by S. W. Clarke
For me. He did it for me.
Despite the pain, Erik did exactly as I asked. He dropped to the ground, rolling away from the fire. And without even thinking, I’d already ripped my jacket off and thrown it over his burning arm, kneeling to place pressure.
As I suffocated the fire, I heard a voice filter through Erik’s groans. It purred from directly behind me, rising every hair along my arms and spine. I couldn’t help but focus half my attention on every word she said, even as I desperately worked to save Erik’s arm.
“How intriguing,” Lust said, a strange note entering her voice. Was that envy? “The dragon has depths of feeling I hadn’t expected.”
Of course he does, I thought. Because I’m his mother, and you don’t know my dragon from Adam.
But I didn’t say any of that. I kept my eyes on Erik. One thought had filled my mind: Do what you can, Tara. Small as I was in this fight, I needed to do what I could.
And right now, what I could do was save his arm.
Chapter 18
Erik had saved me. The least I could do was put Percy’s fire out.
“You’re all right,” I said, even though it felt like a platitude. What I really meant was, “I’m doing my best. I’m going to help you.”
I didn’t know if Erik heard me. He gritted his teeth so hard his lips pulled high, revealing his pink gums. His eyes squeezed shut as I pressed my jacket over his arm and the flames died away to smoke.
I couldn’t help but wonder how much of that smoke was his skin burning away.
At some point, the fighting had resumed. With a yell, someone leapt off the porch and landed so close I felt the breeze off them. It might have been Valdis or Seleema or Grunt or one of the angels.
Hell, it might even have been Percy.
Something whipped over my head, and I ducked down. In a glance to my right, I saw Seleema land on all fours like a tigress. Her head lifted, and she stared at Valdis standing beside the enormous old tree.
He stared back, readying himself to face off with the houri.
I could stand up and yell at the two of them to stand down. I could plead for Seleema to see reason. I could try to stop her with one of my whips.
None of that would make a GoneGodDamn bit of difference. And right here on this front lawn, I was getting a good lesson. What would make me feel good—interceding in their fight—wouldn’t necessarily be of any good.
Do what you can, Tara. Do what you can.
My eyes flicked down to Erik. “Come on. Let’s get you out of the middle of this.”
I tried to help him up to a seat so he could sling his good arm over me and hobble out of the fray, but he groaned like I was trying to rip a limb off.
He’s hurt worse than I realized. If it was just his arm, he wouldn’t be this delirious.
And so I ended up getting behind him and lodging my hands under his armpits and dragging. Even then, I couldn’t move him until he helped a little with his feet, shuffling them across the driveway until I was able to get some momentum and we were on the grass.
I didn’t look behind us. I knew Lust’s army of Others stood out here like lawn ornaments, waiting for the curl of her finger to come forward.
When I’d gotten Erik far enough away, I fell into a crouch next to him, fully out of breath. “Box of frogs, what do you weigh—two hundred pounds?”
“Two hundred pounds of muscle,” he rasped back, drawing up to one elbow in the grass.
“The Corporal’s making jokes at a time like this?” I knelt beside him, secretly thrilled he had the presence of mind to find humor. That was a good sign.
He fixed me with a weary eye lined with the barest hint of mirth. “I guess there’s a first for everything.”
I flashed him the tiniest smile before my eyes were drawn back to the battle. Valdis moved faster than my eyes could track, his body almost blurring around Seleema, who leapt and slashed like a tank. An elegant, agile tank, sure, but wherever she directed her fury, destruction followed.
At one point she clawed at the tree and sent bark shooting like shrapnel over us, and Erik and I had to duck down.
But it wasn’t them I was worried about.
It was Percy.
He’d swooped down, intending to flatten Grunt and pulverize him like grapes in a barrel. The ogre managed to leap away, and now he and Percy were in a ground battle. The dragon’s tail swung around, taking out a few of the porch struts and decimating brick as he roared.
