by Tate James
My fingers curled around the rough horns protruding from George's head as he snaked forward, muscles bunching beneath my thighs, sending us flying toward the entrance to the sewer at a speed I could hardly even comprehend in the dark.
We burst out of the half-open grate, back into the yard, and then up, up, up. I screamed because well, shit, I was afraid of fucking heights. George took us up in the air and swirled, the long sinuous length of his body curling around itself as he spun to face whatever the hell was going on back at ground-level.
“Stay sharp.” Gram's voice said near my right ear, her clipped British accent snapping me out of my brief moment of shock.
Water cascaded out of the large pipe, carrying with it at least two bodies that I could see—Joan and Reg. They landed in a heap on the grass, but neither was moving. And even from here, it was easy to see that the water was tinged with red.
“Somebody's bleeding,” I heard myself choke out, glancing over at the semi-translucent expression on my grandmother's face. The stern Englishwoman I'd known my whole life, this stoic being made of stone and Earl Grey tea, she looked fucking terrified.
“Joan,” George said as I glanced over my shoulder and saw the entire wall of glass windows in the library explode outward in a sea of glass. Two different dragons, ones I didn't recognize, came flying out, one of them sparkling with white-hot flickers of electricity and the other, a shimmery emerald green with leaves for scales.
Since I knew they weren't my boys, I just assumed they were Joan's.
George dropped us down so fast my stomach bottomed out, my thighs clenching tight to keep from falling off. His large, clawed feet gripped the grass as we landed, tail lashing out and cutting a bush right in half. I couldn't see what the hell it was he was aiming at, but in the next moment, I heard a sound, a crackling rush that preceded a massive wave of orange-red flames.
For a second there, I was completely stunned. I just sat on George's back like a useless lump—hey, I was a barista not a ninja.
Fortunately, Billy was there in a split second, the sinuous flaming whip of his body sliding into place in front of us, cutting the wall of fire off in its track. It shot skyward, like a fireworks display, the ground beneath it steaming, a few nearby bushes crackling with flames.
“Arizona, wake up!” Gram snapped as I blinked a few times and came to, sliding off of George's back and landing in the mud. No sooner had I done that then he was being rolled over by another dragon, this one a shimmery pink, blossoms sprouting from its scaled hide.
As pretty as it was, as soon as its body hit George's, I heard the awful crack of bone and a howl escaped his fanged maw, more animal than human. Were we … losing?
“Who the hell are these people?!” I asked as I whipped my head around and saw several more individual scuffles happening amongst all the madness. It was time for a simple mathematics equation. If I had four dragons, and Joan had five, and I saw six more … then what? Who the hell were they?
“You should shift,” Gram told me as I stumbled forward and knelt down next to Reg and Joan. Neither of them were moving and that scared the shit out of me. I didn't exactly know Reg, and I was definitely not onboard for the whole 'arranged supernatural marriage' thing, but I didn't want him dead.
I really, really didn't want him dead.
“Reg,” I said, turning him over and checking his pulse with shaking fingers. He was alive, just unconscious. Thank fuck, I thought as I breathed a sigh of relief and tried to do the same for Joan. She was … oh god. As soon as I turned her over and saw that one side of her face was mutilated, I felt myself getting dizzy, my stomach twisting itself into knots. I was definitely not cut out for this shit.
“Shift, Arizona,” Gram snapped at me again, reaching out and grabbing onto my arm with a ghostly hand. I could actually feel her fingers wrapping around my arm, shards of ice cutting into me and jump-starting my heart.
“I don't know how to fucking shift!” I screamed back, because Jesus H., shifting into a dragon wasn't exactly a trick they taught you working the counter at Starbucks. I crawled closer to Joan, ignoring the raw meat that was the left side of her face, and I untied the scarf around her neck, using it to staunch some of the bleeding. The woman was a bitch, for sure, but that didn't mean she deserved to die.
Gram reached out and took me by the chin, her ghostly nails digging into me like they used to do when I was a child and being punished for something.
