by Ophelia Bell
“Cassie, are you sure about this?” Dad asked.
“She can’t really hurt me. Come on, honey. As soon as you can let one loose that’s hot enough to singe my eyebrows, we’ll head back to the fight.”
That got my attention. I’d seen how easily Vesh was able to hurt Gray, not to mention the shredded state Stuart had been in when he’d first arrived. If I could be any help fending off the enemy, I had to try.
I planted my feet in the springy earth and squared off facing Mom. Dad took a few cautious steps in the other direction. Then I reached deep into myself again to find that power, visualizing it easily as a ball of fire. But it wouldn’t come out.
With a huff, I shook my head. “I have no fucking clue what I’m doing. Every time I focused the magic into my work, I had a blowpipe or a punty in my hands.”
“Your artwork always had a piece of you inside it. That’s how I knew what was yours when I browsed the shops and galleries around town. All I’m asking is for you to channel that power straight into the open, aimed at me. Come on, I know you can do it. Like this.” She turned toward the water and lifted her hand, palm up. Her aura swelled with shadows, which flowed down her arm and into her hand until a pulsing purple flame hovered above her palm. Then she pulled back and flung it out over the water, where it exploded in mid-air into a million purple sparks.
I stood open-mouthed in awe and didn’t regain speech until she turned around to face me again. “Um, wow.”
“You try. Unless you want to practice a defensive spell. I can shoot fireballs at you instead of the water.”
Again, her aura darkened until a fresh ball of deep purple flame hovered in the air above her palm. When she started to pull it back as if to fling it at me, I backed up a few steps.
“You’re not—”
She let loose with a whump that sounded like gasoline being set alight. “Catch it!”
I yelped and raised my hands as shields, frantically pushing whatever power I could in that direction as the fireball hurtled at me. Eyes clenched shut, I braced myself, acutely aware of energy roaring up my legs and into my hands, and a noise like an avalanche blotting out the noises of the fight on the other side of the house. I’d felt those sensations almost constantly while working over the past two weeks; it seemed commonplace. But when an explosive crack filled the air and I didn’t burst into flames, I opened my eyes.
Hovering in the air between Mom and me was a concave shield of what looked like scorched earth and stones. It was rimmed in purple fire that crackled then faded into charred blackness. I held my hands up for a second longer, then dropped them, and the shield crumbled to ash on the ground.
“Holy shit! I did it!”
Mom let out a whoop of glee and clapped her hands “Yes! Now offense, honey. Shoot one at me.”
I focused again, reached for the power deep inside, felt it rushing up my body and into my arms, then…nothing. My hands got warm and tingly, but nothing emerged. “Fuck!”
I bent over, bracing my hands on my knees and shaking my head. “What the hell is wrong with me? The power’s there… I’ve been hyperconscious of it ever since I got here and this stupid estrous shit started.”
Heavy footsteps squelched through the dead leaves and mud behind me. “Try using this,” Dad said.
I looked up and frowned. He stood offering me a long steel punty. I straightened and took the rod from him, then twirled it like a staff. Turning back toward Mom, I let the power flow through me again. This time, it felt second nature to send it out into the steel. Normally, there would be a molten glass bubble at the end, ready for opening and shaping, but I tried anyway, visualizing the glass even though it wasn’t there. The magic flowed as easily as it had for the past two weeks in the studio. I pivoted and aimed the end at Mom, but rather than letting the magic ease through the metal, I actively pushed it and didn’t temper the power the way I did when I was shaping glass.
A thunderous bang filled the air like the report of a gunshot, and a bright orange orb of flame blasted out the end of the rod. I stumbled backward with a gasp. It happened so fast, Mom nearly took a faceful of fire but managed to erect a shield of shadows in the split second before she would have eaten the flaming ball.
When the shield dropped, she was grinning like a madwoman. “I knew you could do it! Are you ready to fight?”
