The Walls of Jericho

Introduction

Drake’s POV

There are many cities in this world that are beautiful by day.

Cities comprised of graceful architecture combined in elegant harmony with the natural landscape. Cities that beat with a genteel heart and a gracious abundance. Wandering among them, one can easily believe they are one of mankind’s finest inventions.

Crossroads is not one of them.

Taking a sip of the Sapphire Revelation gin from the short, tulip-shaped glass that narrows at the tip, I stare out the windows of the fifty-seventh floor conference room. As the sun finally sets, the senseless loudness and the annoying drone of cars vanishes into peaceful oblivion.

By day, the full agglomerative masses swarm and overwhelm Crossroads.

Filthy.

Stinking.

Greedy.

Gluttonous.

What few fine details exist within this place get lost in the teeming population. The constant noise leaves my nerves raw and tingling, my brain buzzing uselessly for hours.

The night brings candor.

The true city is laid bare. Seemingly forgotten. Mercifully emptied, even while occupying the same physical space of the daytime city. An alternate world, it possesses its own culture and realities. It becomes phantasmagorical. Infinitely more attractive once night has fallen and the lights come on is this concrete jungle.

The boorish daytime throngs, a sea of strangers, give way to the rare nocturnal creatures who bask in the kinder neon glow that replaces the sunlight’s rancor. These alone can move as they wish, enter anywhere they find an open door and someone strange enough to let them in. They hide in plain sight, pass one another like ghosts.

Here, time runs different at night. The clocks slow and the seconds creep. The sleeping city brims with atmosphere. Crowded spaces metamorphose into panoramic vistas, misty and desolate with luminescent trees glowing in the streetlamps and the distant expanse of the ocean glittering onyx black with silver spume.

Crossroads becomes inviting.

A silent palace of peaceful parks and stoic buildings, the lights twinkling in the night. A place where the underground rivers sing. The deep shadows cast by glowing lamps turn the most ordinary scene into a magical man-made world, eerie and distinctive. The moon brightens, gleaming in the blue-black sky. The stars and constellations creep out of hiding.

Crossroads mutates into a place outside of the world. It smells different. Becomes a place to decompress, to breathe. To be. It feels as though it’s mine.

Yet, it is not.

Beyond the river, over the light-bejeweled bridges, their backs arched over the murky waters, the wolves lurk in the southern part of the city, as did my corrupted mage.

At long last, she is on the move, unable to resist her calling.

I feel her. She draws close but not close enough to put herself in danger.

There are sounds of movement behind me as the humans shuffle in, chittering like foolish little birds as they take seats around the table. Glancing over my shoulder, I see they have all filed in. Ignorant as they are, it’s only a matter of time before one of them speaks.

“Good evening, Mr. Kemp. All the members of the Board of Directors are here as you asked.” It’s the usual mouthpiece among them. “We’re all busy people with families waiting on us, so do you suppose we could get the meeting started?”

The hot flare of the dragon hidden inside this flimsy form burns along my veins, glowing red beneath this flesh. Finishing my drink, I set the glass aside, inhale deeply, then turn and smile. “Of course.”

“Wonderful. I do hope there’s good news about the Heritage project.”

“There is not,” I reply brusquely. “And that issue is not before this Board.”

“Mr. Kemp, KDS has not recouped a single cent of the initial outlay of assets for that project. In fact, it’s now in the hole. Heritage must be completed or it must be terminated at once.”

I silence the impertinent woman with a lifted hand. “I will remind you. There are seven months remaining on that contract. Heritage is not the issue before the Board.”

“Mr. Kemp—.”

This one I silence with a snarl. “I built this company. When I agreed to take it public, you six stood to reap the most benefit. You assured me of your commitment to my family.”

Finally, the stupid children have gone silent.

“I received word this evening, that my family is in danger. I fly out tonight to Johannesburg to manage those issues personally.”

The room erupts into furious argument. All of them talking at once. All of them demanding my attention like spoiled toddlers.

I raise my hand again for silence. “In my absence, my son, Dracon, will act as CEO by proxy.”

“The Board is responsible for choosing a replacement CEO, even a temporary one, Mr. Kemp—.”

“The Board will do as it is told,” I roar, silencing them. I modulate my voice, reining in the dragon. “Or I will make certain matters pertaining to each individual member of this Board public.”

Around the table, they stare at me in shock and horror.

“We all know how the market will react.” I pull out a chair, taking a seat across from them, lacing my fingers together on the table. “Within a matter of weeks, I will buy this company back at one tenth of its current value while the six of you are facing criminal charges and taking shivs in prison. My good name will restore it, while your homes, your cars, and your belongings will be repossessed. Your families taken from you as you would allow mine to be taken from me. Do you understand?”

I give them time to ponder what they stand to lose. When my mate comes to me, I’ll enjoy knowing these idiotic saps will be the first to fall.

“My son is in route. He will arrive this evening and meet with you in the morning.” Rising, I give a magnanimous smile. “I am sorry to have kept you. Please, do hurry home to your families.” With the groundwork laid, I leave the conference room, taking the elevator to my personal floors.

