by Ophelia Bell
The creature staggered back beneath the barrage of attacks, a hundred mouths bellowing in pain and whipping back and forth through the air to try to shake the combination of elements. It was retreating to the deeper water.
“No you fucking don’t,” I yelled. “I just got here, you bastard. You can eat another before you leave.” The fire surged forth inside me again, and I let another flaming orb loose from my hands. It smacked against one of the heads and split into a hundred smaller fireballs that ricocheted between them all. Each and every one took a scorching mouthful of fire until their bellowing roars turned to pitiful wails before it sank beneath the water.
A chorus of cheers rose up from around me, but my attention was fixed on the lone figure that had appeared at the water’s edge just a few feet in front of me where no one had stood a moment ago. Chayton was still in the water, sloshing toward the shore on all fours, but he shifted back to his human form as he came up behind the new arrival, who I thought was a man, but after all I’d seen lately, I didn’t quite trust my first impressions anymore.
Chayton’s murderous scowl certainly didn’t bode well for this person being friendly, in any case. When my other five mates closed in around us with similar expressions, I had a pretty comfortable suspicion who this person was.
I stepped toward him and stuck out my hand. I’d just kicked his lap dog’s ass, so the least I could do was be civil now.
“Chaos, I presume?”
32
April
The wild, whirling darkness above us cleared to reveal blue sky and puffy white clouds, but the extra light only made the new arrival seem all the stranger in appearance within the suddenly calm spring day. He wore a perfectly tailored, pinstripe suit with french cuffs on the dress shirt. Around his neck was a silk necktie with an abstract pattern that seemed to shift like a kaleidoscope when I looked at it. The oddest thing about him was his face, which at first impression was attractive, but the more I looked, the more asymmetrical his features seemed to be, making it difficult to look him in the eye. And to top it off, I was sure he wore chocolate-scented cologne.
He smiled a lopsided smile and took my hand, his eyes brightening as if I’d just said I was the Queen of England. Conspicuously missing was any shred of accountability for the cluster fuck we’d just narrowly survived.
“It is my honor, Miss Vincent. Or is it St. George? You may call me Chase. I’ve longed to meet you for some time now. I have a proposition for you.”
“The fuck you do,” Tate snapped, stepping up beside me and pressing a big palm to Chase’s shoulder, pushing him back a step.
Chase released my hand but kept smiling that weirdly unnerving smile, then made a small motion with his fingers. The earth beneath us tilted, and cries of alarm rose up from the crowd around us. Tate released Chase to grab me around the waist, steadying me while the world righted itself again.
“You know that shit doesn’t work on ursa.”
Chase pouted a little. “I know, but you caught her before I could see how she reacted. I’ve seen her command over fire today but not over earth. How will I know she’s a true Chimera without a demonstration of her abilities?”
“Whether or not she’s a Chimera shouldn’t be any of your damn business!” shot Stuart, slipping an arm around me from the other side. “She’s ours, and as you’ve already seen, we will fight for her.”
“Damn straight,” Murdoc said, his sentiment echoed by my other mates.
Chase’s smile didn’t falter, but his eyes glinted with inner power, and the pattern on his tie grew less a pattern and more just a crazy mix of color. He raised a hand, and the sky began to darken again. Behind him, the water churned, and my stomach twisted in knots over the prospect of his pet awakening for another round.
In a deep voice that grated my nerves like twisting steel, Chase said, “You know I have but to snap my fingers and render all of you back down to your component parts. Then we’ll see if your magic is strong enough to put you back together again. I will have my Chimera…”
“Chase, for fuck’s sake, stop it!” a female voice yelled from behind, cutting him off before he could say more.
Chase blinked and assumed a mask of faux innocence, his gaze shifting beyond us to whoever had just spoken—someone he evidently hadn’t expected to see but who had the authority to shut him up.
