I tumbled into the water, losing my grip on Lachlan. The whiteflame flicked off as if someone had turned off a light switch.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
I was sinking in the cold, black water, and I couldn’t see anything. My eyes were open wide against it, and the salt in the water was stinging them, but I couldn’t see anything. Where the hell was Lachlan?
I felt in the water for him, but everything I touched was the slimy and cold flesh of the creatures, all of which were frenzied, twitching in the water, churning it up, making it froth.
Lachlan, where was Lachlan? He wasn’t dead. If I’d used the whiteflame, he was alive, and if I could just touch him again, we could end this once and for all.
But something snatched me up by the back of my shirt and yanked me out of the water.
It was the Green King. He held me up in front of his ruined face. One of his eyes was a mass of bubbled up and blistered flesh. The other still stared at me, red and angry. His lips had been burned away, revealing his yellow teeth beneath. They were sharp and small. A black forked tongue darted out of his mouth, and he spoke, but aloud this time.
His voice was like screeching metal. “I will kill you now, dragon. I will rip you apart piece by piece and I will feed you to my beasts. And when I am done with that, I will eat your heart myself. Then I will scour the earth until I find that boy of yours, the one you are so eager to protect. I will feast on him as well.”
I blew fire into his face.
It wasn’t whiteflame, but he still coughed and sputtered. He dropped me. The fire dissipated, hissing out into steam.
I hit the stone dais hard, letting out a whoosh of air. I gathered air into my lungs, ready to breathe more fire.
The Green King picked me up again and slammed me down against the hard stone.
Pain splintered through me. He was strong. I felt things in my body break and burst. These were bad injuries. I could heal them if I shifted—
He picked me up again.
I was screaming now, screaming in pain, screaming in anger. I blew out more fire.
He flung me away, batting at the flames with another hand.
I landed in the water with a splash. I was too broken to swim. I sank.
It was slow. All around me was nothing more than black, black water. Coldness.
It went on and on.
My lungs began to beg for air.
I tried to move my arms, to paddle for the surface. It hurt too bad, and it didn’t work anyway. I was fairly sure some of the bones in my arms were completely shattered. I was destroyed.
There was only one way out of this. I needed to shift.
It wasn’t easy. Shifting was a process that I didn’t think much about, but as I tried to allow the shift to wash over me, it hurt so badly as parts of my body moved into different places. It hurt, and I kept unconsciously stopping it, even though I knew it needed to happen. I had to grit my teeth and force the shift to happen.
Then, in dragon form, I rose from the water, feeling brand new, bright and full of light and energy.
First order of business?
Find Lachlan.
My wings flapped as I soared to the top of the cave. I scoured the area below me—
Tentacles flying through the air from more than one of the monsters. They wrapped around my body, around my wings, around my legs.
I began to fall.
The Green King laughed from the dais, and his destroyed features were even more monstrous in his mirth.
I landed in the water with a splash, still tangled in the tentacles. I filled my lungs with air, blew out fire. It was no use. The water doused the flame before it left my lips. I couldn’t even warm the dark water here. It was too cold. Freezing.
I struggled with my claws, my teeth. But that didn’t work either. I’d get one tentacle free only for another to take its place. I thrashed and thrashed in the water, struggling and fighting. I used magic as well, but it went much the same. No matter how many of the tentacles I managed to pry away from myself, more appeared. The monsters were all closing in on me now. They held me under the water.
Through the surface of the pool, I could see the Green King, leering down at me. He was still laughing, but I couldn’t hear him.
I began to feel very, very tired.
I thrust out my limbs again. Threw out magic. It was no use. I couldn’t get free. And while vampires couldn’t drown, dragons could. I was running out of time. I was losing air. My lungs had a higher capacity in dragon form, but I could feel that it didn’t matter. I needed to breathe soon.
And I wasn’t going to be able to do that.
This, then. This was the actual end.
Well.
I tried to find some comfort in the darkness around, something that felt like a soft embrace, something that would ease the pain of my death.
There was nothing. Everything was cold and sharp, like shards of ice.
Maybe I should open my mouth and let in the water. At least then, the pain would end, and it would be over quickly.
Still, drowning sounded frightening. Maybe it would be best to allow myself to pass out from a lack of air, and then go quietly that way.
I couldn’t allow myself to think of Wyatt now. I couldn’t bear that. I had done my best. The Green King was simply too strong. I hoped that someone would be able to fight him better than we had. Someone more prepared, more powerful, stronger.
I let that wish linger, and I started to let go. And then I wished for Wyatt to grow up happy and strong and safe, and I ached inside with the knowledge that I couldn’t be there for him.
It was actually a little bit ironic, wasn’t it? I’d given that little speech to Naelen about acceptance, and I’d thought to myself about how I’d fought and never accepted anything. And here, at the very last moment of my life, the final lesson was that I had to accept my own death, because I wasn’t strong enough to fight anymore.
For a long time, it had been me against the world, and I’d done everything I could to save my friends and family. But now, everything I could wasn’t enough.
I was going to die, and I was going to die alone.
