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  Heaven’s Crest

  The Dragon’s Dream Saga, Book 2

  by

  D.C. Fergerson

  © 2018 D.C. Fergerson

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. For permissions contact:

  To Cat and Leanna, my girls.

  To Michelle, with the eyes of an eagle.

  To Mom, always showing me off.

  Table of Contents

  The Tempest

  A Week Ago

  Bear in the Woods

  The Great Divide

  High Treason

  A Cause Worth Dying

  Rites of Initiation

  Anchor At Sea

  Voices of the Past

  Bird in a Cage

  Up To Speed

  Playing Politics

  Last-Ditch Effort

  The First Wave

  Earth and Sky, Untamed

  Desperado

  Full Circle

  Day One

  Day Three

  Epiphany

  Day Eight

  Four the Hard Way

  Free Will

  Life’s Tapestry

  Kill Switch

  Peace Talks

  Another Life

  About the Author

  The Tempest

  The headache could have been that bottle of Jack or a concussion. Thinking about it only made Cora’s head throb harder. Moving her arms felt impossible. As her eyes fluttered open, the plastic cords binding her wrists to the chair dug into her flesh. Then there was the blood - so much of it, still slick on her favorite vintage rock shirt. It reflected painfully bright fluorescent light from above, but she couldn’t take her eyes off the puddle on her stomach.

  Trying to wriggle in the chair, the torn parts at the bottom of her shirt separated, and she got her first look at the wound. She gasped at the hole in her stomach to the left of her belly button. She wanted to scream, but a fog covered over her every thought, dulling her emotions.

  “Cora, are you with me?” a voice said at her side. His baritone and manner of speech was ancient, yet familiar.

  She turned her head to the side and saw the glowing amber eyes of the dragon Lucius in his human form. He squatted beside her with a calm, easy smile. She struggled against her restraints, gnashing her teeth and moaning.

  “Easy, Cora. Easy,” he said. His voice was soothing, a juxtaposition to the restraints he undoubtedly put her in. “I have my doctor looking at you. He’s been keeping an eye on your regeneration abilities. He expects you’ll make a full recovery by tomorrow morning.”

  Her head lolled around on a rubber neck, trying to get her bearings. The wooden walls and floor suggested a cottage. The expansive area suggested she was in the living room. At her right, a German man with cybernetic eyes examined her stomach. She hated his shitty casual dress shirt and the tie his wife bought him for Christmas. She hated him most when he pressed a latex-gloved hand to her soft, wounded flesh and brought the searing pain to the forefront of her mind. Seething, her voice hoarse, she struggled to speak.

  “Where..am I?” she said, her voice coming out slurred. Her thoughts remained clear enough that she could tell something was wrong with the rest of her.

  “A very secure place,” Lucius said. “No one will find you here. Blessing or curse, take that as you will. The point is, you’re here with me and we need to have a talk.”

  The familiar sound of a hacker’s fingers typing away on their holographic keyboard, fingers thumping against a table, came from another room. She looked around, but couldn’t see him, only infer he was there. She hoped it wasn’t Gideon. She made his life complicated enough the last time they met.

  “You’re drifting on me,” Lucius said. A finger under her chin gently nudged her back to his beautiful face. His silver hair glistened under the white light. His amber eyes tried to hypnotize her with his gaze.

  “I thought...I thought I was banned from Germany,” she said, shutting her eyes and letting her head fall back.

  “Exceptions had to be made, Cora,” Lucius replied. He patted her knee. “Let me explain. You’re right now under enough Trillozine that you probably can’t think or feel much of anything with a whole lot of passion. You’ll have to forgive me for blunting your charming personality, but Trillozine makes it difficult for you to do things I wouldn’t want you to, like casting spells or lying to me.”