“Keep calm and carry on,” she said, and I almost laughed. That was a joke, right? An ill-timed one maybe, but still … “Arizona, if you don't get up and fight now, at least three people are going to die here tonight—possibly more.”
“How could you know that?” I shouted back, trying to make sense of all the commotion happening in the yard—and believe me, there was a lot of it. “You can't possibly know that,” I whispered as Reg groaned and rolled onto his side, coughing up a healthy amount of blood.
“Arizona, I'm a witch,” Gram said, kneeling next to me in her houndstooth patterned skirt and jacket. “I get premonitions; I always have. Now, you can bloody listen to me or you can sit here and watch several people die—your choice.”
With a sigh and a tight smile that stretched the wrinkles on either side of her mouth, she disappeared.
“Reg,” I said, after I'd tied Joan's scarf around her head, stopping up at least some of the bleeding. “Are you okay?” Stupid question maybe to ask someone who'd just coughed up blood, but I wasn't exactly feeling rational in that moment.
Reg didn't even get a chance to answer me because suddenly, there was this strong pressure around my waist, like I'd been grabbed by a fucking anaconda. Up and off the ground I went, whisked away like a doll.
When I came face-to-face with the thing that was holding me, I just about lost it completely.
It was yet another dragon, but not one of the ones I'd seen before—a new one.
Its face was split in half like fucking Pac-Man or some shit, and its teeth were black, rotted and oozing pus from its gums. When it hissed at me, the stench was almost unbearable. Bones protruded from the thinly stretched skin across its body, and its eyes … they were just sockets of darkness, like pockets of shadow.
I knew right away that I was looking at the … cuntmuffin? Shit if I could remember its proper name.
From behind the creature, a beautiful woman appeared, her hair the color of sunshine, her lips a crooked red smile that I was pretty sure was not lipstick but blood.
She paused next to the monster holding me and laid a hand on its side, leaning in close and whispering something in that mystical language the boys had used on me during the, uh, marking.
Slithering up next to her was a dragon that looked like it was made of fucking metal, its skin a shiny silver that was as unnatural as it was beautiful. It hissed at me when it caught me staring and I froze up completely.
“Whoa!” I yelled, holding my hands up defensively. “I really feel like there's been some sort of misunderstanding here? Maybe we all need to sit down and discuss it over whiskey?”
The woman with the bloodied lips, and the metal dragon both bared their teeth at me in a snarl, and the thing holding me tightened its grip. Sharp spikes of pain shot through me as its claws penetrated my flesh and I let out a yelping scream.
“Arizona, you shift your lazy ass into dragon form and teach this festering heap of shit who's boss around here!” Gram's ghost was hovering near my head and as she spoke, the grotesque creature turned his attention past me like he could see her.
For some reason though, the sound of my straitlaced grandmother swearing gave me the push I needed, where the threat of certain death had failed.
Screwing my eyes shut, to try and block out the distraction that was kuntemopharn, I searched frantically for the seed of magic that George had described to me in the sex shop and thankfully found it, sitting there in the dark of my mind, waiting for me. It wasn't as big or as bright as the ball I had returned to the shop assista
nt, but I instinctively knew it was mine.
With a quick mental high five for finally remembering this wanker's name, I stretched out my intentions toward the glowing blob and willed it to understand what I needed.
A warm shudder radiated through me starting from deep within my chest and flowing to my extremities, and I knew I must have succeeded when Grams whooped near my ear.
“Yes!” she yelled. “You did it, Duckie! Now kick his ugly ass!”
Oh yeah, just like that, huh Grams? Just … kick his ugly ass. Yeah sure, no worries. I'll just … ugh.
When my form had shifted, I'd slipped through the tight grasp Kuntemopharn had on me, my whole being turning to a sparkling aubergine colored mist before reforming me into my newly acquired dragon form on the grass some several yards away from the bad guys.
The woman with the bloody lips snarled something in that language I like, super needed to take Rosetta Stone classes on, her voice sounding like barbed wire scraping down a blackboard.
