The Island Of Dragons: A Paranormal Shifter Romance (8 page)

To my increasing horror, I realized I didn’t have my cellphone on me. I hadn’t grabbed it when I’d left my castle to see Warren. And with Hugh down at the foot of the skyscraper-like hill, I wasn’t sure if he’d be able to hear me if I yelled. Thinking back to when he’d told me to “call” him when I was ready to come down, I now wasn’t sure if he’d meant to
call
him on my actual phone, or if he’d meant to simply call out with my voice and he’d be able to hear me.

Didn’t matter. Seconds were ticking by, and no matter how he’d intended for me to call him, I knew there was now only one way I could. I had to act fast, as it seemed the glowing golem was actually picking up speed now, still heading straight for the village.

Shaking like a leaf, I dashed to one side of the steep, rocky hill, cupped my hands around my mouth, and began yelling.

“Hugh! Hugh, can you hear me? Please answer me!”

Silence. Except for the rustling of the breeze through the tropical grass, and the distant booms of the golem’s footfalls.

“Hugh, please! There’s this big rock creature thing coming, and it’s headed straight for the village! Please fly up here if you can hear me!”

Still silence. With perspiration snaking a line down the back of my neck, I turned back toward the direction of the golem and saw that it was still charging along, glowing an even brighter green now, bright enough for me to see that it wasn’t just made up of boulders, but thousands, if not millions, of smaller rocks as well. It was simply stunning in its size. As far away as I was, I could only guess, but I figured that it had to be at least the size of several semi-trucks standing on their ends and clustered together. It would probably be able to take out an entire castle with a single blow.

I whipped my face back in the direction of where I thought Hugh was probably sitting far below. “Hugh! Please answer me! We’ve got to get help!”

When the only thing I heard was silence yet again, I took a deep breath and began making my way down the steep hill, swearing. In the dark, having to go carefully so I wouldn’t fall to my death, I knew I probably wouldn’t make it down in time to get help. It would be too late. Even if Warren and his men were able to fend off the golem once it entered the village, they probably wouldn’t be able to do it fast enough to prevent at least some people from getting hurt or killed.

Spurred on by panic and a stomach churning with dread, I began heading down the darkened hill faster, almost losing my balance and falling head over heels a few times.  Then I did. I rolled down the steep hill, somersaulting, at least three times before some thorny tropical bush stopped my fall. On my rear, I pushed away from it, realizing that somehow, mercifully, I wasn’t injured in any way I could tell, just extremely dirty, covered in sand and pebbles, though obviously, I had bigger problems.

After carefully rising to stand, not wanting to lose my balance again, I cupped my hands around my mouth and yelled for Hugh one final time. That’s when a miracle happened, or at least it felt like one. Hugh suddenly appeared in dragon form, his long green body silvery in the moonlight.

He hovered near the side of the hill, waited for me to hop on, then sped away to the village without even stopping to ask me what was wrong. I figured he’d probably seen the golem on his way up to get me.

Within seconds, he zoomed into the village, making some deep sound that was similar to a roar. Almost instantly, shifters began appearing outside their castles, and they then took one look at Hugh and shifted as well.

Hugh set me down near Warren’s castle, where Warren was already racing out the front door in human form.

Breathless, I began running over to him, talking as I went. “It’s a big rock creature that came out of the lake. It is made out of boulders, and it’s absolutely huge. I was up on the hill and I saw it. It’s heading for the village right now.”

He’d already shifted into dragon form before I’d even finished speaking, and he now tore off into the night, making the same deep, bellowing roar that Hugh had made, only louder. I watched him until he disappeared into the dark, his enormous gray wings beating the air.

I finally turned away, intending to go do what I didn’t even know, and saw Melody jogging toward me, her face white as a sheet.

“What’s happening? What’s going on?”

I dashed over to meet her, and we both came to a stop, breathing hard.

“It’s this huge thing made of boulders, Mel. It came out of the lake. Warren and his men are going to stop it.”

Melody’s moonlit face seemed to become even a bit paler still, and she spoke in a shaky voice.

“Well, let’s pray they can.”

We shouldn’t have even worried. By the time we’d told everyone else what was going on and had ushered everyone back into their castles, Warren and a few of his men were already back.

Warren landed in front of his castle, immediately shifted back into human form, and pulled me into his arms. “Please, please tell me you’re okay.”

I lifted my face from his shoulder to look at him. “I am, but what about the thing? Is it dead?”

Warren frowned, heaving a sigh. “No, but it will be... soon. Right now it’s back in the lake, where it retreated the second it saw us coming. My men will guard it all night, and in the morning, we’ll have a council meeting to discuss the best possible way to attack it. And then we’ll destroy it; I promise you that.”