The mage will recognize this human form. As such, I need another.

Something younger.

Non-threatening and more charming.

“Camilla! I am not to be disturbed.”

Undressing in my private chamber, I stand before the mirror, concentrate and force a mutation.

Around my heart, the dragon energy ignites, singing red along the veins in this fragile form. Within seconds, the change forces me to my hands and knees, my insides writhing like an angry coiling snake.

The stone tiles beneath me begin to glow hot as the dragonfire spreads outward from around my heart, searing away the old image and creating a new one. It scorches the surface flesh all the way to the tips of my fingers and toes. The skin chars, then turns to ash and drifts to the floor.

Underneath the dying shedding tissue, my bones pop, elongate and rearrange. My shoulders stretch painfully, slimming as my ribcage narrows and my torso grows longer. The muscles and bones in my legs  throb, lengthening. This new image will be taller, thinner, but still strong, and appealing to mage and mate.

Across my head, along my jaw and over my chest, a raw prickling begins as new hair sprouts, and the last stage of the mutation finishes. The dragonfire pumping through my veins retreats to my core, cooling. Exhausted, I collapse onto the still warm tiles.

**

A house wren warbles a courtship song in one of the trees outside the bedroom. With one sliding door open, the lively, bubbly twittering rings loud and I’m tempted to close the door against the sound as it echoes around the bathroom. Not because there’s anything wrong with the birdsong—in fact, I think it’s great. Especially since it’s not what’s dragging me out of bed in the morning.

What it is, is distracting.

Between Channing’s special good-bye this morning and a hot shower, my languorous body is ready for a long nap by the pool in the warm sunshine, listening to calming bird trill before this storm rolls in. What I need to be doing, is keeping a close eye on Rebecca.

The afternoon my mate and I toured Tassler house and made our arrangements with Jannica the realtor to fake-purchase it, we also picked up the Baltic amber ring at the jewelers. Since that minute, I’ve been forced to privately acknowledge that Channing was right.

In part.

I am drawing magical stuff to me. But it’s not like electricity, as he said. With electricity, I consciously have to choose to summon or manipulate it.

The magic thickening around me now is being drawn all on it’s own. The most recent of my little magical tag-alongs are the rings.

The Star of Fate—or Stone of Fate, as Channing likes to correct me—has been renamed SOFie. As near as I can tell, I’ve seen the full range of her abilities over the last month—she can distinguish the truth from lies. Which might seem great, except that I can’t communicate with her beyond the viscerally crippling feelings she gives off when she chooses to detect and relay something.

Despite her admonitions and commendations, I can seldom differentiate what part of a human conversation triggers either forewarning of truth or lie. Which makes her help maddeningly unhelpful.

I can’t say for certain that I’ve discovered the limits of SOFie’s sister, Amber’s abilities. The best that I can tell, she enhances recall of past lives, which for me, might seem potent, except that my past life as Mia was pretty straightforward—prisoner to and destroyed by a dragon.

In a roundabout way, this brings me back to Rebecca. Channing’s suspicions and misgivings aside, SOFie is constantly flaring that nasty vitriol when the woman is around.

What’s more, just like I recognized myself in Mia when she first started appearing in my dreams, Amber keeps showing me Rebecca as if I should know her from the past as well.

Needless to say, things are a bit convoluted in Tassler house. Almost makes me miss Esteban and his simple grungy diner.

Almost.

With Mr. Adriani otherwise occupied watching television and Rebecca still asleep, I have time to slip out the back way and make use of the Tassler Heights’ trail that runs behind the house. Despite Rebecca’s reproaches, I throw on a pair of yoga pants and one of Channing’s sweatshirts, yank on my All-Stars, then head for the great outdoors.

As an orphan kid bouncing from foster home to foster home, I always felt like I was hard-wired for the indoors. Aside from a playhouse my dad built in the backyard when I was five, I never spent much time outdoors or played a lot of sports as a kid. I was—and still am, especially by comparison to werewolves like Channing, or even Damien— pretty soft, kind of clumsy and exceedingly un-athletic. Once I was orphaned, it got worse. Often, I was punished by grounding to the ‘comforts’ of my room—or in the case of the really lousy foster homes, the closet—and didn’t get much time outdoors.

Things went from that to worse after I took the waitressing job at Esteban’s and started looking after Mr. Adriani so I had a safe and stable place to live. Aside from walking to and from work, there was never the option or the means to get out in places like this.

There’s something about the muffled sounds of my footsteps in the conifer waste beneath my feet, the feel of the ocean winds setting the limbs above my head whispering. It sparks my cravings for hiking and outdoor adventures. Even this trail, which terminates at the Tassler Heights’ private beach and the hungry ocean, feeds my curiosity and wanderlust. In a few short weeks at Tassler house, I’ve become a bona fide outdoor junkie.

Here, at least, as long as I’m putting one foot in front of the other, I’m getting somewhere. Unlike with KDS, where job application after job application has been rejected. It’s a hell of a lot nicer than the day-in and day-out criticism from Rebecca about having some respect for my femininity and learning how to take care of my own hair and make-up instead of dressing like I’m homeless.

