by Willa Hart
“Which one’s Sandro?” she asked, her eyes wide and her voice worried.
I scanned the chaotic jumble of dragons flying toward the battle, picking out my guys easily. “I think he’s that emerald green one, right there.”
She nodded, tracking his every dip, dodge and swerve. I did the same with my guys for a minute, but every last one of them were holding their own. Better than that, they were kicking some serious jadokari butt!
While both sides were occupied, I quickly collected my guys’ clothes, hugging them to my chest like a security blanket, smelling their combined scents and trying to tamp down my natural worry for them. The thought of losing even one of them filled me with such dread it threatened to drag me into a very dark place. I shut out the thought and focused on the fact our side seemed to be winning.
Lazlo’s dragon swooped into view, hot on the tail of an orange dragon who kept blasting spurts of dragonfire back at his pursuer. Another dragon joined Lazlo, this one a very pale green, verging on gray, and just as fierce. I caught a sense of familiarity and realized it had to be Almeric. Damn, the old guy still had game!
Together they chased the orange dragon across the sky, finally jointly blasting flames at him. He screeched in pain or fury and kicked up his speed a bit, flying off toward the mountains.
I watched the battle for a few minutes, astounded at the insanity of dragons flying around a human town with impunity. And the humans I saw running from the fight, while terrified, seemed almost familiar with such sights. I would have expected them to stand around in shock, wondering if they were sharing a nightmare or hallucination. But they all seemed to take cover like pioneers when the black hats rode into town, just wanting to survive a fight that wasn’t theirs.
Ash darted through the thick of the enemies with more purpose and decisiveness than I thought he was capable of. He weaved his way around three beefy dragons who surely had a few tons on him, but they couldn’t keep up with him. He flew circles around them, performed beautifully executed barrel rolls to evade them, and glided through the air with more elegance than a hummingbird. Overtaking one of them from behind, he raked his claws across the jadokari’s back, sending blood spraying into the air and eventually spattering to the ground below.
As one of the biggest dragons on the scene, Kellum squared off with the largest enemy, chasing him so high up their shapes were only tiny dark dots in the distance. Then they grew bigger and bigger until I could make out that their claws and jaws were locked on the other in a fatal embrace and they were in freefall.
“Get back!” Tamar cried, pulling Zoe and me under the cover of a large — and living — tree. Not that a tree could really protect us from two massive dragons plummeting to the earth, but it was a nice thought.
The shockwave of their bodies slamming into the ground knocked me off my feet and rained clumps of dirt down on us. As soon as I recovered, I scrambled to my knees and found Kellum on top of the jadokari, his head pulled back and his jaws open wider than I thought possible. Then those jaws clamped down on the enemy’s neck, twisting and jerking until a sickening snap spelled the end for the jadokari. With blood dripping from his maw, Kellum wasted no time in leaving behind his quarry and chasing after another one.
Despite all their constant bickering, Ryen and Danic worked magnificently together. Danic would simply use his thick skull to ram other dragons mid-flight, dazing them from the impact. That’s when Ryen would dart in to sink his teeth into them. They made an impressive team.
Even Sandro slayed it. His brightly colored dragon made it easy to find him, and if I ever lost track, all I had to do was follow Zoe’s intense gaze. He soared around the outer edges of the battle with two jadokari trailing him closely. They were gaining on him, and when they were close enough to fill their maws with fire, Sandro tucked his wings tight against his body and dove nose-first until he was under the enemy dragons, then spun around so he was flying upside-down. As the enemies soared over him, Sandro’s hind legs shot up and his claws dragged down the soft underbelly of one of the dragons. That one screamed in pain and veered away from the fight, while Rufus swept in to finish off the other one.
“Favor, are we winning?” Zoe asked, her eyes never budging from Sandro.
I looped my arm through hers and tried to calm my nerves. Not an easy task when the Dragon’s Heart was suddenly pounding fast and heavy against my tummy, as if it knew what was happening.
“I sure hope so,” I said, shooting a quick look to Hale.
