by Ella Summers
Naomi waited for her to continue. She wasn’t kept waiting for long.
“Seven hundred years ago, Damarion told Darksire to manipulate me. He tasked Darksire with the job of making me fall in love with him. They conspired to change my magic, to make me not entirely Dragon Born anymore. They gave me magic so powerful that I forgot myself, forgot who I was.”
“But why would they…” It hit Naomi like a brick wall to the face. “They wanted to create a rift between you and Makani—and between you and the other Dragon Born.”
“Yes.” Firestorm’s voice was as dry as the embers of hell. “Damarion feared the power of united Dragon Born twins. Our strength is our unity, the harmony of mind and magic that exists between us.”
So Damarion and Darksire had blinded her with power to tear her and Makani apart—and then they’d used her to eliminate the other Dragon Born, to turn the world against them.
“I gained powerful magic,” Firestorm said. “Terribly, delightfully, darkly powerful magic. But I also lost something. I lost the power to connect with Makani, for our magic to work together.”
Firestorm’s descent into darkness hadn’t started with her thirst for power. It had started when she’d given her trust—and her heart—to the wrong person.
“It was all a lie.” Firestorm’s voice hissed like water hitting burning stones.
Naomi’s heart clenched with sympathy. “What Darksire did to you was wrong.”
Firestorm’s dark gaze snapped to her like a whip. “I am not a good person, Spirit Warrior. I neither deserve nor desire your pity. If you feel sorry for me, you’re a fool. I did a lot of bad things in my time. Damarion’s magic corrupted me, but I could have resisted. I didn’t have to succumb. It was a test of will and morality, and I failed horribly.”
“Firestorm—”
“I am the wicked bitch of the Pacific,” she declared, her eyes burning, her voice ringing with conviction. “The Dark Angel. Pestilence. The Betrayer. I own up to what I am and what I did. But I want to set it right, at least as much as I can.”
The crazy thing was Naomi actually believed her. She believed Firestorm was repentant and that her heartbreak was sincere. For a moment, she imagined what it would feel like to find out that the one she trusted and loved most in the world had played her all this time. It hurt to just imagine it, and Firestorm had lived through it. Her pain must have been unbearable, but instead of shutting down, she’d come here to right her wrongs. She was stronger than either she herself or Makani gave her credit for.
Leaving Firestorm alone in her cage, Naomi went inside the house.
Makani was waiting, the unspoken question burning in his eyes: why did you want to speak to Firestorm alone?
“She is repentant,” Naomi declared.
“Impossible,” Makani scoffed. “She is a monster.”
“She might have done terrible things, but she is not beyond redemption,” Naomi argued. “There was a defining moment of morality, a turning point on the road of degradation that made her stop and question everything that she’d ever done. That turning point was her discovering the true depths of Darksire’s deal with the demon princes. That proves she had something left in her: love, fury, that moral compass the Dragon Born are so famous for.”
Makani kissed her forehead. “Your optimism, your ability to see the best in everyone, is one of the reasons I love you, Naomi. But your compassion is misplaced in Firestorm. Any hint of remorse she allowed you to see was carefully crafted. It’s a manipulation. Don’t waste your empathy on her.”
“She warned me about the same thing, you know. She called herself a monster. She said she will always be a bad person, and I shouldn’t care for her. She said that in my place, she wouldn’t trust her.”
He grunted. “The only genuine thing Firestorm has said in centuries.”
“But that bluntness makes me trust her more,” she told him. “Darksire played her. Damarion told him to make her fall in love with him. He and Darksire conspired to change her magic, to give her powers, to make her drift away from the other Dragon Born. And most especially from you.”
Makani remained adamantly unconvinced, seven centuries of mistrust in a nutshell. “She could have fought it. They may have set the path before her, but she chose to take it.”
“Love makes you do crazy things.” She glanced pointedly at her belly. “Crazy things like not kill demons while you still have the chance.”
Makani set his hands on her cheeks, his eyes shining into hers. “We’ll fix this. I promise you.”
