by Mina Carter
***
How could he have been such a fucking idiot?
The instant the immobility spell his mate had hit him with wore off, Duke took to the sky with a roar. He didn’t even bother to use the cabin’s land line to check in with the office and report the fact that Chase, his mate, had gone AWOL.
Instead, he tore the door open and launched himself into the sky. Rage galvanized his body, each massive wing-beat more powerful than the last. He tore through the air like a bullet, racing the sun. His sweetness was clever. She’d timed her escape perfectly and now he was almost out of time. He had to get to the city before the sun rose fully or he was shit out of luck and unable to fly, reliant on human forms of transport to locate his wayward mate.
As he flew, he battered at the mental block she’d placed between them. Since he’d met her, he’d been able to sense her. Not now. She obviously had her magic back, the spell she’d hit him with in the kitchen was evidence of that, and she was far, far stronger than any of them had suspected.
Nevaris Stormcaller. The most accomplished amongst us.
Shit. She’d told him herself. Her mother had been one of their greatest warriors, so it would stand to reason that her daughter would outstrip her. After all, who else would a Queen task to protect her child other than one of her greatest warriors?
She’d even told him about her mission, but had he listened? Shit.
Instead, he’d been too intent on his own operation. On the outcome that he and the PPA needed. He’d assumed she’d be happy to stay put, like Baron’s mate Honor, and play the little woman so that he could be all alpha male and protect her.
But Baron’s mate was new to the paranormal world, and more than that, she was a human in the midst of the monsters. Chase wasn’t. His mate had fought on the battlefield, commanded men and dragons long before any of the rest of them had been born.
He’d expected a warrior to walk away from a sworn duty thousands of the years in the making. How fucking stupid could he get?
The sun brightened the sky and he swore, the increased light meaning he was flying blind. In desperation, he reached out mentally, searching for help even as he relayed his situation. That help came from an unexpected quarter. All over the city, gargoyles turned their faces upward, and opened their minds, giving him the eyes in the sky he needed to navigate blind.
Roaring his thanks, he wheeled around his apartment building. About to land, he caught a hint of a familiar scent, and plummeted to the sidewalk instead. Alerted by the increasing shadow, early-morning workers looked up, screaming as he dropped and scattering lest he crush them to death. At the last moment, he snapped his wings wide and pulled up. His back claws had barely grazed the ground before he shifted.
“Pixie,” he snarled, advancing on the one figure that hadn’t run.
Rat. He’d have known that scent anywhere, and so did his dragon. The creature raged within him, stomping its feet and demanding to be let at the pixie. Grabbing the guy by the sleeveless vest he wore, Duke threw him at the nearest wall hard enough to crack the brickwork. The pixie slid down the wall to the ground.
Duke advanced on him, a low dangerous snarl bubbling from his lips.
“I’m going to rip you to fucking shreds.”
Chapter Eleven
Gods, it felt good to be back. Really back. Her night with Duke had done two things. It had given her the one thing she’d never thought to be lucky enough to have, a mate of her own, and it had broken Sellers’ control spell.
She still wore the collar around her throat as she strode through the corridors toward Sellers’ lair. Whether or not he could sense that the spell was broken she didn’t know, but if he couldn’t, she wasn’t going to lose the element of surprise by taking it off just yet.
A frown creased her brow as darkness gave way to the hotel-style corridors far earlier than she was expecting. Her footsteps were silent in the plush carpeting but she wasn’t naive enough to think he didn’t know she was coming. Sellers might be an arrogant bastard, but he’d been clever and determined enough to track down an ancient spell and make it work. Just like he’d tracked down the sleeping place of the last of the royal line of Shadow dragons, and managed to be-spell both her and Baby before they’d awoken.
Chase rolled her neck until her shoulder clicked. Emotions held in check as befitted a warrior-mage of her standing, she carried on walking. Sellers’ fortunes were about to be reversed in as bloody and brutal a way as she could devise. And after centuries of war, she could be very inventive indeed.
