Elements of Ruin (Hijinks Harem Book 2)

by C. M. Stunich

  It made me feel sick.

  “Fuck, that was close,” Billy said, grabbing hold of the stone wall with his massive claws and clinging to it for a moment, well above the horde of basilisks below. When I glanced down, I saw … a whole sea of statues, elementals frozen in a variety of positions from mid-run to cowering on the floor, to these dynamic fighting poses that made them look so damn fragile. What would happen if they were to tip over and break? I was a little scared to find out.

  Billy crawled up the wall, setting us back on the ledge and then paused, lifting his big head to look over the railing and down below.

  “She's in here,” he said, and I heard the wild anger in his voice mixed with … worry. He was worried. Not good. “The water elemental,” he added, and I followed his gaze to see that my bio mom was standing in the middle of the fray, her dragon form a shimmery blue-white color that would've been pretty in a different set of circumstances.

  You know, like if she wasn't trying to kill us.

  “They purposefully separated us and then parceled out the right weapons for the job,” I said, gritting my teeth and curling my arms around Billy's neck.

  He was going to need me to step up and fight. Water and fire … didn't mix.

  Then again … there had to be a reason that we were in this room together.

  “Hello, honey,” Daniel said from behind me, drawing my attention around to his smug facial expression. He was leaning against the wall, looking like the cat who got the cream. His confidence pissed me the hell off. “So nice of you to join us down here. Honestly, this was far too easy. Clearly, your level of magical prowess proves you do in fact have my genes, but goodness, you are fucking stupid, aren't you?”

  I slid off Billy's back and crossed my arms over my chest.

  “Look, this is really getting old,” I said, trying to sound completely nonchalant. In reality, I was worried. I was actually starting to like these guys and the idea of one of them getting hurt … well, it upset me more than I wanted it to. And this is why I ran away from Max/Warden in the first place. Loving people … leads to a whole hell of a lot of hurt and pain. “Why can't you just accept that you and the moms aren't even close to as powerful as me and the boys, turn your loser asses in, and live happily ever incarcerated? If you surrender now, I'll see about letting you share a cell with the moms.”

  “Oh?” Daniel said, pushing off the wall at the same moment the water dragon crawled up the wall behind us … and chucked a hissing basilisk with her tail. The creature landed on the ground between Daniel and me and then flicked its green scaly head toward Billy.

  The effect was instantaneous and awful.

  Billy froze, his tail mid-swish, his lips pulled back in a snarl, his black and orange skin rippling with gray and then turning into an awful, solid wall of stone.

  The basilisk didn't hesitate before turning his eyes to me, looking right at me through the sunglasses Billy had given me. The pain was awful, sweeping over my body and choking the words from my throat. But when I tried to turn my head away, I was surprised to find that I could actually move, stumbling over to the railing and throwing up over the edge.

  Gross.

  Some heroine I was, puking and coughing like that. Wasn't I just the coolest? I wanted nothing more in that moment to be the type of heroine who wears leather pants and combat boots and kicks ass with swords and guns.

  Then again … I could do better than that, right? Who needed swords and guns when I could not only control seven different elements, but also turn into a fucking dragon.

  Billy's sunglasses saved me, I thought as I spun back and shifted, all in one single movement. He gave them to me, and now he's fucking hard as stone—and not in a good way. I have to protect this man.

  And I knew in that moment, that I'd give my life for him.

  Whoa. That'd happened quick. But it was true. I felt these boys through our magical connection like they really were my soul mates. Whether I believed in the idea or not, I was enjoying getting to know them. Plus, they were overprotective and annoying and far too pushy with this whole relationship thing … and yet, I liked them anyway. The fact that they were all ripped and hung like horses didn't hurt either.

  My body morphed and changed, the aubergine shimmer of my scales taking over my white-pink flesh. I felt my spine lengthen into a tail, my teeth sharpen into points. Claws exploded from my fingertips as I stepped up against the side of Billy's frozen body and bared my teeth.

  I felt so primal and animalistic in that moment … It was hard to keep myself from switching from the defensive … to the offensive.

