by Aaron Crash
Chazzie sighed. “Well, risk is a part of the game we wanna play. We want it all.”
“And we want it now.”
They bumped fists.
“That’s us, right there in a nutshell,” Pru said.
“Cute nutshells,” Chazzie added.
The elevator came to a stop, and the doors dinged open. And there stood the man of the hour, the reason why most every Dragonlord Prime had trekked up to the Windy City. A big hand of applause for the one and only Steven Drokharis.
He was taller than Chazzie would’ve figured. Carlo Bart had called him short, and that might’ve been once upon a time, but he was now a little over six feet. He looked smoking hot in his tuxedo, like a red-barreled M60, seconds from melting. His hair was as dark as the ink on divorce papers. His eyes seemed a smoky blue until you really looked, and then you realized they were gray. And the intensity in them? Damn. Chazzie felt a pleasurable buzz tingle her nether parts.
Steven stepped in but didn’t turn around, as was customary, once the doors closed. The elevator started down. He smelled faintly of orange blossoms and spicy smoke. Delicious as well as arousing.
“You two are pretty for assassins,” Steven said. “I’m assuming you’ve come to take me out before I can cause any trouble?”
“Not quite,” Pru said with a grin. “But good guess.”
“And we’d make terrible assassins inside an elevator.” Chazzie reached forward and pressed the stop button. “We like to kill from afar. Though we love guns, we got claws. Hell yes, we do. And we know how to use ’em.”
The elevator came to a halt.
Steven looked them up and down. “Escorts weren’t supposed to be here. You two like breaking the rules?”
“Every rule we can.” Chazzie paused. “Stevie, you caused quite the ruckus. We heard your speech.”
“It’s Steven,” the man said seriously.
Oh, another tingle hit Chazzie. Who was this guy?
Pru’s smile was downright dizzy. “We’ve been referring to you as Stevie since your sudden rise to power. Word has it, you’re the future. My sister and I like being prepared. I’m Prudence Wayne, but you can call me Pru.”
“And I’m Chastity, but lord, what a mistake it was to name me that. My friends, lovers, and general associates call me Chazzie.”
The Drokharis scion nodded. “Nice to meet you both. You know who I am, obviously. If we’re gonna fight, let’s fight. I was serious about continuing my father’s work.”
“We’re not going to fight you, Steven.” Chazzie moved to touch his face. How serious he was, how determined—she wanted to feel his skin.
Steven caught her hand. “Easy. You know I can’t trust you.”
“No,” Chazzie said. “You can’t. We’re part of Carlo Bart’s Escort. You see that ring?” She moved her hand to show him the simple gold band on her left ring finger. “We’re bound to him. But maybe we can help you.”
Steven let her go. She realized she missed his touch.
Even better? He smiled at her. It was darling and maybe a bit vulnerable. “Why would you want to help me?”
“We like to be on the winning side,” Pru said.
Chazzie nodded. “Our daddy raised us to see opportunity. He said the satisfied might as well be dead.”
“We always shoot the angles when we see them,” Pru added, looking him over.
“It makes life interesting, if not very safe,” Chazzie continued. “You see, we can’t just leave Carlo Bart, and we can’t just back you.”
Pru crossed her arms. “Yeah, nine months in, and you have as much power as a Dragonsoul a century old. It’s impressive.”
“But sometimes the hottest fires flicker out first.”
“You might be paper.”
“You might be coal. We want to know which one it is,” Chazzie finished.
Steven gazed into Chazzie’s eyes and then her sister’s. Yes, those eyes were gray, storming into blue. That inky hair was alluring matched with that pale skin. And just the feel of him? Chazzie already knew. He was gonna burn hot and burn long, oh yes, he was.
Chazzie checked herself. Daddy had said to save your love for family because everyone else was just a tool to use. You might meet a king, but that was unlikely, so treat ’em like a pawn.
However dreamy this Steven Drokharis was, he was only one more piece in their game. She and Pru were experts at keeping their personal feelings in check. All was fair in love and war except falling in love during war. That was a definite no-no. But fooling around? As long as you kept the feelings in your nether bits and not your heart, that was fine.
