Dragon Spell: Fated Touch Book 1 (Dragon Shifter Romance) E-Book

Mac Flynn

• Herausgeber: Crescent Moon Studios, Inc.
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

Jane is a normal orphan with unusual grandparents. She doesn’t realize how unusual until she returns on holiday from college to discover that her grandmother has been kidnapped. Her grandfather reveals that her kidnappers are a new foe from an old world, and her grandmother’s only hope is for them to travel to the other side after her.

The Shifting World, however, isn’t as easy as ours. Every monster, witch, demon, and other mystical fable that haunts the fairytale books of our world resides among those lands. Jane finds herself stumbling through one adventure after another as she tries to learn the ropes, and the magic, of the new world in order to save her grandmother, and herself.

Even a place as strange as the Shifting World, however, has its familiar handsome men. One of them is Caius, a dragon shifter with a sly smile and a glint in his eyes. He joins their search for her missing grandmother, but Jane isn't so sure it isn’t another member of her family that he’s interested in.

Leseprobe

Dragon Spell

Fated Touch Book 1

Mac Flynn

Copyright © 2019 by Mac Flynn

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Appendix

Continue the adventure

Other series by Mac Flynn

Prologue

From tragedy, hope springs eternal.

For me, that hope was a long time coming. My parents were out on the rare dinner night. It was their anniversary, if I recall. Six years of marriage, and four of them with me. I’d been left with my grandparents, the ones who had raised my dad. Grandpa was always a blast, letting me ride his back, and Grandma was the best cook in the county.

Then the doorbell rang. That sound was long and hollow, like the tolling of a church bell at a funeral. My grandmother answered it. I can remember sitting on the floor of the living room with Grandpa. The doorway looked into the entrance hall. Two policemen stood on the stoop. Their voices were low, but the pity in their eyes was loud and clear, even to me.

Grandma’s hand flew to her mouth and her eyes widened. Tears pooled in them as she stumbled back.

“Bee!” Grandpa shouted as he flew to his feet and hurried over to her. He caught her before she dropped.

She spun around and buried her face into his chest. Her sobbing wracked her body. It was then that I knew that something truly terrible had happened. Grandma never cried. The policemen left. Their terrible duty was done. Now my grandparents had their own terrible duty to do.

Grandpa helped Grandma into a chair and came over to me. He knelt in front of me and clasped my hands in his large, worn ones. His eyes looked into mine. He was trying not to cry.

“Jane, there’s. . .there’s been an accident,” he told me. I nodded. I knew about those, but why was he crying? “Your parents. . .your parents’ car rolled over. They didn’t make it.”

“Make it to dinner?” I remember asking him. I didn’t want to face the truth. Why would I?

He shook his head. “No. They’re. . .they’re dead, pumpkin, but don’t you worry. Grandma and I will take care of you.”

He had more words of comfort to give to me, but I didn’t hear them. I couldn’t hear them. My parents. Dead. I was just old enough to understand what that meant. It meant they weren’t coming back. No more of Mom’s smiles. No more of Dad’s piggy-back rides. Gone. Fleeting innocence vanished in a single instance.

Tears welled up in my eyes. Grandma wiped her own and joined Grandpa in front of me. She opened her arms. I fell into them, balling my eyes out.

“It’s okay, sweetie,” she whispered to me through her own tears. She couldn’t stop them coming any more than I could stop mine. “We’re going to take good care of you for them.”

Grandpa wrapped his arms around us, and for a long time we sat on the floor joined in our grief.

Maybe that’s why I’m so close to them, and why it was so shocking to find out just how little I knew about them.

1

Tears dry eventually, and I had a lot of time to dry mine. My grandparents helped, especially during those first few months. It was a hard transition from one life to the next, but their quaint little two-story cottage nestled up against the last remnants of wilderness in the city limits helped ease my pain. There were trees to climb (and fall out of), squirrels to chase (and be chased by), and the quiet walk through the brambles (followed by a hard scrub of peroxide against my many scratches).

