Smolder (Dragon Souls)

  Smolder (Dragon Souls)

  Penelope Fletcher

  Published: 2011

  Tag(s): Romance dragons shapeshifters love fantasy "fantasy romance"

  Dragon Souls

  Book One

  SMOLDER

  Penelope Fletcher

  Copyright © 2011 Penelope Fletcher

  All rights reserved by the Author

  Feedbooks Edition

  Cover Image

  ©iStockphoto.com/adamkaz

  Cover Design

  Penelope Fletcher

  All characters and events in this novel are fictitious and resemblance to real persons, living or dead, are purely coincidental. No part of this novel may be reproduced, stored or transmitted without the prior permission in writing from the author.

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  Chapter 1

  Blinking at the ash that blew into her eye, Marina frowned. Ash? Cold air brushed her cheeks helping to lessen the sting.

  She stuffed her hands into her jean pockets, and squinted. Her jaw worked as she blew gum to obscene proportions then burst the bubble in a minty snap.

  Eyelids so low the picturesque scenery blurred, Marina valiantly tried to understand what she witnessed in the heavens. She rocked back on her heels and cocked her head, wondering.

  All the fidgeting was a way to postpone the inevitable conclusion that the sky was on fire.

  Was there a reasonable explanation?

  The inferno began five minutes ago, and her frustrated amble across the deserted meadow had come to a standstill.

  Richly colored flames licked the sky and writhed under the stormy clouds. Ginger sparks and flashes of crimson streaked above in violent lashes and flirty swirls. The smell of smoke rode a blustery wind.

  Rather than being transfixed by the fire, Marina opted for reserved disbelief. It was a serene acceptance of the fiery aurora borealis.

  With a decisive nod, she decided she should be running and screaming, but she refrained, choosing instead to stand and watch stoically.

  She wondered if the lights were a spontaneous and miraculous world event or if it was restricted to where she was.

  The terrain she stood on was rustic and beautiful. Up on high, she saw green and brown mountains folding into the horizon. A placid lake about an acre wide twinkled a short walk away and was her original destination.

  Fire in the sky beat a lake hands down, so she’d callously switched attention from one natural beauty to another.

  If one could call clouds ablaze natural.

  Marina tensed when a startling thought pulled her from admiring the landscape. What if the lights were a nuclear attack, radioactive waste reacting with the earth’s atmosphere?

  The wind stopped howling, the crickets ceased singing, and there was … nothing. Sound had been pulled into a vacuum, and Marina could hear a faint high-pitched ringing in her ear, similar to the moment before a volcano erupts.

  Her heart rate spiked, and her breath came in short bursts as she waited for whatever was next.

  A single bolt of lightning split the darkness.

  The shadowed land was lit by pale white light, and a shimmer of heat rippled through the air. The silence popped, and there was a loud crack, millions of fireworks exploding.

  The fine hairs on Marina’s body lifted, an electric current running over the surface of her skin.

  She waited for the hollow booms to follow the lightning, but there was no thunder. She waited and waited, but it was silent again.

  Another bolt of brilliant lightning, this one caught her by surprise, and a dart of pain stabbed her eyeballs as the light blinded her.

  “Bugger,” she mumbled, blinking repeatedly.

  An unwelcome kaleidoscope of vivid colors danced in front of her eyes, and her sight slid in and out of focus.

  Blowing out a breath, she took a wobbly step forward, but wisely followed her buckling legs and sank down on a cluster of rocks to get comfortable. The rough, jagged surface of the boulder bit into her skin through her jeans. She wiggled, slapping her hands together and on her thighs to rid her palms of the grainy dust picked up off the rock’s surface.

  A roar shattered the silence.

  As if alive, the sound passed directly through Marina, jarring her to the bone. It rolled over the mountains, rippled across the water, swept through the heather, and trailed off to rumble in a low reverberation.

  Marina tumbled off the rock. Landing on her back, legs akimbo, she froze and listened.

  Heart pounding, she stared into the sky and saw black streaked with red. Tendrils of fire entwined over her head in playful swirls. She looked left then right, and astutely concluded the swirls were indeed hovering over her.

  Lifting her head higher, ignoring the sharp protest of her neck, she couldn’t see passed the rock. Slowly, she inched back onto it. Her muscles were stiffening, but she knew if she kept focused on being relaxed and calm, the cramps would ease out.

  Peering at the sky, she focused into the heart of the broiling mess, the red fire that seemed suspended over the lake.

  Normal clouds did not come that low.

  A dense overcast on fire high in the sky was much less alarming than clouds descending from heaven to broil above a lake. She knew it may be her odd perception of the cloud cover that made them seem so low, but she was sure they truly were that low, and shouldn’t be that near to the ground.

  A shadow darker than the blackness appeared from the crimson haze. It shot from the inferno at immense speed, angled down towards the earth. It stopped abruptly, hovered in the air. Its numinous form was silhouetted by the clouds as it took in the new environment.

  Marina breathed in but didn’t manage to exhale.

  The black spot picked a direction, her direction and started towards it. It grew in size, and took on a more distinguishable shape, though Marina had already marked it for what it was.

