Dragon's Echo Read online

  Dragon’s Echo

  The Dragon Corps Book 6

  Natalie Grey

  Contents

  Also by Natalie Grey

  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

  Afterword

  Bound Sorcery

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Also by Natalie Grey

  Original Series

  Bound Sorcery (Shadows of Magic, Book 1)

  Blood Sorcery (Shadows of Magic, Book 2)

  Bright Sorcery (Shadows of Magic, Book 3)

  Writing as Moira Katson

  Shadowborn (Light & Shadow, Book 1)

  Daughter of Ashes (Rise of Aiqasal, Book 1)

  Mahalia

  1

  Nyx gave a small sigh as the dock workers swarmed around the truck. She’d been offered a chauffeured car to take her from the Alliance Intelligence headquarters to their small set of docks on the outskirts of town, but she had hitched a ride with one of the supply trucks, instead.

  She could just imagine the shit she’d get if she showed up in a car with tinted windows, wearing a dress uniform. Aegis would refer to her as “sir” for the rest of her damned life.

  She was chuckling to herself when she remembered that Aegis wasn’t on her team anymore—or rather, she wasn’t on his team anymore. As of one week ago, Nyx officially commanded Team 11, the team formerly led by Mallory Saga. All but one of her former teammates, meanwhile, remained on Team 9.

  Her smile died. She blew out a long breath.

  “I don’t know what’s taking so long,” the driver said apologetically. He looked mild-mannered and unassuming, but even the drivers and dock crew for these particular docks had high security clearances and combat training. He shrugged. “Looks like they have a new worker. He’ll be trying to do everything by the book.”

  He gestured to the side mirror and Nyx leaned forward slightly to catch a glimpse of the man he was referring to. Reddish-brown hair had a few streaks of grey in it, and the man was indeed going over every part of the truck with methodical interest while the rest of his crew had begun chatting to one another in the shade.

  “Weird career to pick up at that age,” Nyx observed.

  “I hadn’t thought of that. Good point.” The driver sighed as the back doors opened again. “He’s already scanned back there. What does he think could have gotten in there in the last five minutes?”

  “Newbies are the same everywhere.” Nyx let her head drop back and gave a sigh. “I just want to get out of this uniform.”

  The driver chuckled. “Everyone worth their salt hates wearing a dress uniform, that’s what my Pop always said. He was in the Navy.”

  “He had it right.” Nyx bit her tongue on the rest of what she wanted to say: the only person I ever liked who wore dress blues was Aleksandr Soras. And we know how that turned out. She wasn’t sure she could joke about that yet. She hadn’t ever found it easy to open up to people in the first place.

  The dock worker came to the driver’s side window. “You’re clear to go through.” His brown eyes lingered a bit on Nyx and she looked back, trying to be as pleasant as she could. He’d be quick and methodical soon enough, she hardly wanted to yell at him for doing his job.

  It wasn’t his fault she was on edge, after all. He didn’t know she’d been officially promoted two days ago. Since then, she’d had to do more paperwork than any reasonable person should have to do in a lifetime, not to mention get a full day’s worth of medical checkups.

  And Nyx’s dislike of doctors and hospitals was legendary.

  Add in the fact that she was leaving her old team and taking over for a well-respected commander who had been assassinated, and her anxiety was through the roof even before she’d been hauled back to Intelligence HQ for one last briefing in her dress uniform.

  At least the new head of intelligence was tolerable.

  “Which dock?” the driver asked, interrupting Nyx’s reverie.

  “Oh, ah….” Her eyes picked out the familiar shape of the Ariane and she felt a dull stab of loss. She had to look much more purposefully to figure out where the Conway was. “Seventeen.”

  “Right-o. Got stuff to deliver there, anyway.” He turned the truck toward Bay 17 and looked over at her. “You’re the one taking over for Mallory, then.”

  Nyx nodded.

  “You know, I’ve driven a few new captains back and forth over the years,” the driver told her. “They all look like you. And then I see ‘em again a few months later and they’ve settled in. Every one of them.”

  Nyx smiled at that. “Thanks.” She bit her lip and reminded herself that she was hardly the first one to leave her team for a new command.

  “Is that your old crew?” the driver asked. He nodded over to the Ariane. “Here to see you off?”

  Nyx looked over at the crowd of Dragon’s mingling in front of the ship and felt her throat tighten. She nodded. “Yeah, I think so. Me and Loki. He’s coming with me.” She shook her head slightly at herself. This guy would hardly care about team dynamics.

  But she couldn’t seem to stop herself now that she was talking.

  “I feel bad taking him from Talon, but the kid’s got a crush on him, and it’s better for everyone. And it’ll help not to feel so alone, you know?”

  The man snickered slightly. “Sorry, it’s just the idea of a Dragon with a crush.”