  Cora wasn’t sure if it was the headache, drugs, or the gunshot wound, but Lucius was right - the magic was gone from her. What normally felt like a spark of energy in the pit of her guts that she could summon at will was now a dim bulb in a dank cellar. Another vague feeling pulled to the surface of her thoughts - concern, fear, worry. It wasn’t her emotion, but she was riddled with it all the same. She looked around the room again. A raven perched on a ceiling beam above her, shifting back and forth. If the damn bird would stop worrying and start pecking at her restraints, maybe she could get somewhere.

  “There are a number of things I need to know, Cora,” Lucius said. “You weren’t being forthcoming on the phone and now, here we are.”

  “You dragged me to Germany while I’m bleeding out because I wouldn’t take your call?” Cora asked.

  Lucius smiled with his perfect teeth filling a square jaw. “No, Cora. You’re probably in shock and still adjusting to the drugs, but this is the second time we’ve talked.”

  She searched her memories, but came up empty. Thinking was like running in mud. She tried to remember how she got here, but everything since Heaven’s Crest was a blank. She wasn’t even certain how long she’d been out. She tried to calculate a flight to Germany from where she was, but the numbers danced in her mind, playing leapfrog until she forgot what she was trying to do.

  Lucius pointed to the ceiling beam. “I’m definitely going to want an explanation for that raven. Like why it’s followed you across the Atlantic and dodges bullets. I’m sure it’s an interesting story.”

  “Not really,” Cora replied. “I got really high and brought him back from the Spirit World.”

  Lucius laughed, his pleasure disgusting her. “Just another day, huh?”

  “I am ready, Herr Lucius,” the doctor spoke English with a thick accent.

  The smile wiped from Lucius’ face. He became serious, perhaps even concerned. “Cora, I need you to listen.”

  She pulled her head down before opening her eyes. The overhead light blinded her all the same. Her body alternated between throbbing pain in her abdomen and head. Humoring the dragon, she looked into his eyes. The soft amber glow relaxed her. Those eyes entranced her from the first photograph of him she’d ever seen. Then she recalled how much she hated his guts, which soothed her even more.

  “Good,” he said. “The doctor can’t give you an anesthetic, that would counteract the Trillozine. But he has to get the bullet out of you. I know it’s the last thing you want, but I’m going to hold your hand. You squeeze as hard as you need to. This is going to hurt a lot.”

  Cora couldn’t open her mouth to protest before the dragon turned and nodded at the doctor. Forceps sank into her guts like butter, a piercing pain like nothing she’d ever known. Every muscle tightened, the pain so great it took her breath away. Her hands turned to vise grips. True to his word, Lucius held her left hand. A stray thought of using the pain to break his bones moved through her mind and out the way it came. He may have looked human, but his skin was dense, as though crafted from metal.

  “It’s okay,” he cooed, his deep voice reverberating through the room. “You’re doing great.”

  Cora’s eyes rolled to the back of her head. Her voice came out in grunts and moans, her breaths in shallow puffs. She tried to arch her back before realizing another restraint under her breasts kept her still. Words like ‘stabbing’ and ‘torture’ flashed in her thoughts. She wanted to breathe, find her center, endure, but the medical instrument dug through muscle and tissue like a bull in a China shop. Cora couldn’t bear to look at what the doctor was doing to her. She welcomed the thought of the pain driving her into so much shock that she’d pass out, but it never came. She cried out, unable to focus her thoughts enough to beg the doctor to stop.

  The probing ceased, and with it a great burden of pressure and pain in her abdomen. It was by no means better, but it was less than what she awoke to. The clank of the bullet hitting a metal table marked the end of her living room surgery session. The dragon pet her head with his free hand.

  “That was good, Cora,” he said. “I know that hurt, but you did so well. The doc is going to sew you up, and come tomorrow, the wound will be gone.”

  Dizziness washed over her, further clouding her thoughts. Her adrenaline spiked to the point she was euphoric. Tingles danced all over her arms. Cora looked down at her trembling hands, wrists soaked in blood from pulling at the plastic restraints. Her stomach still had the same horrifying hole in it. Deep beneath the surface of the wound, the slightest spark of magic came back to her.

