Chapter Eight

The ride to the beach house was quiet. Noah had no idea what his sister was thinking, but he couldn’t blame her if her mind was reeling. There was a lot to take in. Sometimes he still questioned whether it was all real or not. Considering everything he witnessed in his time, this took the cake. The paranormal was real. Monsters really did go bump in the night, as if worrying about crazy, psychotic terrorists wasn’t bad enough.

“Something’s wrong,” Ethney said drawing him from his thoughts. She leaned forward in the seat so her chin was resting on Elena’s seat.

Noah frowned and stared at the house. She was right. The door was ajar and one of the flowerpots had been knocked over leaving dirt all over the porch steps.

“Stop here and stay in the car,” he told his sister.

Elena eased to a stop on the side of the road. Ethney threw her door open and ran to the house. Noah cursed under his breath and sprinted after her, the overwhelming urge to protect Ethney and find Claire flared up inside him.

Ethney was ahead of him and already up the steps. Thankfully, she didn’t go inside by herself. Who knew what was lurking inside, if anything.

She pressed her back to the door and peered in as best she could before nodding at him. He crept inside, scanning the front room and then motioning her in. She slipped inside behind him and he pointed for her to go to the right while he took the left. Ethney nodded and then crept through the house.

Noah blew out a breath and moved into the living room. The TV was still on; whatever game had been played was paused. One of the chairs was overturned and a smear of blood trailed from the couch to the opposite end of the room leading to the kitchen.

He followed the trail while keeping his ears open for other movement. The only thing he heard was the soft, barely noticeable footfalls of Ethney as she made her way upstairs.

The blood smear went into the kitchen where the sliding door was left wide open. He went outside and scanned the beach. Nothing. No one was in sight.

He ground his teeth and pumped his fists at his sides as he came back in. There were still a few more rooms to check, but he already knew they were empty. Claire and the others were long gone by now.  

Still, he made his way into the last few rooms downstairs to confirm his suspicions. Footsteps thumped behind him, but he didn’t need to turn around to know who it was.

“The house is empty,” Ethney said from behind him.

Noah nodded and turned, his eyes fixated on the guardian. “Yeah. There’s blood in the front room.” He swallowed hard. “Whose is it? Claire’s? One of the other girls?” Bile crept up his throat at the thought of one of them being harmed.

“Aric. He must have put up a fight. His is the only blood here. The others are unharmed—physically.”

“How can you be sure?” Noah asked.

“The smell. I recognize the scent.”

“You think they’re alive?” he asked slowly. He hoped and prayed they were. If they weren’t there would be hell to pay.

“Yes,” she said without hesitation, “he’s building an army. Once the full moon comes, they’ll turn into mindless drones and follow his every command like the others. He just has to keep them prisoner a few more weeks.”

At least Claire was alive, but she was right back where she started. They had to find her and the other girls and help them.

Ethney dug out her phone and put it to her ear. “Daire, something’s happened to Aric. I need your help.” She paused for a brief moment and then prattled off the address and hung up. “He’ll be here in a few minutes.”

“Noah?” Elena frantically called from the front door.

“Crap,” he mumbled before pushing past Ethney and meeting his sister at the door.

“Is everything okay? Where’s Claire?” Elena asked, her eyes darting to Ethney when she appeared in the front room.

“The men I told you about took her,” Noah said trying to keep his voice calm. If he lost it so would Elena.

“Took her?” she asked. “What do you mean took her?”

“It’s fine. We’re going to get her back.” Ethney didn’t give Elena a chance to say anything before she went to the stairs and took them two at a time. She emerged a moment later with some of Noah’s clothes in her hand. Bypassing them, she made her way back through the kitchen and out to the beach.

“Noah, what is going on?” Elena shoved her way past him and further into the house. She gasped and slapped her hands over her mouth when she went into the living room. “Is that blood? Is Claire hurt?” Elena didn’t give him a chance to answer before she followed the trail the same way he had. She walked out onto the back porch and halted abruptly.

It only took Noah a second to find out why. A giant black dragon was landing on the beach. The waves lapped against its enormous feet and its wings hung in the water. They flapped a few more times before falling to the dragon’s side.

The dragon’s body contorted as the bones beneath the thick, rough skin popped and pulled until the beast shrank in size and disappeared completely, leaving a tall, muscular man in its place.

Noah blinked a few times, his mind fighting to process what just happened. It was one thing to know it was possible, but seeing it first hand was something else entirely. 

“What in the world?” Elena asked. She took a few steps back and collided with him. She screamed and lost her balance, nearly falling over, but he caught her before she hit the ground.

Elena spun around and beat him on the chest. “What in the hell is going on, Noah?”

“We can’t stay here,” Ethney said as she came up the porch steps.

Elena spun back around and stared at Ethney and then to the man who transformed from a dragon who was now dressed in Noah’s clothes.

“Grab anything you need and we need to leave. Brockwell wants all three of us and if he finds out why Elena is here then he might kill her,” Ethney said. She walked past them and back into the house.

