ADVANCED SEARCH  

Support WWEnd

WWEnd Blog

WWEnd BookTrackr™

Synopsis

Dani and Eden Rivera were both born to kill dragons, but the sisters couldn't be more different. For Dani, dragon slaying takes a back seat to living a normal high school life in their Tennessee town, while Eden prioritizes training above everything else. Yet they both agree on one thing: it's kill or be killed where dragons are concerned.

Until Dani comes face-to-face with one and forges a rare and magical bond with him. As she gets to know Nox, she realizes that everything she thought she knew about dragons is wrong. With Dani lost to the dragons, Eden turns to mysterious and alluring sorcerers to help save her sister. Now on opposite sides of the conflict, each sister will do whatever it takes to save the other. But the two are playing with magic that is more dangerous than they know, and there is another, more powerful enemy waiting for them both in the shadows.

Excerpt

ONE

If she were a litigious sort of person, Dani was reasonably certain she could've had her best friend charged with attempted murder. Tomás drove like he was trying to kill them both, with one hand on the wheel and the other stuck out the open window like an invitation for a wayward motorist to amputate. His sensible 2004 Toyota Corolla, which had been passed down through multiple older siblings before reaching him, did not seem likely to survive for his kid sister to inherit, judging from the groaning deep in the engine every time he accelerated. Or braked. Or turned. Or thought about turning.

"Is it supposed to be making that noise?" Dani asked, raising her voice over the blaring indie rock that Tomás favored in the afternoons.

"What?" He made no move to turn down the music.

"Is it--" Dani hit the power button on the center console, cutting off a hipster mid-croon. "Is your car supposed to be making that noise?"

Tomás squinted into the sunlight--he could never keep up with his sunglasses--and listened as the Corolla groaned (normal), squeaked (normal), and then began clicking (not normal).

"Huh," he said. "That's new." He reached to turn the music back on. Dani let him, but compromised by turning down the volume to a tolerable level.

"If this car explodes, I want you to know that I'm not crawling through the wreckage to drag your mangled body away from the flames," she said mildly.

"Cars don't just explode." He paused, scratching at a thin patch of stubble on his neck that he'd missed shaving that morning. "I mean, probably."

"I'm going to have them carve 'Gone but Never Forgotten . . . Probably' on your gravestone." She reached over and flipped down the visor for him. The sliding panel over the mirror had broken off years ago, and she caught a glimpse of his brown eyes in the fingerprint-smudged glass. He grinned at her.

"I like it." He had a face made for grinning--all dimples and white teeth and smooth brown skin. There had been pimples there last year too, but they had obligingly vanished along with the last of his middle school awkwardness. He'd gotten his braces off, his growth spurt, and two girlfriends (not at the same time) over the course of the previous summer, and he'd arrived at junior year a bona fide heartthrob, and single--much to the joy of at least half the girls in their class.

"That reminds me," said Dani, plucking the ponytail holder off her wrist to pull back her hair. Tomás took a curve too fast, and she grabbed the handle over the door to brace herself. Outside the pollen-streaked window, through breaks in the trees, she caught glimpses of the green and golden valley rolling into the foot of the mountains. "Jenna McKinney asked me for your number today."

"That's weird."

"Weird that she asked, or weird that she asked me?"

"Weird that we're talking about my grave and you brought up Jenna McKinney. But also, weird that she asked you. Did you give it to her?"

"No. She pronounces your name wrong. It annoys me." For the most part, Dani didn't care about Tomás's dating life, but she wasn't above the occasional tiny abuse of power when it came to cute girls who spent three weeks flirting promisingly with her via late-night text before revealing their actual agenda on the last day of school. Not that Tomás needed to know all that.

"Oh," he said noncommittally. "Maybe I'll see her tonight."

"Maybe."

Dani and Tomás had been friends since seventh grade, when he'd been the new kid in school and she'd been recently bereft of a best friend. Their origin story was a bit of a legend around the middle school and had followed them to William Blount High. Darryl Lewis, the class ass-clown, had yanked Tomás's Saint Christopher medal right off his neck, and when he saw how much it upset Tomás, had initiated a very mature game of keep-away. Dani, who had never been a fan of the game--or of Darryl Lewis, for that matter--had ended it with equal maturity by punching Darryl in the nose. She'd earned herself a two-day suspension, and found Tomás on her doorstep the next afternoon with her homework and a giant bag of Skittles. Some friendships were meant to be.

