Dragonfire Read online

  Almost out of instinct, she slipped one hand into the pocket of her jacket and withdrew her phone, checking the time as first point of order, then swiping it open to the weather app on the second screen. Sunny and twenty-two degrees, it clearly displayed in Celsius; the prediction completely at odds with the actual environment.

  “Twenty-two in Fahrenheit, maybe…” she muttered softly, feeling a little too uncomfortable about it to add much humour to her sarcasm. Nev wasn’t sure exactly how to convert between the two temperature scales, but she knew 22°F would be below freezing.

  She took a moment to capture a short, panoramic clip for Instagram Stories, considered making a joke along the lines of ‘if I’m never seen again…’, then thought better of it when she realised that five minutes after posting anything like that, Dad would be on the phone, demanding to know why she wasn’t at school. She decided instead to video Percy riding off awkwardly in her long dress, perhaps for use in some good-natured teasing later, but her friend had already disappeared by the time she’d turned the phone in the right direction.

  “Oh, bugger…!” She blurted to herself, knowing it was something her dad would probably say and not caring in the slightest. In a rush of renewed effort, she pedalled off in pursuit of Percy, phone once more tucked safely away in her jacket pocket.

  Nev had spent a lot of the last six years being on her own for one reason or another, mostly while her father worked his long shifts to support what was left of his splintered family. Drake Anderson had nevertheless done everything he could to make sure his daughter wanted for nothing, particularly with regard to reading material to keep her occupied. Although becoming an unexpected single parent had left Drake Anderson little enough spare time to eat and sleep, he made sure that no matter what luxuries they lacked from week to week, there was never a shortage of books for Nev to read.

  One entire wall of their lounge room was covered with tall bookcases, each filled to overflowing with every imaginable subject possible, both fiction and non-fiction. She was exceptionally well-read for a teen as a result, although her father’s eclectic tastes in reading matter left her with interests in some subjects such as modern history and technology that were probably unusual for someone of her age. It was perhaps the fact that she found it just as difficult to fit in with the ‘in-crowd’ as Percy did that had resulted in the pair ‘finding each other’ as friends, in spite of their own obvious differences. There’d been some benefits however to not conforming to social norms, not the least of which being that she’d learned early regarding the benefits of study and had determined to do well at high-school right from the outset.

  After another few minutes of bumpy riding around several winding bends, she finally caught up with Persephone once more, the older girl now standing by her mountain bike in the middle of a small clearing that appeared to all intents and purposes to be the end of the track.

  “Took you long enough,” Percy teased with a smirk, not really meaning anything by it as Nev drew up alongside, poked her tongue out in response and dismounted her own vehicle, laying it carefully on the grass.

  “You might’ve warned me I needed to bring rations,” she shot back with a sour grimace of her own, casting her gaze about the small, open space and deciding she liked it no better than the overgrown track they’d just cycled down. “You sure it’s safe here?”

  “Oh, my God, get a grip: we’re… like… a kilometre from the centre of town!” Percy exclaimed with frustrated disbelief. It was actually more like four or five kilometres, but Nev knew there was no point arguing.

  “What are we doing here anyway?” She demanded instead, deciding it a better option to cut straight to the chase.

  “There’s something I wanted to tell you about…” Percy admitted with a weird smile as she rested her bike on its kickstand and fixed Nev with an equally-strange stare. “A secret I’ve been wanting to tell someone for a while now…”

  “Ummm… ohhh-kayyyyy…” Nev took a single step backward, suddenly feeling very uncomfortable and more than a little disturbed by Percy’s strange manner as she cast a nervous glance around at bushland that suddenly seemed very isolated and unforgiving. “Aren’t you s’posed to come out of the closet after you return from Narnia?”

  “Oh, please…” Percy grumped, pulling a sour face, the mood well and truly broken as she turned and began to rummage inside the large sports bag she’d strapped to the carrier rack behind the seat of her mountain bike. “No offence,” she added, pulling a canvas bumpack from the bag and buckling it around her waist, completely ruining the look of her otherwise stylish ensemble in the process “…but if I were gay, you would so not be my type…”

  “Geez, love you too… you were starting to scare me, Perce!” Nev growled in return, allowing herself to relax and release a long-held breath. “I was starting to think you we going to… Christ on a bike…!” That last outburst of mild profanity – another of her father’s favourite exclamations and very out of character for her – came out in a startled cry as Percy drew the barrel and stock of a shotgun from the bag and proceeded to deftly assemble both pieces into one functioning weapon.

  “Hmmm…?” Percy asked, barely lifting her gaze and not for a moment acting like anything at all out of the ordinary was going on as she proceeded to take a pair of plastic-cased shells from the bumpack and loaded the weapon as casually as if she were slipping pods into her mother’s Nespresso. “Oh, this isn’t for you, silly…” She added, sounding not the slightest bit reassuring as she snapped the action shut and hoisted it over one shoulder. “This is for protection.”

  “‘Protection...’…?” Nev repeated, incredulous. “Are you nuts…? Protection from what… rabid field mice…? Some rare species of man-eating possum…?” Nev’s defence mechanisms tended toward nervous sarcasm under stress, and the presence of the rather dangerous-looking shotgun in Percy’s unconcerned hands was definitely a source of concern.

