Leadville Crucible (American Dragons Book 7) Read online

  Steven went to the closet, walked inside, and noticed that most of the clothes were gone. Not all... some suits and elegant gowns had been left behind. He guessed that if the people had left, they wouldn’t have taken their formal wear with them.

  Or maybe the Zothoric insisted their prey dress casually. Steven stood in the closet, thinking. Had the demons rounded up the humans and put them in concentration camps? He imagined creatures surrounding the house and waiting for the humans to pack their things.

  Or perhaps the US government had created safe zones. Still another scenario was that this world’s Dragonsouls had drawn the battle lines. However, that meant the dragons would have had to reveal themselves to the humans. That could’ve caused the Zothoric invasion. Rahaab had insisted that as long as they stayed hidden, they could hide. A world teeming with primates would confuse any prying eyes. Humans could be very loud and confusing. Steven had firsthand experience of that.

  Zoey came out of the bathroom. “They left the cheap stuff. They took their nice perfume. I can smell where it was.”

  Steven nodded. “Thanks for checking.”

  They rendezvoused with the Wayne twins back out in the hall.

  Pru shook her head. “Okay, welcome to the digital age. No newspapers and no magazines. I found a PC, but of course, no electricity, which means we can’t check the websites they perused. Unless you can magic up a battery. Folks would’ve taken their phones and laptops with them.”

  Steven nodded. He liked the idea of turning Animus into electricity. That might take some pretty fair mojo, and so far, it seemed beyond Incanto. With Enchantrix, maybe he and Tessa could rig up something.

  Zoey exhaled, loudly. She was having a hard time.

  “Did you find anything?” Steven asked.

  “Kid stuff,” Chazzie answered. “We found toys for a boy and pop stars up on the walls for some tween girl. It’s nothing country western, so we don’t care. If it were Brad Paisley we’d care. Or I love that Jana Kramer.”

  Pru glowered. “Shania Twain and Garth Brooks killed country. If it ain’t Johnny Cash, I don’t care.”

  “Merle Haggard?” Chazzie asked. “The Hank Williams dynasty. Do they count?”

  “You know they do.”

  Steven took Zoey’s hand. “So, we know something happened July a couple years ago, but we don’t know what. Let’s get outside and talk more. However, I think we should check out this Zothoric hive and then the airport.”

  “Sure, that’s great, but while we’re in this house, we should check the basement,” Chazzie said.

  Pru grunted in frustration. “I am not going into the basement. It’s where the Zothoric might’ve laid their eggs, and we go down there, and it’s all gross and terrible. No. I think the people living here were warned, they evacuated, and we should too.” She took a fresh grip on her rifle. “Not go back to Gaia Alpha. I’m here for the fight, Steven. We should just evacuate this house.”

  Steven agreed. However, he and Zoey did search the basement. It was unfinished and full of cardboard boxes. Some had been opened and dumped out onto the floor. Someone had combed through them, probably searching for valuables or keepsakes or whatever else.

  Zoey picked up a baby girl’s pink onesie. She smoothed out the front, which had the words “Mommy’s Little Princess” written on it. Again, she exhaled. “There was a family here. But they had to run. I don’t think anything survived the demons, Steven. It’s sad. It’s so sad. And this place smells so bad. More than that, it feels bad. No Animus. No Animus anywhere.”

  Steven agreed with everything she said. However, he didn’t want to give up hope. “If the humans had warning, if they were evacuated, they might be alive somewhere else. We don’t know if the family who lived here is alive or not. We’re here to collect information at this point. Let’s keep our minds open.”

  “Okay.” Zoey offered him a wan grin. “At least there aren’t demon eggs down here. Tessa would make some Alien reference. I’m not her though. I wouldn’t know what to say.”

  Again, Steven took her hand to try and soothe her. “We’ll have to ask Aria if there’s an Indian version of Alien.”

  They left the basement and made their way upstairs.

  Aria and Sabina stood in the living room.

  Zoey touched Steven’s back and then fled the house. It was clear that however bad the outside smelled, the inside smelled worse, and she preferred having the sky overhead. The twins were already outside.

  “Did you find anything in the other house?” Steven asked Aria.

