by Aaron Crash
Steven spun and took the thing’s head off with a slash of his IonClaws. But the zombie beast was already dead. It gripped him with arms imbued with magical life. From inside its body, through the ruins of a greasy rib cage, he saw something flash, a rainbow color that reminded him of the topaz pen.
What the hell?
Steven and the undead dragon struck the ground and bounced into flames and torched trees.
Gunshots rang out along with a blast of cold.
Mouse and Liam were breathing ArcticWind through the forest, putting out the fires, giving Tessa a clear path as well as encasing the undead dragon in ice. The zombie thing tried to pull itself out of the snowy cage but couldn’t. It was trapped and writhing.
Tessa walked across the cold, smoking ground, firing her Peacekeepers into Rahaab, who laughed at the magical bullets. Impervious.
Rahaab flung Impetim spells, silver explosions that shook the ground. Tessa used her shields to try and protect herself, but she was caught in a barrage of magical shrapnel and half-frozen chunks of blackened trees. She went flying, rolled across the ground, and then lay still.
“Magica Defensio!” Steven thundered. He threw his shield in front of Rahaab’s next magical attack. The Alpheros’s own Impetim missiles exploded in his face.
Rahaab only laughed. “This battle is fun. Yet this is the end of me, Steven Drokharis. Can you feel it? Can you feel your victory? I can. And I find it all so fucking amusing!”
Aria soared in from behind him, a sneak attack, and slammed lightning into Rahaab’s back. He fought back, another blast of ChromaticFury. If Aria hadn’t been such a skilled flyer, it would have stripped the wings off her back. Instead she whirled and only took a glancing blow. It was enough to send her to the ground, flipping head over tail until she came to rest on her back. She didn’t get up.
Rahaab stood in the ruined outdoor living area. The house had caught fire and burning plastic mucked up the air. Ice and snow hissed as the forest fire was extinguished by Mouse and Liam. They turned their Exhalants on Rahaab.
The Alpheros fisted his hands. He yanked Animus from Mouse and Liam. Then Rahaab barked out words, saying them so fast, Steven couldn’t understand them. He raised his giant silver dragon arms and dead Dragonskins were plucked from the ground. The corpses were sent sailing into Mouse and Liam. But the Templar Knights were no longer dead. Like the wingless golden dragon, they were given new life. Dozens of the undead Templar Knights hit Mouse and Liam, and they were covered in the clawing, biting, clinging zombie lizard men.
Already weakened, Mouse and Liam hit the ground, fighting for their lives against the new threat.
Steven launched himself at Rahaab. There was only one thing that could kill him, the HeartStrike ability off the Path of the Mirror-Souled Dragon.
At the last moment, Rahaab shifted into his human form, a tall powerful man. He dashed to the right, blurring with speed, and snatched a jagged-bladed sword from its sheath. That sword was made from dragon scales connected by a metal chain and sharpened to a razor’s edge.
Steven hadn’t seen that coming. Mathaal had said Rahaab had little love for humans, so why was he going to fight as one? Steven soared over him. The last of the Alpheros shouted something. The sword came apart into a long whip of sharp burs. It wasn’t just a sword, it was a whip-sword!
The length caught Steven around his throat. The jagged pieces of the blade slashed into his scales, and blood poured down his chest. He was jerked backward and slammed down onto the ground. Rahaab retracted the lash back into a sword. He strode forward. “Samael killed countless Dragonsouls with this ridiculous weapon. Never did I think I would use it to slay my greatest enemy, the biggest threat to our safety this world has ever seen.”
“Steven!” Sabina called out. Where had she come from? She must’ve come around with enough Animus to cast a final spell to let her see. In her hand was the Slayer Blade. She hurled it to him. “Not the sword. Your hand and your heart. When the light is the brightest, you’ll know what to do.” The green in her eyes faded. She was out of Animus, blind again, and there was no way she could help him further.
Steven shifted human and caught the sword just in time to parry a blow. Mouse had worked with him for weeks on end to improve his fencing skills.
“Not going to engage in witty banter?” Steven asked.
“There is nothing to say. Either I kill you, or you kill me. Let fate decide, though I know what my destiny is. And I embrace it!”