  Nyx laughed as well. “It’s as ridiculous as it sounds. Trust me, it’s as weird for everyone else, too—this kid looks like … I don’t even know, he’s one of the most beautiful people you’ll ever see, and young, and then he just wreaks havoc. I’ve seen it every time I’ve gone into combat with him and I still don’t expect it.”

  The driver grinned as he pulled to a stop. “Well, I wish you luck. Tom Davis. I’ll see you around, and I’ll bet you a drink at Yulie’s that the next time I see you, you’ll feel much better about your life. Deal?”

  Nyx reached over to clasp his hand. “Deal.” She jumped down out of the truck and Tom pulled away to take the truck over to the loading port at the side of the ship.

  Both crews were milling around in front of the Conway, trading stories and calling wagers. It wasn’t uncommon for a Dragon to move across teams, and some of the Dragons had fought in the Navy together before being recruited. Tersi was deep in conversation with a weathered-looking man Nyx recognized as Centurion, her own crew chief, and Wraith, her XO, was talking with Talon.

  The docks were relatively empty today. In the flurry of activity that had been Aleksandr Soras’s trial, most crews had come in—almost all of the commanders, after all, had found rogue Dragons on their teams. All but one had summarily executed the traitors.

  That one, unfortunately, was Mallory Saga, commander of Team 11.

  Nyx looked around at the group. Centurion caught her eye to give her a nod, but she otherwise had the jarring sense of being a little kid again, starting at
a new school where no one knew her. She tried to smile at that, but she didn’t feel very much like smiling right now.

  Then Talon was there and the rest of both teams melted away to give them some privacy.

  They stared at one another and Nyx saw a suspicious sheen in Talon’s eyes. She jabbed a finger at him.

  “Fuck you, don’t cry. If you cry, I’m gonna cry, and I hate crying.”

  Talon gave a bark of laughter and pulled her into a hug. “I’m gonna miss you, Alvarez.”

  “Nyx,” she said, into his shoulder. Most team commanders went by their names, but it had been so long since Nyx had been Melissa Alvarez that the name just sounded weird to her.

  And giving up the nickname Talon had given her was more than she could take right now.

  “Right.” He pulled away from her and looked into her eyes. “Remember to keep your visor down.”

  Nyx gave a snort of laughter and wiped at her eyes. Talon was famous for this advice. He gave it to every new recruit until they were sick of it, and he always responded the same way: if you’d just keep it down, you wouldn’t have to hear me remind you.

  “And we’ll see each other soon, anyway,” Nyx said, trying to reassure herself.

  When Talon had come to her with a list of the remaining rogue Dragons, there hadn’t even been a discussion. Both of them had taken it as a given that they would be collaborating on this mission. Talon might have been the team leader for their mission against Soras, but there was no way Nyx was going to walk away when there was still a score left to settle.

  He grinned at her. “Absolutely. Lesedi’s on the trace and—”

  The explosion came from the side of the Conway, a boom that rocked the pavement of the docking bay and flung Nyx and Talon from their feet. Winded, her ears ringing, Nyx struggled to turn her head and search for an enemy.

  Someone hauled at her arm and she saw Talon’s lips moving: Come on.

  A look down at her dress uniform showed tiny wounds bleeding through the fabric and Nyx could feel blood trickling down the back of her head where it had hit the pavement. Her enhancements started to work as she moved, however, pushing the shock away for her to sprint. She didn’t have her rifle, but even in her dress blues, she carried a sidearm, and she drew it as she and Talon skidded into cover behind some crates in front of the Ariane.

  Nyx looked around herself to do a quick count. She didn’t see Loki nearby.

  Dammit. Gunfire was ringing out over the docking bay, keeping them pinned down. At the side of the Conway, black smoke and flames were billowing out of the shell of the delivery truck. A single figure lay prone on the ground near it and Nyx felt a sudden ache in her throat. Tom.

  He’d never had a chance.

  The gunfire ended as abruptly as it began, though none of the Dragons had yet found a target in the smoke.

  “There’s something on the bed of the truck,” Talon called.

  “On it.” Nyx made to stand.

  “You don’t have armor!”

  “It’s over,” Nyx said. She was sure of it all of a sudden. How she knew, she wasn’t sure, but she could feel the pieces of the puzzle sliding into place, even if the pattern was too big for her to grasp.

  She pulled her shirt up over her nose and mouth as she ducked away from the blowing smoke and approached the truck. She tried not to look at Tom’s body. All he’d wanted was a quiet life, and now….

  The explosion had ripped most of the truck apart. All that remained was the burned-out bed, resting on its four wheels, and a scorched metal box that looked as if it must have been surrounded by explosives. It was warped and still ticking with the heat, and as Nyx watched, it suddenly sprang open.

  Remote-controlled. She looked around herself and caught sight, at last, of a single figure on a roof at the edge of the docks. It raised a hand in a sardonic salute and disappeared. Male, Nyx would guess, and—

  The new worker who had taken so long to inspect the truck. The one who had examined her so carefully. With a sense of dread, Nyx edged forward to peer into the box.