  “You… need to lighten up a little,” Percy suggested, frowning at Nev disapprovingly over invisible spectacles. “Now, what I’m going to show you…” she went on immediately, getting straight down to business, “is going to be our little secret, okay? I chose you because you’re really smart and you… know stuff… and you’re the only person I know at school who’s likely to appreciate what I’ve found: you’re not a total idiot like the ‘pretty ones’…”

  “Thanks… I think…” Nev replied warily, mostly confident that’d been some kind of back-handed compliment.

  “Any-way… moving right along, this is a secret, like I said… yeah?”

  “What secret…” she demanded in exasperation. “What needs a shotgun for ‘protection’, four bloody kilometres from the centre of town?” (…other that something illegal, she was seriously thinking in her own head…) “Do you even know how to use that thing?” She added, not knowing which answer would be worse.

  “You know Dad’s a shooting champ…!” Percy sniffed, the subject somehow a matter of family pride now. “Yes, he’d have a heart attack if he knew I’ve taken his five-thousand-dollar shotgun,” she conceded, “but... he’s always made sure I knew how be safe with it. Come on…” she urged finally, nodding her head toward an almost undetectable break in the surrounding grass off to her left. “It’s over here…”

  Being safe with a gun’s definitely not the same thing as knowing how to use one! Nev silently pointed out, sensibly keeping that thought to herself as she fell in behind her shotgun-toting friend and followed her toward a narrow walking track leading deeper into the surrounding scrub.

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake, you won’t need that huge bag: leave it with the bikes.”

  “As if…!” Nev snapped immediately with a shake of her head, the duffel bag swinging from side to side with every step. “I have my Bluetooth and two birthday presents in this thing, and I am not leaving all that lying around, just so they can be stolen by some passing bogan while we’re trying to find out way out of Mirkwood!”

&nbs
p; “Fine… ruin your back then for all I care…” Percy fired back hotly, at least recognising the Tolkien reference this time, “…and will you stop videoing me… Jesus...!”

  “This is just in case they only find my phone…” Nev joked automatically, unable to help herself.

  Percy remained surprisingly and very uncharacteristically silent after that remark – suggesting she’d definitely taken offence – and instead immediately picked up the pace a little, as if seeking to distance herself from her doubting friend. Nev knew she probably should apologise, but her own pride wasn’t quite ready for reconciliation yet and she instead went with the very teen response of remaining silent in the hope Percy’s mood would shortly blow over, returning everything back to normal. She did make the small concession of putting her phone away… for the time being, at least.

  The ground was soft and slightly moist under their feet, with long grass and tea-trees growing thick on either side, and it rose above eye level at times, leaving Nev with a distinctly claustrophobic feeling. The hairs on the back of her neck started to rise and she was struck by the strange, unshakeable feeling that someone or – inexplicably – something was watching them. A soft, chilly breeze swept toward them down that track, and as silly as it made her feel in her logical mind, she was nevertheless suddenly a little happier that Percy had brought the shotgun.

  It was darker now, too… far darker than it had any right to be in the middle of the afternoon, and the levels of moisture in the air were almost enough to classify as a fine, misting rain. The sky above was now a solid blanket of grey/black cloud, and as she glanced nervously upward, blinking through the growing drizzle, they seemed so close she could almost reach out and touch them. The patches of sunshine and clear blue that had filled the sky what seemed like only moments before were now completely gone.

  “Uhh, Perce…” She muttered softly, suddenly gripped by the feeling that they really should be somewhere else – anywhere else. “…Maybe we should…”

  “Look… over there…!” Percy called back over her shoulder in a sharp whisper, cutting Nev off and pointing directly ahead. “Can you see it…?”

  Moving forward and peering cautiously over her friend’s shoulder, Nev at first saw nothing: just a small widening ahead in the track that was barely large enough to be considered a clearing. Yet as she stared a little longer, she began to wonder her eyes were playing tricks. As grey and dull as everything around them had become in the failing light, the space ahead somehow seemed to be brighter, as if lit by its own faint luminescence. There was a shimmer in the air: something that was impossible to see if you stared at it directly but almost came into focus in your peripheral vision if you turned your head.

  “What the…?” Without even thinking about it, she fumbled for her phone again, starting to record before she was even certain of what it was.

  “Come on, chicken!” Percy urged excitedly, taking a few steps forward. “Come and see what all the fuss is about!”

  “Perce, I really don’t think this is a good idea,” Nev began, suddenly filled with a fearful certainty that the very last place in the entire world she wanted to be right now was that small clearing up ahead. Even so, she continued to hold the phone high in one hand, both of them so accustomed to its presence that it was almost invisible.

  “Why are you being like this…?” Persephone exclaimed with real disappointment in her tone now as she turned to face her friend, the shotgun held casually across her waist as if it were completely irrelevant. “This’ll be fun… this’ll be awesome…! I’ve been here before and it’s completely safe! I thought…” she continued, her voice almost cracking at that moment, as if she were about to cry, “…of all people, I thought that you might understand…”

  “If it’s ‘completely safe’…” Nev began with acid sarcasm, preparing to ask the obvious question about the shotgun, when something interrupted her words and her train of thought.

