Maks stepped up to the wall. “Could be a hidden door?” He slid his fingers over the stone, pressing and making swirls here and there.
A sound further up the tunnel caught my ears, and I turned my head to hear better. “Maks, is that the bellow of a bull dragon?”
“Fuck,” he snarled. “Help me. There has to be a way to get this open.”
I leaned into the wall, feeling for a latch, a catch, something. The bellow up the tunnel came again, followed by a rather distinct voice.
“Trespassers are destroyed!”
“Oh, that is not going to go well for us,” I grunted as I shoved on another piece of stone. Nothing, nothing was going as planned.
I reached for my pocket and felt for the necklace as a radical, stupid, horrifying, idea came to me. A dragon that flew was coming our way.
We needed to get to the island surrounded by a moat of lava and no bridge. But a flying dragon? That could be the ticket we needed. Or at least what I needed.
“Maks, shift,” I said. He looked at me, nodded and shifted. He stared up at me from his four legs and I pointed at the stone wall. “Now stay here and see if you can get the shifter out, I’m going to get the gemstone.”
“Wait, there is a dragon coming!” he snarled after me. “He’ll kill you!”
I gave him a half-grin. “We all die, Maks. But today is not that day for me.”
Chapter 27
I ran for the end of the tunnel leading down to the dragons’ hoard and the jewel, down the slope as I quickly reviewed the half-assed plan I’d come up with. I refused to think of it not working.
And to be fair, at least I wasn’t hesitating.
The sound of the bull dragon behind me intensified. “Come on, you big lazy fucker! You want me? Then you’re going to have to work for it!”
He roared in response and I could only hope that Maks would stay low, and that the dragon would swoop on by him.
That was the first part of the plan.
The second part was far more ridiculous. I slowed my steps about twenty feet from the drop-off. I slid the long cloak off my shoulders and it pooled to the ground around my feet.
I needed more range of movement and couldn’t risk the flapping material of the cloak being snagged by a tooth or claw at the last second. I wasn’t interested in being thrown off that way. I turned and faced up the tunnel.
“You coming or not, you big bitch?” I called out to the dragon.
Another massive bellow echoed through the tunnel before he came into view at the crest of the final slope. Black as night, there was not a single other color on his scales, claws, or even the horns that stuck out the top of his head. His eyes, though, were a brilliant violet and, call it a hunch, I was pretty sure I stood in front of Lila’s father.
A father who’d run his daughter off for not being what he wanted. Something in me snapped and I hated to say a portion of my plan went to shit right there. Calm, collected. That had been the plan.
“You piece of shit! You gave up on your daughter because she was too small? Maybe if you hadn’t been such a worthless father, you would have seen the amazing dragon she is!” I screamed the words, for her, and maybe a little for me.
His violet eyes popped wide and then narrowed. “I have no daughter.”
“Bullshit, you motherfucker!” I pointed a finger at him, turned my hand and crooked it toward me. “If you dare.”
He opened his mouth and roared, the sound echoing through my chest. His teeth were easily as long as my forearms, and they glinted with the light of the lava behind me.
His muscles bunched, and I made myself not react. He couldn’t know what I planned to do, which meant I had to wait for the last damn second.
The black dragon shot forward, pushing hard with his claws into the rock of the tunnel. He was coming fast, the shards of stone flaring up around him, his mouth salivating.
If he thought he was going to get pussy tonight, he was sorely mistaken.
I waited, my hands outstretched as he came at me, all muscle and teeth. Fuck, I was going to die.
The heat of his breath blew my hair out behind me before I made my move.
I dodged to the left as hard as I could, running up the curve of the tunnel, using my momentum to curl back over the dragon’s head. His eyes followed me, and I walked through the door in my mind, shifting from two legs to four.
I finished my flip onto his back as he slid under me and his momentum took us out of the tunnel and into space.
His wings snapped wide, and I dug my claws deep into his scales. “I’m riding you now, you bitch!”
“I am not a bitch. You only use that for females!”
I could not believe he answered me. “Let me explain. I think you’re as useless as you think—wrongly—that your females are, which makes you my bitch!”
I clenched my claws a little more as we swept around the massive cavern. He barrel rolled and my fur all stood on end as we went upside down. All it did though was make me hang on more. Tighter.
Harder.
He spun so fast it was like he’d decided to corkscrew his way through the ground. We dropped while spinning and my gorge rose. “That’s all you got?”
“Pussy, I’m going to eat you!”
“In your dreams!” I shot back, then let the vomit roll. It spun past me I turned my head and prayed it wouldn’t hit me.
No such luck with the necklace removed. My own puke splashed over me, coating my black fur all along my spine.
“You are weak! You are no more than an irritation to me! You think your claws do me damage?” He roared the words as he slammed his body against the wall and rolled into it, the boom of the hit reverberating through his body and into mine.
Fuck! I let go and raced around his belly as he rubbed himself against the rock as if to dislodge a burr, still flying.
I was on his belly and he was upside down when I dug my claws in deep again. He roared, and I remembered the way my claws had affected the young dragons, how they’d screamed that the wounds burned.
