by Tessa Dawn
AXEVIATHON - SON OF DRAGONS
A PANTHEON OF DRAGONS NOVEL
TESSA DAWN
CONTENTS
Credits and Acknowledgments
Pantheon of Dragons
Prologue
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
Epilogue
A sneak peek from Blood Destiny
Also by Tessa Dawn
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About the Author
Published by Ghost Pines Publishing, LLC
Volume II in the Pantheon of Dragons Series by Tessa Dawn
First Edition Trade Paperback Published April 22, 2019
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
First Edition eBook Published April 22, 2019
Copyright © Tessa Dawn, 2019 All rights reserved
Trade Paperback ISBN-13: 978-1-937223-38-0
eBook ISBN: 978-1-937223-39-7
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
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Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
Author may be contacted at: http://www.tessadawn.com
This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Ghost Pines Publishing, LLC
CREDITS AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Ghost Pines Publishing, LLC., Publishing
Damonza, Cover Art
Reba Hilbert, Editing
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, written by L. Frank Baum in 1900.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend is an ancient proverb which appears to have originated with the Indian philosopher Chanakya (also referenced, Kautilya) Arthashastra around the fourth century BCE. It was also spoken by Winston Churchill during WWII.
PANTHEON OF DRAGONS
Before time was a recognized paradigm, seven dragon lords created a parallel primordial world for their glory…and their future offspring. They harnessed seven preternatural powers from seven sacred stones and erected the Temple of Seven beyond the hidden passage of a mystical portal that would lead back and forth between Earth and the Dragons Domain. And finally, they set about creating a race of beings—the Dragyr—that would exist on blood and fire, and they gifted their progeny with unimaginable powers, unearthly beauty, and immortal life.
For all of this, the dragon lords required only one thing: absolute and unwavering obedience to the Four Principal Laws…
Thou shalt pledge thy eternal fealty to the sacred Dragons Pantheon.
Thou shalt serve as a mercenary for the house of thy birth by seeking out and destroying all pagan enemies: whether demons, shadows, or humans.
Thou shalt feed on the blood and heat of human prey in order to reanimate your fire.
Thou shalt propagate the species by siring dragyri sons and providing the Pantheon with future warriors. In so doing, thou shalt capture, claim, and render unto thy lords whatsoever human female the gods have selected to become dragyra. And she shall be taken to the sacred Temple of Seven—on the tenth day, following discovery—to die as a mortal being, to be reborn as a dragon’s consort, and to forever serve the sacred pantheon.
And so it came to pass that seven sacred lairs were erected in the archaic domain of the dragons in order to house the powerful race begotten of the ancient gods, each lair in honor of its ruling dragon lord:
Lord Dragos, Keeper of the Diamond
Lord Ethyron, Keeper of the Emerald
Lord Saphyrius, Keeper of the Sapphire
Lord Amarkyus, Keeper of the Amethyst
Lord Onyhanzian, Keeper of the Onyx
Lord Cytarius, Keeper of the Citrine
& Lord Topenzi, Keeper of the Topaz
While a dragyri may appear to be human, he is not.
While a dragyra may appear to belong to her mate, she does not.
While the Dragyr may be fierce, invincible, and strong, they are never truly free…
PROLOGUE
Axeviathon Saphyrius, better known as Axe, strolled into the lobby of the King’s Castle Credit Union around ten o’clock, Monday morning. A well-dressed brunette, who looked equal parts eager and insecure, greeted him at the front entrance with a smile and a nod.
“Good morning. How can we help you today?”
Axe spared her a sidelong glance and kept right on walking.
One, he didn’t have the time, nor the desire, to deal with extraneous humans today; and two, he knew exactly where he was going: through the lobby, past the tellers, and down the long, narrow hall on the right—straight to the opulent office of the bank’s newest manager, Warren Simmons.
Warren was a card-carrying member of the Cult of Hades, a faction of clueless humans who dabbled in the occult—or so they thought. In reality, they served a dangerous, supernatural god, and they didn’t even know it.
Drakkar Hades.
King of the underworld and ruler of demons and shades.
Father of the Pagan Horde.
The ancient pagan had messed with the Temple of Seven. He had ticked off the dragon lords by trying to destroy an original dragyri son, Zane Saphyrius—Axe’s lair mate. And in doing so, the dark king had provoked the Seven’s wrath. Not only had Drak sent Salem Thorne, a despicable, caustic demon, to try to slay Zane’s new mate, but he had manipulated the female’s best friend, Macy, by using her surgeon to take advantage of her vulnerable heart. In short, he had planned to use the women’s friendship to one day get to Zane, and the doctor had just been a pawn: an accessible, pliant, easy-to-manipulate tool, due to a weakness in his character…
And a fissure in his soul.
