In the Shadow of Dragons (Aftermagic Book 1) Read online

  SONYA BATEMAN

  Thank you for picking up In the Shadow of Dragons. Please join my mailing list to find out about the latest new releases, book sales, and special offers.

  - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

  Copyright © 2017 by Sonya Bateman

  All rights reserved.

  Cover design by Lou Harper, Harper By Design

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

  - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

  More books by Sonya Bateman

  Available now from Amazon and Kindle Unlimited

  THE DEATHSPEAKER CODEX – urban fantasy series

  DIVINE WRATH – YA urban fantasy standalone

  HOUSE PHOENIX – contemporary thriller series

  The Gavyn Donatti series – Available for Kindle and wherever books are sold

  MASTER OF NONE

  One unlucky thief. One unlikely genie. One very odd couple.

  MASTER AND APPRENTICE

  A deadly cult. An unbreakable curse. The rules are simple: Learn to kill…or die trying.

  MEET THE MAIN CHARACTERS

  Dr. Naomi Talbot runs a HeMo clinic in Casper, Wyoming. Like most people, Naomi tries to carry on with normal life, save for the one day a year when normal is impossible. But her tentative grasp on ‘normal’ is shattered when a colleague who vanished years ago contacts her with a cryptic message: The world is headed for permanent darkness, and only the Darkspawn can stop it…

  Teague Harlow is one of the elite, a Knight who works directly with BiCo CEO Julian Bishop. She refuses the spotlight, preferring to remain in the shadows. This makes her the perfect candidate for Julian’s bold new campaign against the resistance: Join the Darkspawn as a spy and discover their hidden location in the Badlands, so the Knights can wipe them out in a single blow…

  Noah Delaney was an investment banker before magic invaded the world and BiCo destroyed everything he loved. Now the reluctant leader of the Darkspawn, his life consists of hiding in the desert from BiCo patrols, destroying HeMo shipments, and saving as many Changers as possible. But their passive resistance movement is thrust into active rebellion when Noah has a vision involving the key to toppling Julian Bishop’s rule. One that requires a direct attack on the Knights … and risks obliterating the world.

  PROLOGUE

  Casper, Wyoming — Early 21st Century

  Year Zero B.E. (Before Eclipse)

  Casper Midtown ExpoCenter

  August 8, 11:30 a.m.

  He had to admit, they’d spent a serious wad of cash on this extended sales pitch posing as a conference. Not that the Bishop Corporation couldn’t afford the outlay.

  Dr. Scott Madden wandered toward the floor-to-ceiling windows that comprised the long outer wall of the luncheon room, blinds drawn against the glare of the summer sun outside. He had a plate full of bite-sized gourmet sandwiches in one hand and a glass of chilled champagne in the other — a little too early in the day for alcohol, but what the hell. It was on BiCo’s tab. The room was packed with just about every doctor in the state of Wyoming, along with more than a few from further away.

  All for some ‘new and improved’ drug that was, as far as he could tell from the morning presentations, the same as the old drug. Only green instead of blue. And of course, more expensive.

  From the corner of his eye, he caught a trim figure in a gray pantsuit turning from the window and waving. Apparently at him. He stopped, looked, and the polite smile on his face became genuine warmth when he recognized the woman — which actually took him a minute. Dr. Naomi Talbot looked ten times better than the last time he’d seen her a few months ago. She’d put on a bit of weight, regained some of her color. And her smile no longer looked like she’d stretched her mouth to the sides and stapled it in place.

  It was good to see her recovering. The sudden death of her husband, almost two years ago now, had nearly put her in the ground beside him out of sheer shock.

  He walked toward her, and she hugged him almost before he stopped moving. He held the champagne glass up to keep it from spilling and tried not to drop the little plate while he squeezed her back. “Hey, Naomi,” he said. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”

  She stepped back and grinned at him. The expression did his heart a world of good. “Why’s that?” she said. “Some garden-variety M.D. couldn’t possibly be interested in breakthrough medical technologies? We can’t all be viral pathologists, you know.”

