Pure Surrender

by Aja James

  Cloud’s path was instantly a lot easier to cut through.

  “It’s a dragon! It’s a DRAGON!” Benji whooped with excitement.

  “Take it down! Take it down now!” an unknown foe’s voice came from somewhere within the horde.

  Aella had never personally encountered the Creature, but Sophia had provided detailed descriptions. Including an eerie voice that was both masculine and feminine, just like its looks.

  But Aella wouldn’t go by outward appearance where the Creature was concerned. It was a shapeshifter after all. It could impersonate anyone.

  That voice, however, it didn’t disguise its voice in that last command.

  For the first time, it sounded not entirely in control. Guess it was finally confronted with something it hadn’t planned on.

  A freaking flying dragon.

  She urged White Dragon back up into the sky just as their enemies launched javelins and spears at them.

  Despite the thick scales on the dragon’s torso and tail, his wings were vulnerable, she noticed immediately. They were thick and leathery but still made of skin, like bat wings.

  Just as the most effective way to bring down the cavalry was to cut the horses’ legs from beneath them, their enemies figured out that the fastest way to bring down a dragon was to damage its wings.

  Even though she’d maneuvered White Dragon up as quickly as she could, and he’d spiraled and rolled as he climbed into the clouds again, two spears had found their mark, puncturing holes into his wings.

  White Dragon screeched in pain but was able to keep his altitude.

  Aella looked down and saw that Cloud shuddered and fell back for a moment before regaining ground. His connection with his wounded familiar was taking a toll.

  And even though the Elite warriors had made some progress through the horde, the enemy soldiers swarmed around them again, shifting en masse to keep them thickly surrounded.

  Fuck.

  At this rate, Cloud was going to transform to save the day.

  Aella knew what he was capable of. She remembered.

  When her tribe had been attacked, when they’d been on the verge of total annihilation, she recalled the strange tornadoes that descended upon them. The bolts of lightning, hurricane-strength winds and torrential rain.

  She even recalled seeing the dragon himself through the swirling dark clouds.

  She’d seen him.

  As she saw him now.

  There was already a blue shimmer around Cloud’s body, the edges of his form becoming distorted.

  He looked up at her for a split second.

  She knew what he was communicating—the moment he felt he couldn’t hold their enemies at bay any more, he’d change. He wouldn’t let any of them be captured alive, and he wouldn’t let his comrades die.

  Too much was at stake. Medusa’s advantage had grown too great.

  Aella thought fast.

  She’d waited for him for two thousand years. She wasn’t going to lose him ever again!

  Beyond the reach of the enemies’ projectiles, she hovered White Dragon in the clouds. Quickly, she scanned the surging horde and found her target.

  The Creature.

  It was the only “warrior” who didn’t fit in. It looked everywhere around it, rather than focus on the task at hand. It carried a sword, but the blade wasn’t even drawn. It did not have the stance of a fighter.

  “There,” Aella whispered to White Dragon, pointing to her mark.

  He immediately dove again, shooting like a rocket from the sky.

  Before he got within range of the enemies’ weapons, however, Aella leapt off his back and somersaulted through the air, as White Dragon lifted up again without her.

  With the momentum of her downward cannonball, she knocked straight into the Creature before the soldiers around it could react. She hooked an arm around its neck and dragged it through the horde using her Gift of speed to plow through obstacles along the way.

  Even so, she sustained some damage. A lucky slash here, a blow there.

  But she managed to pull the Creature outside the throng of assassins. The moment she cleared the outer circle, White Dragon dove again.

  Using one more burst of strength and speed, Aella hauled the Creature with her onto the dragon’s back as they ascended together into the clouds.

  “Call them off!” she shouted at her prisoner as they flew above the battle.

  “It’s a real dragon,” the Creature murmured in a childlike voice, jarringly contradictory to its current form, that of a grown warrior vampire male. It even stroked curious fingers across the dragon’s neck scales.

  She backhanded the Creature across the face with her iron wrist cuff, the impact just shy of breaking its cheekbone.

  “Call them the fuck off!”

  It looked at her steadily, lifting a hand to touch its wounded cheek, and licked the blood from its fingertips.

  “Can’t,” it said with a humorless smile.

  “You ordered them to attack, now call them off before I hack off a limb. Even immortals can’t grow those back.”

  “I ordered them to bring down the dragon, which was unexpected, not to attack your friends,” it said patiently. “This battle is not of my making. I cannot reverse the order.”

  “Then where is their Mistress?” she retorted, angling a dagger against the Creature’s throat.

  “Where is Medusa?”

  Its unholy smile spread wider.

  “Medusa is everywhere. She can control the minds of those soldiers from anywhere in the world. She is inside each and every one of them. You cannot stop her.”

  Aella looked down at the bloodbath below.

  The Creature was right.

  The soldiers couldn’t be stopped. Not by any power in the mortal realm that was at their current disposal.

  “Look at that,” the Creature suddenly said with wonder, its curious voice back in a sing-songy tone.

  “I’ve never seen such weather patterns before. I’ve never seen or ridden a dragon before either. Today must be my lucky day.”