I nodded, exhaling in a rush. “Good. That’s good.”

Warren kissed my forehead, and I suddenly bristled, realizing I had something to say.

“Well, do you finally believe that I’m not an enemy of your people
now
? Now that I nearly killed myself falling down a hill to try to alert everyone about the big rock thing? I really could have been hurt, and I almost was. Seems to me like a spy with ill-intent wouldn’t be quite so self-sacrificing.”

Even in the dim light, I could see Warren’s face become a mask of pain.

“I’m so very sorry that you were almost hurt. I’m also so very sorry that I didn’t believe you at first. I’m so very sorry that I thought you were a spy.”

Surprised, I was rendered momentarily speechless. “You mean... so, you finally believe I’m not? You’re officially ‘clearing’ me of all suspicion? I’m not a prisoner anymore?”

He nodded, wincing slightly. “I think I was finally convinced that you weren’t a spy when I first saw you dancing with the kids. I felt that in my heart, but it just took a little longer to process it in my mind. Then today, when I went to get the shoes... I just knew and felt on all levels I wasn’t buying ballet shoes for someone intending to do my people harm. But when I delivered the shoes, it just didn’t feel like the right time to tell you for some funny reason. And then later, I just didn’t get the chance to tell you.”

I suddenly took a step back from him, incredulous. “Wait. So you’re telling me that you’d already ‘cleared’ me earlier tonight when we were together? And you didn’t even tell me?”

“Well, you called me an asshole pretty quickly after entering my castle, and then things began... well, you know what began happening shortly after that.”

I realized he was right. I really hadn’t given him much of a chance to tell me that he finally believed me.

Fighting a little smile brought on by a feeling of sudden lightness in my heart, I stepped forward, and back into his arms again. “Well... all right.”

He held me tightly and kissed my forehead again, and this time I didn’t bristle.

Instead, I lifted my face to look at his own. “I want you to call me by my first name... my nickname. I want you to call me Ellie.”

A grin slowly spread across Warren’s handsome face.

“Nothing would make me happier, Ellie. And I want you to call me Warren from now on.”

I smiled, and we began kissing, but just then, someone in the distance began shouting for Chief Warren.

He broke our kiss with a soft groan and took my face in his strong hands. “I have to go, but I’ll be back as soon as I can. I want you to know, Ellie, that these next few days or weeks may not be easy for us. There’s surely going to be some stress and danger in our lives. I also want you to know that I’ll never let anything happen to you. I’ll keep you safe always.”

I nodded, believing that he always would, and he gave me one last kiss before sprinting away.

CHAPTER FIVE

I gritted my teeth when the alarm siren began to peal. I was in the middle of teaching a ballet class on the outdoor events platform in the heart of the village, and all the children had finally just started to catch on to a new barre exercise I’d been showing them. I wasn’t exactly in the mood to stop class. However, I really didn’t have a choice. Not if I wanted to keep all the kids safe.

The alarm sirens were to alert everyone in the village that the massive stone creature we’d now all been calling the golem was on the move, heading out from the lake toward the village. He’d been doing this at least daily for the past four weeks since he’d first emerged from the lake. And every single time it was always the same thing. He’d charge out, each boulder-footed footfall making the ground quake; the dragons guarding the village from the air would alert guards in a tall wooden tower just outside the village; the tower guards would sound the alarms; then Warren and his strongest men would charge out in dragon form. But before they could reach the golem, he’d flee back to the lake, which had fully refilled with water, and sink into its murky depths. Warren and his men couldn’t chase him in and attack him in the water, because even though the lake had been destroyed by dynamite once, now that it had mysteriously and magically refilled, it could only be assumed that the dark water had the same properties as it had had before, and would have the same effect on anyone who went in it. Which was to say, of course, that anyone who went in it would be changed into a murderous Gray Form.

If the whole thing were a baseball game, Black Lake would have been “safe” for the golem. And he seemed to really enjoy reaching “safe,” seemed to really enjoy taunting Warren and his men. Whatever force was animating his enormous body made of boulders and rocks, it seemed to have a real personality.

Warren had held several council meetings, which, as his girlfriend, I’d been allowed to attend as an observer. He and the other council members, including Melody and her husband Josh, had gone back and forth on different plans to try to take out the golem, but Warren always had the final say. And so far, he’d always said that the plan would be to continue to wait and play defense. He kept saying that the council needed more information about the golem, information in regards to what drove it and what powered it, before attempting any other plan. This topic would be revisited at the next council meeting, which was scheduled for that evening. I hoped to make it there, if I wasn’t trampled to death by unruly young children first.