  Actually. Fuck it. Mom always said the best form of defense was a good offense. Let's fuck some scaly dragon ass up.

  Despite Daniel's insistence that I was generally pretty damn stupid—which I guess wasn't hard to believe given we'd just walked our butts willingly into a trap—I was not a total moron. There was no way I could take on both Bio Dad and Bio Mom at the same time, not while also trying to protect Billy's frozen, statue-like form. No, I'd need to even the odds first, before I could stand a chance.

  Flicking a quick gaze around the room, I assessed my options and immediately spotted what could be a potentially great idea. It could also be a potentially awful one. Nothing ventured, nothing gained though!

  Flicking the sunglasses up from where they'd dropped during my shift, I slid them onto my dragon nose where they perched precariously. Whatever, they'd do the trick. Hopefully.

  With my eyes now protected, I launched myself at the basilisk in a flurry of water and sludge, tackling the lizard around the waist and wrestling with him until I had him—her? it?—in a headlock, facing away from me. My tail wrapped around its body, holding it immobile and my muscular dragon arms held firm around its thrashing head. Thank Odin that dragons had longer arms than a T-rex's or this could have ended really badly.

  “What do you think you're doing?” Daniel snapped, circling away from the basilisk's line of sight cautiously.

  “Evening the score, Dad,” I snarked back, and used my water powers to propel both myself and the basilisk enclosed in my iron grip up and around, facing down Bio Mom, the water edition. She'd been watching us with curiosity, probably waiting for Daniel to finish the job himself, so was taken totally unprepared and met my captive basilisk's stare dead-on with shocked, blue eyes.

  Her body stiffened in waves, like she'd been dipped in quick drying cement, or a vat of semen and then placed in the shower. That shit was like damn super glue.

  As the petrification reached her extremities, her claws detached from the concrete wall and she fell like a ton of bricks over the railing, crashing into the pool of water below us and sinking slowly. A small trail of bubbles chased her descent to the bottom, then all lay still.

  “What the fuck have you done?” Daniel shrieked like an enraged fishwife, staring down into the murky depths of the water like his wife had just drowned or something. But like, she was a water elemental so that was impossible, right? Honestly, I had no idea.

  “I tried to play nice and offer you incarceration but no. You just had to go after my mates. Well, no more nice Arizona! It's time for some damn payback Dad!” I spat the words at him with venom, then followed up with a stream of fire from my dragon snout, which just barely missed hitting the petrified form of Billy, still standing on the small ledge beside the pool of water.

  Unfortunately, I did not miss the basilisk's head, and before I could clamp my angry dragon jaws shut, I had crisped the damn lizard's head clean off its shoulders.

  “Ah for fuck's sake,” I muttered, detaching my tail and paws from around the headless barbecued reptile and dropping its remains into the water to join Bio Mom. How weird, I just drowned her and I didn't even know her name. That was kind of sad. Like, yeah I knew that I had five other bio moms, and of course I had Katelyn—my weed smoking Kiwi/Aussie adoptive mom—but … I don't know. I couldn't help feeling a sense of loss as I realized I would never get to know one of my egg don
ors, even if it was from the inside of a padded cell.

  “You little bitch!” Daniel hollered, his face boiling red and the ground beneath his feet beginning to tremble. “I should have strangled you the moment you were born!”

  “Well now that just hurts my feelings,” I snarked back at him. “Oh boohoo, your daughter whom you've been trying to freaking kill decided to fight back. You poor, poor villain. Here, let me play the world's smallest violin for you.” My stream of water that had been holding me aloft gently placed me back down on the concrete ledge in front of Billy, and my dragon paws mimed playing a tiny violin. Okay, sure, it probably wasn't real clear that's what I was doing, but I think Daniel got the point.

  “You've got a real fucking mouth on you.” Daniel's lip curled as he glared at me from across the pool of water where his wife was taking a nice long soak, along with a barbecued basilisk. “Let me shut it up for you.”