  She shook her head. “Nothing. We found a car in the garage, but the tires are flat. We could pump them up, yet we don’t know if the vehicle will work. Tessa is going to have the twins look at it. Chazzie and Pru are good with engines.”

  Aria stood in the living room, arms across her chest, staring out the dusty windows of the houses. Sweat marked her neck. She smelled strongly of cinnamon.

  Sabina was quiet, holding her white cane, waiting. Her eyes continued to glow green, giving her sight.

  “What’s wrong, Aria?” Steven asked.

  She shook her head, frowning. Her brows were furrowed. “It’s nothing.”

  “Do you think this was a mistake?”

  The Indian woman’s mouth was pinched small in thought.

  That made him laugh. “Oh, snap, you can’t even bring yourself to say it. Is it that bad?”

  Aria shrugged. “It’s not good, my Prime. We face an unbeatable enemy on a strange world. Sabina has tried to contact Javier Jones and Paanga Komang, but she can’t. We are cut off. Worse yet, if we return to Gaia Alpha, we risk the Zothoric finding that Earth and doing to it what they did here. I must admit... I am afraid. Why didn’t you send others for this mission?”

  That had been another topic of conversation that they’d discussed over and over. Steven knew Aria needed to hear his reasoning, one more time, after finding the Battle World lifeless. “For one, no one was jumping up and down to come here. I know Savedra and his Willbreakers would’ve, if I’d ordered them, as would Eve Downfyre and her Eight. I think the Five Widows were surprised I didn’t ask them. But come on, Aria, this was our fight from the beginning.”

  “Your fight,” she whispered. “I was merely looking for a Dragonlord, a place in a Primacy. Yet that was never meant to be.” She raised her hand and examined the gold band. “I married a Drokharis. Death and destruction follow.”

  He hated that she was right. His family had been fighting for the world for a long time, since Icharaam first walked on Earth. His brothers wanted to hide. Icharaam wanted to fight, and he was killed for his courage. And when Arthur Drokharis took over, he lost his life to his best friend, Merlin. Yet the dream of free dragons lived on.

  Was this a rash mission? Was Steven being overconfident? He didn’t know. This seemed like the next logical step, and he didn’t want anyone else taking the chance. This was his war, or at least his father’s. He wasn’t going to force anyone else to fight it.

  He took Aria’s hand. “We won’t take any unnecessary chances. So far, the Zothoric don’t know we are here. Maybe we can keep it that way.”

  Aria gave him a big smile. It looked beautiful on her face. “When I first kissed you, I promised you a life of sex and battle. I never thought I would be the one to have second thoughts.”

  “About marrying me?”

  “About battle.”

  Steven took her in his arms and kissed her. “At least you still like the sex part.”

  He loved the feel of her sweat on his skin and her scent in his nose. The Animus from their kiss swirled into them. On the lifeless planet, that precious energy seemed even more magical. The air vibrated around them.

  “Do you feel that?” Steven asked.

  “If you didn’t, I did,” Sabina said next to them. “And look at that houseplant.”

  A pot sat on the windowsill. A single green shoot broke from the dirt. Around it lay withered leaves, and yet that plant had sprouted.
>
  Steven wasn’t sure if their kiss had brought it to life, but it seemed so.

  “We were meant to come here.” Sabina’s voice was quiet. “This fight will not be easy, but none of our battles have been. No manches, Steven Drokharis, your way is not for pussies or pendejos. But you have your best with you. We won’t lose.”

  Steven hoped she was right. He went and touched the plant. Could they bring life back to this dead planet?

  Chapter Three

  ZOEY NOVA STAYED HUMAN. She wasn’t ready to turn into any of her animal shapes yet. Human noses were dull things, and she didn’t want to smell any more of this planet than she absolutely had to. The world wasn’t just dead—she’d smelled the decay in the fridge—Gaia Beta was ruined. A part of her wanted to run into Steven’s arms and have him hold her until all the fear passed.

  She had to be strong, but being on the Battle World made her not only uncomfortable but terrified. This fear, this terrible fear, threatened to send her screaming, running wildly out onto the plains. Instead, she paced, frowned, and paced some more. The steel bracelet shifted on her wrist. Though it protected her from any AnimusChain magic, she still didn’t like how it felt on her skin.

