Dragon Equinox (Immortal Dragons Book 6)

by Ophelia Bell

  She reached out and grabbed Numa by the hair, twisting her head back. “I wonder if my power is enough to pierce dragon skin…”

  Baring Numa’s throat, Meri bent her head and licked, then lifted a finger and traced a line along the pulsing vein beneath Numa’s skin. A long, sharp talon slowly extended from Meri’s fingertip, its pointed tip pressing against the other woman’s flesh.

  When a dark red bead of blood appeared, Dionysus roared.

  “No! You will not touch her. You will not taint my lovers with your darkness, Meri. We had a deal.” His gaze flicked to Nikhil and a wordless message passed between them. He was only stalling her, waiting until Nikhil was ready. Nikhil gripped the hilt of the blade tighter and nodded at the god.

  “You can’t hurt me,” Meri taunted. “This little link to the Source I have gave me all your godly secrets. You cannot harm your own creations unless Fate allows it. You should have listened to Gaia. Now they will all be under my control. If you won’t agree to leave the Haven, everyone will submit to my bond or die.”

  She dug her pointed talon into Numa’s neck, then bent her head to lap at the blood.

  With a roar, Dionysus flung out his hands. “I cannot hurt you, but I can control you.”

  Meri’s body lurched, her hand falling away from Numa’s throat. She went rigid and perfectly vertical, a smear of blood striped down her chin. Her eyes flew wide as she struggled against his power. The mindless puppets who had come alive again moved with a twitch of her head, then came to a halt again when Dionysus stretched out a hand.

  “How are you doing this?!” she yelled. “I thought your creations had free will!”

  “The ones born from fertile unions do. You were not born from my seed, Meri. You were made from my blood. Was the parallel completely lost on you? My blood runs through your veins now. Anything your blood has tainted is mine, including these abominations.”

  With a snap of his fingers, the dead things fell to the sand and stayed. Nikhil sensed his time was near and readied himself, awaiting the god’s command.

  “No, please!” Meri yelled, back to negotiating again, but Dionysus refused to release her.

  “You have done enough damage.” Power radiated out of him in a wave as strong as the blast she had used to level the crowd of observers. Nikhil felt it this time, his skin tingling and his cock rousing from the potency of the magic. He was perfectly fine with that, especially when his mates dispatched the creatures they fought, and he sensed their heated blood, ready to continue the killing to its bitter end.

  “You can’t do this!” Meri yelled.

  “I can’t kill you, that’s true.” His gaze flicked to Nikhil, who lifted the dagger and strolled toward Meri’s immobilized body. “But he can.”

  “How?!” Meri howled. “Gaia herself said I would be immortal!”

  “Yes, but what she didn’t say was that you would be bound to me, as a creature crafted out of my own life’s blood. What makes you whole is merely an extension of me, and while I cannot directly destroy you, others may, if they possess enough power to do so. Power from the other elements. Now…” He turned to Nikhil and nodded. “Take her down.”

  Nikhil walked up to stand before her, the dagger tight within his grip. He gazed into her eyes and held the blade up in front of her face. “Remember this? You were there when it was made more than three thousand years ago. It was a gift from Belah to me on our wedding night, the most powerful symbol of her love, because it proved her trust in my worship of her as both my goddess and my slave. It was a symbol of her complete surrender.”

  He paused, his gaze darting to his ‘Iilahatan who stood clutching the hands of her other mates. Her children were nearby as well, creating a protective circle around their mother.

  “Your manipulation took her from me that day. I believed I had killed her with the very tool she’d given me to give her pleasure. I wonder, can you stand the pain my own ‘Iilahatan thrives on? Are you as strong as she is? She was bled dry and yet lives. Will you be so lucky when I am finished with you?”

  He lifted the blade and made the first slice, just beneath Meri’s left eye and across the plump swell of her cheekbone.

  “I nearly tossed this blade through your heart earlier. I would have been happy if you’d died then, but this is so much better, I think. Seeing you suffer under my hand, for once.”

