Chapter 15

FIFTEEN

Aydan

I touch the back of my head and find wetness. Bringing my hand in front of my face, I see it drenched in blood. I blink into the sunlight streaming through the branches of the tree I'm lodged against. Everything spins for a moment, and I turn and vomit as my stomach twists and turns.

When the dizzy spell passes, I drag in deep breaths. Sam. Granger. I have to get back to them. They were in the shaft. Anything could have happened to them.

It takes work to untangle myself from the tree and stand on the sloping mountain. I glance up ahead of me and wonder how the hell I'm going to climb back up in my current state, but even as the thought comes to my head, I push it away. I have to reach Sam and Granger. No matter what it costs me, I need to get back to them.

Besides, I'd climbed mountains all my life. Though not dizzy. Not bleeding. Not feeling like my body had been pummeled in the fight of my life. But I can do this.

Adjusting my bag on my back, I take a deep breath and start up, careful of all the loose rocks and debris that may come tumbling down on me at any point. Blood continues to leak from the wound on the back of my head, soaking my collar and splattering my shirt. I feel it, like the tickle of a mosquito, and have to grit my teeth to keep myself focused on the climb.

Time passes. I have no idea how much. I'm hurting. Tears sting the corners of my eyes, but I have to keep going. If I rest, I won't stand back up. If I slow, eventually it'll lead to stopping.

The sun moves in the sky. I can sense it. The animals around me are quiet. Even the birds and insects are strangely absent, like that earthquake frightened all of nature.

A shadow passes overhead. I frown and glance up at it, shielding my eyes from the sun. There's a flash of green scales, wide wings, and my stomach drops. It's a dragon. I'm seeing a fucking dragon.

I look away from it and push myself further. I must have a concussion. Maybe none of this is real. Maybe it is. Maybe every second that passes might lead to me winding up alone in the woods at night, my mind slipping away like my chances of seeing my best friends.

The shadow crosses me again, but this time I don't look up. The dragon isn't real. I need to believe in the earth beneath my feet and hands. I need to keep climbing, no matter what I see or experience.

I almost don't believe it when I hoist myself up onto a smooth surface and find the path we'd walked and the shaft in front of me. My throat feels thick, but I try to clear it and say, "Granger! Sam!"

No one returns my call.

"Granger! Sam!" I shout again.

Nothing.

I rise to my feet and move to the open cavern, and look down to see complete and utter chaos. Rocks everywhere. The ground torn up. The crystals nearly all destroyed. Could people survive that? I don't know.

Pressing my knuckles to my eyes, I feel on the edge of crying or vomiting, I don't know which. Their survival seems unlikely, but I'm not giving up. I'm going to climb down there, somehow, and I'm going to search no matter how long it takes me.

"Aydan?"

My hands drop, and I stare in shock. Granger steps off the path that leads into the cavern and onto the path I'm on. He must have been pressed against the cave wall, which is why I hadn't seen him.

I stagger forward and yank him into a hug.

He cries out in pain, and I pull back, worry clenching my heart. His face is pinched in pain. His skin almost yellow. My pulse hammers in my chest. What happened to him? Is he okay? If he's not, I'll never forgive myself. But all I see are bruises, scratches, and dirt.

"My shoulder," he says, probably realizing I'm searching him for injuries. He winces as he nods toward it.

I hug him again, cautious of his shoulder this time. My heart in my throat. "I thought you were dead."

"That makes two of us." He laughs, but it's cut off by an almost-sob. "I thought you, me, and Sam were all dead."

Sam. Fuck.

"Where's Sam?" I ask, my heartbeat filling my ears.

Granger loves her. I can't imagine a world in which he would be here and Sam wouldn't be with him, shoulder or no shoulder. The only reason he'd leave her behind… no, no that can't be it.

"She's… not here," he says, eyes filled with tears.