And yet, five years and many bags of Skittles later, he still missed her driveway every time he drove her home.

"Turn," Dani said, and Tomás slammed the brakes and wrenched the wheel to the left. "Jesus Christ!" Dani banged into the car door, then steadied herself with both hands on the glove compartment as the car bumped down the rutted gravel driveway, which led downhill through a copse of pine trees.

"Language," Tomás warned, with more habit than conviction. He was ostensibly Catholic; which was to say, he attended Sunday mass with his family every week and always wore his medal, but otherwise had never expressed much interest in religion. Too much distraction in school, friends, and everything else his abuela termed "secular." Dani couldn't blame him. She knew a thing or two about distractions.

"I wouldn't have to ask for divine intervention if you would stop driving like a deranged orangutan."

Tomás's only reply was to sail over a dip in the driveway without slowing. Dani bounced high enough in her seat that her head smacked into the roof of the car. At this rate, the Corolla wasn't going to survive another day, much less another owner. The driveway to Dani's house was like its own road, winding through the trees and undergrowth a quarter mile before the property opened up to their front lawn. Thanks to a wet season, the grass was bright green, with neat flower beds encircling the handful of oaks that had survived her grandparents' landscaping fifty years ago when they built the house. The nearest neighbor was twenty acres away through a young forest and overgrown fields, so to Dani, home always felt like its own private world.

The afternoon sun filtered through the trees and cast dappled shadows across the gabled roof, which featured a prominent widow's watch; it had always seemed an incongruous detail for a farmhouse built in the middle of the Smoky Mountains. The whitewashed front porch, with its handmade rocking chairs from the local Cracker Barrel and a wind chime that Dani's older sister Eden had crafted in the second grade from broken glass bottles, conjured Southern Living visions of hot summer nights sipping sweet tea and watching fireflies. Neither of which her family had ever done.

"Thanks for dropping me off." Dani unbuckled her seatbelt as the car rolled to a stop and hefted up her bag from the floorboard between her feet.

"You need a ride tonight?"

"No, Eden got roped into dinner with some family friends, so the Jeep is all mine."

"Cool, cool." Tomás tapped an absent rhythm on the steering wheel as he peered through the streaky windshield at the house. All the curtains were drawn, which wasn't unusual, even in the middle of the day. "Need help with your bag?"

"Do I need help with the backpack that I've carried every day by myself for years?"

Tomás shot her a glare, and she laughed as she pushed open the door and slid out. Her shoes crunched on the new gravel that her parents had trucked in last week. The gravel supposedly was part of the normal upkeep of the old family estate, but Dani and her sister both knew it was to impress these "family friends" her parents were so excited--and tight-lipped--about. Eden had apparently met them a long time ago, so she joined in their parents' smug intrigue, which meant that Dani very emphatically didn't give a shit about it. On principle.

"Don't worry," Dani said, leaning down to meet his eyes. "Eden will be around all summer. I promise I'll help you stalk her later." Tomás had been crushing on her older sister ever since he'd first laid eyes on her, which Dani didn't understand but also didn't mind facilitating; it kept Tomás happy, and Eden would never so much as give him a second glance anyway.

"You're a true friend."

"See you at the bonfire." Dani shut the door and waved him off. She took the front steps two at a time, her backpack slung over one shoulder. She found her mother in the living room, balanced on the back of the couch with a duster in one hand and a half-full glass of what looked like her favorite rum and Coke in the other.

"You're late." Her mother didn't glance down. She was laser-focused on whatever dust bunny she was chasing along the top of the bookshelf. She rose up on her toes, one leg extended behind her like a ballerina, and stretched gracefully to swipe the duster across the farthest corner. Then she straightened and dropped to the ground, her bare feet almost silent on the woven rug. She hadn't spilled so much as a drop.

"That was impressive," Dani said, hoping to distract her.

Her mom took a sip, eyeing her over the rim of the glass. Her shoulder-length brown hair was pulled into a messy ponytail. She was wearing black yoga pants and one of Dad's old Emory University T-shirts.

"Thank you," she said. "You're still late."

"It's the last day of school."

