Dragon Conjurer 4, page 1
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Chapter One
I inched across the damp grass while I kept one eye on my teammates and the other on the ten vampires gathered in front of us. They were standing in a semi-circle and preparing for the dark ritual we were sent to prevent, and so far, they didn’t seem to have any clue we were closing in on them.
The early morning New England air was brisk and damp, and each gust of wind sent dead leaves shuffling across the ground. Goosebumps ran up my arms, but I couldn’t tell if they were caused by my cold, dark surroundings, or by the group of blood-sucking monsters standing just a few yards away in a mist-covered graveyard.
As if he could feel my discomfort, Beyblade snaked between my legs, and his fiery body sent waves of warmth up my calves.
“Thanks, buddy,” I whispered to the wingless red dragon.
I glanced over at my teammates, and the three French students, my three AIMM cadets, and all three of my dragons looked wide-eyed and ready to jump into action. Even Nick seemed prepared. My solar-powered friend was usually unable to get out of bed before sunrise, but the four Red Bulls he drank on the plane were probably to thank for his alertness.
“You guys ready?” I asked, and all nine of my teammates bobbed their heads in unison. “Prepare for capture formation, and remember, we need a couple of these guys left alive. Beyblade, hang back and wait for your moment. The rest of you, let’s go kick some vampire ass.”
Like a well-oiled machine, we emerged from the tree line and into the cemetery in perfect sync.
To my left, Leon balled his fists and increased his molecular density, and Michel’s arms lengthened into lanky and suction-cup-covered tentacles. Elisabeth’s delicate frame morphed into the form of a muscular timber wolf, and tufted ears sprang from her head while her heavy forepaws struck down into the dirt.
To my right, Nick disappeared into the foliage, and Nala extended her arms to start manipulating the ground. Steffi flew overhead already, and she prepared a ball of magical fairy energy in her hands.
Then I felt a whoosh of air from behind me as my blue and white dragons zoomed ahead toward the vampires.
The monsters were pale in the waning moonlight, and the creatures’ shrieks when they leapt back made it clear we had caught them off-guard. A few of the vampires let out a soft hissing sound and staggered around while they stared at my overhead dragons, but others morphed into bats in a flash of dark smoke.
“Ky and Goldie!” I called to the blue and white dragons. “Follow Steffi and take care of the flyers. Everyone else, assume capture formation!”
“Sir, yes, sir!” Nick shouted as he popped up near me and saluted, and he vanished out of sight a moment later.
Just like we had practiced back at the Academy, my team got to work. Steffi unleashed her golden dragonfly wings and took to the sky while preparing to shoot balls of sparkling fairy energy at the huge vampire bats circling above. My blue and white dragons followed her up, and the waning moonlight danced across their wings.
As the flyers shot bursts of air, ice, and fairy dust at the blood-sucking monsters in the sky, the ground forces got down to business.
The grounded vampires were trying to spread out with their claws at the ready, and as the hissing continued, I could tell they were pissed off that we had interrupted their cult meeting. The tallest and loudest among them held a staff, and I made a mental note that this one must be the leader. Two of the unarmed vamps crouched down into a pouncing position on either side of him, and the staff-wielding one waved a clawed hand over the head of his weapon.
Then it started to glow with some kind of magic energy.
With a howl, the timber wolf to my left rushed toward the vampires, and while wolf-Elisabeth circled around the vampires from the left, Nick popped up on the opposite side of the group. Leon joined in, and the three of them triangulated their positions and pressed inward to block any escape paths. They were herding the vampires, and I braced myself to see how this might go down.
One vampire lunged at Elisabeth with its fangs bared, and it grabbed onto her wolf fur with its long, clawed fingers. The wolf snarled and twisted to try and gain the upper-hand, and she managed to clamp her maw on the vampire’s leg, but this didn’t free her of its hold.
Just as the vampire was about to dig its teeth into Elisabeth’s back, Leon leaped over to the dueling pair, and with a single dense fist, the French student pummeled the vampire into the dirt. It laid motionless, but I wasn’t sure if it was dead or just stunned by the strength of our brawny teammate.
“Nala, your turn!” I called over to the dark beauty.
Nala was standing by, and on my cue, she dug her feet into the ground, let out a yell, and lifted her arms. Along the perimeter that Elisabeth, Nick, and Leon were making around the vampires, the earth rumbled, and the ground started to rise up and create a wall.
“Ky!” I called to the dragon in the sky. “Come pick me up! We need to keep the vamps from escaping!”
The moment the words escaped my mouth, the blue ice dragon swooped down, and I leapt onto his back. In one smooth motion, we were in the air, and we circled over the ever-growing dirt wall that Nala was making.
We knew the vampires could morph into bats, so we wanted to keep as many of the monsters contained within the dirt enclosure as possible. This would make it easiest to keep them alive, and then we’d be able to transport them back to the Academy.
Ky and I flew low over the dirt wall, and we periodically shot ice balls down into the enclosure to scare the vampires into submission. The creatures growled up at us, and their red eyes glinted in the waning moonlight.