This wouldn’t end well. If Valdis won, Seleema lost. If Grunt won, Percy lost.
And up there on the porch, Lust didn’t care who won or lost. She’d already won.
This was just a spectacle.
I knelt there, my fingers digging into the grass. “I’ve got to do something.”
Erik groaned beside me, shifting.
“Don’t move,” I said automatically, setting one hand to his chest. “You’re out for the count.”
There had to be a way I could save them both. I just hadn’t hit on it. Maybe if I managed to get Frank out here, Seleema’s spell would be broken. But Frank was inside the house.
Think, Tara. Think.
“Open my jacket,” Erik whispered.
“Erik, I know you’re grateful to me, but I’m busy. Later, OK?”
“Tara, open my jacket, damnit.”
I dragged my eyes off the battle, annoyance flaring in me. “Why?”
He grimaced, propping himself up on his elbow at such an angle that the right side of his jacket fell open. Under, I could see the straps of a gun holster fixed around his ribcage.
And that wasn’t just any gun nestled tight to his body.
I whistled between my teeth. “Is that what I think it is?”
“It’s my backup,” he said. “But it’ll do the trick. At least, long enough to break her spell.”
“It might hurt Percy and Seleema.”
“Not if you don’t aim it at them.”
We met eyes, and understanding flickered between us. I gave a small smile and reached forward, yanking the weapon from its holster.
Erik gritted his teeth, groaning softly. “Use both hands. Take a second to aim before you shoot.”
“Are we still talking about guns?” I leveraged the hand cannon up into my palm; all in all, it was surprisingly lightweight. As I lifted it, I sighted down the barrel toward Lust. “All I want to know if there’s a round in the chamber.”
“It’s loaded.” I heard him swallow. “But you’ve only got one shot.”
I closed one eye, setting one knee in the grass and balancing the missile launcher on the other.
Across the way, Lust stood with a sickening smile on her lovely face. She wore the delighted face of a narcissist in complete control.
Not anymore, I thought.
I slid my finger into the trigger guard, taking aim at the side of her head. With what felt like a microcosmic shift of my finger, the cannon jerked against my hands with a thoomp.
On the porch, the round exploded like a small star, obscuring Lust and the angels and Percy and the whole scene with pure white light.
↔
I squinted against the growing white-out, unable to see past the wall of light.
I knew my aim was good, but I still needed to be sure.
This was akin to that moment on the rooftop in New York, back when I’d been fighting Valdis. I had been so close to the center of that blast that I’d been knocked straight off the side of one of the tallest buildings in Manhattan.
Even this time, some thirty feet away from the center of it, my hair blew back. I gritted my teeth, thinking only of Percy. Sure, he was a dragon with scales harder than adamantium, but he was still a kid.
I always worried for him.
“Good shot,” Erik murmured.
“We’ll see.” I kept my eyes trained on the spot where Lust had been standing.
After a few seconds, the light began to shrink. Valdis’s body was revealed first, one hand against the shredded,
mangled tree and his body half-curled like he’d just run a four-minute mile.
No, it was more than that. He was hurt. That was blood dripping between his fingers, and he was clutching his side.
Then Seleema appeared, standing straight as a rail and staring back at the house with wide, confused eyes. She’d gotten someone’s blood on her nails—Valdis’s blood—and it dripped onto the pavement as her fingers uncurled and all the fight went out of her.
Lust’s spell was broken.
A few feet off stood the unhobbled angel, whose sword lowered slowly, slowly toward the driveway until it gave a tiny, resonant clink.
So Valdis was fighting Seleema and the angel. Explains why he looks like he’s just run a marathon. He must have been burning enormous amounts of time to simultaneously fend off an angel and a houri.
Around the angel, several of Lust’s other followers had been affected by the hand cannon’s magic disruption. They had Seleema’s same confused, wide-eyed look; a pixie darted though the air with fretful agitation, her voice a manic, high-pitched flute. I couldn’t make out what she was saying, but I got the gist of it.
