Dragon Devotion

by Amelia Jade

  “They’re gaining on us,” she said.

  “That is the plan,” Ajax replied, taking a moment to reach out with one hand and rub her leg.

  “Shut up,” she laughed, letting the exhilaration flow through her now, instead of keeping it bottled up within. There was little she could do besides hang on and keep track of their pursuers.

  The truck shook violently without warning, and Arianna looked frantically in the mirror to see what had happened while Ajax fought with the wheel to keep it under control.

  “These guys are getting frisky early,” he muttered, more to himself than her.

  Sure enough, she managed to pick out the damaged front of one of the SUVs, headlight cracked and one smashed completely out of commission from where it had rammed them.

  “Here comes another!” she shouted moments before the cab bounced horrifically. The truck wobbled and she slammed her head into the glass hard enough to open a cut in her head and a crack in the glass.

  “Are you okay?” Ajax asked as he kept the truck going straight.

  “Ow,” she growled, the sound originating deep in her chest. Now she was angry. Arianna blinked rapidly as red filled her vision. She wanted to hit something. Or someone.

  Ajax repeated his question.

  “I’m fine,” she said, her voice still deep, but not quite as rage-filled as it had been. “Keep driving,” she told him, blinking her eyes rapidly as she looked in the mirror. “One of them is coming up on my side.”

  “Let me know when its nose is past our rear,” Ajax commanded.

  “That would be now,” she replied, then held on for dear life as he wrenched the wheel to the right.

  The SUV—she could make out the type of vehicle now—immediately slammed on the brakes and dropped back.

  “They won’t try that again,” Ajax said. “They should know better. Not until we’re outside of the city at least.”

  Sure enough, nothing happened until they neared the freeway entrance.

  “Ajax,” she said, worried.

  “Yes?”

  “They’re falling back,” she replied. “Why are they falling back?” Then, “What the fuck is that?”

  “What the fuck is what?” Ajax asked with a worried look over at her. “Oh,” he said as he looked in her mirror. “Umm.”

  Coming up hard behind them on the freeway on-ramp was a huge set of lights, much larger and brighter than any of those from their other pursuers.

  Over the air rushing across their truck, they began to hear a deep throaty rumble.

  “Not good, that’s what it is,” Ajax said, mashing the pedal as far down as it would. The cargo truck roared and began to pick up speed again.

  The freeway was more brightly lit than many of the streets they had just been rushing through, and it became readily apparent what was following them. The three SUVs had dropped back, each occupying a lane so that no one could overtake them.

  Between the line of vehicles and the truck that she and Ajax were in was a nightmare monstrosity. It was a big rig, but one that had clearly been modified. It was completely black, with no color or chrome on it anywhere. Blindingly bright headlights and an overhead rack speared their truck with color, and it wasn’t until a moment later that she realized the top-mounted spotlights were actually being pointed by people on the roof of the cab.

  If that weren’t scary enough, the flatbed being pulled by it threatened to stop her heart from beating. Banks of lighting lit the trailer, showing her the activity going on.

  “It’s a fucking boarding party,” she said aloud as it pulled alongside them.

  “Definitely not good,” Ajax said, swerving back and forth to make them a harder target to hit as the big rig tried to pull up alongside them.

  On the flatbed men were preparing what looked like cannons. As Arianna focused hard on those men, she felt her senses flare and strengthen. She suddenly had an extreme case of tunnel vision, which instantly made her nauseous.

  But it also showed her what the men on the flatbed were preparing. Retching between her legs, she forced herself to relax, trying to ensure the dry-heaving didn’t become something else. With a snarl she forced her enhanced senses down, making them obey her.

  To her complete surprise, they did.

  Better. Now if I could just learn to control it without the blinding headache and extreme sickness.

  Arianna shook her head. That was a battle for another day.

  “They’re loading harpoon cannon things,” she told him. “I think they intend to shoot them at us and use them to cross over.”

  “Yep, boarding party all right,” he agreed, then fell silent.

  Arianna continued to watch in the mirror as the truck inched up on their left side.

  “Ari,” Ajax said with a tone that turned her blood to ice.

  She looked at him.

  “Remember when I said I’d try not to do anything stupid unless it could be avoided?”

  She continued to look at him evenly.

  “I need to do something stupid,” he said at last.

  “How stupid?”

  “Fairly,” he admitted, wincing at her continued level look.

  Arianna sighed. “You don’t see a way around it?”

  He shook his head. “No.”

  She sighed, glancing back into the mirror at the oncoming mass of metal. “What do you need me to do?”

  “We need to switch places,” he told her.

  “Swell,” she muttered, but she pushed herself back against the seats as Ajax leaned forward and toward her side, maintaining his grip on the wheel and his foot on the pedal.

  It was cramped in the small confines of the truck, but eventually she slid into the driver’s seat, hands on the wheel and her foot pushing down on top of his.

  “Ari?”

  “Yes?” she asked sweetly.

  “I’m going to need my foot back,” he told her.

  Arianna sighed and adjusted her foot so that he could remove his, without them letting up on the accelerator. Ajax moved completely into the passenger’s seat, before leaning back over and kissing her on the cheek.

