The Forbidden Ground + Bonus Scenes from the Series

  The Forbidden Ground

  with bonus scenes from the series

  Lindsay Buroker

  Copyright © 2020 by Lindsay Buroker

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  The Forbidden Ground

  Part I

  Part II

  Part III

  Part IV

  Part V

  Bonus Scenes

  1. Author Note

  2. Book 1: Greemaw’s Valley

  3. Book 1: Val’s Apartment

  4. Book 1: Aftermath

  5. Book 1: The Photographer

  6. Book 2: The Yoga Studio

  7. Book 2: Cave Hunt

  8. Book 2: Injured

  9. Book 3: Shaygorthian

  10. Book 3: The Ice-Cream Shop

  11. Book 3: Cowboy Boots

  12. Book 3: The Water Box

  The Forbidden Ground

  Part I

  The beat-up orange camper van chugged down the interstate, getting passed by semitrailer trucks, Volkswagen beetles, and motorcycles with dogs in the sidecars. As a begoggled husky looked over at us, I rubbed my face and wondered if other assassins traveled by such means. Hollywood was convinced every gun-wielding independent contractor made millions, but it didn’t work that way when you worked for the military. Or maybe the problem was that people are willing to pay more to have government dictators killed than they were man-eating wyverns and murderous vampires.

  My mood brightened when the exit sign for Gold Hill, Oregon, came into view. Almost there.

  “Thanks for the ride, Dimitri.” I nodded to my driver, forcing myself to sound suitably appreciative. “Maybe we can get done quickly and drive back to Seattle tonight.”

  “I’m sure I can. I just have to pick up some dirt.” Dimitri waved to the glass sample containers rattling in his cupholder as we lumbered off the interstate and onto the exit ramp. They looked dainty and fragile next to his big hand. Dimitri was a quarter dwarf, but he loomed more than six and a half feet tall and had the build and pockmark-scarred face of a mafia bruiser. “You’re the one who has to solve a centuries-old ancient mystery and figure out what’s eating the tourists.”

  “Technically, Colonel Willard doesn’t care about the mystery.” I glanced at the little town as we passed through it in a few eyeblinks and headed up a road toward the supposed Oregon Vortex. “She just wants me to…”

  I trailed off as the aura of a powerful magical being flew onto my radar. Even though I was half-human and looked human from the outside, my father had been an elf, and I could sense magic when it was close enough. That included enchanted artifacts and magical beings from other worlds who were visiting or hiding out on Earth. Or, as was the case with this particular magical being, rounding up criminals.

  “Pause dramatically to flummox your driver?” Dimitri glanced over at me.

  “Sorry. I sense Zav.”

  “Your dragon buddy?” Dimitri grimaced. “What’s he doing down here?”

  “He’s not so much a buddy as a sometimes ally in the hunt for bad guys who have committed crimes here on Earth.”

  “Didn’t you say you kissed him in a hot tub once?”

  “No, I did not.” He’d kissed me, and there had been extenuating circumstances. Everything about a dragon was extenuating. “You must have heard an unsubstantiated rumor from someone unreliable.”

  “I think it was Sindari.”

  “He’s definitely unreliable.” I touched the feline figurine dangling among other magical charms on a leather thong around my neck. I might not have said that if the silver tiger had been in the van, but unless I summoned Sindari, he couldn’t hear us talking.

  “I like him,” Dimitri said. “A lot more than I like your dragon.”

  “That’s because Zav is haughty and arrogant.” Now that I thought about it, Sindari trended toward arrogant, too, but he was less obnoxious about it. And he didn’t call humans vermin.

  “The one time I spoke to him, he called me a mongrel, my enchanted inventions junk, and Bessy too inferior for a dragon to ride in.” Dimitri gave Bessy’s dashboard a reassuring pat.

  “He calls me a mongrel, too, and we’re—”

  A great black dragon landed on the street in front of us, and Dimitri threw on the brakes. The tires squealed, Bessy fishtailed, and the van came to a halt less than a foot from the huge muscled body. The dragon didn’t move. His sleek black scales gleamed under the afternoon sunlight filtering through the trees.

  “—close,” I finished.

  “We were all almost close,” Dimitri choked out, knuckles white where he clenched the wheel. “As in intertwined.”

  “Nah. We would have bounced off. Just like bullets do when you shoot dragons.” I tapped Fezzik, the custom compact submachine pistol in my thigh holster. “Trust me; I know all about that.” Chopper, the magical longsword I usually wore in a scabbard on my back, was the only weapon I’d seen hurt a dragon, and even then, the dragon had to be wounded or distracted.

  “So we would have just been intertwined with the trees.”

  “You know the story of how I lost my first Jeep.” Fortunately, the current Jeep was only in the shop for minor repairs, not debilitating ones. An irate griffin had dropped a boulder on it when he’d failed at his true goal of killing me.

  “Yeah, you’ve told it often.”

  “Because I’m still bitter the insurance wouldn’t reimburse me. Tell me having a dragon fling your vehicle into the treetops isn’t an act of God.”

