Pure Destiny

by Aja James

  “I’m going to help you become everything you were meant to be,” she replied, her opaque black eyes glittering with anticipation.

  He was perfect, this Benjamin Larkin D’Angelo. His little body practically glowed with an inner strength and barely-leashed power. Anyone who looked upon him would know that he was special, even if they didn’t comprehend the reasons.

  He was simply better. Stronger.

  More.

  If he had lived during the Age of the Gods, he would still have outshone them all, even as a mere human.

  She wondered what sort of dragon he would become. Something golden and gorgeous, no doubt, with that fine, sun-kissed skin and buttery blond hair.

  “I don’t need your help,” he told her bluntly, though not meanly. His tone was simply matter-of-fact.

  “I’ll grow up when I’m supposed to. And I choose who I become, not anyone else. My Mom and Dad said so. I know so.”

  “And what do you think you know, little man?” she asked, both amused and frustrated by his gently stubborn nature.

  He had a mind of his own, this boy. No matter how young he was, he would not be moved from his own convictions.

  He reminded her of someone… But who?

  Instead of answering her, he slid his hand along the Creature’s container again, careful not to jostle any of the tubing.

  “Is your creation alive? Can it breathe in there? Where are the air holes? How do you open this thing?”

  Silly boy. He should be more worried about his own wellbeing, not wasting his sympathies on the hapless Creature in his test tube.

  “Oxygen is carried to it through the tubes,” she answered, and was rather surprised that she did.

  The boy was nigh irresistible, as if he had the Gift of influence, to persuade others to his will.

  “Carbon dioxide is carried out,” she continued as if she couldn’t help herself. “There’s a lever on top that opens to show its face beneath the glass. Do you want to see for yourself if it’s alive?”

  He shook his head and said in an uncharacteristically quiet voice, “I know he’s alive. I can feel his heartbeat. He’s hurting.”

  Louder, he said, looking back up at her, “Let him go. Please let him go, Lily. He doesn’t like it in there. He wants to be free.”

  Those big crystal blue eyes did something to her. Lilith’s heart clutched with a phantom pain. His eyes slayed her.

  A caldron of resentment and wrath broiled within her. She would not acquiesce to a boy who hadn’t even seen his first ten years of life. That innocent, angelic gaze had no effect on her hardened, unforgiving heart and nonexistent conscience.

  She let her face scale over. Sharp fangs descended, her pupils elongating into vertical slits.

  “I will never let you go,” she hissed menacingly. “Both of you belong to me now. You’re mine. Get used to it, child. You and your si—”

  But she was cut off by the boy’s sudden whoop of jubilation.

  “I knew you’d come! What took you so long!”

  It was pure reflex that made Lilith duck to the side as a dagger spun at her from behind. It sliced into her arm as it passed, making her hiss with fury and pain.

  They dare invade her lair!

  She’d show these immortal warriors and this naïve, misguided boy just how monstrous she could be.

  Playtime was over.

  *** *** *** ***

  One moment there was a strangely beautiful, dark-haired woman in the cavernous chamber with the boy, and the next, giant octopus-like tentacles morphed from her body in place of her arms and legs.

  Dalair barely leapt over one of the suction-crowded appendages before it smacked into the cavern wall behind him with the force of a steel crane, leaving a jagged fracture in solid rock. If he had been caught by that thing, his bones would be dust by now.

  Fuck that.

  He and the others hadn’t fought their bloody way through three dozen guards and a variety of motion-triggered booby traps just to be defeated now.

  The boy was within reach. He was standing right there in front of that tomb-like object.

  If only Dalair or one of the others could reach him…

  There was no room to maneuver in the suddenly cramped space, as the monstrous she-demon grew in size, four limbs turning into eight tentacles, her head still human, though extended from her bulbous body by a serpentine neck.

  Holy gods! This was not the Hydra that he’d seen when Medusa and Wan’er first transformed into the creature. This was something else entirely.

  Just how many forms did the demon have?