  “I wish I could say more, but they’re about to pull alongside us,” he told her as they flew down the highway at close to one hundred miles per hour. “I love you,” he said, then began to winch down his window.

  “Ajax? Ajax what the hell is the plan?” she asked frantically.

  “Drive straight, and when I bang three times, let them come up alongside us. Once it happens, hit the gas again.”

  “Once what happens?” she all but shrieked, reaching out for him.

  “You’ll know,” he promised, and with that he was gone, pulling himself through the window and onto the roof of the truck.

  “You big dummy,” she said, tears streaming down her face, but she kept the truck running straight down the middle of the freeway. “You come back to me!” she shouted through the open window.

  Ajax banged on the roof once. She wasn’t sure if that was because he heard her, or something had happened. She chose to take it as the former. Then came the moment she had been dreading. Three quick bangs on the roof.

  Closing her eyes for a second and uttering a prayer, Arianna lifted up on the gas slightly. On her left the big rig crept closer. Its front end passed the rear of their truck, and still it kept coming. She glanced over as the cab went by, and saw the driver leering down at her with a smile of victory on his face.

  Her truck shook suddenly, and she saw the driver’s face go slack with shock.

  Arianna’s eyes were drawn to the mirror once more, but even though she had known Ajax was going to do something, even she hadn’t expected that!

  Chapter Seventeen

  Ajax

  He sprang from the truck, legs blasting him across the open space at the same instant the men on the truck fired their cannons. Pointed harpoons shot across the distance, punching through the flimsy side of the cargo truck, and joining the two vehicles together.

&nbs
p; While that was impressive and likely scary for Arianna, Ajax had his own surprise in store. He had leapt from his truck as a human, but mid-flight his body began to change. Arms outstretched in front and below his airborne body grew dark and began to grow.

  At the same time he felt the muscles in his legs swell as power coursed through him. Fur exploded from his skin as he more than quadrupled in size, and then doubled once again. Where there had once been a large human bearing down on the flatbed, Ajax hit it in his bear form like a wrecking ball. The huge light-brown bear with a light-gray stripe down his back roared a challenge midair at his enemies. Ajax braced as the flatbed raced up at him. He bounced on his stomach once on the landing, got to his feet, and reached out with a paw.

  His claws just tugged on the man’s skin, the force more than enough as he sent him toward the rear of the semi. The man’s back slammed into a metal rail and he flew up and over, disappearing into the night.

  One down, only—he glanced around quickly—eleven to go.

  He noticed two of them preparing to board the truck, but his path of attack was taking him away from them and he needed to maintain his momentum. Even now he charged at the next man, front paws landing on him. Ajax bore the man to the ground, crushing his chest as he went, before ducking into a roll.

  Using his training he quickly recalled his bear and exited the leap in human form, shifting in the blink of an eye. Ajax had always been one of the fastest shifters he’d known, able to change back and forth at a whim, without the momentary disorientation that often overcame his peers from switching between two vastly different forms.

  Exiting his roll, his legs powered him forward. Arms outstretched, he wrapped them around the man’s neck and use him as a pivot. Ajax’s legs continued to swing forward and around while his upper body stayed mostly in place. The pair fell to the wooden floor of the flatbed, Ajax landing on his stomach, the other man on his back, his head connecting solidly with the floor.

  Ajax wrenched sharply on the head, ignoring the spine-tingling snap that cracked out into the night. He disliked killing. It was far from something he was comfortable with. He was a realist first and foremost however, and was aware that life had blessed him with the ability to be good at killing.

  Very good.

  He used that now, springing to his feet as the other men on the flatbed moved to fight him. Instead of waiting for them to close the distance, he charged right at them.

  Just five feet short of them he saw what he wanted to see as the black-clad attackers set their feet and braced for his impact.

  Ajax smiled and leapt into the air, calling forth his bear once more. His massive form crashed into three of them, sending one falling back with such force he tumbled off the side of the truck with a scream.

  He leapt to his feet, snarling at the man nearest him. The other man rolled his eyes and slammed his fist into the side of Ajax’s head.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Arianna

  “Ajax!” she screamed, seeing him go down from the blow.

  Arianna had tried to follow his instructions, but the harpoons were fastened too tightly and the truck had begun to shake as she accelerated. With freedom out of reach, she had been limited to holding tightly alongside the big rig, watching panicked as Ajax took on the entire squad himself.

  He had told her about the Extremis squad, normal men imbued with the powers of a shifter. Ajax had read about them in the note from J to Levante. It seemed that Levante was the leader of this cell of their mysterious enemy, but no more than a lackey in the grand scheme of things. Whoever this J was, he seemed to hold the real power. Until they were able to be rid of him, this agency would continue to grow.

  Hopefully we can slow that growth down today, she had thought as Ajax went on the attack.

  But when one of the Extremis agents leveled him with a blow, all her hopes that they might escape things intact collapsed just as fast as Ajax’s legs.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” she swore. Her look into the mirror at Ajax had revealed something else to her.

