Unleash the Storm

Book 5: Steel & Stone

by Annette Marie

Genres: Fantasy action & adventure; Post-Apocalyptic Fantasy; Dragons & Mythical Creatures; Urban Fantasy; Young adult

Synopsis

Piper thought she could handle the Sahar, the most powerful magical weapon in existence. She thought she could protect her loved ones and stop a war. She thought she could make a difference. She was wrong, and her mistakes were paid for in blood.



Leaving her world-and her failures-behind, she retreats to the Underworld with Ash and the other draconians. They forge deep into long abandoned mountains, the first draconians to fly the valleys and passes in centuries-or so they thought. Until now, Ash's mysterious heritage has been nothing but a name, but his presence does not go unnoticed. A new danger stalks him, one that may be even greater than what they escaped.



Cut off from the power she'd come to rely on and lost in a world where she doesn't belong, Piper has never felt so hopeless. But she must find her strength, and find it quickly, before she loses Ash to an ancient power he can't fight, before her home is devastated by the daemon war, and before her mind, body, and soul are consumed by the Sahar's insidious magic.

Release date: March 4, 2016

Publisher: Dark Owl Fantasy Inc.

Print pages: 448

Sample

Chapter 1

Piper crouched behind the boulder, her heart beating fast against her ribs. Stretching her neck, she peeked over the top of the rock and squinted at the shallow gorge ahead, cloaked in harsh shadows. She flexed her fingers as she scanned for signs of movement.

Beyond the gorge, towering mountains pressed close on all sides, leaning over her no matter which way she turned. The bold, jagged peaks cut at the sky like stone blades. She was getting used to it, but the feeling of claustrophobic insignificance still caught her in unguarded moments. High above the mountain ridges, the two suns of the Underworld glared brightly over the dark rocks. They lit one curved sliver of the massive planet in the sky with gold light, the other half invisible like a waning moon.

The mass of Periskios, the mysterious planet, was about to swallow the first sun. The two stars travelled the skies side by side, one preceding the other each dawn and sliding below the horizon ahead of its brother before night claimed the land. The patterns of light and dark in this world weren’t the predictable days and nights of Earth. Some nights were pitch black and short, while others went on and on, the darkness broken only by the glowing planet in the sky. Murky twilight would taunt her with the promise of coming light, only for the suns to linger out of sight for hours before appearing.

As she squinted upward, the first sun crept closer to the left edge of Periskios. Light flared brightly as it slipped behind the planet, then dimmed. Slowly, she straightened her legs, keeping bent at the waist to stay hidden behind the boulder. Darkness was coming—the terrifying pitch black of the eclipse night—and the reduced visibility would be far more of an advantage for her adversaries than for her.

Her skin prickled, an instinctual warning. She spun around.

Black wings flashed wide as a draconian dropped off the cliff wall behind her. Swearing, Piper sprang onto the boulder and leaped off it as the draconian slammed into the ground where she’d been standing. She dropped into a roll and came out of it in a full sprint, charging down the gorge. Her daemon muscles surged with strength and her dairokkan trailed behind her like shimmering ribbons. She risked a glance over her shoulder. Her adversary lifted a hand, a spell already forming.

She dove to the side. The spell hit the rocky ground and exploded in a shower of pebbles. Her right hand connected with the ground as she spun in a one-handed cartwheel and landed on her feet, running again. She dashed into the gloom of the gorge. The ground grew steeper and the rocky walls closed in on either side. She slid on the loose rocks underfoot, struggling to maintain her speed and balance as she dodged boulders.

A flash of movement on her left. She sprang right and spun, skidding as pebbles cascaded down the gorge. The second draconian launched out of the shadows barely three feet away. Icy terror washed through her. She threw her hands up and caught his forearms as he bowled her over. She hit the rocky ground on a scaled shoulder. Yanking her feet up, she planted her boots in his stomach and snapped her legs straight. He flipped over her head and landed hard, wings splayed over the rocks.

Piper rolled to her feet, leaped over him, and bolted down the gorge. The end beckoned. Sunlight sparkled on the stream as the water rushed perpendicular to her path. Fluttering in the breeze, a strip of red cloth was tied to a tree branch sticking out of the bank. Anticipation surged. She was almost there.

