Page 5

Chapter 5

Desert Chase

Xavier

Blake popped his head out of the tent, his short hair pushed in one direction. He must have liked to sleep on his right side.

“Ready to head inside?” I asked, picking up some things we had left out overnight.

“Yeah, I guess I should see what I missed out on.”

“Didn’t sleep well?” I asked. It sounded like he had. I’d stayed up, keeping watch. I didn’t particularly like being so out in the open with the vice president’s son, even though this job wasn’t about any kind of particular or known threat. I still wanted to keep alert, so at one point, I went out and sat by the dusty logs, where I looked up at the stars and tried to find my favorite.

“I slept great. I just know that whatever’s on the other side of that rock is going to be way better.”

He wasn’t very far off. We finished cleaning the campsite. I helped carry his bag, even though he was more than capable of doing it himself. And he tried, half-heartedly giving it a tug. I shoulder bumped him in response.

We round the rock formation, and my home came into sight. “Holy fucking shit,” Blake said. “ That’s your desert home? How did you top a castle in Malibu?”

I grinned at him, opening my arms and spinning around. “We’re dragons, Blake. We always take pride in where we live. Where we hold our hordes.”

“So you have more than one horde?” Blake asked. He likely remembered that time he got way too close to mine and I instinctively shouted at him to stop. He looked like a wide-eyed child scolded for getting too close to the hot grill. I felt bad and had to explain.

“We do, although the things we collect stay the same.”

Blake shook his head, turning his attention back to the home behind me. “Dragons. Damn.”

His reaction wasn’t unusual. The Blackthornes had spared no expense in building this sleek and modern mansion against—and on occasion into—the large rock formation behind it. The hard angles of the pale white wood and walls of glass balanced themselves well with the sloping soft ridges of the rock, nearly the same color as the wood. Hearty cacti bloomed with pink and purple roses by the waterfall next to the entrance. Through the all-glass wall of the living room, I could see most of my family gathered.

When my family built this home, they had wanted something that blended in with the landscape while also bringing something new to it. There were windows that reflected back the bright blue sky against columns and walls of imported Dawn Oak. It had the effect of making it seem like parts of the rock formation itself were made of chunks from the sky.

“Want a tour?” I asked him.

“Obviously,” Blake said as he gave another stretch. “But is it okay if it’s after my morning run? I can’t think straight until I have it.”

“Of course,” I said. I had picked up on that pretty quickly. Blake was a regime kind of guy. He stuck to a schedule, especially when it came to his body. He liked to run when he woke up, enjoyed a thirty-minute nap every day at twelve, and always sat down for his dinner at six. “There’s a treadmill in the gym.”

“I was thinking I could just run through the desert?”

“Fine with me,” I said. “I’ll follow from the sky.”

“You don’t have to. If you want to go hang out with your family, you’re more than welcome to.”

I shot him a look. “Pretty sure that breaks all the rules in bodyguarding.”

“Not all of them,” Blake quickly answered. He began to shift before I could ask him to elaborate.

A thick white mist surrounded his body, concealing the transformation that happened underneath. It was similar to mine, except when the mist cleared, instead of a winged beast left behind, there was an amber-eyed timber wolf with soft white and black fur. He gave another stretch, bending his front legs and keeping his hind legs straight. His tail gave a little shake.

“Cute,” I said.

Blake growled. He turned and flexed his claws into the dirt.

My turn. I took a few steps away and began my shift, claiming my form as a dragon. Armor made of golden scales glittered where once was skin. Two swirling horns and a mane of snow-white hair grew from my scalp. My lips and mouth were a snout with lethal teeth jutting from the sides.

I flashed those teeth in a grin as Blake took off in a run. I followed behind him, gaining momentum, gaining speed, and then gaining altitude.

No part of me would ever grow tired of the rush that came from taking flight. There was a freedom to it that made my pulse pound. Taking to the skies gave the world an entirely new perspective. It reframed whatever issue or problem I had into something manageable, solvable. There was a shift that happened when suddenly the sky no longer felt like a ceiling and more like a goalpost.

The desert sprawled out below me. All around were the Joshua trees, with their thick and bent limbs and their crowning of leaves. They were peculiar-looking things. I loved them. Their uniqueness was what drew me to them. I loved when something was a little odd, a little unusual.

Blake looked just as much at ease as he ran across the parched earth. He jumped over a slithering stream, climbed a stack of rocks, and vaulted off them, then continued to run and run and run. We passed a few RVs and campsites, their surprise at seeing a wolf being eclipsed by their surprise of seeing a dragon once my shadow fell across them. I wasn’t high, only barely skimming the clouds above me with the tips of my wings, so I could clearly make out their dropped jaws and “holy shit” expressions.

Once we drew close to the more populated area of Joshua Tree, Blake looped back around and headed to the house. I dipped my wings to the left and turned with him, the woosh of air cradling my body as I smoothly leveled back out.