“Your son tell you about the cat that clawed his hide, the one who saved Lila?” I asked as his blood began to drip. “Did he tell you how he passed out, how the wounds burned?”
“No, Lila is dead!” he screamed back at me.
“She lives! And she will take the throne!” Oh, why did I say that?
His roar rattled the cavern, and I made myself look at where we flew. He dipped low, heading for the lava.
“What are you going to do, rub your belly in the moat?”
“You are a fool,” he snarled as he dropped lower as if to do just that.
I laughed. “I see Lila got her brains from her mother.”
“What?” he roared.
The momentum as he swept low was too much. He missed the moat and skimmed over the hoard.
I let go.
I hit the pile of metal, jewels, and other trinkets, rolling end over end.
Sliding to a stop, I stared up as the black dragon soared up and around prepping for another pass.
I pushed up and ran to the very summit of the treasure trove. A better view, I needed a better view of where the jewel might be. The dragon above me roared again.
I had no doubt he would land on the island with me. Perfect.
But first I had to find the jewel.
I scrambled, diving into the pile. If I were an emerald, where would I be?
Laughter reached my ears. “You think to find our gemstone? Is that why you came?”
I turned to see the black dragon doing exactly what I thought he would. He had landed and crept forward with his wings spread wide and his head snaking left to right.
“Well, now that you mention it, yes.” I flicked the tip of my tail, irritated. “Would you mind pointing it out so I can save our world?”
“Lies, all those who come only have lies with which to blind us with, but I know those lies. There is no danger to this world.”
I moved with him, keeping enough
distance between us that he couldn’t get me in a single lunge. “Not even the Emperor?”
He blew a snort out. “Idiot, the Emperor sleeps.”
“Eh, not so much.” I shrugged. “But you believe what you want, and I’ll do the same. Now where is the emerald?”
He lunged, snapping, but missed me. I slid down the slope of exquisite trinkets, tumbling. The pile loosened and went with me, covering me fully.
I hunched down further as the dragon stepped over me, his belly right above my head, still dripping blood. “You think to hide from me?”
I pushed my way carefully out so that my head was above the pile of coins around me. I made myself look away from his body and to all that lay around me. There was nothing but gold, silver, rubies, sapphires. . . not even a hint of green winked at me.
He continued down the slope, grumbling and talking. He reached under his belly and touched the wounds I gave him and let out a long low hiss.
I pulled myself free of the pile of coins and put my belly low, stalking my way to the highest point of the treasures once more. He was at the bottom now, calling me out with that rumbling bellow of his.
“Pussy cat, you are only making your death worse by prolonging this!”
I rolled my eyes. Big words from a dragon missing a sense of smell and humor.
Once more at the top, I gritted my teeth with the frustration soaring through me. I let my eyes close for just a second and that’s when I felt it. A pulse of energy tied to the forest, to the trees and to the dragons.
I slowly turned and slid down the slope on the opposite side, following the pull, and a faint line of green that seemed to beckon me forward. A chest no bigger than a ring box was on the sand of the island, all by itself. I shifted to two legs, stumbled and went to my knees, scooping the box up. I flicked the lid and a fat jewel sat in a ring setting, surrounded by diamonds.
I yanked it out and slid it onto my finger, then shifted back to my house cat form, making the jewel a part of the chain around my neck.
My bones and muscles protested the rapid shift and a groan slid from me.
Too many shifts, too fast.
“Hey, you lazy ass!” I grabbed the ring box in my mouth and waited for him to come over the crest of the treasure hoard before I twisted, flung my head to the side and released the box to throw it into the slowly moving lava. “That’s what I think of your stupid emerald.”
His eyes. . . goddess, they went so wide that I thought they would fall right out of his head and roll to a stop at my paws.
“NO!” He leapt down toward me, his wings wide as he caught an updraft from the heat of the lava.
I ran toward him, dodged to the right, turned and leapt up, catching hold of his tail. I needed a ride out of here now.
This was about to get tough. And that thought made me want to bust out in maniacal laughter as if the journey so far in hadn’t been tough.
I settled for digging my claws in deeply and making him howl.
Chapter 28
Lila’s father reared up on his back legs, his neck and head twisting around with his mouth wide open, coming straight at me with all those teeth. I distantly wondered if he wasn’t a fire breather, just what was he?
I didn’t have long to wait.
Seeing as his mouth shot toward me, I could see to the very back of his throat and the green mist that grew within that space.
Mist. Not acid like Lila.
Oh fuck. He was a death dragon.
“Cheater, cheater,” I snarled. “You can’t catch me on your own, so you resort to your stink breath?” This was bad, like super bad. Beyond bad, to the deepest of hells of bad, deep within the recesses of the baddest realms. One little breath in, one fucking sniff and I was done.
A death dragon’s breath was pure poison, one that would draw the life out of you and give it to the dragon in question, and there was only one death dragon that had ever lived beyond birth that I knew of. He was the legendary Corvalis. That explained how he’d found his way to become the leader of the dragons. Each combatant who had faced him and lost would have given over their life and their power to him as he fought to take control of the dragons.
