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  Born of two dragons but raised in a lab, Ruby has lived a life of quiet regulation, waiting until the project proposed decades earlier can be started. When Dimensional Arrest, Retrieval and Extraction gets underway, her innate ability to jump dimensions puts her on the front lines with her sisters, retrieving people from earth whose presence is tearing their home world apart. Each assignment takes Ruby to another world to retrieve scholars, criminals, researchers, and escapees. The freedom she feels on the new worlds is cruelly taken away when she has to return to earth over and over again.

  Meeting one of her own kind is a shock, but his determination to help her gain her freedom is even more of a stunning revelation. He offers her a life without walls, in the sun, and wind in her hair. What dragon could resist?

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  Ruby D.A.R.E.

  Copyright © 2011 Tianna Xander and Viola Grace

  ISBN: 978-1-55487-793-5

  Cover art by Martine Jardin

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.

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  Ruby D.A.R.E.

  D.A.R.E. Project: Book 1

  By

  Tianna Xander and Viola Grace

  PROLOGUE

  Eiwyn threw the covers back. The rustle of the sheets seemed loud in the quiet of the room. Slowly, she placed her feet on the cold wooden floor and slid out of bed. Draven rolled over, his hand resting on her pillow. Heart pounding, she tiptoed her way to the door. Grabbing the knob, she thanked everything holy that she hadn’t latched it when she came to bed.

  Draven let out a long snore. His hand moved over her empty pillow as though searching for her. Please don’t let him wake up. Eiwyn opened the door a little more than a crack and slipped through. If she woke her husband, he would see to it that she went nowhere. She couldn’t let him stop her. She knew he would try. He had put his foot down and she was sneaking under it.

  Barefoot, she padded her way down to the room they reserved for opening their portals. Two months ago, she’d had a vision, one she couldn’t ignore. If what she had seen was true, the future of the entire universe was at stake. Now was the time to act.

  Someone, somewhere, played with forces they didn’t understand. One couldn’t jump from dimension to dimension willy-nilly without consequences. Her people could, but they were the only exception. They didn’t need the help of machines, energy or chemicals to open a dimensional rift. They merely needed the power stored within their bodies since birth. Yet, someone had started to do just that and it was ripping holes in the very fabric of the universe. She had to do something and with her sight, she may be the only person who could.

  Entering the room, she closed and locked the door. The thick wood wouldn’t keep Draven out, but it would slow him down just enough. Waving her arms nervously, she hummed a soft tune and the air rippled in front of her. Soon, the other side of the room blurred as the transparent rift opened before her.

  A loud roar had her looking toward the door with tears in her eyes. It would be years before she would see Draven again. Yet, Eiwyn knew what she must do. It was for the good of all. The entire universe depended on her ability to escape her home and jump to the correct world. Eiwyn blew a kiss toward the door. Tears filled her eyes as she heard the pounding of her husband’s feet upon the wooden floor. “I’ll be back, my love…eventually.”

  She stepped through the rift confident that the energy would take the path of least resistance directly to the world she needed to visit. One jump, one world, a few decades and with luck, all would soon be put right.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Ruby sat on her narrow cot staring at the gray wall. After a lifetime of preparing and the last five years in extensive training, this was her first mission. She bit her lip and placed her hand over her stomach. It was almost as though her belly was full of butterflies, the way it fluttered and flip-flopped.

  Nerves, it’s just nerves.

  She bit her lip, waiting for the integrity sergeant to come inspect her before her jump through the rift. Dimensional travel both scared and excited her. Perhaps it shouldn’t, but it did. She couldn’t wait to leave this place. Her mother whispered into her mind about all the things she missed growing up in this sterile environment. It was little better than a prison, but now, she would finally have a bit of freedom.

  Rubbing her thigh, she looked around her utilitarian room, her hands fisting in the rough blanket beneath her. This room may not be much, but it was what she had called home all her life. It was a sad, sad thing that she had never been outside the walls of the compound before today. Her sisters had visited her here in this room. They alternated having their birthday parties here.

  Glancing down, she looked at the bracelet she wore. Twenty cords represented herself and her nineteen sisters. The cords, woven together into one bracelet, reminded her she was not alone. Never alone. No matter what the techs said, they would always have each other.

  Would she ever be free of the scientists, or would they always send someone to drag her back if she didn’t return when they thought she should? She rubbed her thigh and frowned. Even after two months, the tracker the techs inserted into her femur still felt strange. It also felt like a leash. It was there, beneath her skin, ever a reminder that she was tech property.

  Never! You are no one’s property. Soon you will realize that. Like her sisters, her mother could speak to her mind to mind. She wasn’t certain if it was a blood bond or something else attributed to their kind.