  “You, my dear, are anything but garden-variety.” He laughed and set the sandwiches on one of the fancy little round tables spaced out a few feet from the windows. “But really, I just thought you’d be—” He cut himself off with a gasp he didn’t intend. Mentioning Roger Talbot right now was not the best idea, especially since she seemed so happy.

  “Sitting at home in my widow-bubble?” A touch of sadness seeped into her smile, but her expression stayed comfortable. “Roger wouldn’t have wanted me to,” she said. “It just took me a while to realize that. And you helped me get there.” She slipped a hand into his — warm and alive, not cold and papery like the last time — and squeezed briefly. “I never thanked you for everything you did for me after Roger passed. So, thank you.”

  He tipped his glass and smiled. “It was nothing.”

  “It wasn’t nothing to me.” She squeezed again, let go and stepped back. “As for what I’m doing here, Aileen insisted. She said if I was going to spend my birthday working, I might as well do it where there’s free food.”

  “Oh, that’s right. It’s the eighth today,” he said. “Happy birthday.”

  “Thanks. A bunch of us are going out to Five Cowboys tonight for drinks, and probably an embarrassing serenade from a bunch of people in stupid hats, even though they swore no one would sing at me. You’re welcome to join us.”

  “I might do that.” He shook his head and grinned. “Damn. It’s good to see you happy, Omes. I mean it.”

  She laughed. “I know you do, and I love you for it.”

  “Thank you. Thank you very much,” he drawled.

  “You make a terrible Elvis, Scott.”

  “Well, so much for my second career in Vegas.” He smirked and sipped at the champagne. “Looks like Royce Bishop is going to be a no-show this time,” he said. At every other conference he’d been to, the CEO of BiCo had been there constantly, walking around like P.T. Barnum. Glad-handling, booming out slogans and statistics, wringing every last dollar from his audience.

  Of course, that was only after they’d somehow, miraculously developed a method for growing viable cloned organs. Practically overnight, the company went from a struggling boutique pharmaceutical lab with one successful product — an immunosuppressive drug for transplant patients — to a multi-billion dollar global corporation.

  He couldn’t be the only one suspicious of that.

  Naomi gave a slight shrug. “Word is, Dr. Bishop is out on a research expedition,” she said. “Like he’s Indiana Jones or something.”

  “He’s something, all right,” he muttered. “What did you think about the…”

  He trailed off and nearly choked as he turned toward the windows.

  Naomi opened her mouth, probably to ask what was wrong. Then she followed his gaze and sucked in a harsh, startled breath. “What the hell?”

  The huge windows, which seconds ago had pulsed bright sunlight around the closed blinds, were all black as night.

  Barely noticing the buzz of conversation in the
room as it spiraled down into shocked whispers, Scott stepped forward and yanked the nearest pull cord. The blinds wheeze-whined up, rattling toward the ceiling. And the champagne glass dropped from his hand to shatter unregarded on the floor.

  The sun was a black disc traced in red, bathing the outside world in sullen red-black darkness. A total solar eclipse. Not predicted, and not gradual. Someone would have noticed if the light outside had deepened to twilight before noon on a summer day.

  This had just … happened. The sun was there. Now it was gone.

  More people ran to the windows and raised the rest of the blinds. Gasps, shouts, and a few screams rebounded through the room. There was a shift in the crowds, some people tumbling for the exit, more backing away from the dreadful spectacle. Others produced phones and snapped pictures in solemn silence. Several launched into what sounded like frantic calls to 911.

  Beside him, Naomi gripped his arm. She was trembling violently. “Scott, what…” she managed in a breathless voice, almost a sigh.

  “Impossible,” he said, unable to tear his gaze from the ominous flame-wreathed black ball in the sky. “This is impossible.”

  Naomi gave a strangled moan. “It’s an eclipse. It can’t be an eclipse. Can it?”

  His heart, which seemed to have stopped beating, started again at what felt like about five hundred beats per minute. “We need to get out of here.” He put an arm around her, started to turn her away from the windows.

