Blood scrabbled back as the broken slab of floor tilted toward the dragon. Falling brick rumbled. The whole place would soon tumble down on them, burying them in tons of rubble.
“Free yourself!” The Vet urged, her voice rising to a scream. “Free us both!”
He whirled toward the witch. “Shut the fuck up!”
Sybil took a shaking step toward man and monster. “Do it, mistress! Kill your enemy!”
The last syllable of her cry extended as the floor beneath Sybil Auger opened up. With a flutter of her cloak, the woman vanished, screaming, into the hole. With a huff of flame, the dragon focused on Blood.
“Kayla, I know you hear me,” Blood said.
The great scaled head tilted. Dust swirled as the dragon took in his scent.
“Find yourself, Kayla. You need to stop, or you’ll bury us all.”
The reptilian eyes darkened. Despite the deep hue, Blood could see the clear depth there. Kayla’s eyes.
“¡Pollas en vinagre!”
The dark in her eyes was burned away, mad dragon orbs returning, ticking toward the voice. Oscar León appeared in the broken lobby, a Kodiak bear following down the stairs. With an ear-shattering scream, the dragon reared back, mouth gaping, flames rising from her throat.
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Chapter Thirty-six
“Isabela!” Blood realized the girl was lying in a corner of the lobby. The dragon would burn them all to a crisp. He distracted her the only way he knew how. Blood raised the tomahawk. “Kayla, stop!”
Hideous eyes locked on the weapon. The dragon let loose her flaming breath. Blood’s clothes were scorched as he dodged the pillar of flame. Racing past the monster, he flung himself though the destroyed wall. León and the bear gaped at the creature turning toward them.
Blood sprinted to the corner, lifting Isabela in his arms. He put his back to the dragon to shield the girl from the next gout of fire. Each step of the dragon wobbled the sanatorium like a house of cards. He didn’t know if his body would shield Isabela enough to save her from being barbecued alive. Blood would not let an innocent die because of his actions, even if this pathetic act was his last.
He held his breath. The fiery end did not come. Over his shoulder, he saw the dragon staring. Again, the eyes were dark, deep, and human despite their size.
Did she understand? Was Kayla gaining control of the monster she had shifted into? “Let the children go, Kayla. The girl you took—you were only protecting a baby. And your child, your real child.”
“Thorn,” Oscar whispered.
A chilling thought shook him to the core. If the dragon and Kimama were the same… “Your child, and mi—”
With a rolling boom, the ceiling crashed down, taking out the floor with its impact. The dragon turned away from the debris, her tail sweeping through walls, supports. The outer wall heaved and cracked. Her front claws scrabbled for purchase. Blood felt the whole building shift and tumble.
He scooped up Isabela and ran, blinded by the fallout of destruction.
“This way!”
Blood followed León’s voice; he saw the Kodiak racing ahead of him. He bent over Isabela as a hail of bricks and beams fell. The bear’s senses led them through a maze of offices. Walls bent and broke around them. Blood felt the building sway to the north, and back to the south. It was like running across a ship’s deck in high seas.
The Kodiak crashed through an unmarked door, disappearing into the gloom. A second later, the detective followed suit. Before Blood reached the door, a stack of bricks slammed into his back and shoulders. Encumbered by the girl, he staggered to his knees. He had to get her out. Shaking off the dust, he regained his feet.
Fire stairs led down behind the door. The treads angled beneath his boots as the staircase oscillated. Blood managed to keep his balance and ran down.
“Blood, wait!”
A cry from below stopped him short. Below him, the stairwell walls crashed inward, blocking the stairs. What now? The swinging of the building ceased, the direction now moving one way—the structure was toppling. They were trapped.
Thunderous footsteps sounded, shaking the building in its breakdown. A deep, stony dragging sound followed, To Blood’s shock, a huge scaled tail swept through the debris below, clearing the way. Kayla.