She’d been deceived. They’d all been deceived.
The light shrank to where I could see Grunt, his chest heaving as he clutched one of the porch struts in one hand like a mallet. A sheen of soot from Percy’s fire lay over his skin, encircling his eyes.
His gaze met mine, and a look passed between us.
Recognition. Gratitude.
I nodded once at him, but my heart still ached to see a certain pair of eyes. None of this would be all right until I saw—
My dragon.
There he was, curled in on himself at the top of the porch steps. Around him, his own fire burned hot as the shrubberies slowly died in a line, smoke rising into the sky.
“Perce,” I choked out.
His head jerked, golden eyes finding mine. “Tara?”
“Hey, peaches.”
I nearly lowered the gun then, nearly pushed myself up off the grass and ran over to him. I wanted to leap onto his back, grab the spine at the base of his neck and get the hell out of this place.
And I don’t just mean this spot of earth. I mean this place in our lives—what I knew would become one of those memories you dreamed about and woke up in a sweat from, grateful you weren’t really back there.
But I was still here, in this place. I was in the bad memory right now.
And Lust stood between me and my dragon.
My eyes narrowed as they tracked to her above the barrel of the cannon. There she crouched, awkward and barefoot at the base of the porch with wood splinters around her and her hair in disarray around her head.
That little magic-disrupting canister now sat innocently on the porch where she’d been standing, the light slowly shrinking toward it. I’d definitely hit the mark.
And with Lust’s magic disrupted, all her glamor was gone. Her ethereal beauty, her irresistible eyes and lips—and most of all, that eminently seductive expression … all gone.
It was all magic. Illusion.
Her eyes were wide. Confused. Terrified.
Is she afraid?
My mouth opened a degree. It wasn’t every day you met a mortal sin, but this was the rare kind of sight you didn’t ever expect to encounter.
Lust was fearful. Vulnerable. Weakened.
Beside her, the hobbled angel picked himself up off the ground. He stared at Lust with new eyes. Critical eyes. Who knew how long it had been since he’d acted under his own power? Years, maybe. And now that her spell was broken, that definitely wasn’t adoration he wore.
Lust pressed her hair away from her face, taking in the scene without standing. She gazed up at Percy, then at the angel, then around at Valdis and Seleema, her face as open and terrified as a child’s.
When she found me in the grass, still on one knee with the hand cannon aimed at her, her lips formed a flat line below her wide eyes.
She was angry, but she was still afraid.
New adrenaline surged in me, and I tightened my grip on the weapon. “If you don’t give me back my dragon, the next one will land right between your eyes.”
My voice ricocheted off the house and the tree and the pavement, the only real sound in the night. I knew she’d heard me, and I knew she’d heard the lethal promise in my tone.
No matter that I didn’t have another round. No matter that she was a OnceImmortal being with more power in her pinky than I had in my entire body.
If I was good at one thing, it was putting on a show.
Chapter 19
Lust stared back at me, fully acknowledging me with her whole attention. She believed me; I could see it in the angle of her body, in the way her hands found the ground and she slowly, slowly pressed herself up to her feet.
What a small woman she was, maybe five feet tall by a hair. I could see cellulite dimples on her legs, the imperfections of age on her hands, the lines around her eyes and mouth.
It was all magic, I thought. Every bit of her glamor was magic.
Without that magic, she was just a deadly sin that had been cast down to Earth in a regular middle-aged body. She was one of us—a mortal … with a deep and unquenchable craving for attention and adoration.
She fixed her eyes on the gun in my hands. I could see the terror in her eyes, and that emboldened me.
“Did you hear me?” I said, using my loud, carrying stage voice. “I’ve got another round in the chamber and your pretty breast in my sights.”
“I heard you,” she snapped, her voice as raspy as a rake over leaves. Her lips curled away from her teeth in a feral way.