Her mom made an uninterested sound and started dusting again. Analisa Rivera was not the kind of mom who snapped photos of her kids on their first day of school, stuck A+ tests on the refrigerator, or planned end-of-year barbecues. When Eden graduated high school, there were no announcements mailed or congratulations! banners hung. The Rivera family celebrated different kinds of milestones.

"Where's Eden?" Dani asked, shifting her backpack to the other shoulder.

"She's already at the barn."

"She couldn't wait for me?"

"I'm sure she would have," her mom said sweetly, "if you had been on time."

Dani groaned and raced up the stairs to her bedroom. She knew from experience that the later she was to practice, the longer Eden would keep her there. Her older sister was stricter than a drill sergeant when it came to training.

In less than five minutes she'd changed from her school clothes into compression pants, a teal cropped tank top, and running shoes. She sprinted downstairs and through the house to the back door, shouting a hello to her father as she passed his office. Since Eden had taken the ATV, Dani had to wrestle her bicycle down from the wall of the mudroom and pedal like mad across the back forty--which, on top of being muddy and mostly uphill, was in desperate need of being mowed.

By the time she reached the barn, she was dripping sweat and panting. It was a barn in outer appearance and name only; there had never been any livestock in residence. Half the floor was speckled black rubber like the high school's weight-lifting room, and the other half was one massive blue training mat. One wall was lined with exercise balls, dumbbells, punching bags, and weight benches. That was where the resemblance to high school gym class ended.

The opposite wall was like a visual history of warfare, mounted with weapons from various time periods and countries of origin. They were mostly for display purposes only, though not always.

Dani stood in the doorway for a few seconds, watching Eden's back as she scaled the climbing wall installed on the far side. She was almost at the top, about twenty feet up, just at the juncture of the sixty-degree overhang. She was wearing her helmet and climbing harness with a chalk bag clipped on a belt. There was an auto belay device installed at the ceiling, but the line was retracted and the carabiner empty. Eden had stopped using the belay when she was fifteen, Dani even earlier. Milestones.

"Don't let me interrupt," Dani called out. She dug through a bin on the shelf by the door and grabbed two hand wraps.

Eden was silent for a while, contemplating her next move.

"You're late," she said finally. Then she leapt for a hold, catching it with her fingertips. For a couple heart-pounding seconds, she dangled freely with only the narrow crimp keeping her from plummeting to the ground; then she managed to hook her toes around a foothold.

Dani realized she was holding her breath and forced herself to focus on wrapping her hands. It took Eden less than thirty seconds to finish the climb. She pulled down the carabiner from the auto belay, clipped it to the loop on her harness, and released her hold. She swung back and descended to the floor, her posture precise and her landing light.

By the time Dani had finished wrapping, Eden had stripped off her climbing gear and was chugging from a water bottle. Dani retrieved another pair of wrappings from the bin.

"Great dyno at the end there," she said. It was an actual compliment this time, not just a distraction tactic.

"Thanks. I beat my best time." Eden swiped her arm across her mouth and took the wrappings. Dani and Eden both took after their mother, with light brown skin that rarely burned in the summer and dark brown hair and eyes. But where Dani was short and compact, Eden was almost as tall as their father and lean like a ballet dancer. She was wearing a loose gray tank top over a neon pink sports bra and black leggings with a matching pink stripe down the sides. Dani had no doubt she'd coordinated the workout attire the night before. Eden would probably spend all day in the barn if their parents would let her.

"You need a warmup?" Eden asked as they both slipped off their shoes and socks and began pulling on their boxing gloves. There was headgear and various other protective equipment on the shelf, but that gear had gone the way of the belay.

"Thanks to an impatient sister of mine, I biked all the way here," Dani said. "I'm plenty warm."

"Fine. Muay Thai rules?" Dani nodded, and they moved to the center of the floor. "Did you work on your footing like we practiced?"

"Yes," Dani lied, raising her gloved fists to mirror Eden's. The truth was, she rarely came to the barn outside of their normal training sessions. It was annoying enough to be bossed around by her older sister two hours a day, five days a week, without cutting into her precious free time to do more. Dani went along with the training and conditioning, her father's lessons on tracking and wilderness survival, and her mother's lectures on lore and ancient weaponry, because that's what it meant to be a Rivera. But she wasn't about to abandon her friends, her hobbies, her life like Eden had, for the sake of the family legacy and some distant, mostly theoretical threat.

