20 Shades of Shifters: A Paranormal Romance Collection

by Demelza Carlton

  On the ground.

  In the air.

  Swinging from trees.

  Fighting. Each other.

  He turned in a circle, confused and angry.

  The hordes he’d sent to Nebty had returned. Not with news of Nut’s daughters but with claws raised against family and friends.

  Blood fell from the trees and mixed with rain, adding to the blood puddles he tromped through.

  “Stop this madness!”

  He ran up to the closest demon soldier and caught the hand poised to slice the throat of another demon.

  “I said stop.”

  The demon didn’t stop. He growled and fought and snapped at Sansabonsom with his deadly teeth.

  The Demon King blocked the next attack, slicing straight through the soldier’s jaw. The demon kept coming, his jaw on the ground, blood dripping from the lower half of his face.

  The demon the soldier had been attacking hacked into the soldier’s back when he lunged at Sansabonsom. Down the soldier went, into a blood puddle. Then back up.

  Sansabonsom blinked at the demon soldier, then broke the arm that came for him, ripping straight through the elbow before kicking out and catching the demon in the knee and cutting it nearly in half.

  Down the soldier went again.

  Then back up.

  The other demon looked over the soldier’s shoulder at Sansabonsom before yelling, “He’s cursed. They’re all cursed,” and then taking to the sky.

  Sansabonsom retreated.

  The soldier didn’t follow. Instead, he dragged his mangled leg behind him until he found his next victim.

  He’d sent a thousand trained soldiers to Nebty. He’d expected half to return, the others sacrificed fodder for the dragons and his scheme. As he scanned the center of the capital of his kingdom, trees lined the borders, muddy roads marked the routes from homes to hunting grounds, Sansabonsom couldn’t believe his eyes.

  A thousand trained soldiers had left for Nebty, and a thousand had returned. Ten demon hordes and not one soldier obeyed his bellowed commands. They kept fighting, slaughtering every fighting-age demon they encountered, but sparing the elderly, infirmed, and young.

  Kumi was his capital. The seat of his power. Sansabonsom wouldn’t allow this to continue. He went to lift into the air but stopped when a familiar figure flew toward him.

  “Effiom, what is this?”

  “Let’s go.”

  Sansabonsom followed the soldier. They flew away from the battle and capital, fighting demons who approached, which were many. By the time they reached Fela, a deforested village where he kept his greatest secrets, Sansabonsom and Effiom were drenched, winded, and smelled of blood.

  Only his elite force of demons lived in the village. They crawled from the underground shelter and joined Sansabonsom and Effiom. Four males and two females. He would need every one of them tonight. They’d been stationed in Fela for a reason. Expert riders and fighters, their skills would serve him well this night.

  “Tell me what’s going on.” He’d sent Effiom to the Cave of Dep, his punishment for failing to retrieve the scepters and for losing so many soldiers to the dragons. “I thought you had the young dragon under your control.”

  “I do. Set Ombos did everything I told him, and more.”

  “So why are hundreds of my demons dead? And why are my soldiers tearing through my kingdom?”

  With each felled demon, they’d risen from the dead to only turn on another demon. It had to be magic. Dragon magic.

  “Where are the dragons?”

  “Here.”

  Dark eyes searched the flat, open land through sheets of endless rain. In the distance, he could hear battles and cries spreading across his kingdom like a curse, an infectious disease that couldn’t be contained.

  “They aren’t here.”

  “Big, poisonous snakes. They came in the night.”

  A clawed hand reached out and wrapped around Effiom’s neck. He wanted to rip the fool’s throat out. If no dragons were around to kill, then he’d have to settle for Effiom. “Snakes can’t harm us. We’re too strong.”

  “T-these can. Hers can.”

  “Who?”

  “The Dragon Queen.”

  “Nut doesn’t have such power. If she did, the sky dragon would’ve used it when we came for the scepters.”

  “Not Nut. Dragon Queen Isis.”

  Sansabonsom released the demon, needing him to breathe so he could speak clearly. He could always strangle Effiom to death later.

