by Aaron Crash
And when Joe Whipp came sniffing around, which he would, Steven would let him know that he wouldn’t get a single gold coin from the Drokharis Hoard. But the money didn’t seem so important. No, keeping Tessa safe, making sure Aria didn’t have to marry anyone she didn’t want to, those things mattered more to him. If only he knew for certain that his mother was safe. He’d called again. No answer. He promised himself that after they went to the last Aerie in the mountains—the last fire marker on the pendant map—he would drive to the house.
She had Sundays off. She’d be home. If she was okay.
He prayed she was.
Tessa woke up before light and closed the wall. Steven cracked his eyes open, expecting to see snow, but there wasn’t any. The fire continued to burn because yeah, it was magic, and it didn’t need fresh wood. It was a perfect illusion, however. Tessa climbed into bed and kissed Steven, and he tried to go back to sleep, he really did, but being sandwiched by two beautiful women didn’t help his usual morning situation any.
Aria woke to the bed gently rocking, and then it was her turn to be gently rocked.
When they all finished, they tried to go back to sleep, but the excitement of exploring another Drokharis Aerie was too much for them. After sealing up the hidden floor of the hotel, they took the secret staircase down to the fourteenth floor. They emerged from the wall, through a magical door that when shut, looked exactly like any hotel hallway. No wonder no one had ever disturbed the secret rooms above.
They stopped at Rosie’s Diner in Monument, off I-25, and Steven embarrassed himself by eating three breakfasts. He’d polished off the entirety of the BBQ the night before, so they didn’t have to worry about leftovers, and still he was hungry. And brimming with Animus.
“Can I drive now?” Tessa asked after Aria paid the bill.
Aria agreed, and they rocketed back toward Denver. The next Drokharis Aerie was located on Lookout Mountain. They buzzed through Denver, grabbed I-70, and headed west toward Golden. Clouds filled the sky and a light rain fell, but with the temperature dropping, there wasn’t a doubt that the rain would turn to snow.
“So how am I going to be able to sell that stuff from the Colorado Springs Aerie?” Steven asked as they made the right turn up the long winding road that led to the top of Lookout Mountain. In better weather, the road would’ve been full of cyclists, but with the chill wind and slick pavement, they had the road to themselves. Not a single car or bike around.
“There is a Dragonsoul black market for such things,” Aria answered. “My father knows ...”
The words died on her lips as a huge shape descended upon them, blocking out the light and plunging the interior of the car into shadows. The automatic headlights blinked on. Metal screeched as claws tore into the roof.
The sharp pungent stench of lemons and leather filled Steven’s nose, the same odor he’d smelled before in the Aerie. A Dragonsoul in True Form. It was above them, ripping the vehicle to shreds.
And it seemed like they’d be next ...
Chapter Twenty-One
EARLY SUNDAY MORNING, Edgar Vale was shrieking in pain. Mouse had said the Dragonskin ritual would take twenty-four hours, but he was going on hour thirty. Or thirty-one. It was hard to keep track. He and Mouse were on top of the Wells Fargo building in Denver, on a platform that was hidden from the eyes of the simple fuckers walking around the downtown below.
Edgar’s hands and feet were tied to a metal rack with metal cables. The rack had a series of cranks and levers that would either tighten the cables, raise him, or spin him around so that the brazier of hot coals underneath could cook every inch of his skin. His blood and sweat smoked away in the fire, a constant plume of steam and smoke rising up. He could smell his hair burning away even as it grew back, over and over. That smelled better than the BBQ odor of his flesh crisping. He’d thought it would get better when night fell, but then he’d been in a strange situation, half of him roasting and half of him freezing.
Now, he lay facedown as the coals ate away his skin. Mouse was continually dosing him with morphine to keep him from going completely insane from the pain, but that did little to help. Though she hated him, she was doing her part, whispering the spells and adding the magic herbs—mugwort, yarrow, dragonpenny—to the coals. She downed glass after glass of wine. At first, she seemed to enjoy his screams, but now she was pale, clearly exhausted, and ready for the ordeal to be over.
