Imagine Dragon Read online

  Imagine Dragon

  Dragon Guard #32

  by

  Julia Mills

  There Are No Coincidences.

  The Universe Does Not Make Mistakes.

  Fate Will Not Be Denied.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

  Cover by Linda Boulanger with Tell Tale Book Covers

  Edited and Proofed by Tammy Payne with Book Nook Nuts

  Beta Read by Linda Levy

  Formatted by Charlene Bauer with Wicked Bold Creations

  DEDICATION

  Dare to Dream! Find the Strength to Act! Never Look Back!

  Thank you, God.

  To my girls, Liz and Em, I Love You. Every day, every way, always.

  To Felicity Taylor, Thank you again for allowing me to borrow your name. Felicity the Fairy will be in many more stories to come.

  For all of you who have read and enjoyed all the Dragon Guard books so far, this one’s for you. Kayne is an ever-present, vital part of these stories and I had and absolutely BLAST bringing his story to life.

  Never fear, our crazy Demi-God isn’t going anywhere. His smart-ass ways and quick wit will be around for as long as the Dragon Guard is.

  Thank each and every one of you so very, very much!

  You make every day a joy! I simply could not do this without you.

  XOXO, Julia

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Prologue

  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

  Epilogue I

  Epilogue II

  About Julia

  Also by Julia

  The Dragon Guard

  We soar the skies

  Free to a certain extent,

  As long as we stay hidden

  From prying human eyes.

  Our scales differ in color

  Our defensive weapons,

  Tails, horns, talons and all,

  Are never the same.

  We are one with nature

  We blend in with nature

  The wind helps us soar high in the heavens

  While the earth grants us healing strength in our hour of need.

  We are one with the world

  We are the guardians of our kin

  When evil conspires to maim and hurt

  We are protectors of this human race.

  As majestic animals of fairytales

  We share our beings with great men

  They walk in honor and the grace of Fate,

  Fate that we cannot deny.

  Copyright © 2016 Melanie Williams

  - This Poem is based on the Series, The Dragon Guard by Author Julia Mills.

  Index of the Original Language of the Dragon Kin

  Imagine Dragon

  Mo ghrá………My love

  Mo chroí………My heart

  Tá tú mo ghrá eternal. Ta’ mo chroi istigh ionat……….

  You are my eternal love. My heart is in you

  mo Dragon……….My Dragon

  Ceithre……….Four

  Tá tú mo domhan anois agos go deao……….You are my world, forever and always

  Mo dheartháir……….My Brother

  Prologue

  Following Uther and the jaguar named King, Kayne bitched under his breath as the rocks burnt through his gloves and the steam singed the tip of his nose. He knew they had to retrieve their Brethren, the ones known as the Berserkers, who were being held against their will. These brave men and women had been gone for nearly three centuries and deserved to come home, but the Demi-God couldn’t shake the feeling that something more than lost Guardsmen was buried in the depths of the mountain called Devil’s Kiss.

  Climbing onto the ledge, waiting as Drago and Angus, the last of their group, joined them, Kayne bent back his head as far as it would go and gazed at the apex of the mountain. It seemed absolutely astounding that Uther had climbed all the way to the top and rescued Mara not even twenty-four hours after digging himself out of a deep, dark hole in the ground.

  See? That’s what being in love will do for ya’. Make you crazy enough to scale a mountain and jump inside a volcano…

  Wondering how long it would be before the lava reached its boiling point and Devil’s Kiss erupted, drenching the beautiful landscape and the clear blue sea with steaming rock and ash, a flash of light drew the Demi-God’s attention. Narrowing his eyes, he used the enhanced perception of the Dragon King with whom he shared his soul to study the billowing clouds of smoke, trying to locate what or who was insane enough to go strolling around the peak of an active volcano. Zeroing in on what appeared to be a shadow, but had far too much substance to be a mere trick of the light, Kayne poured copious amounts of his special brand of magic into his preternatural sight.

  It took several long seconds, time he really didn’t have but had to take to appease his ravenous curiosity, before what had been eluding discovery finally came into view and made the golden Dragon doubt his own sanity. Immediately recognizing the elegant golden beak and gorgeously luxurious wings covered in thick tawny, dark brown and white feathers, he smiled at the Avian Princess most people thought had been extinct for thousands of years.

  But we know differently. Don’t we, pretty girl?

  Her eyes, yellow and round and magnificent in their ability to see the tiniest details that others missed, met his. Ailill, Kayne’s Dragon King, rumbled a deep sensual hum, lifted his head, and presented the long, thick, impressive battle horns atop his head as a type of foreplay, his way of enticing the lovely fowl.

  Wondering why she was there, contemplating simply asking, the Strix beat the Demi-God to the punch. Her thick British accent and lilting tone filling his mind as she gave a single push of her wings, gracefully rising into the air. “I see you and yours have finally come to retrieve your lost kin.”

  “We have,” Kayne grinned.