  Her body was the size of an elephant, her tentacles long and insanely strong. Four warriors against one…whatever the hell it was, suddenly didn’t seem like very good odds. Despite her size, she moved with lightning speed, her limbs unfurling in unpredictable ways.

  Eli poofed into barely visible smoke to avoid one of her tentacles as it hammered down upon the ground. Within the blink of an eye, he reformed beside the boy, getting hold of his shoulders.

  The long neck of the monster twisted one hundred and eighty degrees around and let out an enraged shriek upon seeing her prize in the hands of the shadow warrior. Faster than the eye could track, one of her tentacles lashed out and curled around the boy’s body, forcing Eli to let go and poof into air again or be crushed in her unrelenting grip.

  The boy gasped at the tight clasp and fought futilely against it, pushing at the leathery tentacle with his hands, kicking and wriggling to get loose.

  She ignored his efforts without pausing in her attacks, holding him aloft and away from his rescuers’ reach, while she swiped other tentacles at Tal, Rhys and Dalair. She even forced Eli to reform by spewing a spray of glowing acid from her sharp-fanged mouth in the direction that his airy form traveled. A droplet managed to catch him on the shoulder, and the warrior hissed as skin flayed from flesh upon contact.

  Fools! A deep, resonant voice echoed in their heads.

  You dare invade my home to steal what is mine! Puny humanoids…you will never defeat me, no matter how many or how strong.

  That was when Tal powered up his sword and a twelve-foot laser beam shot from the hilt, illuminating the darkened cavern in a flash of eerie red light.

  But before he could slice it through the body of the demon, one of her tentacles bludgeoned him right off his feet, sending him flying into the rock wall with a resounding thud.

  Even so, the edge of the sword caught her side and glanced through half of her neck like a hot knife through butter.

  She screamed in agony, all eight tentacles, except the one that held the boy, spinning around her in frenzied self-defense, forcing the warriors to leap away from her or be caught in the deadly spinning wheel.

  She oozed across the cavern floor, leaving a swath of black blood in her wake.

  You sought your own deaths by coming here, the voice seethed with vengeance.

  May this be a fitting tomb, Pure-Dark Ones.

  With that, several of her tentacles smashed through rock and stone, crumbling the cavern walls around them. Water began to flood the chamber from all directions, the additional pressure causing more rock façade to splinter and break apart.

  “Uncle Tal!” the boy cried, his arms reaching toward the warrior who lay still and prone against the wall where he fell.

  “Wake up! You have to get him out! He’s in the coffin! Please! Get him o—”

  The last of his shouts were cut off as the monster pushed off with several of her tentacles and shot like a torpedo away from the chamber into a dark, water-filled tunnel. Behind her, two slabs of solid stone slid closed, sealing them in.

  Dalair cursed and spun toward the tunnel whence they came, just as another slab of stone shot down from the ceiling to grind into the ground.

  Fuck! They were well and truly trapped, water pouring in from all sides. It had already reached their waists.

  He calculated about two minutes before they would be fully submerged. With their
immortal abilities, they had another seven minutes or so before they started to suffocate.

  But it would take hours for beings like them to die of drowning, as their bodies broke down what oxygen they could to keep them alive. All the while, they would grow weaker and weaker, dying by excruciating degrees.

  “Can you turn to air to squeeze through the crevices in the rocks?” Dalair shouted at the shadow warrior over the din of water crushing into the chamber.

  “I cannot maintain my particle form in water,” the male shouted back. “I need air to dissolve. Water is the one Element that cancels my powers.”

  Dalair looked to the eagle spirit who was in his animal form, trying to claw through solid rock with his talons and chipping at it with his beak.

  It was no use. The rock that surrounded them was too thick.

  Rhys transformed back into his humanoid form and took a series of deep breaths just as the water rose to their necks. Eli pulled Tal up with an arm around his torso. The General was still barely conscious from being flung into the wall by the monster’s giant tentacle.

