Dragon Guardian

by Ophelia Bell

“That’s right, kitten. Wait for the power,” Neph said between harsh grunts.

  Aodh was nearly at his limit, his built-up ecstasy ready to overflow any second. When the first violent wave crashed into their bodies, drenching them with its potent power, Neph cried out, “Now!”

  With a resonant roar, Aodh let go, his cock pushing deep and his balls tightening as he shot a flood of hot essence into her. Vrishti stiffened and cried out, her nails digging into the back of Aodh’s neck, her head flying back against his shoulder as she arched with the force of her climax.

  A hot flood coursed between them, drenching his balls and upper thighs. Just as he felt the violent spasm of Neph’s cock alongside his own on the other side of the membrane that separated them, the bottom of the world fell out from beneath them.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Meri

  There was a strange synchronicity to the locale Meri had chosen to complete her plan. She’d been expelled through one of the Nile River portals, at the very spot where she now stood among the reeds, staring down at her own reflection.

  Only it wasn’t her reflection. It was yet another of the many vessels she’d been forced to use over the centuries to stay alive. This vessel couldn’t shift, nor could any of the others, and she wondered if she could even remember how once she finally had an immortal vessel once again. The child she’d left behind, safe in its secret chamber beneath the pyramid, was only the first step in her long-term plan to command an army of immortals. Reclaiming the Haven was the second. That immortal baby would be the key to Meri’s victory.

  “She isn’t immortal yet,” she reminded herself. The Source would fix that, but she needed this vessel to last at least another two decades until she could breed a new one from what would hopefully be the first immortal hybrid in existence. The Source would allow the child to mature enough for Meri to speed the entire process along. When she had the Haven conquered, the Sanctuary would soon follow, and she’d have all the Source’s power at her disposal to build that army, and in the process to create the perfect immortal vessel for herself.

  She felt a pang of longing at the thought of the tiny creature she’d left behind in the tank of gel-like fluid, flooded with the powerful blood of the satyrs who sustained it.

  Catching herself, she chuckled softly. Was she actually acquiring maternal feelings for the child? How preposterous. It was a tool, the culmination of all her hard work attempting to create a creature that possessed all the powers she would need bred right into its DNA, allowing her to finally be done with her reliance on the human race for her survival.

  On that note, she turned away from the river, and directed her mental focus outward into the villages nearby. Only one day left until the Equinox, and her entire army was in place. They were spread out, disguised as locals so as not to draw suspicion, but ready at a moment’s notice to drift to her location when the time came.

  For the first time in ages, she was in the mood to celebrate. Filtering through the minds of the nearest men, she found three who were due a reward for their service and commanded them to meet her at the rooms she kept at a local hotel.

  She missed having the stamina of a nymph, but this new body she’d taken was young, athletic, and beautiful, and could easily keep up with the appetites of a trio of horny soldiers. And now that the prospect of an afternoon of her favorite game was fixed in her mind, she couldn’t wait for it.

  Tomorrow, she was going home.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Calder

  Calder opened his eyes to slits, carefully maintaining his limp shape in the tank Meri had him and the other Thiasoi suspended in. He didn’t want to draw the attention of any guards who might be in the room. But all he saw was a sole technician seated at a control panel behind a glass wall, his attention fixed on a pair of monitors that blocked most of his face from view.

  Calder took quick stock of the surrounding area without turning his head. The tank seemed to be in its own room, surrounded on three sides by solid concrete walls, and on the fourth by a plate glass window that looked into the technician’s booth. Within the tank’s room were cameras positioned at each corner, rotating at intervals. He could only see two of the corners, but had to assume the entire room was similarly equipped.

  There were no blind spots convenient to the exit that he could see. Even the door between the booth and the room was a clear glass sliding door similar to the prison cell doors where he’d been held most recently before the dragons rescued him and Nicholas.

  “Those doors wouldn’t be able to keep you in now,” Nicholas whispered in his mind.

  “All the more reason to be extra cautious. She finds out, she could neuter me like before. Cut me off from you … from my power. I still don’t know how she did that.”

  “That kind of mental blocking sounds like my brother,” Aurum said, her voice sending a pleasant warmth through his limbs he hoped didn’t show up on his vital signs.

  “She had access to Ked’s blood. It would have taken a toll on her vessel to use it, but she clearly found a new vessel not long after.”

  The technician began fidgeting then, glancing at his wrist every few minutes. Calder watched intently, waiting for his moment.

  The second the technician stood up from his chair, Calder moved. He drifted out of the tank, instantly landing behind the man. He clutched the technician’s head in both hands and snapped his neck with a swift jerk. He shifted to assume the shape of the dead man in the split second he took to drag the body around the side of the desk, exhaling a cloud of dragon smoke to conjure a replica of the technician’s dark blue cotton scrubs to cover his naked body.