Normally the Dragonskin rituals allowed weeks for the final burning, but he didn’t have weeks. And he was strong, so strong—the pain would only make him stronger. When he’d gotten locked up for aggravated assault at the tender of age of eighteen, which in street terms was at least thirty, he’d met a hardened con named Dipstick who was in the pen for life. He had four counts of first-degree murder under his belt. Dipstick had taken Edgar under his wing, and he told him the secret to life. Life was pain. And the more you liked pain, the more you could like life, until it got to the point where you didn’t want comfort, you wanted pain.
The special people on the planet had that shit figured out. You look at any Olympic athlete, any politician, any successful artist, and they didn’t just want success and glory, they wanted pain and struggle. The real sick ones got off on it.
And Edgar wanted to be that sick.
So every minute, every second his skin was burning off him, that was good. Mouse would cast the spells to heal it back on, raise him up off the fire, only to bring him back down onto those coals.
He would scream, get hard, scream some more, and he’d remember he wasn’t special, but he soon would be. And every bit of agony he was feeling now? Well, he would bring that same agony down on that fucker, Steven Whipp. Bring it down tenfold. It was his fault, his and his bitches, that Edgar had to cram weeks’ worth of the rituals into a day and a half.
That shit, he’d never forget. Not ever.
Mouse pulled a lever, and he rose off the coals. She then touched him with a glowing vial, almost like a perfume bottle. She called it Elftears. Fuck elves. And fuck tears.
His roasted, blackened skin grew back, as did his hair, until he was just a naked guy in the cold. He got so he hated the chill air more than the mean lick of the flames.
“We have to stop.” Mouse slurred her words. She was beyond drunk. “You’re not changing. It’s too soon.”
“Fuck you, bitch,” Edgar spat. “I’m not stopping.”
“You’ll die.”
“I already died, at some point, last night. This is me, a fucking zombie, and I want more fire, bitch. Give me more fire!” He roared out the words.
“You’re a sick fuck,” Mouse muttered. Then she spun a crank, whipping him around, and lowered him back into the flames.
And like Dipstick promised, Edgar got off on it. He’d never been harder in his entire life even though his dick had almost been melted off any number of times in the last thirty hours.
Everything human inside of him burned away, and only the dragon in him was left.
He sniffed the air and tasted it, rotten pork on a BBQ, awful and delicious, and that was life. That was him. He had his Dragonskin smell, and it was terrible, but he liked it.
No, he loved it.
ABOVE STEVEN, THE ROOF of the Mercedes gave way in a scream of metal and a flash of sparks. The dragon above flung the roof away, and it went banging and clattering across the wet asphalt behind them as chill air swept into the interior. The creature had mustard-colored scales edged in black and reeked of lemons and leather. Aria cursed, drew her pistol, and unloaded the clip into the chest of the dragon.
The dragon let out a thunderous roar. Its yellow beard waggled.
Tessa spun the car around a switchback and mashed her foot down hard, gunning the engine, leaving the dragon behind for a minute.
“Get to the Aerie!” Aria shouted, hair whipping in the pine-scented wind. She flung herself out of the speeding car. In midair, she transformed into a scarlet dragon, her scales steaming in the cold morning. She
met the incoming dragon, and they clashed above the road, turning, twirling, summersaulting, as tails whipped, wings flapped, and claws raked at scaly flesh.
But the yellow dragon was almost double her size. She was fifteen feet long, and it was at least thirty and probably several tons heavier to boot. There was no way she could match its strength. Steven realized it was a male, and from what he understood about Dragonsouls, males were rare. Is this Rhaegen Mulk? he wondered.
Tessa slammed the brakes on, then spun the Mercedes around, tires smoking.
“What are you doing?” Steven asked, shocked.
“We are NOT leaving Aria behind,” the barista said in her warrior voice. She slammed the gas pedal to the floor again, and the tires squealed in response as they rocketed forward.
Steven found himself pressed back into the seat. But only for a second. He pulled himself up and then went Homo Draconis. There was no roof to worry about, so he could expand outside. Using his enhanced strength, he got his feet under him and wedged his massive tail between the front seats to keep himself steady.
