“Colby!” Gabrielle’s eyes held anguish. “Get out!”
Too late. Darkness crawled over me along with the decaying odor of ancient dirt, and I became dragon.
Titus got the hell out of my way. I saw his eyes change to dragon black. He understood what had just happened, and knew that he had to join forces with Gabrielle to take me down.
Especially as Gabrielle hung there, unwilling to act.
“I like this one.” The words came out of my mouth—interesting, because I couldn’t speak in human words when I was a dragon.
“No,” Gabrielle whispered.
“Then it will be easy,” the entity sneered.
I struck. Or, rather, the Earth entity did, through me.
My reason and cognition didn’t go away. I was fully me, Colby, Colbinilicarium, the dragon shit who liked to party. But at the same time, the entity’s awareness flowed through me from head to tail.
I felt like I’d swallowed acid mixed with brimstone, and that after a three-day bender. It burned me, pounding at my head and twisting my stomach.
The entity was mindless, a formless being with a burning need to devour. The Earth had created it, and it had been born deep inside magma, burbling to the surface whenever it could.
Miners died when it emerged—they were buried alive as the entity made shafts explode, or they dropped after inhaling poison gas the entity caused the rocks to release.
The entity exhaled itself through lakes, destroying entire villages, or pulled down buildings as it shook the Earth apart. It didn’t always cause earthquakes or volcanoes, but took advantage of them to emerge and do as much damage as it could.
It enjoyed destruction, and it wanted to burrow into the previous world, the Beneath world, and destroy that too.
Dragon fire—not mine—exploded around me. I blinked away the relentless fixation of the entity to see that Titus had changed to his dragon and streamed flame at me.
I batted aside the fire with a flare of my own. The Earth entity was getting the best of both worlds with me—its resolute, catastrophic force, coupled with the agility of a wily dragon.
I didn’t for a second try to fight the entity inside me and break myself free. I knew I couldn’t. Simple as that. Why waste the energy?
What I could do was force Gabrielle, stunned and uncertain, to act. She had the power to take this thing down, and she knew it. She’d figured out why the Earth entity hated Beneath magic, and I understood as well from its half-insane thoughts.
Beneath magic could devour it. The entity hid itself deep in the Earth, but by doing so, it encountered the occasional cracks to Beneath that stung it, woke it from its happy slumber. The gods and demons from Beneath, ready to feed on anything that got in their way, hacked at it until it had to flee.
Thus, the entity woke itself every millennia or so and went on a rampage to destroy any Beneath magic that threatened it. If other magical beings got killed along the way … Oh well.
And I know my brain’s been jacked if I’m using terms like ‘thus.’
I swooped from Titus’s fire and faced Gabrielle.
Come on, sweetie. Give me your best shot.
Her eyes widened. She was so beautiful, my lady, all long legs and silky black hair, dark eyes I could gaze into for days.
She wasn’t a simpering, brainless fool either. Gabrielle could go toe-to-toe with any dragon I’d ever known and then slap down a demon or two and go out for breakfast.
“Get the hell out of Colby!” Gabrielle shouted. “Face me, you coward!”
For answer, the entity made me suck in a breath and spew flame all over the woman I loved.
But she wasn’t where I aimed. She’d zoomed upward the moment I’d focused on her, slamming a wall of Beneath magic in front of her to deflect the fire.
Gabrielle was smart—she knew she couldn’t fight the entity, but she could fight a dragon.
Dragons had been born of hottest Earth magic—we were probably the closest thing to the entity that any living creature could be. If Gabrielle forced the entity and dragon to fuse into one being, she could defeat it, or at least cripple it enough to send it into hiding for another millennium.
Titus had been a good choice, strong enough to stand the entity taking him over, but not a good choice for Gabrielle. Like I said, he’d have killed her.
I was powerful enough for the fucking entity, but I had a vested interest in keeping Gabrielle alive. I’d rather let her kill me and go party with Janet than fight her.
