A shape lay on the broken concrete. I had mistaken it for trash, but, when I looked closer, it was clear the shape was… human.
My gaze locked on the rise of shoulders, one hand extended out, and the blood. Oh, God. It was Joaquin. His body mangled and broken, he appeared dead. There were cuts over his entire body. Tara, or the untamed at her bidding, had killed him. I didn’t know much about Joaquin, but I knew he was part of the conciliatory peace keeping force and a powerful member at that. Now he was dead, discarded like a piece of trash.
My eyes darted between the body, Black Rock, and Tara. This was clearly a trap, one I’d stumbled into like an idiot with no backup, but if I left now, Black Rock would surely die. And there was no way I was backing down from Tara. Not again.
“Let him go,” I boomed, my power surging. I wanted her to know what she was up against. “This is about you and me, Tara. I’d like to finish what I started on Mirror Island.”
“What you started,” she repeated, chuckling. “Little girl, I started all this long before you and your meddling family came to Summers Lake. And it’s time I finished it.” Blue coils danced higher into the sky. Black Rock’s body twisted, his face contorting in what had to be unimaginable pain, though he didn’t cry out. He would let Tara rip him limb from limb without saying a word if it meant saving me.
But not today.
“You weren’t able to finish me in the caves, you weren’t able to finish me on Mirror Island and you certainly won’t do it now. Your litter of rabid puppies is too scared to attack and your power is all tied up with keeping Black Rock in check. Admit it, Tara. You are finally outmatched.”
I drew in power, feeling it bubble and then boil beneath my veins. More power than I’d ever wielded. I felt like a freaking Norse God with the energy that coursed through me. Red flames licked my hands and shot outward, singeing trash at my feet until small fires erupted. The air around me heated up, sizzling like desert blacktop. The untamed that had ventured into the shadows were now clambering over each other to get out of my way as I floated forward, my feet skimming the ground.
Nothing could stop me. Not even Tara Palmer.
“Little girl has been practicing her magic, I see,” Tara mocked, stepping closer. “All the better to kill you with, my dear.” Her dragon eyes narrowed to slits as she prepared.
Several things happened at once, so fast I was barely able to register them.
As if he were a piece of garbage, Tara threw Black Rock away with one sweep of her arm. His body went flying, bashing into a wall and crumpling to the floor. The untamed lost their fear, spurred on by some unknown force, and raced toward me like sharks to discarded chum.
It was the last thing that happened that startled me most. My magic sputtered like water from a leaky hose.
One minute, it was there full blast. The next, it trickled out in spurts, burning and dying over and over no matter what I did.
I fell to the ground, dropping to my knees in the small trash fires I had started. I dug for more power, but it was as if someone had shut off the valve. There was nothing.
Shit.
When I glanced up, the two dozen untamed were on me.
I had to do something fast.
I acted on instinct. As the first of the untamed fell on me, I rolled sideways and stuck out my foot, causing the creature to stumble. I followed that with a kick that sent it tumbling into the largest of my trash fires. As it howled, another dove on me. My breath was knocked away as a writhing bag of rotten flesh battered my head and shoulders. Curling to protect my face and neck, I drove my knee up, catching its stomach and cutting off its air supply. While it was sucking wind, I punched its head to stunt it further and then rolled it off of me.
Two down.
As I stood, my short triumph died. All around me, a sea of rotting faces waited to attack. They lashed out, testing the waters, gnashing their teeth and growling. Soon, they’d get the idea to attack together and then I was beyond screwed.
My eyes darted around until I spotted Tara hovering above it all. A corona of purple light pulsed around her entire body, a sphere of energy throbbing in and out like a pattering heart.
Wait a minute. Purple?
Paying closer attention, I could see the blue energy coiling around red energy. Constricting it, binding it.
She was stealing my goddamned power! And it was taking all her concentration to do so.
If I could get to her—
Two untamed fell on me from behind.
