Dragon Born Page 4

  “DAD!” Wylan screamed. She grabbed her mother’s shoulders and pain seared her hands. She stumbled back, staring down at her reddened skin. Her mother’s flesh felt like fire. The flames rose higher and Wylan threw personal safety to the wind and dashed in toward her mother.

  A cry rose up from outside moments before the house shuddered again. Kethill let out a great screech and her body burst into flames. Her gown shriveled and where Wylan gripped her shoulders, her hands began to catch fire.

  Wylan stumbled away from her mother, staring at her hands. They didn’t hurt…they didn’t burn. But there was something happening to them.

  Her flesh was peeling away.

  She crashed into the table and the jug of beans shattered on the floor, its contents skittering everywhere. She didn’t care, her mother was going up in flames. This couldn’t be happening. Had this happened to Wylan? They hadn’t mentioned fire.

  Cuthburt yelled from outside again, something incoherent, but the fear that filled his voice drove Wylan to the front door. She slumped in the doorway, staring at her hands. Her fingernails were lengthening, turning black. Her skin looked like scales—red and thick like armor. She flexed her hands, feeling the way the scales slipped together. A chill ran up her spine.

  The shadow passed over the house once more, and Wylan fumbled down the stairs, her eyes drifting up from her hands. A grating bellow sounded, nearly deafening Wylan. She clasped her hands to her ears, but the sound had already been heard. She shivered, her knees buckled and she slumped to the sand. A great wind whipped her black hair around her face.

  Then she saw the dragon clearly. It looked like it was made of sapphires—it’s body glowed in the setting sun. It was the most beautiful thing Wylan had ever seen, and her body called to it. With every fiber of her being, Wylan wished to reach out to the beast. Her hands pulled away from her ears, and she reached up toward the dragon.

  Her hands were no longer hands. They were longer, they were…claws!

  She was distantly aware of the house going up in flames, the mud of the walls crumbling away to show the table and one chair…the chair that Kethill sat in every night for dinner and then for games after.

  The dragon circled overhead, and Wylan knew the moment its golden eyes trained on her because she felt it ripple through her body.

  :Plague bearer,: a voice rumbled through her mind. The sapphire dragon looped back around, its leathery wings opening like great sails of a ship. They were like leather, soft and combed. She could only imagine the way those wings would feel under her hand. She reached out for the dragon as it settled on the ground before her. Great billows of sand stirred around her, slicing into her skin, but her scaly red hand didn’t feel any of it.

  The dragon stared into her eyes, and she felt a kinship there.

  :The first wyvern,: it said.

  Wyvern? Wylan wondered. She’d read of them, but why was he calling her the first wyvern? It didn’t make sense. Wyvern were lesser dragons and largely thought to be impure. Smaller than regular dragons and with lesser powers.

  The dragon cried out, its roar filled with pain, its head rearing back and his wings opened wide, framed by the sun. It whipped around and Wylan could see a spear sticking out from under its scales, close to the base of the tail. The dragon struck at something and then took to the sky in a great buffeting of wings.

  Half a body fell to the ground, blood gushing from the stump of legs. There was no doubt in her mind that it was Cuthburt the dragon had killed.

  Wylan cried out, tears burning on her cheeks before they could fall to the sand. She reached for her father, but pain seized her, contorting her muscles. Agony froze the sob on her lips, and she wasn’t in control of herself. Her muscles bucked, constricted, and seared with liquid fire.

  The wind whistled around her—the smell of fire and charred mud thick on the air mingled with the metallic scent of her father’s blood. Tears streamed down her face, rising as steam off her feverish skin. Her face reddened, saliva sluiced from her mouth.

  And then she was floating. Her mouth opened in a silent cry of pain, her hands clenched at her side—talons that might cleave the pain from her body at any moment. The wind howled around her and pain split her back wide open. She felt bones slip and slide together. Several ribs popped and reformed. The pain was more than anything she’d ever endured before. Passing out would have been a blessing, but it wasn’t meant for her.

