Chapter Fifteen
Ciara’s mind swirled in a black ocean. No, wherever she was, it wasn’t wet, but soft and smelled of dirt. She’d been there a long time. But it was okay. She had her mate.
But where were her children?
She woke with a start. Under her was a soft bed, Jakob’s body wrapped around hers, his wings unfurled and lay on top of them like an emerald green cocoon.
What had she been dreaming about? A dark presence, something that scared her, and children. Her children.
She shook her head. She didn’t have children and probably never would.
Dread overwhelmed her, pricking at her heart, making it skip beats to keep up with the pace the adrenaline required of her body.
Something very dark was coming. No, it wasn’t coming here, it was in America. Home.
She needed to go home. Not that she had anyone or anything to go home to. Yes, her job had been important to her, it had been her life. The one thing that had made her mother, not exactly proud of her, more like tolerating of her.
And Wes? How could she have ever thought her crush on him was anything like love.
Funny how a few days with Jakob had changed everything. She would never get over him. But, she could not see any way their relationship would work out in the long term.
He’d needed her to find the relic, and she’d needed him to fill a whole host of unmet needs. That’s all this was. One hell of a whirlwind fling born out of a dangerous adventure.
Once it was over and he had the relic back, where would they be? They didn’t have anything in common, or any idea if they even did.
Deep inside her heart, where she hid her insecurities and self-loathing, she doubted a powerful, handsome man like him would ever want anything more from a fat girl besides sex.
This mating thing he insisted had happened to him…she wanted to believe it existed. One man, made especially for her, hell yeah she wanted that to be true.
She’d seen a lot of people who married believing the same thing. Almost as many ended up bitter an alone. A soul mate was a convenient lie.
One she’d used on plenty of brides and grooms in the past.
Real marriage was hard work, not magic.
Not everyone got to find a special someone and at least half of the ones who thought they did were wrong. She was a fool for thinking she was one of the ones who would.
Jakob didn’t love her, how could he.
He needed her and had gotten caught up in all of this as much as she had. The trial, ritual and pseudo wedding proved that.
The dread pushed at her again until she scrambled to get out of bed. She slipped out from under Jakob’s arms and put her feet on the floor.
She wanted to run, get as far away from him as possible.
Lines wracked his face, worried, even in his sleep. With his wings out like that, he looked like a beautiful fallen angel.
No. Don’t think of him now. If she did, she might not have the strength to leave him. She couldn’t stay.
The villa sat quiet and Ciara wondered if the other dragons had already left for the States. It was dark outside, so she supposed they could all be sleeping. She had been out for a long time.
She crept through the house, just in case they were about and tried to stop her. She really needed to find some different clothes. This dress was not very good for staying inconspicuous. She didn't even have any shoes.
The last time she tried to escape she torn her feet to shreds. But they'd healed when Jakob blew that green mist over the bite he'd given her in her shoulder.
She placed her hand over the spot. But, that made her feel even worse.
She'd be buying a whole set of turtlenecks when she got home.
Her stomach growled and she decided grabbing a snack for the road was probably a good idea. She barely eaten in the past three days, but she couldn't recommend the Dragon diet for losing five pounds. Especially since she would definitely gain anything she'd lost back when she got home and spent her evenings with banana splits.
The loaf bread Jakob had found for her when she'd made breakfast was still on the counter. She grabbed it and found a chunk of cheese and some slices of meat in the refrigerator. Now she only had a stick and a hanker chief, she could be a well-dressed hobo on her journey to God knows where.
The front door would probably make too much noise, but the hole Jakob and Match had created in the side of the house when they'd fought about her still stood open. She picked her way through the debris in what looked like the remnants of an office. A suit jacket hung on the back of an executive type chair shoved into one corner. She grabbed it and slipped her arms into it.
It smelled of fresh hay and good and plenty candies. It smelled of Jakob.
She held the jacket to her nose and fought back a killer wave of anxiety.
She was doing the right thing, for both of them. She had to believe that.
Jakob would awaken in a few hours and be mad at her for leaving but would probably be on his merry way to his mission of finding the relic soon after.
She shoved the food into her pockets and walked out into the open air. She decided against going toward the town she had found last time. There were woods not far from the other side of the garden. Any other time in her life she would have been nervous about going into a dark forest by herself, but her new abilities, especially the earth element, comforted her. She could call upon the trees and flowers to befriend and protect her.