I had no idea he was even still alive. Or that he was Lila’s father. Suddenly his disdain of his daughter made horrible sense. As the legend he was, there would have been no way he could have accepted a daughter he saw as useless and weak.
His mouth snapped shut and his wings beat twice, hard, taking us higher. I caught a glimmer of movement in the tunnel above and I tried to look without looking.
Two men stood there.
Two where there had been one. Maks lifted his hands and I saw nothing, but Corvalis suddenly jerked hard to the side as if he’d been hit. His head whipped around to face the opening of the tunnel and he swept toward them.
“RUN!” I screamed at them as I myself ran up along Corvalis’s ridged back. I pin cushioned him with each step, digging my claws in to keep my traction high in case he decided to flip over. He drew closer and closer to the tunnel opening and Maks just stood there, his blue eyes alight with a fury I’d never seen in him.
His held his hands out, palms toward us and there was a shimmer of light as though the air around him bent, and then Corvalis let out a roar and his head snapped to the right.
The momentum of him being blown to the side brought his body in close to the tunnel opening.
This was it, the only chance I would get. I ran across the dragon’s back and leapt for the tunnel.
It was too far. I knew it was the second I pushed off with my back feet into the open air between us. I thought about shifting if only to throw Maks the ring.
My eyes met his and his hands swept toward me, his fingers flicking upward, and it was as though I’d been lifted on a gust of wind.
Just enough to get me to the crumbling threshold of the tunnel.
I caught hold of the rock and scrambled forward.
A hand swept under my belly and caught me up. The smell of lion surrounded me, only not lion, but family—a lion related to me.
“Bryce, what are you doing here?” I yelled and stared at the lion shifter holding me, my cloak over his arm.
Not Bryce.
Shem.
My crazy-ass Uncle Shem. And it was then that it hit me. Shem was the lion I’d smelled in the dungeon of the Witch’s Reign. What the hell had he been doing there?
Apparently, my father had not handled things after all.
“Hey, kitten. Let’s go.” He winked a golden eye at me, the wild fervor I remembered from when I was child dulled with pain. But it was still there, meaning he was as unreliable as ever.
He leaned back against the wall where I’d sensed him and the rock slid open. He stepped through and Maks followed.
Utter blackness covered us as the infuriated roars of Corvalis rocketed though the stone. The dark wasn’t the only thing I picked up on. The smell of shit, blood, and rank lion rammed its way up my nose and I wrinkled my lips. Fuck, that was bad. Like a bachelor pad on steroids.
“Uncle Shem?” I repeated his name because I couldn’t—literally could not—believe what I was seeing.
“The one and only.” His hold on me tightened. “Stay in that shape, kitten. It’ll keep the jewel hidden longer.”
“No shit,” I growled. He lifted me so I sat on his shoulder and then a match was struck, lighting up the very, very small space.
“We need to get out of here,” Maks said, holding the match. The lines of his face were drawn.
I stared hard at him. “You okay?”
“Using magic like that. . . it’s draining. And. . . it will pinpoint me for Marsum.”
Shem grunted. “You saved her. Don’t regret it, boy. She’s more important than all of us.”
My uncle took a step forward and then another. “Here, we climb to the top.” He put his hands into a stone ladder that had been etched into a tunnel that went straight up. I clung to his shoulder, wishing I was with Maks. It wasn’t th
at I didn’t care for my uncle, except that I remembered all too well why he’d been run off from the pride.
He’d tried to kidnap me.
I gritted my teeth, turned and dropped off his back, landing on Maks’s shoulder. He reached up and loosened his winter coat. I slid in and shivered.
“Still don’t trust me?” Shem called down.
“You tried to steal me from my parents, Shem,” I called up. “What do you want, forgiveness?”
He barked a laugh. “Well, now, you are your mother’s child, aren’t you?”
I tucked my head against Maks’s neck and breathed him in. He turned his head and pressed his face against my side as if he were doing the same. “You okay?”
I nodded. “Just tired.”
The two men climbed for a long time. Long enough that they had to stop multiple times to catch their breaths. The stone around us rattled and the roars of Corvalis never really stopped, but they did fade, which had to be good for something.
The minutes ticked by.
I focused on Maks, on the sound of his heart. On the smell of his skin and the whoosh of his breath over my fur.
He’d saved me. Caught me when I’d leapt without looking. A smile tipped over my lips.
“What are you grinning about now?” He breathed the words out.
“You caught me,” I whispered.
“Of course.”
“I leapt without looking, Maks, and you caught me.”
He chuckled though there was strain in it. “Seems fitting.”
“Yeah, it does. But you still owe me.”
He had to stop climbing as he laughed. “Yeah, that too.”
From above us, Shem stopped and stared down at us, and it was only then I realized that the light was growing.
We had to be close to the top.
“Stay in your cat form, kitten,” Shem said.
“Stop calling me that,” I yelled up at him.
“You are a kitten,” he said.
“I’m a fucking house cat, you idiot!”
Maks laughed, though silently. I admit. It was kind of funny. Talk about being complicated. I didn’t want to be called a house cat, but I’d take that a thousand times over being called a kitten.
Dragon's Ground (The Desert Cursed Series Book 2) Page 22