Reaching the main doors to the lair, everything was quiet. Too quiet. All her instincts on high alert, she slowed down and checked around her with all her senses. The decorated plaster and plush furnishings of the illusion-wrought lobby looked real now. Before, she’d been able distinguish the illusion from reality, but now she couldn’t. Which meant that somehow Sellers had gotten a hell of a lot more powerful.
Checking the link to her dragon, she found the beast quiet and waiting. The change lurked beneath her skin, ready to burst through at a moment’s notice, or feed her strength in this form, should she need it.
Grim determination filled her. She was ready. Thousands of years of sleep separated her from her last battle, but she was ready for this one. Once she’d crushed warlocks beneath her boot heels, and today, she’d do it again.
Striding forward, she pushed the doors to the main rooms open so hard they slammed into the walls either side loud enough to make half the occupants of the room look up sharply. The rest continued to look toward the raised dais at the center of the room.
Chase stopped dead. The room had changed. It had been a slick, penthouse-style room with marble and chrome as far as the eye could see. Now it looked more like the great halls of the castles she’d known before her enchanted sleep. Like them, it was rectangular, with a large throne at the far end and a high ceiling lost in shadow she knew hadn’t been possible in the original cavern.
Pillars lined the walls, the darkened recesses filled with Red Caps and taller figures. Trolls and Orcs. She paid them no mind, both burnt just as well as Red Caps did, and moved her attention to the center of the room. Fire pits surrounded the dais like sentinels, but it was what was on the raised platform that made her heart stall in her chest.
Sellers stood before an altar like the one he’d tried to sacrifice the human girl on. Like before, he was dressed in all his ceremonial robes. Head to toe black silk decorated with runes. Half had been badly drawn, their shapes no doubt changed over the years by lazy scribe after lazy scribe, each slight change degrading the rune until it was so far from its original form it was useless. The rest though, blazed with power, casting light onto the altar and its occupant.
His back was to her, arms spread wide as he chanted, so she couldn’t see whether the altar was empty or not. As with most of his spells, the majority of what he spouted was utter nonsense. Mystical sounding mumbo-jumbo. Every now and then though, there was a real incantation buried in the nonsense. A madman with half a clue and an inkling of how to get some real power.
He ended his incantation, and turned his head, his arms still raised. “Ahh, Chase. So good of you to join us. Especially now...how do the kids say it? Oh, yes. Now the party’s getting started.”
He laughed, the maniacal sound bouncing off the high walls and dropped his arms. Chase’s breath caught in her throat. There, stretched out on the altar, lay Baby. Blood covered her tiny chest, the scales slick and red as the knife that lay discarded next to her. Sellers turned, dropping a goblet to the floor. It hit with a clatter, rolling end over end to come to a rest facing Chase. A trail of blood marked the floor where it had travelled.
“But...why?”
Baby’s blood was what powered Sellers’ Dragos enchantment. To drink so deeply would risk damaging the source of his power.
Sellers’ laugh chilled her to the soul. “Why, dearie? Because I needed a dragon-mate’s lifeblood to cement my power. To ensure no one can take it away.
”
“B-baby...had a mate?” The world shifted for Chase. Baby wasn’t even old enough to change and choose her own name yet. How could she have had a mate? And who? The only two shadows that she knew of were both mated. “There are no un-mated dragons in this time.”
“Ahh...now you see, that’s where I found a loophole in the spell.” Sellers grinned smugly. “It’s a common misconception and I’ll grant you, it fooled me at first, but the text can be read both ways. As a Dragon-mate’s heart blood or a mated dragon’s life blood.”
Chase blinked as she put the pieces together. He’d linked himself to Baby.... Lifting her head, she extended her senses and reached past Sellers for her charge. She staggered back. Nothing. She couldn’t even sense the tiniest spark of life from the tiny form on the altar behind Sellers. Baby was dead. She’d failed.
The scream burst from Chase’s body without warning as grief and rage struck. Power built up in the hall like an electrical charge ready to go off as she stared at the human warlock. Darkness spilled from her pores to surround her. Once, she’d crushed men like this like bugs and scattered them in her wake.
