Dragon Mage: Dragon Point, #7

Introduction

The end is nigh! according to the media, which is fascinated by the four cloaked figures riding out of the desert. A headline that’s about as believable as the existence of dragons.

Truth or hoax? Daphne isn’t paying much attention because she’s busy geeking out over the awesome relics that just came into her museum. She’s giddy at the prospect of getting to see them up close, until she drops one.

In her defense, she was attacked...by a guy made of smoke. Things might have turned out really bad if she’d not been rescued by a stranger.

A man who is also a dragon.

Yup. Dragon. It turns out they are real and super hot. Azrael is also domineering and dangerous with the most toe-curling embrace.

But passion will have to wait. Azrael needs Daphne to help him save the world. With two of the seven seals broken, they will have to work fast before a monster is released from its prison.

The previous books in the series (see EveLanglais.com):

***Each book follows a couple to their happily ever after.

Prologue

The end of the world began its steady march because of a cat. No one was surprised.

Somewhere in an arid land, where the sun beat down, baking the dirt, at the very rear of a shelf, in a closet rarely opened, sat a bottle that never gathered any dust. More than a century now it had occupied that spot. And before that, ten times as long in another home, showcased with pride. An heirloom passed down along the generations, so many of them that the story of the glass amphora was lost, its true value forgotten. Thus the bottle was hidden away and ignored.

The amphora bided its time. Settled quietly on that shelf, unassuming, waiting. Over the years, the muffled voices and noises that penetrated its hiding spot changed, as did the bedding shoved into this rarely used closet, each new sheet and pillowcase pushing the container farther back until it found itself in the farthest corner, never even sensing daylight.

It waited some more.

One day, something exploded nearby—it could have been a bomb or even a gas stove—rattling the very structure of the house, shifting the old stone. The bottle wobbled for a second, but cushioned between the wall and bedding, it steadied.

The house remained standing. For now.

But the process had begun. A crack appeared. Then another.

No one repaired the damage. And it got worse. A bullet came right through a window, the angle just right to hit the wooden closet door, where it remained wedged. Not close enough to help, but apparently enough to empty the house.

It didn’t remain abandoned for long. Transients moved in, searching the place top to bottom, looking for anything of value. They rummaged in the closet, shoving in their arms, their hands never quite reaching deep enough past the musty sheets to find the bottle.

The closet slammed shut, and the amphora quivered. Close. So close.

It wasn’t long before they returned, yanking on the sheets and blankets stuffed in the closet. They pulled out everything they could, revealing the bottle.

The glass was dragged forward enough to be seen. Daylight at last.

Freedom was at hand.

Open me.

Rather than crack the top, the less-than-gentle hands shook the amphora. Peered at it. It almost got tossed to the ground.

Do it.

The bottle was placed back in the closet, intact. The vagrants left, but they didn’t close the door.

Soon a new occupant moved in, a feline with ribs showing through its fur and a crooked-tipped tail. It sauntered past the closet, teasing with its leisurely walk.

Come here.

The cat didn’t even deign to look. It left.

But it returned the next day. It entered the closet, drawn by a bobbing pinpoint of light refracted from the bottle. The cat chased it around, almost knocking over the amphora. It came close a few times, but the feline proved too graceful, teasing the amphora instead with the silken rub of its fur. As if to taunt, it spent the night curled around the bottle.

It took several days before the feline finally tipped it over and rolled the glass close enough to the edge. The tip of it protruded over the shelf. So close to falling.

Just give it a tiny push.

Because cats were ornery, it pushed the bottle away from the edge to the back of the shelf.

The bottle waited some more.

The feline skipped a few days before returning, this time playing more roughly with the bobbing pinpoint of light, knocking the glass hard enough it rolled to the edge.

Almost there…

The bottle didn’t fall, but it wouldn’t need much.

Here, kitty, kitty. Less actual words and more a thought. A command the cat ignored. It lay down and groomed itself.

Had to admire its suave nature. The bottle bounced a pinprick of light, trying to draw its attention. The cat chose to lick its genital area instead.

Apparently, today was not the day. Or maybe it would never happen. It should resign itself to spending eternity on the shelf.

The cat rolled and stretched, reaching out a paw that it placed on the bottle. Right on the spot. Only the slightest nudge would send it over the edge. The anticipation made the amphora hum with sound.

The feline growled and rolled to its feet. It hunched over the bottle.

Push me.

The cat hissed.

Hit me. The bottle glowed and hummed some more. The cat’s growl rose in pitch, and it batted the threat.

The bottle tipped and dropped to the hard tile floor. It didn’t so much shatter as splinter. Hairline cracks formed in the glass. The cat leaped down beside it and sniffed.

The impact lines spread, and a hum of sound escaped. A hint of something other. The cat cocked its head and leaned closer for a better sniff just as the bottle exploded.

The cat yowled and wished it were somewhere else.

An ancient scream was released as the prison disintegrated, setting events into motion.

Deep in a desert, the ground trembled as an ancient tomb opened. Fissures appeared in the hard-packed dirt, turning it back into sand, the fine grains and pebbles sinking into the earth. An entire section dropped away, showing a widening funnel that swirled, churning rock into sand and getting bigger, as if a stopper had been pulled, until it all ran out.

A rift that hadn’t been accessed in three thousand years opened with a burst of power that radiated, pulsing outward, and all things living felt its passing. They just didn’t understand what it meant.

The innocence before the storm.

From within the whirlpool of dirt appeared four shapes atop steeds made of bone. As they marched steadily upward, motes of sand and dust coalesced to give their mounts shape. Of those riding them, nothing could be seen but the cloaks that covered them. They trotted up the side of the funnel as if gravity did not apply. The heavy plods of the hooves made steady progress up the slope. They said not a word.

