Eternal (Dragon Wars, #2) (8 page)

The thought drove his weariness away. Caitlyn needed food. He eased away without waking her.

“Be right back,” he whispered in case part of her could hear him.

Dougal climbed out of the cave carefully. A quick scan didn’t reveal any dragons in the immediate vicinity. He had no doubt they would be around somewhere, especially the one he suspected fixated on Caitlyn.

He turned toward the ocean. If he lived to be an old man, he’d be sure it was somewhere landlocked. Gods, he hoped he never had to see the water again. The lights from the Wolf camp shone brightly in the distance. How many fires had they lit? It looked twice as bright as usual.

No wonder the dragons always knew where they were. Why not go ahead and make a sign saying
come and get us
? If he got out of there, he’d be sure to tell the commander to tone it down.

In the meantime, he’d find food for his mate. There were tangerines in the trees. He doubted the dragons ate them. They were definitely carnivores. He’d rather have found some protein, but seeing as he didn’t want to stray far from the cave, the fruit would have to do.

Besides, maybe the boat would come back.

He turned toward the fires again. Unless they thought he and Caitlyn had died. They certainly wouldn’t come back for their dead bodies, not on a special trip.

So he had to show them they still lived.
A signal fire.

Where was he going to get fire? The flapping wings caught his attention. It was dark and not easy to tell one of them from the other. Still, he’d lay money on it being the one who’d been hanging around.

Experience told him the particular breed of dragon could breathe fire. So, all he had to do was to figure out how to get it shoot fire at him, catch some, kill the dragon, then light a fire to make his unit come back for him.

Easy. Peasy
.

Of course, he’d rather do all of it without waking his mate. She’d been injured and he doubted she cared for fire—with good reason. How could he ask her to help him harness the flames?

What had her parents been thinking letting their boiler get so out of hand
?

Nothing he could do about ancient history. The only thing he could manage was to try to improve her future.

He took the tangerine back into the cave and deposited it next to his sleeping mate. Dougal kissed her on top of the head. “Do me a favor. Sleep through this, will you?”

It wasn’t going to be pretty, particularly because he was basically going to be winging it. He stepped out again and looked for the dragon. No puns intended.

Bad joke, even for his eternal dialogue.

“Gods, Dougal you are mated for an hour or so and already you sound like your father.” He went to the tangerine tree and broke off a branch. In his hand, he held the stick. He bent over and gathered some of the leaves around the edge of the cave.

“All right.” He called to the demon. “You there. I’m here and I’m sick to death of you. Do you hear me? I’m going to kill you. Tear you apart slowly. Make you bleed.”

How should he taunt a dragon? There had never been lessons and the dragons he’d encountered never needed encouragement to try to attack.

“Come on, you ugly purple beast. You are the most disgusting looking thing I’ve ever seen.”

“Dougal?”

He jumped.
Fuckin Motherfucker.
He’d been really focused on the dragon, too focused if he missed his mate’s arrival. “Caitlyn, what are you doing out here? Get your ass back in the cave.”

“Nice language.” She pointed at the dragon. “Why are you screaming at it? Wasn’t the point of staying in the cave to be quiet? To get it to leave us alone?”

“I want it to breathe fire.”

She grabbed his arm. “Are you sleepwalking? Is this something you do? Night terrors?”

He glared at her. Annoyance with her inability to follow instructions warred with the fact her sardonic wit would probably always keep him amused.

“I’m perfectly awake. Entirely functional and trying to get our asses off this island.” He pointed at the cave. “I don’t want to frighten you. I don’t want you dealing with the beast and the fire. So, go wait.”

She put her hands on her hips and growled. It was one of the few times he’d witnessed her Werewolf other than when she shifted. People were either very wolfy or they weren’t.

“Is there something about me which says coward to you?”

“The opposite actually.”

The dragon chose that moment to land in front of them. The ugly beast roared at the sky. He edged a step toward the cave. The dragon dive had been unexpected.

“Werewolves.”

Caitlyn gasped and he grabbed her arm to steady her. “It talks. I thought I’d imagined the other one doing so.”