My mates and I all turned to see a lovely dark-skinned, black-haired woman striding down the slope with a take-no-prisoners look on her face. We stepped aside for her to march up to him and stab a finger into the center of his chest.
“You are out of line with this ridiculous hunt for someone like me. The Bloodline are under my protection, so if you want April, you’ll have to go through me to get her, got it?”
My expression couldn’t have been any less stunned than Chase’s. He finally recovered and gave her a slanted smile that just missed the mark of appeasing. “Deva, you know how Fate abhors imbalance. I was only trying to even things out. Fate has you, so…”
“I am the balance,” Deva said, glowering at him. “Contrary to your perception, Fate does not have me. Both of you are equal pains in my ass, and it ends here. Remember the deal we made last year? I found you your mate. You do not get to horn in on my territory again! Leave the Bloodline alone!”
The words had the power of a thunderclap, forcing all of us to take a step back, including Chase, though he didn’t look happy about it. He shot one last longing look my way, prompting Tate and Stuart to step in front of me. From just behind me, Gray muttered, “Wow, she really is a power to be reckoned with, isn’t she?”
“How did she do that?” I asked.
“Her turul soul grants her voice the power,” Stuart said. “Plus, she’s a goddess.”
I squeezed between the two bulwarks shielding me to watch as Chaos himself surrendered to a woman no bigger than me. He reluctantly nodded, and the sky cleared once more. A second later he was gone, and the Sound was calm once again, without a trace of the monstrous creature that had been hiding beneath the surface.
“That was fucking badass. No wonder I love her music so much. Hey! Do you guys think I could get Fate’s Fools to play at my show’s opening party this weekend?”
“It can’t hurt to ask,” Tate said, leading me toward the woman who was officially my new hero.
“She’s your hero? After all we’ve been through?” The trio of dragon voices spoke as one inside my mind.
I turned to face my three dragon mates, walking backward as I blew them all a kiss. “You guys know I’ll make it up to you.”
33
April
An abundance of naked male flesh surrounded me and the only two other women in the bunch. I walked with Mom on one side and Deva on the other as we made our way back to the house. The afternoon sun still shone, gracing us with one of the most beautiful spring days so far this season.
“So, I have questions,” I began, darting a look to either side at each of the women I walked with. “I’m just not quite sure where to start.”
“You aren’t the only one with questions, April.” Deva looked past me to my mom. “I thought my mother, Neela, was the last living female Elite from the Ultiori army.”
Mom sighed and nodded. “Neela was the first, I was the last. Meri had just enough immortal dragon blood left to create one more Elite after the one before me was killed.”
“I didn’t think Elites could be killed,” Deva said.
“They can’t, really. And if you ask me, I have my suspicions that we are as immortal as the blood that makes us. We’ve always believed that the only way for an Elite to die is in the fire of the immortal dragon whose blood runs in their veins. The thing is, I know for a fact that immortal blood mixes in odd ways with immortal fire. I think you might agree, wouldn’t you, Deva?”
Fascinated by their discussion, I looked at Deva, waiting for her response. Her lips twitched in a smile and her eyes sparkled.
“Is she right?” My skin prickling wi
th excitement. “Is it a secret?” I whispered when she didn’t immediately answer.
“No,” Deva said, shaking her head. “Your mother is right. My mother and her twin brother were the first two Elites. Not that long ago, she was nearly killed by immortal dragon fire. Or rather, she did die, but she was resurrected by the very fire that destroyed her. That’s what happens when love gets thrown into the mix.”
Mom sighed and squeezed my hand. “Doesn’t love always provide the strongest magic? It’s the thing Meri never accounted for in all her experiments because she didn’t believe in it. I think she hoped to control me better than the other Elites since she was responsible for my existence as an Elite to begin with. She made me what I am. She mistook my obedience for true loyalty, but I couldn’t let her realize I was never really under her control.” She gave me a tender look. “That was why I had to leave you, honey. I promise you, if there had been any other way, I would have stayed. But I saw your potential back then and knew that if I stayed close, it wouldn’t take long before she saw what you would become and would take you from us.”