Rahaab shifted into his partial state, a silver dragon man, tail twitching behind him. His big hand-and-a-half sword came down, but Steven knocked it away. The Slayer Blade blazed with a green fire, the green gem on the pommel bright and getting brighter.
Sabina had said when the light is the brightest. Did that mean the Slayer Blade? Or the sun breaking the horizon? It wasn’t the forest fire. The ArcticWind Exhalants had formed a blackened morass around the west side of the mansion. The undead dragon still wrestled against the ice trapping it.
Steven shifted into his Homo Draconis form and cast a shield spell. A second later, Rahaab opened his mouth and unleashed a rain of acid. It flecked his shadowy force field and hit the ground, sizzling through the concrete of the outdoor living room. When the acid hit the ruined house it easily ate through the wood and drywall, creating a soup.
The Acid Exhalant must’ve been a derivation of Toxicity.
Rahaab shouted something else and his sword came undone again, whirling around his head, a living serpent made of steel and scale. It slashed down across Steven’s back, arcing over his own sword, which was gleaming bright.
No, not the sword, the sun.
It struck Rahaab’s silver scales. A section of scales over his heart gleamed more brightly than the others. His heart. Right there.
HeartStrike.
The whip-sword slashed the Slayer Blade out of Steven’s hand. Rahaab dropped the weapon, and it retracted back into a bastard sword. Rahaab then shifted into a dragon, lunging forward to eat Steven. Those great jaws and those razor-sharp teeth would cut him in half. Steven’s lifeblood would paint the dragon’s beard scarlet.
Steven thought about leaping for his sword, but no, it was like Sabina had said. He couldn’t kill the Alpheros with any weapon other than his own abilities. He triggered SerpentGrace, speeding himself up. At that moment, time seemed to slow.
Rahaab was coming down, that massive maw open, his body an infinity behind him, wings out, claws reaching. And there Steven stood, an ash-streaked, battle-weary human, strong, but naked. Blood from the whip-sword painted his back.
How could he hope to go up against such an ancient creature of the universe? Steven knew, without a doubt, that Mathaal had given him the power. Now, inside of him, he felt the additional energy, and it reverberated through him. He wasn’t just a normal Dragonsoul anymore, however special. In him thrummed the power of the Alpheros.
The sun still sparkled on the scales over Rahaab’s heart.
Steven accessed HeartStrike from the Path of the Mirror-Souled Dragon. And he used partial transformation to change his right arm into a clawed weapon armored with thick scales. He’d stay small to be a harder target for Rahaab to hit.
Steven dashed under the jaws, moving faster than thought. His talons on his right fist were his weapon, and they were swathed in shadows, pulsing with power, even more dangerous than IonClaws. The energy going through him made him sweat, and it was like his cells were linked to a nuclear reactor.
This was HeartStrike. And it would hurt him to use it. He knew this was an Armageddon weapon, a weapon of last resort.
He rammed his dark right arm into the scales of Rahaab’s chest above him. His arm went up and into the heart of the Alpheros. Steven then changed into his True Form, expanding outward, upward, becoming a black-scaled dragon. He cracked through the Alpheros’s ribs and ripped into his heart.
Rahaab let out a shriek that seemed to echo forever.
An explosion of dark energy blaste
d out from the point of impact, where Steven’s claws pierced Rahaab’s heart. Both were flung back.
Steven blinked his eyes. It was like every one of his bones had been put on an anvil and battered with a ball-peen hammer. His head throbbed, and he was having trouble seeing. He was completely human again, devoid of scales.
Rahaab’s huge head turned to him. Most of his chest was gone. The Alpheros should be dead. Yet, he had enough Animus left to whisper a few last words. “Please, Drokharis, please. Stay hidden. You cannot hope to stand against the Zothoric. If they find us. If they know. They will come. You all will die.”
“I couldn’t stand against you,” Steven said weakly. “And yet fate was on my side.”
“And this is my destiny.” Rahaab gave out a last wet gasp. “I embrace it.”
His head lolled to the side and his eyes closed. The zombie Dragonskins dropped to the ground, the magic giving them life gone. Whatever was inside the undead dragon flashed a rainbow color and then winked out. The headless, wingless creature relaxed into the ice.
