Dragons gift the protect.., p.46
Dragon's Gift: The Protector Complete Series: Books 1 - 5, page 46
part #0 of Dragon's Gift: The Protector Complete Series Series
I loved his company. Though I had my parents, my grandparents had died before I was born. Ademius was the closest thing I had to a grandfather.
“Have you done your gardening today?” he asked.
“Yes.” He always asked about my garden, giving me tips and tricks. “But I’m worried. Not only has the forest been dying faster, now my garden is starting to look wilted. The herbs are failing. That’s never happened before.”
Ademius’s eyes turned sad, but he nodded knowingly. “It was only a matter of time.”
“What do you mean?”
“Things can’t live forever, child.” He gripped his walking stick. “Not even me.”
Mention of his death distracted me from my worry over the forest. “You’ve lived a long time, but why not longer?”
He smiled. “I’ve lived plenty long. You have no idea. But don’t you worry about me. It’s you we have to talk about.”
“Me?”
“Yes.” His gaze met mine, suddenly serious. “I will have to go away soon and won’t be able to visit you as often.”
“You only come a few times a year, at most.” I dug my hands into the dirt. I couldn’t lose Ademius.
“Be that as it may, I must leave.” His eyes were kind. “But you will find me again, one day.”
“How?” Tears pricked my eyes. This felt final.
“You’ll know the way. It will be inside you. But I have left something for you that will help. When the time comes, your mother will give it to you.”
“Like a map?” This was like a game—except it was sad. What was the point of a sad game?
“Like a map, yes. But it’s inside of you.” He held out a hand, silencing me. “While I’m gone, you must take care of your garden. Learn to tend it.”
“Why is that so important to you?” I loved my garden, but I almost thought he loved it more.
“It is important to you, Phoenix. You must tend to the life within your garden. It will reward you tenfold.”
“Okay.” That was weird. What did he even mean by that? “Do you really have to leave now?”
He nodded, then slowly rose, leaning heavily on his cane. I jumped to my feet, throwing my arms around his frail body. I sniffled, but the tears wouldn’t stay back any longer.
“I can’t believe you’re leaving,” I sobbed.
“I must. Someone is hunting for me. Someone evil. I must not fall into his hands or…” I drew in a shuddering breath. “Just tend to your garden, Phoenix. It will love you in return.”
I popped awake, gasping. The sun peaked over the horizon, spreading a golden glow over the valley.
“What’s wrong?” Ares’s voice was groggy as he sat up.
“A dream.” I scrubbed my hand over my face to dry the tears. “I knew Ademius when I was a child.”
Suddenly, things were falling into place.
“How?”
“He visited me in the forest several times a year. He must have known what I would become. But then he disappeared. He said he was being hunted.”
“By Drakon?”
“I think so. He said he was evil.”
“That means Drakon has been seeking this prophecy for over a decade. He didn’t have the Vessel of Truth at that point, though, did he?”
“No. He first got it by stealing it from us. But that doesn’t mean he didn’t know the legend of the beaker. Vessels of Truth are rare. He could have learned of Ademius first, then found the beaker.”
“And Ademius got wind that he was coming for him and ran for it,” Ares said.
“Exactly. But not before telling me to tend to my garden.” I smiled. Though I couldn’t remember the other times I’d seen him in the forest, I could recall how comforted I’d felt to be in his presence. How much I’d enjoyed talking about my garden with him. “I’ve always liked older people and I wondered if I had a grandparent. I didn’t—not technically. But I’d had Ademius.”
“He’s a grandparent.” The corner of Ares’s mouth quirked up. “If you add about one hundred ‘greats’ in front of his name.”
I smiled, my heart suddenly light. We were going to find Ademius. More family for me.
I climbed out of the sleeping bag and stretched my sore muscles. “Come on. We’ve got to get a move on.”
“Excited?” he asked.
