High House Draconis Box Set

by Riley Storm

  Below him, the rumble got louder, and moments later, a trio of vehicles exited the tunnel. There was a big red SUV in the lead, followed by a black pickup, and behind that a white four-door sedan that looked awfully familiar.

  Valla’s eyes widened as pieces started falling into place.

  “No,” he whispered.

  It was all his fault. He’d been so caught up in his own quest in tracking down the vampires, that he’d ignored what Liz was up to, thinking it something minor, something unrelated.

  The truth of it all had been there for him to see, but he’d refused. Vampires didn’t build anything, they were here to kill him, the dragons and likely all the other shifters too. That was their sole purpose in coming to Plymouth Falls.

  The newly-made vampire had told him they were building something, but in his arrogance, he’d ignored it, thinking he knew vampires better than one of their own. That what he’d read in the texts meant more than what a live one had to say.

  You knew this was different. That they were changed, because Victor and Aaric told you! They warned you about the new abilities the vamps were showing, to be able to shift, just like us. Why wouldn’t they be doing something else new as well?

  Now Liz was paying the price, because he’d been too blind to accept that perhaps it was the vampires stealing the building supplies, to create someplace more defensible than a cave.

  The sweet irony was there as well, because they were quite literally stealing from the dragons, while also coming here to kill them.

  Valla was up and running before he realized it. The convoy of vehicles had several switchbacks to do as they climbed the ridge. If he could intercept them there, perhaps he could free her. A swift raid, get in, grab his woman, and get out.

  He never wondered when he’d stopped thinking of Liz as the mother of his child and started thinking of her as his.

  Whatever it takes.

  Chapter 33

  Valla landed on the road, his knees barely noticing the fifteen-foot drop. His only concern was for Liz.

  The cars were approaching the first switchback where they would loop back onto themselves, the road going back and forth the entire way up, instead of a straight line. This would be his best chance to intercept them.

  He charged across the road and straight up the hill, taking a track the cars couldn’t. Valla measured his pace so that he would hit the last car first. Given that it was Liz’s, he hoped she would be in it, that he could easily pick her off, throw her over his shoulder and book it out of there before anyone had time to react.

  That plan came to a halt almost immediately, however, as his eyes pierced the darkness, telling him that the rear car was empty except for the driver. It was one of her guards, not Liz, but he was driving with the slack-jawed stare of a vampire Thrall.

  Angrily, Valla waited, letting the convoy pass, then sprinting up the hill, getting ready to intercept them on the next switchback. He could have struck then, taking out the enthralled guard, but then his surprise would have worn off. If he was going to succeed, his first strike would have to take out the vehicle with Liz inside.

  The last thing Valla wanted to do was take on all the vampires and their thralls on their home turf. If one of the elder vampires was present, he would be in serious trouble. As such a young dragon, they would have centuries, perhaps millennia, on him.

  The pickup had tinted windows. Valla swore, his vision not able to tell him who was riding in the backseat.

  There was only one more switchback. He either risked it now or waited and went after the red SUV.

  Then the truck was on him and he struck. His hand sprouted claws as he forced part of his dragon through and he slashed them across the front tire, grabbed the driver’s door and ripped it free and jumped into the cab.

  Almost immediately, he knew he’d chosen wrong. The bald guard sat in the back, staring blankly ahead, while three people who could only be vampires filled the other three seats.

  Throwing himself off the truck, he pivoted to go after the red SUV, but it was already accelerating away.

  Valla roared and gave chase, but he was tackled before he was halfway, one of the vampires from the truck having leapt free as the vehicle crashed and rolled onto its side, blocking the road for the third car.

  “How very kind of you to show up, save us the trouble,” the vampire chuckled as Valla kicked at it and missed. “You smell like her,” it added with a grin.

  Valla’s right hand, still human, flashed forward and snatched the vampire up by its long, black hair. He got to his feet, wrenching the creature’s neck back through sheer strength.

  It wasn’t easy, as his foe was no young vampire but rage at its last comment gave him power. “She is mine,” he snarled, and whipped the clawed hand across, tearing out three-quarters of the vampire’s throat in one swipe.

  Dropping the creature, he flung himself up the slope after the departing red SUV, hoping against hope he could make it in time.

  There was a fluttering of wings and something big flashed at him. Valla threw himself to the ground just before a pair of claws equipped with three long, glossy-black talons sliced through the air where his face had been.

  As he fell, he rolled and fired off a hail of tiny ice darts from his palm, the two-inch long pellets sharper than a needle point and moving almost as fast as a bullet.

  Whatever was in the air was darker than night and barely visible to his eyes, little more than an outline. It was tangible, however, and his ice-storm shattered against it, prompting a high-pitched squeal on a frequency so high he could barely hear it, yet his head throbbed because of it.

  Valla sprang to his feet and continued his mad dash, but another blur came at him from the left. He flung up an arm, and ice sprouted from it at the last second. The vampire dodged to the side, abandoning his attempted tackle, but he was moving too fast, and the spikes creased his face and shoulder, slicing deep into the vulnerable flesh.