The two dragons, one massive and yellow, the other slender and scarlet, lashed out with fang-studded jaws, then went in with claws. The yellow worm threw Aria into the pines on the sloping side of the mountain. She bashed through the trunks, toppling dozens of trees and throwing up waves of black mountain dirt. While she was on the ground, the yellow beast unleashed a crackling blast of blue electricity.
ElectroArc. Steven was witnessing his first live display of the Exhalant.
The lightning sent Aria writhing and twisting in pain. Crimson scales spun away as that awful energy ate into her skin. The yellow worm didn’t relent but kept up the onslaught.
“Faster!” Steven growled, his voice inhuman and brimming with anger. “Drive right by him. I’m going to use the speed to hit him hard.”
Tessa was silent. They careened down the highway at a hundred miles an hour. Steven was about to see how good his armor really was. The wind screamed in his reptilian ears, and the cold froze his scales, but he didn’t care.
“Faster!”
But the engine was already blaring, the tachometer buried into the red.
They entered a short straightaway, pulling in range, and Steven leapt from the car. He let out a roar right before he hit the enemy dragon. If it was Rhaegen Mulk, he was going to pay for murdering Steven’s parents.
Like a bullet from a gun, Steven streaked through the air. He’d timed it perfectly. He slammed into the side of the dragon, and that lightning shit died like he’d hit an off switch. The mustard-colored worm struck the pavement, grinding away the asphalt and a good chunk of his scales. A wing snapped in the crash.
Steven gripped the belly of the worm with his talons, hands and feet. He wasn’t about to let the bone-breaking collision stop him from exacting sweet revenge ... dragon-claw style.
The yellow beast would pay for hurting Aria.
Steven clawed up the dragon, slashing him and causing as much damage as he could until the worm tossed him into a tree. He bounced off bark, tore through a few saplings, then rolled down the slope, his head aching, stars flashing in his eyes, his back protesting in agony. He tried to shake off the pain. But he’d been hurt. And not just a little.
But Steven couldn’t leave Tessa and Aria with the enemy Dragonsoul. He refused. He would die first. He gained his feet through an effort of sheer will and sped up the slope as fast as he could manage. He crested the slight rise just in time to watch as Tessa swerved, guiding the Mercedes toward the yellow-scaled dragon. Amazingly, she was driving in reverse, going in to demolition-derby that asshat. Trunk first, she crashed into the dragon’s head. Then, before it could get to her, she threw it into drive and floored the car.
She raced away, putting distance between the car and the downed monster.
Aria was still down. The yellow dragon was slow getting to its giant feet. It wobbled, weaving, obviously dazed.
Steven bounded onto the road. The yellow worm opened its mouth and breathed out a blast of orange flame. The fire melted through the asphalt, turning it into a quagmire of burbling black goop. Steven threw himself to the side and rolled away, dodging the inferno blast.
In seconds, he was back upright.
After all the marathon sex with his Escort, he had Animus to spare, and though he’d failed before, he accessed the skill tree, found the True Form orb, and focused on it. The yellow dragon was three times bigger than he was, and Steven didn’t think he could take it down as a Homo Draconis. He needed his full dragon body.
Steven grew bigger, a lot bigger, and managed to flick his wings out from under the skin on his back. The pendant flashed brightly, slicing through the gloom. He raised his claws, now the size of car tires. He was doing it. He was achieving his True Form.
The yellow worm growled. “Vale said you were a Dragonling, but no, you’re more than that. Fuck this.”
Instead of attacking, the enemy dragon whirled and straightened his broken wing with a crack. He then swirled a claw in the air and boomed out two words, “Magica Cura!” The wing healed, as did some of the dragon’s wounds, but he was still missing scales, leathery flesh peeking through from beneath. Even after healing, he looked like he’d found himself under Thor’s hammer, and the beating hadn’t been kind.
Aria lay in her human form among the destroyed trees. Her skin smoked from the lightning blast.
