The Dragon of Sedona (The Treasure of Paragon Book 4) Read online

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  The Dragon of Cecil Court

  Chapter 1

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Books By Genevieve Jack

  The Dragon of Sedona: The Treasure of Paragon, Book 4

  Copyright © Genevieve Jack 2020

  Published by Carpe Luna Ltd, PO Box 5932, Bloomington, IL 61702

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author or publisher.

  First Edition: March 2020

  eISBN: 978-1-940675-55-8

  Paperback: 978-1-940675-53-4

  v 1.6

  Prologue

  October 1699

  Appalachian Forest, North America

  “Run, Maiara, run!” Her father shoved her along the path, tugging their horse’s reins behind him. The weary beast could move no faster, laden down as she was with pelts and supplies. Prickling fear raised the hair on Maiara’s nape, and she desperately tried to incite the animal to move, joining her father in his efforts, but the mare dug in her hooves. The headstrong beast won the battle of wills.

  Maiara’s moccasins slipped on the slick mud, flinging her to the forest floor. She broke her fall with her bare hands, the earthy scent of decaying leaves filling her nose. Above them, her hawk circled, the bird’s shrill screams a warning as their pursuer closed in. Crushing pain throbbed within her rib cage, more from her pounding heart than from the fall.

  She couldn’t think about the pain. Not now. With a single-minded focus, Maiara scrambled to her feet and clutched her father’s arm. “Leave her!” She pried the reins from his hands despite his protests.

  An arrow whizzed past her ear and lodged in the tree behind her. Her father’s blue eyes widened over his ruddy cheeks. Finally he saw reason. Abandoning the mare, he grasped her hand. His was large, burly, and pale. Hers was small, dark, and smooth. There was comfort in that hand. Trust. He’d saved her life before.

  “Run,” he commanded. She did.

  They weaved among the trees, the monster haunting the edge of her vision. At first the thing appeared to be a man in the image of a warrior from the Mohawk tribe, bald except for a roach of black hair decorated with porcupine quills, bones, and feathers. War paint striped his cheeks. Despite the bracing chill, he wore only his breechcloth and a pendant, an orb the size of a human eye that winked at her as it pulsed a soft blue light at the base of his throat.

  The monster might have looked like a man, but if what followed Maiara and her father had ever been human, he was no longer. Now he was a wendigo, a demon sent from the netherworld to rid this land of her kind, a relentless shadow, disappearing when the sun was high, only to stretch toward her again. He would not rest until every one of her people was dead. The blue wink of the stone around his neck turned her blood to ice. Whatever that was, it was unnatural, perhaps a remnant of the evil curse that had made him.

  Another arrow flew and she ducked, narrowly avoiding its barb. The wendigo stopped at the place their mare blocked the path and roared. Its eyes glowed as red as burning coals, and its mouth opened wide enough to swallow her entire head. All illusion of its humanity melted with that bone-chilling roar.

  Now the mare moved, tried to gallop away, but the wendigo snared its haunches with a set of razor-sharp claws that sprang from its hands. In a flurry of flashing teeth, the hell spawn tore through the pony, ignoring its equine shrieks. Blood sprayed. Maiara pressed her hand to her mouth as the scent of death reached her, and her stomach threatened to spill its contents. She averted her eyes, but the crunch of bones echoed through the woods long after the horse’s squeals abated.

  Maiara strained to put more space between them and the demon. She gripped her father’s arm tighter and forced him forward. They both knew the meal wouldn’t be enough for the wendigo. The savage beast had an insatiable appetite.

  “You must protect yourself.” Her father stumbled. He could not keep up with the pace of their run. She used every muscle in her diminutive frame to help him to his feet. “It’s the only way.” He was pleading with her now as if she were a petulant child.

  Another arrow, another roar. As she’d feared, the creature had already resumed its hunt. It would never quit. Never stop. Not until Maiara was dead.

  “Now, Maiara. Go!”

  The demon’s gaping maw drooled only yards behind them. Her father’s gray hair was slick with sweat. Through a throat raw from panting, she rasped, “No! Try harder.”

  His feet gained purchase and they were off again. “How did it find us?” he muttered, more to himself than to her. They were fools to think the wendigo wouldn’t pursue them, not after everything. He stopped short, clawed at his chest as if it hurt. “Maiara! You must leave me.”

  “I won’t,” she screamed, shaking her head. She would not abandon her last living family.

  “You have no choice.” He squeezed her hand again. Her father had raised her. Her father had saved her. He’d always been wise, and now the truth in his gaze cut straight to her heart. “Don’t let your mother’s death be in vain.”

