Monsters, Book Two: Hour of the Dragon

by Heather Killough-Walden

  “I….” She exhaled raggedly, her lips glistening wet as she swallowed again. “I said I….” He laughed darkly. He could have flooded her again with that power he’d pulled back on. But dragon or not, he loved her with every twisted fiber of his three black hearts. So as he moved in, his hands sliding along her waist, his strength curling around her, he graciously allowed her to figure it out on her own.

  “Yes?” he prompted. One arm wrapped firmly around her, pressing her to him as his other hand slid up her spine to plunge into her heavy, silky mass of hair. He fisted it gently when her breathing went ragged, and final comprehension dawned in those beautiful, beautiful eyes.

  There it is, he thought.

  Now she understood why he was asking her these things. Now she understood what the spell was for. And now she knew once and for all what he was going to do to her.

  There was no mercy left in him when he used his fisted hand in her hair to tug her head back and lowered his mouth to hers. He hovered just above her to make his next demand a harsh whisper across her glistening, inviting lips. “Tell me, little one. What did you say?”

  “I said in that case… I would be a dragon.”

  Chapter Forty-six – The Dragon’s Den

  Once when she’d been surfing, Annaleia had done something stupid. She knew better. She’d been training for decades. But that was part of the problem; when you did something just long enough, you could sometimes become complacent and take certain things for granted. That day, fate must have wanted to teach her a lesson about that, because she pulled her over-confident stunts and in the end, she’d wound up being torn from her board and going what surfers sometimes referred to as “endo.”

  End over end.

  The chord around her ankle snapped and she lost her board. At one point, Anna had looked in the direction she’d thought was up only to see the backs of her feet. She was completely bent backwards, her body forming a near perfect circle that would have impressed the most flexible gymnasts.

  Beneath a big enough wave, it’s dark under the water and you lose track of up and down. There’s no sunlight to guide you to the surface so you can break through and breathe. The water is angry in a wave like this, turbulent and noisy and sometimes filled with seaweed or sand.

  There are bubbles everywhere in angry water, so even if you can see, releasing new bubbles to watch which way they float so you can follow them to the surface is fruitless. This kind of water, these kinds of waves, all they really want to do is keep you. Forever.

  And once you realize it’s that kind of wave you’re under, there is nothing you can do but hold your breath and swim strong while you pray to the gods that your gut instinct has pointed you in the right direction. If you’re lucky, you’ll reach a surface eventually. If you’re really damn lucky, it’ll be the surface of the water, and not the surface of the sea floor.

  Now, years later, Annaleia had become trapped under a wave like that the second she’d been told that a serial killer had her two best friends. From that moment on, through the transports and battles and bullet wounds and rescues, through the deaths of her friends and their resurrections, her open wounds and her sentinel, to this moment here in a cave caught between a dying soul and a dragon, she had been holding her breath and swimming strong.

  At last, Annaleia had reached some kind of surface. Would she come up for air now?

  Or would the wave keep her?

  He’s going to make me a dragon. He held his face a breath from hers and she was kept in his sway with no choice but to watch as his glowing eyes shifted to a shade that she had never before seen. They were ultraviolet, literally shedding darkness as if it were a form of light, their outer irises a deep dark indigo that lightened to a color nearly matching her own at their cores. She stared, stunned, into those burning, sparking pools of glowing black lightning and thought helplessly, He is going to eat me alive.

  As if he could read her thoughts – and maybe he could? – Ares smiled again, showing her those fangs of his, so long and sharp and wickedly, darkly beautiful. I could be a dragon, she thought. And I would have fangs like that.

  She’d always wanted fangs. How cool would it be to flash some jerk-off a set of sharp fangs and scare the hell out of him? The best defense was a good offense, right? And what was better in an offense than a good, strong set of teeth?

  Anna’s gaze slid back up to his, where she fell into those electric eyes of his and wondered what else there was of him she hadn’t seen. What else had he kept hidden from her all those years ago?

