When Dragons Burn

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Rayna

I woke to rain hitting the window like someone tossing a handful of gravel. The radio on the dresser said the storm had moved in faster than expected, but the sky outside the blinds looked more like a mood than a threat—flat and gray, trees shaking a little, nothing I hadn’t worked in before. I laced my boots anyway. The plan wasn’t complicated: trailhead, the lower overlook, back before noon. Walk it out of my head.

I took the map and a small first-aid kit because I don’t know how to leave it behind. Threw a cheap poncho over my jacket, tucked a thermos in my pack, and signed out at the front desk with a quick wave to the owner. She gave me that look people reserve for stubborn relatives. “If it turns ugly, come back.”

“I will,” I said. I meant to. Solitude isn’t clever if you end up on a news story.

The trail started right behind the lot—wooden post, faded arrows, a warning about bears that someone had underlined with a Sharpie. Mud sucked at my boots from the first step. The air smelled like wet pine and iron. As I climbed, the rain thickened. The poncho stuck to my legs and made that trash-bag sound. My breath felt loud in my own ears.

Half a mile up, I stopped under a hemlock to adjust the pack straps and listen. No voices. No cars. Just wind and the ratchet of distant thunder rolling up and down the ridgeline. I took a sip from the thermos and told myself I’d turn around at the first sign of real trouble. I’ve said that before at scenes—lines you draw with good intentions and step over anyway.

The trail curled along a slope slick with wet leaves. I planted each foot deliberately and used a stick as a third point. After a while, my thoughts settled into the same rhythm. Step, plant, look. Step, plant, look. The night before eased out of my shoulders an inch at a time. I stopped replaying the worst parts. I started counting birdsong and the number of low branches I ducked.

By the second mile, the rain sharpened and turned bitty against my cheeks. Sleet. I pulled the hood tighter and kept going because the overlook was close and turning back felt like failing at something small. Lightning flashed sideways, bright enough to make the trees look cut from paper. The thunder hit a breath later, too close. My skin crawled with the electrical weight of it.

I crouched in a low spot near a boulder and counted—one one-thousand, two one-thousand—waiting for the next strike to judge distance. Another flash, further off. I could smell ozone. The sleet stung through the poncho and clung to my hair. This was stupid. I knew it even as I stood up and kept moving. I only needed five more minutes. Then I’d turn around.

The path narrowed. Water ran down it in a shallow stream, fanning around rocks, taking the top layer of mud with it. I rounded a bend and almost slipped on a patch where the ground had given way. My boot slid a foot before I caught myself on a sapling. When I leaned back, I saw it: two wide, parallel gouges in the mud, like something heavy had been dragged through while the ground was still soft. The edges were already melting from the rain, but the shape was clear. Not a fallen log roll. Not bike tracks. Too wide for a sled. There were smears on the high side of the ruts where something had scraped bark off ferns and young growth. I stared for a second and then saw the darker streaks pooled in the low spots.

Blood washes fast in rain. The fact that it still looked like blood meant there was a lot of it.

My first thought was deer, but the pattern didn’t match. Deer kick and stumble. This looked like a straight pull, weight distributed, then a release—stop, drag, stop. I swallowed and felt the EMT switch flip on in my head. Don’t guess. Look. Count. Measure.

I squatted, ignoring the cold water soaking my knees, and touched a fingertip to one of the darker pools. It thinned under my skin but felt slicker than rainwater. It looked almost black against the mud, but when I brought my finger closer, I saw a hint of brown-red. Copper in my mouth just from the smell. Not oil. Not sap. Blood.

“Okay,” I said, to the empty trees. “Okay.”

A gust sent sleet sideways into my face. I brushed wet hair back and looked downslope where the marks led. The trail there cut across a long stretch without many trees—a slide area or an old washout. The gouges continued past the bend, fading where the ground turned rocky. Whoever it was—whatever it was—had gone that way.

I scanned for boot prints, paw marks, anything. There were impressions, but the water was doing its best to erase them. I could make out something like the heel of a hand? No. I didn’t trust that thought. I took out my phone for a picture and remembered I had no signal as soon as I saw the “SOS” icon where bars should be. I snapped a few shots anyway, then tucked it back in a dry pocket.

If someone was bleeding this much, waiting for the lodge to call a ranger wasn’t smart. The trail saw a handful of hikers on good days. Today wasn’t one of those. I checked the map, though I already knew what it said: the overlook ahead, a spur trail to a service road a mile beyond, steep ground everywhere else. I could follow the marks for a bit and pull back if they led into anything I couldn’t handle.

I told myself I would.

Miron

The first hit came from the left—lightning punching the ridgeline and traveling through rock like a groan. I felt it in the broken bones even before I heard it.

I kept my head down and my shoulders tight, one wing clamped against my back in the human shell, because folding it the wrong way would tear the membrane worse. Heat wanted out of me. I didn’t let it go. Not here. Not with the Shroud humming this close to the surface and the sky flashing like a warning.

The cut along my ribs kept leaking. The Shadowflame blade had slipped between unarmored scales before I shifted back. He’d been fast, younger, not better. The kind of fighter who smiled while he stabbed. I got him after. I think. The last I saw, he slid in the mud with his throat open. I didn’t check. There wasn’t time. Their watchers circled higher on the ridge, and I needed the cover of the storm to move.