Quiet. Peaceful. Secretive. There were some places I couldn’t go, and the rules were laid down as I broke them. Curious as I was, it didn’t take much time to break all of them.

The first started with a curious exploration of the attic. The little cottage’s attic was a narrow strip along the highest peak of the roof, and over the rafters of the second-floor ceiling were placed ply-wood and on top of that were chests and boxes filled with the unknown.

My grandparents thought I couldn’t reach the ring on the attic trap door, but I reached it via an end table in the hall and a heavy stack of books swiped from my grandfather’s extensive library on the first floor. My precocious self grasped the ring in both hands and gave a might tug. The trap door came down followed by the heavy wooden ladder. It hit the floor just shy of scuffing the top of my grandmother’s end table.

I rhetorically wiped my brow and scurried up the ladder to the unknown. The attic was dark, lit only by two small windows at either end of its long stretch. They showed the setting sun. My grandparents would be home soon from their card party. I crept along the ply-wood that acted as the floor and feasted my eyes over the many trunks and boxes.

One of the boxes caught my attention. It was rectangular and made of a dark wood. The faces were unadorned except for the lid which had a honey bee flying in front of a bolt of lightning. My young, childish mind thought they were cute, so I plucked it from its stack and tried to pry open the lid. No-go. A small silver lock in the clasp kept me from discovering the mysteries of what I had dubbed The Bee Bolt Box. I tried to pry it open with the nail of my pinky finger, but it wasn’t a good substitute for a pick.

As I was still fumbling with the lock the shadows outside lengthened. A faint sound came from below me, but my complete concentration lay on prying that wonderful box open. Maybe I could use it as a jewelery box, or maybe a box to put my little glass animals. Or maybe-

“Jane!”

I yelped and spun around to face the trap door. The last glimmer of sunlight disappeared from the windows, and only the glow from the hallway light gave my weak eyes a look. My grandfather’s face peeked out from the floor like a disembodied head. For a second I thought his head had come to scold me for my prying like some haunting figure. That got me screaming and in my fright I dropped the box.

My grandfather’s eyes widened and he used the floor to lung up and forward. He stretched out his hand and caught the box in his palm.

My grandma peeked her head above the floor and looked around. “My goodness, it’s dusty up here.”

“And that makes it no place for a young lady,” Grandpa added as he set the box back in its place courtesy of the dustless spot atop the boxes.

Grandma’s eyes fell on the box and her face lit up in glee. “Are we to have-”

“Dinner,” he interrupted her. “Isn’t it about time for dinner, Bee?”

She sighed, but a little smile played across her lips. I quickly learned that that look meant trouble or teasing, or both. “Oh, I suppose so. Come along now, you two, before you change into a couple of shades.”

“But I can’t be shade,” I protested in my infinite four-year old wisdom as my grandfather shooed me toward the trap door.

“You won’t be because you’re staying out of here,” he assured me as we climbed down the ladder. Grandpa pushed the door back into the ceiling and turned to me with his steely gaze. He knelt in front of me and set his hands on my shoulder before he looked into my eyes. “Now Jane, I’m going to lay down a few rules. The first rule of the house is you don’t go up to the attic.”

“Why not?” I wondered.

“Because it’s dark up there.”

“But I’m not afraid of the dark.”

“And musty.”

“I like dirt.”

“And you’re not supposed to be up there.”

“But why?”

A snort escaped my grandfather’s lips as he shook his head. His expression was less of annoyance and more of admiration. “You’d make a good High Inquisitor.”

“What’s a high quizzer?” I asked him.

He shook his head and stood. “It’s nothing. Just forget I said it.”

“But why should I-”

Grandma took my hand and led me toward the stairs. “How about we start dinner together, Jane? You can help me boil water for the spaghetti.”

That was a good distraction. Spaghetti was my favorite meal, not least of which because the meat balls my grandma made were always huge. However, that didn’t entirely wipe the episode off my mind.

I glanced over my shoulder and looked forlornly at the shut attic door. Maybe someday I’d go back.