“Yeah.” I gazed out at the rising sun, hope filling my chest. “Last week, I knew nothing about my family. Not even if they were alive or dead. Nothing. I’ve been desperate to know for ten years. But now, I have parents. And Ademius.”
“That is a good streak of luck.” Ares smiled.
“Yep. And I’m going to keep it going.” I called upon my magic, conjuring a breakfast of cheese sandwiches and water. I handed one off to Ares.
“Cheese sandwiches for breakfast?” he asked.
“Cheese for all meals.”
“Thanks.” He bit in. Chewed. Swallowed. “You’re a good cook.”
“Only with the conjuring. And cheese.” I ate my sandwich quickly, then conjured a simple nylon backpack. I crouched down and bundled the sleeping bag up into a tiny packet. I’d been careful to conjure one of those compressible ones. I hated leaving trash behind, so I’d just carry it out of here, along with our used water bottles.
“You don’t want to use your destroyer power to clean up?” Ares asked.
“No.” I shoved the sleeping bag into the backpack. The destroyer magic felt too dark inside me, more so than ever. Was that because I was becoming more in tune with the Life magic and the two couldn’t coexist easily? Though it was controlled and no longer making me ill, I didn’t like using it. “I don’t want to use it more than necessary. And I should save my power anyway.”
“Fair enough.” Ares reached for the backpack and swung it onto his back.
“I don’t mind carrying it.”
“It feels like a feather on my back. Literally.”
“All right, Superman.”
Ares grinned. “Just a vampire. But I’ll take the title if you insist.”
I laughed and punched him playfully on the shoulder. “Lets get a move on.”
We set off across the desert, following my dragon sense toward the mountains in the distance. The sun blazed down, making me wish that Ana and Bree had been able to stick around with their buggy. Too bad I couldn’t conjure a car. I was getting close—all that practice with fixing up Fabio and his siblings was giving me enough of an understanding of a car’s inner workings that I should be there soon.
But for now, we were on foot. The ground was too uneven for a bike, so we were stuck with walking for at least two hours. In the blazing sun.
Yuck.
As the hours passed, the sun grew hotter and hotter. Finally, I spotted something.
“I think we’re almost there.” I pointed ahead of us, to the mountain that loomed in the distance. There was a massive rock at the base, like a huge flat boulder that had rolled down the mountain and settled at the bottom.
When we neared, it became clear that the rock had been placed there intentionally to block something. An entrance, probably. Hider’s Haven was in there. Or through there. Hard to say.
I eyed the massive rock in front of us. It had to weigh several tons, no question. “Well, that’s not going to be fun.”
“We have to move it to get to the path beyond?” Ares asked.
“Yep.” I inspected it. Magic shimmered around the stone, a haze of white that indicated a spell could remove it. “There must be some kind of password to get by.”
“Perhaps that’s what Ana and Bree meant when they said it would be difficult to get in without an invitation.”
“Makes sense.” I examined every inch of the stone, then started checking the mountain around it, looking for some kind of clue. When I helped Cass and Del on their jobs, we sometimes had to figure out riddles to get through the tricky parts of tombs and temples. Usually, I was pretty good at them.
But this time? “I’ve got no idea how to get through.”
“I’ll try to move it.”
“It weighs thousands of pounds.”
“True.” Ares approached, eyeing the slab of stone. I could almost see the calculations going on behind his eyes. He rubbed his hands together, then crouched at the edge of the rock and gripped a small crevice. He heaved upward.
Ares strained, veins standing out at his neck as he grimaced. The rock shifted, scraping against the mountain. It lifted a centimeter off the ground. Two centimeters.
Sweat rolled down Ares’s temple. His face turned red. He grunted. The stone lifted another few centimeters, then dropped to the ground.
Ares cursed and stepped back. “Too big.”
Hmmm. That left me then.
I probably couldn’t destroy the whole thing with my magic—this was about a thousand times bigger than the dishrag I’d obliterated in practice a couple weeks ago. But I had to try.
