The Forbidden Ground + Bonus Scenes from the Series Read online

  “Did you let them?”

  “Marty drove them off with his shotgun. We don’t need more people getting killed on our property.”

  “Understandable.” I flipped through the pictures, a lot of photos of the body and some of the surrounding blood-spattered broken foliage and branches.

  “We had a tracker friend and his dog come out this morning, and they went off looking, but he didn’t find any tracks. The dog was too agitated to work. Animals don’t like it back here.”

  “So I’ve read.” I texted a few of the photos to myself and handed the phone back to her. “I’ll look around and see what I can find. I’ve got an animal who’s fearless.”

  Mostly fearless. Sindari had a healthy wariness of dragons.

  “You have a dog?” Bessy glanced back toward the parking lot.

  “I have a tiger.”

  Judging by the look she gave me, Bessy thought I was nuts and that the authorities had sent me by accident.

  I touched my cat-shaped charm and summoned Sindari. If she could take pictures of eviscerated bodies, she probably wouldn’t shriek uncontrollably when a magical tiger appeared.

  Bessy gaped as a silver mist appeared at my side, a great feline shape forming in it. Sindari looked exactly like an Earth tiger, but his head came to my shoulder, and he was silver instead of orange or white. During daylight hours, you didn’t notice the faint magical glow to him, but at night it was more pronounced.

  I extended my hand toward him. “As I said, I have a tiger.”

  Sindari gazed at me with his sharp green eyes and spoke telepathically into my mind. Actually, you have a charm that summons a magnificent Stalker and Hunter of the Tangled Tundra Nation on Del’noth, who is, because of the pull of the magic, willing to assist you in your endeavors.

  I know that. I’m simplifying it for her.

  “He’s kind of like a service animal,” I added to the dumbfounded woman.

  “Oh,” she mouthed.

  We have discussed this before. I am neither a pet nor a service animal.

  Services animals are allowed to go in hotels and sleep on beds. You should approve.

  I am considering gnawing your foot off.

  Don’t do that. I’m going to need it to fight the wyvern.

  Wyvern? Sindari lifted his head and sniffed, also reaching out, I knew, with his magical senses.

  It could be a roc or griffin. Or even a dragon, I suppose. Whatever killed the two tourists here didn’t leave any prints, and the gouges visible in the pictures this lady showed me looked like they were from talons.

  “Can I get a selfie with him for my website?” Bessy asked, recovering.

  I didn’t know what to make of the request, considering we were standing on dried blood and I was here to hunt for a killer. “Will that help with the tourism?”

  “Once you get rid of the monsters, yes. Should I stand next to him? Is that okay? This’ll be great for the website.” Bessy maneuvered closer to Sindari but didn’t touch him as she tried to find an angle to capture herself and a seven-hundred-pound tiger in the shot.

  “Yeah, it’s okay. He likes his ears rubbed.”

  Val!

  What? You do.

  I permit Dimitri and Nin to touch my fur because they are your allies and have respectful hands. This woman is a stranger.

  Maybe she’s good at ear rubs. I took her camera and waved for her to stand next to Sindari.

  Even he seemed to be leaning to the left in this strange place. After I took the picture, Bessy left.

  Sindari sneezed three times. That woman smelled of dead flowers.

  Thank you for being a noble ambassador and allowing her the picture. And for me to tease you. I liked to remind Sindari that I genuinely appreciated him. The magic of the charm ensured that he would obey my wishes—as he’d been forced to obey the vampire who’d held it before me—but I preferred he be a willing companion and not a resentful one. I’d once asked if it was possible to free him from what was essentially magical servitude, but apparently his people had made a deal with the dragon makers of the charms long ago, and they expected to one day be called upon to pay back their half of the bargain. Do you want to help me locate a deadly flying creature now?

  Of course.

  He sashayed past, rubbing against my jeans and jacket, leaving silver fur on them—and scent marking me, too, I supposed. The joys of working with felines.

  As he sniffed around the area, I walked farther up the wooded trail, looking for more clues. So far, I hadn’t felt anything magical, but magical beings didn’t usually leave special signatures behind, so that wasn’t surprising.

