Crush

by Vivienne Savage

  “There has to be a way to stop them. I mean... you said it yourself, Arthur would be appalled. Maybe Merlin would be too?”

  Nate flexed his hand again, holding it at his side. Since entering, he’d been tempted to draw his sword. The desire remained, simmering just beneath the surface of his thoughts until he flexed his hand again. “Step back again for a sec.”

  “Nate?” She moved back, but kept one hand on his waist, holding his belt.

  “When called upon, I draw thee to defend the rights of the weak with all of my strength.”

  Astrid pressed her cheek against the back of his shoulder to protect her eyes from the blaze of light erupting around Nate’s hand. When she risked raising her face again, the silver gleam dimmed to a pale sheen. He held a blade in his hand, glowing with unearthly brilliance.

  It was beautiful, watching him use his magical gift. The sight of a slayer’s sword should have struck fear into her heart, but seeing one in Nate’s hand made her feel safe—not threatened.

  “I wish I could summon mine magically. Did you notice no one seemed to see it?”

  The tension drained from his shoulders. “Yeah, at first I thought it was because you were using a spell, or because I was with you, but no one even glanced at it.”

  He held the sword like a torch, and wherever he shone it, the shadows receded and fell back. Where there’d been only smooth stone wall, another tunnel led forward. There’d been an opening in the wall in front of them all along, visible only by the light of his enchanted sword.

  “How does your gift work?” Astrid asked.

  “We were all cremated in our armor with our swords, I’m told, by Merlin himself, so that our magic would carry on each time we were reborn. It’s spiritually smelted to my soul.”

  “Is it hard? Not remembering, I mean. Or, well, half remembering.” Taking a cue from him, she drew Ascalon from its sheath, doubling their light.

  “Sometimes. I’m one of the youngest, so when the rest of the guys are reminiscing about old times, I get to sit there and look dumb.”

  The next hall had a short trio of stairs. It smelled dank and moist still, the same odor growing all the more intense. She hesitated as her foot bumped into bones strewn on the ground. “I have a bad feeling,” she said.

  The air smelled like animal, musty and wild—the rancid scent of an untended stable with hay left to mold among old urine. Astrid choked on it, and her eyes watered.

  Nate turned left and right, casting light over what appeared to be a deeper cavern, its walls rough rock, and water trickling down into a pool. There was no light, no torches, only darkness. She drew in a deep breath through her nose and tensed.

  “Something is alive down here. It’s a weird smell. Feline, maybe, or canine. Reptilian, too. All blended.” Her grip on Ascalon tightened. “Think hard, Nate. What sort of guardian did they put down here and how do they get past it? There must be something, or you slayers would be killed coming to get your directives from Merlin, right?”

  “I don’t know,” he whispered. “If there’s a guardian, it would know me. Theoretically.”

  Something scraped in the distance over the stone ground, and a clicking noise, like a dog’s claws over the floor, made the hair on her nape rise.

  “Maybe it won’t smell me,” she whispered. “Echo didn’t.”

  “Maybe not,” he whispered back, “but it’s a dangerous risk to take, Astrid.”

  She swallowed, throat tight. The clawed steps drew closer, bringing a fresh wave of fear, not only for herself but for Nate. What mattered were the true feelings shared between them, love too powerful to be denied by past wrongs.

  The thought prompted her into grabbing him by his belt and jerking him back. Giving him no chance to protest or argue, she pushed up to her toes and kissed him, hard, pouring her heart out to him.

  ***

  Astrid pressed against him on her toes, her slim body stretched along his front. He slipped his arm around her waist and lost himself to the moment shared between them.

  “I love you,” he whispered against her lips. “So much it scared me.”

  “Nate, I—”

  The noise drew closer, the creature investigating the intruder in its home. The moment lost, Nate nudged Astrid behind him. The light of their swords reflected off something glossy and large—an eye. Two feline eyes, golden and bright within a lion’s maned face, then two gleaming, red eyes above it where a goat’s head arose from its back with massive horns curling forward. A third head became visible at the end of the tail dragged behind it, hissing and flicking its tongue in and out to taste the air.