  Something akin to panic crawled across the nape of her neck at the trajectory of the advancing thing.

  It had … it had wings.

  Razor sharp spikes crested its back to the tip of its tail. It bore claws and fangs, glowing eyes, and glistening scales.

  “I’m in trouble,” she whispered.

  Her muscles were locked into place, so she jerked, throwing herself backwards. Once again off the boulder, she pressed her back into it, needing the feel of something solid and grounded.

  Marina stared at her hands for a long time. She had always hated her hands. Like the rest of her, they were small and delicate looking. They reflected nothing of the hardness, the roughness inside her. When people shook her hand, it was limp, afraid they would crush her bones.

  Mumbling to herself, Marina rammed the heels of her palms into her eye sockets and rubbed roughly. On her knees, she moved forward and immediately regretted the loss of the boulder at her back. Her stomach lurched. She froze and muttered a curse, her hands digging into the dry earth beneath her to anchor her to it.

  The panic kept creeping, slipping a noose wrought with fright around her neck, and rolling down her back to fuse to her spine, digging in, biting, making her teeth chatter.

  She closed her eyes briefly “Oh, for fu–Pete’s sake,” she moaned. “Not now.”

  After nearly a year of absence now was when her condition chose to reappear?

  Marina tucked her shaking hands into her stomach and doubled over. The pressure helped, and the solid earth beneath her made her feel less nauseous. Head lowered between her legs, she ignored the rotating world, and worked on controlling her bubbling stomach.

  “If you panic you lo
se,” she said on the quietest of breaths. “Suck it up, and move.”

  She trembled, and it wasn’t because of fear. Marina had always been good at dealing with small frights of life, a result of having to control her panic attacks. Loud noises, sudden changes in emotion by a person nearby, someone staring at her for too long, all used to trigger her. She’d start to sweat, her palms so clammy they were too slick to hold anything. She’d begin to breathe too quickly, and eventually hyperventilate. If she didn’t pass out from gulping down too much oxygen, she’d really start to panic, and would attack, furiously, or run away.

  Her mother had been ashamed at this weakness. She sent Marina to every psychoanalyst that would see her in a bid to cure it. Repeatedly they had explained there was nothing they could do by way of drugs or therapy. It was part of Marina, an oversensitive and primitive fight or flight response reacting to stimuli, they said. They assured Marina’s mother after a while she would be able to exercise some control over the condition if he could train herself to stop an attack before it happened.

  Her mother had taken the panic attacks as a personal slight. So. she put Marina in the scariest and most life threatening situations in a bid to make her so afraid that if she survived she would be stronger.

  Marina had bungee jumped and trekked mountains during storms. She’d jumped out of planes, and been taken on kidnapping holidays. At the age of eight, she had camped in the wilderness with no supplies during hunting season. By the age of nine, she learned how to shoot a gun and deal with the loud noises they made. It had taken nearly two months, but the day she could shoot a gun and not scream and panic from the noise was one she would always remember. She had barely winced when the loud shot cracked the air, and her mother had rushed to swoop her into a bone-crushing hug. By twelve, Marina could wrestle a man twice her size to the ground and demand his submission.

  People thought her mother, Almeria, was crazy for treating her only child so cruelly. Yet, none could deny, whilst punishingly persistent and steadfast in her mission to rid her daughter of her condition, Almeria was a devoted mother and a loving person. Always ready to help the downtrodden and reckless in her support of socialist experiments.

  Marina was in awe of her.

  Her mother was beautiful, a force of nature, a blazing star. She was strong, sensual, and abnormally tall, much to Marina’s chagrin since she was so small. Once – in the hushed voice of a wary child – she had asked if her father was an elf to be so tiny and unseen. Her mother had laughed so hard tears had fallen from her eyes.

  Almeria had been proven right in the end when her radical treatment of her daughter’s panic attacks worked.

  By fifteen, Marina had her condition fully under control. Genuinely, little scared or shocked her. She’d become immune to fear, overcompensating for the debilitating numbness that could hijack her body. Then she turned twenty-one, become an adult, it was then her world had chosen to come crashing down around her.

  Returning home after celebrating her birthday was the last memory she had of her mother. They had been driving in her car laughing, smiling, and singing then … nothing.

  Marina had woken screaming in hospital, and was told that her mother was dead. She had been in unconscious for nearly a month. Her neck had broken as well as seven other bones in her body, but her spine had remained undamaged. The doctor had said this news with much contentment, as if an intact spine was a suitable surrogate for the loss of a beloved mother.

  The crash was old news to people in general, and to those who visited her, but her pain had been raw, and fresh, and she had felt utterly alone in her grief.

  Since that day, Marina had looked at those eight broken bones as a gift.

  When an exhausted father of four falls asleep behind an eighteen-wheel lorry after a fourteen hour shift, and ploughs into your sports car, crushing your mother to death – smearing her across the motorway like paste on a cracker – and causes a multiple car pile up, to walk away as the sole survivor was nothing short of a miracle.