  And Aella realized then that she’d failed.

  The Cloud she knew was no longer on the battlefield below.

  *** *** *** ***

  It took mere minutes for one warrior dragon to lay waste to an entire battalion of immortal warriors.

  Aella kept her eyes on Cloud the entire time.

  No one else seemed to be able to see the terrifyingly beautiful jade green dragon with obsidian tipped scales churning through the skies, unleashing elemental havoc upon the earthly realm.

  But Aella saw.

  She remembered this dragon from the time she was a wee girl, sitting astride her first pony. She’d looked directly into his starburst blue eyes from beyond the clouds. She’d dreamed of dragons ever since.

  All this time, it had been Cloud. She never realized until now.

  When the last of the enemies were crushed to ashes and dust, the jade dragon began to ascend higher into the sky, not even looking her way.

  Aella urged White Dragon into a dive and pushed the Creature unceremoniously off about twelve feet from the ground.

  “Keep it restrained!” she shouted to Inanna and Gabriel, who looked up at her with something like stupefied wonder.

  Clearly, a flying dragon and the weather miracle were a lot to take in. Even for powerful immortal warriors.

  Aella didn’t wait to see or hear their response before steering White Dragon back toward the heavens.

  “Come on, gorgeous,” she said as she lay low against his neck as he increased speed, “take me to Cloud. I’m counting on you.”

  White Dragon rose higher and higher into the sky, until the cold, thin air made it impossible to breathe. Aella’s eyes stung so badly she could no longer keep them open. Her skin felt frozen and brittle; her lungs near collapsing.

  And then, suddenly, the air was warm again, she could breathe again, and a radiant light teased her eyes open.

  She’d been tra
nsported into a world she could never have imagined in her wildest dreams. And given her two thousand years of existence, that was saying something!

  It was a lush land covered in mist, as if it lay suspended in the clouds. Waterfalls, lakes and rivers splashed through green forests and exotic flowering fields, disappearing into the thick, pervasive mist. Mountains rose in the background, majestic and bold. Rainbows bridged wisps of curling clouds that floated above the mist.

  And was that…?

  Yes, Aella could see fairy-like xian nǚ in colorful silk robes strolling in gardens and orchards below. She could hear their tinkling bell-like voices as they chatted and laughed.

  She noted irrelevantly that she looked nothing like them.

  She couldn’t think why Cloud had once compared her to their ethereal beauty. No earth-bound being could ever hope to match their other worldliness. The way they moved, the glowing aura they radiated.

  These were the females Cloud spent most of his existence with. These indescribably beautiful, magical beings.

  Aella wasn’t jealous.

  Not at all.

  Okay…maybe just a smidgeon.

  She didn’t have time to dwell on it, because White Dragon kept soaring.

  On the highest peak of the tallest mountain sat an opulent gold-roofed palace surrounded by smaller gold-roofed palaces with a giant garden and a small, mirror-like pond in the middle of it.

  White Dragon conveyed her to the bottom of the hundred steps that led to the palace entrance.

  Aella slid off the dragon’s back in a daze, her eyes wide as she took in the overwhelming structure before her.

  She barely felt White Dragon nudge her forward with his muzzle.

  But when she turned to look at him, the dragon had completely disappeared. Only a kaleidoscopic dragonfly flitted to and fro through the fragrant air.

  “Well,” Aella muttered beneath her breath.

  “Here goes nothing.”

  “At last, I have succeeded! And not a moment too soon, given that this is my last skin. I have created artificially through the combination of ingredients from all Kinds and sources of magic the most powerful, mythical creature of them all—a dragon. An earth-bound dragon that is as permanent a fixture in this world as I wish it to be. After all, I am the dragon…”

  —New journal entries by an unknown hand

  Chapter Nineteen

  “You have returned, Xiao Yun.”

  Cloud rested his head on his fore-claws and closed his eyes.

  It was rude to ignore the Master’s greeting, but he was too heart-weary to care.

  He’d lost Aella forever with this last transformation.

  Well, perhaps not forever.

  If he was optimistic, he could hope that his soul would get sent back to earth in another form sometime in the next few hundred or thousand years. A form that would somehow cross paths with Aella (if she was still alive). He could hope that she was attracted to said form, and love her for a brief while before he fulfilled his role again.

  It was a lot to hope for.

  Given Aella’s love of males in general, he doubted she’d want him after all that time. There were endless earthly varieties to choose from. Why would she choose him?

  He doubted it after everything that had happened. He was certain that if he had been a true Pure One, he’d have suffered the Decline after their exertions in the cavern.

  As for her Pure fangs…he didn’t know what to make of that. They must have been a fluke.

  Perhaps this was why Pure Ones were cursed with the Cardinal Rule.

  Even though making love to a person who didn’t love one back resulted in an excruciatingly painful death within thirty days, surely it was a mercy compared to what he was going through—

  Loving and pining for a female for the rest of eternity while she carried on with her life none the wiser.

  “Do you wish to forget, my child?”

