Becca drew her knees tighter to her body and squeezed her eyes shut. She didn’t care how vulnerable the position made her look. It only mattered that she hold onto herself, and please, somehow let her physical grip strengthen her mental grip.

Just hold on. That was all she had to do. Hold on. Her name was Becca Scott. Captain Rebecca Ann Scott. Not Lash or Kopis or Styx.

Rebecca Ann Scott.

She was a soldier, a granddaughter, a friend. A human.

God, she was human!

Dragons weren’t real. Magic wasn’t real. And she wasn’t losing pieces of her soul, everything that made her her.

This was a nightmare. Just a nightmare. If she could just wake up, she’d be back in Kandahar with her brothers-in-arms, exhausted and wound tight, gathering intelligence on Taliban positions—

Except that wasn’t right. She’d gone home. One tour as a peacekeeper in East Timor and almost two in Afghanistan, and she’d had enough.

No. It hadn’t been the tours that had ended her military career. It had been a teen with a backpack full of explosives, a crowded village market, and a tent being used as a makeshift school. The ambush on her unit, with RPGs tearing into both her light tactical transport vehicles and a sniper picking them off as they scrambled for cover, might not have pushed her over the edge. But she could still hear those people in the market screaming and the kids in the school tent wailing after the explosion — timed just before the first RPG hit her first transport — and there hadn’t been a damned thing she could have done about it. They’d walked into a trap. Someone had tipped off the Taliban that she was planning on convincing the village chief to share intel, and they’d retaliated.

Right. She’d gone home to Toronto…

Had she?

She couldn’t remember. Monsters had ripped through her soul, tearing at her essence with an agony that made the shrapnel, burns, and gunshot wounds from that ambush pale in comparison. She was helpless to stop them, just like she’d been helpless to stop that teen.

Everyone in position around the feast hall, a masculine voice growled. The voice. Somehow, in the unreality of nightmares, this monster was different from the others. He wasn’t inside her body, clawing at her soul. He was in her head, talking to the devil and ordering kidnappings and assassinations.

Diablo, get eyes on Zenobia. Incapacitate if possible. Regis will want to sentence her himself.

Yes. Make Zenobia pay. She was the monster queen the others — the ones who tore at Becca from the inside out — obeyed and feared.

Except Zenobia wouldn’t meet justice. That didn’t exist, because this wasn’t real. It was a dream, a nightmare.

It had to be a nightmare. PTSD. Something. Anything. It couldn’t be real.

Life would be normal. Fine. If she just woke up.

God. Please. Wake up.

She jerked awake. Pain snapped through her skull, but the nightmare didn’t vanish. Her pulse raced and the vise around her chest tightened. She was still trapped in a dimly lit, fifteen-by–fifteen foot cell, with an impossible stone lattice blocking the entrance. The semi-catatonic man who’d been in the corner since her arrival was still there, in a puddle of his own filth, still rocking back and forth and still softly weeping. The nine others — seven men, two women — also remained—

No. One of the men was missing.

She tried to think of his name but couldn’t remember it and couldn’t remember if she’d ever learned it. All she remembered was his starvation-thin features and the haunted, empty look in his eyes. The haunted guy was gone. The big guy in the corner, with shaggy light brown hair and a bushy beard — Werner — had said the haunted guy had arrived just before her, but with their inability to tell time in the cave and the missing time during the worst part of the nightmare, no one seemed to know how short or long ‘just’ was.

Except a part of her knew how long it had been. If she believed the truth of the nightmare, it had been almost six years since she’d been taken, and her dragon hosts had yet to awaken the magic promised within her aura. She also knew she was one of the lucky ones. If her aura hadn’t held such promise, she would have been killed and thrown out like trash. A vessel without magic was a waste of time.

But that didn’t make sense. That was the nightmare, the mess of thoughts and emotions that weren’t hers… couldn’t be hers.

Remember, the masculine voice said.

Becca’s breath caught in her throat. No. No no no. She was still dreaming. The devil’s master never spoke to her when she was awake. But she was still in the cell. She had to still be asleep.

Capture Zenobia.