The sounds of fighting continued beyond the house, and my sense of all my guys was still strong. I broke into a jog between my parents but broke stride when Dad started taking off his clothes.
“What are you doing?”
“Just channeling my magic like you. You didn’t think your old man was still just human after all this, did you? I learned a few things too.” He ran ahead as he unfastened his jeans and pushed them off his hips.
“Oh my god, Dad!” I shot a horrified look at Mom, who was too busy ogling Dad’s naked butt.
“He still looks great naked,” she said, grinning at me.
When I looked forward again though, all I saw was the rear end of an enormous brown bear, hauling ass toward the fight. Mom seemed completely unfazed.
“Did you know?” I shot at her.
She just smiled and picked up her pace to catch up with Dad. I huffed as I booked it after her.
“You two are going to have to explain this to me later!”
We reached the house, and the frantic yells and noises of the fight grew louder. My ears ached from the repeated dissonant screeches emitted by the attackers. From the sound of it, there had to be several of them, though I couldn’t guess how many. All I knew was that my mates were still alive and fighting, and I ran faster to reach them.
I came to the house and decided to run up the steps to the deck to bypass more wet, treacherous ground. Mom stayed at my side, taking the steps two at a time. We rounded the corner to the front and down the steps on the other side then headed down the slope toward the water where the fighting was happening.
Dad had outpaced us, disappearing past a copse of trees that blocked our view of the water. The sounds of conflict were fading, then I heard a loud, unearthly roar so jarring I had to cover my ears. My heart pounding, I reached the bottom of the hill near the dock and skidded to a stop several yards from the water’s edge. Towering over us was a monstrous beast with hundreds of heads, several of them whipping and twisting over the shore, snapping massive eel-like jaws at my ursa mates while they struggled to defend themselves. Overhead, my dragon mates repeatedly dove, breathing fire and clawing at more of the creature’s heads from above.
But something wasn’t right. At first, I couldn’t put my finger on it beyond a vague sense of panic tightening my gut. The guys were all here, shifted into their ursa forms, desperately defending themselves against some creature that had evidently crawled out of a primordial rift.
Then it hit me. There were three ursa fighting the beast at the water’s edge. If Dad was one of them, who was missing? I forced myself to stop and focus, fixing my mind on my connection with my mates and frantically taking inventory. I could still feel all of them. I tore my shirt buttons open down to my sternum and pressed my palm to my breastbone, touching each of the crescent scars they’d given me the night before, hoping it would help.
There was Tate, his jaw clamped onto one of the creature’s heads, shaking back and forth in a ferocious, deadly bite. And there was Eddie, rearing up on hind legs, swiping huge claws at another head that snapped at him from above. Dad splashed in the water with what appeared to be a third head, in the process of shredding it to pieces.
Chayton. Where was Chayton?
“Honey, it’s time to fight!” Mom yelled over the noises. She flung both hands out, sending purple fire at the beast’s body.
“I have to find Chayton!” I yelled back, my belly in turmoil and my heart beating too fast. I could sense him, but what I sensed was alarmingly faint and growing fainter and was somewhere in the direction of the Sound. No…it was somewhere under the Sound.
I tossed my punty
aside and ran for the water, heedless of the enormous heads whipping around above me. One dove down, snapping at my head, and I flung a hand at it in frustration. Heat exploded from my palm, and the head burst into flames, a cacophonous screech filling the air, but I didn’t have time to celebrate my triumph over my power.
I dove beneath the water, desperately swimming in the direction of one of the men I loved.
31
April
The water above me muffled the sounds of the fight but only served to amplify the beating of my heart. I wished like hell that I had a telepathic link to my ursa mates like I did with the dragons. All I had was a soul-deep bond that was more like a sense of utter rightness when I reached for it. I followed that bond down into the depths of Puget Sound, past the enormous armored belly of the beast to a tail that was as thick as a redwood and just as long as the trees were tall.