She spotted the third draconian up on a ledge, already casting a spell. Diving, she came down on her hands and launched into a forward flip. The spell blasted a hole in the rocky ground behind her. She landed on one foot, skidding awkwardly to regain her balance on the loose shale, and stumbled back into a run, lungs burning.

The ground leveled out and the gurgling sound of the stream filled her ears. Two huge boulders stood like sentries on either side of the gorge walls, leaving a narrow passageway she would have to cross to reach the stream. The perfect place for an ambush, with no way to tell on which side her attacker was waiting. Running through the center would be stupid. She had to pick a side.

Her last attacker had been on her right, so she charged the boulder on the left. Leaping off a nearby rock, she landed on top of the boulder and jumped down, intending to slam feet first into the draconian hiding behind it.

Her feet hit gravel in the gap behind the rock. No one there. Damn it! She frantically scrambled out of the gap, head whipping side to side as she searched for the next attack.

A body slammed into her back. She crashed down on the pebbly slope, her arms pinned to her sides and a pokey pair of knees digging into her back.

“Do you surrender?” her assailant growled from above her.

“Ugh,” Piper panted. “Fine. I surrender.”

Her attacker laughed, her high, bubbly voice echoing off the gorge walls. The weight left Piper’s back and she rolled over, chest heaving as she caught her breath. The draconian stood over her, hands on her hips, wings half-spread and tail snapping back and forth as she surveyed her victim with a grin.

“We knew you would think we were hiding behind the boulders,” Raisa boasted, “so I hid nearby instead. It was Sivan’s idea.”

Piper grimaced as she clambered to her feet and brushed gravel off her clothes. It didn’t surprise her that Sivan had anticipated her train of thought and used it to plan an even better ambush.

“You’ve lost four times in a row now,” Raisa informed her, bouncing on the balls of her feet.

“I can count,” Piper grumbled. Tackled by a kid. So embarrassing.

Crunching rocks announced the other draconians as they came down the gorge. Kiev flashed her a smile as he scrubbed dust out of his wavy hair; he was the one she’d flung over her head with her feet.

“You were pretty close that time,” he told her.

She shrugged, her gaze flicking to Sivan. The second draconian boy brushed past them without a word, and she was surprised the ground around his feet wasn’t frosting from the arctic aura around him. When she’d first met him, her immediate reaction was relief that Kiev had been the boy who needed her help and not Sivan. She seriously doubted Sivan would have been as gracious as Kiev about being put in the care of a haemon girl.

Seiya glided down from the ledge where she’d thrown her attack at Piper. After landing, she carefully folded her wings, the motion too precise to look natural. The injury to her wing from weeks ago was still healing.

“That was good,” she said. “You’re getting better at assessing the terrain quickly.”

Piper shook her head and sighed. When she’d asked for help learning how to fight outside the limited scope of her Consul training—meaning one-on-one fights with the purpose of diffusing the situation, not killing your assailant—she hadn’t realized just how large the gaps in her skills were. Even something as simple as running through a gorge while under attack was difficult; she had to choose her path, try to locate potential enemies, keep track of assailants she’d already downed, anticipate potential ambushes. But she was learning—and learning fast. These “games” were also teaching her how to use her daemon form more efficiently and were improving her physical conditioning. She needed to be as prepared as possible for whatever was coming.

Following after Sivan, she and the others exited the gorge and splashed through the stream to the far bank. Kiev grabbed the stick with the flag and they trudged upstream while Raisa chattered about her epic takedown of Piper.

Piper smiled ruefully and didn’t comment. Raisa was just old enough to want to keep up with the teenagers but too young to actually compete. But it was good that she wanted to try; not all the female draconians were interested in learning combat skills.

Her head tilted back as she took in the surrounding peaks. The second sun neared the brightly lit sliver of Periskios. Soon it would disappear too.

They’d been travelling for almost three weeks, by her best estimate, though “weeks” were not an applicable measurement of time in this world. With each cycle of light and dark, they’d moved deeper and deeper into the endless Underworld mountain range. Ley lines probably ran through the mountains somewhere, but without knowing where they were, they had no choice but to travel the long way. That was the downside to ley lines: daemons could only use the lines they knew about.

