Page 37 of Klaus

And yet…

Through the fog of my memory, something tugged at me. Something just at the corners, ready to slip through my fingers unless I closed them tight. What was it, though? I fought to bring it back, whatever it was, certain it was important.

I’d heard something, hadn’t I? Something familiar. A familiar voice.

Not my dragon. Was it? Had it been her? Somewhere in my head, she still existed. The more I repeated this to myself, the truer it sounded. She was still in there. I only had to find her again. Soon.

When one of them took my shoulders and forced me to sit up, I bit my lip to hold back a cry of pain and could taste my own blood. My vision swam, my stomach churned. I was going to vomit.

“You’d better not even think about throwing up,” the one with the rifle growled. “I don’t feel like having to smell your sick while we’re here.”

I wanted to tell him to go to hell, but I had no desire to test his patience. Not when he held that gun. I’d seen what it could do.

There was no option but to keep back the nausea, to breathe as deeply as I dared and focus on holding down whatever wanted to come up. It felt like ages but was likely no more than few minutes before I felt confident opening my mouth to speak.

“Why are you here? What is the purpose to this?” I didn’t wish to lift my head, but I could raise my eyes high enough to get a look at both of them.

One was tall, dark-haired, with a nasty sneer. He had the rifle. The other was much younger, with fair hair and barely a trace of stubble on his cheeks. A child.

A child who had called me an animal.

If there was ever a time for the dragon to make her appearance…

The young man grinned, leaning against a tree with his hands in his pockets. “We came here to finish what the rest of our first team started, of course.”

“Shut up,” the other one snarled. “She doesn’t need to hear any of this. I don’t want you shooting your mouth off, trying to sound like a big shot.”

“She asked a question, I gave her an answer,” the child replied with a shrug. It didn’t matter to him, either way. He was having a good time, proving to himself what a big man he was by kidnapping a woman he didn’t realize was all but defenseless.

We were in the woods, or at least a wooded area. I didn’t recognize it, however, not the way I would’ve immediately recognized the woods which sat just beyond the entrance of the cave. The ground was considerably stonier.

I turned my head to the left, moving slowly and with extreme caution, and through slight spaces between the trees, I saw the side of the mountain. We were beside it, as opposed to before it. Perhaps in the rocky areas between the valley and the mountain, where trees grew in tight clusters.

“Am I the only one you took?” I asked, remembering the way I couldn’t find Klaus. If they had killed him…

The older man eyed me up and down. “What difference does it make?”

“It makes a great deal of difference,” I spat, quickly losing my self-control. What did it matter? They would kill me because I wouldn’t be able to shift. Because my dragon was gone, because of that damned bastard who’d destroyed me. “Perhaps you don’t understand this since you obviously have no soul, but there’s such a thing as caring for others. I care for the people in that cave.”

“People,” the child snorted.

“Shut up,” I snarled, my head whipping around before I could think twice about the pain which would surely result. What difference did any of it make? I’d be dead soon, wouldn’t I? Pain wouldn’t matter. “They’re people, just as you believe you are. And they would never consider doing something as barbaric as what you’re doing to me, as what your friends did to the rest of us. Gunning down the innocent, and why? Greed? You’re pathetic.”

The butt of the gun smashed into my face, and I heard a cracking sound in my head as my nose broke and blood began pouring down my face, over my chin.

“You’d do well to watch what you say,” the man with the gun warned, the butt of the weapon poised over my face as though he was readying himself to strike another blow. “I would hate to destroy that pretty face any further.”

I didn’t say a word, letting my eyes do the talking as I glared at him.

He smiled, his thin lips quirking up to reveal dimples in an otherwise serious face. “Boy, you’ve got some life in you. It’s a shame we had to meet under these circumstances. The spitfires are the best.”

I spat blood at his feet in reply, cutting my eyes back up in his direction in time to catch his look of utter disgust. Good. He knew just a small bit of the disgust he caused me.

“You bitch.” He raised the gun again, ready to deliver what would surely be a stronger, more brutal blow, when a growl made the three of us turn our heads as one.

A fully-grown lion bounded out of the shadows, roaring as he did.

The child let out a scream of pure horror, fumbling for his rifle with shaking hands. I watched with mixed horror and pleasure as Klaus slashed at him with long, razor-sharp claws, tearing crimson stripes down the side of his fair face and throat.

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