Snow swirled down, and Steven felt cold. What was happening? Then he saw. Five more dragons had come, females all, and they were breathing ArcticWind to put out the last of the forest fire. They must’ve been Cassius Pine’s widows, coming home.
Snowflakes tickled his face. Steven smiled and then let go. He’d won. His father was avenged, and he could rest.
Chapter Thirty-One
CHASTITY AND PRUDENCE Wayne walked out across the flat West Texas plain. Not even seven o’clock in the morning and it was hotter than an Aggie linebacker’s crotch in the last seconds of the fourth quarter. Identical twins, Chazzie and Pru had taken a turn living in the human world for high school and college (Go Aggies!) to see what all the hubbub was about. They’d been cheerleaders, of course, with their strawberry blonde hair, freckled noses, big boobs, and all the pretty the boys, young and old, could manage. They’d caused a big fuss and left a trail of drool and broken hearts behind them.
But both Alamo Heights High School and Texas A&M had been too easy to conquer. Their daddy had warned them. So, then they’d set their sights on the Texarkana Primacy and Carlo Bart Baxter. Carlo Bart had taken to them right away, even though they were the daughters of a no-account Ronin drifter who lived as much in the desert as he did in the city, splitting his time between the Texarkana Primacy and the Sonoran Desert Primacy. The Wayne twins thought about going after Scotty Ortiz, but he didn’t have any real big cities in his Primacy. Chazzie and Pru needed the bright lights of Dallas every now and again.
Louis Laloux of the French Swamplands Primacy was a no-go. He wasn’t nearly American enough for the two.
Under a faded blue sky, both were in short cut-off jeans to reveal long legs, the cut-offs cottony and white and soft on their thighs. Tight tops kept the girls from flapping about. Chazzie and Pru were barefoot because they were Dragonsouls and a little Texas gravel couldn’t hurt them. They walked to a bar top on the flat dirt plain. There were a few beers in the cooler underneath. A wide selection of machine guns lay across the hot wooden top. Around the bar were boxes of ammo.
In the distance were targets, a few overly large stuffed animals and a Buick Skylark that they’d driven out there to demolish. Shooting up cars was just too much fun.
Pru took her cell phone out of her back pocket. “Well, Chazzie, wouldn’t you know it? Our little Stevie killed not one but two ancient dragons. Rahaab and Mathaal are dead.”
“I ain’t never heard those names in my life.” Chazzie shrugged and picked up an AK-101 with a laser scope. She stepped out in front of the bar. She took her stance and aimed. A red dot flashed across a giant stuffed panda.
“They were real secret, Chaz,” Pru said. She pressed 5.56×45mm NATO ammo into a clip for her sister. “Honestly, they were real legends. Word has it, they weren’t even dragons but something else.”
“Were they them demon things you sometimes talk about?” Chazzie asked. She pressed the trigger of her machine gun and removed the stuffing from the panda.
“No, not the Zothoric,” Pru said.
“Well, you know you’re the smart one, and I’m the pretty one.” Chazzie ejected the clip and reached for the full one her sister had loaded.
“We look the exact same,” Pru protested.
“That don’t make you any less smart, Pru.” Chazzie clicked the assault rifle to single fire. She chose a target and pressed the trigger three times. Bull’s-eye. Bull’s-eye. Bull’s-eye.
“You’re just as smart as I am, Chaz,” Pru said. “You just don’t care about some things, and I do. Like you don’t care about the Alpheros.”
“Sounds like the Alpheros are all dead.” Chazzie laid the hot rifle onto the bar. She bent and cracked open the cooler and then de-virginized a Bud Light. She raised the can. “It’s 2 a.m. somewhere, and the ugly girls are about to get some action.”
Pru rolled her eyes. “So you have heard of the Alpheros and those two old guys. Well, they’re gone. Stevie now has two Primacies.”
“Three,” Chazzie corrected. “He got that Australian one not too long ago. Couple of days? He’s on a war path, all right.”
“For now.” Pru wiggled out of her clothes. She stood naked on the flat dirt for a minute, then she hulked into her Homo Draconis form, a strawberry pink color. Her dragon smell was very sweet, like bubble gum. She lifted an M60, and Chazzie hurried forward to help carry the belt for her.
“Mind if I take dibs on the Buick?” Pru asked.