  Yes, Mother. But if what you say is true, why have we never met? Where are you?

  Where I am is of no importance. Right now, you must prepare for the trials that await you. Hush now. The techs are coming. Do as they say and soon all will be as it should.

  Ruby heaved a sigh and sat up straight. It wouldn’t do to have the techs catch her in a slouch. It would only serve their lust for punishment and today, she didn’t feel up to hearing them bitch.

  The door opened and a tech walked in. He looked at her through narrowed eyes, as though his lunch had gone missing and he suspected her of eating it. “It’s time to go, Ruby. Pick up your bag and follow me.”

  Grabbing her backpack, Ruby stood and followed him from the room. The ever-present smell of disinfectant assaulted her nose and she prayed that the place they sent her to wouldn’t have it. There wasn’t much she wouldn’t do to be able to go outside to see the blue sky, the grass and trees. She wanted nothing more than to smell the fresh air, free from the disinfectant and the techs’ stench.

  Once a year, the techs allowed them to walk outside of the facility and run around the inner courtyard. Each of them relished that time beneath the sun. According to the techs, it was their birthday, but how can one born from a test tube have a birthday?

  Because you are my daughters. None of you were from test tubes. Test tubes we
re where they put you after they snatched you from my womb. They took the four embryos there and somehow split each of them into five separate beings. My four identical daughters became twenty and I could not have been more proud had I birthed you all myself.

  Their mother always had a way of making them feel better. She never failed to make them feel they were worth something other than being retrieval drones.

  She followed the tech from the room, her face blank. The scientists had cameras everywhere. The last thing she needed was for anyone to see that she relished the idea of diving into the rift. They may not let her go for fear that she wouldn’t return. She followed the tech down the long corridor, past her sisters’ rooms and into an elevator.

  If she didn’t know they counted on her for fugitive extraction, she may have worried that the tech was taking her to her doom. For all any of them knew, he was. No one knew what awaited them on the other side of the rift. No one knew how much trouble an assignment would be. Her assignment could be tougher than she was. She reached up, pushed a lock of hair behind her ear and smiled.

  Her mother had told her and her sisters of their heritage. She was a dragon. There was no one in the known universe with fighting skills like a dragon swan. They were strong, fierce and resolute. Nothing could stop them when their mind was set on something. Right now, Ruby’s mind was set on finding and capturing her prey so she could return him to where he belonged. If she proved to them that they could trust her to come back, perhaps they would send her on more missions.

  Wherever they decide to send you, you can do it, daughter. One day you and your sisters shall be free to choose where you live, where you stay. Just bide your time until then.

  Bide her time, huh? How much time? Who knew how long it would take her to figure out a way out of here for them all?

  She slung her backpack up onto one shoulder and continued down the hall after the tech. Placing her hand over her bracelet, she made herself and her absent sisters a promise. One day we shall be free, sisters. One day…

  The leather of her travel suit felt strange against her skin, the loose grey clothes, that were her normal clothing, were taken from her and she was forced to change in front of a group of eagle-eyed techs who watched every inch of exposed skin and markings appear and disappear as she dressed in her Dimensional Arrest, Retrieval and Extraction uniform. Skintight black leather, black boots and weaponry, that would be reclaimed the moment she came back, slowly settled into position. Her scanner was strapped to her arm above her sisters’ bracelet and it was dormant until it received its coding for the retrieval.

  D.A.R.E. was a stupid acronym, but the D.A.R.E. project had brought them into being as a backup in case the dimensional travel and experimentation had unforeseen effects. They were an insurance policy against stupidity.

  She settled her blades into place and strapped them tightly to her thighs and arms.

  “Ruby, are you ready?” Dr. Nefrin was watching his screens and biting his nails.

  “Ready.”

  “Give her the data.”

  A tech connected to her scanner and set the coding for her target.

  “Ruby, you are retrieving an archaeological team. You need to get them back here within seventy-two hours or your beacon will begin causing you distress. Are you clear on that?”

  She nodded, the tight braid of her hair bobbing across her shoulders. She swallowed. “I am. Seventy-two hours or pain will ensue.”

  “Precisely. Now, key to your scanner and open that portal.”

  She slung her backpack with her supplies into place and stepped onto the launch area. She keyed to the ID frequency coming through her scanner and simply pushed the dimensional veil aside to let her through. She practiced the mantras she had been taught, stepped from one dimension, through the rift between and into her destination.

  The dim light of the lab gave way to a metallic ripple in the air and a blinding sun the moment that she stepped forward. Her eyes flicked rapidly until they adapted to the brighter sun.