  Twin bolts of pain, deep and glassy and utterly unexpected, shot through his legs and radiated through his entire lower body. He fell to his knees with a hoarse shout, felt Naomi’s hands scrambling to catch him. The stabbing pain intensified. For an instant he swore he could feel his muscles expanding like balloons. Inflating toward an agonizing explosion.

  At first he thought the white glare that flooded his vision was a precursor to passing out. Then Naomi gasped, “Oh my God, it’s gone.”

  “What?” he croaked. The pain had vanished completely in the light, but he could still feel the phantoms. He forced himself to his feet, lurching around in a drunken half-circle. Outside, the familiar, sizzling Wyoming summer sun. No black disc, no eerie red dark.

  If it wasn’t for the crowds of people gathering out there, staring in horrified awe at the sky, he might’ve thought he’d hallucinated the whole thing.

  “Are you all right?” Naomi slipped an arm around him and tried to lead him away from the windows. “What happened? To you, I mean.”

  He shook his head slowly. “I don’t know. I’m fine now, but…” He had no idea how to explain it. Everything had happened so fast, and there wasn’t a trace of that horrible pain left. Before he could figure out what to say, his phone buzzed in his pocket. He frowned, drew it out and slid the screen awake.

  One new text. From Brad Halpern, his lab tech, who’d come into the city with him but elected to go shopping instead of yawning his way through the conference.

  THERE’S FUCKING DRAGONS I’M NOT KIDDING. SKY. LOOK.

  “Dragons?” Scott blurted aloud.

  Naomi and everyone within earshot stared at him. He couldn’t elaborate, couldn’t even process what he’d just read. The eclipse was impossible, but eclipses were a thing that actually happened. Dragons were not. The part of his brain that wasn’t gibbering incoherently insisted that Brad was just rattled, he’d seen a vulture or something, and his perfectly sane, intelligent, non-drug-using lab tech, who’d probably never said ‘fucking’ aloud in his life, had come briefly unhinged in the face of the impossible.

  The phone buzzed in his hand, and he actually jumped. A new message popped onto the thread. This one was a photo.

  A dragon. A fucking dragon.

  No.

  Someone screamed, a long shrill note that dwindled into the blanket of complete silence. Every head turned toward the windows. No one breathed.

  Outside, an enormous serpentine shape that was unmistakably a fucking dragon swooped past the conference center, executing a single graceful loop against the blameless blue sky before it disappeared from view.

  Naomi turned an alarming shade of pale and wavered on her feet. He caught her before she hit the floor, but the impact combined with his own watery legs was enough to knock him on his ass. He stayed there holding her, mouth agape, gaze riveted to the window and the ordinary world that had suddenly become anything but, as all hell broke loose around them.

  Dragons.

  A.E. (After Eclipse)

  FROM THE FILES OF DR. SCOTT MADDEN

  CASPER, WYOMING. – The world was rendered speechless today by the appearance of actual dragons. Videos and photos have flooded the internet, leaving no doubt about the reality of these creatures long before officials confirmed the sightings.

  At this point, little is known about the dragons, other than the fact that they were no hoax. It appears there were a total of twelve of these creatures — ranging in size from approximately twenty-five to one hundred feet long — as they first appeared, and then inexplicably began attacking one another in flight.

  Exclusive Gazette video footage of flaming dragons: See website

  It’s been confirmed that the dragons first emerged from somewhere within Hell’s Half Acre, Wyoming’s unique geological oddity — 320 acres of dangerous ravines, canyons, rock formations and eroded earth, situated just to the west of Casper.

  The creatures scattered from this point, chasing one another at speeds clocked as high as four hundred miles per hour across the skies. Warring dragons were sighted as far north as Saskatchewan, south over Panama, and east through North Carolina and beyond, with one dueling pair spotted several miles off the Ivory Coast of Africa.

  Casper’s own Julian Bishop, son of BiCo CEO Royce Bishop, emerged heroically this afternoon to somehow defeat both the last living dragon, and the man who appears to have been responsible for their arrival. No further information on this deceased ‘mystery man’ is known at this time.