The staff-wielding vampire bared his pointed teeth and thrust his boney finger at me, as if it were trying to place a curse on me. He’d clearly singled me out as our team’s ringleader, and with a guttural shout, the monster lifted his staff and sent a jolt of bright white light shooting out of the weapon’s glowing head.
“Out of the way!” I shouted to Ky.
The dragon did a barrel-roll to avoid the vampire’s blast, and then Ky sent an immediate attack back down at the vampire.
The leader was thrown backward from the shock of the icy blast, and his staff flew out of his grip just before he was encased in a thick, frigid tomb.
Nala was quick to bury the staff before any of the other vampires could get their pale claws on it, but as Ky and I were fighting the vampire leader, one of the unarmed beasts had taken advantage of our distraction.
The monster morphed into a bat with a flourish of dark smoke, but just as it crested the opening of the enclosure, a slimy tentacle shot out of the darkness and wrapped around the bat’s body.
“Not today, mon ami,” Michel laughed from his post beside the barricade. Then the French cadet not-so-gently flung the bat back into the enclosure.
From above, I could see the other grounded vampires shrink back into the darkness of the dirt enclosure.
They had to know there was no way for them to escape.
I shot Michel a thumbs-up and then glanced over to see how Steffi and Goldie were faring with the other escaped vampires.
Though the bats were hard to see in the dimness of the early dawn, I was able to catch glimpses of them whenever Steffi’s energy balls streaked across the sky. The bats swarmed around the pink-haired girl, and when she wasn’t flinging balls of energy at them, she waved her arms above her head to shoo away the monstrous animals.
My pixie dream girl’s powers illuminated her bright-pink hair the whole time she fought, and her glowing aura paired with her flight made her look like an angel.
A badass, monster-killing angel.
“Careful! Watch those fangs, Steff!” I called over to her.
“I know!” Steffi huffed in a flustered tone. “These assholes are hard to hit!”
Then she let loose two more balls of energy that both missed their targets.
“Alright, Ky, let’s go help her out!” I commanded the blue dragon, and Ky and I circled around to face the swarm of bats. “Goldie! Let’s do Frost Breath!”
I gripped tight to Ky’s body as my pearly-white wind dragon soared into view, and then I sat back and let the dragons do what they did best: kick monster ass.
The dragons flew parallel to one another so close their wingtips almost touched. Goldie’s pearly body stood out against the dim sky, and bits of ice on Ky’s body glinted in the waning moonlight. The two beasts faced the bats swarming above Steffi, and she dodged out of the way just in time. Then, in perfect harmony, the dragons opened their mouths and released a dual-blast of icy air.
The frosty onslaught encased the hideous bats, and like a Looney Tunes bit, the bat-cicles seemed to hang frozen in the air for a few seconds before they fell. I chuckled a bit while the frozen bats plummeted downward, and just before they reached the ground, Steffi raised her hands and blasted a quick series of shots from her palm.
One by one, the bat-cicles each burst into a mess of ice, bat guts, and pixie dust. It was the coolest and goriest fireworks show I had ever seen, and when I looked over at the fairy-girl, she sent me a mischievous grin.
“Got ‘em,” Steffi giggled.
“Almost done!” Nala’s voice rang out from her position at the tree line. “Oh, shit!”
I whipped around, and just as Nala was about to finish closing up the top of the dirt enclosure, two bats flew out of the small opening and into the early morning sky.
They’d gotten a sudden bout of bravery, it seemed. Apparently, we needed to teach them what happened to monsters who tried to escape.
Steffi shot two blasts of her fairy energy at the frantic vampire bats, but they missed their marks. The stray blasts met the tree line with a crash instead, and an oak tree split in two with a sickening, splintering sound.
Even in the dim light of dawn, I could see Steffi wince.
“Oops,” the fairy-girl whimpered.
“Goldie, we’ve got two stragglers! One more Frost Breath attack!” I called out to the pearly-white female flying nearby.
As soon as the words left my mouth, a blast of icy wind rushed toward the bats, and the white dragon increased her wind current while the blue dragon between my legs spewed an icy, crystalline haze into the mix.
It was a clean strike.
The two bats fell to the ground as bat-cicles and were immediately scooped up into the toothy mouths of Beyblade and wolf-Elisabeth.
I grimaced. “Gross.”
The timber wolf snorted at my commentary, and her eyes twinkled up at me while she gnashed her teeth.
“Alright, Beyblade, the enclosure is set,” Nala called from a few yards away. “Whenever you wanna come and harden this dirt, I’m ready.”
The dark beauty’s muscular arms were still outstretched while she kept the dirt in place, and I could see sweat droplets forming on her forehead and biceps. Her earth bending powers held out, though, she had a determined grin on her face while she waited for an assist.
Beyblade slithered over with a proud flick of his serpentine tail, and he hopped onto the pile of dirt and began scurrying over it. I could hear the muffled hissing of the last few furious vampires seeping through, but Beyblade was already hard at work, and as he crawled, he left hardened patches behind him like the whole thing was a huge clay pot being dried in a kiln.
Nala chuckled proudly while she watched my red dragon work his magic on her massive, earthen tomb, and the dark beauty glistened in the sunlight now peeking over the horizon.