Most of the kids tended to completely lose their minds when the alarms sounded, and there was no other way to put it. This time was no exception. Screaming and waving their arms, they ran around me, into me, and even
through
me, by way of sliding and crawling through my legs. They weren’t exactly great at lining up in an orderly fashion to take shelter in the community center, like I always asked them to do. I was never quite sure if they were all genuinely scared, or simply more excited. The island was a paradise, no doubt about it, but it could also be somewhat of a monotonous place at times, particularly for kids, and I had to wonder if a golem charging toward the village wasn’t some sort of a little thrill. Most of the kids seemed pretty certain that Warren would never let the golem reach the village and let anything happen to them, which I was pretty certain about, too.

“Settle down and please get in a line behind me, all of you! Right now!”

A few kids obeyed and got into some semblance of a line behind me, but the majority of the class, about a dozen five and six-year-olds, appeared not to have heard me and continued flipping out, running around the events platform shrieking and yelling. One little girl with bright red pigtails was on her back with her knees to her chest, spinning around like break dancer or a turtle on its shell. She was alternating peals of apparent terror with brief bouts of giggling.

Not wanting her to get splinters in her back, I picked her up, put her on my hip, and then raised my voice to be heard above the alarm sirens, addressing all the kids. “All of you! Please listen! Get in a line behind me... quietly!”

Not a chance. A few more kids got in line, one of them a little girl with tears running down her chubby, rosy cheeks, but there were still quite a few holdouts. One little boy who loved tumbling as well as dance was now doing front handsprings all around the platform, pausing between each one to take a few giant, heavy steps forward saying, “Boom! Boom! Boom!” apparently imitating the heavy footfalls of the golem. Naturally, this whipped the other line holdouts into even more of a frenzy, and they began shouting and crying even more energetically.

Fortunately, I had a trick up my sleeve, something I’d thought of the day before when this very situation with the kids had happened for about the tenth time. I had lollipops. I’d figured I’d use them only in emergencies, but this was turning out to be one. I just wasn’t sure how else I was going to get the kids into the safety of the community center.

Candy was kind of rare in the village, since most food was homegrown, and therefore, unprocessed. Warren sometimes brought candy back from New York City with him, usually for Christmas, Halloween, and other holidays, but most of the time, if people wanted candy, they had to make it themselves. This made lollipops even more of a treat, and when I’d made them from raw sugar and different flavorings like lime, pineapple, and coconut the night before, I’d expected that an offer of candy might earn me a little more attention from the kids than I’d been getting. I’d just had no idea how
much
more attention, or how suddenly I’d get that attention.

Still struggling to be heard above the alarm sirens, I shouted at the top of my lungs, loud enough to make my throat hurt. “Hey! Kids! I have lollipops! And everyone who lines up behind me quietly and follows me to the community center gets to have one!”

Almost instantly, the rest of the line holdouts dashed over from various places on the platform and got in line. Quietly, too. The little boy who’d been doing wild handsprings immediately stopped and sprinted over while running a thumb and forefinger across his mouth, pretending to zip his lips.

Once I’d done a quick headcount of all the kids in line, I began leading them off the platform and over to the community center, still holding little-miss-turtle-spinner on my hip. She’d covered her face with her bright red pigtails and was now crying into my shoulder.

A short while later, once all the kids were in the stone-walled community center, I had a seat at one of the many tables in the large, open main room, exhaling in a rush. My respite didn’t last long, however. I was quickly encircled by the kids, who were begging for their lollipops in high-pitched, piteous, pleading voices. Not one to make kids suffer so terribly, I dashed over to a shelf where I’d stashed a little woven basket containing the cellophane-wrapped, paper-stick lollipops earlier that morning.

I’d just finished passing them out when Melissa came flying into the center, slammed the heavy stone door behind her, and rested with her back against it, panting. “Mind if I take refuge in here with you guys?”

I said I didn’t mind at all. “The more the merrier.”

She eyed a few nearby kids, who were wandering around, now very contentedly sucking on their lollipops. “Do I get candy, too? If I don’t, I can’t promise that I won’t throw a tantrum.”

Soon she and I were sitting at a table with lollipops of our own, watching the kids, who didn’t seem to be troubled at all, despite the fact that the great booms of the golem’s boulder-feet could be faintly felt, even through the stone floor. The fact that we could feel his approaching footfalls even slightly said a lot about his strength and power, considering that he was probably still a half-mile or so away.