“Pray to whatever gods you hold dear.” Her lips curled back in a snarl, her voice deeper than her human form should allow. “Because I’m going to rip your heart out and feed it to you, still beating.”
He tipped his head back and laughed again. Spreading his arms, he beckoned her on. “Come on then, little dragon. See if you can best me, the most powerful warlock to ever have lived!”
As she watched, the dragos enchantment surrounded him, scales slithering over his skin in transparent dragonscale armor. She knew the lore. No dragon could penetrate it, either with claw or tooth.
“Kill her!” Sellers screamed to his minions at the same moment she launched herself into the air, her shadow form exploding outward in a heartbeat and battle began in earnest.
With a roar, she flipped and spun in the air, lashing out with her claws and tail as Sellers’ pet monsters attacked her. Screams filled the air, her claws dismembering those unfortunate enough to be in their path while the razor-sharp scales along her tail decapitated the taller amongst their number.
Racing between the pillars, she used them for cover as Sellers fired spells at her. But he wasn’t quick enough. She was already gone by the time they splashed harmlessly against the walls behind where she had been.
Chanting under her breath, she pulled power from the witching, throwing spells back at the warlock in the middle of the room. Lightning strikes, thunderbolts...she even whipped the air in the room up into a tornado to throw at him. They bounced off his armor, and into the morass of Red Caps and assorted other critters under Sellers’ control.
Screams of terror and pain filled the air as a counter point to her roars. She was forced to dodge to the side as the tornado spell ricocheted off the walls like a spring caught in a box. It picked up Red Caps as it barreled around, slamming their bodies into walls and the floor until it resembled a cloud of red dust and body parts.
She twined her serpentine body out of the way and turned to let loose another bout of flame at Sellers. He dodged easily and threw back a barrage of lightning. Shit, he was getting stronger and faster thanks to the Dragos spell.
“Admit it, Nightborne,” he yelled over the din. “You’re outmatched and outnumbered.”
Jumping up onto the altar with far more agility than a human of his age should be able to muster, he kicked Baby’s body. It rolled and fell into one of the fire baskets, knocking it over and spewing both the tiny form and flaming coals all over the floor.
“Your princess is dead.” He yelled. “You’re a failure and I’ve won. You might as well admit it and I’ll make sure your death is an easy one!”
Catching herself on a pillar, she wound herself around it and pulled her massive body from the shadows into the corporeal realm. Magic hit her, absorbing into her scales as she spread her wings and dropped her head to look at Sellers.
“The only death here will be yours,” she hissed, icy determination settling into her bones. Letting go of her perch, she fell toward the ground, shifting forms at the last minute to land on her feet. “You wanted to be a Dragos, Sellers...you wanted to play dragon.”
She walked toward him, holding out her hand and calling a blade direct from the witching. The magic formed the outline first, then filled the blade in until, with a snap, she called it into reality. A real sword, formed from magic, but no less deadly for that. She came to a stop in the flames on the floor, standing directly over Baby’s body.
Grief wrapped around her heart, she reached out mentally one last time to Duke. Just a brief touch of her mind to his. No words. Just feelings. The love they’d never get to share now, her sorrow that she hadn’t gotten to know him, and her regret that their happily ever after never had a chance.
Tears flowed down Chase’s cheeks but she paid them no mind. Widening her stance, she spared a glance down. The tiny form of the dragon princess lay between her feet, curled up as though she was asleep.
She might not have been able to protect her in life, but by Hegra, she would protect Baby in death. And if it took her own death to ensure an evil like Sellers wasn’t realized onto the world, then so be it.
Looking up, she focused on Sellers and lifted her blade.
“You wanted to play in my world. So let’s play.”
***
Duke grabbed the pixie before he could get to his feet, hauling him up and slamming him into the wall again for good measure. Shrieks around them told him the civilian population was freaking out, but right now he didn’t give a shit.