Teeth sank into my neck and pain ripped up my body. Arms squeezed me, cutting off my air and something heavy tackled my legs. It was what I’d feared, a coordinated attack. Apparently, they were able to consciously make decisions. Either that or they were being directed.
It didn’t matter. I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move. The stink of rot flooded my nose as panic filled my brain. More hands clawed at my arms and legs, tearing skin away. Something bashed into my head, stunning me.
Pain spiked from so many places I stopped counting. My vision spun. My head pounded. Consciousness faded. I tried to fight my way back to reality. This couldn’t be the end. I couldn’t let Tara win.
“Tara!” a voice yelled. Black Rock’s voice.
A giant crash reverberated through the warehouse.
My power surged, back like a punch in the gut. Hell burned through me, lighting me up.
Then I pushed it out.
Fire.
The untamed were screaming.
Fire.
The air trembled with heat.
Fire.
The untamed ran like ambulatory candles, burning, bumping into things. Dying.
The walls crackled as the flammable objects around us crawled with orange tongues of flame. Trash, cars, beams, stairs. Windows popped and rained glass. Smoke roiled, filling the warehouse. It was too much.
What had I done?
I tried to turn it off. Nothing happened. The fire roared.
“I can’t stop!” I screamed, searching for Black Rock. I whirled, my eyes marking more of my ceaseless destruction until they settled on two figures. Tara and Black Rock locked in mortal combat, grappling with each other.
Both on fire.
“Black Rock!” I tried to reach him, but I was hovering, my legs touching nothing solid enough to propel me forward. “Help me!”
He fell to his knees, the flames dancing over his body. His dreads were gone, burned away, as well as his clothes. Tara, too, dropped to the ground. Even through the blaze, I could tell her scaly skin was blackened, crinkling like plastic in a campfire.
I was killing them.
“No!” I screamed.
I made one more desperate plea.
Santiago! Tom! Fang! Ki! Anyone, help!
The inferno crawled up my legs, devouring me. Everything was burning. I fell to the concrete as the world turned to fire, smoke and ash.
Chapter 18
The world was pain and fire.
I was in hell, had been for an eternity. My very soul was burning, and there would never be a way out. I tried to remember what sin I had committed to earn this fate, but my mind knew little else besides the meaning of suffering.
Help me. Help me. Help me.
The message played in the back of my mind like a recording on a futile, endless loop. No one was coming.
I screamed.
Sorry. I’m so sorry.
I’d done this to Black Rock, too. I’d condemned him to hell, and I had no right to do that. I was no god, no demon. I was just a girl.
So sorry.
It took a jolt of pain down my back to realize that these apologies were not my own thoughts. They were someone else’s.
I know it hurts, but we have to move you.
They had come. They had heard my plea across the distance. Except now I wished they hadn’t. I wished they’d let me die. They’d made the pain worse, much worse.
I screamed again, then the world went black.
* * *
> “Please, tell me you can save her.”
Silence.
God, why did you go alone? Why?
Tom?
I tried to send out a message, but since the blissful blackness was gone, the pain had returned, and it was all I could handle.
You’re crazy, Tom said. But you did it. You got Tara. She’s dead. Never coming back. We made sure. You and Black Rock made it out, though. Ivy will heal you.
Ki spoke next, his voice soothing like no one else’s. You’ll be okay, Lila. You’re safe now. I promise.
“Alright. That’s enough.” This was Ivy’s neutral voice. It sounded garbled in my ears, but I recognized it, even in my anguish. “You can’t be here. I can’t focus with all of you in the room.”
There were protests. Feet shuffled.
Don’t leave me.
I wanted them to be with me in my final moments. There was no coming back from this. From all the screams, the pain, the searing of skin and sinew.
My throat bobbed up and down as I moaned in pain.
“Shh, shh. It’ll be all right,” a soothing voice said. It sounded like Ivy again. The boys were gone.