By the time the trail begins its downward slope towards the beach, the patchy clouds ahead of the storm are knitting together into a dismal overcast. For a moment, I debate turning back. Which is the exact moment I realize whether I continue to the beach or not, I’m going to get caught in the rain.

It’s downhill to the sandy beach, and with any amount of luck, I might be able to find a small cave to shelter in out of the storm. Pushing myself to an awkward jog, I hurry down the trail.

The first stinging drops, driven hard by the biting wind, pelt against me as I rush down the stairs from the trailhead to the beach. Wind-driven waves capped with silty spume crash upon the shore, and I shiver despite Channing’s sweatshirt at the dropping temperature.

The sand and my shoes slow my progress as I dart along the rocky edge, peering through squinted eyes for any sign of a crevice to squeeze into or an overhang to huddle under. I cringe at the blinding forked tongue of lightning that licks across the roiling gray sky, then startle violently and shriek in terror as its booming clap of thunder crashes around me a few seconds after.

I’m huddling against the stony cliff, covering my head with my arms and sorely wishing I’d never left the house when I feel a strong arm wrap my middle and bodily haul me away from the rock wall.

“Hey! What the hell? Put me down!” I shout over the wind and crashing waves, then abruptly find myself dumped into the sand beneath the stairs that ascend from the beach to the trailhead.

“Are you mad, girl?” A low rumbling voice demands. My rescuer accidentally kicks sand over my hands as he ducks beneath the stairs and takes shelter further back against the rocky cliff-face. “Did you really mean to weather this standing out there in the middle of it?”

“I—I—no,” I sputter, lying, and crawl forward as the rain starts in earnest, obscuring the beach almost entirely in wind-blown sheets. “I was looking for a cave or an overhang. I got frightened.”

Drawing my knees up to my chest, I curl into a shivering ball and seek out my savior’s face in the gloom. “By the way, thanks.”

The man who emerges from the gloom isn’t what I’m expecting. He’s dressed casually—like I am—in gray joggers and a hoodie sweatshirt, but somehow, he still manages to look like he just stepped off the cover of GQ magazine. He flashes me a gorgeous smile of perfect white teeth.

“No problem. It's not as if you weigh anything. Mind if I sit too?”

I shake my head, still staring at him. 

He plants one muscular arm in the sand next to me, then lowers his long, lean body to one hip before rolling onto his bottom and crossing his legs. “It caught me by surprise too,” he says in that voice that crackles and rumbles in all the best ways as he brushes the sand off his hands on the opposite side. “I figured I had time to finish my tai-chi at least.”

There’s no mistaking the uncommon accent—his hard ‘i’s, like the one in ‘tai’ sound more like a flat ‘oi’, the way you’d say ‘oil’, the ‘r’ sounds aren’t quite rolled, but they’re hard-tapped, almost more like ‘har’ than ‘r’, and he spits the hard consonants at the beginning and end of words almost like a machine-gun in ‘caught’, ‘too’ and ‘least’.

Unable to contain my curiosity, and well, I am stuck with him in a serious deluge under a staircase, I ask, “You have an unusual accent. Are you from Australia?”

He grins, another of those GQ cover-boy smiles. “Did I get lucky enough to rescue a girl who likes a man with an accent?” he teases.

It’s the same kind of pointed question that Channing’s been poking me with for years and churns up the same kind of raw, s****l response where it definitely doesn’t belong. I blush furiously. “I—I—.”

“You don’t have to answer,” he chuckles, looking out from under the stairs at the ongoing downpour. “I was out of line. Don’t think I’ve ever been stranded with such a beautiful girl before. Where I come from, they say amber-eyed women have supernatural powers. I fear I’ve fallen under your spell.”

I huff a laugh. “That’s funny. Especially since you called me crazy about two minutes ago.”

“Oh,” he groans, squeezing his eyes shut as he grimaces. “Not one of my finer moments. In my defense, I hadn’t seen your lovely face yet.”

“You’d still have called me crazy, even if you had,” I counter. “Is that a yes or a no about Australia?”

He points to the pouring rain. “Can you blame me? You were going to ride that out in the middle of it. And no. Not Australia. South Africa. I’m Dracon, by the way.” He extends his right hand to me over his lap.

“Dracon?” The way he pronounces the word sounds so much like ‘dragon’ that my mouth hangs open. There's a bright, twinkly tinging from SOFie. Great. Thanks. That's about as helpful as a toddler in the kitchen.

“Yeah,” he groans. “Dreadful family name. My friends call me Drake. I’m Drake Kemp.”

“Kemp? As in—.”

“I’m going down in flames here, girl. And yeah, Kemp as in KDS. But don’t get too excited. I'm merely a lowly code writer. My dad’s the CEO.” He offers me his hand again. “You going to give me your name?”

His hand is remarkably warm when I clasp it with mine. “Nice to meet you Drake. I’m Jericho.”