Axeviathon- Son of Dragons

by Tessa Dawn

Tony’s stomach knotted. It wasn’t like Zeik to sound so cryptic, and who knew—maybe it was just the drugs, but it looked like the guy’s pupils were glowing, blazing a hell-fire red.

  “Gotta get you the hell outta this hospital room,” Grunge added. “That was never supposed to happen, but—”

  “Nosy neighbors called the police.” Zeik finished his sentence.

  “What?” Tony mumbled. “Who…” He struggled to keep his eyes from closing. “Where’s Amber? What happened at the bar—what happened at the house?”

  Zeik reached for the IV line and yanked it out of Tony’s arm, even as Grunge sighed, leaned forward, hefted his weight onto his over-developed thighs, and started working on the oxygen tubes and then lowering the guardrail. “Don’t talk. Just listen,” Grunge ordered.

  And just like that, the males went to work.

  They untangled Tony from all the medical contraptions while spitting out a story so outrageously bizarre, Tony knew he had to be hallucinating: The Cult of Hades was more than a criminal sect, and the whole religious piece—the ritualistic worship of dark, evil spirits—was more real than Tony could have ever imagined. Zeik and Grunge were demons, not humans, and they had both been feeding off Tony’s sins for years: his pride, his greed, his lust, and his envy.

  The guy in the bar, also a sin-eater, was named Trader Vice, and Lord Drakkar—the Pagan King—had ordered both Tony’s punishment and Amber’s blindness.

  And the shit that had gone down at the house?

  It was more unbelievable than the rest. The freaky dudes with the slinky, shadowy bodies were also called pagans, only they fed on human souls, rather than sins; and somehow—for some reason Zeik and Grunge still didn’t get—they had drawn a host of dragon-enemies to the house, and that was the commotion Tony remembered hearing. That was how—who, what, and why—Tony had been tossed through the glass patio doors.

  “No, not dragons! Dragyr,” Zeik corrected Tony for the tenth or eleventh time. “They’re sons of dragons, the offspring of gods. They live in a world beyond a portal, and their fathers—and ours—were cut from the same ancestral cloth.”

  Tony would not have believed any of it.

  Not one single word…

  Except three things caught and held his attention. One, the loathing and fear in Zeik and Grunge’s voices: Tony had never heard such reverence for “Lord Drakkar” or fear of any enemy in either male before, and it somehow just made sense—all the years together, the shit they got away with at the bank, the way they controlled other people and fought like they were damn near supernatural…

  Apparently, Zeik, Grunge, Trader, and a couple of shades—two, to be exact—were the only souls left standing, still alive, after the Dragyr’s lethal attack, and Zeik and Grunge had only lived by retreating, fleeing the house and the master bedroom like a couple of whimpering cowards. Tony had only lived by accident; he had lived because the dragyri hadn’t cared enough to check his pulse after tossing him through a thick pane of glass.

  Two, both Zeik and Grunge’s eyes were glowing while they spun their tale and worked on Tony—worked to close his wounds and remove his stitches; to heal his organs and fix his broken nose—using nothing more than their fingertips, some freaky incantations, and a thick black serpentine smoke.

  And third, Amber had gone blind.

  Tony had heard her screaming and felt her panic.

  This night might be unthinkable, but it was definitely real.

  And that brought Tony, front and center, back to the most terrifying revelation of all: The Dragyr must have taken Amber, because her body wasn’t at the house, a blind girl couldn’t just take off and run, and Zeik and Grunge had only been able to track her scent as far as the backyard—as far as a dragyri would’ve had to go before he could open “the portal.”

  Amber Carpenter was missing.

  Tony’s girl was gone.

  And it didn’t sound like Zeik and Grunge were too terribly interested in getting her back, like the demons or the pagans—whatever the hell these entities were—were willing to pursue their dragon enemies in order to rescue Amber.

  “No, not dragons!” Zeik corrected him again. “Dragyr, Tony. They’re called Dragyr.”

  Tony blinked three times as if coming out of a murky dream. “Then Amber…whoever took her…whichever Dragyr…he’ll either rape her or kill her on the other side of this portal? We’ll never see Amber again?”

  Grunge stroked his beard. “Nah, I don’t think so—that’s not how a dragyri works.”

