Page 33 of Drakhana's Treasure
The darkness has weight. It squeezes me as I try to fight my way out of it. Through it all I can hear a horrible pounding, as if my ears and skull are being forcefully attacked.
When I struggle the bonds hold, then start to come apart. As I throw myself up and thrust away the thick darkness, I open my eyes and for a moment the simmering blaze inside me leaks from my eyes and illuminates the room.
I was only dreaming and struggling with my sheets. The pounding is still going on and I realize someone is banging on my door and my phone is vibrating across the floor.
I run to the door, throwing it open. Zelena is waiting on the other side of it.
“Boss, we’ve got trouble.”
“Big enough trouble to wake me before the sun’s come up? What’s the emergency?” With a wakeup like this I’m expecting there to be a fire or worse.
“The ice dragons have moved into Vegas in force.” She says calmly. She turns around her tablet and points it to me, showing the buildings in town that are occupied by ice clan. Their holdings rival our own.
“They have soldiers in all of these locations?”
“Yes.”
“How do we know?”
“Our Vegas spy network is fully intact. We’ve been following them for a few days and this sudden increase only happened last night. And boss…”
“What?” I keep skimming through photos and video of the ice dragon locations.
“The spy network in LA is pretty much done.”
I lower the tablet slowly, staring at her in disbelief.
“When?”
“Only in the last few hours. They started their mass flight just after midnight. Between then and now our spies have been going offline. By contacting the network and warning them we got footage of the ice dragons coming after them one by one. All of fire clan had been driven back. They had no help.”
“Shit!” I grip the tablet hard enough to break it. I’m about to ask a million questions but I’m still in my jocks and a sheet.
“Get upstairs to the top office. Get everyone in there. You know the crew by now? Get them up there with coffee and something to eat. I’ll be up in a few minutes.”
I rush back in, throwing on a shirt and slacks and running my fingers through my hair. This really is it. I knew that their movements looked lot like a take over. I just kept trying to convince myself they wouldn’t push on for the top spot. If my new business tactics had been allowed to develop then we would have kept our position. We weren’t given that time.
I rush upstairs, pushing thoughts of Kirralee from my mind. We’ll be moving the recruits somewhere safe before anything goes down so I don’t really need to worry about her. Recruits are always put out of things like this. All she has to do is keep her head down.
When I start thinking about full on battles, I see my girl shimmering with fire. I can’t shake the image. Maybe there’s more to Kirralee than even I could know.
“Right.” I stride into the top boardroom, grabbing a coffee as I head to the end of the table. I see Zelena has organized several boxes of donuts and all of our company heads are wearily reaching for the sugar and fat rush, washing it down with black coffee. About fifteen people who run our banks, casinos, investments and profits are assembled here and they all look like they were dragged out of bed.
“Who was on night watch?” I snap.
“I was.” Bailey raises a hand. He and the other newbies sit at the end of the table. I was working control center. I saw ice dragons moving in here and killing security to move in on our turf. Distress calls started coming in from LA and I woke the first response team.”
Zelena stands up and opens an electronic screen on the wall.
“The red sections are us; the blue sections are them. As you can see, they have moved aggressively on our holdings. Not content to wait to buy out the real estate legally or cripple our business by moving in nearby, they have actually muscled us out repeatedly.”
“How many dead.” I say softly.
Zelena meets the eyes of everyone in the room.
“Several hundred.” She says softly. “We don’t have the exact number yet.
“Shit!” My voice just bursts out of me. “How is LA? Anyone left?”
