Embers (The Slayer Chronicles Book 2)

  Contents

  Synopsis

  Copyright

  Title Page

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Embers

  The Slayer Chronicles, Book Two

  by Val St. Crowe

  Clarke Gannon does not want to be involved with dragon-shifter Naelen Spencer.

  Seriously.

  No matter how broad his shoulders are, or how much self-professed groveling he does, or how devoted to her he claims to be, she’s not interested. When her ex, gargoyle Logan Gray, shows up asking her to run away with him, she feels as though she ought to take him up on his offer, but something’s holding her back.

  It’s not Naelen, though. Really, it’s not.

  She’s glad to have a distraction when Naelen tells her about some scientists who have been doing experiments on rogue dragons in a remote lab in the Colorado mountains. Now, the dragons have escaped into the facility, and they’re killing anyone that comes across their path.

  Killing dragons is what Clarke’s good at. She’d rather stare death in the face than try to deal with her confusing love life. And that’s exactly what she plans on doing.

  EMBERS

  © copyright 2016 by Val St.Crowe

  http://vjchambers.com

  Punk Rawk Books

  Please do not copy or post this book in its entirety or in parts anywhere. You may, however, share the entire book with a friend by forwarding the entire file to them. (And I won’t get mad.)

  Embers

  The Slayer Chronicles, Book Two

  Val St. Crowe

  CHAPTER ONE

  Naelen Spencer banged on the door of a cabin in the woods of Pennsylvania. He and I had driven nearly an hour from the closest airport to get here. “Hey, Adelia,” he said. “We’re here. Open up.”

  “Finally,” I muttered.

  Naelen turned to me, eyebrows raised. “What was that?”

  “Nothing,” I said, smiling a super-sweet smile. Truth was, the hour-long drive had been tedious, considering we hadn’t been able to find a decent radio station. Nothing came in except some talk-radio station, so we’d driven in silence.

  Naelen gave me a funny look and then turned back to the door. He knocked again. “Adelia?”

  I reached back to finger the fletchings on my arrows. I was carrying a bow and arrows with me, like I always did, because I was a dragon slayer. I didn’t think we’d run into any dragons on this trip, but the bow and arrows was still my weapon of choice. “Hey, you think something’s wrong?”

  “Really wrong?” he said. “Not just that Adelia’s incredibly paranoid?”

  “Well, we assumed she was paranoid,” I said. “When she called us and said she didn’t want to have the knife anymore because she thought someone was going to come after her, we didn’t think anything could happen to her.” After all, Adelia lived out here in the middle of nowhere, a total recluse, and very few people even knew she was out here.

  True, recently one of the protectors had gone missing, and his object with him, but he was known to stay on the move to keep the object safe. He had the star, one of the invisibility class. He’d probably gone underground when Cunningham had come sniffing around.

  Naelen and I had been tracking Cunningham, who was a vampire obsessed with assembling all nine of the magical objects. He thought he could do a ritual sacrifice and become insanely powerful, but we weren’t going to let that happen.

  Anyway, we hadn’t had luck finding Cunningham yet.

  Naelen banged on the door again. “Adelia!” There was a note of panic in his voice. He tried the doorknob. It turned in his hands. He gave me an alarmed glance. “She wouldn’t leave the door unlocked, would she?”

  “No,” I said, pulling three arrows out of my quiver and holding them all in one hand. I notched the first against my bow, ready to fire. If I needed to, it would be simple enough to fire the others immediately afterward, since I had them handy.

  Naelen pushed the door open.

  We peered inside the cabin.

  It looked normal enough inside. It was one big room. A bed against the far wall, neatly made up with a patchwork quilt and fluffy pillows. A kitchenette in one corner—tiny stove, tiny sink, mini fridge. Directly in front of us was a living room area. There was a couch facing a TV mounted on the wall. A striped boho rug lay on the floor in front of the couch.

  Only one problem.

  Where was Adelia?

  Naelen hurried into the cabin, and I followed him.

  He ran to the kitchen, looking around.

  I carefully stepped around the couch. Man, this wasn’t good. Another protector missing? That couldn’t be a coincidence. That might mean that Cunningham had gotten to both of them.

  Where was Adelia?

  Naelen pulled aside the quilt to look under the bed. Nothing there.

  “Is there a bathroom?” I said, pivoting, still with an arrow notched and ready.

  “Uh…” Naelen turned in a circle.

  We both saw the door at the same time. It was next to the kitchen, hanging open a foot.

  Naelen darted over and pushed it open.

  The bathroom was tiny, jammed full of a stand-up shower and a toilet.

  Naelen yanked the shower curtain open.

  Empty.

  “He could be invisible,” I said. If Cunningham had gotten to the other protector, he might have the star.

  Naelen felt around in the shower.

  His hand collided with something solid, something unseen.

  Naelen let out a cry of surprise.

  I tensed, aiming my bow and arrows.