I swallowed past the giant lump in my throat, silently cursing the evil woman who had forced my mother to run from me. “So it’s true. I’m a Chimera? I’m not even sure what that means.”
“I can answer that,” Deva said. “It’s a word we use for higher races hybrids. When the higher races interbreed, the offspring can only be born as the race of the strongest parent. To have a true hybrid requires a binding element to merge the souls, which is where humans come into the mix. Only a human of the Bloodline has the potential to become a Chimera. It’s because you possess high concentrations of multiple races’ blood, activated by the divine blood you carry. So you’re both dragon and ursa, with strong enough traits that you can manifest magic of those races, and may even be able to shift as your power matures. Your father is not a Chimera, since his Bloodline blood is purely ursa, but it’s strong enough in him to allow him to shift.”
“So anyone with strong enough blood can shift?”
“Potentially. Manifest powers, at the very least. I’ve met a lot of Bloodline humans with even faint traces who were able to manifest powers to some degree. Humans with turul blood who are great musicians, with ursa blood who are skilled botanists, nymphaea blood who are beautiful dancers, but otherwise lack any more detectable magic.”
“And dragons? What’s their defining skill?”
“Sex,” came a deadpan reply from just behind me. I turned and gave Murdoc a glare but only received a wicked grin in response, followed by a suggestive squeeze of my ass through my damp jeans. He trotted around us and up the steps onto the porch, giving us a perfect view of his round, toned ass.
The men all filed in through the french doors, the conversation raucous and celebratory as they began cleaning up the glass and making a plan for the afternoon. In the midst of the activity, the room filled with swirling white and golden smoke as the dragons exerted a little power to conjure clothing for the lot of them. That settled, the focus shifted to feeding everyone, and four volunteered to fly to the mainland for supplies.
Mom led me to the Adirondack chairs situated around an open fireplace on one corner of the deck overlooking the Sound. With a flick of her wrist, the coals in the center were ablaze. My skin tingled with awareness of the magic.
“A dragon’s skill always depends on its color,” Deva said. “Your three dragon mates are Guardians to their core. They’re the protectors and the architects. Not only will they build you the most beautiful home, they will defend it to their dying breaths. Ursa are craftsmen at heart too. It always surprises me how well my fate hounds do when matching souls with their mates, but mine have outdone themselves with you, I think.”
“I’m not even going to ask about these mysterious hounds. But what I would like to know is whether the band would honor me by playing at my gallery show this weekend. Assuming my sculpture is still intact. If this latest attack ruined it again, I’m going to have to ask for Chase’s address and go break some of his shit for a change.”
Deva laughed. “I will not only give you his address. I’ll drift you there myself and hand you the hammer. But if you really want to stick it to Chaos, take away his chocolate.”
34
April
Late that evening after an enormous barbecue, I stood on the top step of the deck, looking down the hill toward the studio. All the turul vodka in the world couldn’t fend off the dread over what I’d find when I rolled open that huge door.
A warm presence slipped up beside me, and I instinctively leaned toward it, sighing in contentment when Gray slid an arm around me and pressed a kiss to the top of my head.
“You almost make me believe everything will be all right.”
He hummed softly into my hair. “Only almost? If so, I’m doing a piss poor job of being your mate. Everything will be all right, April. Even if the thing is in pieces, we’ll work things out. The seven of us are a well-oiled machine.”
His statement evoked imagery of greased pistons, and I snorted at the natural progression of thoughts that resulted. I buried my face against his sturdy shoulder, his barely contained laugh vibrating through his chest when he picked up on my thoughts.
“Naughty girl,” he whispered, his breath tickling across my scalp, and my mind suddenly filled with a clearly projected memory of his full-sized dragon cock buried inside me.
