Dark Storm ('Dark' Carpathian Series)

by Christine Feehan

  He drew back, ignoring the agony ripping through him, took a breath and unleashed a torrent of fire straight into Mitro’s malevolent face. The vampire howled, jerking back, twisting his arm viciously as he withdrew his empty fist. Mitro threw himself to one side to avoid the steady stream of flames pouring from the hunter’s throat, his scream filling the chamber.

  Bright red blood sprayed into the air from Dax’s torn chest. Great globs of burning blackened blood, a poisonous acid, from Mitro’s open chest splattered through the chamber and burned into ashes, raining down over him. Gases exploded into fiery balls, hurtling through the enclosed space, pitting deep craters into the walls. Vents burst below them, more noxious gas rising along with bright orange-red sprays of molten rock.

  Mitro hammered at the thin barrier, slamming into it over and over like a battering ram, dodging the fiery bombs blasting upward from the lower pools of roiling magma. Dax leapt after the vampire, reaching with the tips of his fingers to hook an ankle and yank the undead backward. A thousand tiny needles punctured his palm, burning on contact. His first instinct was to let go, but he forced himself to hold on, dragging the vampire back down toward the bubbling pool of heated rock.

  Mitro drove his foot into the hole in Dax’s chest. Pain exploded through the hunter. For a moment everything went black. His body shut down, his hand slipping off the ankle. He tumbled through the air before he caught himself. Mitro was at the barrier, ramming his ridged skull over and over into the same spot. Dax streaked upward to try to intercept him again.

  The mountain rumbled ominously—held its breath for one still second—and then heaved. The concussion sent both combatants reeling. Dax slammed hard into the wall before he could catch himself. Heat seared his body. Blood dripped from his ears. His vision blurred. The chamber filled with gaseous vapor, and the sudden increase in pressure nearly tore him apart.

  In that instant, he felt the Old One rise to protect him. His body had grown accustomed to the conditions of the volcano over the centuries, but neither he nor Mitro would fare well when the volcano erupted and the dragon knew it.

  The Old One took possession fast, his soul rising, spreading out to encompass Dax. Crimson and orange scales first engulfed Dax’s body, sliding smoothly and efficiently from his head to his toes. The hard shell covered the gaping hole in his chest, but his blood continued to seep out between the scales, staining his chest scarlet.

  Dax was used to shapeshifting, but this felt different. When Carpathians shifted, there was no sense of the body completely remaking itself, but this time, there was. He could feel his mass increase, his bones lengthen and reshape. He could feel the wings sprouting from his back, the supple, scaled hide stretching out like vast sails catching an ocean wind. He could feel his nails lengthen, become razor-tipped diamond talons. Strength, agility and raw, primal emotion coursed through his veins. He wasn’t a hunter who’d assumed the shape of a dragon: he was a dragon. Mighty. Powerful. Master of fire. King of the sky. And though his consciousness was still there, the Old One was there, too, ancient and powerful and just as deadly.

  His wings spread, and his dragon body spun in midair. The long, ridged tail splashed into the magma pool, slinging red-hot rock against the sides of the cavern. But instead of pain, the heat invigorated him, strengthened him. He screamed in triumph and challenge and spewed another jet of hot flame toward the vampire.

  But just before the boiling clouds of flame enveloped him, Mitro shifted into a large, scaly black dragon and rammed hard against the barrier, breaching it at last. He bellowed his triumph as the mountain belched, geysers of vapor and fiery material venting through thin spots. There was another short breath and the mountain erupted. Huge, violent plumes of gas, ash and molten rock spewed forth, ripping through the mountaintop and into the sky above. Both dragons went hurtling sideways, driven through the side of the mountain by the force of the blast.

  The fiery red dragon tumbled end over end through the sky, disoriented, nearly blind, inside the cloud of fiery ash and gas spreading over the forest. Lightning cracked across the sky. Bright streaks of red and orange fountained into the air. Ash and white-hot mud rained down. Fiery cannonballs of molten rock shot through the air. A river of lava poured out of the gaping wound in the side of the mountain, looking like long ribbons of thick, glowing taffy, twisted and bright, dropping to the forest below. Trees exploded, fiery bombs bursting into flames.