  She stood outside under the sky, staring at those nasty unnatural red clouds. She drew a length of her hair and chewed on it. She hadn’t chewed on her hair since she was a little girl.

  Zoey’s parents had been Morphlings for Ugly Ellis Dodge, in his Appalachian Primacy, and she’d been a mountain girl, half wild, running up steep hills, diving into rivers, and finding cool mountain valleys to rest in during the worst summer months. She’d had a bunch of pack mates, real terrors, and sometimes, they would harass the humans, but never enough to call down Ugly Ellis’s wrath. It was his job to police the supernaturals in his Primacy. Zoey had known that if she got into too much trouble, Ugly Ellis would punished her parents and not her.

  Zoey’s father died in a skirmish against Alonzo Mac Sterling, the Dragonlord of the neighboring Miami-Dixie Primacy. Zoey’s mother took her to Texas. Ugly Ellis didn’t care one way or another about them. His cool attitude toward Zoey’s father proved that. Carlo Bart Baxter took them in, and the Prime especially liked Zoey’s mother. Things were good, though the twins didn’t make it easy on Zoey’s mother. Those Wayne sisters had been a part of her life for a long time now. They didn’t remember her. Zoey couldn’t forget them or what they did.

  Steven had never pried, and every time it came up, Zoey would either insist she wasn’t ready to talk about it, or she’d find a way to change the subject. She knew at some point she would have to tell Steven the details. She dreaded the thought. Human words had a way of slipping away from her. She didn’t see any good coming from a long conversation with Chazzie or Pru. She’d been the daughter of their Prime’s Morphling mistress. Carlo Bart never married Stephanie Nova.

  After Zoey’s mother died, Zoey was lost for a while. She drifted away from Carlo Bart, and like Ugly Ellis, he didn’t care. Zoey was just some young Morphling and not worth his time. Zoey was found by Juice Juice and his Sounders. The me is the we. Those words came to her so quickly. That was sad. They’d meant so much to her at first. Then all they did was scratch at her soul.

  Juice had left her behind at the first sign of trouble. Because she was difficult. And because she was the bait for Spider Finger’s trap in the Americos Chamber, which would send them down to Odessa, Texas, and the trouble there.

  Zoey swore she wouldn’t be difficult again. Not to anyone. Never.

  Mouse traipsed out of the house on the left. A King Soopers bag full of canned food dangled from one of her hands. She must’ve found some in the pantry of the other house. In her other hand, she held a red-and-white can of something called Nozzza-Cola.

  Tessa was in the garage, with the twins, looking at a car that had been left behind.

  Mouse moved up to Zoey. “Want some, Zoey? It’s flat, and terrible, and probably full of Zothoric cancer, but hey, it’s still sweet. Americans on this plane of existence still liked their high fructose corn syrup.”

  Zoey took the can and sipped it. The sweetness hit her all at once. “Ugh, it’s like flat Coke. Which is terrible for you. You know that, right?”

  Mouse leaned on her sword. “Yeah, like world-hopping and fighting demon things aren’t? This soda pop is the least of my worries.”

  Zoey returned the can to the blonde. “Why didn’t they just call it Coca-Cola?”

  Mouse made an I-have-no-flippin’-idea face. Then thought better of it. “I think they wanted to really drive home the fact that the shit has a crapton of caffeine. So, like no Zs cola. Drink this and you’ll never Z again. Or something. I don’t know. Humans are crazy.”

  “I still don’t understand.”

  Mouse sipped more from the can. “The thing is, Zoey, Coca-Cola doesn’t exist here. We found a mirror dimension, or some shit like that. It’s Coke, like we have it, but the people marketing on this planet decided to call it something else.”

  “They should’ve called it sweet death juice.” Zoey drank some water from her canteen to get the sugar sauce out of her mouth. Then she went back to chewing on her hair. She wanted to appear strong, so she didn’t say anything.

  Mouse laughed at her joke. But of course, she was going to notice Zoey’s mood. Mouse was her best friend. The blonde drained the can and tossed it into the street, where it clanked in the terrible quiet. Even the wind wasn’t blowing, and it always blew on the Great Plains. “Zoey, yes, this is all really weird and scary and yeah, I feel it too. I’m glad the twins are joking. When they get quiet, you know it’s bad. Ironic, most of the time I can’t wait for them to shut up.”