  Above them, her hawk cried out another warning, this one sharper than the last. She heard the bowstring snap, the whoosh of the arrow. Her father’s eyes widened, and in a final burst of speed, he shifted in front of her. The arrow, meant for her, landed in his back. He collapsed against her. Her scream was silenced by a sharp bite of pain. The tip of the arrow that had passed through her father’s body pierced her chest.

  Trembling, she thrust with all her might, tearing the arrowhead from her flesh and allowing her father’s dying body to fall from her arms. A sob caught in her throat.

  “Go,” he whispered. His eyes turned unblinking toward the heavens.

  Too late now. Too late. She raced down the path, breathless, thighs burning. Blood from the wound in her chest blossomed like a rose on the front of her deerskin tunic. The wendigo closed in at alarming speed.

  She had no choice and no reason now to stay behind. At a full run, she scanned the trees, extending her arms. Desperate prayers to the Great Spirit tumbled from her lips. With a last glance toward her faithful hawk above, she did what she had to do.

/>   She escaped.

  Chapter One

  2018

  Sedona, Arizona

  Alexander felt like Wile E. Coyote, only instead of blowing himself up trying to kill the Road Runner, his efforts to free himself from the purgatory he suffered were repeatedly thwarted by a different sort of bird.

  His personal vexation was a red-tailed hawk hundreds of years past its natural expiration date yet far too stubborn to die. Unlike the cartoon Road Runner, the hawk made no attempt to run from him with a resounding meep, meep! and leave him in its dust.

  On the contrary, this bird rarely left his side. Despite his many attempts to separate himself from the winged creature, it remained an obsessive, magical pain in the ass.

  “You’re not going to stop me this time, Nyx,” he said, meeting the hawk’s intelligent amber eyes. Ironic that she resisted so thoroughly when his motivation revolved around her. The two of them were cogs in a never-ending wheel of pain. He only wished to throw a wrench in the gears and save them both.

  He called the bird Nyx after the Greek goddess of the night. Red-tailed hawks weren’t nocturnal animals, but this one had ushered darkness into his life. The kind of darkness that lived on the inside of a man that no amount of desert sun could ever reach.

  At one time, the bird had belonged to his mate, Maiara. She’d called the hawk Nikan, the Potawatomi word for “my friend.” The two had been inseparable until the night Maiara was brutally murdered. After her death, after her body was burned, the hawk attached to him like a tick burrowing for blood, presumably bound to him by the grief they shared.

  He refused to call her Nikan after that. She was no friend of his. She was a ghost. A demon. She was Nyx, the night, and her darkness had been with him ever since.

  A stab of longing cut through him. Thanks to Nyx, not a day passed he didn’t think of Maiara. The bird was a constant reminder of his loss.

  “You have to let me do this,” he pleaded with her. He wasn’t beyond begging. Anything to end this horror-go-round of an existence.

  The early-morning sun was blinding as he scanned the horizon from the top of one of the massive red mesas Sedona was known for. In his hand, he gripped a roll of thin, sharp wire. In his mind, he held an appetite for death. No, that wasn’t entirely true. It wasn’t that he wanted his life to end, just the pain.

  For a dragon, losing a mate was like having a thin layer of skin scraped from their body. Everything was painful, stinging, astringent. His body and soul were raw nerves, left with no protection against the elements, no shelter from the burning sun. He hurt. Everywhere.

  With a deep breath, he took in the beauty of his surroundings one final time. The landscape’s signature red color, courtesy of iron oxide that veined like blood through the stone, provided a sharp contrast to the cerulean sky. The topography was roughly as dry and coarse as the surface of Mars, yet brimming with life, the occasional grouping of desert trees or cactus growing from the stone. Survival in the bleakest of circumstances.

  There’d been a time he’d found its mystique comforting. Not anymore. A clear indication the time had come to end this madness.

  “You don’t want to go on like this, do you?” He stared at Nyx as if to will an answer from her. She let out a shrill cry that let him know exactly what she thought of his plan. “I will never understand you. This has to be as much a nightmare for you as it is for me. Whatever Maiara did to you to make you immortal has bound you to me. Never able to live as a wild bird. Never able to mate with your own kind.”

  He shoved his hands in the pockets of his jacket. “Have you ever stopped to think that if I died, perhaps you could be free? Truly free.”

  She flapped her wings and leaped to his arm, her talons digging into the black leather. Not that her grip was a threat to his dragon skin anyway. He might have looked human with his wings tucked away, but he was far tougher and healed much faster than any man. The hawk rubbed its head against his bearded cheek, its soft russet feathers ruffling at the contact. She brushed her beak against his nose.

  As he stared at her, he saw his reflection in her tawny eyes. By the Mountain, he looked like shit. Even in silhouette, he could tell he badly needed a haircut and to trim his beard, and he knew the rest of him wasn’t any better. He was emaciated and likely smelled of liquor and self-loathing.