“Don’t mind at all, sissy,” Chazzie said.
The machine gun’s rounds ate through the tires and through the hood, blasting pieces off the engine block. The stink of the gun oil and gunfire mixed with the Wayne twins’ sweet smell.
“Carlo Bart is gonna shit himself,” Chazzie said after Pru rattled through a belt. “Stevie isn’t gonna stop with three.”
“He won’t,” Pru agreed. “But sister, he don’t know what we know. If he was smart, he’d stop.”
“You mean the three brothers?” Chazzie asked. “We still don’t know if the Americos are real. Talk about rumor. If they do exist, hell, and they know about us? We’d be in some serious shit. We’d have to put the brakes on all our little endeavors.”
Pru stuck the big machine gun on her hip. Her wings were tight against her back, her tail rested on the hot ground, and she enjoyed the heat. “I don’t see a way around it. Stevie D. has to be our next project.”
“It’s gonna fuck up our summer,” Chazzie sighed. “And you know how much I like the Fourth of July. ’Member that time we banged that one All-American left tackle under the fireworks at the Dallas Cowboy stadium? They was pretty. He was big, hot, and sweaty. We were slutty. That’s a win, win, win, right there.”
Pru shook her serpentine head. “Sister, this isn’t going to just ruin our summer fun. I’d be surprised if we made it to Christmas alive. Carlo Bart isn’t as dumb as he thinks we are. At some point, he’s gonna get suspicious. Besides, he’s not going to go after Stevie alone. He’s gonna make more deals than a mortician in a nursing home to get help.”
Chazzie laughed. “That was a funny one, sis.” She stripped out of her clothes and turned into her partial form, just as pink as Pru. “Hand me that peashooter. I want to see if I can hit the gas tank.”
“You is so greedy!” Pru accused with a lilt to her voice.
“Don’t you know it.” Chazzie snapped in a fresh belt, handling it all easily because she was strong as fuck. “I want it all.”
“And I want it now,” Pru finished.
Chazzie found the gas tank. The Buick never stood a chance, not when the Wayne sisters went after it.
STEVEN LIMPED OUT OF his bedroom in the new master suite of the Infinity Ranch outside Cheyenne, Wyoming. He’d just woken up from a nap, and his black hair was mussed. He was in shorts and a Halestorm T-shirt that Tessa had bought him. And he had the sword cane because sword canes were cool.
He checked Aria’s room, Tessa�
�s room, Mouse’s room, and they were all empty. He knew where they were, though.
It had been weeks since he’d killed Rahaab, and he still wasn’t a hundred percent. That HeartStrike ability had been too much for him. Liam, after studying the third volume more, was surprised the maneuver hadn’t killed him.
It was only because of Mathaal’s dying gift of his own life force. The AnimusChain had transferred Old Matchstick’s life force into Steven. It had been a desperate maneuver, but it had saved them all.
The construction on the Infinity Ranch was done, and it was a splendid thing, a rambling ranch house with a seven-story tower of stone in the center. It was the perfect landing pad for their flights around the Wyoming countryside. Also, the castle was fortified and stocked with guns, the Drokharis Grimoire, and their gold. If they needed, they could retreat inside where there was plenty of food, and water pumped up from the earth below.
The bottom of the castle was the central great room of the ranch and had lots of couches and comfortable chairs sitting on the lush carpets covering the hardwood floor. Rocky columns held the tower aloft and allowed them access, but solid steel doors could rise from the ground to seal off the citadel. Polished wooden stairs twisted up. The central tower was very much like his father’s St. Vrain Aerie, and Steven recalled the doorways at the top, in the backs of the animal sculptures. Where did those doors lead? And would he ever open them?
Not yet. He still had work to do on this world. With Rahaab dead, the law firm fighting Steven had abruptly switched sides. They’d reached out to Bud and his dad and offered to help them with Rahaab’s estate, which Steven now owned. The Novaks weren’t exactly thrilled to be working with Boaz & Jessup, but when they saw the money involved, they quickly changed their tune.
Steven Drokharis wasn’t just worth millions. The “B” word had been thrown around. Rahaab had been on the planet, acquiring his hoard, for fifty thousand years. He’d probably started collecting wheat and chickens when humans first started bartering.