker night, their movements strange and quick. When they came into the glow of her dying flare, she saw that it was a group of three men and one woman, dressed in long black coats. They wore a crest on their chests, a red lightning bolt striking the Earth. They smiled at her maniacally and laughed when they jumped up onto the cars around her.
“What do you want?” she said, turning in a circle to look at each of them.
“We want to feed,” the woman said, her lips red and her eyes eerily bright in the flare’s red glow.
Lucia felt a ball of fear in her chest. These were not regular hoodlums or teenagers dressed up in the latest goth fashions. These people were something else. Not only could she see it in their eyes, she could feel it in their hearts. She sensed a cold yearning, ready to kill to feed a sick insatiable lust. They would drink her blood until she was dry.
She knew what they wanted, but had no idea how to stop them. Her flare began to die. She dropped it, grabbed another and lit it. The memories of her past life wove a tapestry around her mind. She’d encountered these beings before. She knew in some instinctive way how to defeat them.
One of the vampires jumped from the car above her, and the others followed suit. Lucia gasped, fear taking hold. This morning she’d been a mild-mannered librarian. Now she’d been thrust into this strange world. These nightmare creatures would kill her and somehow she knew what they were.
What did that make her?
She squeezed her eyes shut and balled her fist. When she opened her eyes, and let out a sharp breath, a ball of white light shot out from her tight fist. She sucked another breath into her lungs and let it out, opening her palm. The energy exploded outward like a light bomb and the vampires flew backward.
Lucia burst into a run, her lungs ragged from the three blocks she’d already run today. Her Mary-Janes were not made for this sort of thing. She pumped harder, her purse flapping at her side as she gripped her flare. She ducked around the next block, hoping that whatever she’d done with that ball of light would hold the vampires for a little while.
She still didn’t fully comprehend how she knew those were vampires, or how she’d defeated them. It was as if she’d just woken up from a coma and now she was starting to recall who she really was. Her past life flooded her imagination and ancient knowledge floated around the periphery of her consciousness. If she reached out and picked a memory, she could almost see the vast details of her old life. Almost.
She’d just defeated a group of vampires. The spell had come to her instinctively, like a muscle memory. She knew how to pull the energy out of herself. But what was the energy? Could it be what she wanted to call it?
Magic?
What was magic? Was it the manifestation of conscious intent? How had magic become possible at the very same instant the sun had ejected a massive flare? Something was responsible for all this, and Lucia wanted to find out what. Even if she was running from vampires, she was still a librarian and curiosity would still always get the better of her.
She kept running, ignoring the screaming from the knot in her side and her burning throat. She didn’t stop until she made it back to her apartment. As she ran to the door of her building, she breathed a sigh of gratitude that it wasn’t on an electric lock and shoved her key into the door.
Inside the building, she hurried up the stairs and made it to her floor. She was ready to collapse by the time she got to her door and locked herself inside. Felix greeted her as soon as she entered. She set her flare on the counter and knelt to pet her cat. The black and white stray was the love of her life and he’d been with her for five years.
She stroked his back and then gently picked him up, holding him to her chest. She continued into the living room where she used the lighter to light several candles across her mantle and in the centerpiece on her coffee table. She made the conscious decision to save the rest for later. The flare slowly died on the kitchen counter.
Lucia petted Felix on her lap, staring at a candle flame on the coffee table. Her apartment was turning cold, but at least she had Felix purring against her chest. He rubbed his cheek on her hand. She took a deep breath, letting it out with a low moan.
Now that she was home, at least she could hear herself think. But the pulsing panic of the city around her wouldn’t leave her alone. How long could she stay here? With all forms of mass communication down, there was no way of knowing anything. Everyone was on their own.
A tear streamed down her face as she thought of the vampires from the street outside. This wasn’t just a natural disaster. Something about the fundamental nature of reality had shifted. None of it made any sense, but Lucia somehow knew she was part of it all. Some ancestor of hers, in the deep past, had something to do with what was happening now.
The woman in the Greek robes had sacrificed herself for something. It was important, but it had cost her the ultimate price. What could be worth one’s own life? Q
uestions rolled through Lucia’s mind too fast to figure out. She had to push them aside.