  “Then I suggest you hurry. The one called Zared is fading fast. I have done everything I can, never had one I couldn’t heal, but this is different from anything I’ve experienced and the dark magic in the core of this monstrosity isn’t helping. Your boy had been drained of nearly all his life force. You Dragons are a strong lot, but this nasty Beastie refuses to be destroyed.”

  Trying to understand what was giving the Strix so much trouble, Kayne’s heart ceased to beat as the huge mythical owl with the fantastic powers of Intuition, Foresight, and Healing that rivaled even his father’s, pointed the tip of her beak downward, and did a perfect swan-dive straight into the mouth of the volcano.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Kayne bellowed.

  “Your job, son of Lugh. Don’t like it? Then get a wiggle on.”

  Racing into the mouth of the cave, snaking through Devil’s Kiss, sweat pouring from damn near every orifice of his body, Kayne sprinted forward, tracking the scent of his mate like a bloodhound stalking its prey. Warm, spring air and the fresh scent of sunlight filled his senses, infusing him with the need to save not only his kin, but claim the One made for him by the Universe.

  Blindingly bright white light bathed every inch of the walls, floor and ceiling of the cavern to his right. The brilliant mesmerizing radiance he immediately recognized as the Strix’s was not only awe-ins
piring, but just one of her many powers, both ancient and mystic, that made her his equal – something he’d never ever experienced. Picking up the pace, the scenery flying by as a blur, Kayne ignored the irritated grumble of Drago and Angus, knowing they would catch up sooner or later, and he barely noticed Uther running at his side with King, the jaguar, a new and not completely understood member of their Clan.

  Damn, I wish Uther had been buried on a beach in the Bahamas with scantily clad waitresses, cases of Scotch, and a keg of beer…

  “You and me both,” Uther chuckled, reading the Demi-God’s mind with little to no effort.

  “But no, you had to be ornery, didn’t you, Old Man,” Kayne snickered, slowing his step as the eerie perception of a familiar evil, slithered over his enhanced senses.

  Holding up his fist, an old signal he’d learned in his many different positions in the military, Kayne then raised his index and middle finger, crooking them twice in quick succession, to let his Brethren know he would be entering the cave first and on his own. Walking forward, his preternatural senses leading the way, an acrid malevolence, cold as the grave and as creepy as a spider, slid across the toe of his boot, under his pants leg and up his leg. He could feel its barbed tentacles, like little fangs, trying to burrow into his body and its violent Spirit pushing against the shields in his mind. Unable to take hold, the Abomination assaulted his ears with high-pitched squeals, hissing and spitting as the Demi-God blasted the evil glob of pestilence with well-aimed, concentrated blasts of the God-powers he’d inherited from his father.

  Crossing the threshold of the cavern, his eyes went directly to the Strix. Lovely as ever, not bothered at all by the heat and pressure emitted by the volcano, she sat perched upon a ledge at least twenty-feet above his head, her eyes shimmering with unspent mysticism as she stared at the opposite wall. Following her line of sight, Kayne took a second, more intense look, forcing himself to accept the awful truth of the Fate of the Berserkers if they didn’t act quickly.

  “Drago, stay back. Keep everyone with you. We are FUBAR like we’ve never been before.”

  “Show me what you see,” the Commander of the Enforcers demanded, his tone leaving no room for debate.

  Opening his senses wider, encompassing the Dragon known as the Assassin, the Demi-God reinforced his mental blocks, a wall of psychic energy to keep out the living, breathing embodiment of hate, vengeance and deathly intent. The black, icky goo covering not only the empty silver coffins, but an entire rock wall of the grotto, pulsed with the ravenous need to devour. Dark energy, bastardized magic, malformed spells left too long, forced to fight for its life had become the very basis of the creature’s existence. Feeling the great power of the Dragons made it pulsate and wheeze, mimicking a human heart and lungs, as its core expanded and contracted.

  Revulsion coupled with the need to hunt and feed beat at Kayne’s mind and body as the Beast reached for not only him, but his Brethren outside the cave. Warm taps, like fingertips in his mind, he knew to be Drago using the Demi-God’s senses to keep apprised of the situation while pushing his own powerfully pure, Dragon magic at the horrific mass of pure evil.

  Looking up, making sure the Strix was still out of the path of the hateful being, Kayne stepped back, watching in awe at the cloud of malignance forming overhead. Calling to all things dark and evil, the Beast summoned the dregs of the Earth, beckoning them to its Lair, promising the consumption of all things good and right in its bid to spread its vile supremacy across the land with its web of wickedness and deceit.

  “You’ve seen this before?” Drago’s voice broke the spell created by the black cloud.

  “Yeah, and you’ve heard of it, too. This is the same nasty little bastard Kyran and I fought when we rid the world of Eve. I fear that was only a very small offshoot of what we now face,” Kayne replied. “This son of a bitch is huge and a helluva lot more powerful.”

  Before he could hear Drago’s response, his mate’s voice whispered through his mind, projecting images that illustrated her prophecy in vivid detail. “The smell of rancid blood and burning flesh shall cover the Earth. All creatures, magical, blessed and human alike shall be conquered. It shall consume and devour, corrupt and condemn. Once known as the Obscured, it is reborn the Conqueror, and it cannot be stopped.”