  Everything, she thought.

  Again it felt like he’d read her mind when Ares released his hold on her hair to brush the backs of his knuckles across her cheekbones. “Shall I show you?” he asked. His touch was tender, and she knew that tenderness was a lie. It felt like a thin, soft veil over something treacherous. And there was a part of Annaleia that thrilled at that thought.

  Standing so tall above her, Ares’ smile became cruel. A heartbeat later, he was gripping her hard again, pulling her against him – and taking her with him over the edge of the balcony.

  Annaleia tried to scream as open air greeted their rushing bodies and the sudden gush of wind sent her hair flying, but the sound was caught in her throat. Split seconds after he’d taken them both over the side, Annaleia heard the unmistakable sound of massive wings beating against the air, and their descent slowed.

  Another beat and they slowed again, nearly coming to a stop. It took her a few seconds to realize she was airborne but no longer falling. Hovering.

  It took her a few seconds more to also realize she had shut her eyes tight and had yet to open them.

  “Open your eyes, Leia.”

  Somehow Anna garnered enough courage to do as she was told. She slowly pried her eyes open, gasping and stifling all sorts of unflattering whimpering sounds at what she saw.

  They had not fallen at all. In fact, they’d climbed higher. She hadn’t been able to see it earlier because of the shelf balcony waterfall that was above her in his cave, but the ceiling of Ares’ cavern was in fact several hundreds of feet high. And when she looked down, she realized they hovered somewhere near the top.

  “You’re okay, Raindrop,” Ares told her. Anna heard the words and then also felt them. They moved through her like a spell, forcing her to believe him. So she did. Her death grip on his black leather jacket eased up, allowing blood back into her fingers. Her attention spread out past the thought of immediate death, and she noticed something that sounded like cut electrical wires sparking.

  “Now lean back, little one,” Ares commanded.

  Not a chance! she thought desperately. But then, just like before, she was reconsidering. She remembered that she was absolutely safe with Ares. She knew he would never let her fall.

  With this new courage she slowly straightened in his arms, peeling her cheek from his chest and turning a little so she could see him. Oh my God, she thought… That wasn’t a dragon who had her in his grasp. She stared wide-eyed and breathless. That was a devil. It was Lucifer. It had to be.

  Ares laughed, the sound so beautiful it very well could have been the fallen angel in disguise. Or not so disguised. Not anymore.

  She’d never seen wings like his. They matched his eyes in their array of color. They possessed the general shape of a bat’s wings but were covered in a shining blanket of feathers like a raven’s wings. Each feather was a transitional ombre from black to amethyst, shimmering and mesmerizing just like his eyes. All along the edges of the immense appendages, like life blood runs through a man’s veins, purple-blue lightning crackled and zapped, filling the cavern’s upper levels with an eerie black light and energy. That was what she’d heard.

  The black lightning of his wings was also mirrored in his eyes, as well as the highlights in his black hair. He was too beautiful. It made her ache somewhere inside, somewhere she wouldn’t have been able to find if she’d searched a lifetime.

  Like a ghost ache.

  He wa
s getting to her in every dimension.

  Ares’ arms were secure around her waist already, but his grip on her tightened further before he leaned over and spoke in her ear. “You wanted to know where we are right now,” he told her. “And you were wondering what else I haven’t yet shown you.”

  Anna processed that. Her eyes widened again when she realized with a mounting sense of horror that she hadn’t said any of that out loud. He had in fact been reading her mind.

  Oh no… no, no, no…. How long had he been doing that? How many of her thoughts had he overheard? Had he always been able to do that? Oh God! She was mortified to think that he could have been listening in on her thoughts in school all those years ago. How could he do that and not tell her? It was a violation of her privacy! What friend would betray someone like that? She was spinning out of control with the possibilities.

  “Leia.”

  Annaleia went still as warmth and security rushed over her, this time so strong it was unmistakably magic. She stopped snowballing, her sense of dread faded, her shock declined, and her embarrassment dwindled.

