California Imperium

by Aaron Crash

  And she’d left days ago, which meant Sabina had divined Steven’s desperate plan, though she hadn’t seen the Animus vacuum that the Americos Chambers had become, at least for him.

  “And you came just on Sabina’s word?” Steven asked.

  Uchiko turned her head to hide the left side of her face. “Always, Steven. I will always come for you. You could’ve killed me and the Onari Guard, but you didn’t. You gave us a chance. You gave us life.”

  Steven felt the sexual tension in the air. Shifting and casting the Divination magic had taken some Animus from him. He was no longer full. There was a reason a Dragonlord had an Escort.

  Uchiko had her eyes closed. Her throat colored red where it wasn’t scaled. She took in a deep breath, let it out, and then faced him full-on. Her left eye had the vertical slit of a serpent while her right eye was brown, almond shaped. “I will do this for you because it is what you need. But I will need to do it a certain way.”

  Steven’s curiosity was piqued. What was this now?

  She stood and reached out her hands. The scales on her claws were cool and smooth, not hard at all. Her other hand was rougher, in fact, calloused from her hours of combat training. She pulled him up and embraced him, hugging him hard. “I’ve thought about this a thousand times. I want you so much, but I can’t be with you until... until I’m human again.”

  “Or a Dragonskin.” Steven closed his eyes, accessing AnimusChain. He’d felt his own Animus core, but he’d not tried to reach out to anyone else’s.

  “But that is impossible,” Uchiko whispered. “I failed the rituals.”

  He didn’t respond. He could sense her energy, swirling in the middle of her slim, hard body. It swirled in a ball of red, yellow, and orange energy, and it would sputter out as it went round and round, like a pinwheel off-kilter, lopsided, and yet her core Animus was there and strong. Could he adjust it? Could he set the wheel spinning at its center? Maybe, but he was still new to the ability, and he didn’t want to cause more harm. However, there was a definite possibility of adjusting her soul energy. Would it be permanent? He wasn’t sure.

  It was like she had felt him reaching into her spirit and finding her imperfection. “Do you hate me for my weakness?”

  “You’ve never told me your story.” Being so close to her, smelling her, feeling her body against him had his head spinning. “So I don’t know how you are weak.”

  “Soon,” Uchiko murmured. “We will spend a great deal of time together. And I believe I will find the courage to tell you what I have told no one else. About my loves, my failures, my dishonor. But now is not the time. I must service you.”

  She pushed him back onto a sofa and pulled down his sweatpants. The warm air on his erection felt good, as did Uchiko’s gaze on him. He’d grown accustomed to her face, split in half, but then she turned to kneel on his right side. She slid her human hand up his leg until she gripped his length.

  “It has been a long time since I have held a man like this.” Her voice drifted in the air around him. “It is so different than my own sex. Big. Strange.”

  He had to smile. “Every guy likes to hear the big part. Not the strange part.”

  “You don’t feel it when you walk?” she asked. “Does it ever get in the way?”

  “Not a bit,” Steven answered.

  In the light of the fire, she knelt before him. She had her right side facing him, so he couldn’t see her half-dragon part, only her soft face, her hair tied back. His eyes went down her jumpsuit to see the swell of her single breast on the right side of her body.

  “I don’t want to make you uncomfortable, but I’d like to see you,” Steven said softly.

  She gripped him, and he let out a gasp.

  She let out a sigh, a gentle laugh. She let go of him and unzipped her jumpsuit to reveal a single perfect breast with the cutest brown nipple, perfectly nestled in a slightly pebbled areola.

  “You are gorgeous,” he whispered.

  Her hand went back to his shaft, stroking him as he leaked into her strong palm. “Half of me is, maybe.”

  “I’m a Dragonsoul, Uchiko,” Steven answered. “I can see beyond what humans can see. Magica Divinatio.”