  Outside, Zav—known as Lord Zavryd’nokquetal, a name that nobody but other dragons could pronounce—shifted around so he could lower his serpentine neck to peer through the windshield. His violet eyes glowed faintly as he regarded us.

  “It’s an act of something,” Dimitri muttered. “What happens if I honk at him?”

  “Is Bessy fireproof?”

  “No.”

  “Then I don’t suggest it.” What is it, Zav? I asked in my mind, trusting he was monitoring my thoughts.

  You left your domicile in the city without informing me, his telepathic words sounded in my mind. You have been assisting me in hunting down criminals designated by the Dragon Justice Court, and I insist that you continue to do so.

  Willard gave me this assignment this morning. I’ll be back by tomorrow night at the latest. I was confident I could find who or what had mauled the tourists in that time.

  You failed to obtain my permission before leaving.

  Because I don’t ask your permission before I do anything. I’m not on parole, and you’re not my keeper.

  The Dragon Justice Court believes I am.

  Don’t remind me. I waved at Dimitri, who was peering around for options. He wasn’t privy to the telepathic conversation. “There’s nobody coming from the other direction. See if you can drive around him.”

  “Drive around him? He’s bigger than a house. And Bessy doesn’t off road.”

  “The shoulder is open if you nudge his tail out of the way.”

  Dimitri gave me an incredulous look. “Nudge it? With my van? Are you trying to get me killed? I can feel his power like microwaves nuking us through the windshield. He could squash us with his foot.”

  Some time during the months I’d known Zav, I’d gotten used to his power and didn’t find it as disconcerting as I should. Maybe because he’d healed me and helped me several times
that summer. I knew he cared about me, in his own pompous dragon way.

  Your companion is suitably respectful of the power of dragons, Zav informed me. You could learn from him.

  Oh, I’m sure. I was surprised Zav wasn’t getting uppity about me being with another guy. When he was in his human form and we were working together, he had a tendency to act like a jealous boyfriend and chase off any men who came up to me. I’d told him on numerous occasions that this wouldn’t be appropriate, even if we were dating, and that since we weren’t dating, and never would be dating, it was unacceptable. Since dragons were horrible at taking advice and even worse at respecting lesser species, as he called us, he ignored me. Lift your tail, please. I’ll finish up here and come back up to do another mission with you, if Willard pays me to.

  You will come to do another mission with me because I am removing heinous criminals from your world, and it benefits your people.

  Uh huh. Tail up, please. I made a lifting motion with my hand.

  Dimitri gave me another incredulous look. But Zav got out of the way, shifting to one side of the road and moving his tail out of the left lane.

  You could help us with this mission if you like, I thought to Zav. With your assistance, we could finish more quickly, and then I’d be back in Seattle sooner, where you can return to coercing my boss to give me missions that align with your interests.

  I wasn’t tickled that he’d been doing that, but since the criminals on his list—magical beings who’d committed crimes in the Cosmic Realms that dragon-kind ruled over—also tended to be the types to murder and rape humans, we often wanted the same thing.

  Dimitri drove over onto the far shoulder, flattening some roadside water hemlocks to make sure Bessy’s tires didn’t go anywhere near dragon appendages.

  Zav watched us as we drove off, his violet eyes glowing softly. Dimitri’s white knuckles didn’t loosen until Zav sprang into the air and flew off over the trees.

  “Is he likely to bother us again?” Dimitri asked.

  “Oh, I’m sure of it.”

  Dimitri groaned. “Doesn’t he have anything better to do?”

  “In Gold Hill, Oregon? I doubt it.”

  Part II

  As we neared our destination, the trees alongside the road changed from vertical to oddly curved, and an uneasy sensation formed in the pit of my stomach. I didn’t sense any magic, other than in the weapons and trinkets I carried, but the wilderness had an eerie feel to it.

  On the way south, I’d read the hoopla surrounding the Oregon Vortex—that animals supposedly avoided it and that the natives had called it The Forbidden Ground—but I hadn’t expected to genuinely experience anything.

  The parking lot alongside the road at the “Home of the world-famous House of Mystery,” as the sign informed us, was empty. Either this wasn’t as hot of a tourist attraction as promised, or the news had gotten out about the dead guys found in the woods nearby.

  I got out with Chopper and Fezzik and made sure I had extra magazines in my ammo pouches. Also an inhaler in my pocket, but I didn’t admit needing that to anyone but my doctor and my therapist. Hopefully, the clean wilderness air would make my lungs happy. I hadn’t had many problems earlier in the summer during my mission in northern Idaho.

  I’d also brought along a coil of rope, but for now, I left it in the van. The “vortex” didn’t seem that large, so I could come back if I needed it.

  Dimitri got out and scraped dirt from the edge of the parking lot and into a vial. “My job is done. I’ll wait in the van.”

  “That’s fine.” I hadn’t expected him to hunt down a killer with me. Even though he was a big, strong guy, Dimitri made yard art and assisted an alchemist for a living. He wasn’t a natural fighter. “What did Zoltan say about this place, anyway?”

  A breeze whispered through the curved trees, raising gooseflesh on my skin. It was almost August, and it had been hot in the poorly air-conditioned van, but that breeze contained a cool bite, as if someone had opened a freezer door nearby.