She curled up on the couch, focusing on the one memory that gave her the most joy. The dark-haired man who had watched her give her life up. His love for her held her in the darkness. Who was he? She’d never met anyone like him in her life. Men like that didn’t tend to peruse adult fiction at the public library.
He was something bigger than an ordinary man. A titan, or a god. She curled into a ball on the couch, holding Felix to her chest in the dim candle light. The vision of the man grew inside her like a ripening fruit. The thought of him was sweet and juicy, full of untold pleasures.
What was his name? She wished she could remember. Hours ago, she’d been cataloging rare texts on the third floor of the public library, just an ordinary girl from southern California. Now she was having memories of her long lost love from some other lifetime. In her new reality, wanting to know his name seemed perfectly reasonable.
She focused on his face, zeroing in on the essence of him. She felt a white-hot fire burn back at her. The vision behind her mind’s eye changed and the man she loved shifted into the monstrous form of a silver dragon.
Chapter 5
Orion spread his silver wings, pushing north along the coastline. The dark outline of what was once California spread out below him. Who knew what it would be called now that the immortals walked the Earth again.
His heart ached for the time before the veil when the world knew that the sons and daughters of eternity walked among them. The last two thousand years had been torture without his dragon. Without Selene.
Big Sur flew past below him, he swooped on an updraft that sent him higher over the dark forest. The blanket of the eternal night sky shone with a multitude of stars. The moon too had gone dim, its light only a reflection of the sun. Anger burned in Orion’s heart. To turn off the very sun that warmed the planet and allowed life to grow was beyond unforgivable. Xander had to pay for this.
Orion would stop at nothing to return the light to the world. He gritted his teeth, his mind turning to Selene. It was as if he could feel her calling out to him by name.
He wanted to heed her call. She’d been gone for so long. Was it possible that Selene’s spirit walked this Earth, in this time, perhaps close enough to touch?
Selene had defied the laws of probability once, perhaps she could do it again now. He ached to see her after all this time. Two thousand years without his heart mate was too long. His body screamed for her, the beast at his core furious to give her his mark once more.
He had to find her. Orion pumped his wings, feeling the cool ocean air glide under him. He was approaching civilization again, his keen senses picking up the subtle impressions of the lives below. He could smell their fear and despair. The cool scent of vampires crossed his senses. They were feeding below in the darkness.
And it wasn’t just vampires. The dragons of The Surge had joined Xander’s team. Many had waited long for this night. Few had the courage to protect the humans. Orion gritted his teeth. This had to be put right. If the immortals openly walked the Earth again, they had to allow the human race to live in peace.
However, Orion knew that it would be a hard fight to win. For now, they had to take the fight to Xander. The rest of the lower level Surge would be dealt with later. He knew many other immortals who still believed in the sacrifice of the witches.
The witches were the female genetic link all immortals had to the ancient bloodlines. They were part of the lineage of the old gods, just like dragons and vampires.
No matter where the elders had gone, Orion and his clan remained. As did The Surge, who intended to enslave humanity and use it for its own ends.
Who would stop them? The fathers and the mother of all immortals had left two thousand years ago at the time of the veiling.
Had they left on their ships to other worlds or run away to the bowels of the Earth? No one knew. They’d left their children to finish their quarrels themselves. How Orion had landed in this fight he did not know. He was the great-great grandson of the god Dahaki and the goddess Gama, as were all the dragons in the world today.
Most dragons were many thousands of years old. Like the oldest vampires. The immortals had lacked the female line since the witches sacrificed themselves to create the veil. They hid in reincarnating human bodies, devoid of all their magic, their energy given to keeping up the veil.
Sometimes they would be born as wise women or psychics. Sometimes they were persecuted and burned alive. Midwives and healers, the women who always felt a little bit off in the world, as if there was something more than the mundane reality.
None of the immortals could be sure which women were the witches. Even if an immortal found one of these psychic humans, there was no way to tell if she was a witch or if she was just human. Her children would not carry the magic gene either way and she would not produce immortal young.