Naomi cleared her throat and forced a smile. “Of course we will.”
She glanced at her phone, checking the time. Their trip to Bael’s had seemed to take only an hour, but a whole day had passed since they’d left for hell. It was no wonder Makani’s commandos had been nearly falling over. They’d watched Firestorm for twenty-four hours.
“We should go see Rane now,” Naomi told Makani. She was ready to end this. The anxiety was eating away at her. “And we should bring Firestorm with us.”
“That would not be advisable.”
“Rane will know if she’s telling the truth about her change of heart.”
The demon had a special power to cut through all the bullshit and see everything for what it was. She had spells that used your body and magic to channel memories, sifting lies from truth.
“Very well,” he agreed unexpectedly. “It’s about time we learned what’s really going on.”
20
The Reality Shifter
Rane’s domain existed between realms, outside the normal restrictions of time, place, and magic. When a vengeful shadow mage had altered the fabric of reality, the spell rippled through earth and hell—but it could not touch Rane’s sanctuary.
Rane’s house was a chameleon, changing to fit the demon’s mood. Right now, it was snowing here. No, wait, that wasn’t snow, Naomi realized as a sweet white spec melted on her tongue. It was powdered sugar falling from the sky like tiny snowflakes.
And that wasn’t the only weird thing going on. Rane’s residence had chosen a gingerbread house as its form today. Actually, make that a gingerbread castle, complete with twenty towers, each one embellished with a different type of candy. Gummy bears and sugar hearts, licorice sticks and bubblegum. Chocolate chips and chocolate bricks, white chocolate and dark chocolate, milk chocolate and caramel chocolate. Candy canes lined the path that led to the house; rainbow sprinkles covered the rooftops.
There was even a moat around the castle, made of hot flowing chocolate. Ripe strawberries, banana slices, and pineapple chunks hung from the trees on either side of the moat. The trees were made of colored sugar, melted and formed into translucent trunks and branches.
A strawberry and a banana piece fell from two of the trees, hitting the chocolate stream with synchronized plunks. A moment later, the fruit pieces burst out of the stream and landed neatly on a silver platter growing out of a flower. The two pieces of fruit were each now covered in a hard chocolate shell.
“Death by sugar overload?” Naomi said to Makani.
Before he could respond, the gate to the castle opened and the gingerbread drawbridge extended. Rane walked across the sugar-speckled cake plank.
Like her home, Rane’s appearance changed with her mood. Right now, the demon looked like a plump grandmother. Her hair was white, her eyes stormy-blue, and her skin as wrinkled as an old paper grocery bag. There was a slight hunch to her back as she hobbled forward with the help of her cane. She was dressed in a long, dark blue cloth dress with a cream-colored shawl wrapped around her shoulders. Beneath the dress, she wore ankle-high boots, each one tied up with swirled red-and-white laces that resembled candy canes.
“Fee-fi-fo-fum, care for some sweeties, dearies?” Rane’s voice croaked.
“You’re mixing up your fairytales,” Naomi told her.
Rane let out a melodramatic sigh. That single gasped breath washed away decades of age. Instead of eighty, she now looked hardly old
er than eighteen. Her wrinkles faded away. Her white hair turned bubblegum-pink and shifted into two large buns, one on each side of her head; they resembled cookies—pink cookies with dark chocolate chips.
Her plain cloth dress transformed into a short minidress with a pink-and-orange tutu. She wore fishnet stockings and sneakers with tiny decorative lollipop buttons all over them. Candy earrings dangled down from her ears. A lollipop belt looped around her waist, just above the tutu. Tiny tassels, loaded with candies, hung from her spaghetti straps, reaching halfway to her elbows.
“I never liked the vanilla, out-of-the-box fairytales. They need a good mix, a wicked twist.”
Rane waved her hands around dramatically, gesturing like a teenage girl. Her candy tassels jingled. They seemed to be singing a song, but Naomi didn’t recognize the tune.