  Zav flew past at the edge of my range. My guess had been correct. He was hanging out, probably to make sure I finished promptly and returned to hunting the criminals he wished.

  Can you hear me? I thought to him, guessing he might be monitoring my thoughts.

  Yes, Zav responded. You are getting better at projecting your thoughts.

  Am I? I guess old dogs can learn new tricks.

  You are not old for a half-elf. You would be considered akin to one of your human teenagers or early adults.

  Yeah? Maybe that explains my snarky rebellious streak.

  If you refer to your sharp tongue and lack of proper respect for dragons, there is no acceptable explanation.

  Uh huh. As long as you’re flying around and doing nothing, would you mind looking for a magical aerial creature with day-old human blood on his breath? I didn’t know if it would work, but I thought of the pictures Bessy had shown me and tried to share with him what the body had looked like.

  I am not doing nothing. Dragon lords do not do nothing. Ever. My duties are many and demanding.

  Then what are you doing?

  Hunting. I flew many miles to find out why you departed from our agreed-upon work location.

  What was he going to do if I ever took a vacation? Stalk my plane all the way to Hawaii?

  If you help me find the culprit, I’ll take you to a barbecue restaurant on the way back. I half-expected him to scoff—inasmuch as one could scoff telepathically—but I’d taken him to Bitterroot BBQ in Ballard during a mission together, and it had been the first human food I’d shared with him that he liked. Really liked. Much to the staff’s bemusement, he had polished off six racks of ribs while ignoring the cornbread and collard greens. Carnivore diet, I’d explained to our waiter.

  What culprit do you suspect?

  I think a wyvern or a griffin might have done this. Maybe a roc.

  I added the latter, knowing he wouldn’t like me hunting down dragon kin—wyverns and griffins were considered distant relatives to his kind.

  Have you sensed such a creature?

  No. I could usually detect a full-blooded magical being within a mile. But I sense you. Sometimes your giant dragon aura overshadows everything else.

  My aura is appropriate for my power. I have not sensed magical flying creatures, but I was searching for antelope. I’ve found this indigenous Earth creature quite tasty. Does your barbecue restaurant serve antelope?

  I don’t think so, but if you can find whatever killed the tourists, I’ll request they add antelope to the menu.

  Acceptable. I will search in the nearby mountains. All of the beings you mentioned prefer to roost in mountain caves.

  Thank you, Zav.

  “I’ve arranged for some dragonly assistance, Sindari,” I said, heading back to join him.

  He was looking toward the canopy, a breeze rustling the ash, oak, and cottonwood leaves.

  Sindari’s nostrils twitched. How soon will he arrive?

  “He’s not coming here. He’s going to look for rocs.”

  Then we will have to fight the oncoming creature ourselves.

  Before I could ask what he meant, a huge furry monster with leathery wings crashed through the foliage, diving straight toward me.

  Part III

  I sprang behind a tree, pulling Fezzik from its holster, and aiming at a creatur
e that looked nothing like a feathered roc or a scaled wyvern. The thing was furry with barrel torso and simian legs and arms. How could that creature even fly?

  Huge leathery bat’s wings were furled tight as it dove toward my hiding spot. Hungry, beady yellow eyes burned into me.

  As I squeezed the trigger three times, Sindari crouched nearby, prepared to pounce as soon as the creature was close enough. My magically enhanced bullets struck true, two hitting it in the chest and one right above the eyes. Impossibly, they bounced off.

  I gaped. That didn’t happen, except with dragons. And this thing, whatever it was, didn’t even feel magical.

  Sindari sprang at the creature as it finished its dive. He knocked it out of its trajectory. The flying furry beast extended its wings, batting him aside with surprising power, but not before he sank his maw into one of the leathery membranes. His fangs tore into the wing, blood flying through the air.

  The creature howled as it landed, coming down heavily on its shaggy hands and feet, but it never took its eyes from me. As it sprang for me, I leaned out from behind the tree and fired three more times, aiming for different targets. This monster couldn’t truly be invulnerable, could it?