  Two more black outlines topped the ridge, one of them blocking the SUV from his sight as it dove overtop of it and down the angle of the hill right at Valla.

  Something slammed into his knee and then the black shape—it had to be a vampire shifter, he couldn’t fathom what else it would be—hit him straight on, blowing Valla up into the air and back down the hill, talons slicing at his midsection.

  Ice armor rose to cover him as he called upon his innate powers to protect him, but the talons opened up his belly nonetheless, though none of the cuts was deep. Then the attacker was gone, and Valla was soaring through the air as he plummeted downward, each fraction of a second sending him farther and farther from Liz.

  From his child.

  Then he hit the ground and his armor shattered upon impact, scattering across the ravine floor before fading into nothingness.

  A giant flapping of wings not unlike that of a dragon sounded off to his left and the ground shuddered as the giant creature landed.

  Valla got to his feet and prepared to fight on. He wasn’t going to give up.

  Three more shapes came bounding down the hill, and a trio of vampires all landed in a crouch in front of him. Overhead, the flapping of wings warned him of more creatures in the air.

  Just how many are there?

  He didn’t like the answer. The vampires were much stronger than he had anticipated, their numbers greater. Even now, he could spy more figures appearing at the very top of the hill where the red SUV had disappeared beyond the top.

  Valla couldn’t win this fight. If he wanted to get Liz, he was going to need help.

  He was going to need his brothers.

  Reaching out, he took the water in the air around his opponents and abruptly froze it. The water in their skin, little that remained, he froze as well. Thrusting his other hand outward, ice flowed forth in a torrent, swirling up and around him in ever-increasing circles, obscuring him from view of his opponents.

  More ice congealed in front of him as Valla poured energy into it, taking on the shap
e of a human. He needed something for his enemies to see.

  Then he ducked low, turned and ran as he sent the ice-construct charging forward at the vampires, hoping that the swirling wall of miniature icicles and their own problems with the frozen water in their bodies would distract them just long enough.

  Focusing on his change, he felt his body grow larger, and larger. It was so slow.

  Over his shoulder, he heard a mighty roar, followed by a crack! That would be his ice-construct falling apart under the blow of one of the vampires.

  His wings sprouted and spread wide, already flapping as Valla sought his escape. Cursing himself for running, he flung himself into the air.

  I’ll be back for you, Liz. This, I promise. No matter what it takes, I will come back for you. They will pay.

  Then he disappeared into the sky, his giant wings easily outdistancing him from the smaller airborne vampires.

  Chapter 34

  “What did you do to Peter and Chase?” she snapped as the gag came off.

  “You require sustenance,” one of her captors said, and promptly shoved half a food bar of some sort in her mouth.

  Liz gagged and choked on it. She thought about spitting it out, but she was hungry, and who knew how long it would be before she was allowed to eat again? In spite of her anger at what was going on, she sullenly ate the bar as best she could without any hands.

  “Now, what did you do to them?” she asked again, casting worried looks at her two bodyguards.

  They had both gotten out of the car to try and negotiate, but the next thing Liz had known, there were black-clad figures at their sides, staring them in the eyes. She’d watched in amazement as her two alert, cognizant guards had slumped over and acted like automatons, obeying the instructions of the two men.

  Men who were icy cold to the touch. She knew because they’d come around to her side and hauled her out of the car next, one of them casually ripping the seatbelt free first. Liz had tried to fight back, but they simply held her still, and try as she might, she couldn’t even make them waver.

  The power in such a grip, their arms not even shaking as she flung herself around, was beyond intimidating. It was also, Liz was fairly certain, inhuman. She didn’t understand how, or why, but it seemed that, despite her efforts to stay away from Valla’s world, she’d ended up amid it anyway.

  “They serve us now,” the vampire said, tugging her along toward a ramp that led down into the bowels of the building. “Their lives are better.”

  “Right. I don’t think they would agree with that. Why don’t you just let us go?” she pleaded. “We’ll leave, never come back. I promise we won’t tell the cops either. Just let us go.”

  The captor ignored her pleas, much as she expected him to.

  “Who are you people?” she asked, though in the back of her head, Liz was fairly certain she knew.

  I just really hope I’m wrong.

  “You know who we are,” a smooth voice said from the darkness at the bottom of the ramp.

  Liz froze as the voice washed over her, a thing born of power. It spoke to her. She could feel the words in her body and it terrified her, left her knees shaking and her bowels on the verge of voiding themselves. Looking around wildly, Liz tried to escape, but two hands closed around each of her biceps hard enough to bruise, holding her in place.

  “No,” she pleaded as the two creatures—they certainly were not men—on either side of her started dragging her down the ramp, into the darkness below. “Please. No. Just let me go, will you? I didn’t do anything, I’m nobody. Nothing. Just a person. Just let me go, I promise, I won’t tell anyone about anything.”

  “I find that highly unlikely,” the voice said again, still speaking from the middle of the opening, seeming to come from thin air. “Given that you have the stench of Draconis all over you.”

  She hissed, mixed parts surprised and even more horrified than before. They knew who she was and who she’d been with. Her soft shoes scraped against the hard dirt floor, doing little more than stirring up bits of dust and hurting her feet as she tried once more to worm her way free, but it was no use. They were too strong.

