Dragon Equinox (Immortal Dragons Book 6)

by Ophelia Bell

  Enraged and desperate, she retreated through those other bonds, the tributaries of blood that linked her to the descendants of all her former blood-bound pets. What good was all this power if she could use it for nothing more than increasing her spirit’s awareness of the world around her? As a creature distilled down to her magical essence, she could only act on magic with this power, not on the physical world. Her army was still the best hope for winning, but none of the soldiers as yet had found a way through the magic shield that the ursa shaman had erected around the Source itself.

  The magic shield … How could she be so blind? She had come so close to disrupting the power of the temporal bubble before they’d preempted her by taking it down. The shield the shaman held to protect the Source couldn’t be that different, and certainly not as strong if it were only powered by a single ursa and not the blood-melded trio of her former lovers and their newly minted Summer Spirit mate.

  With fresh purpose, she left the grotto behind, along with Nyx’s constant, droning monologue. Bound by blood to all her soldiers, Meri understood much more now than she had before. They were nothing but animals once that blood frenzy was unleashed, only requiring the slightest mental nudge to push harder with little concern for self-preservation. It made them formidable warriors, nearly as durable as the creatures they fought, having been mutated through the blood of their own enemies.

  Almost as a single entity, she commanded them to push toward the central target, and they moved. Armed with blades and outfitted in body armor, they mobbed the squads of nymphs and ursa that blocked the way to the Source. No longer seeking a flanking maneuver, they went straight down the middle, surprising their opponents and forcing them to regroup.

  But the defenders lacked the advantage of a shared consciousness and couldn’t react quickly enough. Their distraction forced them to move farther from the Source, reinforcing the front line with the squad of nymphs that had remained close, defending the sole ursa shaman whose power sustained the protective field around the collection of pools at the base of the massive tree.

  Her consciousness glided across the field of battle, the carnage below a red plain upon which her black-clad forces marched. The men were covered in blood, their eyes wild with lust. One tangled with an ursa, deftly avoided clawed attacks, and ducked its snapping teeth to drive a blade deep into the thick fur of the creature’s belly. He thrust and ripped, nearly tearing the beast in two. Meri rejoiced, and with only the slightest praise, the man ripped the heart out of the bear and held it above his upturned mouth, drinking in the creature’s life.

  With that taste, she knew what she was missing, what could help her gain an even greater advantage. As her soldiers shredded their way through the nymphs and ursa, they began to rip out throats and bend to drink the blood of the fallen. The power from that blood would not sustain them for long, but it was cumulative and would last long enough to overpower their adversaries.

  And that power became hers. Through her soldiers, she found the links she needed to the bloodlines of those they killed, and could leech the power for her own purposes. She felt its transience, but also its sharp potency. It would fade, but it would not fade so soon that she could not use it to her advantage.

  With the intent of a well-aimed arrow, she pointed her entire being at the barrier that blocked her from her goal. Her spirit hurtled forward with the power of her blood-soaked victims that fell at the hands of her soldiers.

  When she met the barrier, the magic shattered as if she were a bullet striking brittle glass. The ursa shaman’s eyes went wide, her entire body seizing in agony as if she too had been struck by Meri’s desperate final blow. But by the time the dark-skinned woman regained her senses, it was far too late.

  Meri plunged into the Source’s waters, the power flooding through her into her army. The Haven’s defenders still fought, desperately clinging to hope and trying to pull the Ultiori back from certain victory. There was no chance of that now.

  All she had left to do was reclaim her body and heal it for long enough to find a new host. She had just the subject in mind.

  Chapter 23

  Zorion

  Zorion’s gaze was fixed to the sky, awestruck at Numa’s display of power. She had done it. The circle of glyphs gleamed in the midday sun, a shimmering pattern of iridescent green against the clear blue heavens. He was so enthralled he nearly didn’t hear the cries of alarm and the chorus of roars from the lakeshore.

