Unleashed: The Deepest Fears Lie Within (Secrets of the Makai) (35 page)

Donovan flew in circles with a sword in each hand, taking down multiple attackers at once. There’d be piles of bodies if they weren’t disappearing on contact.

Where Tristan’s defenses and attacks were mental, Donovan’s were physical. Tristan closed his eyes, unable to keep up with Donovan’s actions or energy level, and dropped to his knees. “I quit.”

“Not yet.”

The colors changed. Trees transformed into transparent gray obstacles. Donovan seemed to be the only source of color—a greenish blue.

“Accommodating.”

Donovan’s final attacker vanished and he straightened. Sweat drenched his face, soaked his white dress shirt. “Explain.”

“Accommodating,” the woman’s voice said again.

Donovan circled with his swords raised, ready for the next attack. A dark shadow swept over the dry leaves. Trees swayed in the sudden gust of wind. He and Tristan turned skyward.

“Stop the training,” Donovan ordered, lowering his swords.

“Denied,” replied the voice.

“What are you?” asked Tristan, barely recognizing Donovan. Even the bone structure seemed different—human, but not quite. Why didn’t Molajah trust the man?

“Tristan—”

A roaring wind knocked them both to the ground as something swooped overhead.

Pure fear induced a fresh adrenaline rush. Tristan gripped the walking stick tighter and tried to recalculate the emerald shield. His heart pounded; the harder he thought about the shield, the more he couldn’t breathe.

“I can’t see what it is—” Tristan rubbed at his eyes and tried blinking away the distorted shapes. Maybe it wasn’t his eyes that changed, but the room itself.

“Pay attention, Tristan!”

He watched in horror as a dark shape with monstrously sharp claws tackled Donovan, yanking him off his feet. He stabbed one of his swords into the inner palm of a clawed foot and crashed into the top of a tree, breaking several branches as he plummeted to the ground.

“Stop the training!” Donovan shouted.

“Unable to comply.”

“Engage extreme safety parameters—”

“Unable to comply.”

Tristan held up his good arm to block the beast when it dove for him. Its black eyes slanted downward and its nostrils flared. Long, serrated teeth spiked outward. Giant whiskers snapped like whips around a body of interlocking, camouflaging scales.

His eyes grew wide as the monster winked out of existence, just before it would have careened into him. It appeared again, like a missile aimed at Donovan.

Donovan staggered to his feet in time to be smashed by a massive tail, straight against another tree. “Get out of the circle, Tristan.”

A yellow liquid gurgled from the side of Donovan’s head, and from each puncture wound in his stomach and thigh. Tristan scanned the clearing for something that resembled a circle and came back to the green form of Donovan.

“I don’t see the circle. I see—” He couldn’t be sure it was blood.

Blistering pain shot through his stomach and up his neck. The creature landed on four legs in front of him. The ground shook as huge claws sent chunks of earth flying in all directions.

And wings! Massive leatherish wings folded in on themselves, hanging like a cloak over an armored back, extending halfway down the powerful tail.

“Donovan!” The beast moved like a snake on the prowl. “What do I do?”

Donovan threw one of his swords at the head of the creature, drawing its attention away from Tristan. It opened his fanged mouth with a roar, twisting its impossibly long neck to snap at Donovan.

Donovan had no chance, caught in the jaws of gaping teeth. The second sword fell from his grip as the monster flung him away like a rag doll, clearing the rounded treetops.

The giant beast of a dragon turned back toward Tristan, taking purposeful strides toward him with ears like sails pinned to the back of his head.

Tristan retreated, tripping on something unseen. He didn’t dare turn and run, scooting back on his elbows. If there was a circle, surely he could escape if he kept backing away.

The monster roared a hot wind of fury, with Donovan’s blood still glistening on his teeth. “I’m not playing!”

The beast leaped forward, spreading its wings, raising its head to strike and reaching with its claws.

Simple survival.

Nothing more. Nothing less.

Tristan caught the dragon with clawed feet of his own and used the momentum to catapult the creature into the trees.

They snapped on impact; Tristan rolled to his feet in time to slash between scales before the animal could strike again.

It recoiled and spun with a roar of rage.

Tristan stared at the dragon, eye to eye. His left arm throbbed; he kept it curled into his chest, claws stabbing into the palm of his own hand.

At this realization, he flexed the fingers, not recognizing the claws glistening with dark blood. Even his armored skin was unrecognizable.

He sat back on his haunches and examined his right hand, finding the sitting position impossible to maintain.

The dragon beast lunged, tackling Tristan to the ground with a heavy crash.

He shoved with his feet before the jaws could clamp down on his neck and the beast flew backwards, impaling itself on the pointed stumps of broken trees.

It turned to dust and settled to the ground like falling ash.

Tristan limped to the spot on three limbs, sniffing the area for signs of life.

Nothing felt right in this place. Not the trees, the sky. Everything felt terribly, terribly wrong.

37
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P
OINT OF
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ETURN
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TRISTAN STEPPED CAREFULLY through the crushed trees. They seemed to shift with him unnaturally. A haunted forest with only an illusion of distance. A cage.

Whatever it was, he would find his way out.

His wings unfolded stiffly as he stretched toward the sky. He beat at the air to get above the tree line, an instinctual motion, only to land on his chest with the effort. His left arm crumpled with the jarring weight, sending a noticeable jolt of pain up through his shoulder.

Something in the forest moved. The scent of an unknown predator lingered in the air.

