The Island Of Dragons: A Paranormal Shifter Romance Read online

  “Things happened, I guess. And by the way, I am really sorry to have to tell you all this. I don’t know how close you were to our father, or what kind of an image you hold of him in your mind, so I hate to... I don’t know. Tarnish your image of him, if I am. Although... well, a little later, your image of him is about to become very tarnished anyway. And that’s because... well, we’ll stick to the present matter at hand. I’m sorry to have to tell you of our father’s infidelity to your mother.”

  A bit confused by some of the things Dalton was saying, I began nodding, but then turned the movement to a shake. “It’s okay. I’ve never really held my father up on a pedestal anyway. Our father, I mean. We were never close. I always found him a bit cold, actually. Very distant. I loved him anyway, just because he was my father, but... I guess I just never ‘got’ him, or maybe he just didn’t ‘get’ me. And in fact... I don’t even remember him telling me he loved me... ever. But... anyway, so, you were born after our father and your mother had an affair... and then what happened? Did you ever know our father?”

  Looking inexplicably uncomfortable, Dalton glanced to the side for a moment before returning his gaze to my face. “Well, yes, and not initially, but then in later years, yes. Once I became a scientist of some renown, he sought me out actually, and we developed a relationship, though it was always kept hidden from you and your mother. My own mother had passed on at that point, and our father and I agreed that for your and your mother’s sake, it was probably best to just keep the two of you in the dark. Our father talked about you a few times, and even once showed me a couple of pictures. He seemed proud that his genetic traits seemed most dominant in us both, and not the traits of our respective mothers.”

  While a warm, salt-scented breeze blew in through a row of open windows, Dalton glanced over at them before looking at me again, making his light green, hazel-ish eyes glint even greener in the bright sunlight.

  “After my mother passed, and then your father and mother passed, I developed a desire to meet you, my last remaining family member, though I just wasn’t sure how to go about it. Then, a little while ago, I did a little research on you, taking a look at your social media pages, and I saw that you were going on a cruise with friends.

  “At this same time, I already knew that I needed to make a trip through a wormhole to this island, and I knew the wormhole I needed could be created at a specific point in the ocean that the cruise ship would be crossing, so I got the idea to kill two birds with one stone, as it were. I figured I could come here to the island, and also accomplish meeting you beforehand, though I was going to do that in a surreptitious way, without revealing who I was.

  “I guess I was just hoping to strike up a friendly conversation and leave it at that, so that on the chance that my trip to the island didn’t go so well, at least I could say that I met you after all these years. I don’t know why it began to feel so important to me, but it just did. But then I never got the chance anyway. The ship ended up traveling at a higher rate of speed than I’d anticipated, and we reached the precise wormhole coordinates faster than I’d thought we would. Then at that point, I had to make my move, even though I hadn’t had the chance to meet you yet.”

  I stared at Dalton for a long moment, incredulous. “So, you... you what? You decided to get the ship to tip and dump me overboard, just specifically so we could meet? I could have drowned.”

  He cringed, shaking his head. “No. I didn’t get the ship to tip just to dump you. No, not at all. That was just an unfortunate and unexpected side effect of my vibration device. I never meant for you to fall overboard.”

  I scoffed, a bit dubious. “So, it was just complete coincidence, then?”

  “Well, no, at least I don’t think so. But it wasn’t intentional, either. See, I set my vibration device to send only a life form with my DNA through the wormhole I created in the ocean, but, and I’m certainly not positive this is what happened, but I think the vibrations somehow drew you toward the wormhole, too, probably because we share some DNA. I think my vibration device might have even led you to come to the top of the ship without you even being aware that you were being drawn. Maybe the pull of the device also made it harder for you to avoid going over the railing, too, I really don’t know.”

  With the bright sunlight bringing out the strawberry tones in his hair, Dalton paused, expression pleading. “I’m really sorry, Ellie. Please believe that I never meant to put you in danger. When I saw it was you that had fallen over the side of the ship, I was completely stunned, to the point that I had to summon up some serious acting skills in order to act like I didn’t know who you were. Whether the whole thing was coincidence or caused by my device, I hope you can forgive me. I hope you can chalk up the whole thing to a little brother being a stereotypical pain in the ass.”

  I cracked a smile, unable to stop myself. “Well, I guess I can let things go. Especially considering that ‘the whole thing’ led me to meet the man that I love.”

  Smiling again, I turned to look at Warren, surprised to see him sitting with his strong jaw clenched and nostrils flared just slightly, appearing as the very picture of irritation and annoyance. He now unclenched his jaw, though seemingly just slightly, because when he spoke, his words sounded as if they were coming out from gritted teeth.

  “I’m really happy that you two have worked things out, and despite my current level of irritation, I really do mean that. But before we get any further into family bonding, I want to remind you both that we’re all currently sitting on an island that is supposedly going to self-destruct. Another earthquake may flatten this castle within minutes. And if I don’t soon get some answers as to why these earthquakes are happening, I may flatten this damned castle myself.”