At the rim of the funnel, they each chose a direction to face. Everywhere they looked, they could see only a barren wasteland.

And a mangy cat.

It stood north of the rift and meowed. A hand, encased in a gauntlet, leaned down to grasp it. Set it on its saddle. The horsemen kicked their heels and set off. No need to discuss their plans. They’d had three thousand years to hone them, waiting for the day they’d return.

They shimmered from view, as if a mirage, and yet that didn’t stop a dragoness named Elspeth—who sometimes saw things no one else did—from stirring in her sleep and muttering, Should have known it would be a cat that broke the first of the seals.

That left six.

Six chances to keep a great evil out of the world. But first, they should probably deal with the horsemen of the apocalypse.

Chapter One

Her very pink T-shirt: I don’t believe in ghosts. I’m an archeologist.

The artifacts arrived in wooden crates, sealed tight and packed with popcorn foam that cushioned smaller solid boxes.

Daphne shoved her glasses up on her nose as she took a moment to stare. This was more exciting than Christmas, for her at least. Canada so rarely enjoyed such exciting archeological finds, and yet a ruin was found, by accident, in the depths of a lake in Northern Ontario. A beaver dam had caused the water supply to the lake to run dry. Dry enough that the ruins that hid at the very bottom became exposed. Steps, leading to a dais. A few toppled pillars. The stone pitted and eroded by water and time, yet clearly manmade. But which era? Who built them? That had yet to be determined. The few artifacts recovered had been catalogued and studied. Everyone was stumped, so while the historians and scientists scratched their befuddled heads, the amazing finds would go on display at the Canadian Museum of History.

Which was the most exciting thing ever!

The archeological find of the century and Daphne was in charge of setting it up.

First, though, precautions. She wore a clean white coat over her regular clothes. Her hair was tied back, and a surgical mask covered the bottom half of her face. Mostly to block smells. Old things didn’t always have the most pleasant scents.

Giddy excitement filled her as she laid her gloved hands on the precious artifacts. She knew better than to leave any skin oils on them.

First out of the crate, wrapped in bubble, a chunk of stone about two inches thick, possibly the remnant of a stone tablet. The amazing part? The carvings in it. Weird symbols that reminded her of Egyptian glyphs and yet didn’t match any currently on file. The linguists were creaming themselves in excitement over a new dead language.

She ran her fingers through the faint grooves. So awesome. Especially since one of the symbols reminded her of a dragon in flight. She loved dragons. She actually collected them. Only handmade ones: carved soapstone, blown glass, and several metal pieces of art. It never ceased to amaze her how the dragon showed up in so many different cultures around the world and going far back, too.

Some in her circle speculated that the dragons depicted in ancient texts were actually the remnants of dinosaurs. Flying reptiles that ended up going extinct.

Others were convinced dragons actually existed because of recent media footage of people claiming to have caught them.

Was it real? Hard to tell with today’s excellent CGI, but what if it were true? What if dragons were real?

Maybe she could meet one up close. Pet it.

Keep it.

Okay, maybe she couldn’t keep a dragon.

Unless…there were some people saying dragons could shapeshift to look like humans. Which she personally thought was physically impossible. Dragons were big. People were small. It just didn’t work.

Unless the dragons were small.

Which would make it easier to keep one.

She forgot about dragons and concentrated on her job again, placing the stone chunk carefully on her trolley.

Next, she uncovered an old dagger, forged out of some unidentified metal. Not bronze or copper, it was something that they’d not yet been able to identify. The speculation was the metal was probably harvested from a meteor. But who did it belong to? There’d never been anything other than prehistoric tools found this far into the continent. This predated the first settlers.

Its discovery would change the history of the country! And she got to see it and touch it before the general public. Her hands shook a little as she placed the dagger onto her trolley, giving it a light stroke. Total nerdgirl-gasm.

Wrapped in layers of bubblewrap, she uncovered a vase comprised of pottery shards that had been glued together. They’d managed to recreate the pot, albeit with missing pieces. It took some delicate handling, as she feared it coming apart.

Only one box left. The one she’d intentionally kept for last because it fascinated her the most. Of all the things found in that lake, it proved the most controversial, firstly because it should have never survived. Glass, in a lake that had frozen and thawed countless times? The bottle should have long ago shattered, which led to arguments, as some claimed it wasn’t part of the ruins. It must have sunk there more recently. But they shut up when all the tests they ran pegged it as being old. As in more than a thousand years old.

It had been located in a chamber accessed via a hidden doorway in the center of the dais. Apparently it was like something out of a movie, the way a certain stone, when shifted, caused it to rumble open. The room beneath was filled with water, and so divers were sent in. A team of three. Two of them had seizures and died before they could be pulled back up. The third retrieved the bottle, but then refused to hand it over and tried to break it. He was supposedly recovering in a psychiatric ward, according to the rumor mill.

The tragedy didn’t end there. Of the people who then got to study it, one of them was arrested for trying to break into the lab to steal the bottle. Yet another of the scientists abruptly quit and decided she wanted to become a nun. Two more died in a car crash.

Given a number of people who died retrieving it, it wasn’t long before rumors of it being cursed circulated.

A tragedy for those involved, yes, but still only a weird coincidence. Daphne didn’t believe for one minute there was a curse. Scientists did not believe in magic but facts.

The fact was, because people were freaked out, she got to see the controversial bottle for herself. She took her time peeling it open, the many protective layers only adding to her excitement.

When the treasure was revealed, she took a moment to admire it, wondering at the intact stoppered jar. Not made of just any glass but a very sturdy volcanic glass shaped into a perfect urn, no handles, about twelve inches high with a narrow neck and a fat base.

The glass was a smoky gray color and smooth all over. Not a single chip or crack in it. The plug in the top of it might have at one time been a wooden