The area they were travelling through was former draconian territory, once fiercely protected by the Taroth family. The Hades family had assimilated the more hospitable regions of Taroth land after destroying the family, but they hadn’t bothered with the mountains; only a caste with wings would want to live here.

But Piper wasn’t sure why the Taroths would have wanted to live here either. The mountains were beautiful but harsh. The large forests were mainly coniferous trees and supported little life, and the soil was too rocky for agriculture. It wasn’t like the lush, rich lands of the ryujin, that was for sure.

She and the others followed a bend in the streambed and, as they came around an outcropping of rock, their camp was revealed. Eight female draconians and an incubus sat around the small fire, with a handful of low, brown canvas tents behind them. She huffed, blowing her bangs away from her face as a sickening whoosh of dread slid through her, but it was over quickly. Through a combination of fluke and necessity, she and Lyre had discovered a way to counter the Nightmare Effect: constant exposure. Short of life or death necessity, she wouldn’t recommend it as an option to anyone.

When she’d learned months ago that going through the Void to another world created daemon glamour, she hadn’t considered that daemons who hadn’t been to Earth wouldn’t have glamour. Which meant all the females, except Seiya, had no glamour to use to protect Piper and Lyre from their Nightmare Effect.

Being constantly surrounded by draconians out of glamour had not been fun. In fact, Piper and Lyre had wondered if they would live through it, not knowing if they could ever adjust. They’d both dropped weight, too sick with fear to eat, before they’d finally desensitized, to everyone’s relief. Now she only got twinges of fear if she was away from any of them for a length of time, but it quickly passed.

Waving a hello to the women around the fire, Piper dropped down beside Lyre on a blanket spread over the rocky ground. It had taken her a little while to get used to him in draconian garb. The fitted black leather looked good on him—everything looked good on him—but it was still a little odd. She supposed she looked just as peculiar wearing a mix of draconian gear and her bright, shimmering ryujin top.

Raisa bounded past her and plopped down beside Shona, her mother, and reiterated the whole story of Piper’s defeat in glorious detail.

“Went well?” Lyre asked Piper.

“If you call getting trounced by a kid going ‘well,’ then sure, went great.”

“Every little bit helps,” he said sympathetically. “You need to condition yourself to our world. I felt woozy for weeks the first time I went to Earth. It takes a while.”

She didn’t mean to complain; her pride was just taking a beating. She really did need to build up her strength, especially since she needed to keep up with a bunch of draconians. The Underworld was kind of like being at high altitude—the air was thinner and everything was more difficult. And she was literally at a high altitude on top of that.

With a final bright flare, the second sun disappeared behind Periskios, fully eclipsed. For a minute more, a thin line of light glowed along the left curve of the planet, then that too faded. Utter darkness fell across the land, erasing the surrounding mountains from her vision.

She hunched closer to the fire, the only source of illumination, and let her gaze wander from one face to another. Though not all present at the moment, there were fourteen draconians in total, including Ash and Seiya. Four males, ten females. On the other side of the fire, a wisp of a girl sat on her mother’s lap, holding a crudely sewn stuffed dragonet toy. Yana held up the toy, spreading its wings out as though it were flying, and looked up at her mother with one large, sky-blue eye. Her other eye was covered by a white patch held in place with ties woven into her dark hair. Piper hadn’t asked yet what had happened to the girl’s face; she wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

Sivan, sitting opposite Piper, held a curved knife in one hand and smoothly ran a wet stone down its length. The sound of rock on steel made her grit her teeth. Beside him, his half-sister Jezel chewed on a piece of dried meat and stared at the fire with a scowl. They were about the same age, with different mothers but the same father—one of the draconian males who’d died in recent years.

Piper was still sorting out how everyone was related. Kiev alone had a mother, sister, two aunts, and two cousins among the fourteen draconians. As far as Piper knew, they’d avoided any inbreeding, but Samael must have been desperate to add some new blood into the gene pool. His best option would have been Ash, who’s only relation among the entire group was Seiya, but as Seiya had mentioned months ago, Samael had never managed to coerce Ash—though his steadfast refusal had resulted in severe punishments for him and Seiya both.