There was no time to pause. Blood ran down the flight of stairs, almost tasting freedom. But the building was no longer a building—it was a landslide. The stairs fell apart as he stepped, making it seem that he rode an avalanche. Legs spread wide, he huddled over his burden as they slid and fell.
Broken concrete and plaster piled up on the ground story. The stairwell would fill, blocking the door. Blood saw a gap at the doorway. He leapt into it. For a moment, he was buried.
Kicking, twisting, sheltering Isabela as best he could, Blood bulled his way through, and further down. Following the sliding demolition, he shouldered his way out of the stairwell. Finally, he saw light ahead. He crossed a marble lobby, pelted with each step, the floor rising in front of him.
Exhausted, he speeded his legs forward by force of will. He burst through the front doors, out of the falling brick and concrete, into the pouring rain. Blood had no more strength left in him. He sank to his knees, laying Isabela on the grass beyond a mossy pavement.
Over his shoulder, he saw the impossible. The massive edifice folded in on itself, upper stories falling into lower ones. Walls leaned slowly southward, gaining speed with gravity. High above, the spires of the main building fell apart like a child’s building blocks.
With an indescribable sound, thousands of tons of stone and brick sagged, listing toward the shallow ravine. Stories, walls, wings evaporated into a mound. It seemed to take forever for the domino-like catastrophe to reach its end. Finally, the failed structure rumbled its last chinking sounds as the bricks ceased their destructive tumble.
“Kayla,” Blood whispered.
He had been so wrong, for so long. In the end, the monster he vowed upon his life to destroy had saved him. Blood stared at the devastation, feeling utterly empty.
“Blood?”
Isabela made a sour face as the rain fell on her. Her eyes opened, widening at the sight of the dust settling over the ruined building.
“What the hell?”
He found himself unable to speak.
A black Lincoln bumped over the uneven ground. Oscar jumped out. Thorn struggled out of the passenger seat. He was shirtless, legs bound in too-tight sweat pants. His face, arms and chest glowed red from the burns, but they were mostly healed.
“Isabela,” León crouched down. “Are you hurt?”
Her eyes moved from man to man. “I don’t think so.”
“You are safe now,” the detective said.
“The dragon?” She gazed at Blood.
He tore his eyes away, sweeping the devastation. There was so much destruction. It seemed a fitting marker for the grave of the monster. But Kayla?
When he faced Isabela, her eyes rolled back in her head. Oscar gently lifted her and put her in the back of the car. “She’s in shock.”
Thorn stood next to Blood, gazing at the broken brick mountain. “So, my mother is a dragon? Was a dragon.”
“Yeah,” Blood finally found his voice. “But your father is a bear.”
With a tilt of his head, Thorn lowered his brows at Blood. It seemed he was about to say something, but changed his mind. The two of them looked alike, Blood thought, not for the first time. But now—
“You brought the girl out of there safely,” Leon said. “But you still have a lot to answer for, Señor Blood.”
His eyes still surveyed the devastation. “I have a lot more to answer for than you know.”
Blood thought the detective would try to take him in. He didn’t know if he had the strength to resist. Footfalls in the grass followed, the closing of car doors. His eyes remained on the fallen building as the car drove off.
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Chapter Thirty-seven
What was left for him? His fingers strayed to his neck. Blood felt two bumps beneath the skin, silver beads. Even if he wanted to shift into a bear, to leave the human world behind once and for all, he could not.
The storm continued, unabated. It washed the dust from him, soaking him to the skin. Blood could not feel the chill. He could not feel anything.
His mind grappled with the facts. For longer than he cared to remember, he had pursued a monster. And at the same time, he pursued his one and only love with murderous intent. Now, it was evident that Kayla and Kimama were one and the same–his one true love.
The vista of devastation lay before him, but within, only a black abyss. His mission was over, his quest completed. Blood was finished as well. His chance at redemption died with Kayla. He would either have to turn himself over to the authorities, or spend his remaining days a pursued man.
Or beast.