  The security panel by the exit beeped just as Calder snatched the dead man’s ID badge off his pocket and stood up. The door opened as he blew out another cloud of smoke to camouflage the body in its little corner.

  “Couldn’t fucking hold it until the end of your shift, man?” the new technician grumbled on his way through the door.

  “Sorry,” Calder said, grabbing the empty water bottle on the desk and shaking it. “Needed to hydrate.”

  The other man chuckled, his demeanor brightening. “She was in a good mood when she left, wasn’t she? That always means a nice, long bonus session. Hey, toss me a fresh bottle.”

  He gestured to the opposite end of the booth. Turning, Calder saw a mini-fridge and stooped to open it and retrieve one of the many bottles of water that were chilling inside. His foot bumped the now invisible leg of the dead man and he surreptitiously scooted it back out of the path.

  “Here you go, man,” he said. As he handed the bottle to his new coworker he met the man’s gaze, immediately triggering the hypnotic swirl in his eyes and expelling more dragon breath. “Gotta love a well-earned bonus.”

  The man stood transfixed for a second, his hand holding the other end of the bottle, but making no further move to take it. While Calder’s gaze stunned him, the dragon breath did its work, filling the man with a sense of rightness and utter well-being.

  “Everything’s kosher here. Nothing out of place,” Calder said, enunciating the words slowly so that the suggestion sunk in deep. He had no guarantee that Meri wouldn’t take a peek into the man’s mind at any point, but his own temporary hypnosis should prevent the sounding of an alarm for several hours without her influence.

  “Yeah, man. Why wouldn’t it be? She’d fucking kill us if it wasn’t.”

  With a terse nod, Calder swiped his badge at the panel by the door and left, picking up his pace as he scanned the corridor, readying his power for more hypnosis in the event he came across more of Meri’s minions.

  He came around a corner and spied a pair of doors across from each other. By his navigation, one of the doors must lead back into the big room with the tank. He made a note of it, then tested the handle of the other door. It opened without issue, giving access to an elaborately equipped laboratory
with a huge chair-like contraption in the center. Above the chair were several lights suspended on long, articulating arms.

  The place was devoid of life, utterly sterile and still. It gave him a chill that he sensed must be Aurum’s gut reaction to the room.

  “Depressing,” she said.

  “We’re no stranger to rooms like that,” Nicholas said.

  Calder silently acknowledged his mate’s comment. He’d rather not dwell on those old memories, but Nicholas was right. The pair of them had spent countless hours in labs such as this, undergoing Meri’s tests, having their blood stolen, their semen extracted, and then later in their captivity, being forced to couple with equally unwilling females of various races. They’d found solace in each other at least, which was more than he could have said for most of the other victims of the vicious bitch’s schemes.

  Just as he was about to retreat from the room, Aurum stopped him.

  “There’s something alive here. I can see an aura. That glow through the steel door there.”

  Calder turned in the direction she’d indicated. He walked toward the steel door and reached out for the levered handle. Opening it blasted him with ice-cold air.

  “Fuck. It’s just the cooler,” he muttered, eyeing the frosted bags and containers that occupied the floor-to-ceiling shelves that lined both sides of the enclosure, leaving a narrow walkway between. But with the door open, the glow was stronger, coming from the other end of the compartment.

  Bracing himself for the unpleasantness, he moved into the cooler, goosebumps immediately rising up on his skin. There was certainly something odd about that glow, and conspicuous about the emptiness at the far end of the cooler.

  He ignored the outer door latching behind him. Studying the room closely, he walked forward. Halfway into the room, something on the shelf caught his eye and he turned to see a series of glowing chambers within a grid of glass. In each one was a tiny creature held suspended. Typewritten labels on each one numbered them in sequence with what looked like a kind of code: D+U=Unviable; N+D=Unviable; D+T=Unviable; U+T=Unviable; N+U=Unviable. There were countless others with increasingly complex codes and dates arranged in ascending order. Embryos, he realized with a horrific sickening feeling.

  “How many were yours?” Aurum asked in a solemn tone.

  “Anything with an N on the label might be. She never captured a female nymph, as far as I know, but she destroyed every single male she kept but me and my Thiasoi brothers. We were too powerful to waste that way. I guess she kept me as her breeding stock, but had a different use for them.”

  Chilled from the sight more than the temperature, he forced his gaze back to the wall. “There are footprints in the frost. One set … a woman’s. There must be something on the other side of the wall.”

  “Be careful,” his mates said in unison as he took a chance and drifted three feet forward.

  The temperature increased dramatically, the sudden change shocking. But the most shocking thing of all was the sight before him.

  The room was devoid of an exit, and was only big enough for the tank in front of him and a path around it wide enough for one person to walk, with a wider space before an angled control panel that had a steady readout of stats on the resident of the tank.

  It was a smaller scale replica of the tank he and his Thiasoi brothers had been held in. Above the tank was a cylindrical contraption filled with red fluid, white lines on the side demarcating volume. It was full, but a long, red tube steadily fed the contents into the tank where the fluid… the blood swirled in smoky, marbled whorls around the object inside, gradually being absorbed through its outer shell.