The immortal family lines had been dwindling. The clans grew old. Many had died in accidents or battles during the veil. Their bodies’ natural healing ability had been severely compromised. It was the same with vampires who could no longer walk in the light of day due to the genetic code of their kind. The veil took away their ability to withstand the light.
Like female dragons, female vampires could not produce fully immortal young. Even the oldest females from the strongest gene pools did not produce immortal children.
Only witches carried the female genetic line from Gama, the goddess. When an immortal male mated with a witch, her young was a demigod, like Orion and his brother Titus.
Witches would become a hot commodity in these times of unveiling magic. The awakening witches would think they were human one moment and then realize they were something else the next. His heart ached for them. His great love, his heart mate, Selene had been one of the greatest priestesses of all time. Selene had been a shining star upon the Earth. She’d died with his baby in her womb.
His heart ached at the memory of her dead body floating in her gazing pool.
He pumped his wings harder as he approached the San Francisco Bay. The dark city loomed above the blackened water. His mind stretched out over the multitude of cries. He felt something there. A mind searched for him by name. A bright spot shone on his mind’s eye. It was like a burning flash of white heat. Magic. He could taste it on the air. Not just any magic. Witch magic.
Swooping, he descended from far above, shooting like a rocket toward the magic. He landed on the roof of a five story apartment building and shifted. His clothes came along with him in a flash of nano-technology and holographic illusion. Orion walked to the edge of the building and looked down at the balcony below. She was there.
He hopped to the balcony on the third floor and looked through the sliding glass window. A woman slept on her couch, holding a cat in her arms. His acute dragon senses made out the outline of her shape and he heard the gentle purring of her feline companion.
Orion sniffed the air, gripping the glass door’s handle. It was locked. He pulled out his glass pad and flicked the screen, using his nano-technology to create a skeleton key. When the lock clicked, he slid open the door. The scent of her hit him. She filled his senses with spices and honey. The spring blossoms at sunrise. The morning dew on the grass swaying in a sweet breeze. He would know that scent anywhere. He went to her side and knelt over her. The cat awoke and hissed before scrambling away into the darkness of the apartment.
“Stop Felix,” the woman murmured.
Her voice was a song. Like the whispered words she’d once said to him so long ago on the grounds of their home. It was her. It had to be. He’d found his beloved Selene! By some incomprehensible chance, he’d found her here in San Francisco. Her loveliness filled his heart as he watched her sleeping face in the flickering candle light.
He had to get her out of here. He had to protect her. His dragon rumbled. He needed to make her his own once again. No other immortal would ever touch her. He vowed to keep her saf
e.
The woman’s eyes fluttered and she yawned. When she finally focused her vision on him, she scrambled to sitting and reached for her glasses. She put them on and then threw them back on the side table.
“Who are you?” she finally demanded.
Orion could smell the magic building in her belly.
“It is I. Orion. Your heart mate.”
“How did you get in here?” she snapped, inching away from him until she’d scooted around the back of the couch.
“I flew. How much do you remember?”
“Remember?”
“Do you know what’s happening?”
“Does anyone?” she said flatly.
“You must be feeling the effect. I can smell the magic all over you.”
“Magic?”
“The energy of the void. It has been kept from us for so long on this planet. Blocked by Gama’s last spell on Earth. She blocked magic from the world. It took your life in the process.”
“My life.”
“Do you remember?”
“I remember…something.”
Orion strode toward her and took her hand in his, pressing it to his chest. Her face lit up in shock. His dragon called to take her. This woman had been his wife. The mother of his children. She had to be his again. He had to protect her.
“You must come with me,” he said, wrapping his arm around her waist.
She let out a gasp and gazed into his eyes. Her long brown hair hung down her back and her green eyes twinkled in the candle light. He knew she felt what he did. Somewhere deep inside. She had to remember him.
“Selene,” he whispered.
“I’m not Selene,” she said, pushing away. “I’m Lucia Amador. What is your name and how did you get into my apartment?”
“I beg your pardon, lady. I am Orion Silverdrake. Your husband. And I flew in here and used nano-technology to pick the lock on your door. Now please, waste no more time and come with me.”
“You flew…”
“I’m a dragon. I thought you knew that.”