  “Hondo told you what we saw.”

  He’d killed Hondo for his abysmal defeat and pathetic excuses.

  “Isis and Nephthys bore the symbols of the goddesses. They fought with snakes and birds. But not like the snakes and birds we’re used to. They can’t be killed, but they multiply when attacked. Isis’s snakes are deadly. The poison is strong enough to kill a demon. I’ve seen it. Hondo saw it.” He waved clawed hands around but pointed to nothing specific. “One of them can control the dead. That’s what’s going on. They’re responsible for this civil war between demons. The counterattack you knew they would make has already begun.”

  The other nations believed the dragons would return and save them from the demons. They’d even gone as far as plotting against him. In the end, they’d been beaten back into bloody compliance. Even the griffins, who fought the hardest, couldn’t compare to merciless demon hordes.

  He looked above him again and saw nothing but demons fighting and falling from the sky. He was losing the war and he hadn’t glimpsed a single scale of his enemy. His elite force looked as if they wanted to join the aerial battle, but his growl kept them grounded and at his side. He couldn’t risk them dying and then being turned against him as well.

  “The sun dragon is a babe of a century, no match for an eight-hundred-year-old demon. If you had murdered the hatchling, she and her twin wouldn’t be here now.”

  Sansabonsom flew away from Effiom and toward his cache of weapons. A second later, the other demons followed. With these weapons, they were an unstoppable force that could withstand any siege from the Dragon Queen.

  He led them back to the capital. The rain no longer poured heavy globules but the closer they got to Kumi the harder it was for him to see.

  Effiom stopped. “We shouldn’t go in there.”

  Sansabonsom strained his eyes to see through the thick gray mist that blocked their path into the capital. Even with his X-ray vision, there was a blackness to the mist he couldn’t penetrate.

  “It’s nothing but inconsequential mists, which can’t hurt us.”

  “I’ve seen this before. We surrounded the manor, and one horde was supposed to go through the forest near the property. They went in and most didn’t come out. The dragons are in the mist.”

  “I don’t hear or smell them.”

  “Neither do I. That’s my point. You didn’t see her. She survived three bullets to her stomach. After the first bullet, she began to shift. We should’ve left the dragons alone. We have Nebty, most of it anyway. We also have this realm. That should’ve been enough for us.”

  It wasn’t enough. The other nations feared him and his soldiers, but Sansabonsom didn’t control the realm the way he wanted to. Once the other preternaturals figured out they had access to the human realm again, one of them would’ve gone in search of Nut and the dragons. He couldn’t keep the new gateway a secret forever. By having Effiom use the Ombos whelp and go after the scepters and Nut’s heir apparent, he controlled his fate.

  Yet, with the scepters now more than ancient relics to claim and wield, it made his absolute rule of the realm more difficult to achieve. But not impossible. This could work out better for him. After he defeated, once and for all, the Dragon Kingdom, the other nations would no longer look to the scaly beasts as their salvation.

  Geb was dead, Nut was gone, and the Scepters of Nebty would soon fall to King Sansabonsom.

  He entered the mist.

  Mists and darkness mingled
in a surreal, sensory-stealing haze of silence and danger.

  He kept flying, deeper into the cold vapor. His X-ray vision wasn’t totally useless, now that he was inside the miasma. Still, he could only see a few feet in any direction, enough to let him know that Effiom and the others flew beside him.

  The mist began to shrink around them. No, it chased them.

  He increased his speed to a breathless gallop.

  Closer it drew the faster he flew.

  Sansabonsom charged forward, following the yellow light of the moon he glimpsed through the mist. With a desperate lunge forward, he cleared it.

  Yellow light blinded him, and he skidded to a halt. Heart raced and lungs burned. Gulping in air, he heard the crackle of fire and the smell of burnt flesh.

  The yellow light, like the mist, receded until there was nothing left.

  Nothing except burning trees and homes. Nothing except piles of dead demons, charred and broken, even the soldiers who’d turned on their king. Nothing except four dragons in front of him.