A shiver ran through her as her gaze slid to the woman sitting closest to the fire, holding her hands toward the flames to ward off the cooling air. With the sides of her head buzzed short and spiky red hair flopping over her forehead from the longer section on top, Coby looked like she could beat up any guy who ticked her off—but the swell of her belly told a different story. Though she appeared around the same age as Piper, she was noticeably pregnant. The father of her unborn child, though, was dead.

The visible proof in front of her that these women had been used as broodmares made her sick. That same fate had awaited Seiya, cheerful Raisa, even little Yana, so shy she rarely left her mother’s side.

Raisa jumped to her feet, startling Piper out of her thoughts, and pointed skyward. “They’re back!”

Piper looked up but couldn’t see a thing in the darkness. Only when firelight caught on the reflective steel of their gear and weapons did she spot them. Wings spread wide, the two men glided to the camp and landed a dozen yards away. Her heart hammered, partially from the spike of fear triggered by Raum’s return, partially from the relief of seeing Ash again.

Folding his wings, Ash strode to the fire. Lyre pulled a water canister from the pack behind him and held it out. Ash accepted it and tipped his head back to drink, putting his back to the fire—probably to warm up from the chill air of the higher altitudes. Raum stopped behind the women on the other side of the fire. Yana detached from her mother and silently approached him, holding her arms out with the dragonet toy hanging from one hand. He reached down and scooped her up, holding her with one arm while Ivria passed him his own water canister.

Piper tore her eyes away before she got caught staring. It still blew her mind to see Raum casually holding his daughter like any other father. She didn’t know why it hadn’t occurred to her that he would have children, but his refusal to escape Asphodel before this made all the more sense to her now. He would have been abandoning his own child to suffer the punishment of his betrayal.

Ash dropped down on the blanket beside her, breathing deep. Her eyes moved anxiously from the dark circles under his eyes to the hollowness of his cheeks. He was pushing himself too hard. He should have been taking it easy while he finished recovering from the injuries he’d sustained in the Overworld. Whenever she and the others were resting, Ash and Raum were scouting the path ahead or backtracking to check for pursuers, sleeping only in short bursts.

As Ash closed his eyes, the water canister hanging from one hand, Piper exchanged a worried look with Lyre. But there was no way to talk Ash into taking it easy. Raum couldn’t do all the scouting himself, Kiev wasn’t experienced enough, and Seiya’s wing was still healing.

“How did it go?” Raisa asked eagerly. “Anything interesting?”

“Still no signs of habitation ahead,” Raum replied. Yana leaned her head on his shoulder, hugging her toy. “We’re almost out of this barren terrain. We’ll reach more hospitable valleys soon.”

“How much farther do we have to go?” Jezel asked, her voice flat as she waved her piece of dried meat in irritation. “How long do we have to keep this up?”

Coby snapped her glare to the teenage girl, one hand pressed to her round belly. “However long it takes to be safe, girl. Do you want to go back to Asphodel instead and see how Samael rewards you for your absence?”

Jezel tossed her short hair out of her eyes and tore off another bite of her jerky.

“Let’s pack up,” Raum said. “I want to put out that fire as soon as possible.”

Kiev and Sivan rose and started to dismantle the nearest tent. Lyre stretched with a muffled groan and began picking up the scattered items nearby. With everyone occupied, Piper slid closer to Ash and touched his hand.

“How are you holding up?” she murmured.

He glanced at her, his gray eyes weary. “Fine.”

“Ash, please. You look ready to keel over.”

A trace of a smile touched his lips. “We’re almost there. Another half-cycle, and we can set up a more permanent camp and rest as long as we need to.”

“Half-cycle,” she repeated in a mumble, her eyes lifting to the black sky where the unseen planet lurked. The stars had come alive, glittering in the sky.

Underworld daemons didn’t track time through days and nights; those terms were meaningless in this world. Instead, they counted cycles. A cycle began with a day of light that ended in the unnatural night caused by the regular eclipse where Periskios blotted out the suns, casting a deep darkness over the world. Another day followed the eclipse before eventually giving way to the longest night Piper had ever experienced. When the darkness finally yielded to the suns again, the cycle began anew. The full progression took the rough equivalent of seventy-two Earth-hours.