I moaned again. It seemed I couldn’t stop.
“Silence would help me work,” Ivy said, talking to herself.
Just as she said it, the pain that engulfed me diminished. I would have sighed in relief if not for the fact that I was still hurting. A lot. The pain that had departed was only half of what remained. But even at half strength, the beam from a lighthouse could be piercing.
My moaning continued, even if not as insistently.
“Not enough, it seems. Let’s try a little more.”
The pain was cut in half again, and this time I did sigh, and, at last, grew quiet.
“That’s better,” Ivy said.
My senses clearing slightly, I perceived the sound of metal against metal, the beeping of medical equipment, and a hard surface under my ruined body.
I tried to open my eyes, causing my entire face to throb. I failed and only managed to make my stomach convulse at the thought of my fused eyelids.
“Not like this,” I said.
“What?” Ivy asked. “Are you trying to say something?”
“Not like this,” I repeated, except it sounded more like “na-lek-is.”
I didn’t want to live if I was going to look like a monster. Death was preferable.
“Don’t worry,” Ivy said. “You won’t.”
Had she understood me? Did she mean she could restore me? Dare I hope?
“First,” Ivy said, “Let’s fix this.”
A sharp, stinging pain shot across my right eye, then my eyelid was pushed open.
“It must be awful to not be able to see,” Ivy said.
The same pain hit my left eye next. I blinked. My eyelids closed in slow motion. For a moment, I was afraid they wouldn’t open again, but they did. My eyes burned as if someone had poured acid in them. The image before me was blurry with dark patches around the edges. The shape of a head sat right in the middle: Ivy hovering over me.
“Now, a bit of magic…” she said, lifting her hand to my brow.
Magic? The thought confused me, but I couldn’t put my scattered thoughts together to figure out why.
A tingling sensation washed across my face, concentrating mostly on my eyes. It was a strange feeling. The word “cool” was the closest that would work to describe it. When it passed, my vision cleared, not entirely but enough to give the shapes I saw more definition.
The corners of my eyes prickled. I wanted to cry with hope and relief, but no tears came out. The fire had nearly consumed me. I was dry with nothing to give. Yet, it seemed that not all was lost. Ivy was a powerful healer.
She straightened. There was a scalpel in her gloved hand. It dinged onto a metal tray as she set it aside. She must have used it to slit open my melded eyelids. She picked up a syringe next and walked around me.
Sending pain across every corner of my body, I swiveled my head to follow her.
She had stopped and was tapping the glass syringe with a fingernail. She lowered it. My heart jumped at the sight of a mangled shape lying on a metal table next to mine. He looked like a drawing in an anatomy book, the ones they use to teach you the names of all the muscles.
Black Rock. He was raw.
I’d done that to him, and my punishment was that I’d done it to myself as well.
“Curragh was always so handsome and honorable,” Ivy said, lowering the syringe.
Curragh?
“He was mine once, but he has changed so much over the years.” She inserted the needle in the anatomy dummy’s arm. “He changed his name to Black Rock… and that’s when I knew there would be no return.” She pushed the plunger, emptying clear liquid into his vein.
A few seconds later, his body gave a violent jerk, then went utterly still. A little smile stretched Ivy’s lips. My heart froze, a bad feeling washing over me.
“Black Rock,” I said, trying to reach for him, though all I managed was a twitch of my fingers.
“He cannot answer you anymore.” Ivy was looking down at him with pity and regret in her eyes. “He will be dead soon.”
Oh, God. Oh, God.
What had she done?
Black Rock!
Was he dead? Had Ivy…
“He will have peace now.” Ivy left him and walked back to my side.
I stared into her resigned expression, my mind reeling.
“You have made things so hard, Lila McCarty.” Ivy plunged the needle into a vial and started filling it up again. “Tara and I had important plans, but, for one reason or another, you always seemed to get caught in the middle. I blame Tara, too. She went mad in the end, after all.”