“No, the uppity ups can speak Werewolf. This is an important dragon, one of the ones who occasionally makes fake peace agreements.”

“Give me the girl. I let you live, male.”

He shook his head. “You’re dreaming. You aren’t coming anywhere near her.”

“We know what she is.”

“Funny phrasing. What do you mean?”

Caitlyn covered her ears. “Don’t talk to it. Please, let’s go away. I don’t want to hear its voice anymore.”

He didn’t particularly care for the sound either, although her reaction seemed a bit extreme. They’d have to talk about it after. He needed fire.

Holding onto the stick for dear life, he called behind him to Caitlyn. “Get in the Gods-Damned Cave.”

She blinked rapidly, then turned and ran. Good. He could do what he needed to do. He dropped the stick. A plan formulated in his mind fast and he had to make it work. It should all come together as long as he moved fast.

Dougal called his shift in mid-air. It wasn’t comfortable and not every Werewolf could do it. Unfortunately, he’d had lots of practice. Taking his wolf form, he jumped on the creature’s back and sank his teeth into its left wing.

It roared and threw him, harder than he expected. He landed with an oomph but rebounded to his feet. If at first he didn’t succeed, try, try again.

He jumped and so did the dragon. To his delight, which was a strange sensation considering, the dragon puffed fire in his direction. Good, he’d pissed it off.

Mid-air again, he shifted into his human skin. He grabbed for the stick, rolling over in time to catch it on fire. He watched with elation as the end of it took the blaze.

Excellent.
All he had to do was keep it lit and kill the dragon at the same time.

The purple lizard let out a roar and charged him. He turned around. His position sucked. There was really not going to be enough time to hold onto the stick and change his form again.

“Mother fucker.”

“Stop.” Caitlyn’s voice rang out.

“No.” He dove in front of her, the flame extinguishing. Whatever else, he wouldn’t let her be hurt.

To his shock, the dragon ceased moving.

“What happened?” He gaped at the still beast. “Why did it stop?”

His mate swallowed, her cheeks a bright red hue. “Because I told her to.”

****

A
s Caitlyn answered, she knew her words didn’t make a lot of sense. Why would the dragon stop because she’d told it to? She didn’t know. Only when she’d seen the trouble her mate was about to get into, and she’d known she could make it stop.

She’d known
.

The dragon faced her, lowering her head.

“Caitlyn.”

Dougal wanted an answer and she didn’t blame him. “You know how you know how to breathe? No one has to tell you can, you simply can?”

He took a deep breath, his eyes narrowing as he regarded her silently for a second. Finally, he spoke. “Sure. Although I’m having to remind myself to do so.”

“Okay. Right. Well, it’s like I suddenly knew I could make the dragon stop. Like I could breathe.”

“Mate, I’m afraid that’s not good enough answer.”

“Well, it’s the only one I have.” Shouting sucked. Any second she’d start to cry. It was what she did when people argued.

“Okay.” He closed the distance between them and rested his hands on her shoulders. “How long is it going to listen to you?”

“I don’t know. Why don’t you ask it?” She didn’t want to speak to it again. Doing so had hurt. She had a headache in the side of her temple, as though someone drilled into her skull.

“How long will you do what she told you?” Dougal snarled at the dragon.

“Die, Werewolf. Die.” It hissed only didn’t move.

Caitlyn took a deep breath and tried to count to ten in her head. Nothing worked. Her mind itched and she wanted the sensation gone.

“I don’t think the dragon here intends to listen to me.” Dougal sighed loudly. She wouldn’t have guessed he could remain so calm in the face of all of this. She would have thought he would long ago have lost him temper. Gods knew, she wanted to.

“How long are you going to listen to me?” Her head panged again.

“Until you release me.”

Dougal actually laughed this time. He threw his hands in the air before he answered. “See, honey, until you release it.”

“Not helpful.” She needed to approach this like a science problem. There was an answer to be found if she kept her pounding head on the task at hand. Should Dougal want to rant, he could go ahead and do so.

“You’ll have to excuse me if I’m terrified about what is happening to you.”

After she reached his side, she slid an arm around his waist and rested against him. “Don’t be terrified. If this gets out of hand, you can kill it. The worst I have going on is a headache.”