  Tragically, Royce Bishop was killed in the struggle against the dragons’ handler.

  Julian Bishop: Earth’s Savior. See p. 2 for exclusive interview.

  While any long-term effects of this incredible supernatural invasion are not yet known, officials are assuring the public that the immediate danger is over. Dragon fire appears to have obliterated the creatures, save for their bones. Government bio-teams have been dispatched to manage cleanup and containment in the aftermath of this astonishing event.

  WORLDWIDE TOTAL ECLIPSE OCCURS WITH THE ARRIVAL OF DRAGONS. Top scientists can’t explain what happened. See p. 3 for more details.

  Though the dragons have perished, one thing is certain: Our world will never be the same again.

  BiCo ‘Anti-Magic’ Drug Fast-Tracked for FDA Approval

  September 23, Year 2 A.E.

  BISHOP, WYO. – Less than two months after the devastating effects of a second, completely unexpected worldwide eclipse, on the anniversary of what many are calling Dragon Day, the Bishop Corporation has announced the successful development of a drug that eases or prevents the horrifying changes many experienced on August 8 of this year.

  The drug, called Hexylmorphizole (HeMo), appears to stop or even reverse the effects of what seems to be some kind of ‘magic radiation’ in areas where the dragons fell, which is particularly strong in central and eastern Wyoming around the presumed origin site. This radiation apparently increases during an Eclipse, leading to some human transformations, violent behavior, and even death.

  With the introduction of HeMo, the Bishop Corporation intends to stop the spread of this destructive radiation and save lives. Once approved by the FDA, which is anticipated to occur sometime in the next few weeks, the drug will be available in both daily pill and monthly injection form.

  Julian Bishop, the young CEO of BiCo, has also pledged to begin immediately training a security force which will be responsible for tracking the magic threat and protecting civilians from further violence, as well as collecting and rehabilitating those wh
o have been infected. Bishop plans to have these increased security measures in place prior to next August. “If this Eclipse continues to happen every year, we’ll be ready for it,” Bishop said in a press conference. “Our research department is now fully dedicated to improving HeMo, and to understanding and negating the effects of this unprecedented attack on humanity.”

  Mr. Bishop was unavailable for further comments at press time.

  Official BiCo Publication

  copyright © Bishop Corporation, Year 3 A.E.

  ECLIPSE SAFETY: WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW

  August 8 is Eclipse Day…

  Are you and your loved ones prepared?

  REMINDER: The Eclipse begins at 11:38 a.m. MST (9:38 a.m. EST; UTC-07:00). BiCo recommends being prepared and within Designated Safe Zones at least two (2) hours prior to Eclipse start time.

  Please visit the BiCo website for expected duration times of this year’s Eclipse, as well as additional tips on Eclipse safety and survival.

  --- THE BISHOP CORPORATION HIGHLY RECOMMENDS RELOCATING TO A DESIGNATED SAFE ZONE FOR THE DURATION OF THE ECLIPSE ---

  If you and your family are unable to relocate to a Designated Safe Zone during the Eclipse, please observe the following rules for home Eclipse safety and survival:

  1. Remain inside your home with all doors and windows locked, from two (2) hours prior to the Eclipse to one (1) hour after the Eclipse. DO NOT LEAVE YOUR HOME DURING THE ECLIPSE.

  2. Ensure that everyone in your home takes an additional dose of Hexylmorphizole (HeMo) on the morning of the Eclipse, or receives a second HeMo booster from a designated Clinic on the day of, or prior to, the Eclipse.

  3. If a person in your home begins to Change during the eclipse, attempt to lead the Changer outside the home, where the patrols can safely retrieve them. Remember to re-lock all doors and windows once the Changer is outside. If this is not possible, attempt to signal a BiCo representative using an official manual flare (please follow the instructions for dispatching the flare carefully). You may also attempt to contact the BiCo Eclipse Hotline at (￭￭￭)￭￭￭-￭￭￭￭*