Alien Dragon's Spawn (Dragons of Arcturus Book 1) Read online

  She stole one last glance over the nightscape of smoke dotted with rocky atolls, then entered the tunnel and returned the way she had come, following the torch-lit corridor back to the main central chamber.

  CHAPTER 12

  “Goddess damn it,” Skal cursed to himself.

  The forest sprawled out a thousand feet beneath him. Even during the daylight hours it would be difficult to find a pair of tiny humans down there, but now, after darkfall, it was nigh impossible. Like trying to find a pair of black ants in a coal mine.

  Katrine had said that they must be somewhere near the village, but that didn’t narrow it down very much. The forest was huge and dense. And besides, a pair of wayward humans would hide at the first sight of a dragon soaring overhead.

  It was hopeless.

  And what were these extra women doing here? Kat, his atma, had clearly been brought here by Fate. But why were her companions here as well? Were they also fated to be mates of other dragons? Perhaps. Or perhaps they were merely sent here as a trial—a task that Skal had to complete to please his atma.

  He would not tell her, of course, that he had looked for her friends tonight. He couldn’t let her think that she could boss him around to do her every whim. He was a dragon, after all, and she was a human.

  Skal would make his atma understand who was dominant.

  The dragon snarled. A twinge of irritation burned like an ember in his chest. Yes, he was irritated by his atma’s defiance. But he was even more irritated with himself for the way that defiance excited him, speeding his lifeblood and hardening his mating appendage.

  He pictured Kat now in his mind’s eye, naked but for her bone jewelry and skirt of rushes. Her tiny hands were fisted on her full, curved hips—egg-bearing hips. Her bottom lip pouted and her delicate brow scrunched insolently.

  His defiant little atma.

  A sudden sound yanked Skal out of his reveries of his mate.

  The sound had come from high above him. An ugly, evil screech that sounded like a high-pitched peal of thunder.

  It was a stormdragon.

  It was Mordragg.

  An onyx-black silhouette against the star-speckled sky, Mordragg called again, and descended in wide swooping circles until he was aligned with Skal. The stormdragon’s scales glinted like polished obsidian in the starlight. His blue eyes sparked with blue lightning from within. When he spoke, his voice came out in a sizzling, electrical hiss.

  “Greetings, Skalamagdrion.”

  “Lord Mordragg,” Skal answered coldly.

  “Looking for something?”

  Skal’s pulse quickened. He kept his voice steady as he lied.

  “Oh, just looking for something to eat…”

  “You must be very hungry.”

  Skal nodded. “It has been a long winter.”

  “And you are up and about earlier than usual this cycle.” Skal sensed the stormdragon’s eyes searching his expression for any signs that would give him away. “I am very hungry too. It seems that someone has stolen my breakfast.”

  Skal struggled to hide the emotions churning within him. He was not afraid of Mordragg, but he was afraid of his atma being endangered.

  “Oh really?” Skal asked.

  “Yesss,” Mordragg hissed. “When I arrived at the sacrificial altar, I found it empty.”

  “Perhaps the villagers merely forgot?”

  Crackling laughter erupted from Mordragg’s fanged mouth. It was a cruel, ugly sound that prickled Skal’s scales.

  “The humans would never forget,” Mordragg snarled. “They know to fear me.” He shook his horned head. “No, someone has stolen my offering, Skalamagdrion. I’m sure of it. The chains upon the altar was broken, but the scent of a morsel was there.”

  Skal’s heart missed a beat.

  Kat’s scent.

  Skal had not been worried about leaving his own scent at the altar. Yes, his body carried a scent, but only his atma would detect that. For other matters, such as marking his territory, he would use his special glands. So Mordragg would not have smelled Skal’s presence at the altar. But in his haste Skal had not considered Kat’s scent. If Mordragg smelled the female’s odor on him now, then his deception would be revealed.

  But it seemed that Mordragg did not detect anything.

  “You suspect another dragon?” Skal asked, trying to sound nonchalant about it.