  *

  Despite the seriousness of Warren’s tone, not to mention the seriousness of what he’d just said, I had to work hard to stifle a giggle, knowing full well that wanting to laugh at such a time was completely inappropriate. Although, it seemed like I wasn’t the only inappropriate one. I couldn’t be sure, but I caught Dalton’s eye for just a second, and I could have sworn I saw his greenish eyes twinkling. We were feeling more and more to me like real siblings every minute.

  However, Dalton didn’t seem inclined to test Warren on the whole flattening-the-castle thing. He immediately adopted what seemed to be a genuinely sober expression and spoke in a voice that was equally as serious. “You’re right, Chief Knight. You’ve waited long enough for an explanation, so I won’t wait any longer.”

  Warren, who’d been sitting a little hunched over on the edge of the loveseat, as if just waiting to spring up to do some castle flattening, now finally sat back, seeming to relax a little. “Please. Go ahead.”

  Also seeming to relax a little, Dalton took a deep breath before speaking. “Ellie’s and my father, who I always called Harold, was one of the men who created this island. I’m sure you probably remember him from those early days, though I know that back then, none of the scientists and computer guys went by their real names... something funny about they were all supposed to keep their real identities secret, even from each other for security purposes or something. That whole thing didn’t last long, from what I heard, but you probably knew my father Harold as Robert O’Dowd, I think was the phony name he went by, but, anyway. The story of why the island is now set to self-destruct really begins back in the States, in the early eighties.”

  Outside, castle repairs were still going on, and a series of loud booms from somewhere nearby interrupted Dalton, and he waited for the noise to die down before continuing, ever so lightly drumming his fingers on the arms of his plush chair while he did so. He drummed his fingers pointer to pinkie, then pinkie to pointer, then back the other way, over and over, the movement so slight it was almost imperceptible. I realized in amazement that my father had used to do this exact same thing. When he began speaking again, Dalton continued the movement of his fingers, not seeming to even be aware of the action.

  “So, back
in the early eighties, Harold was a computer scientist with a background in quantum physics. The government enlisted him to help create shifters to use as weapons in the cold war. At first, he thought attempting to make shifters would be a colossal failure and didn’t want to try it, but he was as greedy as he was talented, and they offered him fifty million dollars, so he ultimately said yes. However, once he’d helped to create this island, and once you shifters were created, Chief Knight, a problem developed.

  “You shifters all seemed to retain your humanity and personalities, meaning, you all didn’t exactly turn out to be the ice-cold, zombie-like fighting machines that the government wanted. So, once Harold couldn’t fix this, and being that he’d been the primary creator of you shifters, the government decided to abandon all of you and the island without even telling any of you why. They told Harold they were going to refuse to pay him since he didn’t create the fighters that he’d said he would.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I gave Warren a sidelong glance to see if he was as intrigued as I was and found him listening to Dalton with rapt attention.

  “So, wanting to destroy his creation so that the government could never change their minds and use the shifters without paying him, Harold set the island to eventually self-destruct by folding in on itself basically via the lake, thereby closing the wormhole that this island and the surrounding ocean exists in. However, he could only do this through a blend of occult magic and physics... stuff so complicated even I don’t even understand it all... and before he left the island, he realized there was a problem.”

  Feeling like a little kid around a campfire, I sat back against the loveseat, realizing that I’d scooted to the edge of it. “What was the problem?”

  “Well, our father did some experiments and realized that the lake was so toxic with black magic that it would create supernatural creatures if anyone went in the water, whether they were shifter or human, and this is what eventually happened when some folks from the island strayed too far and got pulled into the lake. They became what I gather everyone on the island calls the Gray Forms, or called the Gray Forms, before they were destroyed, which was unfortunate.”

  Now beyond intrigued, I spoke up again. “Why? Why was it bad they were destroyed?”

  “Well, the Forms were actually ‘protectors’ of the island, bizarre as that sounds. See, even though Harold was able to create the lake to be a vortex into which the whole island would eventually fold in on itself, after what he’d done using black magic and very complicated physics to create the lake, he couldn’t get some of the ‘glitches’ out, the main one being that the supernatural creatures would ‘plug’ the lake in order to stop the folding-in on itself of the island. And if these supernatural creatures were ever destroyed and none replaced them, the toxicity of the lake would even turn stone to a supernatural creature, which is what happened with the golem.

  “Unfortunately, Chief Knight, you and your men trying to fill in the lake with rocks only made the golem bigger in the end. Which...” Dalton cast his gaze to the side for second, face reddening slightly. “Which I kind of suspected was going to happen. My examination of many rocks and shells on the island pretty much told me it would. With each day that went past, and with each additional rock and boulder you and your men put into the lake, I could see subtle changes happening to the various items I was studying... things like a very slight change in the striations bisecting a particular cluster of sedimentary rocks. Even the shells got into it a little with different little color changes I was noticing day-to-day.”

  I had to know why, and so I asked. “And I really mean how. How did the little changes in the rocks and shells make you suspect that all the rock-piling at the lake was actually making a golem, and a bigger one than he might have been otherwise?”

