by Aaron Crash
But that fear quickly turned to rage. An uncontrollable force he simply couldn’t contain. He let out a cry of pure fury and hurled himself at Mulk, who’d stopped retreating and stood behind his Terror Trio. But then another slab of stone ripped upward, and Steven hit it, face-first, and he went tumbling to land on the ground, right under Mulk.
He turned to see Mouse walking toward their enemies, and she’d never looked more beautiful or deadly. She seemed like an ancient goddess of war coming to exact revenge for being wronged.
Mulk laughed. Sizzling-hot spit leaked from his mouth and hit the ground. Dry grasses burst into flames from the heat of his saliva. “You picked the wrong side, Melissa.”
“I’m Mouse,” the blonde said. “And I bite.”
In one smooth motion she reached back, drew the Slayer Sword, and hurled the broadsword into the guts of Gideon Scaramanga.
“Magica Cu—” Mulk tried to say, but Steven sprang to his feet and slammed a scaled fist into the blue dragon’s face. All of Steven’s outrage and determination to win was in that one punch.
Mulk’s healing spell was spoiled. Ha, and that bastard said he thought spells were beneath him.
Rhaegen Mulk staggered back. Gore poured from his mouth, extinguishing the flames in his throat. The whites of his eyes turned into a scarlet network of busted blood vessels.
In that moment, Steven knew they were going to win.
TESSA SAT UP USING muscles she didn’t know she had. Steven had healed her—which had lasted all of about two seconds. Sometimes she really hated how fragile she was as a human. One leg was clearly broken. Hell, both legs felt like they’d been hit with sledgehammers. Her right arm was out of action, her elbow a swollen, smashed mess. Every nerve ending cried out for mercy. The pain was hideous, and yet Tessa had watched her little brother fight his body every day of his life. From the minute he woke up to the minute he went to bed, Jared pushed himself. Any other kid would’ve given up long ago.
Tessa was wrecked, sure, and would probably die, but like her little brother, she was a fighter, and as long as she had breath, she had battle within her.
Mulk and Steven exchanged blows on the other side of the rocky spears Gideon had summoned from the earth.
Speaking of the Magician, he was trying to yank the sword out of his stomach before he lost consciousness. But by the color of his skin, he wasn’t going to win that race. Tessa put that son of a bitch’s head in her sights and pulled the trigger. The gun kicked in her left hand, the muzzle vomiting out a pink flash of light. His skull melted in the satisfying thunder of her perfect shot.
Terror Trio? Yeah, fuck that. It was the Douchebag Duo now.
Animus filled her, and yet her body remained broken.
“She lives,” Karlos Butcher’s voice whispered behind her.
She turned and fell down onto her right side, managing to land so that her right arm was in front of her. More pain knifed through her, and she struggled to stay out of its grasping tendrils. A new batch of adrenaline flooded her system as a gargantuan anaconda slithered toward her along with a dozen shambling burning dead men. The sweet smell of their cooking flesh filled Tessa’s nose. But that wasn’t normal flame eating them, that was ShadowFlame, and it gave the walking corpses a ghastly spectral glow.
How were they still walking? Their summoner was dead. She figured that the zombies would continue to fight until the duration of the spell ended. Powerful magic. Good thing Gideon Scaramanga was gone.
On her side, she fired and missed. Her hand was jiggling, and her vision was closing in again. The anaconda appeared in an ever-shrinking tunnel of darkness. Four bullets left. She fired twice more. Streaks of pink flashed long lines on either side of the snake’s head. Two misses. She was down to two bullets.
Butcher slithered up to her and took her broken legs into his mouth, which was his mistake. He was fast. Tessa was faster. She stuck her pistol between Butcher’s eyes and pulled the trigger.
He wasn’t going to heal a bullet to his brain.
And yet Tessa was nearly done for. She collapsed onto her back. Was she still holding the Colt? She wasn’t sure. She wasn’t sure of anything.
A corpse with a blackened face leered down at her. She noticed that his teeth were very white surrounded by the crispy-charred skin.
STEVEN BLOCKED A SLASHING claw from ripping out his eyes. Mulk had gone all in, and the two were battling on the ground like starving dogs brawling over a soup bone.