  Two of the Extremis squad, men far more powerful than her, were shimmying across the cables that attached the two vehicles together. Her heart rate notched up another level, to the point she could practically feel the blood rushing through her body. Gripping the wheel so tightly her knuckles turned white, she kept an eye on the mirror.

  There was a hollow bang as the first one reached the side and clambered onto the roof. The harpoons had hit her truck at an upward angle near the top of the side panel, making it easy for them to flip themselves from the wire to the roof, with a grace she could never match.

  It was tough to make out what was happening now that she couldn’t see them. There was a lot of banging from the roof over the cargo area behind the cab. The highway streaked by on either side as the two trucks continued their headlong plunge out of the city and into the highway.

  Part of her mind wondered why there was no civilian law enforcement, but she figured that they must have been warned off. Whatever this mystery group was, they were powerful. She wondered what was going to happen once they broke free. It wasn’t like the agency could be allowed to continue to exist. The shifter community would agree with that.

  She hoped Ajax wouldn’t take part in the dismantling of it, though she knew he would want to.

  Arianna cried out as the roof of the cab suddenly buckled and banged loudly from the force of someone landing on it. Feet appeared in the window and the Extremis agent began to enter the cab.

  A quick glance in her mirror showed Ajax struggling to his feet on the back of the flatbed trailer. She couldn’t leave, not yet. But even as she watched, a third agent began to cross the distance from the big rig to the cargo truck.

  The agent was almost in the window. She needed to do something to slow things down. Focusing, she tried to call forth the strength that she had tapped into on several prior occasions. She needed it to help her deal with the man who just now was slipping into the passenger seat next to her. He had come in feet first, obviously not expecting her to be much of a threat.

  Just then, he was right. Arianna couldn’t seem to find the strength she needed, and without it she would be helpless to resist him.

  “Evening,” the agent said sarcastically as he turned in the seat to face her.

  “Fuck you,” she spat. “If you take me from the wheel right now, your pal out there is going to either be squished or fall and die.”

  The agent shrugged. “I doubt the fall would kill him. As you might have surmised, we are somewhat resistant to that sort of thing. Squishing him between the two trucks might, however. But, as I can see, he has now finished his trip.”

  Arianna glanced in the mirror to see that he was right. It took her a moment to realize she had taken her gaze off the other man. She yelled as he kicked at her across the cab, trying to push her out the door. Arianna was pushed against the door, her back screaming. She kept her foot outstretched, pushing the pedal down as far as it would go. If Ajax needed her, she intended to be nearby.

  “He’s not going to save you now, bitch,” the agent said, grunting with effort as he pushed at her with his booted feet. “Now, get out of here,” he snarled, pulling back with one foot to stomp at her back.

  The sole of his foot crashed into her stomach, and Arianna gasped as the breath was driven from her lungs. She looked around in terror as the air refused to come. Her lungs had been crushed. She was going to die from suffocation.

  As she struggled to get oxygen to her lungs, Arianna felt something. Something she hadn’t before. Inside of her, there was a…spark, though that didn’t seem to describe it. Like a blossoming of power that surged. She reached out tentatively with her mind, and touched it.

  Strength flooded through her body with such a violent surge that her muscles swelled and flexed involuntarily. Her eyes flew open and the muscles of her lungs pumped air rapidly into her system. The world was suddenly crystal clear. She could hear every little sound and sense the
world around her with a clarity that she had never experienced before.

  Beside her the agent grunted as he couldn’t dislodge her. Arianna turned her head to face him, noting the way the agent’s eyes focused on her, then widened in surprise.

  She bared her teeth at him in a smile that no one would have mistaken for anything but the look of a predator ready to strike.

  Her free hand, the one not on the wheel, closed around the booted foot on her chest and without waiting she wrenched it violently to the side with all the newfound strength in her body. The agent screamed as bone snapped and ligaments tore. He pulled himself away from her to the far side of the cab of the truck.

  Sweat streamed down his face as he breathed heavily, trying to contain the agony that she knew would be coursing through his body right then.

  With a snarl she lunged toward him, careful to keep one hand on the wheel and her foot on the gas.

  The agent yelled in terror as her hand grabbed his neck and squeezed, pulling him close to her.

  “Come here,” she snarled, pulling the man across her lap and into the driver’s side door with a ferocity that stunned the agent.

  “Let’s see if your theory about getting squished is correct,” she said, pulling the wheel toward the big rig at the same time she flexed her arm and sent the man through the already weakened door behind her.

  The door gave way and the agent went through it. His foot got caught in one of the suddenly slack cables that joined the two trucks. She watched as he fell between the trucks with a scream that was abruptly cut short. She saw the flatbed trailer bounce as it ran over something.

  “Asshole,” she growled triumphantly.

  Above her she heard the sounds of more booted feet. Right. The other two.

  “Time for plan B,” she said and turned the wheel back toward the big rig.

  Taking a deep breath, she waited for the flatbed to draw closer. Then, with a final mental thank you to the truck and a prayer to any deity watching, she jumped free, trusting that her new strength would carry her across.

  Behind her, she heard a shout from the top of the truck. She slammed into the edge of the flatbed and hung on for dear life, her feet dangling just inches from one of the crazily spinning wheels, which would spell certain death.