This felt right. I’d been down lately. With our mother’s first birthday coming up since we lost her, it felt like some distant storm rumbled toward us. Lightning strong enough to burn us to crisps. She’d zap us sometimes, as children. When we did something that went beyond a simple time-out, she’d hold two fingers out and poke our sides.

The jolts turned into jokes as we grew older. She’d sometimes sneak up and give us a little shock when we least expected it.

Three distant figures caught my attention. Shadows against the dirt. Running. Not away, but toward. I tipped my head downward. They grew closer, and their forms were clear.

Two wolves and a wild dog that towered above them, built like a brick house. They ran with the enhanced speed and agility of shifters. Blake wasn’t too far from them. Only one lumbering rock formation separated them. They snapped at each other from the thrill of the chase.

Fuck.

I dove as I roared out a warning. Blake came to a skidding stop, dust rising up and clouding his legs. I swooped around the rock formation just as they split up around it.

The wolf closest to me kept to the rock formation. The shifter tried to make it under a decent-sized outcropping that would have protected him from my talons.

Too late. I flared out my wings to slow my descent before I grabbed the wolf like a mother grabbing her pup’s scruff.

They struggled in my grip. I had no sight line on Blake. I took back to the sky, the wolf still in my claws. They shifted back into their human form, the man beginning to beg, my claws wrapped fully around his body.

But my attention was on Blake. They had him surrounded. All three snarled, but Blake looked like a runt next to the two massive death dealers.

I dove back down. I tossed the shifter before I hit the ground, his body cracking hard against a tree.

The other two shifters were taken off guard as I ran at them in my human form.

I blasted one in the face with sand, which sent the big dog down to his front paws as he tried to rub it out. Blake leapt at the other, claws and teeth out. They tumbled into a chaotic ball of fur and snarls. I had to trust he’d handle it because the bloodthirsty mastiff quickly shifted into a bloodthirsty man, built as solid as his animal form. A tangle of muscle that appeared to be made from the very rocks that surrounded us.

He launched a fist. I blocked with a forearm. The impact sent me reeling backward, the sharp pain radiating out through my entire arm. I pressed the assault. Ducking as he tried hitting me again, landing a punch to his gut. He sent spit flying as his eyes bulged. I twisted around him and kicked the back of his knee.

The tower of muscle dropped to the ground. I was about to roundhouse kick the back of his head, but he rolled forward and smoothly rose back to his feet. I risked a look over my shoulder. Blake had the advantage. Good.

I turned my focus back to my assailant. He was done playing with fists. A silver dagger with a serrated blade glittered with the promise of death. He smiled, the jagged scar across his cheek pushed up to his coal-black eyes. He wore a dark jacket with what appeared to be a broken hourglass emblazoned on the chest. He kept his canines from the shift. They were as lethal as the dagger. His other hand hovered over a black satchel dangling off his hip.

“I’ve got you now,” he growled.

He closed the distance between us in a few strides. He must have thought his speed would catch me off guard.

It didn’t. I lifted my arm, a shield made of densely packed sand floating in front of my forearm and absorbing the stab from the dagger. His black eyes went wide. He tried to pull the dagger out but couldn’t.

I yanked backward. It was the shifter who was caught off guard. He stumbled. He desperately tried to untangle the knot on the satchel, but his huge fingers wouldn’t allow him to. I grabbed the dagger and let the sand fall to the floor. In one swift motion, I sank the dagger into the shifter’s side. He gasped as he realized his blood flowed freely to the ground. The shifter dropped dead to my feet.

One left.

A yelp made me swing back around. Blake no longer had the advantage. The larger wolf had him pinned to the dirt. His jaw was latched around Blake’s throat. A few more seconds and Blake would have his throat ripped out.

That meant I had time.

The world slowed as I pulled on the tightly wound threads of reality itself. Being a golden dragon allowed me to reach through the veil and manipulate what would otherwise be impossible to even conceptualize. It wasn’t the easiest ability to pull off and did have its limitations. There was no bringing back the dead, and I could only rewind for a total of three seconds—which was something that increased with age.

Three seconds was all I needed.

The world moved backward. The jet-black wolf on top of Blake reversed back into the air, his jaw opening like a monstrous blooming rose. Blake rolled back onto his four legs. He cowered as he helplessly watched the wolf above him.

There was a short readjustment period as the rest of the world caught up to the shift. It was in this period that I could move at regular speed while everything around me moved by centimeters. I ran over to the seemingly frozen scene. I held my hand between Blake and the other wolf.

Time returned to its predictable flow. The shifter fell forward, expecting to taste victory. What it met instead was an arrow impaled in its chest, bursting through its heart and killing it instantly.

I hurled the limp wolf away from Blake. He shifted back into his human form, sitting on the floor with wide eyes. “How’d you get here so fast?”

“I can reverse time, remember?” I helped him back up to his feet. His hair was messy, and he had a couple of scratches across his arms and face, but overall, he looked fine.

“Yeah, but… whatever, it’s too complicated.” He looked around at the dead shifters. “I think I need a drink.”