Battle Bond: An Urban Fantasy Dragon Series (Death Before Dragons #2) - Lindsay Buroker Page 0,99

I touched something down here, I’m going to pass.” I gripped Chopper’s hilt with both hands and willed the blade to help protect me, to push the intrusion out of my mind.

It helped but only a little. Energy crackled in the air, something both similar to and different from what I felt in Zav’s presence.

Shaking my head, I focused on the chain on the floor. I was here to free the dwarf and end the brothers’ ability to do business.

The chain did not lead to the orb as I had expected. Instead, it ran under the orb and to the wall at the far side of the chamber, a dead-end wall. I hadn’t found another exit, so the mystery of how the vault door—and the orb for that matter—had gotten down here would remain.

The chain ran up the wall and into something that looked so mundanely like a fuse box that I almost laughed. Had the shifters picked it up at Home Depot? But no, this fuse box oozed power. It was barely noticeable with the massive sun of an orb throwing off magical energy in front of it, but it had a slightly different feel. I was looking at two different magical artifacts.

Too bad I had to go around one to get to the other.

Warily, I skirted the orb, sticking as close to the wall as I could. By now, it was obvious that the closer I got, the stronger its pull became. Even with Chopper’s help, it was hard to resist the call to creep over to it, to touch it, just for a moment…

“No,” I growled and focused on the box.

When I reached it, I prodded it with Chopper’s tip, afraid it would be as booby-trapped as the dwarf’s shackle. A zing went up my arm, but I wasn’t thrown across the chamber. I reached for it with one finger, tapping it lightly. A surge of power knocked my arm back behind my head.

It was booby-trapped in the same way. Maybe Chopper acted as an insulator.

“What happens if I thrash you with my sword?” I whispered to the box.

It didn’t answer. Before committing to that, I tried to pry open the front panel with the blade. My arm tingled the whole time and started to go numb, but I managed to flip it aside. As soon as I pulled Chopper back, the numbing tingle faded, and I could see into the box.

The chain came up through a hole in the bottom and fused with a gray metal rectangle that looked like a slab of solid steel but radiated power. It had three other places—ports?—where chains could be attached. So it could keep up to four slaves working at a time? Or had this place originally been designed for something else?

Val, Sindari spoke into my mind, we’re coming down.

Who’s we?

The dragon, the Pardus brothers, and several other panther shifters. I’m following them at a distance. They haven’t noticed me yet. Make sure your charm is activated and pray the dragon doesn’t see through it.

It was only then that I realized Sindari’s voice was loud and clear in my mind again. That meant he—and everyone he’d named—was already down here. Why did I have a feeling they hadn’t just come to look at the dwarf?

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In a fit of desperation, I was tempted to bash at the magical fuse box with Chopper and hope it would set the dwarf free before Dob and all the shifters showed up, but that would be pointless. Grandpa Dwarf wasn’t in any shape to fight battles or go anywhere quickly. And it would alert the shifters to my presence. It was still possible they would come and go and not see me.

Maybe.

Voices sounded in the tunnel, and I flattened my back against the wall by the fuse box. With luck, the orb and its intense magic would distract them from whatever they were doing. Not looking for an intruder, I hoped.

I’d pulled the closet access panel shut after me, and the vault door had closed, so there shouldn’t be any sign down here of my presence. Unless the shifters caught my scent. But the charm should still be masking that…

“That dwarf is too comatose to even begin to make a dragon-slaying weapon,” a familiar voice said. Dob.

“He promised he could make them.” That sounded like Kurt Pardus. “Technically, the people who kidnapped him from his realm, brought him here, and sold him to us promised he could make them. But you’re right that he’s