  At first he thought the water had turned to blood. Red was all he saw, surging from beneath the surface and overtaking Numa and her five mates.

  “We have to help them!” Asha yelled, then shifted into her gleaming, white-scaled glory with Naaz astride. She flew into the fray before Zorion could object.

  Neela stood, frozen in fear. “It’s her. She’s coming.”

  “Adara, we must fight,” Zorion said. He shot a look back to the battle that had broken through from the Haven, and beyond the shores of the lake to the maelstrom of blood-soaked men surging up from the center. The monolithic tree that channeled the Source’s power ran red with blood seeping from its bark, its leaves cascading down from its branches like so much crimson carnage.

  More waves surged from beneath the water, armored men wielding blades of all sizes. To his horror, many of them wore trophies of their kills: bear pelts draped across their shoulders and nymph antlers strapped to their heads. Their auras were black with more than the lust for death. Some deeper corruption drove them on.

  In the midst of the onslaught, Numa shifted, her true form rising bright green from the mass of red. At her side, the horned god swung his fists, tossing the enemy back into the water only for them to rise again, somehow refreshed from the contact with the lake.

  Her other mates fought hard, three enormous ursine shapes roaring and swiping, drawing blood and tearing limbs at every turn, while above them a gargantuan falcon dove with talons outstretched, its piercing cries kicking up winds and tossing the falling leaves around the battle in little blood-tinged cyclones.

  “Neela, they need our help!” He touched her shoulder, only to find she’d gone cold. Looking at Zil, he saw his worry reflected in his brother’s gaze.

  Zil cupped Neela’s cheek. “She cannot hurt you anymore, love, and your daughter is safe. This is our chance to confront her once and for all. To prove our sacrifices weren’t for nothing.”

  Her glowing eyes flared bright again, her skin heating as she regained her fire. “I’m ready to burn the bitch,” she said, her jaw set as her fiery wings flared wide from her shoulders.

  “Together?” Zil glanced at Zorion with brows raised.

  “Yes. The time stop will allow us to take them by surprise.”

  Without hesitation, he and Zil merged with Neela’s hand held in both of theirs. The air instantly stilled, the falling leaves poised above the water of the lake that appeared as a frozen sheet of red glass. Zorion shifted into the dragon form he could only assume when merged with his brother, and he and Neela flew across the grassy expanse to the lakeshore. His mate cast fiery blasts out of her palms into the mass of bodies that surged from the water, but the flames remained contained within spheres where they landed. She peppered several all along the very edge, careful to keep them out of range of their allies.

  Zorion’s cold rage pushed him to his aunt, where her green wings were outstretched, several bloodied men clinging to her. He’d swiped several bodies away with his huge talons from the air before their power faded and time surged into motion again in a deafening cacophony.

  Roars reverberated in his ears from the ursa below him as he soared past their heads and made a wide arc to return. Explosive blasts rang through the air, Neela’s fiery bombs detonating in the middle of the groups where they’d landed, tossing men back into the water, some of them landing in pieces.

  Before Zorion could reach the group again and light them up with a blast of his own fire, a desperate voice called into his mind, echoed by Numa’s roar.


  “The portal! You have to complete the ritual. It must be ignited before it can open! Only immortal dragon fire can activate the glyphs. Zorion, please! Before it’s too late!”

  Immediately he turned, trumpeting behind him for Neela to follow. They had the immortal dragon fire required. He was the son of two immortal dragons, and Neela had been reborn from his own immortal fire.

  Together, the two of them angled up instead of down, beating their wings to climb higher toward the edge of the Sanctuary’s dome where the immense circle of glyphs still hung above them. Partway up, a powerful gust of warm wind caught their wings, pushing them even higher. The big falcon fell into formation just in front of them, and with the wind’s aid, Zorion felt almost weightless, his wings outstretched as the currents pushed him where he needed to go.

  Just before the apex of their climb, Zephyrus veered away, and as he descended, Zorion took a breath, aiming his fire at the outer ring of the glyph. Beside him, Neela cupped her palms together, an orb as brilliant as the sun coalescing in between. On his command, they let loose all their fire.