From the corner of his eye, he saw the zombies converging on Tessa. She’d been firing her Colt, but now it was silenced.
Aria lay in her human form, unconscious. Kai Charon was going in for the kill. But before the purple-suited bastard could sweep his katana into her, Mouse, back to being a dragon, hit him with her ElectroArc. He dodged most of it. That Warling was fast and lethal. Mouse took to the air to avoid his pistol shots, but she soon came around again for another attack.
Kai Charon fired three times with his Glock. And Mouse was hit, three times. She tumbled out of the sky. Steven’s heart lurched once more. If he didn’t end this fast, his whole Escort was going to perish, and that? That he couldn’t allow.
Steven caught Mulk’s right talon, then his left, and they were face-to-face, glaring into each other’s eyes. Both were on their hind legs, their front arms locked. Mulk flapped his wings, trying to knock Steven off balance. If he went down, Mulk would kill him. Steven beat his own wings, staying upright, but this Dragonsoul was strong and powerful, at the height of his powers.
Steven couldn’t beat him in a straight-up fight. He had to end the battle, but how?
“Your father begged for mercy,” Mulk hissed. “He wept like a child. Are you going to cry like your daddy, boy? Are you going to beg me for your life?”
Those words got into Steven’s head. How could he win against an enemy that had killed his father? How could he beat a Dragonsoul Prime at least a hundred years old? Probably much older. Steven grimaced. He was losing ground. Mulk was going to put him on his back and rip out his throat.
And still the blue dragon taunted him. “When I’m done with you, I’m going to own your Escort, what’s left of them. I will make them know pain. I will humiliate them in every way imaginable.”
Mulk couldn’t rape them, that would kill him because of the Animus involved. But there were other things he could do to Tessa, Aria, and Mouse.
The very thought of the women he loved being hurt put fresh power into Steven. No, this was his time to avenge his father and protect his Escort. This was his chance to win the Great Plains Primacy.
He thought of Mouse’s lesson, something her father had told her during their fencing lessons.
Opening yourself up for an attack can invite death, but it can also bring victory.
And that was the key. Steven didn’t have enough Animus for much, but he did have enough for one last gambit.
He dropped his claws suddenly, so suddenly that Mulk didn’t come for him right away. It was the last thing the Dragonsoul Prime expected. In that split second, Steven reached and grabbed Mulk’s head, leaving himself open.
Mulk ripped into his chest and stomach with his razor-sharp claws. The pain sparkled in Steven’s brain.
Steven inhaled deeply. If he couldn’t manage an Inferno Exhalant, he’d die.
But Liam’s teachings and the lessons from the second volume had taught him what he needed to know.
Breathing fire meant breathing in life and exhaling death.
Steven pried open Mulk’s jaws, even while the other Dragonsoul savaged his chest. Mulk’s mouth was pink, his tongue red, his fangs white. Steven focused on the back of his enemy’s throat.
And he unleashed a wind of fire right down Mulk’s gullet. This time, there wasn’t smoke, only wicked flames.
That Inferno fried Mulk’s mouth and kept on going, down his esophagus, into his belly, and right out the back of Mulk’s body.
Rhaegen Mulk’s eyes went wide. Then they rolled back in
their sockets.
Steven kept on breathing until every ounce of oxygen was out of his lungs. He stepped back.
And his father’s killer slumped to the side. His insides had been flash-fried, and there was no coming back from that, not with his Magician dead on the ground.
The Animus that filled Steven was so sweet, so wonderful, that Steven had to fight back tears. He’d done it. He’d won.
However, he couldn’t celebrate yet. Danger still haunted the battlefield. Smoke and fire boiled out of the doomed house, and what remained of the zombies were converging on Tessa.
Steven was leaking blood as he took to the wing, and in midair, he whirled, striking the walking dead away from Tessa. They stumbled back. Steven landed, and with a series of strikes, he beheaded the corpses. He burned his hands doing it, thanks to the ShadowFlame clinging to their undead bodies, but that was a small price to pay.
“Enough!” Kai Charon called out.
