Read dragons breath 01 - stalked by flames for Free Online

I’d enjoyed getting out from under her watchful gaze and working to become an independent woman. Yet there’d always be a small part of me that saw her as a symbol of love and safety.
    It had been too long since I’d last seen her—Christmas break five months ago, in fact. She’d wanted to come to my graduation, but she’d been ill and couldn’t make it. Mom had been sick a lot lately. I worried about her and couldn’t wait to get home to see her.
    “Yeah, I’m fine. Some of us are holed up at the university library right now.”
    “Have any of those dragons come near there?” she asked.
    “Um, yeah, but they went away when the storm started.”
    A few seconds of silence passed. “Then you need to come home. It’s safer down here.”
    “Don’t worry, Mom, I’m planning on it,” I reassured her. “As soon as the storm clears.”
    “If the storm is keeping them away, then don’t wait,” she urged. “Grady thinks more of them are going to come. Dragons keep showing up all over the world. Even China and Russia are having problems with them. Germany, too!”
    That wasn’t reassuring at all. Hadn’t Aidan said something about the barrier between our worlds weakening? If that was the case, there could very well be more arriving in the coming days and weeks. Other than Trish, I didn’t have any reason to stay in Norman and she had Justin. They’d be fine without me.
    I really needed to be home with my family. Plus, my stepfather—Grady—was the doomsday type who was fully prepared for an apocalypse. Along with my brothers, we could hole up on his ranch for a long time.
    “Alright. I’ll be there as soon as I can, Mom. I love you.”
    “Baby, I love you, too. Just be careful and drive safely!”
    A crack of thunder shook the building. A second later the lights flickered out and the room went dark. I couldn’t see anything.
    “I will. Just have dinner waiting for me when I get there,” I said, hiding my nervousness.
    “Of course.” I could almost hear the smile in her voice. “Fried chicken and mashed potatoes—your favorite.”
    “Sounds great. See you soon.” I hung up.
    Now I just had to keep my promise.

 
     
     
     
    Chapter 5
     
    Bailey
    Using the light from my cell phone, I made my way back to the coffee shop. Everyone was packing up and moving toward the learning center. I followed them and went to stand by the windows where rain pelted against them.
    The trees in the lower courtyard made me a little nervous. They were tall enough to reach up to ground level and swayed back and forth against the high winds. When I’d checked the weather this morning, there’d only been a thirty percent chance of rain. Now we were being hit with our second storm for the day—typical for Oklahoma weather predictions.
    The windows had wide couches underneath them. Trish and I took our seats there near a guy who tapped furiously at his laptop with a frustrated expression on his face.
    “The internet just went down. I can’t get an internet connection from anywhere,” he announced. “Not even through my cell phone network.”
    Everyone looked at each other, the tension ratcheting up another notch. We were heading into an information blackout. Every time I thought it couldn’t get worse, it did.
    “Let us know if it comes back up,” Justin replied, nodding toward the computer guy.
    He stood next to a high, circular desk set in the middle of the room across from us. A couple of guys who worked in the library leaned in to whisper something to him. It looked serious, but even with him only about fifteen feet away I couldn’t hear anything over the other people chatting nervously around us. As soon as Justin finished his discussion he came over to Trish and me.
    “Do you think it’s the storm or the dragons causing the power outage?” she asked him.
    “Probably the storm,” he replied. “The last news reports we got said the dragons were wreaking havoc up in Oklahoma City. None of them are