  “Who else? There were tracks. One of the others in this territory, I presume. You know how the others are always scheming against me, thinking of ways to overthrow me.”

  Again Skal felt those deadly blue eyes upon him.

  “But not you, Skalamagdrion. You I can trust.”

  The truth was that Skal despised Mordragg, just as all the dragon’s in this region did. Skal did not envy the elder stormdragon’s position of authority as dragonlord of this territory. He simply disliked the cruel way Mordragg ruled his kingdom, demanding human offerings from the villagers.

  But Skal had never had a reason to defy Mordragg.

  Until now.

  “Well,” Skal said at last. “I shall keep my eyes and ears open, Lord Mordragg.”

  “Yes. You do that, young one.”

  With a violent beating of his wings, the stormdragon flew away like a living shadow in the night. Skal was glad to see that Mordragg was heading in a direction that was opposite to Skal’s mountain hall. Still, he would need to gather some food and return to his home quickly.

  With Mordragg now about, Skal did not like the idea of his atma being left alone.

  Skal knew in his heart that sooner or later he and Mordragg would come to blows. It was simply a matter of when.

  Skal could not hide what he had done forever.

  CHAPTER 13

  When Katrine finally arrived back at the central chamber, she paused in the archway, surveying the scene sprawled out beneath the vaulted ceiling of claw-carved stone. The pillows were still scattered where they had left them. The fire in the fireplace was still crackling and popping cheerfully, casting its warm, golden glow throughout the chamber.

  Kat jumped a little as one of the logs unexpectedly shifted, crunching softly in the embers and sending up a swirling shower of orange sparks.

  “Come on, Kat,” she whispered to herself. “Keep your shit together…”

  She glanced around the walls. Aside from the pillows and the fireplace, the room had little in the way of furnishings. The only other features that stood out were the archways set into the other walls of the roughly octagonal chamber.

  There was only one way to go about it.

  She had tried door number one. Now it was time to find out what lay behind door number two.

  Unlike the passage she had just traversed, the next corridor was dark. However, when Katrine tentatively inspected the shallow end of the shadows there, she found that the wall had a sconce with an unlit torch.

  She pulled the torch from its holder, carried it to the fireplace to get it lit, and then set off into the darkness of the second tunnel.

  Unlike the previous tunnel, the floor here followed a slight downward slope, which was a good sign. After all, if Katrine wanted to escape this mountain fortress, she would need to go down.

  The problem was that this path was far more complicated.

  Not far inside, the corridor forked. Holding her torch aloft, Katrine peered down one branch then the other, and saw that both of them forked yet again. It would be very easy to get lost in these echoing arterial passageways.

  But Katrine had a plan.

  It was straight out of a fairy tale, which, considering her present circumstances, made perfect sense.

  By the walls of the corridor, the floor was strewn with pebbles and fragments of stone that had fallen from the walls over time. Katrine gathered up as many of these stone crumbs as she could hold in one fist.

  She picked at random, choosing the left-hand path. Every time she came to a place where several tunnels came together, she placed a pebble in the path so that s
he could easily remember the way back. When she ran out of pebbles, she gathered more from beside the walls.

  It soon became clear, however, that this warren of tunnels was far more extensive than Katrine had originally realized. She wondered if a person might not walk these hallways for an entire lifespan without once retracing her steps.

  Still, she pressed on undaunted. The air was warm and mostly still, but sometimes soft breezes caressed the fine hairs on her arms. There was airflow in the channels, and that meant that somewhere there must be an exit.

  But how far?

  At last, the passageway before her widened. The resonance suggested a large chamber, even bigger than the one with the fireplace.

  Something glimmered in the depths of the shadows ahead.

  Katrine startled at the sight. Her heart was trying to climb out of her throat. She backpedaled.

  The twinkling light dimmed.

  Had she really seen something there? Perhaps it was just a trick of her addled brain. She wasn’t even sure just how long she had been wandering these hallways, having lost all track of time.

