Fireborn (The Dark Dragon Chronicles Book 2) Read online

  Fireborn

  Ripley Harper

  Then the pure of heart shall witness the coming of a great darkness. Upon those who dwell in the light an endless night shall fall.

  For unto this world the Horror shall be born, the dark one, who was cast from Heaven.

  And lo! The curse of our destruction shall rest on its scaled shoulders, and its names shall be: Chaosbringer, Fireborn, Dreamweaver, Treasurekeeper, Worldmaker, Lifebreaker.

  The Old Words: Verse 18:11-15

  Prologue

  They wear masks. The masks are made from some kind of metal with an orangey sheen, copper maybe, and cover their entire heads. Their robes are orange too, and so heavy that I can’t make out if the people underneath are men or women. They look unbelievably creepy, but at the same time the masks make them look strangely serene because the carved faces are completely devoid of all expression.

  There are two of them. Neither has spoken to me yet.

  I am nervous but I am determined to be brave. I am not going to scream, no matter what they do to me. I am not going to beg. Even if I fail at everything else, I will see this through with dignity.

  They lead me to the guest bathroom downstairs. Their hands on my upper arms are firm but not cruel. When we get there, they tie my wrists together and pull a thick black hood over my face. I didn’t expect the hood, and for the first time I feel my adrenaline spiking.

  I’m more scared than I thought I would be.

  With a few quick, decisive movements, they spin me around and push me down onto what feels like a stretcher. I can’t use my arms, so I awkwardly fall into position, hurting my hip in the process. They make me lie on my back. They tie my legs to the stretcher. My hips. My chest. My arms. I feel completely helpless and so scared that I’m close to tears in spite of all my resolutions.

  I can’t see a thing. Suddenly, the outside world seems a million miles away.

  They lift the stretcher and then prop the bottom part up against something, the rim of the bath I think, while they lower the top part. My head is dropped into what must be the bath, while my feet are raised up into the air. It’s a horrible, defenseless position to be in. I feel the blood rushing to my head, my heartbeat a loud, rapid drumming in my ears.

  For a few long moments nothing happens. And then there’s water everywhere, soaking through the hood in a rush. The water flows into my eyes, my ears, my nose and, when I open it in shock, my mouth. I choke and spit it out, gasping for air, but my sharp inhalation only draws the wet hood tighter against my face so it feels as if I’m being smothered with a wet pillow.

  I can’t breathe.

  An overwhelming panic floods my body. I flail around wildly, every muscle straining, uselessly struggling against my bonds. And then the water fills my sinuses, suffocating me in the most agonizing way, but I can’t not breathe anymore, and when I open my mouth to take a desperate breath there’s water in my mouth in my throat in my lungs and I’m drowning oh God I’m drowning I’m dying I can’t…

  “Enough!”

  When they finally stop, I’m making a terrible hoarse squealing sound, clawing for air, hysterical. They pull the hood from my head and I throw up again and again, begging and pleading and crying. I will do anything, say anything, be anything.

  The masked faces show no emotion. I’m not even sure they can hear me.

  And then, from the other side of the room, a voice I trust.

  “Again.”

  Chapter 1

  Some may abhorre all companions at last, fall into melancholia and be dejected and torpid to the most unreasonable degree. To such no mercie or pitie must be shown.

  Lethargie, low spirits and perturbation of the mind are nothing but the fears and despondencies of an ill-disposed, self-willed and lumpish mind, betraying the Training of a Ward to have been wholly unsatisfactorie. Such Wards must forthwith be prepared for the Second Protocols, which should rigorously be adhered to until the wayward mind or body is finally broken…

  From A Full Treatise on the First Protocols (1658), author unknown

  Our new school is all wrong.

  It doesn’t look like a school, doesn’t smell like a school, doesn’t feel like a school. Instead it feels like an abandoned old factory, which is exactly what it was until about six months ago when our real school burned down and the Pendragons made these premises available as a temporary solution.