They tapped gloves and shifted into their stances, each making a few preliminary jabs to test the other's reflexes.

"Raise your guard higher," Eden said, "and square your hips. This isn't boxing." To demonstrate her point, she threw a right side kick. Dani raised her left knee in an attempt to check the blow, but her leg was at the wrong angle and Eden's kick caught her hard on the hip. Reluctantly, she fixed her stance and raised her hands higher to protect her head. It always felt unnatural to her to leave her torso unguarded, like she was inviting a swift kick to the ribs, and Eden had never been able to give her a good explanation other than "That's the proper technique." Finally, Mom had explained to her that the invitation was the whole point. Lure your opponent into a strike, and then use it against them.

They both got in a few good hits, gradually quickening the pace until their bodies were a flurry of motion. Hands, feet, elbows, knees--each put to brutal purpose, bone connecting with soft tissue. It was Dani's favorite part of sparring, when Eden was too focused on her own technique to critique Dani's and it was all about primal reflexes and rapid-fire strategy. Eden's own guard was starting to lower with fatigue. Dani took the opportunity to fake a low kick, and as Eden raised her knee to check it, Dani changed the angle to a high kick, slamming into the side of Eden's head.

Her sister retreated a few steps, blinking rapidly, but Dani advanced without giving her a chance to recover. She threw a left cross into Eden's stomach. Eden crunched down to block, and Dani pushed down on her shoulders while drilling her right knee upward into her sister's ribs. It was a solid blow, and much to Dani's satisfaction, she heard a curse from Eden as she disengaged.

They kept sparring, but all the landing blows were Dani's now, with Eden struggling to maintain her precious technique as she checked and blocked. Dani wasn't paying much attention to her own form, focused instead on hammering strikes into every opening she could find.

"You're too sloppy," Eden snapped, her voice equal parts exhaustion and annoyance. "Wasting energy on fancy moves isn't how you win a fight."

On the last word, she launched into a roundhouse kick, but Dani was ready for her. She kept her right arm up against her body to block the kick, then hooked her left arm under Eden's ankle. She spun around to the outside of the leg so that she was standing at Eden's left side, then swept a kick into Eden's other leg while pushing into her chest. With a terrible whump, Eden hit the floor in a tangle of limbs.

She struggled to right herself but finally collapsed onto her back, gasping up at the ceiling. Panting, Dani stood over her. Her own limbs were quivering with fatigue, but she couldn't help a grin.

"Fancy moves like that?"

"Where the hell did you pick that up?" Eden demanded.

"YouTube."

Eden made a strangled noise somewhere between a groan and a sigh.

"All that flash is meaningless without good technique."

Dani rolled her eyes and walked away. She ripped away the Velcro strap on her right glove with her teeth and yanked it off. Even with the padding, her hand bones were aching.

"For some reason, your sermons on technique are less convincing from the floor," she called over her shoulder.

"This isn't a joke, Dani." Her sister rolled to her feet, wincing. "Why can't you take any of this seriously? You know what we're up against."

Actually, I don't, Dani thought. And neither do you. Not really.

"What makes you think I'm not taking this seriously?" she asked instead, ripping off her other glove and whirling to face Eden. "It doesn't matter if it's Muay Thai or boxing or fencing or freaking stick-fighting, more than half our sparring matches end with you on the ground. I hit every target. I beat every record you set. What more do you want from me, Eden?"

Eden's breath had steadied, and she stood motionless with her gloved hands loose at her sides. Her expression was stony, which somehow made Dani feel worse than if she'd looked hurt.

"I want you to stop acting like any of this is for our own edification." Eden had their mother's habit of over-enunciating words when she was angry. "It's not our egos at stake here. It's the fate of the goddamn world."

"Oh, here we go," Dani muttered, turning back around and flinging her gloves onto the shelf.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"If it's all the same to you, I'd rather skip the 'fate of the world' lecture today. I have plans tonight. Normal teenager plans."

A pause. She heard the sounds of Eden removing her own gloves.

