The Walls of Jericho

Confusion

It takes a long time for Drake’s words to penetrate through the sheer exhaustion that shrouds me.

I’m not just tired, even though that’s what it looks like.

No, this is different. This kind of tired is surreal.

I’ve never felt so overworked in every capacity. I know I just survived s*x with a dragon. Whatever shielding my magic did to keep me alive, it eroded me into nearly nothing. So much so that even processing the aches of my spent body is a supreme effort. An effort I can’t afford because I’m already scraping the literal bottom of my energy barrel just to stay conscious.

“It’s okay, love.” Drake smiles down at me tenderly. His massive fingers circle my pale hand, stark white against the beautiful darkness of his skin, and he lifts my palm to his lips and kisses it gently. “You can rest. Nothing will hurt you. I’ll protect you, provide for you. I’ll give you everything you dream.”

“No.” I’m weary to the bone and drained to the point that even speaking that word seemed impossible, yet I force it out. Then in desperation, I let my invisible mage antennae out, sending them to seek energy sources.

I find three.

The KDS building is a beacon of it, receiving a dedicated quarter of Crossroads’ energy production from all sources, and allocated more when needs demand. It even manufactures energy of its own, using prototype solar panels, storing its freshly mined sustainable energy and distributing it in carefully monitored and nearly undetectable bursts.

Only it’s not hidden from me. I sip and skim, careful not to take too much, but not because the dragon might find me. 

Obviously, that’s not a problem anymore. 

Now, I’m hiding from Damien’s monitoring. Now, I’m hiding from Avernus.

But it’s not just the electrical grid that’s available here. The place teems with humans and I can feel every single one. Employees busily working in nearly every crevice and crack of this place. They fix meals and run cash registers. They treat ills and babysit children. The make repairs. They pay bills. They keep records. They clean. They research. They work, tucked neatly before tiny computers, solving the data storage problems of the world.

Their energy is off-limits. They’re off-limits morally, because I don’t want to hurt living things. Not physically, because now I know nothing could stop me from consuming it all, like the hungry ocean.

The first time I tangled with the dragon—when Channing and I were supposed to be out on our first date—in the aftermath, the big change I noticed in myself was that my powers had expanded. Exponentially. They'd become an identifiable presence. Alive.

No more did they seem to creep, quietly crawling to do my bidding, then returning to an energy state so low it was all but undetectable. After that, it was as if I’d awakened a slumbering monster.  

A slumbering dragon.

Could that be true? I may have been dying all those years ago as Mia. I may have been in desperate need of a new body when I’d found the premature and sickly, failing body of the struggling newborn Jericho, but I’d checked her before I shared the space with her. I’d deliberately sought a human, which I am.

But I didn’t look for a wolf. I didn’t look for a dragon. I didn’t look for the part of Jericho that was hidden, buried in her genetics, even from herself. When I put my consciousness as Mia into her tiny, besieged body and became Jericho, I inadvertently created an unholy trinity—werewolf-dragon-mage.

God, I’m a horrible person.

A person who needs to get away from Drake.

To do it, I'll have to tap the third energy source here, perhaps the most powerful of all. I"ll have to tap the dragon himself. My invisible tentacles latch onto him greedily.

As soon as the flow starts from him to me, I can barely stem it. Almost as if he's allowing it, encouraging it. Surely that can't be the case. If he knew I was feeding off him like a shadow does bright light, he wouldn't allow it. He'd stop me.

Above me, Drake’s breath becomes a little more labored. Gently, he sets my hand down, then eases himself onto his elbows, covering my body with his. He feels less preternaturally warm. For the first time maybe in his entire existence, he feels exhaustion.

“No,” I repeat. “I have a mate.”

His expression shifts slightly. It’s still tender, but now there’s patience too. Like a teacher looks at a favored pupil who’s struggling with a new concept.

Only I’m not struggling. I’ve got this down pat. Brought back from the brink, revived by my stolen energy, I set my body to work healing itself.