Casting around, he found a sizeable sliver of glass. Leaning over a puddle, he saw the tiny wounds in the reflection. With a few deft cuts, he removed the silver beads from his skin. He did not know how much of the silver leeched into his supernatural form. The last time he had been plugged with silver, he had to go into a healing trance to fully recover.
Blood wasn’t sure if he even wanted to recover. His work was done, although not in the way he had expected. Kayla was buried in the mountain of rubble, his heart along with her. Pain surged through his numb oblivion. He had found love again, only to destroy it, as he had destroyed everything and everyone on his long, doomed quest.
His mind filled with thoughts of Kayla, her perfect face, the deepness of her eyes. It was difficult to reconcile the monstrous dragon and this woman as the same being. And Kimama—in his dreams, she always saved him from the dragon’s rage. Yet it was Kayla who had appeared in the last nightmare. Although it was impossible, he knew that all three were one and the same.
He lay prostrate on the broken building, as if to get as close to Kayla as he could, as if she might feel the comfort and warmth emanating off of him through the tons of wreckage. Blood whispered her name. Although he didn’t believe he had it in him any longer, he did something he hadn’t done for more than two hundred years.
Blood wept.
***
How long he remained like that, face down on the shattered rock, rain pouring down, he didn’t know. Yet when he lifted his eyes, the sky grew dark beyond the bruised clouds. The stream on the far side of the building spilled over the tops of its banks. The destruction had dammed the flow. Soon, the area would be under water.
That was not what brought him around. Beneath him, the mound of debris shifted. Blood slowly rose to his feet. His muscles felt wrung out by grief.
As he watched, the surface of the brick mountain rippled, as if struck by an earthquake. Blood stepped away. It seemed more of the pile would fall away into the stream. For a moment, he hesitated, some inner demon whispering that Blood might be taken by the landslide into peaceful insensibility. Wracked as he was, his sense of self-preservation was still fully in place.
A more distant section of the mound shifted, stone rumbling, bricks clinking. Blood feared this mausoleum of devastation would be swept clean by the building water. Rain still fell hard. Lightning split the sky, with the crack of thunder immediate.
In the back of his mind, a thought occurred. This storm, still raging…
The eruption of the mound made him stagger. The newly formed mountain again was demolished. With his arms raised high to ward off the bricks that fell as hard as rain, Blood looked on.
A dusty shoulder emerged, scaled in blue and red. Then a tail swept through the broken rock, easily as if passing through water. Blood scurried back to avoid being buried. A long neck emerged from the wreckage, dust and crushed concrete falling from the glossy hide.
With mighty thrusts, the dragon freed itself. Wings unfolded, shaking off crumbled rock. Smoke trailed from reptilian nostrils as the head turned toward him.
Blood was at once filled with joy and terror as the eyes locked with his. Kayla yet lived. Unfortunately, so did an angry beast the size of a city bus.
He held his palms out, taking a step forward. “Kayla, can you hear me?”
It responded with a sulfurous snort. The mouth opened revealing three inch fangs. He saw no recognition, just animal intelligence in the glowing eyes.
“I didn’t know. Maybe I deserve to die for my mistakes, but I swear I didn’t know. Kayla, come back to me.”
The monster continued to size him up, a deep growl ensuing from within. Nothing stood between them. Nothing but his words.
“Kayla, I know you can hear me. Let your mind touch the dragon’s. Neither one of you needs to be afraid anymore.”
The reptilian head reared high on its neck. Smoke issued from its mouth. From her mouth, he thought, and wondered if that thought would be his last.
Wings unfurled, the sound like enormous drums. With a leap, the dragon took to the air. It pumped furiously for altitude. In seconds, the creature disappeared into the storm clouds of its own making.
Blood stood still for a time, amazed that he still lived. Kayla was still submerged in the dragon. He had to find a way to help her. Human and beast were separated in the woman. Blood needed to find a way to reconnect them. Even if it cost him his life.