  This was not something to get upset over. She had nothing to hide from Ares. He was her best friend.

  It was okay to let him in.

  She gazed up at him, mesmerized, as the dragon’s slow, wicked smile returned. “That’s better,” he said, his voice wrapping around her like another set of strong arms. He broke eye contact to look up at the ceiling overhead, and when he returned his gaze to hers, the look on his face was one of pure, uncompromising iniquity.

  “This is the dragon realm, little one.”

  And in her mind, followed up like a deep, dark echo filled with innuendo and promises, he said, This is my world, Raindrop. Let me show it to you.

  Chapter Forty-seven – The Dragon Realm

  Annaleia Faith had always had the strongest power of resolve he had ever encountered in a human. It hadn’t faded with time, either. Ares was forced to be vigilant, careful, ever adjusting how much of her will he suppressed and replaced with his own.

  He wanted her submission. He wanted it so badly, he throbbed at the thought. And they would not be leaving his realm until she had given it to him. But… he wanted her to submit as herself, not an empty-headed doll with no spirit. So while he wasn’t shy about overriding any thoughts or hesitance of hers that would prevent progress, he was also careful.

  As careful as a black dragon can be, that is.

  He had never been able to read her thoughts before tonight. But she was in his true home for the first time and the spell he had upon her was a powerful one. He’d also been watching her like a hawk, his attention focused entirely on her.

  So when little by little, he’d begun to pick up on snippets of her internal voice as if through a swimming pool or a closed door, he wasn’t surprised. This entire night was new territory for them both. It was anyone’s guess what might be accomplished before the spell ended.

  Such as the ability to speak to her using telepathy.

  This is my world, Raindrop. Let me show it to you.

  He gave her no further warning before he beat his massive wings a single, strong time against the air in the cavern, and with great power they were propelled upward at a dizzying speed. She tensed in his arms despite the heavy influence he’d draped over her, but it was an expected reaction for anyone half-way sane since they were headed directly for a stalactite-covered stone ceiling and were sure to be pierced and then crushed to death at any moment.

  A sharp intake of breath and a tucking of her head to his jacket was what she substituted for a scream as they broke through the illusory barrier and into the cosmic world above.

  Antares climbed. He allowed his magic and his wings to carry them ever higher, his body finishing its dragon transformation as he rose into the realm’s night. Until at an incredible apex, he hovered above the world as the black dragon he’d never before shown her.

  She was holding fast to him of course, her grip not unlike a baby monkey’s on its mother’s fur, white-knuckled and desperate. He couldn’t help but chuckle. But when he did, it came out as the low, rumbling draconic sound only a dragon’s lungs can make, and Annaleia stopped breathing. He waited, smiling to himself because he couldn’t help it. The dark and twisted part of him enjoyed the play of emotions across her beautiful face as he overturned her world.

  Very slowly, very cautiously she lifted her head from his chest. He could hear her thoughts as they floated across her mind like whispers one after another. She was only now noticing that the leather beneath her cheek was no longer a jacket. She saw the shimmering black scales first… then heard the beat of his wings and their coursing electric energy. And then she realized that the arms holding her so tight were the thick, corded, scale-covered arms of a beast, not a man.

  She tensed, her muscles going taut with fear when she saw his claws wrapped around her and felt the gentle warning of his talons where they curled into her abdomen, threatening but not piercing.

  He heard her heart rate kick up a ton of notches and smelled fresh adrenaline pour into her blood. She frankly smelled delicious.

  He’d been wanting to take this slow, to draw it out and make it last what felt like forever. But now that they were here and she was literally in his clutches, he was realizing that he’d wanted this for half a century. Black dragons have little to no patience as it is. That already felt like forever.

  When her breathing came out in cute little ragged bursts and her small hands tried helplessly to curl around his claws where they held her, he wasn’t so sure he wanted to draw it out anymore. She was too adorable. And when she finally looked up at the rest of him and he saw his own visage through her eyes… he knew he didn’t want to draw it out anymore.