  This time, I noticed a piece of twine around its neck, almost hidden by the shaggy dark fur. It held two ivory trinkets that reminded me a lot of the charms I wore.

  The creature landed on the opposite side of my tree, claws—not talons—gripping the bark. It leaned its neck around and snapped at me with a wolf-like snout.

  I sprang back, hot meaty breath blasting me as its bite missed by two inches. I returned Fezzik to its holster and drew Chopper. My magical longsword hadn’t been made on Earth, and it was the only weapon I had that could hurt a dragon. It would work on this creature. It had to.

  Sindari leaped again for the monster’s back. It dropped down and ran at me on powerful legs. Sindari adjusted his flight and managed to come down on it, all of his weight slamming into its shoulder blades. He snarled and bit into the back of its neck. The creature’s momentum faltered as it stopped, battering Sindari with the backs of its wings and trying to knock him free.

  Using the distraction, I sprang in and plunged my blade into its chest. One of the ivory charms on its neck flared silver, and I met far more resistance than expected, but the tip sank in.

  The creature squealed and flung its wings forward, trying to catch me. I leaped back swiftly enough to avoid the attack, taking Chopper with me. The blade was harder to pull out than usual, but I freed it and feinted toward our foe’s abdomen with a quick thrust. Sindari was still on its back, sinking his fangs in, seeking a fatal target.

  “Duck,” I told him, then committed to a real attack when the creature was busy blocking my feints and trying to buck Sindari off.

  Swinging the blade more like a logger than a swordswoman, I cleaved the creature’s head halfway off its neck. With as much force as I’d put into the blow, and as razor-sharp as Chopper was, it should have beheaded the monster. The blade, glowing a fierce blue, did manage to sever its spine and major arteries.

  The creature toppled forward, Sindari clinging to its back like a huge tick. He sank his jaws in to finish it off.

  As I was about to thank him for his help, some instinct made me turn, lifting my sword. A second creature was diving soundlessly toward me, its mouth open, its fangs ready to snap down at my neck, its arms and claws extended to eviscerate me.

  Swearing, I dropped to the ground and rolled away, but as long as its arms were, I was sure it would still get me.

  A massive black shape flew in from the opposite side, the wind of its passage tearing at my clothes as it collided with the creature before it touched me.

  Zav.

  I jumped to my feet. The furry monsters were big—seven or eight feet tall with an even larger wingspan—but they were nothing compared to a dragon. Zav snapped down, crushing its throat, then lifting it and shaking it by the neck as if it weighed nothing.

  Bone crunched, death cries barely escaping the thing’s savaged windpipe. Powerful muscles rippled under Zav’s sleek black scales as he hurled the creature forty feet. It smashed against a tree so hard that its wings and legs were ripped off. I hadn’t known that was possible.

  The remains of the corpse slumped to the ground, the creature quite dead.

  Zav turned to face me, his eyes glowing bright violet as he towered above me. The force of his aura, and a little fear for what I’d just seen, almost drove me to my knees.

  I locked them and lifted my chin, refusing to show that I still found him terrifying when I was reminded of his power.

  “Thanks, Zav.” I casually cleaned off and sheathed my sword. “It seems they’re not holing up in the mountains after all.”

  I didn’t know how he’d learned of the attack, since I’d never sensed anything magical about the creatures—I was fairly certain Sindari had only smelled their approach—but I was glad Zav had shown up. Even though I believed I could have handled the second one, I would have been injured in the process. I healed more quickly than normal humans, but that didn’t mean I liked getting gouged.

  Zav melted and compacted before my eyes, shifting into his human form, a six-foot-two, broad-shouldered, handsome olive-skinned man in a silver-trimmed black robe and slippers. Sometimes, he showed up in high-tops, boots, or some new men’s footwear he was trying—someone had once accused him of being homosexual because of the slippers—but these were still his default. His short curly black hair was always trimmed, his short beard and mustache always tidy. Only his violet eyes were the same as they were in dragon form, the glow gradually fading now that the fight was over.