Pagans were bottom-feeders at best.
No better than carp or vultures.
They fed on the souls—and the sins—of humans.
If the pagan was a shadow-walker (or a “shade”), he simply fed on the human’s essence; he reanimated his immortal, skeletal carcass by devouring the person’s spirit. But if he was a demon—and especially if he was ancient—then he fed on the human’s sins: He encouraged them, milked them, caught them in the act, and grew stronger by association…
And proxy.
Salem had taken advantage of the surgeon’s pride, his never-ending ambition to rise in the eyes of others, no matter the stakes or the costs, and Lord Drakkar Hades had hoped to use the not-so-fine doctor sometime in the future, in a manner as old as time. As Zane grew closer to his new dragyra, as her burgeoning role in the Pantheon was cemented, Drakkar had hoped to draw on her enduring friendship with Macy to sneak a wolf in sheep’s clothing into Dragons Domain. Whether on Christmas, Valentine’s Day, or some other uniquely human holiday, the pagan king was gambling on the certainty that a time would surely come when Macy would want to send her BFF a box of chocolates, or a bag stuffed with gifts—hell, a simple housewarming present would do.
And then Drakkar could use the doctor, and the doctor could use Macy…
The pretty wrapped gifts would not contain delectable chocolates. They would not contain a snow globe or a bottle of fine wine. They would be the pagan substitute of a Trojan horse: ten, fifteen, maybe twenty ancient demons, all in beetle form, nestled snugly inside the packages, waiting to invade, shift, and attack. Drakkar was gambling on the fact that the doctor could get Drak’s pagans through the portal—and into that foreign realm—that they could one day slip in, undetected, posing as harmless gifts. And then they could strike swiftly—and definitively—at The Pantheon of Dragons.
And that’s why Axe was at the bank.
That’s why he was carrying a large box of chocolates, stuffed with Dr. Kyle Parker’s right hand, and wrapped in pretty gold paper, secured by a blood-red bow (truly, the bow had been dipped in blood), and the accompanying card was simple, elegant, and to the point: For Drak; the best-laid plans of mice and pagans often go astray.
The king would get the message.
A young African-American security guard rounded the corner in a rush and called out to Axe—the greeter must have tipped him off. Axeviathon spun around, lowered his shades, and gave the youngster a clear, up-close-and-personal view of his sapphire irises and his jet-black pupils, his otherworldly dragon eyes, and he smiled. “Go back to your post, son, and stay there.” His words were laced with an implicit compulsion, and the human stopped dead in his tracks. He blinked three times, scanned the hallway in confusion, and immediately turned on his heels.
Good human, Axe thought.
He continued to saunter down the hallway to the last door on the right. Then he reached for the handle, turned it clockwise, and strolled into the room. Warren Simmons bolted upright, stepped back from his desk, and immediately reached for the fly on his pants. A skinny female companion, who didn’t look a day over seventeen years old, reached for the sides of her skirt, yanked it into place, and shimmied off Warren’s desk.
Both of them looked ashamed.
Axe snorted and shook his head.
Well, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out Warren’s sin of entry, how he had exposed himself to the pagans.
So the man was a pedophile…
Disgusting, but whatever.
The Dragyr did not get involved in human affairs, at least not beyond any direct or interlocking business with the Pantheon.
They did their masters’ bidding.
It wasn’t an optional clause.
And that, as they say, was that.
As the short blonde female scurried around Axe and headed for the manager’s door, Axe tapped her on the shoulder. “Sweetheart,” he said in a husky voice, laced with lethal intention. “You never saw me, okay?”
Her light-green eyes grew cloudy, and she slowly nodded her head. “Yeah,” she whispered, “okay.”
“Oh, and one other thing.”
She shifted back and forth, nervously, as she waited.
“This old piece of shit—the one you were about to get it on with, on the desk. That’s finished. Find someone your own age.”
She drew back in surprise, but she nodded. Then she hurried out of the room.
Warren’s face flushed red. “Who the hell are you? And what makes you think you can just walk into my office without an appointment?” He reached for the intercom on his phone and grunted into the speaker: “Jackson? Jackson! Get in here.”
Jackson must have been the African-American security guard, and if so, he wasn’t coming. Axe’s compulsion would hold—probably for the rest of the day. But just to be safe—and to make sure Warren didn’t reach out to anyone else—he flicked his pinky in the direction of the intercom, sent a slender electrical flame through the air, and blew out the internal wiring. “Sit down,” he barked.
Now, there was no point in going into Pantheon business with this pitiful Cult of Hades’ sycophant. Truth be told, the low-level human had probably never even met Lord Drakkar, and he likely never would. He was just a pawn on a chessboard—a naïve, corruptible mind that the pagans could use until they were finished with him—until they had sucked all the anima out of him or left him on the sidewalk for dead. The leeching could take a day, a year, or a lifetime, depending on how much sin they consumed from Mr. Simmons—and at what rate they consumed it.