2

That little adventure happened a long time ago. Two decades, to be exact. Nearly my entire lifetime, and at the ripe old age of twenty-four I found myself wondering what to do with my little old existence. College was nearing its end without a focus-or job-in sight, I was without a boyfriend, and my roommates were too fixated on theirs to be of much company. So what was a lonely girl to do to think her life over?

Maybe she’d go home, and that’s exactly what I did. Home to that little cottage nestled against the woods with all its wonderful memories. Maybe the scent of the summer trees and the green grass would reinvigorate my tired soul.

I gave them a call, was rewarded by a quick chat with their answering machine, and headed off for the far reaches of Colmouth, a city of bright lights, hot concrete, and a cute little cottage with my room waiting for me like a shrine waiting for its god. Seriously. My grandma had preserved it since my leaving four years before. For that I was grateful and amused, mostly because my grandpa had had plans to enlarge his library by consuming my former bedroom.

The main road into the city passed through the fields and forests that made up the hinterlands of the large hamlet. The sun was starting to set as I reached the thick patch that abutted that little cottage. I rolled down my window and breathed in the fresh scent of leaves and morning dew that survived in the darkest shadows of the woods.

As I rolled to a stop along the wide shoulder of the road and took in the sights. It was a surreal moment. Beside me was the busy traffic of the normal world, and before me lay the mystical land of untouched wilderness. A part of me yearned to know what lay in those shadows.

A flock of birds flew out of the trees. Their screeching broke the misty spell of the silence and made me start back. In that brief moment something inside the shadows moved.

I leaned forward and squinted at the growing darkness, but only caught the dark trunks of trees and bushes. The black forms of the birds disappeared in the distance, leaving nothing but the silence once more.

Still, a small voice inside me warned me that something wasn’t quite right. I put on my blinker and eagerly rejoined the traffic.

My childhood home was only three miles from the road as the crow flies, but the roads weren’t as straightforward. Twenty minutes later found me pulling into the driveway. A beat-up old pickup, a rustic relic my grandfather refused to get rid of, sat in the left-hand spot while my usual spot was open to me.

I stepped out and looked up at the quaint, two-floor cottage. The firehouse-red shutters smiled down at me like heavy mascara against the tan walls of the rest of the house. The door was a brilliant violet purple courtesy of my grandmother’s zany fondness for colors that didn’t match. I remember them receiving a lot of complaints from the home owner’s association, and one letter was especially strongly worded. It had demanded my grandmother remove from the lawn a herd of stuffed beavers she had acquired from a taxidermist friend. That had been a prickly situation.

I tugged my two suitcases out of the passenger seat of my small car and hefted them up to the stoop. A small sign on the left of the door made me pause and smile. It read Cave Canem, Latin for ‘Beware of Dog.’ The funny thing was we’d never owned a dog, but my grandfather was so fond of the old saying, dusted off from one of his many books, that he’d put up the sign, anyway.

I opened the door-they never kept it locked-and stepped into the small hall. The stairs to the second floor stood against the wall to my left, and on either side of me were doorways to the rest of the ground floor, along with a narrow hall to the back rooms of the house.

I dropped my suitcases in a pile at my feet and took a deep breath. “Grandma! Grandpa! I’m home!” My grandmother flew out of the dining room on my left and clasped one of my hands in hers. Her large blue hair comb, an ever-present fixture atop her head, nearly wedged itself up my nose. She looked up into my eyes with such a pleading look that I almost laughed. “You’ve lost something again, haven’t you?”

My grandfather followed after her and ran a hand through his wispy, thinning white hair. “And very well, too. We’ve looked everywhere for the phone, but we can’t find it.”

“So you guys didn’t get my message?” I asked him.

He snorted. “We haven’t been able to find the blasted thing for a week.”

“Did you try calling it?” I suggested.

He shook his head. “We would but we’ve only got the one, and its battery is dead.”

I snorted. “I wondered why I got sent to your answering machine without a ring.”

Grandma squeezed my hand and her lower lip trembled. “You’ll find the poor thing for us, won’t you? It’s lost somewhere in this large house.”