“Daniel,” she said, and although I had no idea who she was talking to (maybe cuntmuffin had upgraded to a less humiliating sort of name), I could tell she was pissed. “Let's get the little bitch and drag her fat ass out of here.”
Well shit. If that wasn't a bit brutal, then I was a purple dragon. Oh wait …
My brain was teeming with new information, new skills that I could now use, and I realized quickly that this form had the collective knowledge of the men I was now connected to. It was a little unnerving but useful as fuck, as it taught me how to tap into my elemental powers without the trial and error of getting ripped into tiny pieces and then shoved down a storm drain.
Around me, the good guys were losing. Reg was out cold again, with a worrying pool of blood spreading beneath him while George and Shane took on another strangely elegant looking dragon, one that was simply a dance of smoke and shadows in the moonlight. Billy, ever the badass, had just stopped another one of the fuckers from biting Joan's head clean off her corpse ... er, body? I had no idea if she was alive or not by that point.
It was do or die. Literally. If I didn't do something, then we could all very well die here on this lawn.
Following my instincts, I drew up water from the ground, forming it into a hardened spear of ice and hurling it at the deformed and decaying dragon. The spear flew faster than any human could have thrown it, but at the last second the metal plated dragon threw a wing in its path, shattering it, the tiny pieces sprinkling all over the grass.
“Really? You're going to make this difficult, you little cunt?” the woman with the bloodied mouth snarled at me. I guessed she must not only be a misogynistic slut-shamer, but also their designated voice box.
Her powers must really suck if that was all she was good for.
Hell, maybe the only skills she had had to do with her mouth?
Rising to the challenge though, I pulled sparks from the fire Billy was wielding and fed it with wind to ignite the blazing ball before sending it hurtling toward cuntmuffin and his bitches. This time I followed the ball of fire with a hard gust of wind, forcing the blaze hotter so that when it hit the metallic lizard it melted a satisfying hole straight through her wing and splattering across Kuntemopharn's rotting face.
I was permitted a short moment of glee, watching the big bad guy collapse and struggle in the grass before he was back on his feet and flying at me. In his face, I saw my death, and it wasn't pretty.
Right as his full, rotten weight should have connected with me, a snarling mass of fur and teeth knocked him clean off course and tumbled with his momentum across the grass a small distance. Another blur of fur leapt over me to join in the fight and quickly I noticed we had gained some more allies. Suddenly, we were back on the winning team, and this wanker knew it.
His backup dragons retreated from their individual battles, attacking the wolves instead, who were ripping chunks of decaying flesh from Kuntemopharn's hide with their razor-sharp fangs. There were certainly some interesting outfits draped over those lupines, but I could tell right away that none of them were Britt—from the lack of pink vinyl, obviously.
The pony-sized wolves tore into the battle like they had a personal vendetta to take care of and hell, for all I knew, they really did. Glancing over my shoulder—it was a big, scaly, purple, muscly shoulder but a shoulder nonetheless—I noticed that more people from the party were coming our way.
A shout sounded in that ethereal elemental tongue, and I noticed right away that several of the dragons were pulling back and heading for the sewer grate—Kuntemopharn's rotting corpse among them. Eight separate forms slid into the shadows and disappeared into the sewage—a few dark shapes taking off after them.
Shifting back into my human form with the practiced ease of a dopey, gangly teenager with knobby knees, I scrambled to my feet and half-stumbled, half-sprinted across the grass to Reg's lifeless body. He was facedown in the sopping wet grass, his mother's mutilated body only feet away from him.
“Reg,” I gasped, gently turning his face to the side, for fear of him drowning in the inch or so of water surrounding him. Okay, wait, maybe that was dumb. He was a water elemental after all.
As I brushed some of his blonde hair off his forehead, Charlie and several of Joan's other husbands came over and knelt beside us. I heard what sounded suspiciously like supernatural cursing in that strange, eerie elemental language (there it is again!), and then they were lifting her up like she was made of glass, carrying her in the direction of the house.