  The Master never used endearments with Cloud. The fact that he called Cloud “his child” must mean that Cloud looked particularly pathetic this time around. Even worse than the last time he’d been here, fighting his invisible prison of darkness and silence.

  Cloud curled in on himself, tucking his tail beneath his chin, his legs close to his body.

  Everything hurt inside from the loss of Aella.

  Yet, he didn’t want to forget.

  Even though it pained him to think of her moving on to other males—hurt him down to his very soul—he understood now why she did it.

  The physical affection between males and females in the world below was essential to being alive. The connection of body, heart and mind was something he’d never felt before in the whole of his existence in the heavenly realm.

  Because he loved her, because he wanted her happiness above his own selfishness, he wanted her to be loved by others, and he wanted her to be able to love others in return.

  No male, or even a million males together, could ever love her as much as he did, but he wanted them to try. He wanted her to have everything her heart, mind and body desired.

  The Master sighed long and deep. He must be displeased with Cloud’s reticence.

  Cloud just wanted to sleep away the next thousand earthly years. He wanted only to be awake…no, alive, with Aella.

  “I did not expect you to fall so deeply in love, Xiao Yun,” the Master said.

  Cloud felt a hand stroke softly over the chimu on his forehead.

  “A being such as you has never fallen in love before. You are the purest magic in the universe, and you are purely good. Like a human infant, you are without preconceptions, prejudices, guile and deceit. You are innocence and light.”

  The Master paused and added, “But not without mischief. You were quite the rascal in your younger days.”

  Cloud deepened his breathing, trying to slip into unconsciousness, hoping that the hollow pain within would ease with the numbing of his physical self.

  It hurt so much…he missed her so much…

  “Does it hurt because you love her, but you think that she doesn’t love you in return?” the Master inquired, reading his thoughts.

  Cloud’s nostrils flared involuntarily, but he did not answer.

  “You are wrong in that, my child,” the Master said softly. “She loves you unequivocally. She always has.”

  Cloud shuddered all over as fresh pain exploded in his heart.

  He wished it was true.

  How he wished it!

  But it couldn’t be. He didn’t believe it.

  “It is true,” the Master said. “Open your eyes and see for yourself.”

  Cloud didn’t want to see. He didn’t want to be bombarded with the torturous images of Aella…with other males…Those were forever imprinted in his memory.

  He wished her happiness, he truly did. But he couldn’t bear to see her…like that…with anyone else.

  “Look, Xiao Yun. See the truth.”

  Flashes of light teased Cloud’s closed lids as images began to play before him. He was afraid of looking, but he yearned to see Aella despite it all. He loved her and missed her desperately.

  Slowly, he raised his eyelids a small fraction, squinting against the light of the images.

  They were of Aella right after he’d saved her tribe from the vicious attack.

  She’d gotten on her stallion the moment it returned to her after abandoning Cloud. She rode it fast and hard across the plains in the direction that he’d gone before.

  Frequently, she looked up into the skies, as if she expected to find him there, above the clouds.

  Had she somehow seen him that day? But how was it possible?

  Cloud peeled his eyes open wider and watched more images rapidly flash before him.

  These were of Aella going from village to village, up and down the Altai mountain range, past the Scythian borders into Han territory.

  There were no sounds, so he couldn’t hear what she said, but from the looks of it, she was searching for so
mething or someone.

  She was searching for him.

  He could see seasons passing as she continued to search. Until finally, she climbed all the way to the top of Kunlun Mountain in the northern edge of the Tibetan Plateau. There, she stopped at a Chinese monastery that worshipped the Jade Emperor.

  She conversed briefly with the head monk in residence. Had she learned Chinese? She must understand and speak enough to get by, for they reached an agreement after a while. The monk brought her to an altar of the Jade Emperor and had her kneel on the cold, hard ground.

  There she stayed, in her usual warrior garb, wrapped in an overcoat made of furs in deference to the freezing temperatures on the mountaintop. She knelt before the altar with her hands tented together in the praying position for days, neither sleeping, drinking nor eating.

  Cloud watched as her lips turned blue and broke from the cold. Her golden skin lost all of its glow. Even her breath froze before her face as she struggled to breathe.

  He wanted to shout to her to get up and leave. She’d die there if she didn’t. He couldn’t stand to watch her suffer…

  “She did die.”

  Cloud’s eyes snapped fully open as he speared his fiery blue gaze into his Master.

  “How do you think she became a Pure One?” the Master asked calmly.

  Cloud shook his head. He didn’t understand. What—

  “She came to the top of Kunlun Mountain to pray to the Jade Emperor because she’d heard that if she ever wanted to be visited by a dragon, that was the deity she should pray to. And that particular temple was her best chance at getting heard. She wanted to be visited by one particular dragon, who, at the time, was being incarcerated and punished for his transgressions on the mortal plane.”

  Cloud’s eyes widened with disbelief.

  “Yes,” the Master addressed his doubt, “the human female did indeed see you in your true form the day you saved her tribe. I don’t know how it is possible, but she described the dragon she wanted to see in exact detail.”

  Cloud couldn’t countenance it. She’d known what he was and still came to find him?

  She’d died trying to see him?