“I’m going to rip your entrails out,” he promised, shoving his face right into Rat’s so the guy could read death in Duke’s eyes. His own painful and bloody death. So what that Sellers had given the pair of them a love potion. The bastard still worked for the warlock and he’d had his hands all over Duke’s mate.
That was more than enough to seal his fate.
“No!” Ris erupted out of nowhere, getting between Duke and Rat before he could knock the Pixie’s head off. “He’s one of us.”
“What the fuck?” Duke snarled, trying to shove the Seer out of the way, but the guy was stronger than his lean frame would suggest and hung on with a tenacity that would have done a dragon proud. “Ris, get your skinny ass out the way so I can teach this guy a lesson about touching what’s not his.”
Ris shook his head, using his shoulder against the middle of Duke’s chest to shove him out of the way as he turned. All the while he kept himself between Duke and the pixie, who leaned against the wall, wiping blood from the corner of his mouth.
“He’s. One. Of. Us,” Ris repeated, a hand on Duke’s chest to stop him when he tried to surge forward. He fought back the urge to part shift and just roast the Seer. As irritating as he normally found those with foresight, Ris was fast on the way to becoming a close friend. He didn’t barbeque his friends. Not without extreme provocation.
“One of us?” Duke’s eyebrow winged up. “As in he’s vaguely humanoid or did you have something more specific in mind? ‘Cause unless you ain’t telling me something, buddy, you sure as fuck ain’t a pixie. And I know I’m not.”
“He’s PPA.”
Duke blinked in surprise. Okay, so of all the things Ris could have said, that was so not what he expected. “Excuse me?”
“PPA. I’m serious.” Ris managed to back him up a couple of steps. “He’s deep undercover. Like so deep undercover that even the Seer team don’t know about him. I had to bug shit out of Iliona to get her to admit he’s one of ours.”
Duke looked over the guy’s shoulder to Rat. The pixie leaned against the wall, all nonchalant like. Just his expression, somewhere between not caring and ‘fuck-you’ pissed Duke off, so he surged forward again, the memory of his mate in this man’s arms uppermost in his mind.
“No!” Ris was there again, holding onto him as Duke managed a couple of steps. “Besides, take a sniff. A good one. Do yo
u really want to get into a pissing contest with a demon prince and start a war with hell?”
Hell. Duke recoiled a couple of steps, looking from Ris to Rat and back again. Then he did as he was told and took a deep breath, rolling it over his tongue to taste the scent. His eyes snapped wide open.
“Fuck me. You’re a demon.”
“Demon prince,” Ris corrected.
Rat pushed away from the wall with a groan and swept his arms out for a bow. “Raterrenh Di Lakai Telosa to be exact.” He coughed and winced, pressing a hand to his side. “Hell of a throw you got there, dragon.”
Duke shrugged. “One of a twin. Sibling quarrels get nasty and when your brother can turn into a creature bigger than a city bus, you build some serious muscle.”
“Huh, yeah. Heard about you two.” Rat rolled his shoulders as if easing out the kinks there and when he stood up straight this time, he didn’t wince. Duke was impressed. Either the guy was a hell of an actor, because he had to have bust a couple of his ribs with that throw, or he healed real quick. “But we don’t have time for chit-chat. I broke cover because this is more important than my mission. Sellers found a way to cheat the Dragos enchantment.”
He looked directly at Duke. “I’m afraid your mate is walking into a trap.”
Fear galvanized Duke but he hid it deep down. Chase could take care of herself, at least until the cavalry got there. He nodded, motioning for Rat to lead the way. “Then what are we waiting for? Lead on, man.”
It took them longer than Duke liked to cross half the city, where Rat lead them into the middle of an abandoned industrial estate. Duke knew the area, he’d flown over it many times. As far as he recalled from the news, the whole block was due for redevelopment soon.
“Where are we going?” he demanded, as the half-demon led them deeper into the set of crumbling buildings. Rat stopped, yanked up a manhole cover and looked up.
“To the lair.”