  He felt the Animus leave him, but her hand on him was giving him more, and then all he could see was Uchiko, naked before him. Her scales covered her left side but parted around her very human labia between her legs. Seeing her like that, vulnerable, naked, and her soft but strong eyes on him, was too much. She hungered for him in a way none of his Escort had, for they hadn’t been alone and chaste for so long. When he’d first met Uchiko, she’d mentioned lovers among the Onari Guard, but those had perished, and so for months she’d been alone, untouched. And even before that, when she’d had sex, she had done it in the dark. It had been a furtive, shameful thing because of how she looked.

  He saw her currently, on her knees, her damaged Animus swirling off-center. The mystical energy was coalescing around them, into her and into him.

  Then he saw dragons, crashing through his Queensland mansion in Surfer’s Paradise. He heard Tessa’s Peacekeepers along with Teegan’s DP-12, the double-barreled, pump-action shotgun. Abby Free flashed through his vision, her IonClaws blinding. Michaela Montes, fighting with her enhanced Escrima sticks, bashed through Homo Draconi.

  Attacked. His Escort, in Australia, fighting for their lives. Was that the present? Or the future? He couldn’t tell. But Zoey wasn’t fighting, she was backed in a corner, a wolf, baring her fangs, her eyes rolling because she was so afraid.

  Steven tried to stick with the images, but he couldn’t. They were plucked out of his head. He didn’t fight it, because if he did the visions would disappear completely.

  Then he was in the past, seeing Uchiko as she was centuries ago. She was walking in a kimono among the cherry trees, their leaves red, orange, yellow. Smoke hung in the chill autumn air. A pagoda rose above the pink canopy of fall colors. Uchiko moved regally across the ground in silk slippers, and he had the idea she was royalty. Though she wasn’t crying, she looked sad. What was her story?

  And then he flashed forward, into the future, and he was having sex with her, in her, and they were sharing Animus. She wasn’t restored, no, but she was comfortable enough with her deformity to let him make love to her. She gazed up at him, in her bliss, vulnerable, brave, and wanton.

  That one image exploded in his brain and pushed him over the edge. She continued to milk him until he had to ease her hand off him.

  He was still gasping. Reaching the peak of pleasure during the Divination spell had been intense.

  “What did you see that got you so excited?” she asked.

  “You,” he said simply.

  BRUNO ILLICK LANDED on the lighthouse island, on the deck of the house, underneath the tower of the beacon. He had his bag of tricks and the Hellstring along with a quiver of very special arrows. When he shifted, his pale dragon scales turning to human flesh, he dropped the bag, his quiver strapped to it, and the Hellstring onto the wet wood.

  The bag was blood-encrusted from his old kills, but he also had flecks of new gore on it. The Dragonsoul female had squealed when he’d shoved the bone arrows into her belly to get to her Animus core. He liked his arrows—they worked well to disrupt the magical energy inside his prey—but he loved Animus more.

  Sunset filled the eastern sky, splashing the ocean with a scarlet light. Bruno sniffed the air, but all he could smell was the ocean on wet rock and seagull shit.

  “Magica Incanto,” he whispered to unlock the back patio door. He bent to pick up the Hellstring. He nocked a bone arrow.

  He padded into the house. He was hungry, and he needed to smoke soon. Nicotine was a harsh mistress, demanding and cruel.

  Inside, no one came at him. The mansion under the lighthouse seemed deserted.

  “Magica Divinatio,” Bruno murmured, using the old magic. Modern Dragonsouls didn’t like the old magic. They were afraid of it. Bruno, though, Bruno knew he was a creature of An
imus, and the magic was his home. He enjoyed all the Magicas, even the Mirror-Souled charms, HeartStrike, AnimusChain, FleshForge, and Enchantrix. He like portal magic too, liked the pain, but it was forbidden. His father had beaten that into him. No Magica Porta. Because there were things between worlds that could lay eggs in your Animus, and then spiders would eat you from the inside out. No, not that, not the shadows of teeth and talon.

  Bruno had a little spell book, a little leather notebook, where he scrawled things his father taught him. His father was still alive, but Bruno wished he wasn’t. A father must die for his son to grow into a man. Bruno thought about giving the old dragon death. But no one had paid him for such a task, and Bruno only killed if hired to do so. Everyone he knew feared his father. Maybe they should.

