by Judy Mills
He stroked the blade of the knife down my cheek leaving a damp smudge of my blood behind. "Take off your clothes."
Outrage bristled down my back.
Behind Navarro, Cooper stirred, regaining consciousness. He saw the vampire and lifted his head, making the tendons on his neck stand out in stark, vulnerable relief. His gaze met and held mine. "Shift," he mouthed silently. I shook my head.
"You still defy me?" Navarro asked, amazement lacing his tone.
Cooper gave me a fierce, "it's your only chance" kind of look and mouthed the word again. Then his strength failed him and he fell back, swinging slightly.
No. I couldn't bare to see the terror and repulsion on his face again.
I knew I wasn't human. I accepted it and that was bad enough. The other thing, that creature I turned into...even among the Weres I was a beast.
"Poor abandoned human orphan." Navarro's expression softened with false sympathy. "It seems to me that you need all the protection for which you can barter. Your clothes, please."
I scowled at him. Did everyone in the paranormal community know my freaking life story, or just the vamp leaders? That little girl was long gone and she didn't need protection. She never had.
A fierce madness flashed across his face. "Now," he snarled.
Fine. He wanted to play? I was willing to oblige him. Cooper was right. I had nothing to lose.
I unsnapped my vest and threw it to the floor. "Orphaned, yes," I said, pulling my shirt off over my head. "Abandoned? Without question. State records can prove it." I unzipped my pants and stepped out of them.
"Left without a legacy?" I faced him in my underwear, furious over all the suffering he had caused. "Not so much." I took a deep, focused breath and concentrated on the light deep in my being.
He contemplated me. "The rest. I will have you humiliated and helpless as Lord Bellmonte's whore deserves. And then I will feast." He brought the knife to his mouth and licked my blood from the blade with the tip of his tongue.
...Feel. Picture. Trust.
The source of my life, the source of all I was, pulsed gently from the center of my soul as the vampire's eyes went wide. Psychotic fury raged across his face as I focused on the peaceful, nurturing energy. As it grew, I reached with my heart toward the father I could barely remember.
A warmth touched me. A vibration of life. The blurred image of a man's face appeared, just beyond my understanding. He looked back at me and surprise ignited in his strikingly vivid blue eyes.
Navarro spit out the blood and then spit again. "Poison! Bellmonte has filled you with the poisoned blood of a filthy shifter!"
The orb of light burst out around my body as the vampire lunged for me. From inside the peace and silence of that light, I saw Navarro pull up short and stumble away. He stared at me in shock.
The buzzing vibration of the shift swept over me and my consciousness rose above my body. From that balanced, soothing place, I watched my light form bulge and stretch as it climbed to over eight feet in height.
Monstrous reptilian legs, muscular arms ending in clawed hands, the gargoyle-like head and snout, wings and finally a powerful, dragon-like tail.
Details focused...claws, spikes along the tail, leathery skin, rows of shark-like teeth.
A snap of bright light exploded in my head—
"Your master will die for this!" Navarro screamed.
—and I found myself straddling a four foot circular hole in the walkway as I looked down on the vampire. Panic shimmered through his dark eyes.
I raised my hand and flexed the reptilian, claw-tipped fingers. They were six inches long and deadly sharp. An experimental flap of my wings puffed Navarro's hair up off his forehead and rage contorted his face.
"You cannot exist!" he hissed, backing away another few steps.
I slashed my tail and the end of it slammed into the wall. No more impactful to me than slapping my human hand down on a table, but the rock crumbled leaving a dent the size of a pony.
I gazed down at Navarro and rage seethed through my heart. I was going to kick his ass.
"Our creator annihilated your race ten thousand years ago. How—"
I snapped my teeth at him and he danced away. I advanced, a distant part of me wondering if this was what it had felt like to be a T-rex hunting down some pitiful herbivore.
I chomped at him, then quickly turned and swept my spiked tail across the floor, hoping to knock his feet out from under him. He dodged both.