  “Dragyr…dragyri…sons of snakes…who gives a shit what they’re called?” Tony murmured, letting off some steam.

  “When they want human women for pleasure,” Grunge continued, ignoring Tony’s groaning, “they take them here on Earth. They only take them through the portal for one reason.”

  “To keep them,” Zeik supplied. “She’ll either serve the Seven in the temple, or—shit, who knows?—it seems impossible, but she could be the male’s dragyra.”

  Tony’s heart constricted in his chest. “What the hell does that mean? Serve in the temple? Serve, how? And what the hell is a dragyra?”

  Grunge held out his hand, clasped palms with Tony, and drew him out of the hospital bed. “It’s a female mate, someone chosen by the dragon lords to bear dragyri sons for the Pantheon, a wifey, if you prefer human speak.”

  Tony blanched.

  “He’ll be back,” Zeik grunted.

  “Who?” Tony asked, gingerly following his demonic roommates to the hospital door. “We’re just gonna walk right down the hall?”

  Grunge chuckled. “Humans only see what we want them to see, Tony. We’ll do whatever the fuck we please. And yeah, I agree with Zeik. If Amber’s a dragyra, her mate will be back.”

  Tony’s head was literally spinning, whether from the overload of irrational information, the lingering morphine, or an unhealed head injury. He didn’t know, and he didn’t care. “What makes you think so?” His voice reflected his hope.

  “Because at some point,” Grunge said, “the dragyri is going to glimpse Amber’s memories, and when he does, he’ll be gunning for a handsome shit-bag of an Italian human.”

  “He won’t rest until you’re six feet under,” Zeik supplied. “What we did to Amber that day in the store…what we’ve done every year since…you can bet your ass he’s coming for you, brother.”

  Tony visibly recoiled. “But…but you guys have my back, right? I mean, nothing has really changed between us? This god, the king of the underworld”—he absently rubbed the tattoo at the back of the neck—“I’m one of his followers, right? Even if I didn’t completely get it before tonight? Lord Drakkar isn’t just a…a crime boss…he’s…he’s a freakin’ savage god?”

  This time, it was Zeik who laughed, and his voice was absent of light, humanity, or even amusement. He spun around so quickly, Tony never saw him move, and then he snatched the human by the throat, lifted him three feet off the ground, and slammed him against the nearest wall.

  His eyes were more than glowing.

  They were hate-filled, feral, void of a soul.

  “Let’s get one thing straight,” he snarled in a guttural tone. “Lord Drakkar had a message for you: Let him know that the lord of the cult he worships is terribly displeased with his laziness. You are nothing to Lord Drakkar.” Zeik extended five claws from his unencumbered hand and drew a line, trailed in blood—from the curve of Tony’s chin, down the center of his throat, to just below his collarbone, with the tip of one talon—and then he dipped his head and lapped the blood with his tongue. “And as for me and Grunge? You’re chattel, prey, dinner. You will live or die at our whim. You’re alive right now because we’re waiting for a word from Trader…a word from our sovereign. Do we kill the human bitch because he knows too much, erase some of his memories and keep him to do Lord Drakkar’s earthly bidding, or do we use the worthless bastard as bait to draw out the dragyri in question. Lord Drakkar is not going to take kindly to twelve dead pagan
s; if you’re lucky, he will demand revenge, in which case your piteous human life still has value. Are we copacetic, Rossi?”

  Tony trembled all the way down to his toes.

  What the hell had just happened?

  When he had woken up that morning, he had a very sweet life: a shitload of money, a beautiful girl, and a bad-ass arrangement that nearly guaranteed a life of decadence, invincibility, and power. And just like that, the tables had turned.

  Tony was now on the bottom of the food chain.

  And nothing—absolutely nothing—was as it had seemed.

  What a freakin’ shit storm this night had turned out to be…

  Indeed.

  Ghostaniaz Dragos stared at his heavily coffered ceiling, counting the glistening reflections in the beams and the paint as he crossed his ankles on the oversized mattress and squinted against the light of the dragon moon.

  “You went through the portal yourself!” Lord Dragos had reprimanded him earlier, pissed over five or ten insignificant minutes, the time between Ghost’s arrival on Earth and Axe showing up at the nightclub.