He looked hopeful, as did Tamar. Several jadokari lay dead or wounded on the ground and it looked like their numbers were declining quickly. Apparently, they only liked to instigate when they were guaranteed a win. Once the tide turned on them, they scattered like cockroaches. Or died. Either way was fine by me.
“Who’s that?” Zoe asked.
For the first time since Sandro flew off, her attention had strayed. She was watching a figure running toward us from between the two apartment buildings. Two more figures followed the first, and as I squinted, I recognized her.
“Oh, that’s Mariam,” I breathed, happy to see she hadn’t been harmed in the fight at the decoy building. The dragon world couldn’t afford to lose their females.
“Thank god,” Tamar said. “More enforcers.”
“Hale, you might get to fight after all,” I said, but he was too busy watching the dragon battle.
Mariam never slowed. She was in an all-out sprint, her attention never wavering from us, which seemed weird. Something must have spooked her to set her on fire like that. I glanced at the two men running behind her, but they seemed to be keeping pace, not chasing her.
“What the—” I started, then Mariam drew close enough for me to catch the look in her eyes.
Pure fire.
Pure purpose.
Pure hate.
The hair on the back of my neck stood on end as our gazes locked. She wasn’t running toward me, she was running at me, but my brain was so surprised — and she was moving so fast — I didn’t have time to react.
The air and my wits were knocked out of me as her body slammed into mine, sending us both flying to the ground. Strong fingers wrapped around my throat, and a tiny part of my brain wanted to laugh in her face at the effort. I couldn’t breathe anyway, so what was the use of choking me? But the sane part took over and clawed at her hands, desperate to pull them away.
“Give me the guli,” she screamed in Balaur.
Somewhere behind her, I was aware of Zoe wincing at the language as Hale and Tamar engaged the two enforcers who’d followed Mariam. Tamar gripped one by the throat, picking him up off the ground and then tossing him like a spent cigarette butt. He scrabbled to his feet and lunged for Zoe, but Tamar was on him like white on rice.
I managed to get my fingers under Mariam’s hands and pulled them a fraction of an inch away from my neck so I could swallow a lungful of air. Then she was back at it. I flapped a hand at Hale, but he was busy with the second enforcer, trading jabs as they both expanded in size, but didn’t fully shift.
I slapped feebly at Mariam’s wildly grinning face as she choked the life out of me and wondered what the actual fuck was going on. Mariam was an ally, if not a friend. Hell, I’d pushed Kellum to take her as a mate!
“Where is it?” she seethed, and that’s when it hit me. Mariam was our mole.
She let up just enough to allow me the oxygen to speak. “Hidden,” I croaked, trying to wriggle out of her grasp. No luck.
“Liar!” she screamed and closed my throat again.
Bright sparkles lit up behind my eyelids. My lungs burned even as my vision dimmed. This was it. This was how I was going to die. Not by fire or claws or fangs, but by choking. How stupid was that?
“Get off my friend, you bitch!”
The weight on me doubled, then fell away completely. I took a few choking gasps, my hands instinctively going to my throat, then saw what had freed me. Zoe was a whirling dervish on Mariam’s back, punching and sla
pping and scratching every inch of bare flesh she could find. Mariam spun circles, trying to reach far enough behind to pull the fierce human off of her but failing miserably. Zoe delivered a powerful punch straight to the side of Mariam’s head, knocking her sideways, toward the big tree we’d hidden under.
If my body and brain hadn’t been starved for oxygen, I would have taken a mental picture of Zoe kicking the ass of a dragon, but sadly, it didn’t last long. Mariam staggered up to the tree, turned and then slammed backward into the trunk. Zoe coughed out a grunt and crumpled to the ground as Mariam raced back to me. But by then I was on my feet.
She stopped a few feet short, stooped and arms spread, ready to leap on me again. “Where’s the guli?”
“I told you, I hid it.”
“Lies! Lies! Lies! I know it’s on your body. I feel it calling to me. Give it to me. Now!”
