For the first time the elemental jinn tore its gaze from me, and after about two seconds of scanning, focused on a spot to my right. I did not turn to look – enemy in front of me, friend at my back.
The jinn moved, gliding back, its words just audible. “I do not know how you have broken the ancient energy, but fate has intervened. There are three paths for you both now … one is … survival. Good luck.” It disappeared into the other side of the swirling energy mists.
Arms surrounded me then, Braxton’s heat and scent engulfing me.
“Hold on to me.” He had to yell to be heard over the jinn’s increasing enchantment. “This is going to hurt.”
That was the last thing I heard before there was an inward ricocheting of energy and the circle of power surrounding us suddenly imploded. I couldn’t be more grateful that Braxton was with me. I wasn’t even going to question how that was, not yet anyway; it was time to prepare for … for…
The strike of the energy was direct, and no matter how hard I fought it, I was forced to surrender consciousness.
Everything went black.
Chapter 6
I’d been knocked out once before, in sparring. It was tough to hit a shifter hard enough to render them unconscious, but when I was about seventeen a lion shifter got me a good one, out cold for fifteen minutes. So I knew the sensation of waking from a blow like that, the haziness and disorientation of my synapses trying to fire in some semblance of order again.
Waking from the jinn’s spell was nothing like that. A slow haze of consciousness started to filter in, measured increments of awareness. I knew my body was moving on instinct without any actual recognition of the motions. Eyes open, chest rising and falling, lungs filling, hands scratching at the rough dirt beneath my body. I couldn’t say how long it took for memory to creep in, for images to filter into my brain past the lingering magic. Whatever spell that elemental had hit me with, well, it had knocked me out in more ways than one.
My eyes were tracking small wisps of what looked like dandelion. The air was neither hot nor cold, and there was plenty of light, but I wasn’t outside. It was like a wood-lined cave, which was … odd. Maybe a round cabin?
Bit by bit, piece by piece, the parts that made up Jessa started to fit back into their places. My wolf rose, along with my dragon. When I was unconscious, they seemed to be out as well. As the fluffy aura of my dragon snarled and flicked metaphorical wings, I suddenly remembered that Braxton had broken through the energy cage. What the hell had happened in that clearing? Where had the jinn sent us?
A slice of agony split through my head, as if the clarity of events had reminded my poor abused body that it had just been hurt. Badly. I couldn’t move my head, but that didn’t stop my hands from searching for my dragon shifter.
What if something happened to him? What if that jinn had taken or hurt Braxton?
The wolf and dragon inside both started to howl, a long mournful cry of pain and loss. We couldn’t survive without Braxton. There was no Jessa without him.
I was distracted by a low growl behind my head. I was still struggling to move myself, having to force my limbs through magic that coated my skin and held me immobile.
The contents of my stomach started to roll as the agony of my head intensified. I was about five seconds from hurling. Eff this. I knew what I needed to do.
I reached for my wolf, fighting the remnants of the jinn’s spell on my skin. The shift to animal often cured many ailments, and she was quite impervious to magic, so it was my best option. I was going to destroy my clothes, but I’d deal with that later.
The change was seamless. Four paws hit the hard, rocky ground, and without much hesitation I began to scan and scent the place. It really did look like a round wooden room. There were two doors. From the one in front I could scent something damp and decaying, like the forest; the other held the hot and smoky aromas of the desert.
There was no roof, the ceiling was a natural skylight, a glass barrier in which beams of light caromed in an array of arcs and lines. They must have been the dandelions I’d followed with my eyes.
Circling the room twice, there was no sign of what had growled before. It had to have come from outside. The monochromatic nature of my wolf vision didn’t give the variation that my Jessa eyes would have, but I was guessing there wasn’t much in the way of color in this room anyway.
The growl sounded again, louder this time, and then everything clicked into place. I knew that sound, I’d heard it many times before. It was Braxton. Dragon Braxton.
Door number one. The forest. Which was good, since I wasn’t taking the desert door. It reminded me of the scent of the jinn, and it seemed avoiding their kind was in my best interest.