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  Pursuing Flight

  A Dragon Spirit Novel: Book 4

  C.I. Black

  Contents

  Pursuing Flight

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Other Books By C.I. Black

  About C.I. Black

  Pursuing Flight

  C.I. Black

  Their connection is as wild as their magic… and just as dangerous.

  * * *

  Nero survived the loss of his inamorata by the skin of his dragon-spirit’s teeth. Since then he’s focused every ounce of his power — magical and political — on hoarding the most unlikely of treasures: innocent human mages. Rescuing them instead of following orders to murder them.

  * * *

  Now his secret, forbidden coterie is under threat from Rebecca Scott. Victim. Soldier. Mage unaware. A woman trapped in a tortuous lab experiment, whose pain and terror echo down the unbreakable cords binding them together.

  * * *

  Unsure if her hell is real or a PTSD-induced nightmare, Becca jumps at one slim chance to escape the sadistic white-coats probing her broken psyche, following a strange, alluring voice throbbing from somewhere deep in her bones.

  * * *

  When Becca’s desperation yanks Nero to her side, he makes a staggering discovery. This courageous, half-crazed woman is, impossibly, his second inamorata. But even if she gets her wish to carve their souls apart, it’s too late for him. If her heart stops, so will his… and everyone under his protection, human and dragon, will be lost.

  Pursuing Flight

  by C.I. Black

  * * *

  Copyright © 2017 C.I. Black

  Published by Gryphon’s Gate Publishing

  * * *

  Cover Art © 2017 Eithne Ni Anluain

  * * *

  ISBN: 978-1-988115-47-4

  * * *

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without written consent, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  * * *

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and events are entirely the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual locals, events, or organizations is coincidental.

  Prologue

  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.

  1

  White lightning snapped across Nero’s sight and seared through his head. He shifted in the tub chair across from his imposing office desk, the leather squeaking with the movement. But nothing eased the agonizing magic that made him the dugga of the Asar Nergal and warned him about a human mage threat. Except his magic was wrong. It wasn’t a human who endangered his people, his coterie, and more importantly, the members of his puzur, his secret coterie — and if he was being honest with himself, his hoard since he didn’t collect anything else but these misfit humans — it was him.

  And if he didn’t do something about it soon, it might be too late.

  It could already be too late.

  He was the reason Diablo hadn’t been able to capture the last of the mages created in Zenobia’s coup and why Capri’s Clean Team was working overtime to cover up any instances of magic to keep the human world oblivious to the truth that magic and dragons were real.

  The last time humans had known about them, they’d cast a spell and destroyed dragonkind, and it had only been through the sacrifice of their goddess that dragons had managed to survive — albeit in a weakened spirit state, forced to inhabit human vessels.

  Another flash of lightning in his head. He ground his teeth, knowing the magic would take him back to the woman in the hospital… yearning to go back to her.

  Yes, he needed to deal with her. Killing her was the most expedient solution.

  But he wasn’t that drake anymore. He didn’t just kill humans because they might become a danger. This woman needed help. If she hadn’t gone insane, unable to accept the truth about the world — or because she’d been forced to share her body with a dragon’s more powerful spirit — then she’d need help. She didn’t have to become the danger dragons feared.

  Except she was a danger. She could highjack his mental connection to his Asar Nergal soldiers and warn other mages they were being hunted. As well, from the flash he’d gotten last night, whatever facility she was in, the doctor had seemed to know she could hear him. Which only complicated the situation.

  Yes, that explained his lack of action — aside from the fact that he didn’t know where the woman was — there were just too many unanswered questions.

  He needed more information — like, did the doctor know the truth, or was she assuming this woman suffered from auditory hallucinations? How many people knew the truth about this woman’s ability? How many people would he have to neutralize? How much of a mess would Capri and her team have to clean up? How many loose ends were there?

  It was all about the logistics and nothing to do with the pain and fear and confusion that had seized him when he’d connected with the woman. He couldn’t just send in his whole team, even if the medical facility was in a secure prison lockup. Word that he was weak might make those few ambitious members in the Asar Nergal challenge him for the position of dugga. And
he didn’t have the time for that.

  Over the years, he might have changed how he and the Asar Nergal dealt with some of the mages they hunted — saving who they could instead of killing them — but the directive remained the same. Protect dragonkind.

  Except above that, he had to protect his puzur, those humans he’d saved, and those dragons who’d embraced them as kin. And those dragons included the members of the Asar Nergal who — all who remained — had willingly broken their king’s directive, saving innocent humans instead of murdering them. If any of them thought he was weak or endangered their cause, they’d kill him and claim his rank.

  This was a situation that needed to be carefully dealt with. Nero needed more information, and if he were smart, he’d deal with it himself, eliminating any chance of anyone finding out that a human could highjack the telepathy the Handmaiden had given him, which she’d sworn could only be heard by other members of the Asar Nergal.

  Which only gave him more questions. Was it him? Or was the Handmaiden’s magic failing? And if the Handmaiden’s magic was failing, what did that mean?