Finally, I glimpsed a more human shape of a shoulder and arm, then hands that frantically shoved and beat on the immense tail. He was trapped beneath it, pinned against a rock. I swam down as fast as I could and grabbed his hand. He gave me a frantic, panicked look, and his eyes widened. He shook his head, his hair flowing around him like a black halo. A slow stream of bubbles drifted up from the corners of his mouth. He pointed up toward the surface, baring his teeth at me.
The hell I was going to swim back up and leave him! I shook my head and grabbed his hand again, pulling. He let me pull, his body flexing as he struggled to push himself free, but it did no good. I let out a frustrated yell into the water that came out as a series of big bubbles. How long had I been down here? How long had he? I didn’t feel the kind of burning pressure in my lungs I’d have expected after holding my breath for too long, so I kept trying.
I moved behind him, braced my feet on the rock he was pinned against, and shoved. But my feet slipped, and I only succeeded in pushing myself away without dislodging him at all. When I swam back, he gave me a pleading look and pointed at me, then toward the surface again.
This time, I nodded. I’d get air, then come back, and I hoped to hell he’d last long enough. I swam as fast as I could to the surface, broke through with a gasp, inhaled, then dove beneath again.
On the way down, I saw where he was trapped from a new angle, and the shape and texture of the rock sparked a memory that made me realize what a fool I was. The current was slowly eroding that stone into sand, which wasn’t all that far removed from the materials that I dumped into the crucible of my furnace on a regular basis.
Chayton had gone limp, his arms floating up away from his body. My adrenaline spiked, and I swam around to grab him and shake him. He didn’t respond, so I gripped him by the cheeks, pressed my mouth to his, and blew as hard as I could, forcing air into his mouth and willing him to live. He didn’t regain consciousness, but I sensed our connection strengthening. It was as if he’d been retreating into darkness but came forward again, though I didn’t know how long it would last if he stayed down here.
I focused on the rock again, swimming around Chayton and pressing my hands to its surface. Then, with all my might, I pushed power through my hands, holding back nothing. The stone heated beneath my palms, then a crack formed, and within was the orange glow of lava. I still didn’t let up, forcing more power in until the entire outer layer formed a webwork of cracks with the orange glow of molten stone shining through from within.
The stone softened enough to provide give, and I grabbed Chayton beneath the arms and hauled him up with all my might. His inert body moved only a little at first, then finally slipped free. I grabbed hold of him from behind, slinging an arm across his chest, but he was way too big for me to get hold of him beneath his opposite armpit. I kept trying, and he kept slipping free because I couldn’t find a solid handhold on his big body.
I had to get him the fuck to shore before he drowned, and I’d already lost track of how long we’d been down here. That I was still able to hold my breath was a crazy thought itself. But I could do magic. There must be something I could do to help get us out of here. At a loss, I finally had an idea. I peeled off my flannel shirt and stretched it out longways, twisting it to form a makeshift rope, then slung it around him, over one shoulder and under the other, tying the ends of the sleeves together.
With something to hold onto, I kicked hard and swam to the surface, making sure Chayton’s face was above water before turning toward the shore. I stopped and stared, treading water and breathing hard as I got a good view of the fight. But where there’d been only my other five mates and my parents, I saw at least half a dozen new figures facing off against the beast on the shore and in the air above. Who the hell was helping us?
A rippling shadow shot through the water ahead of me faster than any human should be able to swim. I yelped and frantically paddled backward to retreat from it, when a dark head burst through the surface.
“April, I’m here to help. Give him to me.”
Blinking and sputtering, I treaded water to keep from sinking. “You’re that guy…the one who brought them to me.”
“I’m Llyr. One of Deva Rainsong’s mates. There will be time to explain later. Now let’s get you two to dry land.”
He swam close and slipped one arm around my waist and the other over Chayton’s chest. I didn’t see how he could swim holding us like this, but then the world twisted just like it had when Mom had stolen me away from the house when the Bane brothers arrived. It was as if I’d been tossed into a giant toilet bowl, and someone had just flushed. The sensation ended as soon as it began, and my feet hit solid ground. I immediately fell to my knees and retched, dry heaving the breakfast I’d never had a chance to eat.