"I'm sorry if our family's responsibility gets in the way of your summer fun," Eden said, her voice quieter now but no less angry. She came up beside Dani and set her gloves neatly back in their place. "Let me ask you something, though. Do you ever wonder why Mom and Dad hung that on the wall in here?"

She gestured toward the top of the door frame. Dani glanced up, even though she already knew what she would find. It was a bleached white skull, long and lizard-like, but the size of a Volkswagen Beetle. A pair of spiny ridges ran along the center of the head, flaring into two slightly curved horns. Double rows of teeth like a shark's filled the grinning mouth. It was the pride and joy of the Rivera family. The constant sentinel over their training. The ever-present reminder of that distant enemy.

A dragon skull.

"Because mounting it over the fireplace might raise some suspicions when we have house guests?" Dani asked innocently.

"Because it could have just as easily been Mom's or Dad's skull rotting in that dragon's cave somewhere, if they hadn't taken their responsibilities seriously. If you come face to face with one of those in the flesh, your stupid YouTube stars aren't going to be any help."

"And you think any of this will be?" Dani gave a short, incredulous laugh as she cast a glance around the barn. "You think a dragon is going to wait for you to find a weapon and take up the proper stance? You think that a perfect right hook is going to be any use against those teeth? For Christ's sake, Eden, all the technique in the world isn't going to save you if a dragon decides to barbecue you for dinner."

"And your devil-may-care, anything-goes attitude is?"

"I'm not like you," Dani said. "I fight to win."

"So do I!"

"No, you fight to be perfect. It's not the same."

Eden set her jaw and squared off to face her. For a second, Dani thought she might throw a punch, but then she shook her head.

"Fine. Let's put your little theory to the test and see which of us would survive the longest."

"You got a dragon chained up in your closet that I don't know about?"

"No, but we have the next best thing." Eden looked toward the opposite corner of the barn, where a tarp covered something large and lumpy.

Dani followed her gaze and smiled.

"Okay, but we have to do it for real. No safeguards."

Eden hesitated, then nodded.

"Okay."

El Toro, which was an affectionate nickname bestowed by Analisa, was a home-built, custom-engineered contraption that most closely resembled a mechanical bull. Instead of a saddle and fake horns, it was equipped with retracting spikes the length of baseball bats, electrified whips meant to mimic the swinging of a dragon's tail, rubber pellets the size of paintballs that shot much faster and hurt much worse, and of course, the constantly rotating nozzles that breathed fire at random intervals.

El Toro was a death trap that could only be shut down by a small red button on its underbelly--or, in case of emergency and utter failure, a kill switch on the wall. It was one of the only training tools in the barn that required strict parental supervision. Dani had only faced it once, Eden twice--every time on the easiest setting, and every time with the safeguards in place. Spraying water instead of fire, the spikes blunted with rubber tips, the lashes' electric current shut off, and the pellets moving at a quarter-speed. Even then Dani hadn't come close to besting it, and Eden had only managed it earlier that year, by the skin of her teeth.

But Dani had been fourteen the last time she tried it. She knew things would be different this time.

Together they dragged the contraption to the center of the barn. It took Eden nearly ten minutes of fiddling to get everything set up properly.

"I'm first," Dani said when it was finally ready.

"Fine by me." Eden sauntered over to the kill switch and snatched the stopwatch from where it hung on a peg. "Do you need a safe word?"

"Screw you."

"Haven't heard that one before."

Dani took a second to collect herself, staring down the two giant bolts that served as El Toro's eyes. Then she hit the green button on its head. The light blinked slowly, giving Dani ten seconds to back up and take her position before the machine roared to life. And "roar" was the first thing El Toro did, bellowing out a stream of flame in a complete 360-degree spin. Dani felt the heat of it on her chest as she leapt back. She used her momentum to drop into a backwards somersault, then rolled up into a crouch, ready for her next move.

She watched the ever-changing configuration of spikes and lashing whips, instinctively searching for a pattern, though she knew there wasn't one.

"You know, waiting for the battery to run down doesn't count as winning," Eden shouted from her safe distance.

