It was a summons.But for whom?
“All I gotta do is figure out whose team they’re batting for, and who the hell had the nerve to fuck with my Wards.”
Tired of talking to myself, but too keyed up to stop, I opened the throttle almost as wide as it would go, giving my Harley a fresh infusion of gas and waiting for the roar of the engine to calm my rapidly fraying nerves.Because I couldn’t buy luck with a million dollars, it didn’t come.That beautiful, reassuring, rumbling hum was swallowed by a deep, resonant vibration skimming the ground, then slithering up the frame of my Fat Boy.
The desert was alive in a whole new, imposing way.Arrhythmia was humming a bone-deep timbre that had Lou up on his feet, his head low and his eyes glowing.
“Someone is fucking with things they know nothing of.”It was a warning, not a statement.
That explained a lot.
I’d seen battlefields– Supernatural and not.Magical detonations and those created with chemistry and human hands.In the old days, when we fought for King and Country, my Brethren and I had unleashed Dragon Fire without restraint in defense of our Homeland.Although it had been necessary, the carnage was devastating, the loss of life overwhelming…
No matter how bad it got, not once had the sky turned blood-red or had the horizon looked like a gaping wound.
The mushroom cloud pulsed.I felt a heartbeat… Not from the mist… Not my own… But somehow connected to me…
Soft, feminine, fiery, and fierce, the heartbeat and its owner were more determined than a hundred Guardsmen marching into battle as it beat in opposition to the mushroom cloud.It called to my heart… to my soul… to the Darkness that lies within all unmated Dragons.
My vision blurred.My heart skipped a beat.My lungs collapsed as a dense, unmoving wall of desert air slammed into my chest.Sharp and sudden, it stole my breath.Then, just as quickly as it returned what it had taken.My Harley wobbled.The tires worked hard to grip the dirt– to find purchase– as I fought to keep control.
“Son of a bi…,” I spat, still gulping air into my lungs.
Whatever or whoever was playing silly buggers with the fabric of our world hadn’t finished.Then I felt it again– that lone heartbeat, battling the pulse of mushroom cloud– and I realized…
“It’s beating in time with mine.”
“Aye,”Lou snapped.“Now go.She needs us.”
At least he was talking to me again.Weirdly, his gruff words only accentuated the feeling that something deep within both of us was changing, transforming…dare I say– evolving?
“Wait?What?Did you say ‘she’?Are you talking about the other heartbeat?Who is it?What do you know that I don’t?Lou.Lou?”
He was gone again.Dammit!
“You know I hate the silent treatment,”I snarled.“Well, I’m not playin’ today.”Not taking my eyes off the cloud, I added, mostly because I just couldn’t stop,“Holler when you’re ready to talk, Old Man.I got shit to do.”
Darkening and intensifying, the edges of the mushroom cloud expanded and contracted.It was reshaping, but it wasn’t doing it willingly.Something was pushing back from the inside.Something…
“The ferocious, lone heartbeat.”I was in awe.Who was in there was tough as nails, she refused to give up, simply didn’t know the meaning of defeat.
One thing was for sure.Lou was right,sheneeded us.
“Damn,” I breathed.“She is… amazing.”
Heat flared in the depths of my soul.A deep, instinctive certainty filled me from the inside, looking for a place to call home.
“That abomination isn’t meant to be here,”Lou ground out through gritted teeth.
“What?What isn’t meant to be here?The cloud?No shit.”I waited for a confirmation that never came.“What the fuck, Lou?What…?”
“This was never supposed to be possible.It was simply not supposed to be… period.”
“What.Are.You.Talking.About?”I demanded and pleaded and pretty much begged, but got nothing.King Anluan was deep in thought.
He had shut me out.It had never happened before, not even one of the millions of times I’d pissed him off over the centuries.Whoever said there’s always a first time for everything… Well, that genius should’ve kept his damn mouth shut.Putting that shit out into the universe just gets it coming back tenfold– and usually in my direction.
Okay, enough of that.What did I know?Lou had gone dark.No sharing of information.No sharing of thoughts.No sharing ofanything.