  We have a new principal too: an attractive, steely-eyed woman called Mrs. Smith. The new vice-principal is also named Mrs. Smith, which was a bit confusing in the beginning but now everyone just calls her The Other Mrs. Smith. Our new guidance counselor is called Mr. Johnson. He’s young and friendly and extremely energetic, but as far as I’m concerned he can never measure up to…

  No.

  I refuse to think about all that now.

  Everything about this temporary school feels fake. It’s on the far side of town, and although it’s really big and surrounded by acres of parking, there’s no front lawn, no flag, no sports fields, no school mascot grinning down at you when you enter through the front gate. There’s also no gym, no library, no proper laboratory, and no assembly hall. There is a cafeteria, but the place is cold and drafty and the fold-out chairs and tables make harsh scraping noises on the bare cement floor. Even the classrooms aren’t real: they’re just sections of the original factory floor split up into separate areas by portable, pre-made subdivisions. Sometimes if you stare at them long enough, you can see the faces of the students in class reflected in those panels, and subtly distorted by the cheap white plastic, everyone looks weird and kind of deformed.

  Like maybe it’s not their real faces after all.

  I never thought I’d say this, but I kind of miss our old school. In retrospect, there was something reassuring about the place, perhaps because we all knew that our time there was limited. It was a relatively short sentence: we only had to wait out four-years and things would get better. We could leave, and everything would change.

  The new school is different.

  The echoing spaces of this musty old building is a terrible reminder that some things can’t be fixed. That some stories don’t have a happy ending. That sometimes you have to live forever with what you’ve done.

  I shake my head, trying to get rid of my gloomy thoughts. It’s Thursday afternoon, a clear, early spring day, and I’m standing in the parking lot, staring at the fake school building as if I’m looking for some kind of sign. It’s funny, in those long months when I couldn’t go to school, I missed this place with an almost physical ache, but now that I’m here, I’m not sure what I longed for so badly. Nothing is the same anyway.

  I stayed late after class, trying to make up some of the work I missed, so most of the students have left and the parking lot is almost empty. And yet I’m stalling, not entirely sure how I’m going to get through the rest of this afternoon. My leg is hurting really badly again, and I’m feeling too tired and too weak for the fight that lies ahead.

  I close my eyes, take a few deep breaths. Hmm. Today the air smells like spring for the first time, a rich, damp mixture of mud and tar and sweetness—

  “Stop daydreaming and get moving! You’re late.”

  The voice comes from behind me, a tense, grating hiss. I gnash my teeth in irritation as I turn to face my bodyguard. “Stop ordering me around,” I snap, telling myself that I’m not at all intimidated by those vicious silver eyes, those ugly tattoos, that hateful sneer.

  “Jack Pendragon is expecting you at four.”

  “Jack Pendragon isn’t the boss of me.”

  “Don’t be such a child.” My bodyguard’s scarred top lip pulls back
a little and he spits out his words as if they’re burning his mouth. “And get into the car. I’m leaving in exactly thirty seconds.”

  “You can’t order me around. That was never part of the deal.”

  The raw hatred on his face almost makes me wince. “Jack Pendragon wants you there at four, and you’ll be on time even if I have to throw you over my shoulder and carry you there.”

  “You wouldn’t dare.”

  “Try me.” His icy silver eyes hold mine, daring me to disobey him.

  “Whatever.” I turn away. “I’m going okay? So get off my case for one damn second.” But my voice sounds less sharp and more childish than I’d have liked.

  I’m just so incredibly tired of it all.

  If only that Skykeeper nutjob hadn’t tried to kill me. If only I hadn’t been so weak and sick at the time. If only I hadn’t felt so paranoid and so lost and alone. If only I’d never listened to Ingrid.

  Thing is, at the time getting a bodyguard seemed like a pretty solid plan. I was jumpy and terrified and struggling to sleep at night, unable to concentrate, unable to even think straight. Also, Jack Pendragon himself recommended the guy to us, and if there’s anybody in the world who knows how to protect himself from keeper attacks, it’s that slimeball.