  She grinned as she looked up. Make that suns.

  Her scanner started bleeping like mad, forcing her to turn on the spot and directing her to the mountain range in the distance.

  Ruby did a self-inventory and grinned again. She was completely intact and on a different world. Only the leash buried in her thigh managed to dampen the elation she felt.

  With a sigh at her deflated mood, she started to trot toward the mountains. She would be there in half a day or so, no rush. Rift jumping from place to place on a solitary planet was prohibited unless there was an emergency, so she had to be satisfied with coming out of the rift within thirty miles of her targets. Twenty-five of that was flat, empty plain and the rest was mountain passes. What kind of a race would live in such an inhospitable environment?

  Her body was more suited to running in the heat than she had thought. Testing back home had indicated that she would thrive in any climate, but vids showed that the humans she lived with would have passed out or dropped dead in this kind of heat if not properly equipped.

  The sense of freedom ran through her again and she knew with certainty that it would only get stronger with each world she visited. She sighed and moved over the plain, her boots leaving prints in the dust that would disappear in the next storm, as if she never was.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The camp was wide open and sparsely populated. She needed ten bio signs from the home world and there were only three in the camp and one by itself off to one side. That left six unaccounted for.

  Ruby took a drink of water and made a face. The canteen tasted like plastic and metal. She had to make a decision. Should she toss the ones she could locate back through or wait until they were all together?

  She drummed her fingers on the rock she was leaning on and scowled. If she launched the ones in the camp and found the one nearby, she would only have to pop six back through portals when they returned. It was quite a conundrum.

  She decided to deal with all of them together. It may not be smart, but if a few of them could be convinced to go willingly, they might tip the balance.

  Ruby settled in the shade of an outcropping and watched the camp. It looked like the team members had pair bonded, a couple were caressing each other and the woman who was alone looked out over the open field where the fourth beacon was coming from.

  She tilted her head as she tried to figure out the expression on the woman’s face.

  That is sorrow, Ruby.

  Mother? You can reach me here?

  Of course, dearling. I can reach you anywhere.

  The calm tones in her mind made her smile.

  Why does she stare out into space like that?

  The strange feeling of her mother using her eyes made Ruby a little queasy. She is mourning. She misses her mate.

  Her mate?

  The signal next to the camp is probably his grave, dearling.

  I don’t understand. She rubbed her forehead in confusion.

  I suppose you don’t. When these people lose a member of their society, they bury them in the ground, placing them back in the earth.

  If they lose them, how do they know where to find them to bury them?

  When someone dies. When they cease to breathe, their heart no longer beats. Their souls leave their bodies and the shell left behind dissolves. The exaggerated care that her mother was taking was obvious. You have never seen someone die, your confusion is understandable.

  So this happens to them only?

  Most races have shorter lifespans than ours, Ruby. You will live to see stars die and be reborn. This is a burden as well as a blessing.

  Ruby went silent as she absorbed something she hadn’t considered before. If her techs were obnoxious in the future, she could simply remember that they would fade away long before she did. It might work to keep her from provoking them into using the stunner.

  When the suns’ light shifted from white-yellow to orange-red, it was time to make her move.

  Sta
nding and dusting the red-brown rock and clay off her leathers, she walked down the hillside to the camp. Ruby was amazed at her ability to navigate the rocks, something that had never entered her training. She skipped lightly down as if she had wings, but dragon swans did not have wings. The females would never change forms or it would endanger their ability to breed. Her mother had once told her stories of dragon women who had forced a shift and had gotten stuck in their scaled form, forced to lay an egg that would not hatch for twenty years. So, it was forbidden and after a few eons was bred out of the species.

  She let her feet make a lot of noise as she approached the nine people gathering around the central fires and ovens. They jumped to their feet and watched her approach in astonishment.

  Ruby took a deep breath and spoke to them as if talking to a junior tech. “Hello. May I speak with Dr. Delphin?”

  One of the older males stepped forward and nodded. “I am Dr. Thaddeus Delphin. Who are you?”

  “I am an agent of the Dimensional Arrest, Retrieval and Extraction project. Your team’s presence here is contributing to a destabilization of the dimensional barriers and I am here to take you home.”

  The man’s face turned several shades of red before settling on crimson. “We were told that when we decided to come here, it was a one way trip.”

  She nodded. “I understand that. However, have you noticed a lot of tectonic instability of late? Your home world is being shredded by dimensional holes and your very molecules are holding the holes open.”

  A few of the other members of the team gasped.

  The woman who had been staring into space had tears in her eyes. “What is happening back home?”