  As her dress ripped down the back great leathery wings snapped open from her spine and she screamed, giving voice to the pain that burned through her body. The wings grew along her arms, slicing through the fabric of her pink gown until the dress lay in tattered rags beneath her. She glanced down at the garment, but she didn’t see it…all she could see were red, scaly feet that dangled above the ground.

  She cried out again, but this time it wasn’t her voice that drifted on the air. A guttural roar rose from her lips. Wylan was no more. In her place hovered a red wyrm the likeness of a dragon, but not really a dragon. It was something different…something smaller and not as powerful. The blue dragon roared in the distance, and Wylan knew true fear. This wasn’t the fear of a human to a dragon, but the fear of an inferior creature to a superior beast.

  Wylan opened her wings wide but a swift wind threw her to the side. She spiraled over the dunes, crashing to the sand. Great plumes of dust rose into the air around her. She pushed to a stand, her front legs—what used to be her arms—were now part of her wings, and she flexed arms more powerful than any kind of strength she’d felt before.

  The wind tore around her, and she tried to take flight once more. Her eyes were trained on the dragon and the path it was following…the monster that had killed her family. She opened her wings and let the wind take her. Flying came to her like second nature. She let the wind carry her for a while before she sliced up through the gathering night, her wings carrying her higher and to other currents of air. She felt the currents play along her scales as she slithered higher and higher.

  Her thoughts were only for the blue dragon, and the anger that burned inside her was stronger than her beasts fear of the great wyrm.

  Wylan knew one thing—the blue dragon was going to die.

  Millie looked to the cornflower sky. Dark clouds skirted the edge of the once great imperial city of Darubai. A storm was brewing. Electricity hummed through her body and it stirred her bushy black hair, tantalizing the wyvern soul inside. Her sage gown rustled around her bare feet. There was power in the storm. There was fate in the winds.

  Millie shivered and closed her dark eyes. As she’d done many times before, she sought out the vision, the one so many wyvern youths were having these days. She remembered when the fever took her and the fire burned away her human side, leaving behind a half-breed. She’d become something other than human, alone in the desert with no help or aid. She’d thought she was cursed. In part, she’d been right—at least she thought until she made it to the imperial city of Darubai.

  She became a wyvern. It was the day she’d met the wyvern soul within her—Josephine. The vision of the rainbow lady had come to her then, but not since, even when she sought it out. But what did she expect? She wasn’t a yellow wyvern who could see the future and call on visions.

  Now, eighteen years later the whelps of wyvern parents were having the same visions almost nightly.

  She suspected that’s why the wing commander of the blue unit had sent Josef Decker for her. Millie followed his leather-clad back through the streets of Darubai. In times before the dragons returned, the imperial city had been a thriving place. People streamed over the hard-packed roads conversing with one another, or buying wares along the streets.

  That all changed when the dragon plague came. Millie had arrived in the city only days after the plague had started. Entire blocks of crying, terrified people had been quarantined. The quarantine hardly stopped the invasive disease from spreading. It worked fast, and the results were devastating. Considering her past as a midw
ife and the green wyvern soul she harbored, Millie had been given to the healers to help where she could. She’d already been through the illness and survived. But watching mothers and fathers, children and grandparents succumb to the dragon fever had nearly broken Millie.

  It reminded her of home in Dulasan. She’d seen Sasha, a young girl from Dulasan, go through the fever and watched her turn to ash when she didn’t survive.

  Many of the inhabitants of Darubai didn’t make it. They’d turned to ash and mingled in the air with the wind just as Sasha had. For weeks the streets were filled with crying and screaming, moaning and vomiting. It seemed months went by where the air was choked with so many ashes and Millie had tried not to think that the ashes were people. People she could have easily breathed in if it wasn’t for the scarf that covered the lower half of her face. The amount of people going through the fever raised the temperature within the stone walls of the imperial city to near scalding temperatures. Millie had to scale the face of the Northern Mountains just to get away from the heat and to cool her skin. It was there she could take a deep breath, there in the mountains where the moans and cries didn’t plague her and she could stare at the sky, imagining a different world before the dragons came and reduced human life to this—a struggle to survive.

