Cruel Daddy Dragon (Candara Dragon Ops #3)

Chapter 22 - Rufus

It’s early the next morning when we all leave for the cave. Kaius carries Julie, Milo carries Lena, and I carry Sarah. Orion goes first, and we make sure to let him put a decent amount of distance between himself and the rest of us. Since he’s unladen, he keeps swooping around in elliptical patterns, breathing in the air from all directions. As we get close to the hole, I look at the other two:

“Hold up!”

Kaius and Milo stop, hovering in the air. I hover ahead of them.

“O,” I say to Orion, “are you smelling anything?”

He dips down and swoops low to the trees. So low that the tips of the trees tap his feet as he flies over the canopy.

“Nothing so far,” he calls back, “No signs of Eclipse. We may have gotten lucky, and those two were the only two who knew about the hole.”

He looks down and back up to us:

“I’m going to go down and have a closer look,” he says, “If I raise the alarm, you three fly off with the girls.”

I swallow thickly and nod to him. Orion folds his wings and plummets down into the canopy. There’s a long moment of silence, just the gentlest scrunching and cracking through the trees as Orion (I assume… I hope ) crawls through the branches to check if it’s safe.

After a few moments, we don’t hear anything else—just silence.

That’s good. If we’re not hearing the sounds of battle coming up through the trees, then we’re probably in the clear. But still… doubts niggle at the back of my mind, and Sarah leans over and voices them:

“Are we really going to leave him if Eclipse is down there?”

I don’t answer. I don’t want to solidify it by saying the quiet part out loud; that feels like it would make it real.

But soon after, Orion calls:

“All right! It’s safe!”

I look to Kaius and Milo and nod. The pair of them nod back to me, and we all soar down together.

“Hang tight,” I tell Sarah, “this is probably going to be scratchy.”

“Okay,” she answers.

I turn down and try and swoop through the canopy. It’s a tight fit, and I try to move myself back and forth so that Sarah doesn’t end up being scratched to hell and back. I don’t think I always succeed; I hear her gasp lightly and feel some of the branches catch. Once we finally get to the ground, I swing her off my back, and she has a litany of thin red lines over her skin. I brush my hand over hers.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

Sarah scoffs.

“You think I can’t handle a few scratches? Come on, Rufus.”

She strides off. I have mixed feelings swirling in my stomach. On the one hand, that kind of attitude has always been so attractive to me… On the other hand, Celeste was always like that…

She told me that she was going to keep herself safe for my sake, but I don’t know… old habits die hard…

Sarah strides forward with purpose. Kaius and Milo are landing now and gently dropping off Julie and Lena.

“Are you all right?” I catch Milo asking Lena seriously, “Do you still feel okay? Not nauseous or dizzy from the flight?”

“I’m fine, Milo, thanks,” she answers.

“Just let me know,” he says sternly, “we don’t want any extra stress on the baby.”

I see Sarah noting the encounter before I catch up to her. She smiles softly in greeting, and we all gather at the edge of the hole.

“Wow!” Julie murmurs, “I never knew this was here!”

“It was underground until the other day,” Sarah answers, “Seems I dislodged a very careful balancing act when I tried to spelunk in, and it just crumbled.”

“And we need to still be careful,” Orion interjects, “It might collapse in further. Milo, Kaius, Rufus, keep close to the girls in case.”

We all nod. Orion is then the first to float down into the hall, just spreading his wings and falling. I turn to Sarah and give her a teasing smile.

“You hear?” I loop my arm around her waist and give her a squeeze, “I have to keep close to you.”

She gives me a grin back.

“Ugh! How annoying,” she teases back, “But I guess it’s Alpha’s orders. Or… whatever Orion is right now.”

“Yeah, I’m not sure,” I answer, “Cyrus is the Alpha, but when he’s gone, Evander is in charge. Since Evander’s also gone, Orion usually steps in, so he’s… whatever we call two steps down from the Alpha.”

Sarah laughs.

“Right. So it’s Alpha number three’s orders, then.”

I cackle back. I see the other two dragons take hold of Julie and Lena and then gently float themselves into the cave. I hold Sarah closer to my body, and she curls up against me. I spend a moment enjoying the feeling of her wrapping herself around me before I spread my wings and step off the edge of the cave into the hole. My wings act as a parachute, and we float down easily. As we hit the ground, we hear Julie shiver:

“Oh! It’s colder in here than it is on the surface!” she cries.

“Is it?” Sarah says dryly, and I start chuckling.

Kaius comes closer to her, trying to shield her with his body. But Julie doesn’t even notice him, instead gasping and walking toward the wall.

“Oh, my! Look at these engravings on the walls!” she exclaims, “That’s incredible!”

“I know!” I hear Lena cry out from across the room, “These sigils are amazing! I’ve never seen magical signs like this!”

I watch Lena cross the room, Milo by her side, watching her with a worried expression. But Lena doesn’t pay him any mind, pulling out a small, battered notebook and looking up and down at it.

“So, you don’t recognize the signs at all?” Milo asks.

