Defender Dragon (Protection, Inc 2)

It almost killed her to turn her back on the call, but she made herself run into the castle rather than out the gates. Her shoes clattered over the marble floors as she dashed up the stairs. Lucas had gone to an attic to find women’s clothes, and she’d need to hide her incredibly non-Brandusan hair if she wanted to leave the castle without immediately being spotted by assassins.

To her relief, the attic wasn’t hard to find. She opened wooden chests until she found a green headscarf, like Brandusan woman often wore while doing housework, and tied it tightly around her head. Then she hunted until she found a sturdy leather backpack stashed at the bottom of a closet.

Journey checked herself in a mirror. With her hair concealed, she looked like any Brandusan woman. Thank goodness she was curvy. She’d fit right in.

Go! The voice shouted, making her jump. Go now!

“In a minute!” Journey said aloud.

She ran down to the bedroom and swept a medical kit into the backpack, started to run out again, and then remembered that the assassins had used dragonsbane on Lucas. She ran back in, grabbed the bottle of heartsease, and stuffed it into her skirt pocket.

Lucas is in danger!

“As if I don’t know,” she muttered.

Finally, Journey ran to the kitchen and flung dried fruit and several canteens of water into her pack.

Go— The voice began, then shut up as Journey hurried out the door. Once she was headed in the right direction, it seemed satisfied.

She went out the front gates and let her inner magnet lead her in the right direction. That turned out to be cutting straight through the woods, following what she’d seen of Lucas’s flight path.

She tried not to worry so much that she couldn’t think straight, but it was hard not to. What if she arrived too late? What if she arrived in time but couldn’t help him? What could a completely ordinary woman with no special skills do to rescue Lucas, when being a brilliant fighter and a dragon shifter hadn’t been enough to save himself?

Journey hurried through the woods, glad that if nothing else, she was at least used to hiking long distances. Maybe once she got to wherever he was, she could whack his enemies with the backpack.

She hiked all morning without a stop, occasionally drinking water and eating a handful of dried fruit as she walked. At mid-day, the inner voice, which had shut up for the entire hike, suddenly yelled, Here!

Journey jumped in surprise, then snuck forward until she could peek through the trees. “Here” was a castle nestled in the woods, similar to the one Lucas had left her at, but without a wall around it. No one was in sight.

Any suggestions? Journey inquired of her inner voice.

It was silent. If Lucas was in there, and presumably he was, he must be locked up. There was no sound of fighting or shouting or anything at all. The silence was eerie.

Since she didn’t have any better ideas, she snuck around to the back. With any luck, it would have a servant’s entrance. If anyone caught her, she could always claim to be a caretaker.

Journey’s heart pounded as she approached the small wooden door at the back of the castle. To her relief, it opened, though with a creak that made her nerves jitter. No one was in sight. She walked inside, stepping softly to prevent her shoes from clattering over the marble floor.

I wish I was a shapeshifter, she thought. I wish I was a bodyguard. If I get out of this alive, I’m at least going to take a martial arts class.

But though she had no training, she did have her wits. If Lucas was imprisoned here, the logical place would be the dungeon. Dungeons were underground. So she was looking for stairs down or a trap door. Hopefully, not the same stairs that his jailers were using.

Prisoners needed to be fed. If there was a separate servants’ entrance, it would probably be near the kitchen. Using the layout of Lucas’s castle as a rough guide, she searched until she found a kitchen. That had no trapdoors or stairs going down, so she opened the pantry door.

Here! Her inner voice shrieked.

Very helpful, Journey told it. She’d already spotted the door half-hidden behind a cupboard, carved with unnerving scenes of torture and imprisonment.

She had to unload everything out of the cupboard before it was light enough for her to move aside without making any telltale scraping sounds. Then she opened the door to a flight of stone steps leading down into darkness.

Journey began to tiptoe down the stairs. Soon she was in total darkness, forced to feel her way down. She expected to be stabbed in the back by assassins or grabbed around the ankle by a monster at any second. Sweat ran down her back, though the air was cool.

Then she took another turn and saw flickering orange light. Journey froze, listening. She could hear a man’s harsh breathing, but nothing else.

Here!

The steps led to a dungeon lined with barred stone cells, all empty. She crept forward until she came to the source of the light, a cell lit by burning torches.

Lucas was chained to the wall.