  Jack Pendragon told us Zig had been trained since birth to resist keeper power and that, like his father and grandfather before him (both also named Zig because that’s not creepy at all), he was gifted with a rare magic that makes him stronger and faster than a regular bodyguard could ever be. Best of all, Jack Pendragon said, was the fact that at twenty-one Zig was still young enough to pass as a high school student, which meant that his constant presence at my side wouldn’t draw too much attention.

  Zig was loyal, he said. Zig was professional, he said. Zig was my best hope for survival, he said.

  Hah. What he didn’t say was that Zig also happens to be an insanely aggressive religious fanatic who never stops mumbling creepy quotes from a weird old poem nobody’s ever heard of. Oh, and then there’s the pesky little issue of him hating me—as in absolutely, flat-out hating me—for some reason he’s never bothered to explain. As soon as I met the guy, I knew that the whole thing would turn out to be a disaster but by then nobody would allow me to go back on the deal.

  Zig leads the way to his car. Every now and then he turns around to scowl at me, mumbling under his breath.

  “Stop glaring at me. I’m walking as fast as I can.”

  “You have exactly ten seconds before I throw you over my shoulder.”

  I’m almost tempted to call his bluff, but then I decide there’s no point in playing his game. Plus, I’d probably lose. I bet he’d carry out his threat just to spite me, and I’m still too weak to put up any real kind of fight.

  “Ooh, look at the big bad bully,” I mutter, even as I limp a bit faster. “Threatening a girl. So scary.”

  “A girl?” His voice is a low, disgusted sneer, just loud enough for me to hear. “You might fool other people into thinking that’s what you are, but I see right through you, monster.”

  My heart lurches at his words, and for a moment I feel so scared and alone that I have to swallow the ache at the back of my throat. These days I tend to burst into tears at the slightest provocation, but I refuse to give this jerk the satisfaction of making me cry.

  “Insult me all you want,” I tell him over my shoulder, hoping my voice won’t waver, “because after this meeting you won’t ever get the chance to talk to me again. The only reason I’m meeting Jack Pendragon today is to get you fired.”

  “Thank God.” His face fills with ugly satisfaction. “Being in your presence every moment is making me sick.”

  “So why don’t you just quit?”

  “I’ll quit when Jack Pendragon tells me to quit.”

  “What are you, his lapdog?”

  “You know nothing about my life.”

  “I know you’re the meanest, most insufferable –”

  “Hey, Jess!”

  “Wait up!”

  Two high, eager voices interrupt our argument. I turn around to see Maggie and Eve crossing the parking lot towards us. They’re both grinning widely and giggling with excitement.

  “You’d never guess what happened!”

  “This is too good; you’re going to die.”

  They hurry towards me: Maggie in an untidy flurry of wild red hair and cheerful freckles and Eve in an awkward jog, her square, black-rimmed glasses threatening to slide down her nose.

  “We caught them making out in one of the temp labs!” Eve squeals when she reaches me, grabbing my hand in excitement. “I couldn’t believe my eyes!”

  “Do you think they saw us?” Maggie’s bright blue eyes sparkle wickedly.

  “I doubt it. They were far too busy pushing their tongues down each other’s throats.”

  “I wonder if anybody else knows?”

  “This is going to cause such drama.”

  “What’s going on?” I ask.

  “Jonathan is cheating on Taylor!”

  “We saw them making out!”

  “Those Elite girls are going to freak!”

  “Yeah?” I ask, curious in spite of myself. “So who’s he hooking up with now?”

  “That’s the best part!”

  “It was Chloe!”

  “Chloe Fischer?” I’m genuinely surprised. “You’re joking.”

  “I promise you, we saw them with our own –”

  Slam!

  The sound of Zig’s open palm hitting the roof of his car startles Eve into silence.

  “Oh,” she says, looking a bit confused. “Sorry Zig. I didn’t see you there.”

  “Hi Zig,” Maggie turns to him with a friendly smile on her face. “How are things? Haven’t seen you in a while.”