She imagined an angry apple orchard hurling fruit at any enemies like the ones in the Wizard of Oz.
The only obstacle between her and escape was a pond that contained a very large blue sleeping Dragon smack dab in the center of it. She hurried past Kai as quietly and quickly as she could while asking the water to gently rock him.
She was sure she'd been caught when he snorted and snuffled behind her and she broke into a run. Nothing followed her as she dove into the dark forest.
Or had something? She glanced back aware of the feeling of eyes on her and ducked behind a tree.
Kai hadn't moved.
She must have imagined the rustling. Simply because she could now call on the elements didn't mean there wasn't something else out here with her besides earth, wind, water, and fire. The sooner she could get through the woods and find civilization, the better.
Something resembling a path opened up before her. She thanked mother nature for showing her a way forward.
Some moonlight shone through the treetops, but there were more dark places than she cared to acknowledge. She had seen the beasts Jakob called the demon dragons appear out of those kinds of shadows.
The sound of twigs breaking behind her sent her running again along the path. She heard nothing else. In fact, the forest had gone too quiet.
Someone or something was definitely in here with her.
She swallowed down the sour taste of fear in the back of her throat and concentrated on the path. A flash of black whipped across the trail in front of her too fast for her eyes to track.
Then she felt a burst of wind when something ran behind her a moment later.
Oh God, she was being hunted.
Hopefully, demon dragons were not as smart as velociraptors.
She heard a screech off to the left and something black and winged fell from the tree above her. There was more than one.
She was running faster now than she ever had in her entire life. But, that wasn't saying much. She was no track star. Working out had never exactly been high on her priority list.
If she survived the night, she was counting this as all the exercise she needed for a month or more. Her heart and lungs were pretty damn mad at her at the moment.
A black, clawed arm reached for her and she threw up a wall of dirt to block it.
Duh. She needed to use her powers. She couldn’t afford to stop and close her eyes to concentrate so she hoped she wouldn't screw this up and create more of a barrier for herself.
This next part was going to hurt.
Ciara made herself remember being held in Jakob's arms. The burn of emotion from that memory stretched out all around her and she called upon the ground and trees to form a BBW-sized tunnel she could run through protected.
The forest bent to her will and dirt and branches fused together forming an archway a few feet wide that surrounded her as she ran.
The creatures outside scratched and scrambled at her shield and a too many of their claws managed to poke through.
In minutes she was covered in scratches and she wasn’t sure how much longer she could keep running this way. She pressed hand under her ribs and did her best to breathe through the pain of the stitch forming there.
If she didn’t find help or shelter soon, she’d be done for.
The rasps of her heavy breathing made it hard to hear much else, but the whistle of a train somewhere ahead was loud enough to break through. She listened hard but didn't hear the chuga-chuga of the train moving along the tracks. That had to mean there was a station ahead.
If she could only get to that train, maybe she could escape the demon dragons. Or maybe they would attack all of the people on the train. She had to risk it.
One of the demon dragons got wise to her protective barrier and jumped into the trail ahead of her, close enough that she didn't have fast enough reactions to veer away.
Right before her eyes, talons tackled the beast and tossed it aside. They didn't stick around long enough for her to see who it was.
All she knew, was that it wasn't Jakob's green scales. The claws had been pitch black.
Were they fighting over her?
The tree line broke a few feet ahead and she barreled out and almost smacked into the metal side of the train. With her last bit of energy, she ran along the track and up to a Soviet era style cement train platform. She climbed up the three metal steps and into the train car, grabbing the sliding door's handle and sliding it shut. The whistle blew again and the train jerked, lurching forward. It took an interminably long time to move past the platform and away from whatever had been chasing and helping her escape. She stared out the small glass window in the door searching for any clue.
There, at the edge of the wood, a man crouched in the remnants of her plant and earth barrier. His clothes were tattered, and she could she could only just make out his black hair. But, his jet-black eyes tracked her.
Who the hell was he?
Whoever he was, he remained in the woods, not following her.
Ciara was still breathing hard and tried her best to get her lungs under control before she entered the passenger car. She pushed the door open and found rows of bench seats, with only a few sleepy riders. She slipped into a seat and glanced around to see if she could figure out where this train was going.
A white placard was screwed into the wall above the windows. It showed a line with periodic dots labeled with words she did not understand. One dot was lit up. The labels appeared to be city names. The last dot on the line was labeled Praha Hlavni Nadrazi.