  Glowing eyes pierced the veil of the dark cloud and ash to spot the struggling black dragon. Red wings swept down in powerful strokes, propelling him high into the air. The experience was unlike any Dax had ever shared before. He was Dax with the Old One, watching, feeling and thinking with him, yet at the same time he was separate. It felt almost as if his consciousness was a visitor in the dragon’s body. The body wasn’t his own, and yet it was. The duality left him feeling dazed and a little disconnected.

  Yet despite the alienness of his current situation, Dax remained keenly aware of the blood dripping through the scales covering the dragon’s chest. Mitro had wounded Dax badly, and that wound had carried over through the transformation. Dax knew he needed to stop the blood loss, and soon. The dragon, however, cared little for the fluid leaking from his chest. Rage and dominance consumed the Old One’s mind as he raced toward the floundering vampire that wore the appearance rather than the true form of a black dragon. Banking left and using the ash cloud for cover, the Old One rode the volcano’s superheated updrafts to rise above Mitro. When he was positioned above the black dragon, the Old One tucked his wings tight and dove, rocketing downward, plummeting through smoke and ash at deadly speed.

  Mitro glanced up just as the red dragon extended its wings and brought its fore and hind legs around, talons extended for a strike. At first Dax thought Mitro would run, but when the black dragon only screamed a challenge and launched toward him, Dax realized Mitro had no idea he was confronting a true dragon rather than the weaker shapeshifted form of a dragon that Carpathians could assume at will.

  Mitro thought he had the upper hand.

  The Old One was confident that he had the greater size, greater skill, stronger position and momentum on his side. The kill seemed virtually assured.

  Inside the dragon, Dax struggled to come to grips with a storm of fierce emotions. Dax had always fought, always killed, with emotionless efficiency. The dragon did not. To the dragon, the fight was life, full of wildness, rawness and pulse-pounding emotions so vivid he could almost taste, touch, see and smell each one. Elation, pure and white, whirled with flames of fiery red aggression, and streaming banners of golden-bright pride. Dax’s mind and senses whirled with the overload.

  The red dragon slammed into the smaller black one, and they locked together, both falling out of the sky. Wings fluttered wildly, each dragon seeking balance and superior attack position. Long necks writhed. Fangs snapped and tore at scaly hides, seeking a killing bite. The talons of their back legs clutched each other with grim determination, while their forelegs tangled and ripped at vulnerable bellies.

  The Old One was stronger and bigger, driving his claws deep into Mitro’s belly ripping and tearing through the armored hide to the soft, vulnerable organs beneath. His claws penetrated with each stroke, removing scales and chunks of bleeding flesh.

  Within his black dragon form, Mitro screamed in shock and pain and insane rage. He’d been certain of his victory—certain of his physical superiority over Danutdaxton—but each of Dax’s blows struck deep, while each of Mitro’s own were turned away by diamond-hard scales and a seemingly impenetrable red hide. Mitro didn’t understand. How was this possible?

  He writhed wildly but could not break free of the red dragon’s fierce grip. Locked in a death battle he suddenly realized he might not win, Mitro began a desperate, brutal assault on Dax’s one possible weak spot: the scales over his heart where, even in dragon form, blood was seeping from the terrible wound Mitro had dealt him. With vicious determination and demonic speed, Mitro landed a series o
f punishing blows on the bloody spot. The chest plate bent, but before it could break, Dax’s fangs sank deep in Mitro’s shoulder, ripping out a massive chunk of flesh and tendon.

  Writhing, screaming, ripping, biting, the two giant beasts plummeted toward the burning ground. Seconds before impact, the two dragons ripped apart, wings spread wide to catch the wind and send them soaring in opposite directions.

  Mitro pushed hard, pumping his wings with desperate speed to climb back up into the air. The red dragon pursued him with single-minded determination. The calm, relentless, determined hunter who never surrendered the chase.

