Destiny Kills

man, but rather a glorious gold and silver dragon, his scales gleaming like polished copper in the sharp firelight.

“Wow,” Carli said, echoing what I was thinking. I doubted I’d ever get tired of seeing his dragon form.

Trae lowered himself down and cupped his front claws so that they formed a chair-like structure. “Ready?” I said to the little girl.

She looked up at Trae, then nodded solemnly. I led her forward, and helped her get seated. Trae gently closed his claws around her, so that she was locked in tight.

I kissed her cheek, then said, “You okay?”

Again she nodded. There was fear in her brown eyes, and perhaps the glitter of tears, but she gave me a tremulous smile nevertheless.

“I’ll see you soon, okay? Enjoy the ride, Carli. It’s lovely, flying right up there with the stars.”

She looked up at that, and her smile blossomed. I touched a hand to Trae’s chest, and he looked down at me and winked. I stepped back, well out of the way.

“Get going, everyone.”

Wings swept into action, pumping hard. The boys lifted off somewhat shakily, but soon they were soaring high. Trae glanced at me, blue eyes bright in the darkness, then sprung skyward after them.

Carli’s delighted laughter seemed to linger in the air long after they’d disappeared.

There were shouts from below, indicating they’d been spotted. I waited for several precious seconds, scanning the sky and hoping there were no hunters about to spring into the air and give chase. No one did, and relief slithered through me. But it was short-lived. I needed to go rescue my mother, before the scientists got the fires under control and I got trapped.

I turned and ran for the stairs.

The journey downward took a quarter of the time, though I was sweating and breathing heavily by the time I took off the old lock and swung the gate open. The corridors were shadowed and silent, and I prayed to the Gods of sea and lake that they kept that way. I ran down the hallway, my feet slapping against the cold stone, the sound echoing lightly across the silence.

I grabbed the still unconscious guard from the cell, and once again carried him down to the next lot of cells, the muscles in my back and legs on fire. In the second cell along, I sensed my mother.

I flopped the guard against the wall near the scanner, holding him upright with one hand as I wiped the sweat from my eyes and sucked in great gulps of air. I was shaking so hard anyone would think I’d run a marathon—and I suppose in many ways I had. A marathon of fear. Fear for Trae, fear for the kids, fear that I’d be back too late to free my mom.

After several more deep breaths, I grabbed the guard’s hand and flattened it against the scanner. Again the scanner read his prints, and the light above the door changed color.

I dragged the guard inside the cell, then turned and looked around. The large room was shadowed and quiet. Water trickled softly to my right, the smell of it warm and familiar. Loch water.

So why hadn’t my mother called the loch? She could have, given time and patience.

To the immediate right lay a basic bed. A bedside lamp pooled yellow light across a sparse rug, and highlighted the dust on the cold stone floors. Beyond the bed lay the open bathroom facilities. My mother was in neither the bed nor the bathroom, but she was here somewhere.

“Mom?” I said softly. “It’s me.”

“No.” There was a long pause, as if she were searching for the right thing to say, then, “I told you not to.”

Her words were slurred, her voice filled with a deep sense of weariness and hopelessness. And pain, great, great pain.

It hurt to think that she’d come to such a point where nothing seemed worth fighting for. But it also hurt that she would think I could simply walk away, leaving her here for these monsters to continually prod, and poke, and sample.

I studied the shadows, trying to pin down her location. “I won’t let you die here, Mom. Come on, I’ve found a way out for us.”

“There is no point. My time is too near.”

Fear clutched at my heart. She had given up on her life. Well and truly given up.

No, part of me wanted to shout. This isn’t like you. We need to fight them. We can’t let them win. Damn it, she’d always been a fighter. Even Dad had acknowledged that. I guess that was part of the reason I’d gone to find her when I was old enough. She hadn’t come, as Dad had promised she one day would, so I’d gone to find and free her. And in the foolishness of youth, had presumed I’d succeed where she had long failed.

What had the scientists done to her that it had come to this?

I finally spotted her silhouette. She was standing near the air-conditioning vent, not facing it but rather with her back to it, so that the slight breeze stirred her hair and flung the dark strands across her face.

For some reason, fear stirred all the more strongly.

“Mom, I won’t leave unless you do.”

“Destiny—”

“No,” I said, more violently than I intended. “There’s no debating this. You’re leaving this goddamn place. They’ve taken you from our lives, taken your life. I won’t let them take you in death as well.”

She was silent for a moment, then sighed. “If you wish.”

“I damn well do wish.”

She hesitated, then stepped forward, and the lampshade’s pale light washed across her face. Or what remained of her face.

My mother had been blinded.

And not just blinded, but disfigured. It almost looked like acid had been splashed across part of her face and her eyes. The left side of her face had an almost melted look, reminding me of the way plastic held too close to a fire softened, then ran. And her eyes—oh God.

I gulped back bile and resisted the urge to look away. One socket had no eye at all. It was just a space filled with scarred and ravaged skin. The other, barely visible under her drooping eyelid, was white. Pure white.

“Not a pretty sight, is it?” she said softly.

There was no bitterness in her voice, no anger, and I think that was even more shocking than what had been done to her.

“Why?” It was all I could say, all I could think to say.

She smiled, though only half her mouth lifted. “They got sick of me trying to escape, so they decided to do something about it. I’ve had a long time to get used to the feel of it, Destiny.”

It certainly explained why they’d never let me see her. I was fiercely glad they hadn’t decided to blind me, as well, and suddenly wondered if Egan had been my savior in more ways than one. After all, I’d done more than my fair share of attempting to escape in the early years of my capture, and blinding me most certainly would have stopped that.

But maybe they figured that having a mutilated female wouldn’t have done their aim to have a breeding pair too much good.

“That’s just—”Words fled. Somehow, monstrous and evil just didn’t seem to cover what they’d done adequately enough. I took a deep breath in an effort to cut the sick churning in my stomach, then said, “Was it deliberate?”

“They intended to take my sight, so yes, but my strength took them by surprise and it went slightly wrong.” Bitterness crept into her voice. “Even after all this time, they are still surprised by the things we do. Despite all their technology, they have not learned that much about us. It is, perhaps, the only blessing in this whole mess.”

Anger swirled through me. “Damn it, Mom, why didn’t you call the loch? Why didn’t you punish the bastards for doing this?”

“Because I can’t.”