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Chapter Thirty-eight
Kayla found herself in the shower, with no memory of getting in. The water splashing down on her was lukewarm. She must’ve been in here for a while if the hot water was running low. She turned off the taps.
Focus, she told herself. Memories formed slowly. Outside the bathroom window, the sky was dark. She gasped. Had she really stolen two vehicles this morning?
It came tumbling back to her, the race to the old sanatorium with Elathan. The girl, Isabela, was inside. Those two men, Thorn and Oscar, trailing them. The four of them rescued the girl, and then…
And then…
Alien memories filled her mind. Her baby, suckling, and Kayla holding him to keep him warm in the freezing car. She and tiny Thorn would die there if help didn’t come soon. She had miscalculated, going into labor out here in the middle of nowhere. Dun-colored hills surrounded her, glittering hard with frost.
What was she doing out here? The paramedics arrived. She lay on the road. They placed a board beneath her. She heard them talking about a car accident, a hit-and-run. They needed to stabilize her neck and staunch the bleeding from her head wound. Sun blazed on the dun-colored hills, the warmth of the road sizzling beneath her.
Heat filled the cave, and smoke, making the air almost unbreathable. The man she loved was dying of it. Kimama helped him to his feet, half-carrying him toward the mouth of the lava tube. Outside, the air revived him. She gazed at the frozen vista, limned by moonlight and the mountain slopes below.
The mountain had spoken while they slept. She lay in her hut, awaiting the return of the man with the bear medicine, the man she loved. But the roof was on fire. Above, the mountain, Wy’east, shouted with burning ash and rock. The village was on fire.
Kayla shook her head, gasping for breath. Her head was killing her. Shaking, she stepped out of the shower, toweling off. She hadn’t had an attack like this in a long time. Shifting didn’t help. Her complex thoughts couldn’t be tamed or cured by the timid creature she shifted into. That’s what The Vet said when Kayla turned to her for help.
The Vet. The dragon, Sybil Auger. She had attacked Kayla with an ax. But that had made no sense. Why would a creature as powerful a dragon use a weapon?
She swiped the steam off the bathroom mirror. Kayla ran her fingers between her breasts. A slender pink scar ran there. So the memory was real. Or was it? Meeting her eyes in the mirror’s reflection, she gasped.
The scar on her forehead—it was no longer a scar, but a wound. Pink blood seeped down her damp skin
. She saw bright red on the towel.
Kayla took deep breaths to calm herself. She had gauze and tape in the vanity drawer. Applying a bandage, she wondered if there was anything uglier than a big bandage on your head?
Memories flooded her mind again. The first time she’d seen the scar. After the accident, after the unknown car had struck her when she was a teenager.
No, it was the time she’d fallen down that abandoned mine shaft.
No, it was from the tomahawk thrown by the man she loved.
“Stop it!” Kayla clutched her head.
After a moment, the memories stopped cascading, the pain in her head subsiding. She met her eyes in the mirror again. Kayla’s hands played over her body. No stretch marks. There wasn’t a baby. The pink scar between her breasts must be years old, although she couldn’t remember what had happened.
Except for Sybil Auger striking her with the hatchet.
No, the Auger was the dragon, the dragon!
Sleep, she thought. All she needed was some sleep. It had been a trying day, even if she could only remember parts of it. Kayla would feel better in the morning. She hadn’t felt like this since
The baby was born
The mine accident
The car accident
The tomahawk attack
Pain seared through her again, making her cry out. Aspirin, and sleep–that’s what I need. Staggering, she shrugged into her robe. She opened the medicine cabinet, and took two pills with water from the sink. Sleep. She just needed sleep.
Kayla moved through the apartment. She saw case notes spilled everywhere. The case. Elathan. She only had a few weeks to prepare. How could she prepare when she was a big ball of crazy?
Was Elathan all right? Where was he? Kayla didn’t want to think about it too hard. Remembering only brought on the foreign memories. It was like she was recalling someone else’s past. Kayla knew it was a dangerous path to tread.
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