  Her voice faded, but the visions continued. The blob of black goo he and Kyran and Caitlin had tried to exterminate was just a small part of a much larger, much more ominous Being that was unfortunately, alive, prospering, and propagating. The spawn that had awakened from its long, deep slumber in the shack in the woods had reached for its Mother with its thin black tendrils and slithered its way to the jungle, to the volcano, to the largest, most formidable portal to Hell.

  Left in the dark for way too long, the Obscured, pushing itself towards the Conqueror, was hungry, famished, and would stop at nothing to have what it wanted – the malevolent power and dark enchantment to seek an audience with the Devil himself. Watching intently as the being’s breaths increased to pants, the huge bulbous formation in its center budding, growing, expanding, stretching its core into long, spindly fingers that reached for the Demi-God.

  Shouting aloud, as well as into the minds of everyone in the cave, Kayne roared, “It’s got the Berserkers. The fuckin’ bastard has our Brethren and it intends to devour them.”

  Pearl

  Chapter One

  Pulsing and pounding, flitting and fluttering, dancing between demanding and pleading, the Obscured wove a tail of deceit and appeal that called to the dichotomy of Pearl’s soul. Born of the day and the night, the Healer and the Warrior, the woman and the Strix had only been tempted in such a way once before in her many centuries of existence. It was disconcerting, so unbearably hard to resist the thought of giving into her dark side, the one inherited from her father felt as if it had a life of its own. But she was strong, nearly invincible and the whisper of a heartbeat, that stuttered, fading fast as it fought against all odds to stay alive became her sole focus. It pushed away the dark thoughts of death and forced the purity of life to the forefront. There were lives to save, lives that mattered to so very many, that had a purpose and a reason for being outside their own existence. That was why Pearl had been born, why she’d lived so very long, and why she’d joined Sadie and the others in their war on evil.

  Allowing her vision to blur and her supernatural sight to take over, she followed the miasma of barbed tentacles and stringy gore searching for a path to the center of the maelstrom – the heart of the Beast. Carefully picking her way through seething beds of hate and scorching patches of pure evil, all brought to life a millennium ago by the Fairy Kings and Queens, the thundering hooves of the Wild Hunt invaded her consciousness. Hurdling her into the chaos of her own memories, demanding she take heed, a dark omen swept through her, the promise of death and destruction was alive and well careening its entrance into the human world.

  Staccato blasts, discordant and shrill, assaulted the sleepy silence of the night sky. Icy winds tore through the trees, the frantic rustle of their leaves a distressed cry to the Mother of All that danger was afoot.

  Misshapen shadows, their skeletal fingers drawn to the beat of Pearl’s heart, snatched and clawed at the hem of her long leather coat, their need to possess, to feed, a seething entity within them. Hounds and steeds, their fur the color of slate, their eyes a flaming, fiery red, obeyed only the call of the golden Hunting Horn, their answering bays and confident whinnies accompanying the manic crunch of the frozen Earth underfoot as blistering blasts of hellfire shot from their mangy muzzles, casting a bloody hue over the low-hanging crescent moon.

  Calling forth the Strix, her transformation complete in a single heartbeat, Pearl pushed her billowy wings against the frigid gusts of air, instantly obtaining enough forward thrust to rise her six-foot form into the air. Circling above the horde of undead riders, warriors who even in death remained loyal to Odin, stampeding from Valhalla to Earth through the enormous vortex, she looked
for the Leader.

  Sifting through fields of dark skeletal riders, her gaze landed upon the Ruler of the Aesir Tribe of Deities at the precise moment his band of marauders opened their bloodless lips, their war cry roaring across the frozen wasteland. Snow-white hair and his long silver beard rippled behind him like the train of his royal robe as he sat upon his six-legged steed, a stark, defining contrast to the sea of ebony warriors surrounding him. He was Odin in the form of the God of the Wind and all would bear witness to his majesty.

  With her senses creeping forward, searching for the thread to pull that would unravel the plot of the All Father, Pearl was caught unaware as faces from her past, Clanswomen and men who’d fallen in battle and the victims she’d been unable to save, raced over and around her, following the great Odin, doing as he bid.

  The need to join the Hunt, to once again fight alongside her comrades was overwhelming. The pounding of her heart matched the pounding of their hooves. The blood of her father, of the last full-blooded Strix, the last bird of omen to foresee the death of a king and let its haunting cry fill the bewitching hour, pushed her to yield to her baser instincts and turn her back on the healing and light given to her by her mother.

  Adrenalin fueled her need to avenge the fallen. The Call of the Hunt, its infectiously pulse-pounding beat turned thought to desire and desire to action. It was intoxicating in its devastating simplicity and something she simply could not or would not resist.

  Lengthening and strengthening, the bones of her wings reached towards Odin, their ends narrowing to deadly claws, matching the long, deadly talons at the tips of her toes and the lethal hook at the end of her beak, each promising a sacrifice worthy of her station. No longer the formidable Strix, Pearl had become the Stringes, the fierce Battle Owl that no other but her father had ever attained.