  “Oh my God, it’s a chimera.” Astrid’s eyes widened. She kept her sword down, but ready.

  A flash of memory came upon him, too brief to grasp. “It’s been a guardian for centuries, brought over from the Old World with Merlin.”

  “Maybe you can tell it to back off?”

  He gave her a dubious look. “I don’t speak chimera.”

  Still on his guard, he stepped forward to confront the beast. It didn’t attack him, perhaps the first positive sign that the encounter could end without bloodshed. Leaning forward to sniff him, its feline nose came inches from his skin. Whiskers tickled his cheek and rank, hot breath breezed over his face.

  Nate froze on the spot, clutching his sword hard enough to leave indents in his palms. He shuddered as the serpentine head came next. A trickle of sweat slid down his hairline and his palms itched, his fingers flexing around his sword hilt.

  “We’ve come to pay our respect to Merlin,” he said, with some vague recollection of it understanding them. The beast strode past and continued to prowl toward Astrid, sniffing curiously with its lionesque head, smelling with its nose almost against her neck.

  “I come in peace.”

  “Did you seriously just treat this thing like an alien?” he whispered.

  She shot him a look, unamused, but remained quiet.

  Finding nothing strange, the beast turned as if to stalk away. Nate’s relieved breath whooshed out of him, and he almost collapsed. So close. Merlin was so close. And suddenly, he felt so very tired of it all and ready for the ordeal to end. No more dragonslaying, no more cycle of rebirth. How many women had he loved and lost over the centuries?

  “Let’s go, I think he’s fin—” The tail swung past when the chimera turned, bringing its head within inches of her. Stopping, the creature stiffened and the serpentine head hissed.

  “INTRUDER!” the goat screamed, while the lion’s head roared. The snake bit at her, lashing out. Whatever test Astrid had passed with the goat and lion, she’d failed with the venomous serpent.

  Ascalon clattered to the ground and bits of Astrid’s clothing fluttered around her. One moment, she’d been a girl level with his shoulders, and in the next, he was diving out of the way to make room for a dragon looming above him. She hunched over in the cavern on all fours, too large to stand upright.

  The lethal fangs struck against the tough scales of her shoulder, narrowly missing a wing covered in gold and black feathers.

  Even in the dark, Astrid reminded Nate of sunlight. He was reduced to staring with his mouth open, awed by her beauty. Then he snapped out of it and leaped up to his feet, swinging his astral blade.

  “Astrid!” While sharp, the edge of his sword glanced off the chimera’s scales. He’d have to stab it with precision. The lion turned its head toward him and roared. Nate struck again, swinging to give her time to adjust to her shifting, glancing another blow off of its claws and drawing first blood.

  The chimera snarled as he feinted, backing into the wider area of the cavern. Scoring another hit, he laid open the skin between its lion shoulder and goat head.

  “Betrayer,” it growled.

  Bigger than both Nate and the chimera, Astrid swept in between them and snarled a warning to the creature. “Stay away from my Nate.” She snapped her teeth at the serpent tail and raked her claws against the goat’s horns.

  Her
Nate? His brows raised. Astrid may have been bigger, but other dragons larger than her had already been bested by the magical beast.

  “Watch out for its tail!” he called to her. An older dragon’s tough hide was almost impenetrable, but hers looked soft and supple. Youthful. One bite from it’s serpentine maw would be enough to take her out of the fight. Refusing to risk her safety, he lunged in again, brushing past her winged side, and aimed for the furred front of the chimera where he scored his second successful stroke. The blade slid in almost effortlessly, but it wasn’t the killing blow he wanted. The chimera was only angrier.

  Despite being outsized and outnumbered, the chimera held its own in battle against them. Nate had thought with two against one, the odds would be in their favor, but the Chimera had three dangerous heads and a pair of talons, each head thinking and working independently of the others. It clawed and bit, ramming its horns into Astrid’s chest and slamming her into the cavern wall. Nate viciously swung at its hindquarters and parried a bite from the swift tail.