“It’s okay, love,” he says, stroking my hair back from my forehead. “You didn’t know. You didn’t know I was out there searching for you.”

“Actually, I did.”

His brow creases in consternation and confusion and his eyes return to mine. “What? What are you talking about?”

“I’m the mage, Drake,” I bite out from between clenched teeth as my temper flares. “I’m the mage that you imprisoned and then killed. I’m Mia.”

His golden-orange eyes go wide. “How do you know about Mia?”

“Because I am her! I’m the woman that you took prisoner as a child. The woman you forced to seek your mate for a lifetime and then killed because that was never my job.”

“Mia?” he gasps, shaking his head in denial. “No. I didn’t kill her! She was dead when I found her! You. The wolves killed you! As you aged, you grew confused, you couldn’t remember who I was—who you were. You grew fearful. Hostile. You'd lash out. Hurt people who weren't strong enough to resist your power. For years, you were their target. I protected you. I loved you! But I couldn’t mate you. You were human. You would have died!” As I continue sapping his energy, his weight rests heavier on top of me. “I couldn’t bear it! I could never have hurt you. My God, what’s happening to me?”

“I. Was. There. I lived it all, Drake!” As his energy wanes, my grows. Monstrous. Furious. Effortlessly, I shove him off of me. “I know what that room is off the closet downstairs! It’s a cage. A prison where you held me!”

Kicking through the wreckage of our clothes on the floor, I find mine. I dress hastily. Angry. Embarrassed.

“It—it is—a—a cage. Fa—Faraday cage,” he huffs, struggling to right himself, trying to sit up. His yellow-orange eyes track my movements. “You—hurt people. Couldn’t—couldn’t control—your—magic.”

Ignoring him, I collect my belongings off the floor where I dropped them, then start around the bed for the door.As I round the foot of the bed, his massive hand catches weakly at my wrist and I drop everything again. 

“Don’t go. Talk—talk to me. Please—Jericho, please. “

“Talk to you!?” I snarl, my eyes boring into his. “Did you think I’d be stupid enough to fall for it twice!? You mesmerized me! You took what you wanted without the slightest care for what that might mean to me or the people I love!”

He reaches his hand out, pleading. “I did,” he admits, nodding and struggling to get his arms under him. “I did. Not to deceive. To help— ease your conscience. You could say no.—Choose.—That’s—that’s why—why I asked.”

SOFie twinkly tingles on my finger. That stops me in my tracks.

Drake did ask.

More than once.

And I told him ‘yes’. More than once.

I squeeze my eyes closed, horrified all over again at what I’ve done to Channing, but my hot tears escape from their corners anyway. My guilt swells, engulfing me. This is all my fault. Sobbing, I sink to my knees.

Why did I do this? Why did I do any of it? I knew this was going too far. I knew! I knew Drake wanted me. I knew I wanted him, but why? Why? Channing has given me everything I need. More than I need! So why am I so conflicted? What don’t I understand?

That’s when the thought hits me that I don’t care.

I don’t care what I don’t know. I care that I’ve been manipulated by the dragon. Again.

Pulling myself together, I wipe angrily at my tears. I gather my belongings again, my eyes fixed on the dragon as I do. “I’m leaving. Don’t follow. Not ever,” I warn. “If you come after me, I’ll kill you.”

“Jericho, no!” This time when Drake’s hands close on me, he doesn’t let go. “You don’t belong with him. You belong with me. A human can’t—.”

“He’s not human, Drake. He’s wolf. Get your hands off me.”

Dragonfire flares into dancing flames in his eyes. His grip tightens. He rises to his full height, glaring down at me. “Then you can’t go back. They’ll kill you.”

“You know nothing about it! He would never hurt me! He would never let someone else hurt me!”

Tripping and stumbling, he drags me from the room, across to the small sitting where the pictures of his mother hang on the wall. “She was a wolf!” he roars. “One of them! Sister to their Alpha female! We lived peacefully. We helped people around us. She missed her sister. And when she reached out, they hunted her down and killed her, Jericho. One of their own.”