The mirror was screaming and keening from the floor where I’d dropped it. Gabrielle had used it to bounce the Earth entity into me, the mirror having been forged from the same kind of magic.
I created it, the entity whispered in my head, at the dawn of time.
No, the mirror had said someone living at the Salton Sea had done it. Or, wait—it had said its sand came from there, in an Earth-magic sink.
I remembered sitting at the foot of Gabrielle’s bed, watching her in worry, while she’d interrogated the mirror. The mirror had been forged from ancient sands, which now the Earth entity was taking the credit for forming. That both unnerved me and gave me ideas.
Meanwhile, I was made to fly and roll and stream fire at Gabrielle and Titus. Titus had launched himself to the top of the arena and hovered there, as though hanging out and waiting to see how things went.
No you don’t, you bastard.
I banked and went for him. The arena was big enough that two dragons could circle around each other but if I kept a little below Titus, I had much more room to maneuver. It also let me flame him in the belly.
My fire swatted him there, and Titus screamed, rolling to dampen the flames.
Dickhead. He should be protecting Gabrielle, not saving his energy to fight me once I killed her.
“Abomination!” the entity shouted through my mouth. “Destroy it!”
I didn’t have a choice. As when Drake had made me burn down half Janet’s hotel, my lungs inflated with air that would pump up the fire in my flame sacs and stream it out hotter than any fuel a human could make.
Dragons didn’t breathe fire, or belch it, which would be, frankly, gross. Just as the digestive and breathing systems in our human bodies were separate but used the some of the same space, a dragon’s fire mechanism was a series of separate organs.
Sacs around the stomach stored the fuel, which in theory was harmless until ignited. We mixed the fuel with oxygen and used lung power to flush it through pipes outside the corners of our mouths, and the fuel lit when it hit the outside air.
That’s why we can’t spit fire in human form—human bodies don’t have the flame system. The fire we shoot from our hands is nothing but cool magic.
The entity put me through this explanation, fascinated even as I was doing my best to singe the hell out of Titus.
Titus finally rolled down from his refuge at the top of the arena and started to fight me for real.
We circled each other, dropping or rising to get a bead on each other, Titus’s dragon a black and red colossus of fury.
“No!” Gabrielle screamed at me. “You fight me.”
“Sorry, sweetheart.” The entity said, “You don’t get to choose. The point is to kill me, remember? This dragon I’m in is collateral damage.”
That was so not the right thing to say to Gabrielle. I started to feel sorry for the entity.
Gabrielle rose on her magic, surrounded by white lightning. “My boyfriend is not collateral damage. Get out of him!”
Boyfriend? When did that happen? And why did it make me, the free spirit, so pleased?
Titus didn’t wait for debate. He swooped, flamed, and caught me in the side.
Dragon hides are tough and thick—have to be. We live with the equivalent of plastic explosives inside us, which, like I said, are harmless until ignited.
But fire still hurt, and if my skin burned away enough to let any flame inside, I’d explode like a bomb.
I bellowed as Titus’s
fire melted scales and cracked the webbing on my wings. I folded them and dropped—wings are vulnerable, and a dragon with burned-off wings is a sitting duck l’orange.
The fall put the fire out, but my hide smarted, which pissed me off. I soared up to Titus again, shooting flame, catching the length of his tail. See how he liked it.
Gabrielle watched in agitation, surrounded by shimmering silver magic that kept her safe from stray flames. She wasn’t moving on with her plan. She didn’t want to kill me.
I was touched, but there was a bigger picture here.
I flew at her, fire streaming. Come on! Do it, Gabrielle. Kill it.
“You can’t win, little girl,” the entity said. “Your boyfriend is my slave. He is finished, and so are you and your kind.”
Oh, please, can you come up with any more lame villain speak?
The arena rumbled again. Gabrielle lost her stricken look and actually laughed, though the laugh was strained.
“You want to finish my kind? You wait until my sister gets here. You know, she’s your kind and mine, all mixed up, and she’ll trash your ass.”
“Then we shouldn’t wait,” the entity said, and struck.