“Um… yes and no,” Lena answers, looking up and down at the notebook, “See, I recognize pieces of the sigils, and these individual pieces have their own meaning. But they’re put altogether into one bigger spell—that’s got to be a much more powerful one. It’s like it’s a paragraph written in a different language, but I only recognize a few words in it.”

“Do you think you could translate it?” Milo asks.

“Probably,” Lena answers, “I mean, they have to have been written by Grams, right? That means they should be in one of her notebooks…”

She looks down at the disheveled journal in her hands.

“I guess it’s just spread out among a lot of different notebooks…”

“It might have been written by someone else,” Milo points out, “You recently said that there might have been an entire coven of witches in Greyson Ridge back in the day. Do you think it’s possible that someone else might have written them? Are you going to be able to translate them if that’s the case?”

“Should do,” Lena says, “I think this is Gram’s drawing, but even if it’s not, I think she’ll have noted down the sigils anyway. She was very thorough—it’s because of her that I know there was more than one witch here anyway.”

Suddenly, Kaius calls out:

“Milo! It’s Julie!”

Milo whips around, and I look around at Kaius. He’s got his hand on Julie. Julie’s staring at nothing, her hand on the engravings.

Milo jogs over to the pair of them, but he only gives Julie a cursory observation before he smiles at Kaius.

“She’s just having another vision—don’t worry so much.”

“Yeah, okay,” Kaius replies, “It just freaks me out sometimes. She looks so scared…”

“Don’t worry about it,” Milo says again.

Julie blinks and comes back. She looks around herself, and both Milo and Kaius smile at her.

“Hey,” Kaius breathes gently.

“Welcome back,” Milo says, “What did you see?”

Julie grins widely, her cheeks flushing a soft pink. She looks back to the engravings.

“This cave used to be part of a meeting place that the Greyson Ridge witches and the dragons used to use,” Julie says, “Our ancestors used to meet here a lot. I’m starting to think that this was after the dragons left Greyson Ridge—they used to meet secretly down here.”

“I wonder why the dragons left to begin with,” Kaius says.

“Yeah… do the engravings have a clue about that?” Milo asks.

“Um, I’m not sure,” Julie answers, “I’ll need to keep looking at it for that.”

“I might have an idea,” Orion calls out.

I look over to him, and so does everyone else. I don’t know exactly what Orion’s been doing while we’ve been looking around, but he’s on his knees by the far wall, his fox-like face close to the wall.

“I can smell something odd here,” he declares, “It might be Naga.”

“What?!” We all seem to gasp at once.

“It’s very faint,” Orion says quickly, “To be honest, I’m sure I can only smell it because this cave has been sealed off for so long. The scent might be as old as the cave is.”

“So, Doctor Tom wasn’t the only Naga who found his way here…” Milo murmurs.

“ Creepy Tom, you mean!” Lena snaps.

There’s a rumble of uneasy laughter from everyone. Everyone except Sarah, who is standing right next to me.

I glance at her to see her smile—but she’s not smiling.

She’s got this light frown on her face, watching something. Except when I follow her gaze, I just see the wall opposite her. I walk in front of her.

“Sarah?”

She doesn’t answer. She just keeps staring intensely at the wall.

“Sarah? Hey! Can you hear me?”

Again, no answer. She just keeps staring intensely at the wall.

“What’s going on?” Milo asks, walking to my side.

“Not sure… I think she’s having a vision, too,” I reply.

“Not surprising,” Orion grunts from across the cave, “This place is heavy in magic. I can’t sense any relics or keys here right now, but there’s no doubt they used to be here. I’m sure this level of magic will set off all sorts of latent powers.”

“So, there are no relics,” Kaius says, “but it still seems pretty useful to have a place where we can go that sparks visions.”

“And these spells will probably be useful once we can figure them out,” Lena says.

There’s a murmur of agreement, and then Sarah jerks next to me. When I look back, she’s looking around, a subtle look of alarm and concern on her face.

“Hey,” I purr, “welcome back.”

She looks up at me, that same intense frown on her face.

“Hey,” she replies in a monotone voice.

“Hey, Sarah,” Milo asks, “How are you feeling?”

“Fine. Just… it’s a little weird,” she replies.

“I imagine it is,” Milo agrees, “What was the vision about?”

Sarah opens her mouth, and then her eyes suddenly dart up to Lena. Then she looks back at me and Milo.

“Just Merl getting into trouble again,” she says, “I’m probably going to have to go back onto the surface soon.”

“Yeah,” Orion says, “If everyone’s done here, we should be going. We’re pretty exposed out here, and there’s no relics here anyway.”

“I’ve done about as much as I can do,” Lena says, “I’ll have to come back with more journals from Grams to figure the spell out, though.”

“I’m in a similar position,” Julie admits, “I’m going to need to figure out what these engravings mean with my other books. Just let me take a few photographs, and I’ll be ready to go.”

“All right,” Orion answers, “Make it quick.”

Julie pulls out her phone and starts taking pictures of the engraving, and Lena starts doing the same across the cave. As they do that, Sarah grabs my arm. She beckons to me, and I lean down to her.

“We have a serious problem!” she hisses to me.

“What?!” I whisper back.

“Not here,” she says, “Not around Lena and Julie. I need to talk to all you dragons alone.”