When I recovered, Llyr was bent over Chayton, his hands splayed across his chest, but he wasn’t doing compressions. Instead, a bluish glow bled out from beneath his palms. A second later, Chayton made a gurgling noise, and water spewed from his mouth. He rolled over and coughed, dark wet tendrils of hair obscuring his face as he regained his breath. I crawled over to him and cupped his jaw.
“Chay, are you all right?”
He lifted his eyes and blinked once, then hauled me into an embrace so fierce I lost my breath.
“Gaia fucking save me, you’re okay,” he rasped, burying his face against my neck. In the next second, his lips were on mine, kissing me ferociously. “The others,” he said when he pulled back then looked around us.
The fight was still going on about a hundred yards down the beach, but the giant creature looked like it was being pushed back now that reinforcements had arrived. I itched to get in there and do my part.
“What the hell is that thing?” I asked.
Llyr had been standing a few yards away, giving us space, but turned at my question. “That’s a creature known as Typhon. It’s one of Chaos’s earliest creations and is fiercely loyal to him. You might have already met a few of its many heads though.”
“You mean Vesh?” I asked. “He’s part of that thing?”
“The individual heads can manifest as chaos energy and exist away from its body. When enough of them are destroyed at the same time, it summons the body from beyond the void. It can’t be killed.”
“Then how the fuck do we send it back?”
In a hoarse voice, Chayton said, “It’s like a dog with a bone. It won’t stop until it’s carried out its master’s orders. Only its master can really control it.”
“Did you guys know it would come?”
“We counted on it,” he said, slipping the rope of my wet, twisted shirt over his head and handing it to me. “The surest way to get Chaos to come and face us is to kick his favorite pet. He should be here before too long.”
I set my jaw and jumped to my feet. “Then let’s go speed things up. I want a face-to-face with that bastard. Are you in shape to fight?”
Chayton hauled himself to his feet, all six foot ten of his naked glory unfolding until he looked down at me with a grin. “A little drowning can’t keep me down, babe. Let’s go kick that puppy
in the balls.”
Llyr smiled at us and reached out his hands. “Let’s say we surprise it. You guys be ready to attack when we land.”
I eyed his hands warily. “No offense, but hitching rides with you doesn’t leave me in fighting form.”
He laughed. “It never does for beginners. The trick is to fix your mind on the best sex you’ve ever had and forget about what’s really happening.”
“That should be easy,” Chayton said, then hooked an arm around my waist and planted another kiss on me. This time, he was slow and thorough and owned my mouth for several seconds with his very capable lips and tongue. By the time he finished, my knees had turned to jelly and my skin tingled from the brush of his goatee.
When I regained my senses, Llyr was smiling at us both and nodding. “That spike of endorphins is the antidote to drift-sickness. Just remember it.”
“Trust me, I will never forget it,” I murmured and reached for his hand.
No sooner had he gripped me when the world upended, but the trip was over as soon as it had begun. I landed on my feet without a trace of vertigo and immediately sent molten magic surging through my limbs. Unlike before, I had no doubt it would come out the way I intended.
Beside me, Chayton shifted, his body morphing into a huge black bear as he fell to all fours. He let out a roar, then charged through the shallow water at the creature. The enormous fireball I let loose lit the way, its reflection making it look like he was ablaze when he rose up on hind legs and raked both foreclaws down the front of the monster’s chest.
My fireball hit it squarely in the chest at the juncture of all those writhing necks. Mentally, I willed the flame to spread and was only a little surprised that it obeyed, spreading between all the heads and flaring brighter as if they’d been doused in gasoline. The fire lit up the sky, reflecting off the wings of not just my three dragon mates. A fourth dragon had joined them, his scales a shining gold, and beside him, an enormous falcon with lightning crackling around it repeatedly dove at the beast.