  She often asked herself why she bothered. What was the point in going through life if it was this? Would it be wiser to seek out the dragons and let them kill her? It would certainly put an end to her suffering. But Josephine wouldn’t allow her to. The wyvern soul had a mission just as much as Millie had a vow—heal the sick and help rear the young.

  Some survived the plague and came out the other side of the fever as wyverns. Some had survived the plague and came out the other side no different than how they’d entered.

  Most died. Others were broken mentally and sometimes physically.

  Darubai was a ghost town now. The city was sprawling, but it was filled more with memories of people, ghosts of its past greatness than it was with humans.

  Josef stopped and Millie nearly ran into his broad back. He shot a smile over his shoulder, the kind that split his face nearly in half and was so full of youthful impishness that it was infectious. But Millie was too racked with nerves to smile today. “We’re here,” he said, as if she needed the confirmation.

  The entirety of the wyvern army was housed on the outskirts of the city, nearest the western wall. It wasn’t a long walk from the nursery where she worked, secluded in the mountain face. Headquarters was a small, two-story building. Soldiers weren’t housed here, they took up residence in any number of the abandoned houses and apartments that made up Darubai. Headquarters functioned as a base for the commanders. As with most of the buildings in Darubai, it was made of colorless brick. The door was open to the breezy day, allowing view of a dingy hall that stretched to the back of the house.

  “Ready?” Josef asked. His blond hair shone in the sunlight and his blue eyes sparkled with mischief.

  Millie nodded. She couldn’t understand why the man was excited—she was so nervous her stomach hurt. She’d never been called to an audience with any branch of the military. This was a first for her, and she couldn’t imagine what required her presence. She followed Josef into the building. A hall stretched out before them, dimly lit and cool with a nice cross-breeze that hinted at rain and storms. To either side of the hall doors opened up into random offices. Josef led her down the hall and up the stairs in the back. The second floor was much the same as the first. At the top of the stairs Josef gestured for her to enter an office. The room wasn’t meant to fit three people and the furniture.

  Behind a stone desk sat a small, dark-haired man. She knew Garret from sight, even if she’d never been formally introduced to the blue wyvern. He rose and extended a hand. His leather armor fit like a second skin giving her a hint of muscle beneath. He was a dark man with dark eyes. Though he exuded an air of intimidation, his smile put all her fears to rest.

  Millie took his firm grip and bowed her head slightly. “Wing Leader Garret, it’s a pleasure to meet you.”

  “Millie Bixby…” Garret studied her dark face. “It’s a pleasure to meet you as well. Please, have a seat.”

  She sat, but Josef remained standing.

  “You must wonder why I called you here today,” he said.

  “The thought had crossed my mind.” She smoothed the folds of her gown as though she hadn’t been worried in the least and this was nothing out of the ordinary.

  “How long have you worked with the whelps?” he asked.

  “Almost sixteen years,” she answered. Am I supposed to address him as sir?

  “What do you think of these visions they’ve been having?” he wondered.

  Millie pondered the question. She gazed out one of the windows, toward the mountains where her children rested after lunch. “They’re strange,” she said. “I remember having a similar vision when I first changed.”

  “As do I,” Garret said.

  “But it was only once,” she turned her attention to Garret. “They are happening with much more frequency, and they’re reoccurring. I don’t think any wyvern has had that happen before.”

  “Have you had a vision of the rainbow lady since?” he wondered.

  She shook her head.

  “Neither have I,” he told her. “Even though, I still feel where she is.”

  “Me too,” Millie said. “To the south-east.”