I barreled at Gabrielle with all my dragon speed, strength, and fire. She barely dodged in time, and her magic shield wavered under my onslaught. I went for her again, the Earth entity enhancing my natural dragon power.
Gabrielle’s eyes ignited with rage as I knocked her off her feet, and I saw her realization that she’d have to strike back.
She came for me, my girl, dark eyes sparkling and beautiful. Beneath magic streamed from her, lighting up her body, her hands coming together as she directed all she had at me.
I met the attack with a wash of fire, which was split by the Beneath magic. We lit up the arena, flame and white light bouncing off the stones. Titus zoomed upward and behind me again, taking advantage of Gabrielle’s frontal assault to hit me in the ass.
My tail went up in flames, and I beat the air with it, trying to put it out. Titus, not waiting, sent another stream like a swift arrow at my haunches.
The fire never reached me. A sudden beam of light reflected from the tiny piece of mirror below and batted the flame aside.
Titus flapped quickly backward. I blinked in surprise and realized that Gabrielle had defended me, bouncing a point of Beneath magic through the mirror to intercept Titus’s attack.
Mistake. The distraction left me free to fly right at her.
I didn’t bother with magic this time, I simply ran my dragon bulk into her. Her Beneath lightning stung me all over, but I took her down.
Gabrielle’s body was human, never mind her mother was a goddess. The Beneath goddess had manifested inside an existing woman in order to do the deed with the human man she’d chosen to impregnate her. Gabrielle wasn’t a demon—she was a human being.
Being tackled by a dragon would break all her bones and crush her to death, which was what the entity wanted. Wanted me, as dragon, to eat those bones too.
I infused myself with as much of my own will as I could, and changed to my human form as the pair of us went down, landing on the sands beyond the hole Gabrielle had opened. The darkness that swathed dragons when they changed enveloped us—the cold magic force that allowed a huge beast to stuff itself into the narrow shape of a man.
Gabrielle squirmed under me, her body warming mine even as we fought.
“Colby.” Her eyes filled with tears, her magic dropping away.
“You have to finish it, sweetheart,” I said. “He’ll never stop until you do.”
“Why?” She balled her fists and pushed at me. “I wanted you to stay out of it.”
“To give you a chance, baby.” I kissed her lips, lingering a moment to enjoy her warm breath, the taste of her, her softness. She looked into my eyes, and I knew I’d found what I’d been looking for all my life.
But no time to savor. I rolled from her and dragged her to her feet. “Now, do it.”
Gabrielle spun away from me in rage, balling her fists and raising them to the sky. “Come on out! Let’s finish this!”
The ground trembled. A bolt of lightning shot straight through the ceiling, breaking open the roof and sending Titus spinning.
Sand whirled. White light streamed upward from the opening in the floor to meet the bolts streaking down.
Hell rose and boiled forth. At the same time, Janet the Stormwalker strode in, her hands full of lightning. Behind her came Mick, fire encasing him, and then Grandmother Begay and the woman called Chandra.
The entity looked through my eyes, and I saw what it saw.
Ruby Begay no longer hobbled, but strode with head up, wrapped in black feathers, an ancient Earth being made dangerously unhappy. With her was Chandra the doctor, except she shone like silver, too bright to look at. I felt the entity’s fear rise.
It feared even more the next being who arrived, Nash, who appeared to be a pillar of emptiness. But the nothingness wasn’t passive—it sought, and the entity didn’t like that.
Maya followed barely a step behind Nash. The entity recognized she was human and dismissed her.
Idiot. She carried a pistol of some kind, holding it competently.
Then there was Drake, his huge black dragon superimposed on his human body. He led the dragon slayer on a rope of binding magic, and I saw the double nature of the man—human and demon—the melding of the two and something beyond that.
I also saw that the binding spell wasn’t binding him anymore. He must have recovered his full strength—but then he’d had days lying in Janet’s basement to heal.