I let out a sudden gasp as arousal blasted through me almost as strong as a spontaneous orgasm. I pulled away, smacking him lightly on the bicep. “Keep it in your pants while my parents are here, got it?”
He glanced over his shoulder to the fireplace and the circle of people settled in chairs and on the deck around it. A smoky haze of Murdoc’s enchanted dragon breath hung over everyone. Shimmering golden smoke wove through it from Deva’s dragon mate, Rohan. I’d enjoyed breathing the mix of drugging smoke for a little while, my overworked muscles relaxing and my mind succumbing to pure euphoria as I listened to them all swap stories of their dealings with Chaos and Fate.
“Your parents seem to have wandered off together. I doubt they’d notice if you did the same.”
“They’re making up for lost time,” I said, still a little giddy at the idea of them together at long last.
“Are they though? Meri’s been dead more than two years. Evidence suggests Cassandra has likely never been very far from this house for long. And a discerning dragon can tell their energy is as bound up as two soul mates can be. I’d be a fool to suggest Andrew Vincent managed to stay away from the love of his life if she was within his reach for the past three years.”
He was right, and I’d already made my peace with it. Mom had her reasons for staying away at first, then avoided returning when it was safe for fear of disrupting my career and success. I couldn’t say I agreed with her choice, but I understood it.
I didn’t need to worry about either of them now that they had each other again. What I worried about was down the hill behind that big barn door.
“I’m going to have to see if it’s still standing at some point.”
“Then let’s go get it done.” Gray threaded his fingers through mine and lifted my hand, brushing his lips across my knuckles. From the corner of my eye, I caught the movement of the rest of the group as they gravitated toward us, evidently led by Rohan, who I’d come to learn was a Gold dragon and had powers of psychic empathy. He gave me a cheerful smile and puffed out a breath that snaked its way toward me.
“A little confidence boost,” he said when the smoke twisted and spun its way toward me, circling my head and tickling my nose until I inhaled. Within seconds, my mood shifted, and I straightened my spine.
“Thank you.” I gave Rohan a nod, then started down the steps with Gray’s hand clutched in mine. At the bottom, my three ursa mates strode ahead, reaching the barn before the rest of us and waiting. I braced myself, anticipating the telltale sharp ache in my jaw that accompanied the lingering magic that Vesh had left behin
d before. But the closer I got to the barn, the more my sense of connection to my mates increased.
Pleased yet confused, I paused and blinked, shifting my vision to see the auras of magic that clung to all living things. My eyes widened, and I exhaled a sharp breath.
“What is that?” I asked, staring at the slowly pulsing cloud of vivid magic that swelled out from the walls of the barn. Marbled swirls of green and orange bled together, and when I stepped closer, my breath quickened.
Gray squeezed my hand. “Every artist puts a little of their soul into their creations. There were seven of us working on it. Not to mention, we did produce some pretty strong magic last night.”
Tate grabbed hold of the door handle and rolled it back along its track. I was no longer frightened about finding a misshapen hunk of metal inside, but with my sight shifted, I was unprepared for the kaleidoscope of tangled magic I’d see wrapped around the sculpture.
“April, oh my!” Deva exclaimed, stepping forward to stare in awe at the huge tree of life that stood before us. The trunk was a cage of twisted steel rods that were already slightly oxidized with a deliberate rust-colored patina. Within the cage was a core of translucent quartz that would be infused with dragon fire on the day of the show to make it glow with inner light.
Stretching up and flaring out from the trunk stretched the framework of branches, made of thinner rods bound together with green-tinted copper wire that was wound tighter at the ends of the branches. At the ends of each of the twenty primary branches were an assortment of the caged globes my guys and I had crafted, each one containing a miniature landscape of tiny plants waiting for my touch to awaken into blooming. Still smaller branches stretched between the others, tipped with glass leaves in a variety of shades from pale green to deeper green to brilliant orange to icy blue-white, the colors split into quadrants to represent each of the seasons.