  “Nate, be careful!”

  She slapped the snake away and maneuvered around to the beast’s other side to split the heads’ attention. She drew blood again, crippling the lion head by finishing the slice Nate began, but not before its goat horns dragged down her side.

  The horns scraped down Astrid’s belly, enraging him. He saw red, and all sense of self-preservation drowned beneath the rising tide of his fury.

  As Astrid exhaled a line of flames, he dove toward the beast and brought his sword down in an overhead swing toward its shoulder. In a rush to maneuver out of the way of his overhand slash, the chimera barreled into dragonfire, setting its fur ablaze. The goat head screamed; then the snake lashed out and swung around. It bit him before he could parry, the sensation like molten lead in his veins.

  Astrid’s roar reverberated through the cavern, showering them with a light rain of dust and brittle lichen. She hurled her body between him and the chimera, drew a deep breath, then exhaled a volcanic storm of fire laced with white lightning.

  Nate stumbled to one knee but kept himself upright with his sword, planting the tip of it into the soft earth beneath their feet. The pain was indescribable, worse than anything he’d experienced in all of his life. And it was spreading fast. All around him, the cavern became aglow with light, heated from the fire.

  The prolonged effect of lightning spilling into the beast blinded him, and he closed his eyes against the repetitive strikes of electricity. It shone brighter than the most radiant strobe light, and her unfortunate victim could do nothing but succumb. The chimera’s goat head gargled an awful death scream until the last bolt split its scaled hide and a smoking carcass was all that remained.

  In the next second, Astrid was above him. Her blue eyes filled with worry, fear visible on her draconic face. “Nate, no, no, no.” She shifted, shrinking down to her human shape, naked and pale in the dim lit cavern. “Please stay with me,” she begged.

  His hold on the sword slackened, sweaty grip too weak to hold it any longer. As he collapsed, Astrid caught him in her arms and cradled him against her naked bosom.

  “Hey,” he rasped up to her. “He’s just in the next room. You keep your promise, okay?” Heat flushed through his body from head to toe, an inferno burning in his lungs. “I’m sorry. For everything. Sorry I hurt you.”

  “No. No, I won’t. I can’t lose you, Nate. Not like this.” Tears rolled down her cheeks. “I’m not leaving without you.”

  Everything hurt, and he wondered if he’d felt as much pain during previous deaths. No. He hadn’t. He remembered the last, recalled dying an old man, peacefully in his bed, surrounded by friends and a few knights, but no children, because he’d never married. How ironic that as his current life ended, he finally began to remember more than snippets of his previous life.

  The serpent had left twin puncture wounds, deep and oozing blood, in his torso just below his ribs. If the venom didn’t kill him, blood loss certainly would. Despite it, he tried to smile. “It’s fine, Astrid. Go finish this.” The acrid odor of roasting chimera and Nate’s blood filled the cavern. He tried to ignore both to focus on her face.

  Something told him death wouldn’t come for some time, not until he’d suffered and his insides melted with sickness. Before that happened, he wanted Astrid to leave.

  He couldn’t let her watch him suffer, no matter how much he wanted to hold her hand until the end.

  “I don’t give a shit about Merlin. I care about you. I love you. I will not allow you to die.”

  Astrid bent over him and placed her hands upon his inflamed middle. His torso had already begun to swell, reacting to the venom. A subtle glow of ivory interspersed with gold bloomed around her hands until it surrounded her, creating a rainbow nimbus of light.

  She was more beautiful than any angel.

  Magic swept through him, bringing cooling relief to the acid flashing through his veins. Then the agony was gone. He sucked in a deep, starved breath, and for several seconds, Nate lay in her arms too bewildered and surprised to move.

  “Astrid?” he questioned in surprise.

  The dragoness didn’t answer. She threw herself down and embraced him tight. Warm tears leaked from her eyes onto his neck where she’d buried her face.