The vampires were successfully contained, and we’d captured them just in time. If we had been any later, they would have either flown away or burnt to ashes in the sunlight.
Steffi and Goldie landed on the ground nearby, followed by me and Ky. Then Nick, Leon, and a now-human Elisabeth jogged over to admire Nala’s handiwork, and a moment later, Beyblade leapt off the side of the vampire enclosure.
Nala let out a heavy breath and dropped her arms, and she bent over and put her hands on her knees as sweat dripped down from her forehead onto the cold ground below.
“You’ve really outdone yourself this time.” Elisabeth grinned as she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
“You’re definitely getting more efficient,” Steffi added as she patted the dark beauty’s back. “But you need to be sure you’re not pushing yourself too hard.”
“I-I’m okay.” Nala straightened and put her hands on her hips. She smiled her bright, gap-toothed smile while her dark skin glistened with sweat, and we locked eyes.
I could easily have lost myself in her ebony eyes, but the sudden crackle of radio static ripped me from my thoughts.
“You kids done? It looks pretty quiet down there,” Silva’s voice echoed from Nick’s waistband.
Nick unstrapped the radio and pressed the communication button. “Dragon One, standing by for pickup. I repeat, pickup is a go.”
“Have you gotten anyone to play along with the whole ‘Dragon One’ thing, yet?” I chuckled.
“Not yet.” The lanky nymph smirked. “But I keep hoping.”
Ky padded forward and gave me a look that seemed to say, “Hey, the others ate all the bat-cicles, and I’m getting hangry. I want to go back inside now.”
His footsteps were surprisingly light for how big he was getting. In fact, all three of my dragons were getting bigger. Thanks to the sudden influx in missions this past week, they were getting stronger, too.
All my team members were getting stronger.
I glanced at the cadets around me, and I couldn’t help but feel a swell of pride at the group. My dragons were incredible and powerful and badass, but a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and as I looked at the people around me, I didn’t see a single weak link.
Steffi slipped her hand into mine, almost as if she could read my thoughts.
“You were amazing, darling,” she purred with a smile. Her golden eyes sparkled in the early morning sunlight while the sunrise framed her head like a warm, orange halo.
A few moments later, Silva arrived, and he landed the plane on the other side of the cemetery. I hurried to call my dragons back to me, and with three flashes of light, my tattoos reappeared on my skin.
Nala, Nick, and I grabbed one cage from the cargo hold while Leon, Michel, and Silva grabbed the other. The cages were solid metal all around so the vampires wouldn’t get burnt to a crisp by the sun, and we brought them over to the containment enclosure that Nala had made for the vampires.
“Okay, so how do we get them out without them escaping?” Nick asked while Nala opened our cage and pushed its opening flush against the dirt wall.
Nala winked at the nymph, and with a snap of her fingers, she created an opening in the earthen enclosure that was perfectly cage-sized.
There was nowhere for the vampires to go but inside the cage.
As expected, the vampires flooded into the cage, and luckily, it was large enough to hold two of the monsters. The two cages we had would easily be able to transport the three vampires that were left alive.
After gathering the vampires in the cages and loading the cages back onto the plane, we all boarded, and it wasn’t until I sat down that I realized just how tired I was.
We’d had to wake up in the middle of the night to make it to the east coast before sunrise. The day before, we’d had a particularly tough mission with a team of goblins working alongside a family of giants, and that job alone would have been enough to leave us exhausted for a couple days.
The entire past week had been much of the same, though, not just for us, but for everyone at the Academy. There had been an increase in monster activity all across AIMM’s jurisdiction, from icy Nova Scotia down to rocky Cape Horn, and it was up to us to make sure the rest of the world didn’t know about it.
Which was normally the status quo, but it looked like the status quo may be taking it up a notch from now on.
Not only were there more frequent monster attacks, but there were also more attacks by monsters who were working together.
This was unprecedented and new to everyone at the Academy, including the monster experts like Dr. Hastings and Headmaster Burkhard.
My team had already gotten some experience with these kinds of attacks. Only a week ago, we’d faced a Wendigo, a Giantess, Pukwudgies, and Skinwalkers, all of which were working in tandem. Against all odds, we had come out the victors, but none of us realized at the time that monster teamwork was going to become the new norm.
Luckily for us, the vampires had been working alone this morning. This fight was almost a respite from the new norm.
Elisabeth grabbed my hand and pulled me from my thoughts. The beautiful redhead was seated next to me on the plane, and Nala sat just across the aisle with Steffi seated next to her.
“You were really great today, Dylan,” Elisabeth said in her French accent, and a smile played at her lips.
I leaned down to give her a kiss, and her warm lips melted against mine, but then I felt a pull against my other hand and turned to see Nala and Steffi pouting.
“Hey, don’t forget about us!” the dark beauty blinked her large, ebony eyes and pouted her lips.
Before I could respond, Nala hopped out of her seat, grabbed my face with both hands, and pulled me into a sloppy kiss. Her tongue met mine, and her fingers made their way upward to my hair so she could grip me by my roots. After several seconds of toying with my tongue and running her hands through my hair, Nala released her grasp and left both of us gasping.