I hissed and a flush spread over his face.
"I will destroy you, Demon-Were," he snarled.
Navarro swiped at me with my knife. I hopped out of the way and he dodged forward, darting in to make a shallow slice across my side.
Oh no, he didn't.
I roared, the sound rolling off the ceiling like thunder, and kicked boxed the jerk with my giant dragon leg. He flew backwards and smashed into the wall.
He pulled himself from the debris and charged me before I could follow through. I grabbed for his head with my claws, but he shied away. Pivoting, he made a stab at my stomach with the knife. I flexed my wings as I sprang back, slapping him on both sides of his body.
He stumbled and I snapped at him, missing taking his head off by inches. If he wasn't so fast, I would have had him and my failure infuriated me.
I made another tail sweep, this time higher, hoping to break his back. He cut the tip off as he sprang away.
I slashed with my claws and caught him in the shoulder, but it was shallow and didn't slow him down anymore than the pitiful slice on my tail did me.
We were evenly matched. Two vicious monsters circling, stabbing and clawing as we each struggled to gain the upper hand, and getting nowhere. The battle would come down to who could outlast the other.
I mentally braced myself for the duration, determined for that winner to be me. I would do whatever it took to stop Navarro forever.
Even if it killed me.
* * *
Through the pounding in his head, Cooper struggled to focus on the blur of the battle raging on the upper walkway. Below him, the vampire guards stationed by the factory entrances broke from their posts to rush up the stairs.
His wrists and ankles were pure agony as if demons gnawed at his skin and bone with fiery, razor-sharp teeth. The stakes in his bullet wounds felt like they were dissolving his muscles centimeter by centimeter.
Sweat broke out across his back and chest and his stomach rebelled, rolling acid up into his throat. His mind dodged away from the pain in his body as he struggled to control his instinctive horror of and shock. Though maybe if he choked on his own puke he'd at least succeed in spoiling Navarro's fun.
Cooper resisted looking at his wrists and focused instead on the chains suspending him from thick eye hooks bolted into the ceiling. He didn't need to look. He knew what he'd see—his boiled and bloodied flesh where the shackles were clamped.
Shackles that hadn't been made for a hundred years.
Humans thought silver caused this kind of reaction. His kind had let them believe it. The myth had allowed Weres their peace. Humans who thought they had control over their lives tended to be passive and didn't go looking for trouble.
The truth was, silver in its purest form was sacred to his kind, an earthly representation of the moon and the goddess who protected them. But it also blended well with other metals and made the perfect agent for moonseed powder. In the right quantity, the herb was deadly to shifters. Worse, when combined with the right metal composite and other ingredients, it never lost its strength.
Navarro had put a lot of effort into planning for this.
Cooper's anger erupted, pushing against the fear and despair clawing at him. He grit his teeth and fought to reach the place inside himself where his life force pulsed. He felt it hovering just out of reach and rushed to grab hold of its promise. The effort was like trying to grab a fistful of water. Impossible.
The hunger for freedom maddened him and Cooper jerked against th
e chains, bucking wildly. Pain shredded his body and the edges of his vision darkened. Panting against the torment and the unconsciousness it brought, he twisted his torso, attempting to dislodge the spike from his leg and side. If he could at least stop whatever black magic the Archon wove, it would be enough, but the spikes had been driven in too deep.
Exhausted, he went limp. All he'd accomplished was to accelerate the flow of his blood into the murky vortex below. He stared down at the grotesque shapes of the young practitioners swaying and spinning to the flow of their emotionless chant.
One child in the circle looked up at him, the aristocratic features of her dark face nearly invisible in the shadows of the hood covering her head. The clarity and purpose in her brown eyes surprised him. When she glanced around as the guards scampered off, alarm tightened in his chest. This child could not be planning to rescue him.
She lifted a finger to her lips as if telling him to stay quiet, and gave him an encouraging nod. He shook his head. She needed to get herself out. He would not have her death on his conscience when he berated his last.