Steven turned and touched the stop button again along with the tenth floor. The doors slid open. “I’m not going to burn away like paper. And I don’t intend to be coal, either. As long as I’m alive, I’m going follow my conscience and be true to my father’s work.”
He stepped out.
Chazzie held the door open. Pru came forward with their business card. She flipped it to him, and Steven caught it deftly. “Let’s just keep in touch. How about that?”
Steven nodded.
“And you might not want to go out through the doors downstairs,” Chazzie said. “We heard a rumor that you’re not supposed to leave Chicago alive.”
“And flying away is going to be dangerous as well,” Pru added. “Be careful. And we’ll see how this little game plays out.”
The last of the Drokharises smiled. “Thanks for the warning.”
“Warning?” Chazzie laughed. “We never talked at all, sugar. Not one little word.”
Steven chuckled under his breath. He continued down the hall.
Chazzie let the doors close, and she leaned against the wall. She dialed her Prime. “Hey, Carlo, are you done with your little party? Pru and I are bored. We wanted to come and say hi, maybe have a little shrimp.”
Carlo Bart sighed into the phone. “Yeah, come on up. If anyone doesn’t like it, they can go fuck themselves. That little dickhead doesn’t know who he’s dealing with. In the end, we might not even have to lift a finger. He’s managed to piss off most every dragon on the continent. Without friends, he’s not going to last long.” Her husband hung up.
Chazzie let out a long breath. Her mind felt like a tornado had come sweeping down through it, scattering her thoughts. She was jittery, on edge, and all her certainty had been knocked away.
Her sister took her hand. “This ain’t gonna play out like we want, Chaz.”
“No,” Chazzie murmured. “It’s not. I’m scared, Pru. A little turned on, but mostly scared. Stevie is a game-changer.”
“Yeah,” Pru agreed. “And it’s Steven. We came looking for a pawn and found a king, one who moves like the queens we are.”
Chazzie swallowed hard and clenched her jaws. Steven Drokharis was handsome and powerful, but more than that, he was dangerous in a way Chazzie had never seen before. “Pru, if we were smart, we’d hole up and wait out the fireworks. This ain’t gonna be a battle over a Primacy or two. This is gonna be total war. There’s not a square on this board we’ll be safe on, not one.”
Pru nodded. “A battle for the world, sister. You might be the pretty one, but I’m the smart one, and I’m still too dumb to stop.”
“We both are.” Chazzie winced against the fear. And she’d thought she had full control over her emotions. That was a laugh.
۞۞۞
Steven raced to the stairwell at the far end of the hallway. The Wayne twins had warned him without really warning him. Was it their boss who was gunning for him? It seemed so, but really, it could be any Prime on the planet, perhaps one that wasn’t even at the Chicago Conclave.
The NorCal and SoCal Primes hadn’t shown up. Everyone thought it was because the Californian rivals couldn’t be in the same room together, not without it getting ugly. But maybe they were secret allies and were coming for Steven now. Could be. Didn’t much matter.
He reached into his pocket for his cell phone. It was dead. Had the t
wins cast some sort of spell? He couldn’t be sure, but his phone was DOA.
He’d come to the party full of Animus, and unlike his first few months as a dragon, he had a variety of weapons and powers at his command.
There was a window large enough for him to squeeze through in the stairwell, though it didn’t open, and there were black steel muntins between the glass panes. The city lights beckoned. Steven growled as he took off his tuxedo. That suit was too comfortable to shred. At some point, they had to come up with magic to allow clothing to transform with them. He’d had the tailor create a mesh lining in the coat so he could ball up the tuxedo and strap it to his body.