  I suppress a groan. By now I should be used to this: they never seem to notice Zig’s presence, no matter how glaringly obvious it might be to me. In the beginning I couldn’t understand it, until I realized that his ability to blend into the background clearly has something to do with his specific brand of bodyguarding magic. Because there’s no way anyone would overlook him otherwise.

  Zig isn’t particularly big or tall or muscled, but there’s a hardness to him, a kind of thrumming menace, that makes it perfectly clear to anyone with a lick of sense that the guy’s bad news. And that’s not even mentioning the rest of his look—honestly, if he wore a T-shirt with the words I AM THE BAD GUY on it, it would’ve been less obvious. I mean, what kind of person gets a huge, ugly snake tattoo on his face? And that’s not even mentioning the scar that tugs his upper lip into a permanent faint sneer, or the strange silvery serial killer eyes, or the faint German-sounding accent straight from a Nazi movie.

  The first time I saw him, I couldn’t believe Jack Pendragon thought this comic book villain would ever “blend in” at a small-town high school. And yet he did, right from the first day when Zig was introduced as an exchange student I had to show around.

  It took me a while to figure out that he must be manipulating people’s minds in the way Jack Pendragon did after…

  Well. Whatever.

  It’s clearly some sort of magic trick. Because while my friends can see him, they don’t really see him. Mostly they forget he’s there within minutes of my pointing it out.

  “We need to go,” he tells Maggie, his face unsmiling.

  “Oh. Okay.” She gives him an uncertain smile before turning to me. “Will you be coming over later?”

  “She can speak to you at another time,” Zig says before I can answer. “We are leaving now.”

  “Um. Okay.”

  Maggie and Eve frown at each other, momentarily confused. Then they walk away, resuming their conversation almost as if they’ve forgotten all about me.

  “So the Prince and the Princess are back together again!”

  “Just in time for prom too. If only they weren’t such flaming douchebags, it might even have been romantic.”

  As t
heir voices fade away, I frown at Zig. “You have no right to mess with their minds like that.”

  “Get into the car.”

  I feel my temper flaring and welcome the spark of anger inside me. “You can do what you like to me; I don’t care. I’m not afraid of you. But you better watch yourself around my friends.”

  “Get. Into. The car.”

  I roll my eyes, but I get into the car anyway. The sooner I get Jack Pendragon to fire this guy, the better.

  Chapter 2

  Although Juveniles have a natural ability to wield all four types of natural magic, it may happen, on occasion, that an exceptionally powerful Juvenile becomes drawn too far along the Path of one kind of magic and, immersed in its depths, loses all connection to the other three. We refer to this challenging state as a Period of Flux.

  The only solution to this problem, regrettably, is to allow the Juvenile to reach Mastery of the Path she is set upon, for once Mastery is attained, the channels to the remaining magics should effortlessly open up again. This is most effectively done by a quick Initiation, after which a Juvenile should be drilled back into a more disciplined state immediately.

  From Elements of Knowledge: An Instruction into Selected Wisdoms of the Black Clan (1823); translated from the original French by Genevieve Bernard (2006)

  When Zig pulls up in front of Ingrid’s house, I notice Jack Pendragon’s black Mercedes Benz parked in the driveway, the driver still sitting inside. As I struggle up the front steps, I catch the guy’s eye for a second and realize with a start that those strange silver eyes could only belong to Zig’s father.

  Wow. He obviously hates me just as much as his son if that look is anything to go by.

  I find Ingrid and Jack Pendragon waiting for me in the dining room. They’re sitting across from each other at Ingrid’s antique table, like lawyers representing opposing sides. As usual Ingrid is outrageously dressed; today she’s wearing a scarlet shoulder-padded jacket, a matching pencil skirt, and a tiny red hat. But in spite of her dramatic eighties-style power suit, she looks every one of her seventy-odd years: her face lined and tired, her grey hair dull and lifeless, her body slightly slumped in her chair.