The girl gave him a quick smile, and then to his astonishment, faded away like a ghost.
He couldn't decide whether he felt relief or despair. On the bright side, the child wasn't real. The bad news was blood loss and exposure to the poison were causing him to hallucinate which mean he was dying.
A cold emptiness filled his chest.
He had failed.
* * *
I moved toward Navarro, the walkway shuddering with each step. I had him trapped against a stack of crates and exhilaration burned through my heart and mind. My nostrils flared, the smell of blood from the gash across his chest sweet and enticing as I pulled it in and swallowed it down.
I lunged.
The explosion of gunfire lit up the world behind me and the stinging hail of bullets hit my back. Furious, I spun toward this new threat. A handful of guards raced down the walkway toward me, firing their rifles as they came.
Bullets hit the layers of scales covering my body and bounced off, ricochetting wildly. A stray hit slammed the closest vampire in the forehead and he dropped like a stone. The rest dove for cover. They were nothing. Weak. My kill was safe from them.
I turned back in time to see my prize diving for the railing. I slashed at him with my claws and swept my tail high. He dove and rolled beneath the blow, crashing through the railing and plunging over the side.
The guards sprang from their hiding places and swarmed over me. A cold, mindless fury exploded deep inside me, drowning, lifting. The world shattered and reformed with focused clarity—kill, destroy, survive, triumph.
Euphoria flooded my body and I surged up through my attackers, ripping and biting. A wild, feral heat scorched my soul, pure and joyous in its simplicity. Blood and gore flew out around me and my heart soared with joy. My enemies would die and I would feast.
A furtive movement caught my attention and I spun toward it. Two creatures crawling away. Hate thundered into me and I sprang at them. With satisfaction I crushed the first one with my tail and sank my claws into the legs of the other.
His high-pitched screams buzzed along my nervous system as I pulled him toward me, exciting me, pushing me higher and higher. He had denied me my prey and he would take its place.
I dug into his shoulder and lifted him above me. He bit into my hands and arms frantically, but his fangs couldn't penetrate my scales. With a powerful yank, I tore him in half. The hot, sweet smell of it thrilled me.
"Addison!"
I paused at the strange word while the need to feast rushed through me like an avalanche.
"Addison, look at me!"
Annoyed, I turned toward the noise. A creature, a man, hung from chains in the air. A distant yet familiar warmth touched the center of my chest as his silver-green eyes locked with mine.
"This is not who you are!" the man shouted. The words bit into me. I knew him. He wasn't prey or enemy. He was...
Below him a strange oily sound rose, gaining strength as it crested over us. The edges of it vibrated along my skin cold and evil and I hissed. The man's gaze broke from mine and he writhed on his chains, pain scraping his features into a knotted, tortured mask. Blood pumped from his wounds into the vortex below, turning it black.
"Addison," he groaned.
Sorrow and regret hit me, fracturing the primitive frenzy that had overtaken me.
"Cooper?" I looked around, bewildered. Crates and railings were smashed, torn bloodied body parts littered the floor, and in my clawed hands...
Horror exploded through me. I dropped the dead vampire and backed away. Oh my God.
I remembered. I knew what I'd been about to do. Acid boiled into my throat and I gagged.
My gaze shot to Cooper. And he was bleeding out as his body twisted with pain. I was going to lose him! I opened my wings.
"No, Addie," he groaned, making a sluggish effort against his shackles. "No time..."
I launched off the upper level platform, flapping furiously. Dipping from side to side and galloping up and down like some monstrous roller coaster, I managed to get clumsily airborne. I gave an experimental swish of my tail, hoping it would act as a rudder and slammed my face into the wall. Pushing off with my arms, I slowed my wings to a more rhythmic pace and with a controlled effort angled my tail the other way.
Not great, but better. A few more adjustments and I headed for Cooper.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I hovered in the air next to Cooper and studied the chains and shackles binding him. He opened his eyes and looked at me blearily. My heart buckled and I tried not to notice how pale he was.