I smiled and patted the top of her hands. “It’s all right, Grandma. I’ve got this.”

I slipped out of her clutches and stepped into the living room. My fingers danced over the side table on my right as I scanned the room. The phone wasn’t in the obvious places. Maybe it wasn’t obvious. I tapped the cover of a book that lay near the lamp on the table. Maybe it was-

Something caught my attention. I squinted at the bookcase against the wall to my right. A smile slipped onto my lips. “I think I may have found it.”

I walked over to the bookcase as my grandparents stepped into to the doorway. Three of the large volumes were pushed out from the wall. The usual habit of my grandparents was to have the books pushed against the wall so they could put small curiosities in front of the books. I reached behind the books and a moment later drew out my hand, and the missing phone.

Grandma clapped. “So wonderful!”

I shrugged as Grandpa took the phone. He glared at the object. “So much trouble. . .”

“It’s a marvel of modern technology, Simon,” Grandma scolded him.

He scoffed. “Modern is a subjective word, Bee.” His gaze fell on me and he noticed I was staring hard at the bookshelf. “Something the matter, pumpkin?”

I swept my eyes over the bookcase. “No, but it’s just-well-” I snorted and shook my head. “It’s nothing.”

“Nothing is something,” he argued as he took the phone from my gleeful grandmother.

“It’s just that I always thought there was something behind this wall,” I admitted as my eyes fell on the space where the phone had been hidden. Near the three books sat a dry tome about the inner workings of a sexton. “You know, like a secret passage or something like that.” I reached out of the book.

“Shouldn’t you get to unpacking before reading?” Grandpa advised me.

I dropped my hand and turned to him with a teasing smile. “You guys don’t mind me moving back for a little while and cramping your style?”

“We’ll manage somehow,” he quipped with a devilish glint in his eyes.

Grandma stepped up and grasped my hands in hers as she smiled at me. “Welcome home, Jane.”

And what a welcoming party awaited us that night.

3

I trotted upstairs and to my intact bedroom. Even the fluffy kitten sheets were unchanged, though cleaned by my thorough grandmother. I dropped my suitcases onto the floor and plopped my butt on the foot of the bed.

Introspection was never pleasant, and I didn’t find it so then. College, a job, life. None of it sounded appetizing. I looked down at my hands that lay in my lap. Surely there was something more that those pale hands could do with themselves.

“Jane!” Grandpa called from downstairs. “Your grandma’s dinner is ready!”

“I’m coming!” I replied. I stood and let life-choices drop to the background of my mind. Dinner was ready, and I needed to prepare my stomach.

My grandfather was an adequate cook, but my grandmother was insane. Boiled beets in jello was a staple of the table. Another favorite of hers was chicken drumsticks served cooked in a roast. How she got a dozen of those drumsticks into a single ten-pound roast was beyond either of us.

I girded my iron-clad stomach and proceeded downstairs. A hint of chicken gave me a hint, but it turned out I was on the wrong scent. I reached the dining room doorway and paused.

There, spread out on the table, was a sane meal. The drumsticks were on a plate that didn’t include a roast. Nothing floated in the jello. Even the orange juice was without its usual pulp the size of Alaska. My grandmother sat proudly on the right side of my grandfather with him at the table, and there-on his left-was my seat, pulled out and ready for me.

“I thought that after such a long time with that bland college food you might take some time to get used to normal food,” my grandmother told me.

I smiled. It was good to be home.

We supped on the delicious food and dined on a white wine dredged up from the rough-stone and dirt-floor basement. The conversation was more intelligent than most of my college lectures and wandered over such topics as gardening, Cicero, and deep-sea diving. My grandfather was a fountain-well of knowledge equal to the legendary Well of Urd from Norse myth. I considered him Odin, nickname he took as high praise, especially since he hadn’t even needed to trade an eye for his knowledge.

We finished dinner and after the dishes were cleared we all strolled into the living room. A more apt name for the room was a library extension. Half the walls were covered in bookshelves. A television sat in a corner, used only by my grandmother to watch the cooking channel.