Hale and Tamar kept looking my way but they each had their hands full. If they even thought of coming to my aid, it would leave Zoe, me and them open to a coordinated attack. As much as I wanted Hale to rescue me, to take this bitch out once and for all, I was going to have to hold her off until he or Tamar — maybe both — took out their opponents first. With a deep, bracing breath, I snarled at Mariam and said the only two words that made sense in that moment.
“Fuck you.”
Her teeth sharpened to points as her lips slid into a wide grin, then rushed me. This time I was ready for her — as ready as I could be to take on a dragon in hand-to-hand combat. We both screamed our fury as she grabbed at me and I knocked her hands away, time and again. This time her target was my shirt — namely, trying to pull it off my body to get at the Heart.
Zoe recovered enough to scrabble at Mariam’s back, trying to pull her away from me, but she simply wasn’t strong enough. I wasn’t either. I tried every self-defense move Danic had taught me, but nothing could bring down Mariam. Two humans didn’t stand a chance against a dragon. Not physically.
But mentally…
I’d discovered half my powers accidentally, and I wondered what else I had lurking deep inside me, waiting to come out when circumstances warranted. Grabbing Mariam’s wrists, I caught her gaze and focused all my mental energy directly into her beautiful green eyes and let loose a blast as loud and powerful as I could manage.
FUCK YOU!
A cannon might as well have gone off between us. Mariam went flying, landing on her back a good twenty feet away and skidding in the dirt for several more. She lay there for a long moment, and I almost thought I killed her, when she lifted her head and locked onto me like a laser-guided missile. Her pupils flashed reptilian, her body expanded, and her fangs descended. She was shifting into her dragon and she was pissed.
Gaining her feet, she took a few stumbling steps toward me, then veered to the left, directly toward Zoe. I screamed. Every pent-up emotion I’d tamped down over the weeks, all the fear and confusion over this strange new world I found myself living in, the threats to everyone I loved, it all came out in a vocal chord-bursting scream that should have stopped the world from turning.
It didn’t. But it did draw Tamar’s attention away from her foe. As Mariam rushed Zoe, Tamar tackled her partially-shifted form in a blur of auburn hair. They rolled around in the dirt, punches and curses flying between them, even as they grew. Within seconds, two fully grown female dragons stood in the spot their human forms had occupied, scraps of clothing hanging from them in shreds.
The two dragons circled each other, smoke trickling up from their nostrils, as I hurried over and pulled Zoe to me, huddling at the base of the tree. Hale managed to knock out the enforcer he was fighting and turned to take on Tamar’s guy. With equally ear-splitting roars, Mariam and Tamar launched their huge bodies at each other.
Tamar got the upper hand first, toppling Mariam onto her back, but Mariam wasn’t even close to being down for the count. She kicked her hind legs at Tamar’s underbelly, sending her sprawling backward with an earth-shaking thud.
Mariam spun around until she spotted us, then her chest expanded as she drew in enough air to incinerate us. The air around her snout rippled with the heat we were about to feel. Zoe shrieked and buried her face in my neck, but I refused to cower. I looked that bitch straight in the eye as I waited for death by barbecue.
Fire exploded on our mini-battleground. But it wasn’t Zoe and me who were being burned, it was Mariam! She howled and recoiled as Tamar’s blue-white flames swallowed her whole. Tamar advanced slowly, each step concentrating the blistering heat she poured on our new enemy. Even from dozens of feet away, it stung my skin and made it hard to breathe.
It took several seconds of continuous dragonfire to weaken Mariam. At first, she tried fighting back, but when she couldn’t overpower Tamar’s flames, she took to raising her wings as a defense. But she didn’t have the power of my boys because the thin leather burned to ash in seconds, leaving her cringing on the ground. And shrinking.
Tamar let up on her assault just in time for Mariam’s blackened form to shift back to human. The sight almost brought up my lunch. She was alive, but barely. Her gorgeous, lush, brunette hair had been burned away, leaving behind blackened and crackled skin over her entire body. She writhed in pain, even as she tried to crawl away from Tamar.
Satisfied with her work, Tamar shifted back to human and advanced on Mariam. She crouched low until the other woman met her gaze.