  He gently nudged her back onto the branch of the juniper tree. “That’s enough. Wait there. This will be over soon.”

  It was hard to kill a dragon. Technically, he was immortal. Poison wouldn’t work. Walking in front of a semitruck wouldn’t work. If alcohol could’ve done him in, he’d already be dead. By the Mountain, he bought tequila by the case. It would be easier to run his motorcycle off a bridge, but a fall for a dragon wasn’t much of a threat. Dragons couldn’t drown or burn to death.

  There was only one foolproof way to kill a dragon: decapitation. He checked that the wire was properly fastened around the base of the tree and placed the noose around his neck, then backed up to get a running start.

  This was going to hurt.

  Glancing toward Nyx, he was relieved to find her gone. Maybe his lecture had gotten through to her after all. She’d left him. It was a sign.

  He ran for the edge.

  Three steps from the brink, Nyx flew straight up, sheering the side of the cliff. He cried out. Her wings fluttered against his cheeks and talons scraped his neck. Unable to stop his momentum, his feet slipped out from under him and he became a baseball player sliding into home, only the plate was open air beyond the cliff’s edge. His dragon’s wings tried to punch out but got caught in his leather jacket, store-bought—not part of the specially designed wardrobe his oread had made him to accommodate his extra appendages. Fuck. For a second he seemed to hang in the bright blue sky, Nyx with his noose in her claws hovering over him.

  “You mangy-feathered, slimy-beaked, bit—” He dropped like a stone.

  His back collided with the gravel in front of his motorcycle. Oww. Immortal or not, it hurt when bones broke. Perfectly still, he stared at the hawk as she banked and circled down toward him, her cries echoing off the cliffs.

  “I really hate you,” he whispered. It came out as a squeak. He worked to pull breath into his aching lungs as a sickening slurp indicated his bones were already healing. Not too much damage then. Slowly he raised a hand and ran his fingers through his hair. The back of his head was sore, but there wasn’t any blood. He was fine. Depressingly whole.

  The crunch of wheels on gravel turned his head. A minivan had pulled off the highway and parked next to his bike, and a tall white man wearing dark socks and sandals was climbing out of the driver’s seat.

  “Hey, are you all right?” The man hurried to him and leaned over Alexander, the floppy brim of his hat casting shade over his face and blocking his view of Nyx.

  “I’m fine.”

  “What are you doing lying on the side of the road?”

  He glanced toward his bike. “I’m, uh, just resting.”

  “Buddy, this is not the place. Someone could run you over.”

  He cleared his throat. If only that would be enough to do him in. “Hmm. Right. I’ll be on my way then.” He allowed the man to help him up and gave his neck a good crack.

  “Hey… Hey! Are you that guy? You know, that guy who paints the desert scenes with the bird.” The man turned to the van and yelled, “Honey, it’s that guy!”

  Alexander groaned. Oh dear goddess, please open the earth and swallow him down to hell pronto. This was the last thing he needed today.

  A woman in a Minnie Mouse T-shirt, jean shorts, and a green visor hopped down from the passenger seat of the minivan.

  “My word, it is him. Alexander! We just bought one of your paintings. You’re so talented.”

  “Thanks,” he mumbled. “I really have to go.”

  “Oh wait, can we get a picture?”

  “I, uh…”

  The woman had already pulled one of his paintings from the back of the van. He
recognized it—a piece he’d done a few years ago of Nyx, the red rock, and the blue sky. It was a money piece. It meant nothing to him; he’d just painted it for the money. It was the Thomas Kinkade of his work, beautiful and meaningless.

  She held it in front of his chest, her husband holding the other end of the canvas, and then popped her arm out to take a selfie. He did not smile.

  “One, two, three…,” she prompted.

  The glare from the cheesy grins on either side of him was almost blinding. Out of sheer guilt, he popped the corner of his closed lips a quarter of an inch. A series of clicks later, she slid her phone back into her pocket.

  “Thank you! What a special moment,” she squealed.

  She loaded the painting into the van, and the two waved their goodbyes. He watched them drive away from the seat of his motorcycle.

  Once they were gone, Nyx landed on the handlebars of his Harley-Davidson and cooed her apologies. He glared at the bird. “So that’s how it’s going to be? No way out?”

  She chirped and lifted into the clear blue sky.

  He revved the engine. “What a fucking Monday.”

  Chapter Two

  Sedona, for all intents and purposes, was a desert, consisting of red rock, dry weather, and plenty of sun. Technically, the area got about sixteen inches of rain a year, an amount that earned it the label of semiarid, not a desert, if you were a stickler for the details. Still, for an average of 278 days per year, Sedona’s rocky terrain baked beneath cheery golden rays without a hint of a raindrop.