  And then, suddenly, Adelia popped into sight, tackling Naelen.

  No, she wasn’t tackling him. She was lifeless. She was bloody and motionless, and she’d been shoved onto Naelen.

  By Cunningham, who was still here somewhere, only invisible.

  I fired all three arrows blindly.

  They struck the door the bathroom.

  A disembodied voice let out a chuckle.

  Cunningham! There!

  I yanked out three more arrows and turned, letting loose all three in the direction of his laughter.

  Two of my arrows embedded themselves in the wall.

  One disappeared.

  “Ow!” shrieked the voice.

  I charged him, throwing down my bow. I barreled directly into Cunningham, and we both went down.

  Except we were both invisible now, since I was in the circle of the object’s power. There was a half-foot radius around an object that its power expanded to.

  Cunningham and I scrabbled on the floor, but it was tough, because I couldn’t see anything, and I had to go completely by feel.

  I felt for his
face. I wanted to shove my thumbs into his eye sockets.

  I found a pocket instead, and my hand closed around something small and metal with poking points. The star! I pulled it away and scrambled backwards.

  Cunningham was visible now. His face was scratched up and he was out of breath.

  Had I done that to his face? Maybe Adelia had.

  “You,” said Naelen, pointing at Cunningham.

  Cunningham dove after me. He reached out and caught my foot.

  We were both invisible again. His hands went to my neck.

  He was going to strangle me? I kicked at him.

  He grunted. But his hands didn’t close over my neck. Instead, they closed on the talisman that I wore, a magical talisman that was mostly there to save myself from compulsion. Having a bit of magic on you saved you from being compelled.

  “No!” I screamed.

  But Cunningham ripped the talisman off my neck and tossed it aside.

  “Clarke,” he whispered, his voice hoarse.

  He was going to try to compel me to give him the star. Well, screw that. I threw the star away from me.

  It tumbled and bounced on the floor.

  Cunningham and I were both visible now. He was right on top of me, and I could see his dark hair and the dark stubble on his chin. His face was contorted with rage, so he didn’t look like his normal suave self. He gazed into my eyes.

  I tried to shut them.

  “Stop,” he said.

  I stopped. Damn it. He was compelling me.

  “Are you mine, Clarke?” he said. “Give the dragon the finger.”

  I flipped Naelen off.

  Naelen was reaching down to pick up the star.

  “Don’t pick that up,” said Cunningham.

  “Let her go,” said Naelen, wrapping his shirt around his hand, so that touching it wouldn’t make him invisible.

  Cunningham crawled off of me and stood up. “I can make her do whatever I want right now. I could make her shoot you with her arrows until you do what I say. So, don’t pick that up.”

  Naelen’s nostrils flared.

  Cunningham turned back to me. “Where’s the knife, Clarke? Tell me the truth.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “You didn’t get the knife from Adelia?”

  “No, he didn’t,” said Naelen, holding it up. “Because I have it. Adelia had it inside her clothes. Fell out when you pushed her onto me.”

  Terror in Cunningham’s eyes. The knife was of the power class, which meant that it enhanced Naelen’s power. Naelen was a dragon, so he had considerable magic already.

  There was only one problem with the assumption Naelen could do magic, and I knew it, even if Cunningham didn’t. In order to have magic, Naelen had to shift into his dragon form. The magic wore off about two weeks after a shift, and Naelen hadn’t shifted in quite some time. He didn’t have magic.

  We weren’t prepared. We hadn’t come here expecting a fight. We thought we’d take the object from Adelia and reassure her that everything was fine. We had been stupid. We should have known to always be prepared.

  “Shoot him,” Cunningham said to me.

  Obediently, I fished my bow and arrows up off the floor. I took an arrow out of my quiver. I notched it.

  Naelen’s eyes widened. And then he hit the floor.

  My arrow sailed over him, missing him by centimeters.

  Cunningham chuckled again.

  I had missed, so the compulsion still held. I took out another arrow and aimed at Naelen.

  Naelen was crawling somewhere, crawling on his belly for something…

  But it was stupid, because he couldn’t crawl fast enough, and I was going to shoot him. Cunningham hadn’t specified where, so I tried to think of the best place to hit Naelen. Even if I wounded him, he could shift and heal all his wounds. I aimed for his calf.

  And then Naelen picked up the talisman that Cunningham had thrown. Now, he had magic from the talisman, even if he hadn’t shifted recently. He turned intense blue eyes on me. “Don’t shoot me!”

  Naelen’s compulsion, bolstered by the knife, was more powerful than Cunningham’s. I didn’t shoot.

  “Drop the bow,” said Naelen.

  I dropped it. “Why’d you make me do that?” I demanded. “Why didn’t you tell me to shoot Cunningham or something?”

  “Wait, where is Cunningham?” said Naelen.

  I whirled. “God damn it, didn’t you get the star?” I said. Cunningham was nowhere to be seen.

  Naelen shook his head.