  “Which ones are Nut’s daughters?” he whispered to Effiom.

  “None of them.”

  “Then where are they?”

  As if commanded to appear, four dragons emerged from the darkness above the first four. He hadn’t heard them, no less seen them. The black dragon with a splash of purple scales on the chest lowered to join the yellow energy, gray mist, thunder, and rock dragons. Those five dragons, however, didn’t capture his attention.

  The Demon King’s eyes settled first on the seething rock dragon, much larger than the other one. Strange images marked his wings and forehead. One of the images Sansabonsom recognized. He didn’t know what it was called or meant, but he’d seen it on Geb’s heads when he’d taken the first of two sets of eyes.

  Even that dragon, massive as it was, didn’t warrant his full attention. But the other two dragons did if they could be called dragons. He’d never seen any creature like them. Dragons, but not quite. What had the scepters done to them? Once he defeated the females, he’d slice them open and find out. The same way he and his demons did their father.

  The red dragon narrowed her gaze on Effiom, then she inhaled. Her eyes turned a murderous bright red.

  “It’s him.”

  “Are you sure?” the green-and-black rock dragon asked.

  “He smells the same. Compost. Eyes are also the same. Black and vile. I could never forget.”

  She hissed, and Sansabonsom thought the strange dragon would attack Effiom. Was this the new Dragon Queen? She wasn’t what he’d expected, and neither was the white dragon with spikes.

  They faced-off. He thought the Dragon Queen would demand something from him—an apology, an explanation, a compromise, maybe even the release of his pets. She had to see, with his weapons of war flanking him, that she and her little group of eight dragons couldn’t win.

  Nut’s hatchling did none of those things. A spray of fire preceded her attack. She came right at him, not an ounce of fear in her red eyes.

  They collided. He atop the best weapon in the realm, a one-hundred-foot three-headed dragon.

  The Dragon Queen would die.

  Thirty Minutes Ago

  Osiris hadn’t expected his plan to go as well as it did, but Isis had managed to dispense hundreds of king cobras with little effort and without meeting a single demon in the sky. He did worry about her and Nephthys, however. Neither dragon was used to their natural form, especially Isis. More, they didn’t know the full scope of their powers. Whether any of that would put them at a disadvantage, they would soon discover.

  “We’re about a mile from the capital of the Demon Kingdom.” Isis stopped, and everyone else did too. “Is this close enough for you to control the dead demons?”

  “I don’t know. It’s a thousand of them, which is more than I’ve ever managed.”

  If Nephthys couldn’t maintain her control over the demons, then the amendment Isis had made to his plan wouldn’t work.

  “Listen to your heart and magic and not your mind, Nep. The mind betrays and confuses us with insecurity and doubt. We question when we should have faith. We pause when we should surge forward. We cower when we should trust the strength of others.”

  “You want me to build an army of dead demons, claiming the minds of the demons killed by the ones I already control. That’ll be hundreds, maybe another thousand more.”

  “I know what I ask may seem unreasonable, perhaps even impossible, but it’s not. Trust me. Tap into that part of you that you’ve always known existed but was too afraid to explore and to release.”

  The words were for Nephthys, but he knew she’d meant them for everyone, including herself. Being Dragon Queen meant being in charge and having power over others. What Isis was doing now, indeed, what Isis did best, was to lead by example. It was the way she ran Dragon Investment Group, never asking others to do what she wasn’t willing and capable of doing herself. Effective leaders inspired action, possessed confidence, in themselves and their team, communicated their vision, and acted decisively.

  Isis caressed her sister’s flank with her tail, an encouraging back and forth motion that had Nephthys turning her face into her sister’s neck.

  “Osiris will help you. Together, the two of you are strong enough to control every dead demon.”

  He had no idea what in the hell Isis was talking about. Osiris had no special goddess-given powers. Shit, his damn heart still didn’t beat, and his scales wouldn’t stop tingling.

  “I don’t know how I can help.”