He alone stood, holding Aria to him. She was bloodied and weary, but she was conscious. Barely. The Warling had sheathed his sword. He held his pistol to Aria’s temple.
“I’m leaving,” he said. “It is very clear you have won. All I want is my life. If you let me go, I will not kill her. Do we have a deal?”
Steven grinned, showing the Warling his fangs. “No. You will die. If you kill her, you will die slow. If you drop her, I will end your miserable life as quickly as I can.”
Aria swung an elbow back, right into Kai Charon’s breadbasket. He stumbled back while Aria dropped to the ground.
From behind Steven came the thunder of a single pistol shot. A flash of pink whooshed by Steven and opened a hole in the Warling’s forehead. Right between his eyes. He blinked, shocked to find himself dead, and then he too fell, the last of Mulk’s vassals defeated.
Steven returned to his human form, clutching the wounds on his stomach and chest. Damn, but Mulk had gashed him good.
With bloody hands and weakened legs, he stumbled to Tessa, who lay on her back, half of her body still stuffed into the giant anaconda’s mouth. Steven dropped to his knees beside her. “Magica Cura,” he whispered, tracing one hand along her cheek. The Animus from Mulk left him as he healed as much of Tessa’s broken body as he could. Her right elbow went from a purple knot back to normal. Some of the gashes on her face closed over.
Tessa blinked. “Right back at you, my Prime. Magica Cura.”
They traded healing spells until both could walk. They then used the last of their magic to help Aria and Mouse back to their feet. All were still wounded. It was going to take a lot of rest and spells to get them well.
The four walked around the burning house to the garden.
Mathaal blinked. The ancient dragon, glowing white, stood in the middle of over a dozen dragon corpses. Some had turned back human, but most lay dead in their True Forms. It seemed that death sometimes altered the bodies of Dragonsouls, and sometimes it didn’t.
When Old Matchstick saw Steven, he growled and opened his mouth to unleash more hell on them.
Tessa let out a weepy sigh. “Uh, I’d like to get off the roller coaster now. It’s been fun and all, but I’m kinda done.”
It seemed their war wasn’t over yet. Not quite.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
THE SUN WAS GONE. STARS twinkled in the warm night sky, but a wind was bringing in bright white clouds from the west. The only light was from the fire burning down the Double-Circle Ranch. The air was heavy with the scent of the fire and the blood of the dead. The various odors of the dead Dragonsouls dissipated fast.
“Mathaal, it’s me, Steven Drokharis.” Steven waved his arms. “Rhaegen Mulk is dead. We have our revenge, my friend. We don’t need to fight.”
The old dragon closed his mouth and glanced around, blinking slowly. “Stefan, you are young. Have I gone back in time? I don’t know ... I don’t know these dragons I slew. Were they friends? Have I done something horrible again?”
Steven smiled. “No, they were our enemies.”
“Most of them,” Mouse murmured. She left them to go to Liam Strider, who lay unconscious on the ground. He was back to being a yellow-haired human with a long blond beard, which was matted with blood from getting smacked in the face by Old Matchstick’s tail. Still, he was clearly alive, which was a tremendous relief.
Mathaal blinked and great tears dropped from his purple eyes. The cataracts were gone, but his mind was still uncertain. “Steven Drokharis, the last scion of that great family. You came to me, in my prison. I remember. You weren’t alone. There was a fight. You took back the book that I told Stefan I would guard with my life. Your father, who showed me such kindness.” The ancient dragon glanced at Tessa and Aria. “Your Escort is very beautiful. You are lucky. Even the ape isn’t too disgusting.”
Tessa laughed. It sounded so good, ringing out. “Well, Steven, if you ever have any doubts about me, you can always remember that I’m not too disgusting.”
Steven squeezed her hand. He left her to approach the great white Dragonsoul. “I’m sorry for pulling you into the fight. But we needed you. You saved us.”
“I ... saved ... you.” More tears leaked out of Mathaal’s eyes to splash on the ground. “I still have some use after all, it seems. Thank you, Steven, for the great honor of helping you. You will do great things. I can see that.” He paused. “Where is Uchiko? Where are the Onari Guard? Are they here?”
“No, they are back on the island,” Steven said.