“Make the bitch pay,” Becca hissed into the shadows.

“Another dream?” Werner asked, his voice low and difficult to understand with his thick German accent.

“The devil’s master is going after Zenobia in some feast hall.”

Glenn — a twenty-something who also looked like an island castaway and who claimed he’d been stolen from the jungles of Vietnam — barked a harsh laugh that made the weeping man in the corner moan. “Wouldn’t that be something.”

“I want your dreams,” the blond woman beside Werner said. “I’m always at the center of a—” She groaned. “In the center of a— a tornado.” She screamed, and a gust of wind exploded through the cell. It slammed Becca against the wall. The air burst from her lungs and the whirlwind whipped it away. The guy in the corner wailed, the five on the far side hit the floor, two others were wrenched to their feet and pinned to the ceiling. Werner shoved against the impossible tornado, seized the front of the woman’s soiled T-shirt, then froze.

Light flared around him and everyone else, except the weeping guy in the corner, and a weight filled Becca as if she was so exhausted she couldn’t move. Her thoughts muddled and a command within the core of her being to stand jerked her to her feet.

The tornado vanished, dropping the two against the ceiling to the floor, and in unison, with a glazed look in their eyes, everyone turned toward the entrance as the stone lattice melted into the floor.

This was it. Her chance to escape. But, like all the other times the lattice had impossibly vanished, she found herself frozen, unable to move, controlled by a monster in her head.

The vise around her chest squeezed tighter, and she fought to breathe. They were going to try to awaken her magic again. Someone was going to invade her, seize her body, and tear into her.

Wake up. Please, just wake up.

They weren’t going to activate some strange magic within her. She didn’t possess magic. Magic was impossible.

Across from them, the lattice over the other cell also melted away, and the queen monster — Zenobia — and her lieutenant strode into the hall from the far end. The lieutenant hissed a guttural word and everyone but Becca, weeping guy, and Glenn stepped into the hall, joining the others from the other cell.

Everything within Becca screamed to run. Just run. It was a dream. If she concentrated hard enough, she could escape. Or better yet, wake up. But her body wouldn’t obey. She could barely get the thought to form before it turned into mindless howling… or was that weeping guy still howling?

Zenobia flicked her wrist and the lattices swept back over the two entrances. The others marched like well-trained soldiers out of sight, and the force possessing her let go and dropped her to the floor. The weeping guy turned silent, but his rocking picked up, and Glenn moaned, his eyes unfocused…

Or was it Becca who was unfocused? Her pulse sped up, and she clung to that sensation. She lost time when she felt like this. The monster in her head thought of that time in terms of months and years. But that was the nightmare. Not reality. Not truth. Not—

Agony exploded in her head and shot like lightning through her limbs. The weeping guy screamed. His eyes rolled back and he collapsed, while Glenn howled and gripped his chest. His breath came in fast gasps like he’d been shot and was clinging to consciousness.

“Something’s happened,” Glenn said.

Someone in the hall roared. Someone else started yelling for help.

A black vortex erupted against the wall beside Glenn, and Werner leapt out as the impossible vortex vanished. He grabbed Glenn’s arm and helped him stand. “It was the Asar Nergal.”

“They know about us?” Glenn’s eyes widened. “They’re after us, like the dragons knew they would.”

“But you—” Werner’s gaze jumped to Becca and bore into her. “You knew they were going after Zenobia. You heard them.”

“I didn’t hear anything.” Because it hadn’t been real. This wasn’t real. But she couldn’t control her racing pulse. The monsters who’d been in her head knew that even trying to awaken her magic meant death for both of them. The Asar Nergal — whatever the hell they were — were merciless. They eliminated threats with extreme prejudice. And she was a threat.

“You did. We attacked the other dragons in a feast hall. But they were waiting for us, just like you said.” Werner pressed his hand against the stone wall and another vortex burst to life. He shoved Glenn inside and held out his hand to her. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

Round up all the humans, the masculine voice said.

But she was certain what he really meant was kill all the humans.

Nightmare or not, there was no way she was sticking around for that.

She grabbed Werner’s hand and plunged into a black, consuming nothing.