  Garret nodded. He folded his hands atop the desk. “And do you still feel her as strongly as you had before?”

  “It’s different now,” she said. “Her presence has grown stronger in my mind. I feel like she’s calling to me, though that’s absurd, isn’t it?”

  Garret gave her a look that said he didn’t think it was nearly as absurd as she hoped he had.

  “You’ve felt it too?” she asked.

  “What about you, Decker?” Garret turned his attention to Josef.

  “Her presence has grown in my mind since my first vision,” he agreed.

  “What does this mean?” Millie wondered, glancing between the men.

  “I think she’s been born,” Garret said simply.

  The revelation struck Millie like a fist. She made her way to the window and surveyed the streets. The broken buildings stood like the teeth of some great maw that was about to latch shut on all of them. She crossed her arms over her chest to stave off the chill of premonition she felt.

  “What do you feel?” Garret asked.

  “I’m no prophet,” Millie said. “I’m a green, not a yellow.”

  “As a wyvern who’s connected to the rainbow lady, what do you feel?” he urged.

  “I feel the truth of your words,” she said. “Almost like they were my own.”

  Garret nodded. “That’s why I’ve called you here today. I would like you and Josef to find her and bring her to Darubai.”

  “You would like us to go get her?” Millie asked. “Why us? Specifically, why me? We have new whelps. I can’t just leave them.”

  “This comes down from the clutch commander,” Garret said. “I’m sure there’s good reason for it.”

  The clutch commander knows of me? Millie wondered. She’d never met the woman, but she knew of the top ranking head of the dragon guard.

  “How often do they need your help anyway?” Josef asked Millie. “You have other greens working with you in the hospital and the nursery. You must have another you trust to take the reins.”

  Millie sighed. She was a civilian and had nothing to do with the military, but they were all overstretched. The emperor and the empress still ruled the common-folk while the military acted as constables and city security. She didn’t like the idea of saying no. She was called upon to help, and the military wasn’t one to send people off on needless missions.

  She’d be a baby, Millie thought. She remembered so many years another baby that she’d left to the whims of the long desert. The little golden-eyed baby that hadn’t been loved by her mother, who
had gained so little love from Millie’s assistant. She couldn’t say no to another baby. Maybe this is a test by the good spirits, she thought. Maybe this is how I make amends.

  “As to why you,” Garret continued, “you’re the best we have at tending to younglings. We have no idea what kind of situation the babe could be in. We are going to need our best to tend to her.”

  Millie nodded. “Of course. You’re right. I can hand over the nursery for a few days while we collect the baby.” When she thought about the baby, she remembered the vision she’d had when she changed and she could almost feel a connection to the child. She knew in her very soul—even in her wyvern soul—that Garret was right. The baby had been born. There was no telling in what conditions she’d been born into. Lavender eyes filled her mind when she thought of the baby. Josephine trilled in delight when the eyes came. There was a sense of a mind, intelligent and cunning beyond the years of a baby. Millie found herself smiling despite the fact that she was going far from the city she’d lived in for the last eighteen years. Only the dragon guard went beyond the city looking for other humans who might have survived the dragon plague and the attacks. Her stomach swirled with nerves that she couldn’t calm. She knew little about weapons, having been trained little with a sword…all she had was the poison—and healing—of the green wyvern.

  “So you agree?” Garret asked. “You do know we can’t make you go.”

  “I know.” Millie turned from the window. “But I also know that baby may need my help.”

  “Perfect,” Garret said.

  “When do we leave?” Josef asked.

  “As soon as you’re both ready.”

  It took Millie the better part of an hour to get things organized at the nursery and walk Caroline through what she’d need to do while she was gone. Stepping out of the hospital and onto the stone path cut into the mountain face, Millie felt that she was forgetting something. She hadn’t been out of the city since she arrived, and part of her was apprehensive about what she would find. Another part of her worried that something would happen to the whelps while she was gone. She wasn’t sure if she would ever forgive herself if it did.