  What-the-fuck-ever.

  Would the madness never quit?

  And now, because the dragon lord owed Lord Ethyron a favor, he was loaning Ghost out as payment…and punishment…as if Ghost gave a shit either way.

  Ghost owed Lord Dragos.

  Lord Dragos owed Lord Ethyron.

  And Axeviathon Saphyrius—the male who had just found his mate—owed seven pounds of flesh, seven pints of blood, and seven broken bones to the emerald god, for providing the use of the Emerald Lair’s mercenaries.

  Talk about your Game of Thrones.

  These jackasses needed a hobby.

  So be it.

  The way Ghost saw it, he was getting off easy—instead of getting whipped, or beaten, or tortured, himself, he was to be used as Lord Ethyron’s weapon. Ghost would deal out Axe’s torment, and everyone’s sadistic impulses would be satisfied—all debts would be paid.

  And once again, Lord Dragos would try to teach Ghost a lesson.

  The same infernal lesson he had been teaching him since that childhood night in the alley: Thou shalt pledge thy eternal fealty to the sacred Dragons Pantheon, and mercy doesn’t pay. When Daddy orders you to hurt someone, to annihilate someone, to make a sport out of torture—or to dine on one’s heart—you do it with gusto, or else.

  Got it, Ghost thought, rolling his eyes and turning his attention back to the shadows on the ceiling. If he stared hard enough at one particular beam of moonlight, it almost looked like a snake, coiling back to strike.

  Huh, he thought; shadows could be interesting.

  And comforting.

  And Ghost had no problem uncoiling that snake.

  He would strike Axe so hard—and so swiftly—the male would never know what hit him, and Daddy wouldn’t get the satisfaction of watching Ghost sweat.

  The male had stopped sweating centuries ago.

  Chapter Sixteen

  3:00 AM

  Axeviathon Saphyrius—but he went by the name of Axe—occupied the entire lower level of the Sapphire Lair. And just who called their residence a lair, anyway? The garden-level apartments were immaculate and modern, reminiscent of an urban warehouse with their exposed brick walls, wooden crossbeam accents, and plush, luxurious furnishings. There was an elegant kitchenette woven seamlessly into the contemporary architecture; a palace-sized bathroom fit for a five-star spa; and rows and rows of garden-level windows, all framed in arched black ironwork, stamping the suite with a gothic appeal.

  Now, as Amber sat on the edge of Axe’s oversized sofa, her feet tapping nervously on the wide-planked floors, she gripped the mug of hot mint tea between her fists and tried to make sense of what was happening:

  Axeviathon was a dragon…

  No, correction—he was a dragyri male, a member of the Dragyr race.

  He had lived for over 225 years in a world he referred to as the Pantheon, beyond a portal that linked to Earth, a portal he had taken Amber through when he had removed her from her house on Syracuse Lane. And if that wasn’t farfetched enough, he had explained that Zeik and Grunge were demons, pagans who came from the underworld, but temporarily resided on Earth. More than likely, they had been feeding on Tony’s sins for decades and doing the bidding of some horrific dark lord. And as for Tony, he belonged to the Cult of Hades, which was something Amber had always known; only, she’d had no freakin’ idea what it really was.

  The tattoo engraved on the back of Tony’s neck was not what Amber had once believed: The witches’ pentacle on the pommel of a sword, with a reversed numeral seven just below the crossguard, had never been a leftover insignia from an old motorcycle gang, a crew Tony had run with before he had met Amber—before he had hooked up with Zeik and Grunge. According to Axe, it was a pledge of devotion and a mark of ownership: a stamp placed on the followers of the pagan lord.

  Only Tony thought the pagan lord was a crime boss—or had he always known?

  Her temples throbbed for a minute…

  Was she getting all this right?

  She couldn’t be sure.

  As far as Amber was concerned, Axe may as well have told her that Dorothy wasn’t really from Kansas—she was from Chicago—and Toto wasn’t really a dog. He was a three-headed serpent who lived in Poseidon’s sea, and Axe had taken Amber to a hotel on Mount Olympus, where she would have to do more than click her heels three times to find her way home.