  He made another cut, straight down her cheek, grazing the razor-sharp tip of the knife farther until it hit the neck of her shadowy clothing. The dark gauze fell away as though burned by an invisible fire.

  The fear in Meri’s eyes was unmistakable. Loss of control was probably the source of it, more so than the pain, but the combination was a heady mixture that made Nikhil’s blood hot. He sliced the blade through her top, cutting the front of it away. Her breasts spilled free, creamy and perfect and utterly lacking in allure.

  “I can endure whatever the fuck you have to throw at me, you weak bastard. I don’t believe you can kill me, and when I get free, you will all pay!”

  “Quit wasting time,” Dionysus said. “That blade drew my blood. It will work to sever a life crafted of my blood too.”

  Nikhil growled, wishing he had more time to draw this out, but it’d gone on long enough. Letting her have another word to taunt him would be too many. Far, far too many.

  He sliced a line into the skin along the inside of one breast, his cock stone-hard from the sight of her blood and the anticipation of the reward. With the tip of the blade, he dug in, found the gap between her ribs, and pushed.

  Meri gasped and spasmed, her eyes going wide. The blood seeped out past the blade, then came in a flood when Nikhil penetrated the wall of her heart.

  Gritting his teeth, he focused on her face again, smiling wickedly at her terror. This was the best part of victory, feeling the enemy’s blood gushing warmly over his skin and the fear in their eyes when they realized they’d been beaten, that their minutes on earth were numbered in the single digits.

  Her body slackened, abruptly released from Dionysus’ grip as her blood flowed freely. The blade sank deeper as she slumped against Nikhil, a strangled plea escaping her. Her head fell against his shoulder, her hands clawing at his arms. She smelled of the ocean, he abstractly realized, and her blood was scented of a potent spice that he remembered from when he’d first met Numa and her mates. Numa had smelled like this, and so had the god.

  He frowned at the correlation, so focused on the slowing tempo of her heart as it pushed the last of its contents out onto his arm over the hilt of the blade, and the last breathy begging words she gasped before going still. When he finally knelt with her limp body in his arms, he became aware of the tumult around him.

  Numa cried out, lurching past him and stumbling, then half-crawling across the sand away from the bleeding corpse of their enemy. Her other four mates went after her, surrounding her and another prone shape that Nyx had caught and held in her arms.

  The god had fallen. But who had the power to take him down?

  Chapter 29

  Numa

  Numa stumbled in the wet sand, desperate to reach her fallen lover. His chest bloomed with blood as though he too had been stabbed by some invisible blade. She sank to her knees, crying out his name.

  “Please stop!” she yelled at Nikhil. “They’re linked! Stop. You’re killing him!”

  Blood gushed between the two figures embracing like lovers. Nikhil’s knife was buried in Meri’s heart and he murmured dark, vindictive promises in her ear as he bared his teeth and twisted the blade.

  Numa yelled his name again and finally caught his attention, but Nikhil stared dumbly at her, his bloody hand still tight around the hilt of the dagger buried in Meri’s chest. He glanced back down at his work, hypnotized by the waning arterial spurts, but finally pulled back, leaving the blade jutting from the body that fell to the sand.

  It was far too late, though. The bleeding in her lover’s chest wouldn’t stop, and neither would her healing smoke close the
wound.

  “Shh, little one. Be still,” Dionysus whispered, reaching up to brush his fingers over her jaw.

  “No! You are mine, and I won’t let you die!”

  “Who said anything about dying? I’m a god. Gods can’t die.”

  Beside her, Nyx cursed and Numa blinked, trying to refocus on what had shifted the Dionarch’s attention.

  “His horns are gone,” Nyx said, raking her fingers through the dark hair that fanned across her lap. “He is shrinking, losing his power.”

  Numa cupped his face, her heart twisting at the realization that he had grown smaller, lighter. “What is happening?”

  A worried-looking Zephyrus slipped down to his knees beside her, sliding a hand in a comforting caress over her back. “He paid a price to control her. This was that price. His blood gave her life, and destroying her took some of that life from him.”