The demon picked up the silver platter on the gigantic flower. She held it out to Naomi. “Chocolate-covered fruit?”
“Are they poisonous?”
“Only one out of every two,” Rane replied, a mischievous twinkle in her bright blue eyes.
Awesome.
“No, thank you,” Naomi said with a polite smile.
Rane snorted. Apparently, good manners amused her. “Suit yourself.” She popped the chocolate-covered strawberry into her mouth. “Well, come along now, dearies. I haven’t got all century.”
Then she turned and went back into her gingerbread house.
Naomi, Makani, and Firestorm followed the demon into the house. The inside was so very different from the outside. Instead of gingerbread and candies, it was awash with marble and gold. It looked like the lobby of a bank, the kind where the minimum deposit was a hundred million dollars.
Rane leaned back against a marble table. “You’ve brought the dragon along.”
Her eyes narrowed as they fell upon Makani. As expected, she didn’t look happy to see him. Makani had once told Naomi that they’d fought and he’d given the demon a ‘bloody nose’. She didn’t know if he meant that literally or not.
Rane’s gaze shifted to Firestorm. “And you’ve brought the Betrayer too.”
She said the word like it was written with a capital letter, like it was Firestorm’s title as much as Pestilence or the Fire Monster.
“She brings death and destruction wherever she goes,” Rane said. “You should not have brought her here.”
“We had to,” replied Naomi. “We need your help. You can tell if someone speaks the truth. You can use your magic mirrors to look into their past, to see what they have done. And to look into their soul.”
“I don’t look into souls all that much anymore, dearie. It’s bad for my complexion.”
It was an odd comment from someone who could change her appearance at will. But, then again, Rane was an odd demon.
“Can we trust Firestorm?” Naomi asked her.
The demon shrugged her dainty little shoulders. “You can trust her as much as you can trust me.”
Awesome.
Naomi tried again. “Firestorm says Darksire deceived her, that centuries ago Damarion assigned him to make her fall in love with him. To warp her magic, to use her against the other Dragon Born.”
“Damarion was an asshole. He did all that and more. He used her.” Rane looked pissed off, perhaps because a man had once used her, tricking her for his own gain.
So Firestorm’s story of her past was true, just as Naomi had thought. But was the rest of this terrible story true too?
“Firestorm claims that Paladin and Paragon are…” Naomi cleared her throat. “That the demon princes of hell are inside of my babies.”
“I know.”
“You already know?” Naomi gasped.
“Yes. I don’t need my magic mirrors to see that. I can see them. The Betrayer speaks the truth.”
“So it is true. All of it.” She’d known in her heart that it was, and yet the finality of Rane’s words weighed heavily on her soul, like someone had just dropped the moon on her head.
“I can sense the two demon souls inside of you, merging with your babies’ magic.” She turned a fiery glare on Makani. “Well, that’s a fine mess you made of things again.”
“It’s not his fault. It’s the demons,” Naomi told her.
“The demons didn’t put a pair of buns in your oven, honey. The dragon did. Kids today!” She threw her hands up in the air. “You’d think you had never heard of birth control.”
“I was taking contraceptive magic herbs.”
Rane laughed in her face. “That’s earth magic. And you’ve been spending a lot of time in the spirit realm. Magic there works differently than on earth. Different magic, different rules.”
Naomi hadn’t thought of that. A quick glance at Makani said he hadn’t either.
“The babies were conceived in the spirit realm,” Rane said.
Naomi and Makani had only ever had sex once in the spirit realm, a few hours before they’d rescued Dad from the Monolith.
“Spirit magic, Dragon Born magic, and demon magic.” Rane scowled at them all. “A real mess.”
“But how is this possible?” Naomi asked. “Spirit Warriors cannot be possessed. The demons shouldn’t have been able to possess my babies.”
“They latched on when your babies were only a few days old, before they were anything. It was so early on in their lives that Paladin and Paragon didn’t possess them; they became part of them as they formed.”