I called upon my magic, stepping forward and pressing my hand against the stone. I shuddered, not wanting to call upon the destroyer magic, but forcing myself to. It felt weird, especially once the power rushed up inside me, but I focused on pouring the magic into the stone. It rushed out of me as a breeze, filling the rock.
Slowly the stone cracked, a fissure crawling from the top to the bottom of the enormous rock. The slab didn’t crumble away—I wasn’t strong enough for that—but the crack grew slowly.
I focused, feeding more of my power into the stone, envisioning it splitting in two. Finally, the crack crawled all the way up to the top. It was now in two pieces. Hopefully I could destroy at least one.
Panting, I stepped back. “Just give me a moment and I can try again.”
“Not necessary.” Ares stepped up and gripped the rock on the right, heaving it upward. His muscles strained, but the boulder crept up inches. Then a foot. He shifted it a few feet away from the mountain, then dropped it. It thudded to the ground. He stepped back, sweat trickling down his brow.
“Nice one.” I held up a hand for a high five.
Ares grinned and held up his hand so that I could smack it with my own.
“Good teamwork,” Ares said.
“We should make our own motivational poster. I’ll be the kitten hanging off the branch and you can be the eagle who is soaring toward his goal.”
Ares chuckled.
I joined him at the crevice where the stone stood away from the mountain and peeked inside. It was dark and narrow, but there was a darker bit and the cool scent of earth flowing out.
“Definitely a tunnel back there, and just enough room to squeeze through.” I was about to step inside when Ares slipped past me and went first.
He had to exhale fully and slide through sideways, but he managed to disappear into the tunnel entrance. I shuddered at the close quarters, then followed him.
Inside, Ares held his hands up, letting his magic light shine inside the dark space. It was about seven feet tall and ten feet wide, a railroad track disappearing down the tunnel.
“It’s an old mine,” Ares said.
I crouched, examining the track and the footprints in the dirt. “The track hasn’t been used in decades, but the footprints look fresh. Sorta.”
“Hider’s Haven could be a repurposed mine.”
“I’d almost bet on it.” I stood and started down the track. Ares kept at my side, his hands illuminating the passage in front of us. The air was dark and cool down here. For the first time since the sun had come up, I wasn’t sweating. “Hider’s Haven has got to be in this mountain. It’s not a throughway.”
“Between the heat and the monsters out in the valley, I agree.”
I kept my ears pricked and my senses alert as we went deeper into the mountain. Soon, a pale glow shined from up ahead. I pointed. Ares nodded.
We crept toward it on silent feet. As we neared, the glow coalesced to form a figure.
“A ghost.”
“Not a Phantom?” Ares asked. There was a slight shudder to his voice. I couldn’t blame him.
“No. Phantoms are blue. This guy is just a ghost.” They didn’t normally give the living too much trouble. This one was transparent white, about forty years old, with long messy hair covered by a hat. His overalls and old-time hat making him look like he’d stepped out of another century. “A miner.”
We neared, and I waved awkwardly. “Hi.”
He chewed on something, his jaw working furiously, but I couldn’t tell what he was chomping on. Then he tipped his hat. “Howdy. You got your pass?”
“Um.” I tensed, ready for a fight. “No.”
He frowned. “Hmm. Then I reckon you ought to turn back.”
“Can’t do that.” Ares stepped forward.
The ghost seemed to debate, then shrugged. “Can’t stop ya. But you’ll regret it.”
“Going farther?” I asked.
He grinned, revealing several missing teeth. “Yep. But it gets boring down here, so I wouldn’t mind the company.”
“We won’t be here long,” I said.
His smile widened. “You will be. Once the mine gets ya.”
“Because we don’t have a pass?” Ares asked.
The miner nodded and hiked a thumb behind him. “You won’t make it two hundred yards. But give it a try.”
“You’re quite the welcoming committee,” I said.
“Like I said, I’m bored. Heard that boulder crack and came to see what’s up.” He waggled his brows at me and licked his lips. “And you’re real pretty.”