  “That it’s not mentioned in any of his books and he’ll pay big money for samples. Hence my sudden interest in driving you down here.” Dimitri pocketed the dirt-filled vial and drew out a few more empty ones. “He actually wants samples from different locations, so I’m not quite done.”

  “How much is big money?”

  “Fifty dollars plus gas.”

  “Wow, make sure you invest some of that for a rainy day.”

  “And you’re buying me free food for driving you. It’s a double win. Besides, maybe I’ll find a piece of an asteroid or a lodestone or something that would be more valuable. Or that I could use in my art.”

  “Do asteroid attachments make people more appreciative of bears made from recycled dishwasher racks, bicycle wheels, and urinals?”

  “Everybody should be appreciative of such things.”

  An older couple came walking down a driveway from a house on the opposite side of the street from the sign and the entrance. Willard had mentioned that the owners lived nearby. I wondered if being across the street kept them safely out of the vortex.

  “Don’t let them see you stealing their dirt,” I whispered, heading over to greet them.

  The man was squinting suspiciously at Dimitri.

  “Isn’t dirt free for anyone?” Dimitri slipped his vials into his pocket.

  “Not if it’s on someone else’s property.”

  “I’m Marty and this is Bessy. Are you the government agent?” The man wore overalls, a thin white T-shirt, and a straw hat. His floral-summer-dress-wearing, late-fifties Bessy looked nothing like the van that shared her name.

  Marty looked me up and down but didn’t comment on my combat boots, jeans, and duster—or whether I was what he expected. My magical weapons wouldn’t be visible to him, or to any other mundane person, unless I removed them, but he could see my utility belt and ammo pouches, so he had to assume I was armed.

  “Val Thorvald.” I stuck out my hand.

  He shook it, glancing down again—this time at my chest—and his wife frowned at him. My work attire wasn’t exactly feminine and curve-enhancing, but quite a few men found my six-foot-tall, blonde, and descended-from-flinty-Norse-ancestors look intriguing.

  I offered the wife my hand, but she ignored it.

  “I’ll show you where we found the bodies.” Bessy walked across the road, following a path toward the House of Mystery.

  “I don’t suppose I can see the actual bodies?”

  “Police took them. Plenty of blood left though.”

  “Fun.”

  She frowned over her shoulder at me. Marty stayed back to speak to Dimitri—or make sure he didn’t scrape any more prized dirt into vials.

  I had no idea why our alchemist friend Zoltan had sent him to gather the stuff, especially if he didn’t have any real information on this place. It had a creepy vibe, and those trees had a decided kink to their trunks, so maybe there was a paranormal influence around, but it was hard to imagine it would make the dirt of interest to an alchemist.

  Bessy walked past a crooked one-room cabin with the walls and floor tilted to the side. It looked like something built for a fun house, but the wood was old. The place must have been a roadside attraction back when Model Ts were cruising the countryside.

  Looking at the structure added to the unsettled feeling in my stomach, but my guide didn’t stop to talk about it.

  As I hurried after her, I almost tripped, something my more-agile-than-average feet hardly ever did. But the woman appeared to be listing to one side as she walked. It wasn’t a limp. She was walking normally, but her entire body was as tilted as the cabin.

  “What’s the explanation for the weirdness here?” I asked as we continued past the cabin and into the woods.

  “There isn’t one. Been lots of studies. Some say magnets. Some say ghosts.”

  Over the years, I’d been in a few haunted graveyards, houses, and asylums—all made so by spells cast by magical visit
ors from other worlds—but there hadn’t been anything notable about the gravity in those places, nor had I encountered optical illusions.

  “Magnets?” I asked. “Like what? Neodymium iron boron or maybe a nice alnico?”

  That earned me another glare over the shoulder. I didn’t bother waiting for her to turn back to roll my eyes. Maybe Dimitri was having a better conversation with the husband. I doubted it.

  As we walked down a well-worn path, gouges and bumps in the hardened mud promised that this area was usually as damp as the rest of Western Oregon. We came to an area of trampled undergrowth beside the trail and a tree with broken branches.

  Bessy pointed at the ground. “The blood has soaked in, but you can see where it’s dark. And there are some stains there.” She waved to the side of a tree. A rusty smear marked the jagged end of broken branch. A thick broken branch. Something large must have hit that. “The police looked all over but didn’t find any tracks other than those of the boys and other people who have walked back here. They didn’t find a murder weapon either. I’ve got pictures of one of the bodies.”

  She pulled out a smartphone and swiped around until she could show me the gory remains of a teenage boy, his intestines torn out, one eye missing, and the rest of his face clawed up so badly that it would have been difficult to identify him.

  “You took these?”

  Bessy in her dusty floral dress and sandals didn’t look like the squeamish type, but this was downright garish.

  “I didn’t look real close, but I took them,” she said grimly. “Some other tourists got some too before the police shooed them off and put up tape. That was yesterday. This is all over the local news now and on the internet too. The only visitors we’ve had today wanted to hunt the monster, not pay for a ticket to the House of Mystery.”