  He raised a hand in a dramatic gesture, not totally unlike my own had been earlier, and lightning crackled through the air, slamming into the ground close enough to my feet that I needed to jump my dragon ass backwards a bit to avoid getting zapped. Huh, maybe my dramatic gestures weren't so damn stupid after all. Take that Joan and your stuffy lessons!

  Countering his lightning bolt with a ball of fire, I repeated the gesture with my dragon paw but it seemed to come out more like I had something stuck between my claws, as opposed to the dramatic magical gesture. Damn it.

  My ball of fire went wide, hitting the wall behind Daniel and dissipating in a hiss of smoke. Smirking at my pitiful effort, he conjured up a ball of air by using an elaborate, Tai chi looking movement and lobbed it at me with the force of a baseball pitcher. The ball of air whooshed at me so damn fast I didn't have time to try and move my huge, tailed butt out of the way, so I went spirit form instead and let it simply sail straight through me … and right into Billy. Shit.

  His statue form was knocked over like a bowling pin, and teetered on the edge of the low railing. My breath sucked into my figurative lungs, because I was still in spirit form and therefore had no lungs, as I watched the Billy statue—who was built like a brick shithouse in dragon form as well as human form—wobbled on the edge, then plummeted into the water to join Bio Mom and Crispy Lizard.

  “Shit on a motherfucking moonbeam,” I cursed, channelling my inner Warden, and wasted no time diving straight into the watery muck after him.

  My glittering aubergine form sliced through the water like a hot knife through Vegemite, and I rematerialized my paws just in time to grab hold of Billy's rock-hard … neck. I know we were in the sewer, but this was no time for dirty jokes.

  Holding on tight, I used my water and air powers to propel us both back out of the water and onto the ledge where I lay gasping and coughing for a quick second, before leaping back into battle mode. This was no Pokémon match; my opponent would have no qualms kicking me when I was down, but even as I readied another elemental attack, I couldn't help but wonder … how deep was that damn pool?!

  “You clearly don't care much for your wife, or you would have fished her out like I just did my soulmate,” I panted, lobbing chunks of concrete and scree at my Dad, which he dodged and batted aside with air and water, while still retaining his human form. Why hadn't he shifted? It was becoming abundantly clear to me that my control of my mates magic was so much stronger in dragon form.

  “She's a water elemental, she can't drown,” he sneered back at me, but the look on his face betrayed his lack of confidence in those words. “As soon as I finish you off, I'll pull her out and un-petrify her. Simple. Now be a good girl for Daddy and stay still while I fucking kill you.”

  “You must seriously have a few kangaroos loose if you think I'm going to stand her and be killed by a pathetic heap of wombat shit like you,” I snorted. “No, how about fuck you?”

  My dragon body raised up on my haunches and I swirled a dragon paw in the air, conjuring a torrent of lightning bolts to come showering down on Bio Dad. Unfortunately—or fortunately?—I'd failed the class in school that taught us about water being a conductor for electricity. My randomly directed onslaught of electrical bolts zapped across the water, linking together and exploding in one massive burst of power. Literally. The amount of electricity in that room could have powered an entire city block, or knocked one out.

  I threw myself over Billy, pushing him hard up against the wall of the room and away from the water in the hopes that we wouldn't also get zapped. Because how shit would that be? If I finally killed Bio Dad, but also killed myself and Billy in the process?

  If this were a book, like say one of those reverse harem paranormal urban fantasy romance ones that I'd browsed in the bookstore, then this would be the logical opportunity for me to wax lyrical on how selfless I was, how my life was a worthy sacrifice to save the lives of millions, and how if it meant taking down Bio Dad, then my death was justified.

  But this wasn't no damn paranormal romance novel, and I was not that selfless. My life had barely begun with my many husbands, and I wanted to experience all that they and their magical dicks had to offer me! I was too damn young to die; I hadn't even had a seven-way yet!

  Okay, Arizona. First order of business when you make it out of this alive. Dick. And lots of it. Everywhere, in every which way. This is fucking happening.