With each cycle lasting about three Earth days, “weeks” were pretty meaningless. According to Ash and Lyre, ten cycles was about a month, which was how she was translating her current stay in the Underworld into three weeks, but daemons rarely marked time with any kind of precision; they really only counted cycles and seasons. She would never have guessed from her interactions with them on Earth that daemons had little interest in tracking the passage of time beyond the basics.

Pulling her eyes away from the black sky, she stood. “I’ll help pack things up. You stay put and rest.”

He nodded and closed his eyes. She suppressed her worry about his health and crossed the camp to help Raisa, who was struggling to bring down a tent by herself. She glanced back at Ash, sitting alone, and it struck her again how different he looked without glamour compared to the other draconians.

Her first sight of him among the entire group had been a shock. They all had the same wings and tails, the same dark scales running over their shoulders and the tops of their arms down to the retractable claws that tipped each finger. But Ash’s three horns on each side of his head were unique, and the dark, swirling patterns that marked the transition of scale to skin were much clearer on him than any other draconian. The others looked almost washed out in comparison. Natania was probably right; seeing him next to so many of his kin, Piper had trouble believing he wasn’t a Taroth descendent.

Though the other draconians’ Nightmare Effect could still influence her, she continued to possess complete immunity to Ash’s. She’d eventually gotten around to asking him about it, and the way his face had softened at the question made her stomach swoop. Trust, he’d said. Complete, utter, fearless trust. The magic of the Nightmare Effect fed off even the slightest hint of fright, and only a total absence of fear or doubt—conscious or subconscious—could negate it.

“Whatchya staring at?” Raisa asked, peering around Piper’s shoulder to follow the direction of her gaze. She pulled a funny face as she collected the tent poles and folded them into shorter rods. “Ash again? You see him all the time.”

Piper blushed at getting caught staring—again.

“He just doesn’t quite match the rest of you, that’s all,” she said, pulling her eyes away to concentrate on laying out the canvas.

“Oh, yeah, well, he’s always been different.”

“What do you mean?”

Together, Piper and Raisa folded the material into a small square.

“Well,” Raisa said, “I was pretty young when he tried to escape with Seiya, but before that, my mom always told me to stay away from him.”

Piper paused, bent over the tent as she looked at the girl. “Why?”

Raisa widened her eyes. “He never listened. He was constantly disobeying orders and getting into fights with guards. He was always in trouble, and my mother didn’t want me to get in trouble from being nearby.” The girl grinned. “I always thought he was really cool—but kinda scary too. Then he almost escaped, and after that he was never around much. Samael was always sending him away or locking him in the bastille so he wouldn’t cause problems.”

“Ash did it on purpose.”

Piper jumped in surprise, turning to find Jezel standing behind her, licking the salt from her snack off her fingers.

“He told me once that he would never let it be easy for Samael,” the girl said.

“Let what be easy?”

“Owning draconians.”

Raisa beamed. “I told you he was cool. And then he escaped! The first one to ever escape and not get killed after.”

“Escaped with your help,” Jezel said to Piper, her flat tone a stark contrast to Raisa’s enthusiasm. “How did that happen, exactly? You’re a weird haemon, but still just a haemon.”

“A lot of luck and some outside help,” Piper replied, keeping her tone friendly. She tipped her head toward the last tent. “Can you help us pack up that one?”

Jezel glanced at the tent, looked back at Piper, then walked away—in the opposite direction of the tent. Piper sighed. Teenagers. Had she been that bad a few years ago?

Raisa rolled her eyes as they headed for the last tent. “Don’t mind her. She’s always like that.”

“At least I’ve got you for company,” Piper said. “If I were stuck with just Jezel and Sivan, I don’t know what I’d do.”

Raisa giggled and Piper hid a momentary flicker of guilt. She really shouldn’t judge any of the draconians for having morose attitudes, considering the pasts they’d only just escaped. Pushing her bangs out of her face, she pulled open the flap of the tent. Inside, a heap of snoozing dragonets took up most of the space.