A large window looked out on the backyard and a smaller one on the front lawn. The shadows of the trees loomed over the tiny house like a giant over David, but in the warm light of the living room we settled into our usual chairs. Well, except for my grandma. She sat in front of the television with her legs crossed and watched a chef roast a duck. I shuddered to think what evil ideas entered my grandmother’s mind.

A clock hung over the unused fireplace that was the centerpiece of the room. It stood opposite the doorway, an imposing piece of architecture made of rock taken from the local area and smoothed to near-perfection. My seat of choice, a well-cushioned armchair, sat near the chimney.

As I read one of my grandfather’s many books on medieval farm equipment a dry smell hit my nose. It was the scent of ash. I glanced at the fire. We hadn’t used it in a decade after the last fire nearly consumed the house. A few bits of ash floated down to the empty tray. My first thought was a stuck bird, so I closed my book and kept my eyes on the ash as it grew more pronounced.

“Guys, I think there’s a-”

A huge deposit of ash dropped from the chimney and splashed over the tray. The gray dust spread over the room, causing us all to jump up and cover our mouths. The ash invaded my mouth and I could hear my grandparents cough, but only their dim outlines were visible to me.

Another outline caught my attention. This one came from the chimney. The dark figure crawled on all fours out of the hearth and stood. As the ash cleared I could get a good look, and what I saw made my jaw hit the floor.

This was no Santa Claus. The creature was as bulky as the jolly elf, but that’s where the resemblance ended. Its face was that of a man, but with a piggish nose and tusks that protruded from either side of its mouth. The thing wore a dirty shirt of the roughest wool over which hung a vest of equal cleanliness. Its feet were covered in leather shoes and the billowing pants were made of the same rough material as the vest. At the thing’s waist tucked between its bulk and its belt hung a saber.

The thing unsheathed its weapon and pointed the blade at us. Its voice reminded me of gravel with a hint of a shoe squishing into mud. “Against the wall!”

My grandfather narrowed his eyes at the intruder. “Who are you?”

“I said against the wall!” the thing barked. We apparently didn’t move fast enough because the creature charged Grandpa with the saber as its battering ram.

Grandpa sidestepped the fiend and drew out his leg. The piggish man tripped and skidded snout-first across the hardwood floor. He hit the carpet in the entrance hall and flipped over. His nostrils flared and he fumbled for his sword that lay by his side.

“You’ll pay for-”

“That’s enough,” a new voice spoke up.

The intruder looked up. Another pig towered above him, but this new intruder wore a clean but old cloak. His spiny hair was neatly combed back and he smiled as he bowed his head to us.

“Good evening, Bee. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you, Sage.” The figure looked them up and down, and shook his head. “Time hasn’t been kind to you, has it?”

“Who are you and what do you want?” Grandpa snapped.

“Who I am is Gargan, leader of the Porcine Pirates,” he introduced himself. “As for what I want-” his eyes flickered to my grandmother, “-I’d like Bee to accompany me on a little adventure.”

She wrinkled her nose. “I’d rather not. I don’t like ham.”

“And we’re retired,” Grandpa added. “So just return from where you came from and never come back here.”

Gargan chuckled. “I’m afraid I went to a lot of trouble to find you, so I’m not leaving without some compensation.”

My grandfather grabbed the lamp closest to him. “I won’t let you take her without a fight.”

Gargan leaned his head back and let out a great, belly-jiggling laugh. “You? Fight me? Have you looked at yourself?”

My grandfather darted up to the pig and jabbed the sharp top of the lamp into Gargan’s gut. The man gave a wheezing breath and stumbled back. He doubled over, giving my grandpa ample angle to crack the lamp over the back of his head.

Gargan went down hard to the floor. His bloodshot eyes looked up at my grandfather with fury. “Men!”

More pigs stampeded out of the dining room and from the hall. They jumped my grandfather and tore the stumped remains of the lamp from his hand. Another socked him in the gut.