  The lion was really a warlock; the scarecrow was actually a ghoul; and the tin man wasn’t missing a heart—he ate them when he wasn’t skipping clumsily down the yellow brick road!

  It would have been every bit as plausible as Axe’s story…

  The tale he was spinning to frighten her—or confuse her—which one, she didn’t know.

  But a few things about the psychotic tale were resonating in her gut, niggling at the back of her mind, and beginning to gain a tiny foothold in the realm of reality—outrageous reality, but reality just the same: First, the bank, King’s Castle Credit Union; Warren Simmons had the same tattoo as Tony, and the man got away with murder on a daily basis. There was no way KCCU should have been able to embezzle so many funds, to launder so much money, or to work with so many criminal enterprises in broad freakin’ daylight.

  And Zeik and Grunge…

  They had always seemed superhuman in their own right: all-powerful, nearly invincible. Humans didn’t fight like that. And the giant, the one called Trader, he had stolen Amber’s eyesight with nothing more than a kiss. And oh, lest one forget that enormous beast—the godlike being—that had loomed over Amber in that indoor swimming pool, the one with claws, scales, and sapphire veins…

  If dragons actually existed, then Lord Saphyrius sure fit the bill.

  But why Amber Carpenter?

  Why some golden-haired girl from nowhere with such a tragic history and an equally pathetic past?

  Why would Axeviathon Saphyrius, son of the Sapphire Lair, want Amber so badly?

  Why had he acted so brazenly that day in the bank?

  “Amber girl.” He called her name from across the sitting room as he perched on a dark leather ottoman, and his voice, as usual, was like smooth, melted butter…butter being spread over shards of glass. “You feeling any better?”

  She blinked several times. Now, wasn’t that just the question of the century. She was feeling like she was about to pass out, and she was so very tired—she needed to sleep—but she didn’t dare close her eyes in this…dragyri’s…lair. “I’m fine,” she muttered, lying through her teeth, but she wanted to keep him as far away as possible. She didn’t want him anywhere near the sofa.

  “I know it’s a lot to take in,” he said.

  She took another sip of her tea. “Mm hm.”

  “Amber,” he prodded, “look at me.”

  She stared into the center of her mug.

  No way.

  Those eyes—those strange, mystical, fire-rimmed pupils; those s
apphire irises—she didn’t want to see them again. They were too real, too haunting, too powerful. And they threatened to bring her entire world crashing down…forever. Because if this was real, then Amber was truly up shit creek without even the hope of a paddle. She grimaced and closed her eyes. She would have never thought she would miss Tony Rossi or long for the mundane life she was stuck in, but in this moment, she would’ve given almost anything to turn back the hands of time…to be safe at home, her feet up on the sectional, watching a movie next to her long-ago captor…assuming he was even still alive.

  A deep, nearly inaudible growl drew Amber out of her musings, and her eyes shot open and fixed on Axe. “Did you love that man?” he asked her bluntly, and she almost spilled her tea.

  “Who?” she whispered.

  “Tony,” he grunted, and then he tilted his head to the side and paused. Amber felt a tickle beneath her scalp, like a feather penetrating just beneath the surface, before he added, “Rossi. The guy in the picture frame that says Amber and Tony. Are you in love with him?”

  Amber gulped. She bent to set her mug on the floor before she spilled it, and folded her hands in her lap, and then for the very first time since he had entered the bank, she allowed herself to really study Axe, to scrutinize his features, beyond those mystical eyes: his expression, his coloring, his body language.

  To, once and for all, take it all in…

  At first glance, she was stunned by the obvious—and it wasn’t like she hadn’t noticed it right away, but she hadn’t fully absorbed it. Axe Saphyrius was quite possibly the most gorgeous anyone, male or female, she had ever seen in her life. He had the kind of good looks that screamed playboy or billionaire, the kind of guy who might travel around Europe in a Lamborghini with a different supermodel on his arm every week, with one glaring exception: Axeviathon wouldn’t fit in a Lamborghini, and he was rugged and earthy from the top of his beautiful head to the tips of his sexy toes. He would probably fit more comfortably in a five-thousand-pound pickup truck, and he would be far too restless to engage in the mundane, bored out of his mind with a superficial woman.