  She swallowed hard at what she saw. A lump of Gerren’s Ore sat neatly in the box, and curled over the top was a note:

  COME AND FIND ME

  Nyx’s hands clenched. Maryam Samuels was dead. She’d seen the wreckage of that space station. There was no way the senator had survived, even with all the upgrades she had. The place was dust when the Ariane left.

  So who the hell was taunting her with this?

  When people appeared at her shoulder, she turned to give a distracted smile. Wraith and Centurion, and there was Loki—where had he gotten off to?

  Then she remembered, and gave a sharp look at the members of Team 11. They stared back, and she knew they had seen what just happened, far more clearly than she had. They had taken cover together, as a team, to fight off their enemy.

  And Nyx had taken cover with the crew of the Ariane.

  2

  “It’s done.” Tristan Mandekar slipped through an alleyway near the Dragon docks. He ran a hand through his brown hair and the paler hue began to fall away, disappearing like dust in the sunlight.

  He had already shed the dockworker’s uniform a few streets back. Now he was wearing a light sweater and grey pants, suitable for Seneca’s spring weather.

  At 41, he wore his dark good looks with more than a hint of arrogance, and he hadn’t been pleased at the idea of blending in. Tristan was a businessman, someone who smiled and charmed his way into deals for his employer. He’d done that for more than 20 years.

  It really should have been someone else at the docks, but there weren’t many people left from Ghost’s organization on Seneca. The contractors had all fled, following the money to other organizations when Ghost’s extravagant profits disappeared. Meanwhile, most of the highest-level employees had been with Ghost on the space station when it was destroyed, including her personal guard.

  Of those left, the stupidest and slowest had been left as a blood offering to the Alliance. Maryam Samuels obviously could not have run her smuggling scheme on her own, so the Alliance would keep hunting until they found enough accomplices to content them. A handful of senate aids and junior politicians had been arrested for treason, the charges amped up based on the fact that Ghost had maintained her own armed guard….

  And, of course, the fact that everyone was still jumpy after Aleksandr Soras.

  Tristan, who had been on assignment when Ghost’s space station was destroyed, had been called back to her hideout on Ragnarok, expecting that he would have to swear fealty to her replacement.

  Instead, he’d been confront with Ghost—not a codename, not an abstract concept, but a working cybernetic construct with Maryam Samuels’s thoughts and memories coded into it. Whether or not it was a true combination of human and machine, Tristan did not know.

  It was intelligent, however. It thought, it planned.

  And it still held her grudges.

  Tristan had argued to be sent to their various allies that still remained. He wanted to know the plan. He wanted to rebuild. After all, he had been instrumental in any number of Ghost’s successes over the years. He liked to think that she knew his instincts could be trusted.

  They were unlikely to find something as lucrative as Gerren’s Ore, at least in the short term—but he had studied Soras’s dealings and he knew that they could make themselves just as quietly indispensable to the Alliance.

  Between legal and illegal trade, they could become a crucial linchpin in human affairs. Anyone who tangled with them, who found them … would know that destroying them would cripple trade.

  Tristan was ready to make it happen—except that Ghost wasn’t willing to tell him her current plans.

  Instead, she had sent him to retrieve Melissa Alvarez, the Dragon known as Nyx, and bring her back to Ghost’s hideout for revenge.

  Tristan didn’t think much of this plan, but he would execute it with the same attention to detail that he brought to every project he did for his
employer. The goal was different, of course—destroy Alvarez both in body and in spirit. Normally, he forged alliances.

  But both of those things relied simply on knowing one’s mark.

  And it was very, very obvious what Nyx cared for.

  It would, consequently, be easy to set a trap for her … and destroy her when she got to it.

  3

  Nyx dropped her bag on the floor with a thud and looked around herself. The captain’s quarters on the Conway weren’t very different from Talon’s on the Ariane, but it was different enough to be jarring—the bathroom on the wrong wall, the bed sideways to how it should be.

  And it still felt strange to be in her own room at all. Talon had insisted that Nyx take his cabin while she was in temporary command of the Ariane. You need someplace to be alone, he said seriously. Trust me on this. It had still felt odd. She had spent a good chunk of time in Talon’s rooms with him and Tersi, planning missions and going over paperwork, or sometimes just bullshitting and blowing off steam. Still, she had spent nearly all of her adult living in close quarters, first in the Navy and then in the Dragons.

  She gave a look at the closets, and then at her bag. Three more were piled in the corner. She really should unpack. Instead, she thumped down onto the bed next to her bag, resting her elbows on her knees with a sigh.

  She thought she had said her goodbyes to Team 9 over the past few days, and made her peace with leaving the Ariane. She’d been away from home since she was 18, she was used to being far from the people she loved.