He shifted his right arm into scales and muscles. Homo Draconis claws tipped his fingers. Then he accessed IonClaws. His talons became as bright as an arc welder’s fire. He pierced the steel in the windowpane easily. The stench of molten metal filled the air as he cut out glass. He morphed his other arm, enhanced with DarkArmor, to catch the glowing edge. He set the window onto the floor. He could have just broken the window, but he wanted to escape quietly if possible. If he could avoid a fight, great. If not, he’d spent the past months training every day, working away slavishly. Sabina, Tessa, and Mouse had worried over him, telling him to slow down. Liam had agreed with them. Aria, however, had matched his intensity, training as hard as he did. Because they both knew they’d gotten lucky, over and over, and that luck might not hold out.
Before his Dragonsoul heritage had been revealed to him, Steven was a full-time student working three jobs. That work ethic had served him well once he stopped grinding away his soul for money and used it to train and study. After the long hours working, he needed to rebuild his supply of Animus, and that meant a lot of sex. For now, his core Escort—Aria, Tessa, Mouse, and Sabina—were more than enough. But at some point, he’d have the five widows of Cassius Pine as well.
Steven couldn’t ponder that too much. He had to stay focused.
As a human with draconian arms, he backed up to the door of the stairwell. Then he ran and launched his body like a cannonball through the hole he’d cut into the building. The arctic wind hit him and ripped away his breath. So… fucking… cold. He’d grown up in the dry climate of the West. That wet chill off the lake was a whole different game. Throw in gale-force winds and fuck his life.
As Steven fell, he uttered a Magica Defensio spell to hide himself from the humans. He meant what he’d said: he wouldn’t draw the wrath of the Zothoric until the dragons on Earth were ready. That meant staying secret, avoiding portal magic, and keeping a low profile. It had worked for fifty thousand years.
At the same time, he knew very little about the demons Rahaab had been so afraid of. All he really knew was that the Zothoric had almost wiped out the Alpheros, the Dragonsouls’ ancestors, and that they’d visited the blue-green gem before, during the time of Hammurabi. Tessa had traveled to Rahaab’s massive library at Mont-Saint-Michel to research the demons. However, she hadn’t found anything definitive yet.
Steven transformed into his True Form and stretched his wings to catch the wind. Thirty feet long, he looked like a classic Western dragon, with a bit of a beard hanging off his chin. He had sharp spines rising from his back, though his long tail was smooth. The wind gusted, and he went careening through the air. He had to tuck his wings in to avoid smashing into a skyscraper, then flare them to avoid the ground. The wind caught him again, and he was sent whirling out over the lake.
Steven’s scales were black, so he blended in with the night. Steam misted off his body. Dragonsouls in their True Form were creatures of heat and fire, and so he wasn’t cold anymore. He whirled around to see three shapes rising from the ground, coming in fast. They blocked his way to the Waldorf-Astoria, where he would rendezvous with his Escort.
No use for it, he’d have to fight his way through them.
He created a shadowy force field in front of him to keep him safe from magical attacks. He cast another shield spell for melee followed by DarkArmor to thicken his scales. He readied his Magica Impetim spells. He’d left Rahaab’s bastard sword, Samael’s Lash, back at the Infinity Ranch in Cheyenne.
Fire shot through the night sky. Lightning followed. Then red orbs of sparkling energy blazed toward him. Surprising, since most dragons had drifted away from studying magic, but those were Impetim bursts whizzing at him.
His magical shield blocked the attacks. Steven rose, hurling his own magic missiles, black throwing stars, at the three dragons rising to meet him. Then he tucked his wings and used his shield to keep claws off him as he broke through their ranks, bashing through arms, wings, legs, and tails. Claws tried to rend his scales, but his DarkArmor held.
He turned in midair, wrapping himself up in his wings and using gravity to pull him toward the earth. He inhaled, filling his lungs, then exhaled lightning, a blistering blast of electricity that caught first one dragon, then another, then another. Liam had given him lessons on how to perfect his ElectroArc Exhalant.
He got a good look at the enemy Dragonsouls in the sizzling light of his attack. All were various colors of black—a big male with scales edged in green, a female with black turning into orange, and another female with a bloodred tint to her. This last had been the one who’d cast the Impetim bursts at him.
“Magica Cura!” the crimson female called out. She healed her comrades as they turned to come after him.