  “Well, it’s hard to explain, but short answer, the bigger and stronger the golem got, the more his existence began to ‘pull’ on inanimate, semi-organic matter on the island. Because the golem was a supernaturally-created creature, it was almost as if he had the ability to pull other matter toward him, to continue to make him bigger, as our father expected he might do.

  “It was all in his notebooks... these hundred-some-odd spiral-bound books with every page just filled even beyond the margins with all sorts of formulas, plans, and calculations... some of them having to do with shifters and the island itself, and some of them about the lake specifically. A lot of it was almost impossibly complicated quantum physics, but some of it was just black magic ramblings. Even with our father’s help, it took me a few years before I was even able to make a small amount of sense with the equations.”

  Dalton fell silent, seeming to pause for a bit of breath. A warm breeze blew in through the open windows, and while it caressed my face, I sat thinking, just trying to digest it all. Stunned as I was by everything Dalton had said, I had to admit that a lot of things having to do with my father made perfect sense now; things such as his secretiveness about his job, his coldness, and his constant distance, both emotional and geographical.

  Now I knew that my father had probably just been preoccupied with occult magic and quantum physics. He’d probably been often busy pondering whether the supernatural island he’d set to self-destruct actually eventually would. He’d also probably been preoccupied with his secret son and the woman he’d had an affair and a child with. All topics of thought one probably wouldn’t be inclined to share with a little girl.

  After a long moment or two of silence in the sun-filled, stone-walled living room, Warren suddenly spoke to Dalton in such a menacing, hostile tone that it startled me. “So, if I’ve understood you correctly, Dalton, you’re saying that you knew—full well—that we were just making the golem bigger, and more powerful, and more destructive, and you didn’t even say anything. Is this true?”

  Now that Warren had made the point, I suddenly felt a little hostile toward Dalton, too, actually, more than a little. Joanna, Davy, and I all could have drowned because of the golem, and countless others in the village could have been hurt. A few shifters who’d fought the golem alongside Warren had been hurt.

  Staring Dalton down, I folded my arms across my chest. “I’d like to know as well. Is what Warren said true?”

  Wincing, Dalton had turned red when Warren had spoken, and now he turned an even deeper shade of scarlet. With the slightest of funny little twinges in my heart, I realized that uncontrollable blushing was a sibling thing from our father. I often had difficulty stopping my face from seemingly bursting into flames at different times, too. And as mad as I was at Dalton, this made me feel just the tiniest smidgen sympathetic toward him just then. It made me feel just the tiniest bit of some sort of a sibling bond for some reason. I was his big sister, after all, and that fact made me think, or at least want to think, that he had to have some good explanation as to why he hadn’t alerted Warren that piling rocks in the lake was only leading toward a more powerful golem.

  But even if he did have some good explanation, it didn’t seem like Warren was going to hear it. Before Dalton could respond to either of us, Warren stood, fists balled and eyes like slits. Without lifting his gaze from Dalton, who was now sitting wide-eyed, clutching the arms of his chair so hard his knuckles were white, Warren spoke to me in a low voice with just a hint of a tremor in it, like maybe a tremor of barely-controlled anger. Or rage.

  “Please step out, Ellie, and wait for me outside.” With a vein in his forehead beginning to bulge, he paused, rolling up his shirtsleeves. “Dalton and I need to have a private talk.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Without even thinking, I leaped between Warren and Dalton. “Warren, please! Don’t hurt him!”

  “Ellie, I’ve asked you to step—”

  “He’s my little brother!”

  Warren spoke through gritted teeth, eyes still narrowed. “He’s a grown man, and one who put everyone in this community, yourself especially included, in serious danger.”

  “Well, he made a mistake! He made a
very serious mistake; I’ll admit it. But if we don’t listen to him, if we don’t even give him a chance to explain himself—”

  “Ellie. I’m not going to ask you again. Please leave. Wait outside. Maybe a good ways away... out of hearing distance.”

  “No! I’m not leaving so you can beat Dalton to a pulp!”

  “Then I advise you duck and cover your ears, unless you want to hear this punk scream like a little girl.”

  I glanced from Warren to Dalton, seeing that his formerly red face was now white as a sheet. He sat cowering in the big overstuffed chair, seeming like he was actually shrinking into it, becoming even smaller-framed than he already was. Warren, on the other hand, had only seemed to increase in size in his anger, his towering form now appearing to me as much taller than six-foot-three.

  Becoming desperate, I gave him a little shove, my fingers connecting with the rock-hard wall of muscle that was his chest, though I didn’t even move him an inch. “I won’t let you do this. You’re scaring him, and—”

  “If he’s a big enough boy to put children in danger, Ellie, then he’s a big enough boy to take an ass-kicking like a man. Now, for the final, final time. Step. Aside.”

  Not knowing what else to do, or how else to cover Dalton with my body to keep Warren from attacking him, I hopped onto his lap and threw my arms around his neck. “How’s this for stepping aside? Now if you want to punch Dalton in the face, you’re going to have to punch me off him, too. And how would that make you feel? Would that make you feel like a man?”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake, you know I could never harm a single hair—”