  “These were not rocs or wyverns,” Zav noted dryly.

  “Yeah,” I croaked, then cleared my throat, realizing I’d been gaping at him. When he was this close, his aura always affected me, an electric charge that radiated from him and crackled over my skin like power from high-voltage lines. Except it was a lot more appealing than that. It made me want to lean in close and bask in his presence. Which was a problem because I was not looking to hook up with a dragon and definitely not to become some enraptured mindless minion of one. “I noticed as that one was attacking me.”

  I don’t know what they are. Sindari was examining the body of the creature we’d killed. They do not appear capable of flight. Perhaps these trinkets allow them to fly. There is some subtle magic about them, much like your charms, but I did not detect it until this one was right on top of us, so they should not be very strong. Unless they are self-camouflaging.

  “Let’s take a look.” I knelt beside the body, not sure whether to be pleased we’d mauled it as badly as it had mauled the tourists or just grim at the whole affair. “Zav, have you ever seen anything like these, uhm, animals before?”

  “I have not.”

  As I cut the twine necklace out of the tangled fur, Dmitri ran up with Marty and Bessy. The husband started at the tiger, but then gaped at the furry body and didn’t ask about Sindari.

  “Batsquatch,” he breathed, as if he recognized the creature.

  Batsquatch? He had to be joking.

  But I tapped it into my phone for a look.

  “Who are you?” Bessy whispered, staring at Zav.

  “I am Lord Zavryd’nokquetal, a representative of the Dragon Justice Court.”

  Bessy stared at him without blinking. At first, I thought she would ask to take a selfie with him. It took me a moment to realize that she was enthralled by his dragonly presence.

  Ignoring her, Zav walked to where he’d thrown the other creature, maybe to check it for charms. Eyes glazed, Bessy followed him. She lifted a hand, as if she might touch his robe, but she didn’t get close enough to try.

  I rolled my eyes and read the handful of entries on the batsquatch. It was touted as a bat-sasquatch hybrid. The drawings accompanying the reports of sightings and livestock being eaten did look similar to these creatures. Huh.

  Filing that away for later consideration,
I went back to the charms. There were two of them, one that gave me a zap when I touched it. Cursing, I dropped it.

  The little shield-shaped object lay in the dirt. The shapes of most of my charms were clues to what they did, so I wagered these were similar. This might have created the barrier that had made it so difficult to kill the creature.

  The other one was shaped like a footprint. It didn’t zap me, so I curled my hand around it, probing it with my senses. It warmed against my palm and, seemingly of its own volition, my arm rotated around my body to point off to the northwest. A little tingle went down my spine as the urge to walk in that direction came over me.

  “Hm.”

  Dimitri touched my shoulder. “Are you all right? You’re spattered with blood. Is any of it yours?”

  “No.”

  “Does it come off that jacket?” He waved to my leather duster.

  “Yeah. I had my dry cleaner put a fancy stain guard on it. She’s half gnome, and her magical power is getting blood, guts, and excrement out of clothes.”

  Dimitri wrinkled his nose. “Excrement?”

  “Sometimes, when people and animals die, bodily functions happen.”

  “I’m glad I’m not in your line of work.”

  “Are you? Zoltan’s ingredient lists for his alchemical potions have a lot of stinky and disgusting things on them. Remember the sasquatch anal gland secretions he wanted?”

  “He wanted you to get those, not me.”

  “Oh, right.”

  Zav returned and held out a palm, displaying two charms identical to the ones this creature had been wearing. I looked for Marty and Bessy, debating how openly we should speak, but they were wandering back toward the road.

  “Your admirers left?” I rose to my feet.

  “I convinced them,” Zav said, “that you would solve the problem more easily without their presence.”

  “I didn’t hear you say anything.”

  “Magic does not require words.”

  True. I thought of when we’d first met and he’d touched my temple and compelled me to do things. That had almost gotten me killed. But we’d been more enemies than allies then, so I didn’t hold a grudge. I did, however, remember how creepy that power was.