  He couldn’t outrun Dax and, though it still made no sense, clearly couldn’t best him with strength alone. Mitro needed an edge, an advantage. His eyes narrowed to obsidian slits, focused on the ash cloud billowing from the erupting volcano. Putting on a burst of speed, he flew straight into the boiling black heart of the plume.

  Through the Old One’s eyes, Dax watched Mitro dive into the superheated ash cloud. As he disappeared from view, the wind shifted, beginning to spiral around the cloud.

  What was he doing? The circling winds gathered the particles of hot ash in an ever-tightening vortex around the wounded vampire. Did he think he could hide in the cloud?

  The Old One let out another roar of challenge and dove straight toward the vampire, eager to end the threat.

  The concentrated debris in the air dropped visibility to zero, but the dragon’s vision saw more than even Carpathian eyes. He could see the changes in the density of air, the solid form at the heart of the whirling black ash cloud. The black vampire was motionless, wings outstretched, letting the unnatural cyclonic winds keep him aloft. Dax could almost feel the vampire healing his wounds from the inside. Closing tears in vital organs and stopping blood loss where the dragon had sliced and torn.

  The red dragon was practically on top of Mitro when all the rock and debris in the air solidified into a packed wall that completely blocked the vampire from view. Fearless, certain of his dominance, the red dragon brought his hind legs and forelegs into position for another strike, and plowed through the relatively thin barrier, shattering it on impact.

  But instead of finding a vulnerable, wounded opponent on the other side of the ash wall, they slammed full force into the hard point of the black dragon’s tail—a point Mitro had transformed from simple flesh, scale and bone into a razor-sharp trident of silver spikes, each two feet long and glinting with evil, serrated at the tips.

  Screaming in surprise and pain, the red dragon impaled itself on Mitro’s spiked tail. Dax gasped in agony, feeling the spikes as if they were tearing through his own flesh.

  Luckily, instead of taking the speared tail through the heart, the spike embedded deep in his stomach. The serrated edges were making quick work of the Old One’s insides, but because they’d missed the heart, it bought Dax and the dragon a few precious minutes.

  Once more, the two dragons were locked in a death battle as they plummeted from the sky. Mitro stuck fast to the other dragon, claws and tail spike digging deep. The Old One continued to claw and shred at Mitro’s belly and limbs, teeth snapping at Mitro’s neck and head. The black dragon rammed his tail spike up under the red dragon’s ribs, seeking the elusive heart, but just as before, Mitro’s shapeshifted dragon form was no match for the might of the Old One. Mitro reeled back in pain.

  That flinch gave the Old One the opening he’d been waiting for. His teeth bore down lightning fast just above the shoulder, wrapping around the smaller neck, powerful jaws snapping shut with extreme force. The black dragon returned a bite on the other’s face, his fangs sinking deep beside the Old One’s left eye.

  The dragons crashed into the mountainside, rolling down the steep sides, crushing trees in their path. A hard jolt broke them apart. Mitro came to a stop first, while the larger, heavier Old One continued to roll almost to the base of the volcano. Wounded, one wing torn and bloody, the red dragon struggled to its feet and screamed its defiance, eyes still locked on its combatant, refusing to lose sight of his goal.

  Inside the body of the dragon, the Old One’s rage and pain buffeted Dax with a maelstrom of emotion. The Old One was determined to win despite its injuries. Dax wasn’t sure how much more their shared body could take, but the Old One fought off his attempts to control the red dragon. All around them, ash and burning chunks of pumice continued to rain down from the erupting volcano.

  The red dragon tucked its weakened wing tight against its back and began to climb up the mountain toward Mitro. Still reeling from the brutal fight and equally brutal landing, the black dragon righted himself with shaky, labored motions. Black wings extended and flapped as Mitro tried to gather his strength and take to the air.

  Unwilling to let his prey escape, the Old One put on a burst of speed, latched on to the black dragon’s rear leg and threw him into a stand of nearby trees.

  Riley blinked rapidly as the cave around them disintegrated. Ash continued to fall, soft drifting petals that choked the air and covered the trees and foliage like down. The forest around them was intact—the blast hadn’t flattened the trees on their side of the mountain—but a few scattered fires and mud had done major damage. Several hundred feet up, she could see the devastation of the ruins of the Cloud People’s village. Fires glowed all up and down the mountain, orange and red valiantly struggling through the darkened ash swirling in the air.