“Drake!” I shouted, and then something hit me and knocked all the air out of me.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Gabrielle
Colby yelled over the noise of my demons bursting into the arena from below. They knocked him over just as the dragon slayer jerked his head up, gave Drake an evil smile, and snapped his arms open.
The black threads fell away, and the dragon slayer stood free.
Drake, without missing a beat, started the spell again, sending tendrils to wrap the man. The dragon slayer threw them off with ease, jumped over the balcony to the dirt floor, and prostrated himself in front of Colby, who’d climbed to his feet.
“I brought them, master. I serve you.”
“Good,” the entity said with Colby’s voice. “Keep the dragons away from me.”
I hated hearing Colby talk like this. I wanted to reach inside him and strangle the asshole monster who’d taken him over.
What scared me was that I suddenly knew I could do it. But I’d kill Colby in the process.
“This wasn’t his plan,” I snapped at the entity, waving my hand at the dragon slayer. “It was my plan. He’s been stuck in a basement. I want the credit for bringing us all back here, understand?”
Colby raised his fists to strike me, but I shoved him away with a burst of magic. I had to get the entity out of him without damaging him—maybe by knocking Colby out? Worth a shot.
“Take him down!” I shouted at the demons, pointing at Colby. “But gently.”
They moved in, way too fast, teeth and claws striking. Colby spun away from them. He gave me a look of understanding, cloaked himself in darkness once more, and became a dragon.
The demons—flying ones, crawling ones, man-shaped ones—attacked him, trying to force him to the ground. Demons are hard to control, as the witch who’d summoned the one in the C had discovered, but I had so much more power than she did. The demon that witch had conjured was here, in fact, racing to attack Colby.
“No!” I waved at him frantically. “You! Get the dragon slayer.”
The slayer was trying to escape through one of the arena entrances, but Mick stepped in front of him, grinning dangerously.
The mirror continued to scream, the keen of it grating on my nerves. I kicked the shard out of the way, and it ended up against the wall. A bright light shot from Colby to it, and its scream wound to a thin, piercing wail
.
“I’m soreeeeee,” it sobbed, and then the Earth came.
It was like the attack on the rooftop, except this time, we were already underground.
Clods of dirt, sheets of mud, and the snakelike roots dove out from the arches at all of us—demons, dragons, Earth goddess, Beneath goddess.
Janet drew down the lightning from the storm outside and struck back. She was beautiful with her power—both kinds entwined in her, balanced and whole. She’d struggled with that for a while, and now here she was, honed and terrifying.
I’d been struggling for similar balance, but I couldn’t worry about that right now. I was Gabrielle, goddess of Beneath, and I wanted to kill.
So did the demons. They surrounded Colby, braving his fire, striking with acid, claws, teeth, venom.
Titus went for him too, the fury in his black eyes telling me he’d give Colby no quarter.
Mick and Drake and the red-eyed, horned demon stalked the dragon slayer, while Janet fought the suffocating Earth with her storm. Rain washed away the dirt, wind blew back the roots, and lightning pulverized the rocks.
And Grandmother and Chandra? They watched. Their heads turned as they observed the demons flying around, the dragons fighting, the Earth itself attacking us.
Nash was in the arena, trying to get close to Colby, probably with the idea of sucking out the entity as he had from Cornelius. Even Maya tried to help, though she mostly hid behind a pillar, looking to see where she could point her gun.
I had to get to Colby. The demons would hold him down, and Titus would rip him apart if the Earth entity didn’t eat him from the inside out first.
I blasted a path to him. The demons melted away, afraid of their goddess, and I walked through them.
“You want to mess with Beneath?” I yelled at the entity in Colby’s dragon eyes. “Then you got it!”
I spread my arms, willed the sands of the arena to surround me, twisted the storm into the vortex, and called forth the world of Beneath.
I became it. The liquid light from below swallowed me, my goddess magic twining with it to let the light rise and have substance. If the Earth entity could attack with all the power of the Earth, then I could fight it with all the power from the world of Beneath.
Dragon Bites Page 22