"What the hell does that?" It can't mean… it doesn't mean…

He shakes his head and runs his good hand through his dust-covered dark hair. "A dragon took her."

"Wh-what?" I must have heard him wrong. It's the head injury. It's making me crazy.

"A dragon took her. I know this is going to sound insane, but I hit my head. There's a fucking lump like a baseball, and I woke up alone and confused, and I heard Sam scream. A second later, a green dragon was flying out of here, with Sam in its claws."

"So, you hit your head too?" I say, stomach sinking. He has no idea where Sam is. He's hallucinating too. Sam is counting on the two of us to save her life, and we're both half-crazed.

"No." He grabs my shoulder, his fingers biting into me. "I saw a dragon take her."

A large shadow passes overhead, and I look up again to see the green dragon. My heart starts hammering. Is that… real? It's just not possible. Is it?

"Come on," he says, pulling me into the shadow of the cavern. "We don't want it to see us."

Then I notice how hard he's breathing and the pallor of his skin. "Are you okay?"

He hesitates, then nods. "I just need to find something to fix my shoulder and my other wounds. And you need the same. Your entire head is soaked in blood, your neck, even your jacket. You're going to need stitches. And the rest of you is no better."

I don't care. I don't care about any of that. Doesn't he see? "No, we need to find Sam. We don't have time for this shit."

His dark eyes hold mine. "If we don't take care of our wounds, we won't be able to help Sam. You know that. It's Survival 101."

It is. I know. But it doesn't matter. Every second I'm without her is another second a piece of me dies. I won't be alright until she's safe in my arms. "I–I just need to find her."

"We will. Okay. We will. But let's just take it one step at a time." He steers me to a large rock next to the plastic bin that's tied to a tree. Wordlessly, he pushes me down on the rock and my knees buckle, even though he'd been gentle.

My head spins. He takes his pack off his back with a hiss. "We need medical supplies."

I take several deep breaths, realizing he needs my help with his shoulder injured. The world tilts as I lean forward and fish out his medical kit, and then I pop it open and let it tumble from my fingers onto the backpack, even though I'd been trying to hold on to it. I think.

My eyes close. He tends to my head, huffing and puffing as he pours water over my wound. "Fuck, Aydan," he mumbles. "When I'm done irrigating it, I'm going to apply pressure to stop the bleeding, and then we're going to need to super glue this sucker. I'd rather pack it with gauze and bandage it…"

"But we need to find Sam, so we need to do this quickly." We're taking a risk. If there's still debris in the wound, I could end up with an infection. We're going to have created a problem. But I don't care right now.

He struggles to do his best while only using his injured side when absolutely necessary. He's sweating and pale when he collapses to his knees, raises my shirt, and cleans and bandages more wounds I hadn't even noticed, before doing the same with some jagged ones on my legs. Maybe all the scars will impress Sam. I almost smile, but I can't, because she's out there somewhere.

He finally crawls to the rock and collapses next to me. "You're good."

I'm pretty sure we both have a concussion, but I don't say it, because it wouldn't help anything. Instead, I inspect his shoulder, take a t-shirt from my bag, and shred it. "Your shoulder is popped out of the socket."

He gives me an absolutely exhausted look. I don't blame him. I'd popped my shoulder out of the socket once when we were on a climb, and he'd had to put it back into place. It'd hurt like hell, but I hadn't been afraid, because I didn't know how bad it'd be to fix and to heal. He knew, so he didn't have the beauty of being ignorant.

"You ready?"

He nods, going a shade of green. "For Sam."

"For Sam," I say, then grab the wrist of his injured arm, pulling his arm gently forward and straight out in front of him.

It's hard. He instinctively fights me because of the pain, but I don't let him go. He cries out when I get his arm out in front of him, then lets loose a string of curses I never imagined falling from his lips when I pull. Even beneath the sound, I feel his shoulder pop back into place.