  There was certainly no point in going back now. The dragon would surely be returning soon.

  Whatever might be lurking in the shadows up ahead, it certainly couldn’t be worse than a dragon, right?

  Drawing a deep breath and mustering all of her courage, Katrine inched forward.

  Once again, something flickered in the velvet darkness.

  This time, however, Katrine didn’t retreat. She shifted the torch to get a better look, and as she did so, the glinting lights up ahead shifted too.

  It was a reflection.

  Moving cautiously, her bare feet making barely a whisper on the warm stone floor, Katrine advanced, and with each step she took, her eyes grew wider and her blood rushed faster in her veins.

  Treasure.

  Piles and piles of treasure. Mountains of it. Great, towering heaps of gold and silver and platinum, winking back the flames of her torch. There were gemstones too, their polished facets refracting the light into geometric webs. Suits of armor, empty metal husks, their breastplates and pauldrons worked with alien designs. Katrine stared in amazement at the vast collection of shiny stuff.

  So dragons really did hoard treasure, just like in the stories.

  But there were other things mixed in with the gold and the gemstones. Pieces of machinery, Colorful bottles, bits of electronic devices. All the stuff seemed to have been gathered from a multitude of different eras. Some of it would have fit in perfectly in the medieval era on Earth. Other items seemed to be highly advanced alien artifacts.

  All of it was it total disarray, piled up without any apparent concern for function, value, or historical era.

  The only common feature the objects shared was that they were all shiny.

  God, this dragon was basically an oversized squirrel, hording his stash of useless shiny objects.

  Well, not all of the objects were useless.

  By her foot, an ornamental dagger in a jewel-encrusted scabbard caught Katrine’s eye. She stooped, propped her torch against some unidentifiable hunk of machinery, and placed her handful of stones on the floor. Then she plucked up the weapon.

  The blade left the sheath with a steely whisper. Katrine tested the point with her thumb. It was so exceedingly sharp, black ruby blood welled from an invisible slit. She didn’t even feel the sting until a moment later.

  Katrine licked the blood. She re-sheathed the blade and tucked the scabbard into the waist of her skirt.

  The weapon would come in handy. Not against the dragon of course. Katrine had no illusion of taking on a dragon with a small dagger. Besides, she didn’t even want to do that. Sure, he might be keeping her prisoner here, but he wasn’t all that bad.

  Still, there was no telling what might be lurking in depths of these mountain passages.

  A warm wind ghosted over Katrine’s shoulders and stirred her hair. A sound came from the distance. A soft, wet gurgling.

  She picked up the stones and the torch.

  At the far side of the cavernous treasure chamber, Katrine found the source of the sound. It was issuing from one of the many shadowy archways dug into the walls here.

  The sound frightened her, raising her small hairs. But the warm exhalations of wind were also coming from this direction, and that could mean there was an exit ahead.

  Escape.

  Emboldened by the weight of the dagger at her hip, Katrine advanced.

  The torchlight pushed back the murky shadows of the tunnel. The air grew warmer. The gurgling grew louder. Katrine’s heart thumped harder against her ribs.

  And then there was the smell, pungent, stinky, and raw.

  What was up ahead?

  After a few steps more, the answer was revealed.

  Mud.

  Ahead of her, in another much smaller chamber than the one she had just left, Katrine was faced with a large flat expanse of grayish mud. The surface bubbled sluggishly, like a thick stew over a low heat. Each bursting bubble released a stinky vapor into the warm air.

  Katrine stepped to the bank of the mud pond. Tentatively, she dipped a toe in.

  Comfortably warm.

  Still, there was no reason to attempt to cross this pit. As far as she could see, the path did not continue on the far side. It was a dead end.

  Katrine began to turn back toward the treasure room, then paused…

  And idea had flashed across her mind

  Part of her immediately dismissed the idea as idiotic. But another part of her wasn’t so sure. Skal would be returning soon, if he had not returned already. From what Katrine could tell, the dragon had a better-than-average sense of smell, which meant it would not take long for him to sniff her out. Besides that, there was no telling how much farther she would have to go to find an exit from this labyrinth of stone.