  There was no way out. Surrounded on all sides by impenetrable rock. Water rising too rapidly.

  Dalair looked around for something, anything, that could help them pull off a miracle.

  But it wasn’t what he saw that made him pause. It was what he heard.

  He closed his eyes and concentrated his hyper senses on the sound.

  Ba-bump. Ba-bump. Ba-bump.

  A fifth heartbeat. Faint and muffled. Slower than the four warriors’. Barely there.

  Ba-bump. Ba-bump. Ba-bump.

  But it was there.

  Dalair took a deep breath and dove, following the softly thumping heartbeat.

  The sarcophagus. It was coming from within.

  “You have to get him out! He’s in the coffin! Please!”

  The boy’s parting shout, Dalair recalled now.

  Something was definitely in there. And it was very much alive.

  Briefly, Dalair wondered if he was doing whatever was imprisoned in the contraption any favors by freeing it. From one hell into another.

  But the boy had been adamant, and Dalair could not help but carry out his command now that it was in his head.

  He swam around the coffin-like object looking for a lever to open it. Not finding one after a minute, he unsheathed his half-moon blades from the back holster, combined them into a disk and swung it with all his might into the upper part of the container’s side, cutting through the steel casing. Like a giant can-opener, he used the handle to drag the circular blade through the thick steel, all the way around the object until he met the original place where he’d first cut into it. Stowing his blades behind him again, he pushed against the top of the coffin, trying to remove the “lid” he just created.

  But the already substantial metal, weighed down by water, was too heavy, and his strength was waning from lack of oxygen. It wouldn’t budge.

  His body was starting to break itself down in suffocation. The agonizing path to eventual death by drowning had already begun.

  The weight of the blades on his back kept him in place, almost kneeling beside the coffin. Involuntarily, he reached out a hand to touch the metal casing. Somehow, it felt warm from the life within the box.

  I tried, he pushed the thought to the hapless creature therein.

  I failed. I don’t know who you are, but it looks like we’ll be keeping each other company for the foreseeable future.

  And then, a miracle did happen.

  Speak for yourself, brother.

  Dalair was shocked into opening his eyes when a familiar voice whispered in his head.

  I, for one, am getting out of here.

  A blast of blue fire blew the heavy lid clear off the coffin. A pale, skinny, long-limbed man with long black hair emerged from the box, but disappeared so quickly Dalair thought he’d imagined him—

  And in his stead, an obsidian dragon commanded all the space in the water-filled cavern, opened its mighty jaws, and roared.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Benji couldn’t breathe. But that didn’t stop him from struggling with all his strength.

  He wriggled and he twisted, clawed his fingers into the surprisingly thick-skinned tentacle that held him, kicked and lurched. But to no avail. The creature wouldn’t release him no matter what he did.

  When he felt faint from the lack of air, his lips parting of their own accord to release some of the unbearable pressure inside, the human head of the monster curved toward him until the woman’s mouth sealed upon his own.

  Suddenly, air was pumped into his lungs from her body. When he had enough, he twisted away and held his breath again, not wanting to feel her slimy mouth on his.

  They were moving so swiftly through the water, and it was so dark this far down beneath the surface, that he couldn’t really see where they were going. He could only feel the rapid currents moving against them as she parted the lake with her torpedo-like body, her tentacles churning like a fan rotor behind her.

  Finally, they surged upwards, toward a distant speck of light that penetrated the surface of the lake.

  Instead of looking toward salvation, Benji looked down instead at the receding dark depths of the lake, where his friends still remained trapped.

  He wished he could be stronger and bigger so he could help them. He wished the creature who held him wasn’t so awful. He thought he could be Lily’s friend. He thought he could talk her out of her evil plans.

  Benji was thankful for the water to disguise the onset of unmanly tears.

  It wasn’t fair! It couldn’t end this way! Maybe it was all a nasty dream, and soon he’d wake up in his bed back at the Shield with Mama Bear and Tal sitting at his bedside with cookies and hot chocolate. Sophie, Mom and Dad would all be there. Sophie’s Mate too. The man named Dalair.