  The bird in the rafters cawed at her. He was concerned - she felt his worry. The fog was starting to lift. Lucius stood up from her side, turning to the doctor. He glanced at the raven.

  “That may have deadened the effect,” Lucius said to the doctor. “Give her another 8cc’s of the Trillozine to compensate.”

  “As you wish,” the doctor replied, returning to his metal table and producing a syringe.

  “Screw...you, Lucius,” Cora said through gritted teeth.
The syringe sunk into her neck, but she felt nothing. Once he withdrew it, the cold, creeping sensation it provided moved through her like a snake. Her focus fell away, along with her anger. Then her magic faded, until the most she could sense from the bird was that he watched on.

  “There’s my girl,” Lucius smiled. He took a few steps out of her field of view, and came back with a chair. He set it facing her, unbuttoned his suit jacket, and adjusted his tie. At least the bastard had more style than the doctor, dressed to the nines in the finest of British opulence. He sat down and sighed.

  “That was quite an experience, no?”

  “I’m going to kill you someday,” Cora said before descending back into moans.

  The doctor pressed and pinched, applying pressure as he stitched her back up. Lucius shifted in his seat, keeping himself in her view around the doctor.

  “I didn’t know about your regeneration abilities until well after you found out about them,” he said. “You keep surprising me, my dear. The doctor says your abilities are unmatched by anyone he’s ever seen. I tend to agree, and I know far more people than he does.”

  “What do you want, Lucius?” Cora groaned. She was over this conversation-turned-torture session already.

  “The same thing I wanted the first time we did this,” Lucius replied. He reached into his suit jacket and came back with an older-model 9mm pistol. He rested it in his lap. “I have a month’s supply of your favorite whiskey in the pantry. You’re welcome to it, as soon as you give me the information I requested.”

  “Which was?” Cora asked, her mind a fog of confusion and blanks.

  “The Dreamer. I want to know everything that happened since we last saw each other,” he replied. He patted the pistol in his lap. “You can tell me what I want to know, or I can shoot you again. I don’t like doing it, and you’re just going to keep healing from it, so let’s not make the good doctor work overtime, shall we?”

  “Agent 71280, NSA, United Northern States,” Cora said back reflexively.

  Lucius grunted and threw his hands in the air. “Here we go again with this nonsense. Cora, you and I can keep this going for days...weeks. I don’t sleep, and you won’t die.”

  “I’ll clear my calendar,” she replied, pushing through the pain to smirk as she stared back at him.

  Lucius fumed a breath out of his nose. Lifting his wrist, he moved his sleeve out of the way and swiped out a holographic screen from a silver bracelet. With a few presses to the screen on the back of his hand, a cone of light projected into the air. It was a live feed from GNN. A blonde elven woman talked. The inset played of a video featuring a squad of UNS soldiers standing on the edge of a mountain trail. The headline on the screen read, ‘The Brink of War?’

  “...unclear at this time. The tense standoff began yesterday as UNS troops crossed the Demilitarized Zone and have set up a post here, at the foot of the Bighorn Mountains in Wyoming. The Native Council is expected to send diplomats to the UN to denounce the situation, perhaps even later today...”

  Lucius closed the screen. “ Are you sure you have that kind of time to waste, Cora?”

  It was a no-win situation. Her torture-resistance training would demand she recite her agent number as the answer to his every question, but this was the real world and Cora knew better. Lucius could manipulate her regeneration ability to do this to her for weeks on end. He’d never sleep, grow too hungry or too tired or too bored with hearing her scream and cry. If there was even a chance she could get back to the Native Free Lands to stop a war, she’d have to play Lucius’ game.

  “What do you want to know?” she asked.

  Lucius nodded and leaned in. “Smart girl. Tell me everything, from the moment you arrived at Heaven’s Crest last week.”