  This one is prescient, you fool… she cannot be controlled…

  That soft, disembodied voice appeared directly in Nev’s mind, the words barely audible.

  “Who’s that…?” She gasped, whirling about in fear with phone raised as if she might use it as a tiny club. “Did you hear that…?”

  “Well, if you’re just going to be like that…!” Percy harrumphed as she turned her back on her friend, one free hand placed jauntily on hip in a clear sign of displeasure. She was pouting now and feeling unappreciated, and had decided that maybe certain people didn’t understand what a huge favour she was doing for them.

  Are you feeble? She cannot be here! I see… fire… ruin…! She hears …she hears…!

  “Someone’s whispering…” Nev persisted, “…someone… or… something…” she added finally, not at all sure why she’d made that last statement.

  “Look, if you’re going to insult me, then I’ll just go home...!”

  Kill them both… the dark one, too: she serves no further purpose…

  “Perce, stop it: this isn’t funny!” Nev growled, angering now and certain her friend was playing some huge prank. “I’m not in the mood for –!”

  The rest of her words were cut off mid-sentence as the shriek of a horse’s whinny split the air, the heart-stopping sound coming with a sudden burst of blinding white light at the centre of that strange clearing ahead. Even as both girls recoiled instinctively, each raising a protective hand to cover their eyes, they heard the clattering drumbeat of hooves from the same direction.

  A huge stallion was suddenly upon them, galloping out of that dazzling light. A dark-clad rider sat astride its back, leaning forward in the saddle with the reins in one hand and a long, curved sabre in the other. With face wrapped in black cloth and only eyes visible, the horseman rose on his stirrups and released a howl of rage, blade held high and ready to strike. The light behind him flared again as he appeared, spreading out like a ripple of searing white from that tiny clearing and sweeping over all of them with equal impact. Both teens were instantly overcome by a strange, queasy feeling that filled them with nausea and caused Nev’s vision to blur.

  Nev screamed – nothing else seemed appropriate – and as the rider bore down on them, Persephone took a startled step backward, stumbled over something at her feet and fell flat on her backside. The shotgun fired as she hit the ground, its muzzle facing the horseman as he came at them with sword raised. A loud boom filled the air and the rider pitched backward with a cry, toppling from the saddle as his sabre fell away to one side. Shying away from the shot, the now-riderless horse swept past Percy and bore down on Nev instead, her phone still held pointlessly in one hand as she watched the scene unfold with horror and disbelief.

  Initially slow to react, the horse’s flank clipped her shoulder as Nev finally threw herself to one side at the last moment. The bag flew from her hands and rolled away as she was catapulted into the long grass in a daze, landing on her back and laying there motionless for a few seconds, staring blankly at the darkening sky above. As her ears pounded from the sounds of both the retreating horse and the hammering of her own heart, Nev’s mind desperately tried to process what she’d just experienced.

  “Nev! Nevaeh! Oh, my God…!” Percy’s shocked cry began to break through the fogginess of her mind as her friend knelt beside her and helped her into a sitting position. “No, no, no, no, no… this won’t do at all…! I can’t mess this up again! Are you okay? Are you alive…?”

  “I think so… heard my full name twice already today though, so possibly in Hell…” Nev mumbled, still not completely in control of her own senses but managing a little sarcasm to at least show she was recovering.

  “Yes, you’re fine, then... clearly…” Percy replied with exasperation, standing up once more and taking a few relieved steps backward.

  “The flash… the sword…!” Nev exclaimed suddenly, reality elbowing its way back into her consciousness as she clambered to her feet once more and glanced around in fear. “That creep on the horse!”


  “I… um… I think maybe he’s dead…” Percy admitted eventually, not sounding at all happy about that as Nev, horror spreading across her face, took a few steps toward where a dark, motionless shape lay crumpled on the grass. “Oh God, Nev… I’ve killed him… They’ll be ever so angry! What’ll I do…? I’ve killed him…!”

  “Good job, too…!” Nev decided, not upset about that at all as she recalled the whispered words in her head seconds before he’d appeared. “He was gonna kill us, Perce… serves him right, I reckon…” Phone amazingly still in hand, she turned and cast her eyes about for her fallen duffel bag, then wandered over on unsteady feet to collect it.

  Little of what Nev had said registered with Percy in that moment as nervous tension got the better of her, and she fell to her knees and proceeded to vomit comprehensively onto the grass. Instinct took over however as she dropped the shotgun, and she at least managed to protect her father’s prized Beretta by pushing it out of the splash zone.

  “Well… that’s unpleasant…” Nev observed disdainfully, referring both to the body and Percy’s retching heaves. “I wonder where that horse has got to…”

  Part of her realised she really shouldn’t be feeling so relaxed about what had just happened, and she wondered if perhaps she might be shock, but thinking about all that was something for the ‘too hard’ basket at that moment and Nev decided it better to just concentrate on getting her bag back… and the pair of them getting the hell out of there as quickly as possible.