Shaking my head, I break his hold and stumble backwards. “No. They wouldn’t do that. They tried to kill you! For trying to take the Alpha’s mate.”

Leaning on the back of a chair to support his still weak frame, Drake eyes me. “Is that what they told you?”

My breath comes shallow as I try to make sense of what I think I know and what I don’t.

“Because if that’s what they told you, they lied,” he says bitterly. “The Alpha kept his mate. I would never have asked for a mated female. Jillian led me to her sister.” He stabs his finger at the woman’s pictures on the wall. “My mate.”

“Jillian?”

“The mage,” he says flatly. “Your previous incarnation, before Mia. You see the past and the future, Jericho. Look inside me. Tell me that I lie. Look inside you.”

I know as I stare across this small space that I don’t have the capacity to cope with anything else today. There’s no more revenge—I can’t hurt Drake until I know, unequivocally, that he did the things I thought he did. But I can’t stay with him either.

I won’t be used.

“No.” I shake my head. “Call Camilla.”

His brows draw together in confusion. “What?”

“Summon Camilla to aid you. Do it now.”

“Why—ah!” The confusion on Drake’s face rapidly morphs into pain as I let send my magic to siphon off more of his energy. This time, he won’t recover in a few minutes. Ca—Camilla!>

When he slumps to the floor, his eyes closed and his breathing shallow, I flee. Drake had said there were three ways into the penthouse. From the helipad. From the office. I duck against the wall as a tall, thin woman who must be Camilla strides through the bedroom door, homing in on Drake’s location. Racing on bare feet down the hall, I skip the elevator and take the stairs to the lower level.

It takes me longer than I expect to find the door, then I’m taking the long slow ride to the parking level. The noxious smell of the garage hits me as the elevator doors open. Skimming around outside it, I shuffle my feet into my miserable shoes. Trying to look calm, I make my way to the exit with forced measured strides, then to the curb.

It takes two minutes for an Uber to reach me, then I’m speeding towards Tassler Heights. Several emergency vehicles rush past us, sirens blaring and lights flashing, headed the opposite direction.

My driver watches them in the rearview mirror. “Looks like they’re stopping at the KDS building we just left,” he says. “Wonder what’s going on?”

Miserable, I stare out the opposite window and don’t answer him. I'm certain I already know.

**

As I close the front door of Tassler house, I lean my forehead against it.

I hurt.

Not physically. Despite how rough things got between me and Drake, I don’t know if I’ll ever feel the aftereffects of that. I’ve absorbed so much of his energy and sapped him down to the point where he was near death, that I don’t know how long my store of his life as a power source will last.

I don’t know how long it will take before what was Jericho becomes just me again. Not the Jericho that’s full of a dragon’s energy and a dragon’s seed. The thought makes me sob.

“Oh! Hi, Liza!”

Hearing Mr. Adriani’s bare feet slapping on the floor, I pull myself together and turn around. He’s standing strangely close, peering at me with those milky blue eyes. Abruptly, he takes two steps closer, then throws his arms around my shoulders in a gentle hug.

“I’m sorry you’re sad,” he whispers. “It’ll be okay. I promise it will.”

His gentle offer of comfort is more than I can take. I break down in fresh sobs, sinking to the floor. Mr. Adriani sinks with me, rubbing a small circle in the middle of my back. I shouldn’t be doing this. Not here. Not now. Channing could wake, he could see me, then how would I explain?

“Jericho?”

It’s not the snappy click-click that I expect when Rebecca comes flying down the stairs towards us. Mr. Adriani stumbles to his feet, backing away quickly, and she squats before me, sliding seamlessly into the space he was occupying. Holding me firmly by the shoulders, she peers into my tear-streaked face.

“What the hell happened to you?”

“I—I found—him,” I choke out between sobs. “I found the dragon.”