“Ew. Haven’t you ever heard of subtle charm?” He’d really lost me at the lip licking. Blech.
“You’ll change your tune once you’re stuck with me for a century.” He smacked his lips.
“I’m quite confident that I won’t.”
“Well, we’ll see. No one’s ever made it through who don’t have a pass.”
And now they were ghosts haunting this place. Probably avoiding the creepy advances of the lip-licking miner.
“Then where are the other ghosts?” Ares asked.
“You’ll meet ‘em.” He cackled. “And then you’ll be one of ‘em.”
“Great. Thanks.” I left him, Ares at my side.
“Come and find me later!” the miner hollered after us. “I’ll be lookin’ for ya!”
“Ew, no,” I muttered and continued on. The path felt like it could go for miles, the railroad running deep into the mines. We’d walked for ten minutes or more, the tunnel dark and quiet. Eventually, a ghost hovered along the side of the path ahead of us. “Fingers crossed for a non-sleazy ghost.”
Ares chuckled. As we neared the second welcoming committee, I got a good look at him. My stomach dropped. Half of his head was crushed in.
“Looks like he fell from a great height,” Ares said.
I swallowed hard. “Yeah.”
We were close enough to see his ghostly brains and sightless eyes. Though we passed him, his head didn’t turn to look at us. A shudder ran over me. Apparently the brain injury had wounded even his ghostly brain.
We were a few feet away when one horrible whisper slid across the back of my neck. “Run.”
Fear poured ice water over my skin.
I’d never been more convinced in my life that I should do as I was told. The one word was desperate, terrified.
I glanced at Ares, heart in my throat, then took off, sprinting down the corridor. Running toward our doom.
10
The ground trembled beneath my feet, creaking and groaning. I sprinted harder, racing through the tunnel with Ares at my side. We followed the train tracks deeper into the mine.
The ground in front of me dropped away, a huge section disappearing into the depths of the earth. I lunged left, avoiding the deep crevasse. Another section of ground dropped away.
I leapt onto the wooden slats of the train tracks. It was like a suspension bridge across the disappearing ground. I leapt from wooden slat to wooden slat. Some crazy part of my brain reminded me that they were called ties. Not really useful info at this point, but apparently I was crazy.
“Faster!” Ares shouted from behind me.
All around us, sections of ground dropped away. The train track remained, the wooden ties held together by the iron rails. I leapt from tie to tie as the earth fell away around me.
Suddenly, what had happened to the ghost was obvious. He had fallen, his skull crushing against the ground far below.
Shit. That would be us.
As the ground fell away, the train track bridge became too long. My heart thundered. The track wasn’t built for this—it was going to snap. And we were going to fall.
I inanely wished for a jet pack, but it was beyond my conjuring capabilities. So I called upon my magic, ready to create another bow and an arrow with a grappling hook end. It’d worked once, so I just prayed it would work again.
But the bridge snapped. All thoughts of conjuring fled as I fell. My stomach jumped into my throat as I reached out for the wooden railway ties. My fingertips slid off the rough wooden surface of one tie, but I managed to grip the next as the train track bent toward the newly formed cliff wall like the broken rope bridge from Indiana Jones.
I’d always thought that scene was insane. Now I was living it.
The cliff wall in front of us was jagged, with little ridges where one could stand.
“The metal will snap!” Ares roared from below me.
I glanced down. He clung to the ties below me as we swung through the air. Above us, the iron railroad ties were bending as the bridge drooped.
“You’ll have to jump for the cliff!” Ares shouted.
We were close enough that I just might manage to grab onto one of the little ledges.
The metal shrieked as the train track bent too far. I scrambled to find footing on one of the railroad ties beneath me. As soon as I did, I pushed off and jumped for the cliff.
As I sailed through the air, it hit me how impossible this was. Even in the movies, people didn’t succeed at this. Ares flew by me, strong enough and fast enough that he defied reality.