  He didn’t want to go wherever the monster was taking him.

  Right now, he was so very mad at her! If he had a sharp object, he’d probably stick it in her tar-black eye. She was a bad, bad person for hurting his friends.

  And then, just as he was about to raise his head to surface the water and take his first deep breath in what seemed like an interminable period, the crumble of rocks and cloud of dust rising from the bottom of the lake grabbed his attention.

  Something was drilling through the debris. It twisted this way and that, loosening the cracked boulders in its way. A gigantic black snout pushed its way through, followed by a thickly scaled face surrounded by large, tooth-like thorns, including a long array of dagger-like scales that fanned out from its cheeks and brow like a man’s sideburns or a lion’s mane.

  Great jaws with at least two rows of closely stacked teeth opened in a silent roar as the rest of its body powered through the rocks. The creature shot through the opening it created like a sleek black missile, coming right for Benji and his captor.

  Dragon, Benji mouthed soundlessly, staring wide-eyed at the obsidian-scaled monster as it shot toward them.

  It’s a freaking DRAGON!

  It had four large claws which it tucked close to its horizontally scaled belly, like the underside of a black King Cobra. A long, scaly tail extended behind it, undulating like a wave to propel it forward and upward.

  Something else was folded against its body on each side, but Benji couldn’t get a good look, because—hallelujah!—his friends were hanging off the appendages.

  There was the shadow warrior Benji had met once before at his art teacher’s apartment, another warrior he didn’t know, Sophia’s Mate, and Uncle Tal!

  Yes! Benji wanted to jump with joy, but he settled for a slow-motioned fist pump instead, the water making his limbs lethargic in their movement.

  Finally, Benji’s captor, Lilith, broke through the surface of the lake, holding Benji aloft in the air. He immediately gulped for breath, sputtering and coughing to purge his lungs.

  But just a moment after, she was yanked down again. She uttered a shrill, furious screech be
fore being dragged back into the water.

  Benji, too, took a deep breath before the flailing tentacle that still held him prisoner plunged him back beneath the lake.

  It was the black dragon, Benji saw. It had Lilith by two of her trunk-like tentacles, its long, sharp teeth clamping down and pulling inexorably as it pedaled backwards with its claws.

  That seemed to piss Lilith off, because her body grew bigger, her form changing yet again. The human head elongated and transformed into the ugly, sharp-snouted skull of a serpent.

  For some reason, Benji thought her serpent form looked far less attractive than the black dragon. It looked like a mix between the alien from…well, The Alien, and a Komodo dragon. Except with lots of vertical scales on top of its head, like a rooster’s comb.

  Benji silently apologized to the Komodo dragon for comparing it with the detestable creature who still held him tightly in its tentacle. If you didn’t pay attention to the Komodo’s teeth, it could almost pass for cute. Sort of.

  Lilith’s dragon head reared back and opened a torrent of silvery blue fire toward the black dragon still hanging onto her tentacles.

  Hit squarely between the eyes, the black dragon let go with a gurgled howl, thrashing its head from side to side in pain at the assault, its thick scales flaking apart to reveal tender pink flesh beneath.

  Its passengers shook loose from its body and swam as quickly away from the rapidly escalating battle as they could.

  As the black dragon struggled with its wounds, Lilith reared back again to strike.

  Benji thought she would unleash another torrent of flames, but that’s not what she did at all.

  She turned on her own neck and bit down. After three giant crunches, she sawed through scales, flesh and bone.

  Benji looked at the decapitated, bloody stalk of her neck in wordless horror, even as her head floated weightlessly in the water beside it, a gruesome smile frozen on her serpent face.

  She lopped off her own head!

  Did she have an attack of conscience? Somehow, Benji didn’t peg Lilith for someone with suicidal tendencies. She was far too full of herself for that. He had a feeling she’d destroy the whole world before turning on herself.