Page 54 of Destined Dawn

She glides low over our heads, her wingspan so wide, we’re all plunged into darkness and she whistles again, calling to me.

“What?” Christopher Kennedy says. “What is this? Where is her rider?”

“Right here.” Renzo grins, thumbing towards me.

The Lord Protector lowers his gaze from the sky and stares at me with disbelief.

“Then you really are your father’s daughter,” he sneers at me.

The dragon lunges down towards his supporters and there are screams as men and women drop to the floor, covering their heads with their hands. The dragon does nothing though, simply skims over them, her long talons tucked into her body.

The Lord Protector calls out to his supporters. “This dragon is theirs. Attack her.”

I gasp, willing her away, and she spirals up into the air as the scores of magicals fire their magic up into her belly. She howls as it hits her scales, the magic splintering and sparking as if hitting thick metal shields.

“Leave her alone!” I yell, flinging more magic of my own their way. Some of the magicals divert to attack us again and then the dragon is twisting in flight and whistling again.

But this time it isn’t me she’s whistling to. Other dragons appear – one, two, three – out on the horizon and heading this way. Each of these dragons with a rider on their back.

The large golden dragon sweeps towards the ground. A fierce rumble issues from her chest and it seems to glow even more golden in the dull cloudy light, then a stream of fire bursts from her nostrils, cooking ten magicals at once. I avert my eyes, the smell of burned flesh strong in my nostrils, the cries of the dying magicals loud in my ears. Wings crack above my head and when I open my eyes again, the dragon is looping back up into the clouds as the remaining magicals pelt her with magic. For a moment she’s lost behind the thick blanket and then she reappears behind Christopher Kennedy’s people, blasting them again, several of them scattering and diving to try and avoid the jet of fire.

Chrisopher Kennedy spins and launches magic so dark it seems to suck the light from the sky. It sears towards the dragon, hitting her square on the jaw. Immediately her fire extinguishes, clouds of smoke billowing from her nostrils instead. She thrashes her jaws in anger, grabbing two men in her front talons and taking off into the sky, dropping their squirming bodies when she’s almost to the clouds.

Christopher Kennedy, the self-imposed Lord Protector, spins towards us, his eyes wild with madness like the assassins. He laughs as the dragon circles above his head – the other dragons not far away now, almost at the Gray Isle.

“You think this is the end?” He laughs manically. “You poor deluded, stupid fools. So naïve, so clueless. You don’t know who she really is. You don’t know who he is.”

He glances towards the coming dragons and then back to his remaining supporters.

“Away!” he yells. And suddenly we’re all consumed in a thick dark blanket of smoke, so thick I can hardly see, the vapors choking me so I’m coughing and spluttering for air.

“No!” Tristan cries out and then he lunges forward, crouching down to pick up my discarded knife. He flings it through the air, the metal singing as it flies through the thick smoke in the direction of his father.

I wait for the thud of metal against skin. I wait for the retaliation of magic.

Nothing.

The cold wind sweeps away the black smoke and the sand in front of us is empty.

Christopher Kennedy and his followers are gone.

21

Rhi

“He’s gone!”I pant, spinning my gaze around.

“Yes, but who the hell is that?” Stone says, shielding his eyes and watching as the three dragons fly closer, finally joining the golden dragon in the sky. They circle us three times and once again my mates are crowding round me and lifting their hands.

Then together all four dragons swoop towards the beach, the ground shaking as they land in front of us.

Renzo’s rucksack – the one he’s been carrying all this time – now lying discarded on the sand, begins to wriggle, and then Pip squirms his way out of the top, squawking angrily as he does.

The others pay him no attention. They bristle ready for another attack, but the three riders – one man and two women – simply stare at us. These three dragons are smallerthan the one I healed, with duller coloring. The women riding smaller green dragons and the man a larger brown one.

They are dressed in tight-fitted suits of leather, dark helmets on the women’s heads.

“You may lower your hands,” the man says, his accent thick with the West. “We are not here to harm you.”