  Katrine stared at the burbling pond of gray mud.

  She looked down at the dagger tucked at her hip.

  This was either going to be the best idea she had ever had or the worst.

  She set down her fistful of pebbles and lay the torch on the ground beside them. Next, she removed the simple bone jewelry that she still had around her neck and wrists from the ceremony. Last, she stepped to the edge of the mud pit.

  Briefly, Katrine considered the possibility of getting stuck in this mud pit. Swallowed alive like one of the prehistoric creatures at La Brea. However, when she dipped an exploratory leg inside, her bare foot touched a rocky bottom. The mud was not deep, only about mid-thigh.

  And it felt surprisingly good—warm and smooth and squishy between her toes.

  Katrine grinned as she stepped her other leg inside and began spreading the slippery stuff all over her half naked body.

  This was a very good plan indeed.

  CHAPTER 14

  If anyone had been standing watch atop the craggy peaks protruding above the sea of clouds that night, their eyes would have been met with a curious sight: a winged dragon, his hard scales glittering like blood red rubies in the starlight, was hurrying homeward across the blue velvet sky.

  That in and of itself was not so curious, at least not on this particular world. It was, after all, the Age of the Dragons.

  No, what made this dragon unusual was his enormous burden, which even his sprawling, webbed wings, as huge as a ship’s sails, were struggling to keep aloft.

  From the dragon’s scaled muzzle their hung a dripping giant carp that must have weighed a full ton or more. It sagged in the dragon’s clamped fangs like a small, black whale.

  And that was not all. In its clawed forelimbs, the dragon carried even more goods—an entire darkplum tree, which had been pulled up by its roots. Stirring in the warm breeze, the tree’s leafy boughs were laden with an abundance of purple fruit, pieces of which occasionally dropped off and disappeared into the sluggishly swirling smoke clouds below.

  And in addition to all of this, the dragon bore several bales of dry rushes tucked beneat
h one scaly arm.

  At last Skal reached his mountaintop—the highest for miles around. He landed with a heavy thud, dropped the dead fish onto the stones, and sat for a minute panting. Once he had caught his breath, he gathered up the fish once more in his fangs, and along with his other items, the tree and the rushes, he ducked inside the carven entrance of his layer.

  Skal was feeling much better now than when he had left. In addition to the dead giant carp he now dragged along in his toothy maw, he had already eaten one other, as well as a couple of mountain goats that he had practically swallowed whole. The hollow pit in his stomach was finally sated, but he knew he’d be hungry later, hence the extra carp.

  In addition to his stomach, Skal’s mind was now in a much more positive place as well.

  When he had stormed out earlier, following his argument with Kat, his mind had been rumbling and rolling like an angry stormcloud. However, he had not been able to think about anything during his excursion except for the tiny, defiant human. Even while he had been hunting, his mind had been focused on his atma.

  He could not wait to see her again. His enormous heart pounded faster with each step he took.

  Before reaching the central chamber of his lair, Skal ducked down a side alcove and set aside the fish. The one he had devoured earlier tonight had been fresh. Practically alive. But he preferred his meat aged and ripened. He would come back for this one later.

  He continued on his way, finally arriving at the main domed chamber in the center of the mountain.

  “Atma, I am home.”

  The only answer was the echo of his own voice rebounding from the stone walls and the sizzling whisper of the fire that still glowed brightly in the fireplace.

  I have brought something for you," he added, gently shaking the fruit tree in his claws.

  Still no answer. Where was his little human pet?

  Skal’s eyes fell upon the disordered heap of cushions in the middle of the room, and he grinned. Ah yes. His little mate was feeling playful, and she was hiding from him, just as she had tried to do before.

  The dragon dropped the uprooted tree and bales of rushes by the wall.

  “Hm,” he said to the quiet chamber. “Where could she be?”