“Makani and I slept together only a few hours before the demons latched on to our babies. There should not have even been a baby yet. I remember that from biology. It takes days before a fertilized egg implants.”
“You’re forgetting something very important: time often works differently in the spirt realm,” Rane told her. “The magic of life and death works differently. Those few hours represented days to your body and to your babies.”
Rane set her hand on Naomi’s flat belly. “The demons’ magic has completely merged with your babies’ magic. One hundred percent penetration. Congratulations, folks. You couldn’t have timed this better if you’d tried.”
“So there’s nothing we can do?” Naomi sighed.
“There are loads of things you can do. Get lots of exercise. Eat a balanced diet. Take your vitamins.” Rane counted off the platitudes on her fingers.
Naomi frowned at her. “You are mocking me.”
“Not just you, dearie. I’m mocking you, your dragon lover, and…” Rane glanced at Firestorm. “And how did you contribute to this mess?”
“My husband conspired with the demons inside of her. Paladin and Paragon wanted her to conceive so they could merge with her babies.”
“The hell panthers cast a strange spell on me.” One that had made Naomi frisky enough to have sex with Makani in the middle of hell. “That was all part of the plan.”
“Yes, that is what I saw in Darksire’s mind,” Firestorm confirmed. “The panthers’ magic filled you both with lust. And it made you fertile. The demons knew the offspring of you and Makani would make the most powerful hosts they could ever hope to have.”
“You’re neck deep in this mess, and they trust you?” Rane chuckled at Firestorm.
“No,” Makani stated coolly.
“I would like to fix it.” Firestorm’s gaze flickered to Makani. “I’d like to fix a lot of things.”
His response was a stony glower.
“He does hold a grudge, doesn’t he?” Rane commented brightly.
“I don’t blame him. I am responsible for the near-total annihilation of our people.”
“Oh?” Mischief flashed in Rane’s eyes. “Didn’t he tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
“Seven centuries ago, most of the Dragon Born escaped death,” the demon said. “As Damarion’s armies were closing in on them for the final big battle, I whisked them away and put them someplace safe. To all of you, it looked like the Dragon Born had died, but they are living quite comfortably.”
“Where?”
“They are nicely tucked away in their own little world inside my honeycomb. They are living quite comfortably there. It’s a Dragon Born paradise, a place where every child is born a Dragon Born mage and everyone is immortal. I figured human nature would kick in eventually, and they’d start killing one another, but they are so…happy.” Rane rolled her eyes, looking quite bored.
Firestorm blinked. “How is this possible?”
“I know. There hasn’t been a single war there in seven hundred years. Everyone gets along so well.” Rane made a disgusted face. “You Dragon Born are so boring.”
“No, how did you save them?” Firestorm asked her. “What kind of magic is this?”
“Much more powerful magic than that hack Damarion taught you, dearie,” Rane shot back with a haughty look. “You could say I have a way with folding reality.”
That was the understatement of the year. Rane was the mistress of reality-bending magic.
“They didn’t die,” Firestorm said quietly.
“I love that you didn’t tell her. Very cheeky of you to make her live with the guilt.” Rane grinned at Makani like she’d never heard anything so fantastic. “I think I’ve changed my mind about you, dragon. I do like you.”
The demon was so weird.
“This isn’t a trick? All the Dragon Born are truly still alive?” Firestorm asked Makani.
“Yes.”
Relief flashed in her eyes, quickly followed by anger. That one was directed at Makani for not telling her they were alive. Magic flared up on her fingertips.
A ball of crackling lightning formed between Makani’s hands. “That doesn’t change anything,” he said coldly. “It doesn’t get you off the hook for your crimes.”
“If you’re going to battle to the death, please take it outside. I’ve just finished redecorating,” the demon said, watching them with eager anticipation.
“They will behave,” Naomi promised her.
“Oh? What a shame.” Rane turned to her talking cat, who was watching them all from atop a crystal tree that grew out of the marble floor. “Cancel the popcorn.”