“You got a tattoo on the back of your neck?” Axe asked.
The human’s eyes narrowed. He looked instantly guilty, and he reached up to scratch his nape. Yep, he was sporting a medieval sword with a witch’s pentacle etched into the pommel, on the back of his neck. Sure as shit, he was. And that meant that somewhere in the underworld, a demon was watching, listening, and tuning in to Warren Simmons several times a day. They would read his distress, catch the disruption in his sin, and eventually come to investigate. Hopefully, the hand wouldn’t stink too badly before they found the box of chocolates.
Axe figured he’d better speed things up.
He dropped the “gift” on Warren’s desk, planted his forefinger in the center of the bow, and seared his gaze into Warren’s. “You leave this right here until someone…important…comes to get it. You don’t open it; you don’t talk about it; you don’t mention it until then. We copacetic on that?”
The man looked decidedly pissed off, like he wanted to rip Axe’s head off—good luck with that one—but somewhere deep inside, where predators recognized prey and quarry hid from hunters, his common sense kicked in. “Yeah,” he mumbled in a surly tone, “we’re copacetic.”
“Good,” Axe said.
He was about to pull a disappearing act, simply vanish from the bank, when he thought better of it: He should make one last pass through the lobby, make sure nothing had gone wrong—make sure no humans had been tipped off—before he made his way back through the portal. His muscles bunched and contracted in the lithe, smooth gait of a hunter—it was the animal nature of a dragyri—as he sauntered out of the office, headed back down the hall, into the lobby, and quickly checked all human eyes for signs of awareness.
Convinced that everything was A-Okay, he passed by the last female teller—and his amulet heated up.
What the hell…
The timeless, heavy sapphire stone hanging around his neck—the one that linked his soul to the Pantheon and his life to Lord Saphyrius—suddenly singed his flesh, leaving a trail of smoke in the lobby.
His inner dragon drew to immediate attention.
He angled his body toward the nice-looking teller and regarded her much more closely.
Her beautiful dark amber eyes, which matched the color of her hair almost perfectly, began to glow inside her irises, and then, just for an instant, her pupils turned deep dark blue.
Sapphire.
Just like Axe’s stone.
The precious gem seared a scar into his flesh, and in that moment, he knew…
Oh yeah, he knew…
And, holy hell, the realization was stunning.
He was staring at his fated dragyra.
His beast began to snarl as he took a step in her direction—just what the hell was she doing in King’s Castle Credit Union?
CHAPTER ONE
Amber Carpenter’s fingers froze on the ten-key unit of her keyboard, which was all well and
good because she suddenly forgot what she was doing: Was she logging out with her passcode in order to go on break, or was she pulling a report so she could reconcile her drawer?
It didn’t really matter, she reasoned—the cash wouldn’t add up anyway.
It never did.
It wasn’t supposed to.
And Warren would handle it later…
In the meantime, holy shit!
The tall, muscular menace, the guy with dirty-blond hair—the one who had strolled into the lobby about thirty minutes earlier with the swagger of a jungle cat and the aura of a Viking—he was stalking toward Amber’s station, staring at her in earnest, prowling…slinking…marauding, whether he meant to be overbearing or not. And his cocky, masculine presence, that powerful, tangible aura, radiated off him in waves—it was enough to make Amber go weak at the knees, her palms begin to sweat, and her fingers freeze in mid-stroke. “Just a moment, sir,” she muttered, trying desperately not to stutter. “There’ll be another teller here to assist you in a minute.” She took an unwitting step back and gestured toward the stanchion rope in the lobby. “In fact, could you please wait behind that line?”
Damn, that was rude, but he was making her so nervous…
The Viking thumbed his dark sunglasses, took a step toward the counter, and swiped the underside of his thick upper lip with his tongue in a rapid, almost feline gesture. Yeah, Amber thought, definitely a jungle cat, maybe a jaguar or a cougar.
“What’s your name, pretty lady?” he rasped, leaning far too possessively against the counter.
So much for waiting behind the rope.
Amber gulped. “My…my name? Um…” She fidgeted with a charm on her bracelet, and the corner of his mouth quirked up in a smile.
“Your name is Um?”
She shook her head in annoyance and maybe a little fear. “No…no! Of course not. My name is…it’s, um…it.”
“Your name is It?” His tone was more playful this time, at least in a lion-about-to-eat-a-mouse kind of way.
She sighed, feeling both flustered and irritated. “Yes, my name is it,” she snapped in a snarky tone. To hell with it—he didn’t need to know her name. And besides, if he thought she was bat-shit crazy, he might be inclined to stop asking questions.