I stared at her, the cannon still poised in my hands. I closed one eye as though preparing my shot. “So what’re you waiting for?”
Her hands came up, wrapped around her body as though protecting herself. Even at this distance I swore I could see goosepimples rising on her arms, her tiny frame porcelain in the night. She looked so fragile as her eyes darted around to the angels and the houri and the dragon and the ogre and finally to the vampire who stood not ten feet from her.
The vampire who wanted her dead as much—maybe more—than me. The vampire who would do anything to protect his daughter from the sin currently standing on his front lawn.
Except right now, he was doubled over with his hair hanging down toward the ground and clutching his side.
Come on, Valdis, I thought. I gave you an opening. Take her down.
“Trust him,” Mariana’s cool voice whispered again in my head. “He will do the right thing.”
But he didn’t move. He remained hunched, fingers stanching the blood issuing from the wound in his side in an imperfect, primitive way.
Silence prevailed a second or two longer, and I was about to tell Lust she was out of time when a tiny, simpering laugh echoed softly around the driveway.
That was her laughing.
I doubted that meant she was giving me my dragon back.
My fingers tightened around the gun as my eyes flicked back to her. I didn’t like the sound of that little laugh. Not one bit.
She was staring now at one of the angels—the hobbled one who was descending from the porch.
“Hey,” I shouted at her. “Eyes on me.”
Lust ignored me. She had raised one finger, curled it in toward herself in a come hither to the hobbled angel. A soft, close-lipped smile had appeared on her face.
She was laughing in delight at her own power. Small and fragile and uncertain as it was, it was still working on the angel.
No. Not possible.
It had only been a minute. Less than that.
“Erik,” I said slowly. “Is she doing what I think she’s doing?”
“Burning time?”
I nodded, not taking my eyes off her.
I sensed him shifting in the grass as he tried to gain access to his uninjured arm. He stifled a groan of pain. “Afraid I can’t check right now.”
Right—I had a watch, too. I
glanced down at the World Amy watch on my wrist. The clock hand was moving fast—too fast. “Box of frogs,” I whispered. “How long do these canisters last, anyway?”
“The magic-disruption rounds last for at least ten minutes.”
“Have they ever lasted less than ten minutes?”
“No.”
“Well,” I said as Lust’s finger curled even farther, beckoning the angel. “Now one has.”
The two of us stared as the angel approached Lust, his hooded blue eyes fixed on hers. I already recognized that look on his face—that happy, half-awake post-coital daze.
That was Lust casting a spell. That was definitely Lust using magic.
“That,” Erik murmured, “is why she’s a major player on the board.”
With every step the angel took, Lust seemed to grow in size. In beauty. In power. She looked less and less like a regular, vulnerable woman and more like the force of nature she’d been when I’d first seen her through that open door.
I was losing my opening. And I didn’t have another round in the cannon.
“Erik,” I gritted out. “Tell me you’ve got a spare shot for this gun.”
“That’s why it’s a backup. It’s only got one shot.”
I cursed, dropping the useless weapon to the grass. “Valdis,” I barked across the driveway at the vampire.
He didn’t respond to me. Well, not exactly. With a great inhale, he straightened, hand still pressed tightly to his side, and began hobbling toward the house as fast as he could.
Which, given how fast he’d been moving not ten minutes ago, was exceptionally slow. Even by human standards, he was only moving at about a trot.
Whatever Seleema did, she really got him good.
He moved right behind Seleema, who didn’t even notice him; she was too confused. On he went, right past Lust and the angels. He ignored Grunt and Percy as he booked it up the steps and through the open doorway, still smoking from Percy’s fire.
And before I could yell his name again, the vampire was gone.
Valdis had run away.
I stared at the empty doorway, as though he would reappear with a blade or a gun or even just a battlecry. But even as I waited, I didn’t know why—I’d never expected anything noble from the vampire who’d killed my family.