  The green smoke of the glyphs ignited instantly, and in a brilliant blast of power, a shimmering elliptical opening appeared above them. The sky beyond was dark and filled with stars, but moments later, that night sky from some other land was completely obscured by winged creatures cascading in by the hundreds.

  Dragons and turul abounded, some with riders, but most without. With triumphant roars and piercing falcon cries, they answered his trumpeting welcome and his mental plea for help.

  An immense blue dragon soared around the edge of the portal and came back to hover before him where he and Neela watched, suspended in mid-air.

  Nikhil rode astride the big blue dragon, the general who led this army.

  “What has happened?” he bellowed, eying the continuing carnage beneath them.

  Zorion shot Neela a look and she answered for him, calling back, “Meri must have broken through!”

  Zorion’s mother let out a roar of displeasure and Nikhil cursed. “This means she’s gained access to the Source. We will confront her now, before she becomes too powerful to beat! Finish off this wave and join us when you can!”

  Nikhil let out a shrill whistle and waved his arm in the air, directing the throngs of winged creatures toward the edge of the falls. Multitudes of them plunged over and disappeared from sight, leaving behind enough to help push back the enemy from the Sanctuary’s shores.

  Chapter 24

  Meri

  The immense power left Meri drunk with elation over her certain victory. It was only a matter of time before she destroyed the last of the nymphs and ursa who opposed her. She shifted her consciousness upward from the depths of the Source’s pools into the immense tree that now grew in its center. This was new, but not surprising. She’d suspected it was the ursa’s doing, creating an unbreakable connection between the Haven and the Sanctuary to ensure power from the Source was never lost. It would matter little when she controlled both realms.

  But her soldiers were falling back, as though they’d met resistance on the other side. No sooner would a squad plunge into the pool than she would see the same men emerge again, some broken and bloody and some floating up as corpses covered in burns or slashes from giant talons.

  The dragons in the Sanctuary were not numerous enough to push back against the throngs of her army to that degree. She’d counted them. The Sanctuary only had a handful of residents, mostly elderly ursa and children not fit to fight. Two immortal dragons were in residence, but their presence was not enough to account for the number of bodies returning from that fight.

  The triumphant chorus of roars and battle cries that reached her from downstream made her reflexively turn all her soldiers’ heads to that direction. Those were not the cries of the human mercenaries she controlled. They were the bellows of dragons, the piercing calls of falcons, and one cry she knew better than all the others: the distinctive, ululating battle call of the Thiasoi themselves, ringing out in a chorus of deep, male voices.

  This could not be. She had not left an opening for any to follow. Yet somehow, reinforcements had come to defend the Haven nonetheless. Then it came together—the temporal bubble. She’d only thought it a shield to protect the child, and it hadn’t occurred to her that it served another purpose—it had bought them time to find a way to allow in reinforcements. She’d been so blind, especially when the ancient immortal dragon she’d recognized as one of Nikhil’s special treasures had burned her, sending her back to her body with her tail between her legs. That had given them the distraction they needed, forcing her to seek out the child rather than discover their true purpose.

  She shot her consciousness back to the Sanctuary then, soaring above the lake. She might have been gratified by the blood-soaked landscape and the leafless tree running red from the blood of the fallen creatures, but the immense portal that hovered in the barrier above the lake told her the truth of their efforts. Dragons and turul still streamed in by the hundreds, most of them bypassing the battle that waned in the Sanctuary, heading directly over Gaia’s Falls into the Haven itself.

  She had reached the Source. She could still use it to win, but only if she regained a physical form.

  She found a mercenary at the rear of the battle, closest to the grotto where her broken body lay. She would spare no others, but one should be enough. Infusing his mind with her command and enough power to sustain him through the task, she sent him to the grotto where her body lay. The barrier at the opening stopped him, which was no surprise.