  White smoke poured out of Bruno’s eyes, obscuring his vision for a moment. He winced, expecting to see the Dragon Slayer, expecting to feel the cut, because sometimes Divination could be cruel, only showing you the same thing, over and over.

  This time, thankfully, was different. He found himself gazing into the past.

  Tallulah Brahms, that was the name of the female he’d pierced with his bone arrows. He’d found in her a hotel, a nicer place, where they asked questions, where they had security. It was in a large human city.

  Humans. They didn’t interest him. They didn’t know how to absorb the Animus. They were only flesh, and not that much. He ate them, sometimes, but it wasn’t his favorite food. He’d rather eat chicken, honestly.

  In the large human city, he’d found Tallulah, scarred, scared, running. In the hotel room, the suite, it was called, he forced her into her partial form and used the arrows on her. She wept and begged for mercy. And told him everything she knew.

  The lighthouse was the important part. It was near where the battle had been. It was where Steven Drokharis had been, but no more. He’d gone. He couldn’t go back to the big human settlements of the New World; no, he’d go to the British penal colony. That was where he had another Primacy.

  Bruno couldn’t kill Steven until Steven found what he was looking for. Roy had said that, but Roy had said so many, many things. Roy knew Bruno’s father. The two had known each other a long time. They were bonded in blood, far more than Bruno was, to them, or to their third.

  Bruno unstrung his bow and went to retrieve his bag of tricks. He brought everything into the main room of the house. Inside his bag, he found a Rainier beer bottle, according to the label. The humans did enjoy their intoxicating liquors. He didn’t quite understand how they could stomach the rot, for that was what it was: rotting grains, rotting potatoes, rotting grapes.

  Bruno didn’t need the decay, he needed the glass bottle. Since sex was beyond him, and since killing could be problematic, he’d learned to store Animus in bottles using Enchantrix.

  He smashed the Rainier bottle, and the Animus from the Tallulah Brahms kill filled him. He shifted into his partial form as the sun broke the horizon to bathe him. He took it as a sign.

  He would fly, perhaps not to the penal colony, no, but to an island. Bruno couldn’t scry Steven directly, nor his Escort, for they were all hidden by magical ink. Tattoos.

  However, Bruno could feel the flow of life and destiny, and he knew he would feel her arrows pierce him on an island in a sea of islands, a particular emerald gem, wave-tossed and fire-kissed.

  Her arrows.

  She hunted him.

  He enjoyed her desire to kill him.

  The huntress. The goddess of night. The cloaked one.

  Would Bruno kill the Drokharis child before she killed him?

  He didn’t know. Some things were hidden, secrets, mysteries. The humans would find the dismembered corpse of Tallulah Brahms, and they would see that as a mystery. They would never find the killer. He’d left enough money to pay for the destroyed room. Honesty was important.

  Before he left, he would do his ritual. Inside the living room, he took all the furniture and stacked it against the doors and windows and in the hallway. He sat cross-legged in the ruined room. He enjoyed five smokes, ate five pieces of smoked fish, and so on. Until he was finished. He did his ritual as fast as he could because he longed for a bath.

  He found the tub, filled it with water, and then eased down into the boiling water, which sloshed over the edge. His eyes went to the perfect V between his legs. The Dragon Slayer had removed his sex and sent him back to Father.

  Father then sent poor Bruno away. Maybe it was for the best. A father should have a son who was a son and not an assassin.

  He didn’t miss his member. He liked how perfect he was without it. He drifted off to sleep, thinking and not thinking, feeling and not feeling, and when he woke up, the water was as frigid as it was murky.

  Out on the deck, Bruno shifted into his True Form, a long, bone-white dragon, with a grisly bag and a magic bow in his claws. He headed east, toward the Hawaiian Islands, far, far away. He would rest there, perhaps find a kill, or simply smoke, eat, smoke. Then he would continue on toward the islands spread across the gem of the world like green specks in the blue eyes of a white cat.

  Unlike most Dragonsouls, Bruno liked to fly across the world.

  Because one day, all dragon kin would fly between worlds through the void of space. That had been the king’s promise, oh so many years ago. Before the Dragon Slayer slew the king and the world wept.