  “You’re what exists between death and life. Between fire and moon. Nephthys found every piece of you, and I returned most of your life. Yet I didn’t bring back all of the rock dragon. A part of him is still on the other side. Come, Osiris, and lend my sister your strength and magic.”

  All eyes were on Osiris as he moved to hover beside Nephthys, even Set’s who had suspiciously little to say since they set off for Kumi.

  “What do you need me to do?”

  “I don’t know. Nephthys is death. She’ll have to figure out how to match your magic with hers.”

  Isis flew away from them and next to Aset. The Tyets had also said very little. None of them had mentioned it, and he couldn’t be certain, but Osiris believed their parents had been among the dead warriors that formed the tunnel to the gateway. They had stayed behind, like King Geb, to defend Nebty and to make sure Nut and her flock of dragons made it safely to the human realm.

  All of them had lost family to the same awful event. At least Osiris and Set had Makara and the twins Nut. The Tyets had to not only flee their island home but leave behind both parents. He didn’t doubt Nut did her best to create a new family for the dragons. She certainly loved the Tyets as if they were born from her. Still, it had to hurt to see their parents like that.

  Osiris glanced over his shoulder at Isis. He thought her eyes would be on him and her sister. Instead, she’d shifted from beside Aset. She now hovered in front of the Tyets, speaking to them. Osiris couldn’t hear what she said, but when her tail reached around and caressed each of the Tyets, in the same manner she’d done Nephthys, Osiris turned back to the moon dragon.

  “Isis knows, doesn’t she?”

  “That the warriors were the Tyets’ parents, yes. That’s the main reason she blessed them with her blood.”

  “Is that all she did?”

  “Knowing my sister, probably not. Let’s get started.”

  “Don’t you want to wait until we have Isis’s full attention?”

  “She turned her back on us, and it wasn’t because she wanted to have a private word with her Tyets. That’s her way of reminding us that she has absolute faith in what we’ve been tasked to accomplish. Her standards are high. We won’t fail ourselves or disappoint her. Besides, Isis is far more exacting of herself than she is of anyone else. Are you ready?”

  “If you are.”

  He watched as Nephthys flapped her wings up and down while remaining in the same
spot. Except for the white vultures, all the symbols of Nekhbet—white Atef crown of Upper Egypt, the lotus and the round Shen ring—lifted from her wings. Translucent and no larger than a handprint, they shot through the dark sky and toward Kumi.

  One of her white wings grazed his, a silent call to action.

  Osiris flapped his wings, following her movement and speed. Without her needing to tell him, he concentrated on the Isis Knots and djed symbols on his wings. He envisioned them peeling from him and soaring on wind currents and after the demons. They appeared in his mind’s eye, as did the dead demons. Not the ones killed by Isis’s snakes, but the ones the poisoned demons had already slain.

  He saw them, heaps of clawed and murdered flesh. Life had already seeped from them, but their bodies remained, vessels to be taken over and used. Osiris sent the symbols of his resurrection outward and toward those empty vessels. Hundreds of Isis Knots and djeds bolted through the sky and toward the Demon Kingdom. With each dead demon they encountered, one of the symbols flew inside and attached itself to the brain stem.

  Within minutes, Osiris controlled over two hundred dead demons. He gave them a single command. The same one he heard Nephthys give the poisoned demons earlier before she sent them home to wreak havoc.

  “Attack only fighters and soldiers. Don’t harm your young, sick, or seniors.”

  He flapped his wings harder and faster. Repeating his efforts over and again until he could hear all-out war coming from the direction of the Demon Kingdom.

  A warm tail ran the length of his face and neck. “That’s enough, love. You can come back to me now.”

  Osiris opened eyes he hadn’t known slipped closed.

  “Well done. How do you feel?”

  He didn’t know how he felt, except that the tingling under his scales was gone.

  “Winded but good. How did you know I could do that?”

  “I didn’t. I only needed you to believe that you could use your magic in a way you’ve never done before.”

  “Wait, you were guessing?”

  “An educated guess, Osiris. Don’t make it sound as if I was winging it”