Something yanked me up out of the water. The tentacles stretched as I was tugged away, and then they all gave way. Whatever was pulling me was too strong.
I surfaced, and I gasped for air. My lungs hurt, but it was sweet to have life-giving breath. I was in the claws of something strong and large and red. It was flying me through the air.
Lachlan!
He blew out a tongue of bright white fire. Whiteflame! It was coming out of his mouth, and it was so bright that I couldn’t look directly at it.
The fire poured out of his mouth as if there was no end to it.
And it settled below us, flowing into all the spaces as though it was liquid. The whole cavern was suddenly full of steam and screams and smoke.
Everything the whiteflame touched disappeared inside it. Everything. The water. The monsters. The stone. The Green King himself.
In moments, everything was all gone.
Lachlan set me down on the bare stone floor of the cavern, and it was hot under my feet.
The whiteflame had consumed the water. Nifty.
Only one bad thing about that. I couldn’t shift back to human form.
* * *
Luckily, in the next room of the cavern, there was another pool of water, and I was able to sink into it and shift back to myself. That shift was necessary to heal the damage that had been done to me in dragon form. Lachlan shifted back too.
I threw my arms around him. “I thought you were dead.”
“It’s like you said,” he said. “Vampires can’t drown. The Green King didn’t know anything about vampires. He was from another world where vampires don’t exist. Vampires are creatures of this world—the melding of humans and dragons. He had no experience with my kind at all. He underestimated me.” There was a confidence in his voice I didn’t think I’d ever heard before.
I kis
sed him. “You saved me,” I said when I pulled back. “I was going to die, and you saved me. Thank you.”
“You saved me first,” he said.
“No, I didn’t. I was sure that you were turning evil, and I didn’t trust you. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“You did,” he said. “You gave me your blood.”
“But you weren’t even swallowing. That’s when I was sure you were gone.”
“I couldn’t swallow at first. I couldn’t do anything. The Green King had me so weak. He started in on me the minute we arrived. You were still unconscious, and I let him, because I wanted to protect you.”
“I should have protected you.”
He kissed me. “We can protect each other. You’ve been the strongest for a long time. You’ve had to take on certain responsibilities. It’s always fallen to you.”
“And this time, it fell to you?”
“This time,” he said, “it was a little more balanced.”
I laughed weakly. “Well, it’s a good thing. Because if it had been up to me, we’d both be dead.” I looked into his eyes, feeling desperate to communicate to him what I was feeling. “I need you, Lachlan. We’re stronger together. I’ve never been the strongest one, not really. I’ve only been strong because I had you.”
“Me too,” he murmured. “You make me strong.”
We kissed again.
“So,” I said. “How do we get out of here?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Once we got out of the cave, we realized we were on an island. It seemed to be the same island where I’d been before, back when Clarke and I had found Santa. So, to get out of there, we had to shift back into dragons and fly to the closest land. Then, we were faced with the options of running around in dragon form or running around naked. We didn’t know where we were, either. It was a beach town, and beach towns are mostly the same, but this was a beach town somewhere where people didn’t speak English, and neither Lachlan nor I was bilingual.
With no money and no clothes, we ended up at a homeless shelter where some very nice ladies babbled at us in something that might have been Spanish or maybe Portuguese, and got us some clothes. After a bit of effort, we were able to communicate a request for a phone, mostly by miming.
Luckily, I had Felicity’s phone number memorized.
But once I was talking to her, I realized that I had no idea where we were. Naelen and Clarke had access to a private plane and could come pick us up wherever we were, but we didn’t know where that was.
So, an even longer and more confusing conversation commenced with the nice ladies who’d given us clothes. Which got us nowhere.
Then, one of them said something that sound like “Ingles,” and rushed off. When she came back, she had someone who spoke English, albeit brokenly. Anyway, we were able to discover that were on another, larger island in South America, a getaway off the coast of Brazil.
Naelen and Clarke were there within hours.
Lachlan and I got on the plane and found that Felicity and Connor were on there too. We were heading back to Sea City, which was fine with me. Connor, however, brought up the fact that we were supposed to go out in Corpus Christi and all get crazy drunk, considering it was all over, and we’d won. We’d beaten the Green King.
Naelen said he had a full bar on the plane.
So, we got a little tipsy on the flight back. When we touched down in Sea City, we all went back to my hotel together.
I, for one, was glad to be home.
The repairs on the Purple Dolphin were complete, and when we stepped into the lobby, everything looked perfect, like it had never been destroyed. I wandered over to the front desk, and I peered up at the new television that hung on the opposite wall. I remembered when that vampire gang, The Lost Breed, had come in and broken whatever TV I hung up there. They’d broken a lot of TVs. But ever since Felicity, Connor, and I had taken care of The Lost Breed, we hadn’t had any problems with them anymore.
I remembered how Lachlan hadn’t much liked the fact we were vigilantes. He’d seemed like such a straight arrow back then. I didn’t know that he was just struggling to keep a lid on the more unruly parts of himself.
A joyous cry from overhead.
I looked up and saw that Wyatt was at the top of the steps. Vivica was there, holding the boys’ hands. She grinned down at us. “Looks like we beat you home.”