Tristan got to his feet, keeping his bad limb tucked in protectively, and stalked the wooded area in search of the threat.

He wrapped his claws around the trunk of a lifeless tree and yanked it out of the ground, tossing it aside. The dirt did not smell as it should, but the predator’s scent grew stronger, emanating from somewhere nearby.

He pursued the odor until he came upon a tiny creature— severely injured and barely breathing. Tristan lowered his head and stilled. The little creature didn’t move.

A trap. Bait.

Before Tristan could back away, the creature’s hands shot fire into his eyes, scorching his nostrils and singeing his gums. He reared back, tearing through the false trees half blinded, snapping trunks in half as he plowed through them. His wings naturally extended for balance, snagging on every heartless branch.

Some sort of barrier kept him running in a tight circle, continually scraping the skin of his right wing against some sort of camouflage. The path soon became a track of bloodied spikes with broken trees scraping his belly, stabbing into his tender feet.

He cut toward the central clearing with a faster pace, desperate for enough speed to get off the ground. Only then could he escape these invisible walls and find a deep cave, or craft one, and tend to his wounds.

The tiny creature wasn’t playing defenseless anymore. It stood in the center of the clearing, shouting something unintelligible.

Tristan charged, sacrificing his bad arm for more speed, extending his battered wings for lift. He leaped toward the sky with every ounce of strength as fire from the creature seared his open wounds.

Tristan screamed...roared was more like it. But in two flaps of his wings, he’d be free and clear of this madness. His nose slammed against an invisible surface as hard as stone, nearly breaking his neck.

He plummeted to the ground, catching a few spikes to his side on impact.

No time to recover his senses; he whirled to his feet and made another lap on the track, increasing his speed, extending his wings.

The tiny green creature in the center aimed his arms upward; the air seemed to condense around him, absorbing his forward motion.

He broke through with sheer force of will and used what was left of his momentum to leap above the trees, crashing hard against the sky—an infuriating solid mass of something undetectable. His left arm would no longer hold any weight when he righted himself to try again.

Nothing would prevent him from breaking through.

He circled with the track a third time, ignoring the odd little man in the center, and sprang into the sky. This time, he put his nose down and hit with the armored plate of his forehead.

The crack reverberated through every bone.

He glared upward, confused by the jagged fissure dissecting the sky, and couldn’t recall crashing to the ground.

The little creature stood a breath away.

Tristan curled in on himself and used his long tail to swat the stubborn, fire-making thing out of his way. One or two more forceful hits was all it would take to break free.

Accommodating nicely with the three-legged gate, his wings spread out wide, just before the leap, and he drove his good shoulder into the broken sky.

It didn’t work, but it was progress.

Tristan ran the loop with nowhere else to go, keeping his lame arm tucked in, limping heavily on the other. Several times he skidded on shifting logs, landing hard on his chest, unable to keep his weight evenly distributed from front to back.

His wings were simply too heavy to keep off the ground, they snagged and tore on every sharp spike. He couldn’t get them to bend inward and his own blood seemed to be coating every bit of forest.

The little creature made his way back to the center of the clearing on two legs, holding his hands upward again.

Tristan watched warily, calculating his chances at breaking through whatever kept him contained in this hellish location. One more hit might be enough.

But the longer they sized each other up, the more sluggish he felt. The little creature was up to something.

A small explosion came from a dense spot of forest.

The green man turned and Tristan bolted in the opposite direction. By the time he was forced to circle back, additional creatures had appeared from the flames, cutting through the bloodied track on a course for the creature in the center.

They were alike in some ways; shape and size. But the newcomers were warm blooded, glowing yellow and orange. The green fire-maker was nearly invisible by comparison.

Tristan eyed the fire they’d started and made a run for it. If they could get in through the flames, it had to be the way out.

He kept his nose down and dove into the minuscule passageway, only to bash and scrape the sides of his face. He shook it off and staggered another lap, eyeing the jagged gap above.

The three creatures in the center were of no concern, he made another run at the sky, slamming himself along the widest point of the crack. A cascade of boulders fell with him and the sky itself shifted from the bright blue of freedom to a vacant, dead white.

Never had he been in such a confusing underground. Anger surged through him, providing the burst of strength he so desperately needed.

The two warm-blooded creatures seemed less threatening than the fire-maker. They weren’t predators. They stood side by side, fear and something else radiating from their pores. They were definitely up to something...his nostrils flared as they separated.

One reached for a sharp spike on the ground. But instead of crafting a weapon from the branch, it simply vanished.

Curious.

Escape.

Tristan made another run at the barrier. This time, his right wing wouldn’t extend at all. He barreled into the cavern wall that seemed to flicker between forest and stone, then crushed his left wing as he tripped over it.

How far underground was he? How did this happen?

He stayed down to gather his sense of direction, waiting for the pain subside.

The warm-blooded creatures were moving quicker now, doing away with the fallen trees.

Tristan rose to his feet and searched for the fire-maker. He wouldn’t have seen the creature at all if it hadn’t taken a curious side-step, drawing attention to its location.

Tristan disregarded it and went back to the issue of stone that camouflaged as open landscape. His bloodied right wing had clearly marked the physical boundary—the cage was bigger than he’d imagined.

A sharp sound pierced his ears; he snapped his head around and spotted the fire-maker holding a metal tube of some sort—red smoke billowing from its heated end.

He then noticed a colorless flag stabbing into his bad hand, precisely where unarmored flesh became claw.