Oh no. No. It can’t be.
My eyes swiveled around the room.
Tom!
“They can’t hear you, dear,” Ivy said. “This room is especially constructed to block mental waves, radio waves, electromagnetic waves… and much more. I need absolute privacy for my experiments.”
Ki!
She’d filled the syringe and was now checking the dosage, squinting at the small numbers on the side.
“More than enough,” she said, smiling genuinely, like I’d never seen her do before.
Fang!
“Fang is distracted with your friend, Mercedes. A dragon and a human girl. That has never been a good combination. My kind is so much stronger, resilient. But there is always room for improvement. We need to do better, not worse.
“We tried to make the untamed better, but there was so little to work with at the start. At least, they provided a great distraction while I planned. Now Tara is gone, but our research wasn’t in vain. I will continue to perfect it. Your body will provide great insight toward getting the dragon serum right.
“Without interference from you, Black Rock, and your friends, I will make enough faithful dragons to fill the world. Your father will be one of them. His feeble body is having a hard time handling the serum Tara gave him, but with my help, he might be my first. I’m learning much from helping his system accept the foreign DNA.”
No. Dad.
I’d brought him here for this. I’d been such a blind fool. I had no tears, but there was a keening in my chest, and it filled me completely.
“Now,” Ivy said, pressing the needle to my arm and sticking it through my mutilated skin with relish. “It will hurt just a little.”
A coldness worse than the inferno that had consumed me at the warehouse went into my arm. Like some sort of flesh-eating bacteria, the frigid liquid crawled through my dry veins, ripping them open, pushing, ramming its way through to every corner of my body.
Waves of pain racked my body. I flopped on the table as liquid agony tore me apart.
Forgive me.
I’d failed everyone.
I’d pulled them away from their happy lives to drag them into my reckless, pathetic existence. I had been selfish. I had wanted all of them for me, and
they’d brought me such happiness. Now, it was all gone.
“My,” Ivy said in awe, “you’re strong.”
The convulsions finally stopped. I’d like to say that stillness descended upon me then, but my mind was clamoring, rioting, refusing this awful fate.
Except the poison inside me was too much, and no amount of willpower could fight it. I was fading.
“Let me through!”
Santiago?
No. Don’t come in. Run!
There was a crash. Ivy turned, the empty syringe in her hand.
“Ivy?” Santiago said her name with apprehension and doubt. “What is going on?”
Chapter 19
“Santiago,” Ivy said with fake brightness. “However did you get in here? Why aren’t you resting?”
Santiago’s eyes darted from Ivy’s face to Black Rock to me, the confusion on his face building.
“What is this? Why can’t Lila answer when I send her telepathy? And why is the door guarded?” He walked over and grabbed my hand, his fingers warm against the ice cold chill that covered my entire body. “She’s so cold,” he murmured, turning to Ivy.
I wanted to shout but every inch of me was paralyzed by the solution coursing through my veins. Even telepathy was lost to me. I was a prisoner in my own body, unable to explain anything. It was worse than being unconscious. Now I could also see Ivy destroy Santiago before I died.
Ivy’s initial flustered expression had settled into her normal calm demeanor.
“It’s the sedative. Naturally, it made her docile, though easy to work with. The pain was driving her mad. Now... if you could give me time to heal her. I really can’t work under these conditions.” She smiled as she put a hand on Santiago’s back and attempted to usher him to the door.
He whirled away from her, circling back to Black Rock. He put his fingers on Black Rock’s mangled wrist.
“No pulse,” he said, slowly.
“Ah, yes. So sad. I couldn’t save him. Terrible. I can’t even process it.”
She walked to the table and hunched over, her long red hair hiding her face, though her tone betrayed her lack of feeling. She was a master at hiding her emotions, but doing the opposite seemed to short-circuit her robot brain. She was as unconvincing as a kid in his first school play.
Perilous: The Dragon’s Creed Series Book 3 Page 12