  “But not all of it, right? Please tell me he isn’t dying. Don’t lie to me!”

  A shadow loomed above them, and she looked up into Nikhil’s horrified face. “I didn’t know,” he said. “I would have found another way, had I known.”

  Dionysus shook his head weakly and coughed. The wound in his chest reopened and another surge of blood spilled from him. “There was no other way, but you can help stop the bleeding.”

  “Anything. What can I do?” Nikhil asked.

  “Burn her. Turn her to ash to sever the link between us, or I will be stuck in this dying state forever.”

  Nikhil’s eyes flashed with sharp desire, incongruous with the moment. “It would be my pleasure.”

  Nikhil let out a sharp whistle and raised an arm. The army came to attention as he walked toward them, and he stopped before Numa’s two nephews and their fire-winged mate. Numa’s brothers and sisters also gathered around to hear his command. Nikhil’s order passed back through the ranks, and one by one the dragons shifted, rising into the air as their wings spread and caught the currents.

  Hundreds upon hundreds of winged creatures twisted on the ocean breeze, the dragons mingling with the turul. They flew up and circled around above the shore. At the lowest point, a few dragons at a time hovered in a circle around the bloody corpse of their enemy, opened their mouths, and let loose torrents of blinding flame.

  The turul sang and the wind kicked up, fanning the flames incinerating Meri’s body. When the first group of dragons departed, another group circled down and breathed their strongest fire at the sand beneath.

  This went on for some time, and with each blast, Dion relaxed in Numa’s arms, his breathing growing slower and more even. Eventually the wound in his chest closed on its own and he fell unconscious, but his pulse was strong.

  “My father will live,” Nyx said, sliding her palm across his forehead, her face a mask of concern. “Let us take him back to the palace to rest.”

  Numa was only peripherally aware of other figures surrounding them. The familiar stature of an old friend appeared. The fact that Nereus was back at Nyx’s side went barely noticed, but lent her comfort nonetheless. Her siblings were alive and whole, their own mates surrounding them. Her sister’s long-lost children had survived as well.

  Love and hope pervaded the air, but she couldn’t shake her own worry, not as long as Dionysus lay unconscious. She held tight to his hand when Nyx and Nereus pulled their group into the drift. Her other mates were near, none of them willing to part with her or Dionysus any more than she was willing to part with them.

  They landed in a tower room with a big bed. Cade held Dionysus in his arms, the god’s body as beautiful as ever. Smaller now, he was dwarfed in the ursa’s hold. When Cade lay Dion down and covered him, Numa immediately returned to his side.

  She stared down at him, troubled by the steady, yet faint aura surrounding him. She knew what it looked like, but was loath to admit what she saw—that he had become mortal.

  “Will my breath heal him? Can we bring back his power?” she asked, casting a desperate glance at Nyx.

  “I don’t know,” she replied. “No god in memory has ever made such a sacrifice. Stay with him. Let us know when he wakes.”

  Numa nodded distractedly, lying down to cradle Dion’s head against her chest. When Nyx and Nereus left, her other mates gathered, pulling up chairs or settling on the bed as well.

  Zephyrus slipped onto the mattress behind her and wrapped his arms around her middle. “We are alive and whole, and all of us willing to do whatever we must to help him.”

  “I know,” she said, allowing the West Wind’s comforting song to lull her to sleep.

  Chapter 30

  Nikhil

  Nothing but a blackened sheet of glass remained on the beach, the only evidence of the fire that had rendered Meri’s body to ash. The immense heat of the dragon fire that made it penetrated far into the earth, and the glass extended down for several feet. It possessed a subtle inner glow, retaining some of the magic the dragons had flooded it with to destroy Meri’s corpse.

  Aodh, Gavra, and Ked worked together in their dragon forms to excavate what remained of their enemy, which was no more than the faint shadow of her ashes suspended in that dense block of glass. While they were certain she was dead, her spirit overtaken by the god’s power and cremated with the blood that had bound her, they didn’t want to take chances that any remnant of her remained. The glass would be shattered, each shard kept under guard by trusted members of the higher races.