“Okay, guys,” she told them. “Time to rise and shine!”

A couple heads popped up from the pile and sleepy golden eyes blinked at her. Zwi climbed out first and nudged a couple of the others. A few firmer nudges, then a sharp nip to someone’s flank. A yelp and they were all up at once, trotting out one by one—Zala, Nili, Teva, and five others. Zwi fluffed her mane importantly and strutted out last.

The dragonets stretched their wings while Piper and Raisa dismantled the tent and packed it up. She carried the packs over to the pile by the campfire, where Ash still sat, dozing with his chin propped on the heel of his hand. Piper stood beside him as Kiev joined them. Teva, his dragonet, appeared at his ankles and transformed in a whoosh of black fire. He quickly loaded the dragon with supplies, strapping the packs firmly to Teva’s back. One dragon could carry four fully loaded packs, weight that would have only slowed down the draconians.

A woman joined Kiev, her grayish blue eyes scanning the remaining packs. Mahala was one of the older women—probably in her early twenties, which was pretty old for Samael’s draconians. Only her sisters, Shona and Denna, were older. Mahala clucked her tongue softly and another dragonet hopped over and transformed. Kiev and Mahala loaded the dragon quickly.

Piper watched Mahala surreptitiously, curious about the woman. She was quiet, rarely offering her opinion on anything, but she didn’t have the soft, motherly air of her two sisters. She reminded Piper of an older version of Seiya, lithe and graceful with a high ponytail of long, raven-black hair and eyes that seemed to see everything.

Ash rose to his feet beside her as Raum returned to survey their work. With rushes of fire, three more dragonets transformed—Zwi, Zala, and Nili. Already familiar with the drill, Piper climbed onto Zwi’s back and got comfortable, stroking the dragon’s mane. Raisa hopped on behind her, tucking her wings out of the way. Lyre mounted Nili, and Seiya lifted the second youngest girl—Netia, a tiny waif of a thing—onto Zala’s back before climbing on as well. Yana, the youngest, would be carried in her mother’s arms.

Raisa sighed glumly as the other draconians stretched their wings to warm up their muscles to fly.

“I wish I could fly,” the girl grumbled.

Piper glanced back to see Raisa watching Jezel enviously. She’d learned since joining the group that draconians weren’t capable of flight until well into puberty. It would be a couple years still before Raisa’s wings were strong enough for anything more than short glides.

“Same formation,” Raum announced. “Is everyone ready?”

Piper glanced around as everyone nodded, their faces lit with harsh orange light from the fire: Denna, Shona, and Mahala, the three older sisters. Ivria, holding little Yana in her arms. Coby, one hand resting on the bulge of her stomach. Kiev and Sivan, with Jezel standing between them. Seiya and Netia on Zala’s back. Raisa behind Piper. Lyre astride his dragon mount. And then Ash and Raum, decked out in weapons, ready to fight to protect them all.

Raum spread his wings and sprang upward. Sivan and Jezel went next, then the women, then the dragons. Piper clutched Zwi’s mane as the dragon took three running steps and jumped toward the sky, laboring the get them airborne. Kiev brought up the rear, following in Teva’s wake.

She looked back. Below, Ash was a dark shadow on the ground as he extinguished the fire. He would circle the camp, carefully obliterating the signs of their presence before catching up to them. She bit her lip, facing forward again, and squinted against the wind. The others were barely discernible silhouettes, but ahead, a tiny flickering white dot marked Raum’s location and provided a point of reference as they followed him blindly through the night.

She marveled at the bizarre chain of events that had brought her here. Months ago, she could never have imagined she would be hiding in the Underworld with a group of refugee draconians, flying through the desolate, majestic peaks of the Taroths’ former territory in search of a place to make their new home.

Longing twisted in her gut and squeezed her throat. A new home. Her old home was gone—blown up, the remains nothing but charred rubble. She needed to put down new roots, needed somewhere to call her own, but she wasn’t sure this was the place she wanted to call home.

--

Unleash the Storm
The Steel & Stone Series / Book Five

Copyright © 2016 by Annette Marie
www.annettemarie.ca

All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations for review purposes.