Crawl, breathe, clamp down. Every time I pushed with my right hand, the gash pulled and the world went thin around the edges. I pressed my palm to the mud to leave less obvious tracks, but I knew I was carving ruts anyway. I smelled iron and the slick mineral scent of the mountain bleeding with me. Stupid to come this far downvalley, but the high air would have carried my heat like a flare. The council didn’t need me bringing a patrol to their door.

A washout took my weight and slid me three yards downslope. I grabbed for anything. Fingers closed on a root. Pain went white and then red. I swallowed bile and shut my eyes for three breaths. The thunder covered the noise I made. The rain didn’t care.

I needed a hollow. A rock overhang. A shed. Anything with three sides and a roof. Even an old ranger station would do. Somewhere to seal the heat and stop the blood. I pressed my hand harder to my side and tried to cauterize a thin line from the inside. It took too much. Sparks danced behind my eyes and the smell of cooked skin made me gag. The bleeding slowed, but it didn’t stop. The blade had kissed something deeper than it should have.

Move.

The ground changed from needle-soft to slick clay. My boots—useless human things—caught and slid. I took them off, tied the laces to my belt, and pushed on barefoot. Better purchase. More mud in the wounds. I gritted my teeth and focused on the next rock, the next root, the next gray patch of earth under the storm.

A flash. The follow-up crack hit before I finished the thought. Close. Too close. The hair on my arms rose as if the sky had reached down and lifted it. I counted instinctively. One. Two—

The second hit struck higher, on the ridge to my right, and the shock ran through the ground like a ripple. The old wards sang once in the bones of the mountain and then went quiet. I paused, listening. No wingbeats. No voices. Only rain. Good.

Then I smelled it—human. Soap, wet cotton, peppermint and something sharp, like alcohol. Close enough to be real, not a memory. Female. Small. Moving steady through the weather with more stubborn than sense.

I lowered myself into a shallow dip and tried to still my heat. The Shroud would blur edges, but a dragon’s body in pain reads like a flare if you’re trained to see it. I tucked my hand against the wound and pressed until the world narrowed around it. The drag marks would pull a hunter or a rescuer. I didn’t want either.

I closed my eyes and counted thunder.

Rayna

I followed the marks down past the bend. The trail pitched steeper and crossed a section where water ran in sheets. The ruts survived even there, scarring through the top layer into clay. I moved slower, scanning ahead before each step. The sleet turned back to cold rain that soaked through my hood and trickled down the back of my neck. My fingers went numb around the walking stick.

Another lightning strike hit so close I felt the shock in my teeth. I dropped into a crouch and covered my head like I’d tell anyone else to do. The flash left a ghost image. When it cleared, I saw something that made the back of my throat go tight.

On a flat stone just off the trail, the rain had pooled into a shallow puddle. The water there ran pink for a second, then diluted and cleared, then pink again as fresh drops hit. The flow fed from a small ledge above, not a vein—more like a drip. I stepped closer and set my palm under it. Warm. Not body-temperature-warm; just enough to feel strange against cold rain.

“Hello?” I called. I stood still and listened. Wind. Rain. A branch cracking somewhere up the slope. “I’m here to help.” My voice sounded small and dumb in the trees, but it’s what I say when I don’t know what else to say.

I climbed the small ledge and saw the next set of signs—broken fern fronds, a smear on a rock face at hand height, and a fresh print in the mud that wasn’t a boot. The shape wasn’t perfect. Rain had softened the edges, but it looked like fingers. Too long, maybe. Or I was seeing what I expected to see because I wanted to find someone alive. I wet my lips and tried again. “Hey! Can you hear me?”

The slope above ended in a shallow shelf under a tangle of laurel. If I were hurt and trying not to be seen, I’d tuck in there. I angled toward it, testing each step. My boots sank to the ankle more than once. My thighs burned. The rain had a way of sliding into my sleeves and pooling at my elbows. My skin itched with cold.

At the base of the laurel, the drag marks ended in a churned mess. Whatever had made them had either climbed over or slipped under. I crouched and lifted a branch, careful not to shake water down on my face. The space beneath was darker than the rest of the slope. At first I thought it was just shadow. Then my eyes adjusted, and I saw a shape—broad across the back, one arm tucked under the body, the other angled wrong. Bare feet. Mud to the calves. A shoulder blade that rose and fell in uneven breaths.

Alive.

I didn’t crawl in. Not yet. I scanned for the stupid things that get rescuers hurt—loose rocks, a bad angle, any hint of an animal. Nothing moved except leaves and rain. I shoved my pack off my shoulder, yanked the zipper, and pulled out the small kit and a foil blanket. “I’m going to help you,” I said, keeping my voice low. “I’m Rayna. I work EMS.”

No answer. A low sound that could’ve been a word or pain.

I slid in on my side to keep my profile small and put my hand on the person’s forearm, the one that wasn’t at a weird angle. Warm. Too warm. My fingers slipped on skin that felt… I don’t know. Different. I pushed the thought aside and did what I know how to do.

Airway. Breathing. Bleeding.

“Hey,” I said again. “Stay with me.” The rain beat on the laurel and ran down my back. Somewhere above, thunder rolled across the ridge, slower now, like it was moving on. My phone still said SOS. I pinched the foil blanket open with my teeth and tried not to look past the edges of what I could handle.