Dani shot her a dirty look, which was a mistake. In her split second of distraction, she missed the red pellet shooting from El Toro. It caught her in the collarbone. She swore, spotted an opening in the spikes, and bolted forward. Whips danced around her like demented jump ropes, and she ducked, skipped, and twisted to avoid them. She could have sworn she felt the buzz of electricity raise the hairs on her skin. Three more pellets shot out in quick succession. Two were wide, and the third she sidestepped. A spike shot out, lancing into the gap between her elbow and side. Dani stared down at it while her heart skipped a beat, then she had to lunge to miss another whip.

There was a faint wheezing sound, and Dani realized what it was just in time to hit the deck. Another jet of fire spewed above her. Dani blinked and saw a whip sailing toward her face. There was no time for swearing or even thinking now. She'd devolved into a creature of pure instinct. She reached up--only a split second after the fire had abated, judging by the sizzle of heat over her hands--and grabbed the spike above her. She swung her feet forward and off the ground like a gymnast mounting a high bar. She didn't quite have the momentum to swing into a handstand on the spike, but she managed to climb atop it. Then she planted one foot between El Toro's eyes and jumped across its back. She hit the ground in a crouch.

The mechanisms on El Toro were randomized, but their general placement was determined by the proximity sensors inset all over its body. When Dani landed on the opposite side, she took advantage of the brief delay as El Toro recalibrated to her sudden change in position and rolled underneath it. She jabbed upward, slamming her palm into the red button.

A loud whirring, and then silence. She closed her eyes, panting for breath, and grinned to herself. She rolled back out and climbed to her feet, dropping a theatrical bow. Eden clapped dutifully, though she looked less than impressed.

"Two minutes and six seconds," she said. "Not bad."

"Your turn," Dani said, taking the stopwatch from her. "Safe word?"

"'Screw you' does have a nice ring to it." She made her way to El Toro, giving it a companionable pat on the head before hitting the green button and moving back into position.

Dani couldn't quash a swell of excitement in her chest. She liked to compete, and she loved to win, but more than anything--and this was a secret she intended to take to her grave--she loved to watch her sister kick ass. She had ever since she'd been seven years old, spying through a crack in the barn doors while nine-year-old Eden moved through fencing drills with the grace of a dancer, scaled the climbing wall with hardly any missteps, and hit eight out of ten targets with a Sig Sauer P238, all with the cool confidence of a cop in a crime drama. Those were the days when dragons were barely a fairy-tale concept to Dani, and training was a thrilling promise instead of a daily chore.

Her sister's obsession with technique was a pain, but the truth was that Eden was good at what she did. Better than any of the other scattered dragon hunters Dani had met in her life. Probably even better than their parents. Dani couldn't help but feel a certain sense of sisterly pride at that, even though she would never admit it out loud.

El Toro quaked to life with less panache than it had for Dani, but soon enough the whips and pellets were flying. True to form, Eden ducked, rolled, jumped, and dodged with elegant, military precision. Within the first thirty seconds, she had already gotten close enough to the machine to touch it twice, but was stymied both times before she could get underneath.

As the stopwatch ticked ever closer to two minutes and Dani was beginning to think she might actually best her sister on this one, a whip lashed Eden across the stomach. She yelped. Dani ran forward a couple steps without thinking, but forced herself to stop. The only thing Eden would hate more than losing was interference.

In the next moment El Toro bellowed out a column of flame. Eden was distracted by another whip flying toward her, and sidestepped--right into the line of fire. She cried out, a sickening sound of pain that reverberated through Dani's own body. She took another involuntary step forward.

Eden twisted free from the flame--it looked like it had just gotten her shoulder--and stopped with her back to the machine, gasping loudly.

Then, mid-rage, El Toro died, its whips falling limp and spikes freezing in place. Dani blinked, wondering how Eden could have possibly reached the red button from where she stood.

"What the hell do you two think you're doing?"

Dani spun around at the voice and found her father standing behind her, his hand lowering from the kill switch. He eyed Dani for a few seconds, and when she didn't reply, turned his glare to Eden, who hadn't moved. A muscle in his jaw twitched. Dani looked and saw, with a sinking feeling in her stomach, what he had seen: the tip of a spike, which had obviously been in the process of extending when he hit the switch. It was a couple inches from the back of Eden's neck.

Copyright © 2021 by Destiny Soria

Reviews

There are currently no reviews for this novel. Be the first to submit one! You must be logged in to submit a review in the BookTrackr section above.

Images

No alternate cover images currently exist for this novel.