  “Come, my little friend,” the voice purred. “Come join me, we have much to discuss about your friends.”

  Only sheer stubborn determination prevented Liz from wetting her pants at the promise contained in those words.

  “I’m not telling you shit, asshole,” she snapped, latching onto her rage, feeding it, letting it burn brightly, a shield against the darkness as she was hauled into the underground cavern.

  “Oh, I think the opposite,” the voice whispered suddenly from near her ear. “You will tell us everything we want to know, and with minimal difficulty.”

  She barked a laugh, knowing the sudden inability of her legs to work gave away her true feelings, but she wasn’t about to cave. Not for this jerk. If they were going to kill her, they were going to kill her, but she wasn’t going to go down mewling like a pathetic sack of shit. They were going to get the full experience, or else her name wasn’t Eliza Julie Wray!

  “What the fuck do you think I actually know, you moron?” she said, making an internal bet with herself about where the voice would come from next.

  Just as she felt the timing was about right, she snapped her head to the right, staring out into the darkness. There was no sound, no voice, no feet shuffling on the floor, but the delay in response meant she’d gotten it right.

  So predictable. Too predictable. Valla will use that against you and open you up like a can of sardines once he gets here, she thought to herself.

  There was never any doubt that Valla would track her down. If there was one thing the dragon shifter was good at, it was finding her.

  “I’m honestly just surprised that you didn’t have the guts to make me one of your…whatever they’re called,” she said. “Like Peter and Chase. Didn’t have the strength to do it to a woman?” she chuckled. “Is that it, too much of a pussy to do it to me?”

  “Not at all,” the voice said from so close behind her, she yelped and tried to dive forward.

  The hands of her two silent guards once more held her firm, and as she settled back into place, the low chuckles of her unseen captor spiked her anger higher, stoking the fires burning inside her.

  “I think it is,” she said. “Why else would you not—don’t you fucking touch me!” she snarled as the ghost of a hand slipped across her stomach.

  Liz struggled more violently than ever before as a protective instinct she’d never known kicked in. Her body twisted to the left and she kicked that creature—it had to be a vampire—in the groin.

  Or tried to. The thing that used to be a man casually lifted a leg far faster than she’d thought possible and blocked her kick.

  A hand slid up the back of her head and grabbed at her hair, the short red curls tugging painfully on her scalp, forcing Liz’s head back. Held still, she started to shake as something sharp slid over her throat. A threat? Or a promise? It didn’t matter; she subsided.

  “That’s better,” the voice said. “Much better. Perhaps in time, you can learn to serve. As you will see, if you do as required you will be rewarded.”

  “How are you rewarding me?” she growled. “You won’t even reveal yourself to me.”

  There was a rustling of fabric behind her, and then suddenly a light sprang into existence as a match sparked and caught. A moment later, orange light flickered to life as the fire was held to a candle.

  “Forgive me for that,” the owner of the voice said, his back still to her. “The sunlight leaves me…vulnerable, even in the waning moments. It comes from being as old as I am.”

  He turned to face her and Liz gasped in surprise.

  “Old?” she asked as he approached. “You don’t look old.”

  “I am a vampire, my dear. The effects of aging do not apply to us.” He stopped in front of her, looking up into her eyes.

  “You’re just a child though,” she whispered, lookin
g down at the brown-haired youth in front of her. He was perhaps four and a half feet tall and could be no more than eleven.

  The moment she met his eyes, however, Liz realized she was wrong. No eleven-year old had such distant eyes. They were old. Very old. This child had seen more of the world than any living human being. Liz didn’t know how she knew, but she knew.

  “How old are you?” she asked in a very subdued voice, for the first time not bothering to be snarky and irritating. She was so far out of her depth it was weighing her down.

  “I don’t know precisely,” the child answered, his voice somehow aged and yet incredibly youthful all at the same time. “But I am approximately eight centuries old.”

  Eight. Centuries.

  “Oh, my God,” she moaned, and a fear more insidious and colder than anything she’d felt before swept its way into her, taking hold, shaking her to her core. “Why am I here?”

  “You are here, my dear, because you are immune to our powers,” the vampire-child said, giving her a smile so wide it made her nauseous.

  “How? I’m just human?”

  “Ah,” the child said, holding up one dainty little hand. “But that’s not all you are.”

  How was it that so much strength could be contained in such a voice? It defied the laws of nature. Unlike Valla, whose dragon voice was musical, beautiful and flowed with the world around him, this was perverted and just wrong in a way she couldn’t quite define. But it most certainly did not belong in her world, Liz knew that.

  “I am all human,” she said. “Sorry to break it to you. Nothing special about me.”

  “Not you,” the child whispered. “But what you carry within you.”

  Liz stiffened at the reminder that she was pregnant. “What do you mean?”

  “That,” the child said with pure hatred as he pointed at her stomach. “That thing inside you, protects you. It makes you beyond even my abilities. Perhaps my master…but he is not here. Thus, you remain as you are.” He grinned, and a malevolence that didn’t belong on such a youthful face spread across it, leaving Liz sick to her stomach.