  Chazzie and Pru. Just their names hurt Zoey, though she wasn’t going to talk about what happened to her mother. She wouldn’t dare. Part of being a pack meant going along to get along. You didn’t create conflict if you could help it.

  Mouse knocked her with a slim hip. “Come on. You know when we find the Zothoric, we’re going to kick their asses. And if we can’t, we fly back to the St. Vrain Aerie, break on through to the other side, and we have thousands of soldiers ready to join us in the fight. We got Primes, Warlings, Morphlings, Magicians, and even Cactus Bill said he’d help us.” Mouse tried to sell her joke as being serious. “I know, Cactus Bill, right? Total badass.”

  Zoey grinned despite herself. “Cactus Bill is weird. I’m not sure how powerful he is. In Texas, he was kind of a joke. I guess he’s friends with the twins, but we kind of always thought they got their information from someone else and only said Cactus Bill was the source. Kind of like a dodge.”

  “Dodge or dodgy?” Mouse asked. “Cactus Bill is definitely dodgy. Seriously, though, Zoey, I know this is hard. But we’ve won, time and time again. And now you have your wicked armor. Sure, you guys get all the magic items, and all I get is this magic sword. And a ring. And an amazing husband. And great sister-wives. And my sardonic sense of humor. And I’m going on nearly two years of sobriety. So, yeah.” Mouse stopped talking, but she didn’t stop smiling.

  Zoey couldn’t help herself. She grabbed Mouse and held her close. She glanced down and watched as the grass greened around them.

  Mouse saw it and her mouth dropped open. “What the biscuit? For the love of fuck? What?”

  Zoey let Mouse go and she stripped off her clothes. Life, life was here, and she wanted to smell it. Once naked, except for Icharaam’s Amulet, her wedding ring, and the defense bracelet, Zoey focused on the Animus at her core. She brought that energy into every part of her body, changing her bones, changing her muscles, turning herself into a wolf. When she sniffed and snuffled at the green grass, the scent of life, spring, and hope filled her keen nose.

  Mouse was still cursing when the others joined them on the lawn, where a circle of green grass surrounded them. Their life, their Animus, had extended out onto the very earth itself. They were powerful, and they were going to use that power to bring Animus back to the dry husk of the Battle Wor
ld.

  Steven and the rest of his Escort came out of the houses.

  Zoey let out a woof and went over to rub her side against Steven. He reached down and petted her head.

  The twins were wiping their hands off with rags. They let them drop.

  “Any news on the car?” Steven asked.

  “Yeah, they have an air compressor for the tires, but not electricity,” Pru said. “And I’m certainly not going to pump them up by hand. And do we really want to be the only ones driving around here? I think not!”

  Steven nodded. “Okay, but I’m done walking. We’ll fly to the Zothoric hive.”

  “Cruxis,” Tessa said. “Plural is Cruxi.”

  “That too.”

  Zoey closed her eyes as Steven petted her. She loved the feel of him, the smell of him, and that of the other women. This was home. They could go anywhere in the universe because these people were her home now. Even Chazzie and Pru.

  STEVEN KEPT HIDDEN in the cottonwood trees lining Barr Lake. On the shoreline was a structure unlike anything he’d ever seen before in his life. It was alien, bestial, disturbing.

  More red clouds had gathered to the west. The sun was a bloody knife wound in that crimson. They had a few more hours of sunlight before nightfall. Their time walking was behind them now. Aria had shifted into her True Form as a test. Flying through the heavens, staying low, nothing had attacked her.

  Could the Zothoric not detect them? They weren’t sure. They’d been on the strange world for hours, and so far, nothing had come for them.

  When they found the Cruxis, they split up so as not to be seen. Aria changed into her Homo Draconis form and moved down the way. Her eyes twinkled in her red face, and her cinnamon scent drifted over. Further down, the twins, still human, clutched their rifles.

  Uchiko was crouched next to him. The Zothoric structure was made of an inky-black material—hardened secretions, according to Sabina and her vision. She’d turned off her Divination magic so as not to draw attention. She sat with her back to the lake behind a cottonwood tree. Every so often, he’d hear her humming her song, but then she’d stop abruptly. Good thing. He wasn’t ready for a fight just yet.