“I would return,” Mathaal whispered. “It is my prison, but oddly enough, it has become my home. Do I have your leave to return there?”
“You do.”
“Magica Porta!” Mathaal called out. The smoke from the burning house swirled until it became a circle large enough for the ancient Dragonsoul. He took off on his great white wings and flew through the gate. Once his spiked tail disappeared through the portal, the circle closed with a flash and a barely audible pop.
Steven was left alone with his Escort. He didn’t have the Animus to heal Liam, and neither did Tessa, so they dragged him back to the Orange Crush and the F-150 still parked in the driveway. Both vehicles had somehow survived the battle.
They got blankets from the trucks and wrapped themselves and the Ronin up.
They leaned against the cars, watching the house burn, in silence. The black smoke reached up to the cloud-strewn sky. A fat raindrop struck the ground next to Steven. Only one.
A million thoughts went through his head. He was now the Dragonsoul Prime of the Great Plains Primacy. He’d been a dragon less than a month. How could he have done so much in so little time?
The answer came immediately. The Drokharis blood in him ran true and strong. More than that, though, it was thanks to his Escort, the three brave women at his side. And he’d acquired powerful vassals—both the reluctant Yellow Ronin and William “Bud” Novak.
“Thank you,” he said to his Escort.
“You are most welcome,” Liam muttered. He pulled himself up. “So did we win?”
“We did,” Tessa said. She shrugged. Smiled. “It wasn’t even that hard.”
There was a beat of shocked quiet. Then Mouse erupted. “What the fuck, Tessa? We had to use every trick in the book, and still it could’ve gone either way. For the love of biscuits, that wasn’t easy. I’m not sure I’m up for another fight like that. Ever.”
“I am,” Aria said. “And I do love biscuits. Speaking of which, I’m famished. We probably should’ve kept some food and water in the cars. The house was doomed from the start.”
Steven felt his hunger keenly. He would’ve eaten anything at that moment. He eyed Karlos Butcher’s snake body. That wouldn’t be too much like cannibalism, would it?
Gravel crunched behind them. Lights flashed through the weeds of the rough road.
They all turned into dragons—except Tessa, obviously, though she was already loading her Peacekeeper—and twirled as they prepared for whatever fresh hell was headed their way. A Chevy Silver
ado puttered up to them pulling a Jayco camper, a big ol’ unit that could house a small family easily.
Steven tensed, mind spinning. What the fuck?
The Silverado stopped, and Bud stepped out of the truck. He glanced up at the four dragons peering down at him. “So, wow, yeah, dragons. I knew you weren’t bullshitting me. But, guys, aren’t you supposed to stay hidden? I mean, isn’t that a thing?”
Steven shifted back into a human, as did his friends.
Tessa holstered her gun, ran to Bud, and hugged him. “Oh, Bud Novak! You missed this huge fight, which was probably a good thing. We thought you’d come at the exact wrong time and we’d have to save you. Again.”
Bud shrugged. “That’s me, wrong place, wrong time. My timing is usually impeccable.”
“Tell me you have food in that trailer,” Steven said. He walked over and shook the guy’s hand. He didn’t care he was naked.
Bud, though, got uncomfortable. “Dude, I know I’m your vassal and all, but I do not want to be looking at your unit. I brought some clothes, and yeah, the camper is fully stocked. Because, me, yes, I’m awesome.”
Weather on the plains changes quickly. The sky, now loaded with clouds, let loose rain that dropped in sheets, driving them inside the trailer. The storm was a blessing. It would put out the house fire and stop the flames from spreading. Also, the fire department wouldn’t be coming to break up their little victory party.
Liam knew how to turn on the generator. Bud was clueless. It seemed he’d bought both the truck and the trailer that day in Denver. He said he wasn’t a camper, and Cheyenne had some nice hotels, but he wasn’t going to take any chances.
They pushed out the slides and took turns using the shower. Steven had never loved hot water like he did that night as he soaped his bruised body. Tessa had healed him, but his skin was still a network of wounds. However, he took such satisfaction knowing that Mulk’s days of clawing up anyone were over. He’d avenged his father. He’d beaten the odds and kept his Escort safe.