  Marina’s skull had been fractured in two places, and her brain had swollen dangerously. The doctors kept her heavily sedated to manage the pain, but had woken her up when the danger passed.

  Funeral arrangements could no longer be delayed.

  Marina had woken, in pain, confused, and with her mental guards down leaving her vulnerable and exposed. When she was told of her mother’s death, the panic had gripped her so strongly she thought her heart would give out. Not possible, since she was hooked up to a machine that monitored her heart.

  Marina inherited her mother’s multi million pound fortune, built from wisely investing rare gold and precious jewels the day she was able to open her mouth and demand her lawyers.

  Marina feared little anymore. Her mother had raised her strong.

  So, Marina, the much sought heiress to a fortune and conqueror of panic attacks, didn’t quiver because of the fire in the sky. She’d been watching that calmly. Her entire body shook, and her heart slammed into her breastplate because she knew what the creature was. The creature – that as she sat rocking – flew in her direction. Marina knew on an intrinsic level what it was without the faintest idea how she knew. Vague knowledge tickled the corner of her mind, but she was too diverted to pay it any heed. Why she was not shocked at the creature’s appearance is what shook her most, startling her into an episode. Something so outside of the normal frights of life, her panic attack had snuck up on her.

  Hidden behind the boulder, she craned her neck to see the lake. The creature faltered and dropped altitude, it was moving much slower now, its smooth glide becoming erratic.

  It was enough to get her moving. Marina crawled. She didn’t scream and run, she simply shifted forward and started moving, keeping as small as possible, not a difficulty for someone like her.

  She heard it coming.

  The heavy beat of gigantic wings.

  She peeked over her shoulder again, and her brow furrowed. Nothing. She did what too few people do when trying to hide or run away, and looked up, just as the creature gave up altogether.

  It dropped like a stone, glowing bright red, slicing through the air. It sounded like a fallen star screaming to earth.

  She scrambled up and dived, landing on her side, but forced herself to roll like a runaway egg down an incline.

  It collided with the ground with an almighty boom.

  The rocks Marina had been propped against were heaved from the earth and scattered. The land rippled outward, the stalks of heather ripped apart, and the night was filled with the sound of churning terrain, a sound usually only heard during the mists of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.

  Marina twisted to sit on her bottom, the fluffy heads of wildflowers tickling her face, swaying back and forth, as she breathed out in rapid puffs. She paused to breathe in deeply to push a fainting spell away, her chest expanding and lifting. Once she was in the clear, she exhaled and sank into herself, and then let her body take over to start panting again.

  It was still and quiet, the fire in the sky gone.

  Marina sat listening.

  There was deep breathing, the sound of something heavy moving, and a low rumble of an angry beast.

  Her legs tingled and alarm bells abruptly went off in her head. Turning away from it, she lurched up and ran.

  As if angels descended from heaven to gift her wings, her small feet flew. She bolted through the field and back down the slope, the tops of flowers batted off by her flailing hands. The adrenaline coursing through her wasn’t enough to keep her going, and the panic took told. Her legs cramped. She tripped over her own two feet and fell hard, rolling down the rest of the skill, rocks, and hard lumps of earth bruising her until she slid to a stop half way down the hill, face down, tongue licking grass.

  She spat and yanked her head back. Not used to being so clumsy, she grunted nosily. “Ow!”

  Clamping a hand over her mouth, eyes wide, she ducked her head down, hoping the heather and wild flowers were
tall enough to hide her.

  Biting the side of her hand, the pain was a sharp reminder that she needed to remain alert. She nimbly regained her feet and was relived when she felt no significant damage to her body. Her knees did knock together when she turned to look back up the hill, to see if was coming for her, but there was nothing there.

  The crickets started singing again and this time the frogs joined in with their throaty croaks. Something slithered passed her foot. She stomped her boots to be sure nothing that crawled on five legs or more came too close.

  Debating what to do, Marina put one foot in front of the other and started climbing back up the hill. She laughed nervously to herself. “Stay then run away then totter back,” she muttered. “What are you doing?”

  Marina knew, there were times in life that were monumental. Pivotal seconds where a person could make a choice, the choice, the one that defined them, a choice that altered your life forever. Sometime between spotting the fire and the seeing the creature, Marina had accepted this was her moment. She had reacted as her body had wanted, but now she was thinking again.

  Her steps blended into skip, and her pulse quickened as she rushed towards her moment with great excitement.

  Chapter 2

  The tall grass swayed in the meadow. Marina imagined the stalks trembling and shivering in fear of the beast entombed in their earth. The sky no longer burned. It was dark, but Marina could see where the creature had fallen, it was difficult to miss.

  Quietly, she made her way to the crater that radiated heat. It was about the size of an Olympic swimming pool, but the far end was tapered, the creature had slowed after hitting the earth and caused less damage.

  Marina edged closer to the heat. There was a faint hissing and cracking. Glowing yellow rocks mottled with black, sizzled and popped around the crater. The rocks had melted into blood red goo and were sliding down the crater in streams. Blue flames burned brightly in the red goo, and it was sickly sweet like rotting fruit. It left a sour fizz on Marina’s tongue when she breathed in.