  No longer fighting to breathe, he instead struggled to hold the naked woman sprawled against him. His arms enfolded Astrid and he held her close. A ghostly remnant of the pain remained in his side, and even that rapidly began to fade.

  “You healed me.” It took a moment for it to settle in his brain.

  “You could have been killed,” she sobbed against him.

  “Hey, it’s okay. It’s over, baby. You killed it.” Somehow. Thanks to her, and only thanks to her, the beast was little more than a charred lump with embers floating up from it’s smoking carcass.

  “You big idiot, trying to be all noble.”

  “Nobility is kind of what I’m known for,” he pointed out.

  She lifted her face, eyes watery and nose red, and looked him over. “Are you okay? Did I get it all? Are you still hurting?”

  He groaned and adjusted his position, but ultimately shook his head when the final twinges faded over time. In a much quieter voice, and after an awkward pause, he whispered, “You didn’t have to save me. I was ready to die, Astrid.”

  “I’m not ready for you to die,” she whispered in return. “Nate... I meant what I said. I love you. And I know it might not mean much to you, or that you insist you aren’t worth anything, but I meant what I said in the car, too. You’re my soul mate, and I knew it the moment we met. You’re special to me, but not only for that, but because... you’re you.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong, baby girl. It means everything to me.” He sighed and stroked his fingers down her back. “Your family won’t understand.”

  He certainly couldn’t blame her fellow dragons if they took offense to her decision. They still hadn’t solved the dilemma of what to do with Merlin or how to defeat the slayers hell-bent on destroying her race.

  “I thought I was losing my mind when I felt more of a connection with you after one date than I ever did with any of my human exes.” He sighed. “Everything I’ve done since receiving this mission has been to neutralize the shit going down between the knighthood and your people. I thought I could convince them you guys aren’t a danger anymore. I did it for you.”

  She looked over her shoulder toward the entrance to the next room then back to him. “Maybe we can convince Merlin of it. Make him understand. Show him what you and I have—it’s real.”

  “Kay says he’s given them orders.”

  “But you said you’ve never heard orders in your dreams. Do you trust Kay?” Nate shook his head. “If he’s been asleep all this time, then he doesn’t know. So let’s show him my kind have changed.” She helped him into a sitting position. “Because I can’t walk in there and just kill him. I can’t walk in there and kill you.”

  “And
if he can’t be reasoned with, baby? If he wakes up an angry old wizard and we have to fight him? It won’t be like this,” he said, waving his hand toward the smoldering chimera remains. “He’s the first among wizards and witches. He’ll be awake and capable of defending himself.”

  With effort, he climbed to his feet and began to inspect the torn cotton covering his ribs. The skin was smooth, but two shiny, puckered indentations were scarred in his side.

  “I can’t go in there and murder someone in cold blood,” she whispered. “What would that make me? If you did live, would you ever be able to look at me, knowing I killed someone without giving them even a chance? Would you be able to see past me being a murderer? I couldn’t. I couldn’t look myself in the mirror and forget what I’ve done.”

  “Then I’ll do it, and your hands will be clean.” He leaned over to retrieve his sword from the ground and glanced at her. “What’s one more murder on my hands among others?”

  Despite all of his bravado, Nate agreed with her. He didn’t want to kill Merlin any more than he wanted to die along with him. Murder was never the answer.

  “Nate...” She flushed, her naked body pink from head to toe.

  Averting his gaze first, he shrugged out of his jacket and offered it while facing the wall. After Astrid had zipped it up, she plucked Ascalon from the ground and moved toward the door without giving the chimera a second glance.

  “You’re not killing him in cold blood either. Whatever you were in the past, you’re not that man anymore. I believe in you Nate. Galahad.”

  From her, the name didn’t sting like an insult. It felt right. He watched her move toward the opening in the cavern and clenched his jaw. “He’s the one at the root of this evil. For centuries we’ve hunted your kind on his orders, Astrid. That man is indirectly responsible for your uncle’s death. For your grandfather’s death. Should we just forget that and live and let live?” He tried to justify it as much to himself as he did to her.