“I never liked you,” she said, wrinkling her nose in distaste — whether from Mariam’s betrayal or the stench of her burned flesh, I couldn’t tell. “Should have trusted my gut.”
The sound of flapping wings drew my attention away from the macabre scene. My boys! One by one, they landed nearby, and with each one, the jadokari Hale had been fighting took another step away. By the time Ryen landed, the man was surrounded. He was clearly smart enough to know we had more important matters to attend to so he took his shot and bolted between Ryen and Danic, running as fast as his human feet would take him. They watched him go with dragony smirks before shifting.
Behind them, the battle had wound down, leaving only Rufus snapping at the tail of a fleeing jadokari before Lalzo’s roar called him back. Once the entire L.A. crew was on the ground and in their human forms, we advanced on Mariam as a single, cohesive unit. Even Sandro and Zoe joined us, but stayed at the back to give us space for what needed to be done.
“Unbelievable,” Kellum said, shaking his head ruefully as he looked down on Mariam’s barbecued body. “She was the mole all along?”
Ryen sneered at her, a thin line of blood trickling down his hairline. “No wonder that melot escaped so easily.”
“Tamar, you okay?” Ash asked, sidling up next to me and wrapping an arm around my waist.
“Fine, just exterminating a rat.”
“Ha!” Mariam choked out the hoarse laugh, surprising us all that she was still alive.
Tamar kneeled down and glared at her nemesis, who was little more than a skeleton with a crispy Cajun coating. “You picked the wrong side, traitor. You lost.”
To my horror, Mariam’s lips twisted into something that resembled a smile, her lips cracking until blood seeped from them. The soft crackling sound I heard turned out to be her new, toasted laugh.
“The fight…has only…begun…” she rasped out, her hideous grin never faltering, despite the agony she must have been suffering. “Vazha is returned.”
Her prophecy sent chills wriggling all the way to my marrow. Then she locked onto me and I knew what true fear was.
“You may…have the…guli…” she managed, “but we have…Maximus.”
The life in Mariam’s eyes blinked out, then smoke poured from her body, obscuring it from view. As we all stood frozen in shock, the smoke cleared and Mariam’s body had disappeared.
Chapter 19
The crackling fire at the far end of Bunica’s cottage was the only sound in the room as we all sat around, either at tables or on the floor, peering into the flames and avoiding one anoth
er’s gazes as long as we could. I sat on some cushions between Kellum and Ryen, while Danic sat on a stool by the fire, prodding the embers, and the twins sat at a table with Tamar and Luka. Bunica sat in her old comfortable rocking chair, which remained ominously still. Rufus, Lazlo, and Almeric were scattered around the cottage, and Zoe and Sandro took up a small love seat together. Tamar had already put Soso down for the night with promises of ice cream the next day if he stayed in bed.
And, as always, the Dragon’s Heart thudded away, reminding me this fight wasn’t even close to over.
We’d won our battle against the jadokari, yet we weren’t chattering about our victory. Danic wasn’t bragging about how well he’d fought, Ryen wasn’t shooting him down with snarky jokes, Kellum wasn’t congratulating anyone on their impeccable teamwork, and none of us felt joy over getting a leg up on our enemies. A dark mood hung heavy over everyone, with no sign of letting up.
“How many did we lose?” Bunica asked at last, breaking the grim silence.
“Alek,” Tamar said softly, her voice catching.
“And Gunner,” Lazlo added, his teeth clenched so tight I thought they might crumble in his mouth.
“Let us honor their memory,” she said with so much sorrow, my heart broke twice.
We bowed our heads in unison, remembering Alek’s suspicious nature and devotion to his cause, as well as Gunner’s inquisitiveness and intense personal integrity. I found myself wishing I’d taken the time to get to know them better. My life felt emptier without them, even though I’d barely known them. I couldn’t imagine the pain those closest to them were feeling.
Luka broke the somber moment by slamming his fist into the table, making me jump a little. Wetness glimmered in his eyes but his face was red with rage.
“I cannot believe Mariam was a traitor! Five years! Five years she worked with us, lived with us. She was a sister to me. How could I have been so blind?”