“You did,” I said.
“Did you kill the Green King?” she said.
“You know it,” I said, and then I bounded up the stairs to see my little boy. Lachlan was right behind me. Together, we covered Wyatt in kisses, while he giggled and grinned at us.
I looked up to see that Felicity was heading out the front door.
“Hey, Felicity,” I called. “Where are you going?”
“Home to see Scott and Asia,” she called back.
Of course. I gave her a little wave.
“Guess we should be leaving too,” said Clarke.
“No, wait,” I said. “I don’t want everyone to leave. We barely got a decent buzz on the plane. Felicity, bring Scott back here. We’ll do food. We’ll have juice for the kids.” I pointed at Connor. “You make cocktails. You’re good at cocktails.”
Felicity grinned up at me. “Okay, okay. I’ll come back.”
“You better!” I said.
And that was how we all ended up in the back of the hotel, gathered around tables near the pool, the ocean glittering in the distance. We’d eaten pizza, and the boxes were open on the tables, half gone. All of us adults had drinks in hand, and the kids were playing together in the sand, just a few feet away. The air was warm, but there was a cool breeze coming in from the ocean, and I was happy.
“So,” said Naelen, “what now? You guys took out the Green King, and you’ve got crazy amounts of power with that whiteflame, so…?”
“Back to the grind, I guess,” said Lachlan, who was still working on a piece of pizza.
“Murders to solve,” I said, grinning.
“You’ve got to tell me all about the Order of Rasmossen and Wolffe,” said Clarke. “You promised you’d give us info if we helped.”
“Of course,” I said. “We’ll do that for sure.”
“So,” said Scott, “this thing you guys all just did, it was crazy dangerous, right? Because Felicity told me it wasn’t dangerous at all, and I know she was lying to me.”
Felicity laughed. “I didn’t say it wasn’t dangerous at all.”
“You did,” said Scott.
“All’s well that ends well,” said Naelen. “Right? We all survived.”
“We did,” I said. “And I need another drink. Anyone else?”
“We’re out of ice,” said Connor.
“Oh, I’ll go upstairs and get some,” I said. “Is that where you guys put the bags of ice?”
“Yep,” said Lachlan.
“Be right back.” I skipped over to the steps and climbed up to the back door of my apartment. I moved through the place to the kitchen, where I opened the door to the freezer and took out the ice. It was good to be home.
I heard the door open. “Someone need something besides ice?” I called back.
“It’s me.”
I turned to see Lachlan. I grinned at him.
“So, uh, I had a crazy idea,” he said.
I raised my eyebrows. “Crazy? What?”
“What are you doing tomorrow?” he said.
“Nothing, I guess,” I said.
“Want to get married?”
* * *
~Lachlan~
“I know it’s short notice,” Lachlan said into the phone, “and if you don’t think you can make it, we won’t be bothered. But Penny and I can cover the cost of your plane ticket, and I’ll pick you up from the airport, and—”
“Are you kidding, son?” said Nathaniel Flint on the other end. “You didn’t invite me to your last wedding.”
“Well… I’m inviting you to this one,” said Lachlan.
“I want to be there,” said his father.
Lachlan couldn’t help but smile. “All right, then. Well, we can set you up with a flight first thing in the morning. Wedding’s not until evening tomorrow. We have to wait until the officiant turns back from stone.”
“What?” said his father.
“You ever meet a gargoyle, Dad?”
Nathaniel cleared his throat. “Well, it sounds like it’ll be an experience.”
Lachlan chuckled. “We’ll see you tomorrow, then.”
“Sure thing, son. You take care of that little boy for me, you hear?”
“I hear you.”
They made some arrangements for the plane, and then they hung up. Lachlan set his phone down on the coffee table in the living room of the suite he shared with Penny. The carpet in here was brand new. It looked pristine and perfect, and he was almost afraid to walk on it. He was glad the hotel was back up and operational, even if it meant that Penny would be busy over the next few months and wouldn’t have as much time to help out with cases.
He got up off the couch and gingerly walked over the carpet to the window. He pulled aside the curtain and looked out. He remembered the first time he’d stood here, staring out the window. It had been some kind of angsty conversation between him and Penny, back when he couldn’t resist drinking her blood. He remembered the man he was back then. Broken and empty, barely holding on.
Meeting Penelope Caspian had changed everything for him.
He peered out over the lights of Sea City, and he couldn’t help but be grateful for everything he had.
It didn’t get much better than this.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
When I got married to Alastair, it was a big wedding, and I had this dress with a poofy skirt that made it impossible for me to sit down, because there was so much tulle in it.
I never really had any desire to have a wedding like that again.
So, I got up early the next morning and went out with Felicity to look for a simple dress that I could wear on the beach. We found something right away. It was off one shoulder, a shimmery white-silver fabric. The skirt fell asymmetrically, with a slit that showed off one of my legs. It was kind of a slinky dress, but it wasn’t too tight and it had a lot of layers, all of which helped camouflage the little bit of baby weight that I was still hanging onto.
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