  A Week Ago

  It had been nine hours since Cora crossed the Demilitarized Zone at the Minnesota border. The UNS was pretty lax about letting citizens leave, it was getting back in that was difficult. Her brand-new Harley roared across the open highways, checking off one state after another left behind. She took the scenic route from Washington, D.C., north around the Great Lakes, then Interstate 90 took her to the border zone.

  The Native Free Lands were less a group of states and more a conglomeration of different tribal people that would no longer tolerate the presence of the United States government. After The Awakening in 2058, which saw 300 million people worldwide magically transform into elves, trolls, dwarves, and Native peoples, the existing cultures of the world fell apart. The United States descended into a long, bloody conflict that ended with the former world power broken in four pieces.

  Cora was born in the year of The Awakening, and was old enough to remember leaving the Native Free Lands behind her. Her father was an elder of the Sioux people that settled in Wyoming. Though instrumental in bringing an end to the Second Civil War, his death spurned her Irish American mother to take her back to Chicago, in the hopes of raising her to have a normal life.

  The thought of ‘normal’ made Cora laugh. Less than five days ago, she was a retiring NSA agent, wealthy, and excited for the future. With her mentor and most of her team murdered in Berlin and the NSA duped into thinking she was a suspect, Cora had to match wits with their target, the dragon Lucius. She still shuddered when she thought of the trail of bodies left behind to clear her name. Lucius’ glowing amber eyes still stared into her soul when she slept at night, no matter how many Jack and Cokes she slammed down to make it go away.

  Today was a better day. She was no longer in the UNS. She had a big breakfast at a diner in Sioux Falls, South Dakota before spending the afternoon crossing the whole state. It was almost dinner time when she made it to Heaven’s Crest, Wyoming.

  The sleepy town rested in the Bighorn Mountains, a sacred place to the Sioux for centuries. Places like this, where the Native people gathered after The Awakening, was the start of the Second Civil War. Many dreamed of places like the mountain, while others felt the call physically, a compulsion to leave their lives behind and reclaim the sacred lands. Cora never felt it herself, having been raised between here and Chicago, but something changed when she arrived. The trees, the air, the untamed wilderness just past the shoulder of the road - everything was right with this place.

  Her uncle was in this small town somewhere. After the events of Berlin, and the growing power of her magic, Cora had questions she hoped he could answer. She stopped her bike at a fuel station and hooked up the power cell on her Harley to charge before heading into the convenience store across the lot. Pulling off her helmet, the sensation of the air around her was almost overwhelming. The scent of the trees, the intensity and variety of colors in their leaves, even the blue sky above was different. It was a far cry from the neon, hologram-laden concrete jungles she left behind.

  Quaint was the only word that fit the small town. She hadn’t seen a traffic light in miles. What few trucks and cars she shared the road with were older models that still used gasoline engines, fueling at pumps on the other end of the station. A small bell jingled as she pushed through the door. A Native man with a deep reddish-caramel complexion smiled from behind a counter on her right. He was young, but his eyes were kind and looked helpful. She stepped to the counter and removed her earpiece. The sound of Joan Jett loving rock and roll still played from the speaker.

  “I was hoping you could help me,” she said, pulling her fingers back through her jet black hair. “I’m trying to find someone that lives around here. His name is Sitting Bear. Do you know him?”

  “Well, I do,” the young man said, rubbing his chin with a finger. “But you’d probably be wasting your time. He doesn’t talk to outsiders much.”

  Cora cocked her head to the side. “I’m his niece. He might make an exception.”

  The boy’s jaw fell open. Whether it was awe or shock, the response surprised her.

  “You’re the daughter of Still River?” he said.

  Cora looked around the small store, as if checking for others gawking. She lowered her voice. “Yeah. What’s the big deal?”

  “We used to play together,” the man replied. He tapped at his chest. “I’m Living Wind...well, back then I was Edwin.”