  “Well, he’s invisible now,” I said. “So, we just need to find him again.”

  * * *

  But we didn’t.

  We looked all over the cabin, everywhere we could, and he was gone.

  The good news was that Adelia wasn’t actually dead. She had lost a lot of blood and she wasn’t conscious, but her pulse was still strong. So, we abandoned looking for Cunningham and called an ambulance.

  Technically, it was a win for us, anyway, considering that Cunningham had come for the knife and hadn’t managed to get it. He still had the star, but he was no better off than he had been.

  Naelen and I had met Cunningham months ago when Naelen hired me to help him find his missing sister, Reign. Cunningham had taken the girl captive along with a group of other female dragon shifters. At the time, he had a power enhancing object—the stylus. That allowed him to compel the dragons to do whatever he wanted. He was using them as blood slaves.

  Typically, vampires could only make blood slaves out of humans. They couldn’t compel other magical creatures.

  Human blood worked to keep vampires alive, but blood from magical creatures gave vampires magic. Between his steady influx of magic blood and the fact he had magical objects, Cunningham had been a force to be reckoned with.

  However, Naelen and I had taken him down and freed the girls.

  Cunningham, however, had gotten away. Just like he had today.

  It was starting to look like a pattern with him.

  Naelen and I had been tracking him for months, but we were always a step behind. Whenever we arrived any place that Cunningham had been, we were too late. He was already gone.

  This was the closest we’d been to him since freeing Reign and the other shifters.

  It was too bad that things hadn’t gone so well.

  The ambulance arrived and carted off Adelia. We followed and went to the hospital to make sure that she was okay.

  Adelia was a protector, someone who’d taken one of the nine magical objects and vowed to keep it safe from opportunists like Cunningham. She wasn’t the only protector out there. But if Cunningham had the star, then it stood to reason that the protectors were in danger.

  “We should call Eden,” I said, once we know that Adelia was going to be okay and were back on Naelen’s private jet. Naelen, like most dragon shifters, was filthy rich.

  “Sure,” said Naelen. “Guess we should give her the knife, since Adelia doesn’t want it.”

  “Actually, I’m thinking we should keep an object with us,” I said. “If Cunningham has an object, the best defense against his using it would be to have one of our own.” Having an object meant we were impervious to anyone else using an object’s magic on us. “No, I was just thinking that she would want to warn the other protectors. Cunningham’s clearly after them.”

  “Good point,” said Naelen. “We’ll get in touch with her once we’re back home.”

  I got out my phone. “Why not call her now?”

  Naelen plucked my phone out of my hand. “Because right now, we’re busy.” And just like that, he wrapped his arms around me and pressed his lips to mine.

  I felt hot and cold at the same time. His lips were insistent but yet soft, coaxing me, stoking a growing fire within my body. I pushed him away.

  He chuckled.

  I folded my arms over my chest. This was old hat for Naelen and me. “What is your problem?” I said. “When are you going to stop doing that kind of stuff?” />
  Naelen considered. “Well, if I really thought it bothered you, I’d stop it immediately. But it doesn’t bother you, not really. You like it.”

  “I don’t,” I said. “I don’t like it at all.” My legs felt shaky. I found one of the oversized leather swivel chairs in the plane and sat down on it.

  He headed over to the mini-bar. “You not only like it, you look forward to it.”

  “No, I don’t,” I said. “You making drinks?”

  “Sure thing,” he said. “You want a ridiculously weak one, like always?”

  “Please,” I said.

  He got busy mixing me a rum and Coke, which was what I typically drank on the plane. My go-to drink in a bar was Corona with lime, but Naelen wouldn’t stock beer on the jet. He got this pinched expression on his face when I even suggested it.

  “You dream about me at night,” he said as he stirred. “You wake up sweaty and unsatisfied.” His voice had dropped in pitch.

  The sound of it made my stomach do flip-flops. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said primly.

  He marched over with two glasses. He handed me my rum and Coke, and sat down with his whiskey on the rocks. “When you’re bored, you watch me, and I know you’re imagining me without my clothes. I know you like the way I look without my clothes, because every time I’m naked in front of you, you get flushed.”

  I glared at him. “That’s because I’m embarrassed that you’re naked, not because I find you attractive.” He had to take his clothes off to shift into a dragon, and he wasn’t shy about it. I’d seen everything. More than once.

  “You definitely find me attractive,” he said, peering into his drink, aloof and amused.

  Right, fine. That was true, as far as it went. He was gorgeous. He had the bluest eyes I’d ever seen in my life. Broad, powerful shoulders. A tapered waist. A flat, muscular stomach. Thick, strong thighs. And between them… I shifted in my seat, feeling too hot all of the sudden.

  “Now,” he said, “you’re picturing me naked.”

  “Because you brought it up,” I said.

  “I picture you naked too,” he said. “But I have to use my imagination.”

  “And that’s the only way you’re going to see me naked, so you might as well get used to that.” I took a big gulp of my drink.