Either Reg was totally okay or else his dads cared more about his mum than him because they left him right there on the muddy ground in front of me.
“Where's Shane?” I asked when George appeared on Reg's other side, also in human form. He was missing a substantial chunk from his left arm. Like, meat was showing. I felt my stomach turn over and dropped my eyes back to the comatose elemental in front of me.
“I don't know,” George said, and it sounded like he was panting pretty heavily. “We need a healer though,” he continued through gritted teeth, flicking his brown eyes up to mine. “Let's get Reg inside.”
“I've got him,” Billy said, appearing from the bushes and bending down to grab his friend. He tossed Reg over one shoulder and stood back up, muscles ripping. It would've been, like, seriously fucking sexy in a different context. “You guys look for Shane; I don't feel him nearby though.” Billy started walking and then paused when he noticed the wound in George's arm; one charcoal brow cocked up. “But don't take too long—you need a fucking healer like now.”
“I'll be fine,” George said, and there was something about his face that was almost scary, a quiet simmering anger underneath that made me wonder what would happen if he was pushed to the edge. “Arizona, you're the spirit elemental here,” he continued, lifting up his right hand and touching the bleeding wound with tentative fingers. At least it was on the side without the tree tattoo, right? Small miracles and all that. “Search for Shane's essence.”
“His essence?” I asked, realizing then that I was breathing just as hard as he was. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw several werewolves sniffing around the grounds. Still no Britt—no way I'd miss that hot pink miniskirt. Guess she really was off doing the Dances with Wolves thing with the alpha male. I could only hope the sex was good and that he didn't have an ugly penis because I was going to have to hear all about it.
“How do I do that?” I asked, knowing there wasn't going to be an easy answer. A lot of this magic shit was sort of … intuitive. I slicked some wavy blonde hair behind my shoulders and tried to breathe. “Look deep inside yourself, you must,” I whispered and George raised his eyebrows.
“Are you … making Yoda jokes right now?” he asked, but at least he almost smiled. That was something. “Yes, look inside and find the connection you have to each one of us. Try to follow that to its source. It should be easy to designate which belongs to Shane.”
“I'll do my best!” I said, realizing that my hands were starting
to shake. I think spare adrenaline was still coursing through me, making me feel like I'd downed ten large cups of coffee. I was hyper-fucking-active. Closing my eyes—because it just seemed right to do magical things with one's eyes closed—I searched for that glowing ball inside of me. I realized it was probably just my mind's way of rationalizing an impulse that felt natural but yet was impossible to understand. There was no actual glowing light ball inside of me, but that was the easiest way to perceive it.
I felt around for some sort of connection to the guys, not really expecting to find much. I mean, I'd known them a handful of days. That wasn't long to feel anything for anybody, was it?
But I guess when George said connection, he meant magical connection. Our little orgy had opened up all sorts of magical pathways inside of me.
Searching around, I felt the slightest tug in George's direction. When I probed at it with my mind, I could feel the cool, easy earthiness of his magic. Touching on that, I could almost feel my mind blooming with growing things, wet earth, the sweet heady scent of floral blossoms.
“I think I've got it,” I said. Either that or this was just another part of my hallucinatory dream sequence and I'd soon wake up … I opened my eyes, but the sight of the bloody water near my feet, the broken metal grate from the sewers, George's arm … it was all too distracting. I snapped them closed again, took a deep breath, and felt for that wild twist of tornado that was Shane. If someone were to ask me to picture an air elemental in my head, I would've thought soft, wishy-washy, weak. But that wasn't Shane at all.
I kept searching, touching on the hot flaming brand that was Billy, the … sultry … fluidity that was Reg (of course that asshole would find a way to make water sexy), and something else … There was an electric tingle that traced right up my spine and into my skull, making me feel on edge, my teeth gritting against the buzz of energy coursing through my body.
Lightning struck several places around the yard; I couldn't see it with my eyes closed, but I could feel it.