  Latching onto her link to the Source, she drew the power to him. His blood turned to fire in his veins, the pain something that would be unbearable, though she didn’t care enough about his welfare to avoid it. As it was, he was paralyzed by her control, forced to take the brunt of the agony while she pulled more and more of the power into him.

  With the man screaming in agony, the magic finally reached the threshold she required. Pressing him against the magic barrier, she forced his eyes open and his voice to work.

  “Nyx!” she yelled using the soldier’s strained vocal cords. “I have won! You may as well surrender. Your precious Nereus is dead, along with all the others who thought they could beat me today.”

  The Dionarch’s attention shot to the mercenary, who Meri commanded to stretch out, pressing his palms flat against the shimmering field that held him back. When Nyx rose, fierce anger churning in her swirling gaze, Meri pushed all the power she could into the man’s body, aiming it against the barrier.

  The split-second before the energy became too much, she retracted from his consciousness, back into the broken body that lay inside the grotto. Nyx’s attention was focused on the explosion that rocked the entrance, the power erupting from the soldier’s body and blasting directly into the barrier. It may have been overkill if all she’d wanted to do was breach that barrier—she could have done that without him—but the distraction itself was key. Nyx was frozen in horror just long enough for Meri to do what she needed.

  She pulled more power into her twisted, broken shell, commanding the magic to heal what Nyx herself had refused to. Conscious and in command of her physical form once more, she rose up on the bed as stealthily as possible.

  The Dionarch stared at the bloody mess left behind by the soldier’s exploding body. Red haze still lingered in the air, slowly settling over her skin. Too bad his blood wasn’t enough for Meri to force a blood meld. She summoned the Source’s power to her once more, testing the limits of this body. It wouldn’t sustain much power for long, but she only needed it to last a few more moments.

  She took Nyx down swiftly, with a knee to the back and elbow to the side of her head. Grabbing the woman’s wrist, she twisted her arm up and pressed it to the center of her back. The other woman was thankfully not shifted into her primal form. Meri’s recently healed body twinged with pain, but she channeled that discomfort into the rage that she needed to fuel this task.

  Glancing
around for an implement, she caught the glint of familiar steel on a stone ledge by the bed. The dagger she carried with her everywhere—they had kept it. It had once belonged to Nikhil, until Meri had claimed it as her own, treasuring it for just such an occasion as this. She reached out and the blade flew to her through the air, pulled by the force of her own will.

  “Nereus is close, Meri,” Nyx said. “It is only a matter of time before we execute you as we should have done when you betrayed us.”

  “Bullshit,” Meri said, bending over and pressing the dagger to Nyx’s throat. “Nereus will never kill the woman he loves.”

  “He never loved you,” Nyx said. “Have you really been lying to yourself about that all this time? He urged me and Neph to kill you. We chose to show you mercy. We will not make that mistake again.”

  Meri let out a bitter laugh. How Nereus felt about her didn’t matter a bit. Baring her teeth, she bent over Nyx’s back, nuzzling her ear seductively.

  “He will have me today, just wait.” Then made a small slice in Nyx’s throat, bent down, and covered the cut with her mouth. Hot, sweet fluid flooded her tongue and she drank deep, reveling in the cry of realization as Nyx struggled beneath her. She felt the Dionarch attempt to shift, her body bucking, but unable to throw Meri off while she was weighed down by her newly acquired power.

  With another slice of the blade, she cut into her own wrist and forced the bleeding opening against Nyx’s mouth. The second her blood touched the other woman’s tongue, her spirit carried along with the flood of red fluid and she claimed the Dionarch’s mind, pushing in through the horror and shame.

  To Meri’s surprise, she discovered that the Dionarch herself believed she deserved this violation.

  “Isn’t this a treat?” Meri crooned. “You were as mad with power as me, weren’t you? I imagine you regret ever giving in to your daughter’s tricks to subdue you. Your own love for Nereus is what made you fail. His love for you is what will seal the deal and make the Haven mine for good.”