By that time, Steven had spun around, and he went soaring between buildings. He turned to the right and raced down Michigan Boulevard. He had to keep his wings beating against the headwind. It was coming in mercilessly, channeled by the man-made canyon.
Below him, clueless tourists thronged the street, window-shopping, walking to and from restaurants, and generally enjoying their very human lives.
They had no idea that above them Steven was being chased by three slightly singed dragons.
Steven had both his magical shield and his melee shield behind him. Lucky he did. ShadowFire burned through his force field, and those dark flames scorched his tail. He gritted his teeth against the pain. Those were high-level Dragonsouls. He knew what their next attack would be.
The air charged with deadly power; the sound of the wind whistling through his ears was eclipsed by a yawning silence as the world bent to the ChromaticFury of one of the dragons. If that Exhalant hit him, it would fry the scales off his body and blow chunks of meat off his bones.
Steven had learned to fly like an acrobat from Aria, and that wind whistling into him, well, he could use it to his advantage. He turned sideways and dug his front claws into the nearest building, swinging his hind legs and tail around. Glass shattered. People below scattered. Steven sprang off the building, opening his wings wide, and those gale-force winds he’d been fighting filled his wings. He shot back toward the three dragons, barrel-rolling to avoid the ChromaticFury, which slashed through more of the skyscraper he’d already ruined. The tourists couldn’t see their spells or their bodies, but they could see the damage. They ran, screaming. A gas line went up, blowing fire out the side of the skyscraper. Sirens sounded in the distance.
Steven banked his wings and took a left down a street so narrow his wingtips brushed the buildings on both sides. One wrong move and he might get clipped and go down. He couldn’t allow that. He had a plan to both fight back and get away, though it meant he would get chilly in the process.
The three Dragonsouls chasing him couldn’t make the turn and went zooming by, but he knew they’d be wheeling around to come after him. They must’ve seen where he’d gone.
He saw a fire escape clinging to the side of an old hotel. He turned into a Homo Draconis and landed on a steel platform. He dug his claws into the mesh floor to stop his momentum.
The three came tearing down between the buildings. The black-green male whooshed past him. The black-orange female saw him and tried to stop, but the dark red magician dragon collided into her.
Steven made his move. He cast a ShadowStrength spell, focusing on Dark Red.
He stole Animus from her as well as physical strength, and both fueled his muscles. In her weakened state, she started to fall. He then flicked on his IonClaws. With a magically enhanced leap, he left the fire escape and came crashing down on Dark Red. He cut through her scales, through her ribs, and into her heart. She let out a howl as death claimed her.
Animus flowed into Steven.
She turned human. Steven caught the shocked look in her eyes, the bright red of her ruined chest, and the black remnants of a tattoo. It was just a glimpse, then he kicked off her and shifted back into his full dragon form. His surprise attack had worked. Imbued with Dark Red’s strength, Steven shot past the other two dragons, knocking them out of his way, and then went flying through the last of the buildings, over Lake Shore Drive. Then he plunged into Lake Michigan. That freezing black water closed in over his head.
He grimaced, held his breath, and brought his wings close to his body. He used his tail to swim through the water, deeper, deeper, deeper. Colder, colder, colder. He was like an eel thrashing its way through the water.
When he reached the muddy bottom, pitch-black and freezing, he swam until his lungs screamed for breath. Then he kicked off and shot upward, letting his snout gently break the surface. He inhaled deeply, smelling the air, then smoothly lifted his serpentine head and neck from the water. He was alone. The sky was clear. Chicago’s skyline glittered in the distance. He cast a Magica Defensio spell to create a platform to stand on.
He was safe. And the scratched-up tattoo on Dark Red’s chest was a clue to the identity of his attackers. Yes, most likely they were sent by Carlo Bart Baxter, but perhaps not. Strange that the Wayne twins would warn him. What was their role? Maybe Carlo Bart had sent the twins to confuse matters. Maybe.
He’d have to talk it all over with his Escort. He only hoped that they were okay. If someone went after him, they might try and assassinate his Escort as well.