  “We can’t stay up here,” Jubal said, covering his mouth and nose. “The wind is shifting our way and there’s every possibility of a gas cloud coming at us from the other side.”

  “I can’t see a trail,” Ben said. “How are we going to find our way back without Miguel?”

  “We’ve got GPS,” Gary said. “And once the ash settles enough, we’ve got friends we can call in to pull us out with a helicopter, but we should try to find Miguel and the others just in case.”

  Riley’s head jerked up. There was that ominous note in his voice—in the way he worded it. She let her breath out, coughed and covered her mouth. “I think I can track them,” she admitted with a small glance at Ben.

  “Of course you can,” Ben said. “You can build caves and stop volcanos. I’m just looking for the thigh-high boots and cape.” He flashed her a little grin and wiggled his eyebrows.

  In spite of the circumstances she laughed. “I wish I had my cape. I’d fly us out of here.”

  Gary took the lead. Riley and Ben fell into step behind him. Jubal brought up the rear as they began to make their way down the mountain. Ash was thick powder on the ground, in the foliage, falling from the trees above them until they were nearly drowning in it. They wrapped shirts around their mouths and noses and continued doggedly on.

  It was impossible to tell how close to dawn it was with the ash so dense in the sky, obscuring any evidence of light, but her watch told her they had a few more hours before the sun began to climb. It shouldn’t have mattered, but if there was an honest-to-God vampire roaming around, then she wanted the sun to come up fast.

  She cleared her throat. “Gary, if this ash hangs over the rain forest and keeps it dark, will the … a …” Saying the word vampire out loud just sounded ludicrous. She definitely could understand Ben’s disbelief even in the face of evidence that some form of evil haunted their journey and pushed the porter to murder her mother.

  Gary glanced over his shoulder, his expression sober. “I know it’s difficult to believe that such things exist. But it’s out there and it’s a killing machine. It cannot come out in the sun, that much is true about them. They go to ground and place safeguards around their resting places. If this one was locked in a volcano for hundreds of years without blood to sustain it, it has to be one powerful creature.”

  “And hungry,” she murmured. “Tell me about them. Everything you can think of.”

  Gary looked up quickly. Fear and panic raced over his face as he fought to find words. Before Riley could look up he spoke.

  “I will. Later. Right now, we need to
move.” His voice somehow seemed calm compared to how she felt when she saw giant red dragon wings outstretched, speeding toward the opposite side of the mountain.

  They ran. They raced through trees and brush, leaping over fallen trees and debris, unmindful of the many small cuts and bruises they earned as fronds and branches whipped at their skin. The first time they heard the powerful roar that ripped through the air above them, the sound nearly froze them in their tracks. Then survival instincts kicked in, and a jolt of adrenaline sent them racing even faster.

  Adrenaline and lack of breath dueled with one another as they attempted to race over a small rise. A crash came from their left, its strength so great it dropped them to their knees. They couldn’t tear their eyes away as trees, dirt and ash were tossed into the air. For a split second Riley thought she made out the shape and color of a red wing, but then it was buried in chaos.

  The madness came to an end, but what rose over the treetops below was a sight to dazzle the mind, dust and ash still in the air; the red dragon rose from the rubble, his head and back and folded wings coming fully clear of the smaller trees. Jaw, lined with wicked teeth, opened wide, eyes almost alight with fire, in their depths a crimson red.

  A second, much smaller dragon, a gleaming black, burst from the ashes, wings out from its torn, bloody body, the wedge-shaped head reaching with snapping teeth toward the red dragon.

  “Holy shit,” Ben whispered.

  Under the circumstances, Riley found the profanity utterly appropriate. The two enraged dragons turned their heads in tandem and pinned their focus on Riley and her companions.

  Fear had been her constant companion this entire trip, but now, as the gazes of the giant red and the smaller black dragon rested on them, fear turned to terror. A rotting, twisted evil shredded her insides, and heat so hot it felt like she was trying to hold the sun in her chest burst through her body.