“What?” Elena whispered.

“No one’s going to hurt you, Miss,” Daire said taking a step toward her.

Elena backed up until she was standing on Noah’s feet. He wrapped his arms around her and said, “It’s okay.”

“Daire.” The guardian nodded at Noah.

“Noah Hawthorne. This is my sister, Elena.” He hugged his sister a little tighter as she began to tremble in her arms.

“Nice to meet you. Sorry you got involved in all this. And don’t mind Ethney, she’s just riled up about everything that’s going on.” His eyes darted to the door she disappeared into. “But she is right. We need to leave.”

Yes, they did. The sooner they left the better. “We have a car just outside.”

Daire inclined his head. “I’ll give you a minute.”

Noah waited until the dragon was safely inside the house before he turned his sister around to meet her eyes. Her skin was pale and her eyes were wide. He took her clammy hands into his. “I haven’t been lying to you. There’s a lot going on.”

“You never said anything about dr...dragons!” she said her voice hoarse. Her gaze snapped up to his. “That’s what he was, right? A dragon?”

“Yeah. We have to go with them, Elena. The man who took Claire might come back for us.”

“And he’ll kill me?” she whispered.

“He doesn’t want you to cure us, but I’m not going to let anything happen to you and neither are Ethney or Daire.”

He knew he couldn’t really speak for the guardians, but something told him the pair would protect Elena regardless of what happened to him. Elena was their best ticket to finding a cure and he got the sense the two were honor bound to protect the innocent.

“Come on,” Noah said taking his sister by the elbow. “We need to go.”

“Where are we going?” she asked.

He didn’t have an answer for her. The guardians must have somewhere else they could go, but he had no idea where that was. “Someplace safe,” he finally answered.

Elena closed her eyes and blew out a breath before nodding her head. Tears shimmered in her eyes, but she put one foot in front of the other and went back into the house.

* * *

“We’re staying here?” Noah asked as Ethney steered the car down the rest of the long drive.

“Yeah. What’s wrong with it?” she asked. Her eyes flitted to the rearview mirror, holding his gaze briefly before going back to the road.

Noah frowned. The shack, if you could even call it that, looked like something out of a bad horror film. The broken shutters lay on the ground along with flecks of paint had been chipped away from the siding and the debilitated porch looked ready to collapse at any moment.

“I feel like I need a tetanus shot just looking at it,” Elena said, clearly thinking the same thing he was. She wrapped her arms around herself, but leaned forward a little as if to get a better look.

He had to agree with his sister—the place was one wind gust away from toppling in on itself. He stayed in safer-looking places on missions overseas in Iraq.

“It’s close to the ocean and secluded,” Ethney said. Those two things were about the only things the shack had going for it. “The inside is better than the outside,” Ethney added when she finally pulled the car to a stop. She shut off the engine and handed the keys back to Elena.

“I hope so. I need a clean, sterile space to work,” Elena flushed and cleared her throat. “I mean, I can’t have things contaminating my samples.”

“Don’t worry. I’m sure it will be fine.” Noah patted his sister’s hand and then got out of the car. He hoped Ethney was right. He’d hate to get some other weird condition because a sample became tainted. His life was already screwed up enough!

As if to mock him, his cell phone vibrated in his pocket. He dug it out and looked at the caller ID—his boss. “Commander,” he answered.

“Hawthorne, how soon can you mobilize?” Commander Jack Douglas asked.

“As soon as you need me to,” he said. “What’s going on, Sir?”

“We’ve been keeping eyes on Brockwell. It looks like he is getting ready to move. The attack needs to happen tonight. We can’t risk the group breaking up before we can take them out. I’ll text you the coordinates for our rendezvous.”

Commander Douglas was always one to take immediate action and for that Noah was thankful.

“Sir, they have some children being held against their will,” Noah said. He met his sister’s gaze for a moment.

“Understood. We’ll do everything we can to ensure no innocents are hurt.”

“I’m still bringing the two operatives with me as we discussed earlier. They are somewhat experts in this field,” Noah said.

“I’m aware of the young woman and men you’ve been keeping company with. They seem to appear whenever these incidents do. However, I believe the man has been compromised and is now being held prisoner by Brockwell, too. Who are these people? I haven’t been able to get any ID on them. They certainly don’t work for any unit in the government. Who do they work for and can we trust them?”

Noah nodded his head even though Douglas couldn’t see him. “Sir, they want this to end as much as we do. They are special operatives that answer to someone much higher than even we do.” That was about as close to the truth as he could get. The Commander would think he was nuts if he disclosed the guardians’ boss was a Greek goddess.

There was a long pause and he wondered if his commanding officer was going to go back on his word. “Very well.”

The line went dead and Noah held the phone in his hand. It chimed a moment later with a new text message. He opened it up and read it to himself. The attack will commence at dusk. In four hours meet to go over the details.

Claire would be back by tonight if all went according to plan—it had to; he couldn’t lose her, especially not after everything they’d been through the past few weeks.