  The blue-green gem might be a sad place, but Bruno was happy. Racing across the world, Bruno rejoiced in the freedom and the possibilities. The infinite possibilities. Bruno knew he was a limited creature, yet he never grew tired of the never-ending game of “What if?”

  What if, someday, her dark arrows took Bruno down?

  Then he would rest.

  What if, someday, he pierced her with an arrow, bone-bright?

  Then their game would end. He found his disappointment amusing. For she was the only lover he would ever have.

  What if, someday, Father took Bruno into his home and into his heart?

  That would be a happy day indeed.

  Chapter Fifteen

  STEVEN WALKED THROUGH the broken glass of his Surfer’s Paradise mansion. The place had been demolished, and bodies, mostly of women, lay sprawled in the debris. A few men were there, including one big hairy man with most of his chest gone. Gold rings were on his fingers, and he had a relatively unpleasant orange tint to his skin.

  Though blood-splattered and gunshot, his features were somewhat familiar. It was Hindmarch Hotham, the Dragonlord of the Endeavor Primacy.

  Uchiko wasn’t with him. She was in the shadows of the eucalyptus trees outside, ready to strike if needed. She could hurl a dozen deadly shuriken in seconds and then vanish. It was nice being guarded by a ninja.

  Aria stood naked in the middle of the wreckage. She was quite the vision—tall, slender, muscled, and gorgeous with long dark hair, dark skin, and piercing green eyes. She smiled at him. “Welcome home, my Prime. I believe you have arrived just in time to have missed all the combat.”

  Steven tromped across the glass. “Is everyone okay? Any casualties?” He held his breath. After his vision of the battle, he’d called them. Aria said they were fine, though they were on high alert. She had agreed he should take a plane, since that would tax him less than flying. The Indian woman insisted he not open a portal.

  He and Uchiko had immediately left the lighthouse, and he’d flown her to Seattle on his back. They’d wrapped her in multiple layers, and he was warm, but she’d still been chilled. From Seattle, they booked first-class tickets to Brisbane, twelve thousand dollars each, but that wasn’t an issue. He’d used one of the American Express cards Bud insisted he carry.

  In the air, Steven had called again but received no answer. A stewardess told him that Australia had experienced country-wide outages. That was when the attack happened. Now, the outage made sense. Hindmarch Hotham owned much of the telecoms. And he’d been able to jack around with all the networks, both at home and abroad. Steven figured magic was
involved as well.

  Aria took him in her arms and held him. “No casualties. The Five Widows are a force to be reckoned with, surely. And Liam saw them coming. However, Zoey had issues during the battle. Severe issues.”

  Steven sighed.

  Aria stepped back and shifted into her Homo Draconis form so she could walk across the broken glass without a problem.

  The rest of Steven’s Escort, along with Liam Strider and William “Bud” Novak, were on the back deck, which had a view of the ocean. The beach was below, down a single set of stairs. The ocean waves were coming in, the water so different, the air so warm compared to the Oregon coast.

  Tessa and Pretty McGillicuddy were handing out Magica Cura spells, fixing wounds, and working on getting everyone back on their feet.

  When Steven walked out in the bright sunlight, all eyes turned on him. Abby Free tore out of Pretty’s grip to hug him with a bone-breaking embrace. Michaela Montes dropped her fighting sticks and joined her, thanking God he was okay. The communication blackout had gone both ways. Skylar Blacke held back, for a moment, until Pretty grabbed her and Teegan and then all five widows were hugging him.

  Pretty got shoved to the front, and he gazed into her blue eyes. They stared up at him, so full of love, and yet scared, fragile, because in her heart of hearts, Pretty couldn’t trust anyone ever again. Her words echoed through him for the millionth time.

  You don’t mean it, Steven. You say the words, but you don’t mean them.

  Then the bear attacked. Zoey shoved them all over. The Five Widows tumbled like pins in a bowling alley, and the big Morphling was like the big furry ball. Steven lay on his back with the bear on him. Zoey hadn’t grown to her full size, or that probably would’ve been the end of the deck. She was still several hundred pounds of shaking fur.