“The dragon is making your head hurt?” He was shouting again. “Did you eat the tangerine I brought you?”

“I’m afraid I didn’t see it.” She’d lost focus again.

Caitlyn walked over and took the stick Dougal had to drop earlier. She walked over to the dragon. “Light this on fire.”

“Without burning you. Say those words. I don’t want any mistakes here, since you don’t know why the thing is listening to you or exactly how precise you have to be.” He nodded toward it. “Trust me on this. Dragons are not to be trusted.”

“Light this on fire without burning me,” she amended.

The dragon did as she instructed and then made a sound, which sounded akin to a huff. The purple dragon did what she said, but didn’t like it.

She handed the burning stick to Dougal who made a similar noise to the one the dragon had made. Clearly, she’d gotten better at identifying the sounds of annoying creatures from all different species.

“Why are you listening to me?”

“You’re one of the few.”

Dougal raised his eyebrows. “Do you understand what that means?”

“No.” She extended her hand to the dragon. “Could you elaborate please?”

“You are one of the few Werewolves with the power to make us do what you will. It was my job to capture you before you realized your powers as we did with the rest of them.”

Dougal stepped forward, which was a good thing because she’d lost the ability to think. Others? Control? What did any of this have to do with her?

She wanted her mate and she wanted to get back to her lab. Her safe, benign, sterile lab, where she could pretend there was no war and the dragons were far, far away creatures she didn’t need to worry about.

Caitlyn had fainted the day before. A good swoon might be in order. Only nothing happened.

“Tell it to answer any questions I pose to it.”

She stared at the dragon. Her brain felt actually tired. “Answer any questions he poses to you.”

The dragon huffed and Dougal spoke through gritted teeth. “What others?”

‘The other Werewolves who had the ability to control us.”

“How can they do that?” Thank the gods Dougal still had his presence of mind.

“They’re born with the ability. Our Queen can sense them when they’re close by and she sends us to them, to eliminate them, before they realize what they can do.”

“What happened to the others?”

“What do you think happened, Werewolf? We fed on their bones. Our Queen makes a feast of them. She says they add to her powers.”

Dougal nodded. “I need you to do something you aren’t going to want to do, Caitlyn.”

“What’s that? If you told me to pass out, I’d be okay with doing so.”

“I want you to tell it to die.”

She looked at him for the first time in a few minutes. His face had hardened, the lines around his eyes deepened. This was the Dougal who had walked into the commander’s tent after killing the dragon. The Male who would stop at nothing.

“I...”

He put his hand on her shoulder. “You can’t keep it under your control forever. It needs to die before it can tell the Queen you know what you are. Already, your head hurts. What happens if five or six of them arrive? We have to get you some place safe. That means killing anything and everything which knows about you.”

Dougal’s warm hand steadied her. He was right. She really didn’t want to do it. She’d never killed—not outside of a hunt, and rarely there.

“Tell you what, never mind.” He let go of her. “I wanted to see if it would die if you told it to. I was curious and my interest’s not fair to you.” Dougal winked at her only there was no mirth in his gaze. “Tell it to stay still.”

Easy. That she could do. “Stay still.”

The dragon screeched and didn’t move. Dougal moved to the beast. She expected him to shift and when he didn’t she realized she really had no idea what he planned. He climbed the dragon’s wings. In less time than it would have taken her to tie her shoes, he snapped the dragon’s neck.

Soundlessly except for the click of its neck breaking, the dragon hit the ground. She stared at the purple carcass.

“Why did you kill it that way? Why not shift and tear it?” As soon as she asked, she wished she hadn’t. This place—where the dragons were born—it was a death trap, whichever way she looked at it.

“I wanted to see if I could. If I had the strength in my hands to end its life if it wasn’t flopping around. Don’t feel bad for it.” He jumped. “If you hadn’t realized you could make it obey, it would have brought you back to its Queen to be eaten.”

“I...”

Dougal stepped in front of her. “I’m a brutal male. I’ll never be otherwise. Whatever version of me existed before the dragon wars, he ceased to exist. My only objective is to keep you safe from this point on.”