Steven took a step toward her, but keeping his True Form was too much for him. He knew he couldn’t achieve it fully, not yet.
The yellow worm took to the air and swooped down onto Aria. He caught her up in one talon-tipped hand and then—with a deep belly laugh—the dragon wheeled and flew off, huge wings beating furiously at the air. “At least I won’t be leaving empty-handed,” he called back over his shoulder.
Steven bellowed, “No!” He felt himself changing back, first into Homo Draconis and then into his human form. Naked, standing in the cold on the ruined highway, he watched as the yellow dragon escaped with Aria dangling lifelessly beneath him.
Steven dropped to his knees, feeling every wound, from hitting the dragon at a hundred miles per hour to careening into fully grown pine trees.
Tessa pulled up, got out of the car, and went to him. “Steven, are you okay?”
“Aria,” he gasped. “We have to go after her.”
But only storm clouds were in the sky. There was no sign of Aria or the dragon who had taken her.
Steven and Tessa were alone.
Chapter Twenty-Two
TESSA HELPED STEVEN into the Mercedes, which mercifully still worked. It didn’t have a roof, the trunk was a snarl of twisted metal, and the engine ticked loudly. Bits of metal tumbled away behind them as they drove away from the battlefield. Still, Tessa had done a great job in using it as a weapon without doing much damage to the engine.
“So what now?” Steven asked quietly.
“We have to find Aria,” Tessa said. “We can’t just let this Rhaegen Mulk dick take her.”
“That wasn’t Mulk,” Steven said. “He mentioned Edgar Vale, and working for him. I think it was another of Mulk’s vassals, or it could’ve been a Ronin.”
“Shit, dragons for hire,” Tessa breathed. “What a world we live in. Well, whoever that was, that was one big-ass beast. So that’s a male dragon ...”
“I’ll get there.” Steven closed his eyes. He was so cold, but inside, he felt colder despite the burning in his chest.
“When you went True Form, you were impressive.” Tessa sighed. “So where do you think Aria is? I don’t suppose you can use the pendant to find her.”
“I can’t.” Steven lifted the chunk of mystic topaz and accessed the map. The fire marker was still above them, a few more turns on the road away. “But I can find the next Aerie.”
The barista let a sob escape her. “We can’t ... not without Aria. We can’t.” She shook her head, tears streaming down her cheeks.
“We have to,” he said softly. “O
nce we find the Power of the Pen, I might have access to spells. Not that I’ll know how to use them.”
They curved around another switchback and drew nearer to an outcropping of rock jutting out of the side of the mountain like an enormous broken thumb. The crag, rising high, split the forest. They were near the top of Lookout Mountain but not quite at the summit.
“Hold up,” Steven said, squinting as he examined the rugged cliff.
She slowed the car.
He raised the pendant. It flashed a brilliant gold. The rocky side of the cliff edging the roadway opened, revealing a curving roadway into the mountainside. Holy crap.
“Wow, total Batcave action right there,” Tessa said, awe in her words. “If only Aria was here to see it. I can’t really enjoy it now that I know she’s in trouble.”
He put a hand on her forearm and squeezed reassuringly. “I understand. But at this stage, we have to find my father’s pen. The last of the artifacts might be able to give us the power we need to get her back. To stop Rhaegen Mulk and his henchmen.”
Tessa brushed tears from her face, then motored into the passageway, flicking the headlights on. Only one headlight worked, but it cut a wide swath into the darkness. Once they were inside all the way, the cave entrance magicked closed behind them and a series of torches on the walls flickered on. Tessa killed the headlights and puttered farther in.
They cruised past the rough-hewn rocky walls, wet with moisture, and headed around a final bend, which let out in an underground parking garage. A parking lot with more than a few vehicles: a handful of Harley Davidson motorcycles, a cherry-red Corvette Stingray from the 1960s, a yellow Dodge Charger from the ’70s, a big orange Ford Bronco II from the ’80s, and a BMW roadster from the ’90s. Tools hung over a workbench flanked by two big, red, expensive tool chests. More of his Hoard, now that he was the last of the Drokharis clan.