  He was frightening to her, yes. His body was a scene out of an artist’s fantasy nightmare, his colossal wings spread against a backdrop of planets, galaxies, nebulae and star systems, his scale-covered body the length of several buses end-to-end. But he knew now how she truly felt as well. The words that described her uninhibited reaction skirted across her open mind; she was unable to stop them. My God… Magnificent… I can’t… unreal… all mine.

  Her last words rocked through him. She was thinking that the glorious thing he actually was, larger than life and stunning, was the real Antares. Her Antares. Hence, she was thinking the dragon she openly gazed at above her – belonged to her.

  Ares had always been the possessive one between them. He had laid claim to her five decades ago, not the other way around. Or so he’d always thought. But now here she was, so small and fragile, and literally caught between the razor-sharp talons of a black dragon – and she had the guts to think of that dragon as belonging to her.

  Fuck.

  It was the hottest thing he had ever heard.

  He felt his chest rumble in a low growl and knew his eyes had taken on that menacing, promising glow. She went still in his clutches, all soft, yielding flesh and big lavender eyes and wild, wind-blown hair.

  Yeah. He’d waited long enough.

  I wanted you to know, he told her now, speaking his words like a caress across her mind. Her little body was growing so warm in his hands, her blood pumping so fast, and he caught another scent as well, an honest and uncontrollable side effect of the dominion he exerted over her. She was aroused.

  If he hadn’t already decided to speed things up, that would have made the decision for him.

  I need you to trust me, Annaleia. Because this was it. The ride was going to get bumpy now. He waited to see the flash of recognition in her eyes, waited a beat more to see if she would object.

  And then he did what he both needed and wanted to do.

  He began to shift with her in his arms, crushing her to him with a body morphing from dragon back to man. Only his draconic glowing eyes and wings remained when he slid his hand behind her to grab hold of her hair once again, gripping it tight. She hissed with something between surprise and painful pleasure. He caught more of her scent �
� shampoo, rain, and passion.

  Ares pulled hard enough to force her head back, exposing the long column of her neck, and then he turned with her in the air and dove back toward the ground.

  She wanted to scream, but she wouldn’t have the chance. His wings folded in behind him, leaving a shooting-star trail of lightning dust in his wake. He leaned in and inhaled the sweet, sweet fragrance of Anna’s blood where it pumped madly, riding fast and hard and close to the surface of her veins.

  As her fingers again curled tight into the lapels of his leather biker jacket, Antares flooded her form with untold amounts of physical bliss. It was a buffer, one he hoped was enough. Because then he sank his very sharp fangs into her throat. This time, his little dragon did manage a scream, and it pierced the night. But it could not be helped.

  This was how it had to be.

  He would have to sink his teeth into Annaleia and take her blood three times. Three bites, one for each of his draconic hearts. And the first had to be his dragon heart because that was what he was, and that was what she would become.

  The dragon was the one in charge, the one holding the leash of this transformative spell, and his dragon heart was what made Ares a monster. It was neither kind nor forgiving, it gave no quarter. It was still angry that Ares had locked it away the one night Annaleia had given herself to him – because she had then escaped him. And if he’d been the dragon at the time, she would not have gotten far.

  The second and third bites could be different. He could be gentle. His other hearts would be calling the shots.

  But right now, Ares’ dragon had five decades of pain to work off. It was a horrible, brutal pain, an unforgivable kind of pain. He could barely control it now, frankly. He felt slightly delirious, drunk on his victorious domination of the woman he loved, his best friend, the one he’d wanted to bite and claim and fuck the moment she’d rounded that corner in corset lace boots and no bra.

  Of course the dragon knew what to do even while Ares was lost in her, and after his draconic nosedive from the skies of the dragon realm, Ares found himself with Annaleia back inside the cave, standing in the doorway of his master bedroom. He may have transported there; he could do so without speaking in the dragon realm. He honestly didn’t know.