Prague.
But was she going in the right direction? There were only five stops between the dot that was lit up and the end of the line in the direction she hoped she was traveling.
Someone who she assumed must be a train conductor walked toward her down the aisle. Crap, he would want to see her ticket. He stopped at another passenger and Ciara watched him tear off a slip of paper from a pad dangling from the belt at his waist and exchange it for money.
Here goes nothing. She closed her eyes and asked the wind to help her out. She heard a yelp and peeked out of one eye. The train conductor was caught up in a foot-tall swirling dust devil. Oops, too much. She pulled back on the power and used his and the rest of the passengers’ distracted state to tear off one of the paper tickets and floated it over to her seat.
The ticket taker pulled himself back together, brushed himself off, and glared at the others who were openly staring at him. Then he made his way over to her. He frowned at her appearance, looking her torn jacket and dress up and down, stopping for an extra second to gawk at her bare feet. “Bileta, prosim.”
She could only assume he was asking for her ticket. “Sorry, I don't understand Czech. Is this what you want?”
She held the piece of paper, praying it was valid. He punched it with a little hand-held machine and handed it back to her.
Phew.
She spent the next twenty minutes staring at the placard waiting for the dot to change. The next stop closest to Prague lit up. Yes.
A chime and then a female voice came over a crackling loudspeaker four more times in the next hour and a half. She almost had the foreign words memorized by the time they rolled toward the final destination. “Ukoncete prism, vystup a nasty, Deere se zaviraji.” Then finally, “Pristi stanice Praha Hlavni Nadrazi.”
Next stop, Prague.
Dawn approached as she made her way out of the already busy train station.
She was here, but what was she going to do now? She didn’t have any ID or money. How did she think she was going to get home?
She’d already proven calling home for help was a fruitless endeavor. Maybe she’d just take up residence here and become a homeless person.
She could live in a park and grow her own food. Until the freezing winter came and she froze to death. No, wait, she had fire.
Hmm. This plan was sounding better and better. Even better than going back to America and being a stupid wedding planner again.
She had herself convinced until she was surrounded by a group of grubby-faced children in clothing more tattered than her own.
A woman stood nearby holding a crying baby. The children all spoke at once, chanting something and making faces at her. They bumped and jostled her, laughing like they were playing a game.
Then in another instant they fled.
A young man in a fancy uniform with a United States of America flag on it walked toward her scowling at the scamps. “Miss, you need to be careful hanging around Hlavni Nadrazi. If you had anything in your pockets, those Romani children have it all now.”
“Romani?” She shoved her hands into the pockets of the jacket and came up with nothing but air. They’d stolen her food.
The reality of being homeless in a city like this, in a foreign country hit her hard and she started crying.
Dammit.
“Commonly known as gypsies. They hang around here and a lot of the other touristy areas making their living. Are you okay?”
“No.” She sniffled and tried to wipe at her face, but the sleeve of the jacket fell off, the remaining shreds simply giving away.
The young man looked her up and down, but in a much more gentle way than the train conductor or anyone in the station had. “I’m a US Marine, ma’am. I work at the embassy here. Do you need assistance?”
Boy, did she ever.
The marine took her on a tram, paying her fair, and escorted her all the way to embassy row. The city was gorgeous, with a giant castle on a hill, a river through the center, covered in ornate bridges.
She wished she could have seen it any other way.
Another time, in another life maybe.
She gave her sob story to a woman who the marine introduced her too at the embassy, giving only enough details to make the story plausible, and leaving out every bit about dragons, and magic, and falling in love.
Before she knew it, the embassy woman was in tears too. Must be that emotional part of her new-found magic she didn’t understand.
They cried together, the woman got her a meal and some clothes, and somehow finagled her onto a military transport back to the US.
She slept the whole way, despite the noise and stares of the military personnel on board with her. When they landed, she didn’t feel any more rested than when they’d taken off.
Someone showed her to a phone and she called Wesley.
“Hey, babe. Where you been?” He was as perky as the day she’d left him.
“It’s a long story. Do you think you could come get me? I left my car at the Ketcher-Fast wedding.”
“Sure. Where are you?”
A four hour drive away. The Bridezillas of Willingham Weddings were going to have to wait. “Washington DC.”
“Jesus. This better be one hell of a story.”
She’d have to figure out what to actually tell Wes while she waited for him.
“It is.”
One that she wanted to forget as soon as she could.