Battle Bond: An Urban Fantasy Dragon Series (Death Before Dragons #2) - Lindsay Buroker Page 0,97

the compulsions the dragons had put on me. But it was easier to resist than a dragon’s commands, at least from here and with Chopper in my hand, lending its protection to my mind. That might change if I got closer.

Footsteps sounded in the room above me. I wasn’t sure if I was still under the bedroom or had moved under the hallway. It occurred to me that the shifters would feel this magic, too, that someone would know their vault had been opened. I needed to shut it—but not without seeing who was in there first.

A ding-dong echoed down from above, almost amusing in its mundaneness. The doorbell.

The footsteps stopped. A few muffled shouts echoed from above.

The dragon is here, Sindari informed me.

He rang the doorbell? Why did that seem ludicrous to me?

He did. I can sense him standing on the stoop in his elven form.

I couldn’t tell where Sindari was. Still in the house, I thought.

Stay safe. Don’t get closer than twenty feet from him—Zav said he felt you at that distance. I’m going to find out who we’ve been sensing in this weird basement.

Be careful. I just felt an immense powerful swell from somewhere under the house.

I know. I opened a door.

I think it’s something menacing.

I had a feeling it wasn’t a fairy handing out lemonade.

Be careful, Sindari repeated. That’s probably the only way in and out.

I’m not sure about that. There’s a two-ton vault door down here. It wasn’t brought in through the crawlspace opening. I eased the door open a little wider, enough for me to slip through.

Maybe it was here before the house was built.

I had been about to step in but froze at the thought. The door looked new, far newer than the house above, but Sindari’s suggestion was possible. If so, maybe it—or whatever was behind it—was the reason the shifters had picked this place. Maybe it had to do with why so many other cat shifters were willing to come hang out here for days. To protect a secret?

Only one way to find out. I’m going in.

27

I stepped through the doorway, leading with Chopper, though I was tempted to switch to Fezzik. Images of enemies firing at me from behind crates popped into my mind.

A moan came from the left, behind the door, and I spun, almost attacking before my brain registered what I was seeing. A dwarf. A full-blooded, full-bearded, old male dwarf with wild white hair and olive-gray skin that reminded me of dirt and stone. His slate-colored eyes were sunken and vacant, and he didn’t react as I stood gaping at him with my sword poised to strike.

He sat on the floor with his back to a stone wall—the walls in here were natural stone, not the lumpy cement of the other room. Unlike the muddy floor outside, this one was flat, rock, and bone dry. Boxes of ammunition rested to the dwarf’s right and a crate full of loose rounds to his left. As I watched, he took a single bullet from a box, held it in his hand and murmured something too soft to hear, then placed it in the crate. A faint magical residue emanated from the bullet. Before he’d touched it, it had been plain.

The dwarf moaned again, the sound soft and full of pain. His left ankle was shackled with iron, a chain running from it across the floor of the small chamber and into a tunnel. The chain was the source of the lavender glow, but it wasn’t the source of the magic calling to me. Whatever that was came from down that dark tunnel.

The door thudded shut, sealing with a hiss. I lunged for it a split second too late to grab it and hold it open. My stomach sank. There wasn’t a latch or wheel or anything but flat metal on this back side.

Trapped.

No, I’d opened it once. I could use magic to open it again. I hoped.

You will not believe this, Val. Sindari’s voice sounded far, far away, as if he’d run to the end of the mile range he could get from his charm.

What? I lowered my sword and crouched in front of the dwarf.

When I waved my hand in front of his eyes, he didn’t react, didn’t seem to see me at all. Was he blind? His face was gaunt, his weathered hands so lean that I could see every tendon and vein along the backs as he worked.

Dob has heard that the brothers sell dragon-slaying weapons,