"Can't you ever...do what I tell you?" he said, his voice thin and tired.
I would not lose him. Not to a bastard like Navarro. Not to anybody.
I chomped down on one of the chains. Pain and a sickening bitterness cut into my mouth and tongue. I bolted back, instinctively shaking my head as I pawed at my tongue to get the taste off.
"Treated with moonseed and...witch blood," Cooper said. "Stop Navarro."
I shook my head and locked my gaze with his. My heart swelled with a sweet promise I'd been too stupid to know was there.
I struggled to make my dragon-dinosaur snout form words. "Wuv...ooo," I garbled out.
Cooper managed a half-dead laugh. "Now you tell me."
I flapped backwards and wrapped both my hands around the chain attached to his right wrist, near to the wall. My palms started to smoke and an aching pain spread up my arms. I didn't care.
"Wait," Cooper moaned.
I stretched the chain taunt, braced myself for what was coming and bit down on it. Hard.
The chain snapped.
Cooper swung wildly. I clutched the broken chain attached to his wrist in my grip and pumped my wings as hard as I could, my tail swinging from side to side as I tried to stabilize us. Spitting metal and blood from my mouth, I moved to his other wrist, determined to get him down and to safety.
At the sight of the blood coating his side and leg, a sickening feeling of failure flooded me. I had let my panic get the better of me. I had to think this through.
If I held him, I couldn't reach the chains. If I got to the chains, I couldn't support him. There was no easy way to do this.
I wrapped one scaled arm around his upper body and pulled him against my torso. My wings strained to keep us both up.
Fear for him roared through me as I maneuvered us to the chain holding his other arm. I bit through it with a vengeance, hardly noticing as the poison stripped another layer of skin from my tongue.
Cooper bucked against me and went limp. I fought to stabilize us, fearing the worst. I had to get to the other chains.
With a queasy feeling, I eased him down until he hung upside down and then I let go. His limp body swung gently from the chains attached to his ankles. Blood seeped from his leg and side, dripping down to hit the floor far below, but he was still breathing and a tingle of happiness coiled thro
ugh my stomach.
He also no longer fed the vortex, though it didn't seem to make much difference. The black, malicious energy continued to spiral in the center of the swaying children, radiating a hungry viciousness.
I grabbed the chain holding his left leg and snapped it. Adjusting my balance, I bit through the last chain.
The sudden full weight of Cooper's body nearly pulled him out of my grip. My back strained with the effort, but I grabbed for his leg and held on.
Turning, I struggled toward the closest walkway, opposite from where Navarro had jumped me. I barely cleared the railing, stumbling as I landed. Gently, I lowered Cooper onto the walkway.
I wasn't surprised when Chiwa stepped from behind a packing crate a couple yards away. I'd already smelled her.
She ran toward us. "He can't shift with the treated metal touching his skin. He's going to die."
I snapped my teeth at her. Cooper would not die. I wouldn't let him.
"Cuss me all you want, it's the truth," she said.
I narrowed my eyes at her. How did she know it was me?
"I saw you shift," she said.
Awesome. A witness I couldn't kill.
"I won't tell." She knelt next to Cooper and examined the shackles with shaking, clumsy hands. "They're old. They have a place for a key."
A key? Where had I seen keys recently?
Of course! I nodded my head and took off, a surge of hope easing the aching fatigue screaming through my body.
Across the cavernous room, I landed on the other walkway next to my human clothes. Out of the darkness, a vampire guard sprang at me, the sword gripped in his fist swinging toward my head in a blur of movement.
I had no time for pests. I back handed him with my tail before his sword reached me and he sailed over the broken railing. I heard him hit with a sickening wet crunch as I bent to gather up my clothes and gear—not an easy task with six inch claws.
Clutching my belongings to my chest, I leapt into the air and glided back to the other walkway. I landed next to Chiwa and thrust the clothes at her, my attention on Cooper. He still breathed, but each pull of air seemed shallow and labored. We were losing him.