  Other piles of ashes littered the beach, the destroyed remains of the other soldiers who had not been freed from Meri’s influence. Once they had retrieved the bodies of their fallen, all that remained were the remnants of dried blood scattered across the beach and throughout the Haven. Even those signs faded to nothing with one good rain.

  Yet a shadow of the final confrontation still remained, and Nikhil stared at the black patch of sand beneath his feet, wondering if it was merely his own vision playing tricks on him—some remnant of Meri’s control lingering like a bruise upon his psyche. The once shining white sand remained darker in this spot, though there had been several rainy days since the battle had ended.

  “There is no sign of her,” Belah said. “Even my brother who was the first to fall under her spell reports a profound sense of ease, and once we cleared the rubble blocking the Diviner’s cave, she confirmed as much. Meri’s taint has been burned away from this world. She can no longer haunt us.”

  “I know. I expect this feeling will fade in time. It’s as though a splinter has been removed from my flesh after ages of enduring it. I’d grown used to its constant pressure, and the wound is still so tender I can’t help but prod it to remind myself that it’s gone.”

  “We have everything to look forward to now, my love,” Belah said, pulling him around to look at her. “Our family is whole again, or will be when your daughter returns.”

  Nikhil pulled her into his arms, closing his eyes and savoring her warmth and the slight pressure of her round, pregnant stomach against his abdomen. Another child was coming—a son or daughter he ached to meet. Nieces and nephews abounded, more dragon pregnancies being reported each day.

  He was not used to such abundant joy, but it was still tempered by worry. The things Meri had said of his and Neela’s daughter troubled him. Despite all Meri’s lies, he believed those words to be true—that the child would be cursed due to her origins. Her lack of a soul would be a burden no child should have to bear.

  He was consoled by Belah’s eagerness to be a mother again. Deva would not want for loving parents—not with seven fathers who would claim her as their daughter, and three mothers eager to nurture her. He almost felt sorry for the girl and worried for her independence with such a doting family and collection of overprotective males prepared to watch over her. But the one parent she would not lack for was thankfully gone and would never return.

  “What of the other … pregnancy?” he said, hesitating to call the last creature Meri had attempted to create a child.

  Belah’s expression darkened
with pain. “Nyx couldn’t counteract the curse Meri put on it, and she refused to let it grow inside her. She destroyed it.”

  Nikhil’s throat constricted. “That means she can’t…”

  Belah responded with a grim look and a brief shake of her head. “She says she is happy enough to have Nereus back. Assana and Calder are well and happy too. Nyx is more than happy to be a grandmother and leave the honor of having babies to the younger generations.”

  But he didn’t miss the sheen in her eyes when she pressed her hands over her own pregnant belly.

  “She’s right, I think,” Nikhil said. “The one thing I wanted most was to have a child with you. I know this baby you carry is not my blood, but Iszak and Lukas deserve the chance to know that love as well. I have Asha, who is more than I could have hoped for in a daughter. If we could never have another, I would not regret it.”

  “You have Deva too. She’ll come back to us as soon as Dion’s able to retrieve her.”

  There was more to be done, but the rest could wait. As he gazed down into Belah’s eyes, that empty ache left behind by the absence of his quest for vengeance slowly eased and filled with his love for her. With it, his old desire surged again and his body heated, his skin tingling beneath the lazy scrape of her nails along the base of his skull.

  Her lips spread into a smile and he knew she’d seen inside his mind, felt the need return strong enough to obliterate all his other worries. As though responding to her unspoken desire, Lukas and Iszak appeared, crossing the sand with easy, yet purposeful strides.

  The two Princes of the North Wind glanced between Nikhil and Belah. Lukas smirked, and Iszak’s eyes sparked with desire, but they both sobered by the time they reached the couple.

  “I wish like hell I could tell you two we have time to ourselves for once, but that is sadly not the case,” Iszak said. “Dion is awake. We need you to come back to the palace.”