After a few licks of her pineapple-flavored treat and declaring it good, Melissa scooted her chair a little closer to mine and spoke in a low voice. “All the men are in dragon form right now trying to get that damn golem to turn back to the lake... but they’re having a harder and harder time each time that this happens. Think about how much time has passed since the alarm sirens first went off. Normally, they have him heading for the hills by now. But I think he’s getting bolder... stronger. And he’s learning how to bat away some of our dragons in the air and move past them.

“With every day that passes, it seems like he’s becoming more and more intent on making it to our village and killing us all.” After glancing at the kids to make sure no one was listening, Melissa scooted her chair even a bit closer to me and continued. “Warren’s gotta do something, Ellie. All of us can’t live like this, with the threat of attack every single day. And sooner or later, that golem thing is gonna get hip to how to really effectively beat back our dragons, and he’s gonna be able to just charge right through them to the village. I think his days of simply turning back around eventually are numbered. He’s gotta be attacked. Warren’s gotta figure out a way to go from defense to offense and take this big stone monster dude out for good.”

Sighing, I surveyed a few kids strolling around in their ballet shoes nearby, then responded to Melissa in a near-whisper. “You think Warren doesn’t realize that, Mel? You think he hasn’t been wracking his brains trying to think of a way to take out the golem? He has, and not just at council meetings. He’s been thinking about it just about every second of every single day. But he’s worried about his men. If they try to attack the golem at the lake... if any of them were to actually go
in
the lake, or be dragged in or something, they could be turned into those Gray Form things. He’s also worried about his men being hurt or killed in a fight with the golem. His men are incredibly strong dragons, yes, but this golem thing is
huge
, Mel. You haven’t seen it, I have. And it’s just massive. It could probably crush a dragon with one of its stone fists. So... yeah. Warren knows he has to figure something out soon, but he’s being cautious. He’s been playing defense just to find out how the golem
works
, so to speak. But he
will
think of a better plan soon... maybe even at tonight’s council meeting.”

Before Melissa could respond, the little boy who’d been doing wild handsprings outside came up to me and tugged on one of my t-shirt sleeves. “Um, excuse me, Miss O’ Brien. Excuse me.”

I asked him what was up, and he held out the soggy stick of his lollipop. I’d made the sticks out of tightly-rolled tubes of plain white paper.

“Um, excuse me, Miss O’ Brien, but the end part of this candy doesn’t taste as good as the top part of this candy did.”

I responded while trying not to giggle or smile. “Well, Davy, that’s because the ‘end part’ of your candy is actually paper. It’s not meant for eating.”

Davy suddenly broke into a wide grin. “Gotcha! I pulled your leg, Miss O’Brien. I knew the stick was paper. Bye!”

He sprinted away, shrieking with delight, and at the same time, I realized that the faint booms of the golem’s footfalls were now even fainter, just barely even able to be felt. Warren and his men had made him turn back to the lake once again.

Melissa and I laughed at Davy’s antics, thoroughly amused.

Then, Melissa smiled with her gaze on him, but her dark eyes seemed to hold a little trace of pain even as she did so. “You know, I know that kid’s a firecracker, but it’s kids like him that make me really, really hope I can have one of my own someday. Just one. That’s all I ask for. Just one little firecracker to share with Dan.”

In the several decades that everyone had been on the island, all of the women had struggled with fertility issues, but Melissa had been one of the few who hadn’t been able to get pregnant even once. Melody was in the same boat. Even during the recent baby boom since the Forms had been killed, neither of them had any success.

I told Melissa that I was pulling for her, and she said thanks and then asked if I had any baby dreams of my own.

“And I mean, specifically, any baby dreams with a certain village chief.”

Though the thought had crossed my mind, I scoffed, pretending that it hadn’t. “No. I mean... well, Warren and I have only been together a little over a month. I think it’s probably far too soon to be thinking any thoughts about a family.”

Melissa gave me a little eye roll. “Not considering the way the two of you look at each other.”

“And, besides... I might like to get married first. And in order to get to
that
stage, I’m sure Warren and I need to spend a little more time as a couple together. Which....” I trailed off with a faint sigh. “Which is obviously not going to happen until this damn golem is destroyed.”

Finished with her lollipop, Melissa tossed the stick on the table and sat back in her chair. “Look. That will happen fairly soon. I know I may have made it seem earlier like I don’t have faith in Warren as our leader, but I do. I just said what I did because I’m just as frustrated as everyone else, and just as frustrated as he is, too, I’m sure. And just as frustrated as I’m sure you are also.”

I set my unfinished lime lollipop back on its cellophane wrapper, thinking. “Yeah... I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t frustrated. And I wish there was just something I could do to help. Not that there’s probably anything I can do against the golem, but just
something
.”

Melissa shrugged, expression sympathetic. “I know. But like you said, there’s probably nothing you
can
do.”