Guiding his arm back to his side, I try to pretend I don't see the tears in his eyes. I use the shreds of my t-shirt to build a sling and give him some reprieve from the pain. Then I check on the bump on the back of his head, even though I can't tell much from the outside, just that there are no cuts. Then treat the small cuts on his back, stomach, and legs.

When I'm done, I'm sweating too. I collapse back on the ground, back pressed against the rock, and he slides down and sits beside me. His head hits my shoulder. We both sit together, rasping in shaky breaths, trying to fight through our pain for the woman we love. Our best friend.

"We need to go," I say.

He nods, but neither of us moves. Then I roll onto my knees and climb to my feet, fighting another wave of nausea as the world tilts.

"Granger?" I'm ready. I can do this.

He gets to his feet slowly, and we put our packs on, him, one-armed. We start down the path back to the Phoenix Institute, gasping, and groaning the whole way, wondering how the hell this path became this long and this hard.

After what feels like a lifetime, we reach the gate, only our access codes don't work. I don't know if the system is down, or if they restricted access in the chaos, but it doesn't matter. We have to focus. To find Sam. I glance up and see the dragon in the distance. If the dragon took Sam, that's where we need to go.

"We'll have to go around it."

"Of course we do," Granger grumbles, but we keep going.

It takes forever to reach the front of the institute, but when we do, the gates are closed there too, and our codes won't open it. We start walking down the path, and after a short time, find a car. The remains of the person in the car are strewn about the road, and it's clear he — or she — tried to run from the dragon and was caught.

"Fucking hell," I mutter.

Granger nods, but we both try to ignore the body and climb into the car. It's still running, in drive, but it didn't crash into the tree that it's pressed against, so we should be good to go.

"You sure you can drive?" Granger asks.

"You can't, so I have to," I tell him.

He huffs, but it's true.

I put the car in reverse and steer around the body, glancing up at the sky. We can't exactly follow the dragon from the ground as easily as I want, but it's clear it's in front of us, so that's where we're heading.

Suddenly, my phone rings.

"Granger…?"

"I got it," he says, pulling it off my toolbelt. We both see her name at the same time. Without hesitation, he answers it and puts it on speaker before I can say a word. "Hello."

"Granger?"

"Sam!" I roar her name.

"Oh my gosh, you're both there. You're both okay. I was so scared. Listen, stay undercover. There's… there's a dragon in the sky. You're in danger out in the open. I know I sound crazy, but I–"

"We know about the dragon," I say, my heart aching. "We know it took you. Where are you?"

"I know this sounds like I've lost my mind, but when the dragon took me… it dropped me. Except, instead of hitting the ground, I turned into a dragon too. A red dragon."

What? Is she fucking with me?

"Are you there?"

"Yes," Granger says. "So you're a dragon too. That's okay. Are you alright?"

I don't know how he can answer so calmly. Like this happens every day.

"Yes, I met a man. Captain Evander. He works for the group that funds the institute and–"

"Who are you talking to?" The voice is low and masculine with a drop of something that makes me feel uneasy.

"No one, just my friends," she says. "Now, listen, he wants me to go back to the base, as he calls it, where Specter Inc. operates out of. The scientists he works with know a lot about dragons. They'll be able to help me."

Fuck. "No, Sam, don't go with this strange guy. Don't listen to him, and sure as hell don't turn yourself into scientists. You'll become their guinea pig. You need to get out of there."

She's breathing so hard that her panting fills the phone. "I understand."

"They don't need to know more. The less they know, the safer you'll be," he says, and my hands tighten on the steering wheel. He's full of shit. If Sam goes with him, we'll never see her again, dragon or no dragon.

"Don't listen to him. Don't trust him. Where are you?"

"Our tire popped on some debris on the way to town."

"What the fuck are you doing?" he hisses.

Then there's silence.

"Sam?"

"Sam!" Granger shouts.

But the call ended. He tries calling her back, over and over again, but there's no answer.

So I do the only thing I can and drive faster.