  My mind whirled a million miles an hour, as I hugged Billy's stone-like form and waited for the maelstrom of electricity to subside. It wasn't my life flashing before my eyes, it was my future, and goddamn it if I didn't desperately want that big white wedding that Charlie and Joan had tried to coerce us into. In my mind's eye, I could see myself in a big poofy dress, holding a bunch of flowers, while Britt and Siobhan sashayed up the aisle ahead of me in their skin tight hot pink mini-dresses. At the end of the aisle waited my men. All six of them.

  My heart cracked a little at the imaginary vision, and I felt big wet dragon tears rolling down my snout and dripping onto Billy's scales.

  Finally, the flashing light and crackling of power died down, and I released my hold on the fire elemental dragon statue, peeking over my shoulder to see if Daniel had made it out alive like the damn cockroach he was.

  “What the bleeding rectum is going on in here?” Warden's voice echoed through the room as he came skidding to a stop in the mouth of one of the tunnels.

  “What—” I looked around with what I was sure was a dumb as fuck look on my snout.

  “I feel this massive power surge, then half of the city gets its power knocked out, and I come in here and find you and Billy … what … making out in dragon form? Gross!” Warden snarled, stalking towards us while I inspected every facet of the room to find where Daniel might be hiding.

  “Warden, what the bloody hell? We weren't making out! Billy got basilisk petrified and I was protecting him from the lightning!” I explained, still searching the roof in case Daniel'd turned dragon and scuttled up there.

  “Oh really?” Warden remarked in a dry voice. “Because he looks just fine to me.” The energy elemental put a hand on his hip and gestured at Billy with a nod of his chin.

  I glanced back and found William Brenton, lying underneath my splayed dragon fingers, the claws arranged around his head like knives.

  “Uh, Firebug, could you let me up, please?” he asked, and I carefully extracted my … paw? hand? … and stepped back, shifting into human form and raking the fingers of both hands through my hair.

  Billy sat up with a groan, rubbing at his forehead and blinking those gorgeous orange-brown eyes like he was coming out of a long sleep. Or a hard one, I guess? Pun intended. As I looked down at him, at his charcoal hair and chiseled jaw, his rounded biceps and tattoos … I felt a surge of lust and … affection? I wouldn't call it love, not yet, but the warmth in my chest was a hard thing to deny.

  I opened my mouth to say something, probably nothing eloquent or witty or even coherent, but something to try to explain how I felt when I heard the scrabbling of claws from behind me. S
hit. Temporary reprieve, but in no way a victory …

  We were still standing in the middle of a sewer filled with basilisks with a strange spell glittering above our heads, a whole horde of stone elemental quints, sexes, and septs below us. And I had no fucking clue what to do about it. We couldn't just leave them there.

  “This spell,” Warden said, holding out a hand and pulling Billy to his feet. I think in the moment, they forgot to hate each other because they just grasped fingers without hesitation and then … froze. Their eyes locked for a brief moment before Warden yanked his hand back and held it to his chest like he'd been burned. Pun also intended. “My first thought was that it was some sort of … draining spell, so Daniel could pull the power from the elementals in the room, but after I snapped a picture and sent it to Anita, she told me it was just a containment spell and that it'd be easy to break.”

  “So … what the fuck was the point of all this then?” I asked and Warden shrugged. Billy grabbed my arm and yanked me close, away from the railing and the giant green lizards crawling over it.

  “Close your eyes, Firebug,” Billy said, and I realized then that I'd lost the sunglasses somewhere, probably in the water when I'd dived down to rescue the fire elemental. “And keep 'em closed. Warden?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” he said, pulling out a pair of shades and putting them on Billy's face. He closed his hazel eyes and reached out, taking my hand in his. I pretended the situation was too intense for me to feel anything at all, but really, I got butterflies in my tummy and my already wet panties (from the water, not arousal, you perv) got even wetter. But yeah, think pervy thoughts this time because I was definitely talking about love juices.

  “Just keep your eyes closed and let me deal with this,” Billy said, and I could feel the heat of his magic on my skin as well as the tickle of power flowing through our bond. “Basilisk are basically impervious to anything but fire. So let's cook these fuckers and then get the hell out of here.”