  Its skin.

  Which was pale pink and translucent enough for the tiny beating heart to show inside its chest. Its aura glowed a faint pink, pulsing with each beat.

  “Sweet Mother. A baby?” Aurum asked.

  “It isn’t human, whatever it is,” Calder said. “But it isn’t one of us, either. What is it?”

  He stepped closer to the control panel and observed the readout. Beside the panel was a thick, leather-bound book with intricate patterns tooled into the cover.

  The leather binding creaked when he opened it, revealing yellowed pages covered in delicately written script in the ancient nymphaea language.

  “A grimoire?” Aurum asked.

  “Or a journal …” Nicholas supplied. “It looks like the one my mother left me.”

  Calder flipped the pages, swiftly skimming the text. It began as a series of entries of mere speculation. About a century after being expelled from the Haven, Meri had begun making an effort to see if she could improve her situation. By the dates in the top corner of each page, he placed the first few entries at a few decades prior to the first series of abductions and the subsequent rise in attacks on the higher races.

  The entries didn’t begin to look like true lab notes until shortly after that date, roughly three thousand years ago. From that date on, she methodically tracked her various tests, detailing the results, the grid-like notes interspersed with more detailed narratives of her conclusions.

  Nikhil would be a worthy vessel, but for his one weakness. Aodh had the same weakness—their cocks are good for pleasure and procreation, and not much else but a distraction. I need a female vessel suitable for the spirit of a nymph …

  … A cocktail of dragon blood works on humans, but only if it is not Immortal blood. Immortal blood kills them within moments, shortly after they go mad. Why has Nikhil survived? He was human before the wedding …

  … Unable to crossbreed the races in captivity. Are we truly incompatible? How are we able to breed with humans? Missing something crucial …

  … The blood mutates each test subject after the transfusion. Somehow Nikhil and his twin pups are the only ones yet who have been mutated by Immortal blood. Still don’t understand this. He claims they were all dragon blessed. He isn’t clear on how this works …

  … There is some mix of mutation plus affection that works. Subjects DBM-599 + UF-276 conceived after only two weeks sharing a cell, the first time testing enforced proximity for an extended period. UF estrous may be a factor, but inconsistent. Cannot discount the possibility that an imprinted pair may be required, but conception still does not guarantee viability …

  … Nikhil has taken a liking to the ursa cub. His interest in the fertility experiments is flagging. Perhaps it’s time to let him have his son …

  … not just affection as previously believed. Love between the turul princess and her guards has produced several specimens of near perfect viability. Something is still missing. The embryos still don’t survive in the artificial womb. It’s as though they starve despite adequate nutrient solutions being provided. All in vitro experiments with similar human embryos prove viable with almost no issues. What is so difficult about the higher races? Perhaps revisit human DNA for clues …

  … Nikhil is testing me. His mind has been inaccessible at times. Something has shifted in the River, I’m sure of it. If only I had my own connection still. Need to bring my dog to heel before he gets out of hand. He is the only Immortal mutant left untried in the experiments. It’s his turn. Will attempt to cross-breed a pair of mutated humans for the first time …

  … Human DNA is the key to viability. They are a tenacious race which does not need love to proliferate. Odd that the higher races do. But that bears the question whether Nikhil and the female pup I compelled him to breed with shared something I was unaware of. Did their mutations add love to the equation? …

  … It doesn’t matter now. She is alive. And she is beautiful. The satyrs will finally serve their purpose. If I had access to the true Source, this would be so much easier…

  “Fuck,” Calder said out loud. “She stops there. No suggestion what she plans to do with this embryo. The woman’s not exactly the maternal type.”

  “What are we going to do
with her?” Aurum asked.

  Calder stared at the tiny floating creature. The tank that held it was big enough to house a full-sized infant, but this little creature was still incredibly tiny. It had arms and legs, fingers and toes. It could have been human except for the strange aura that surrounded it and the distinct pair of tiny protrusions on its head suggesting it might soon have horns, as well as the faint webbed outline of wings along its back. Its feet ended in tiny claws.

  The notations in Meri’s book suggested it could not live without the infusion of Source-imbued satyr blood. A quick glance at the container above the tank suggested it had a supply that could last a few days. Perhaps a week. He needed to get his Thiasoi brothers and his father out of their damn tank. Once they completed their mission, he would volunteer his own damn blood for this baby if he had to.

  “We leave her for now. When we’ve dealt with Meri, we can come back. This room is on its own power grid. It’s completely secure. She’ll be safe.”

  Aurum’s mental presence inside his mind hummed with uncertainty. “I don’t trust what Meri has planned for her.”

  “Then we’ll just have to make sure we get to Meri before she can complete this abhorrent experiment. Whatever the fuck it is. We need to finish scouting this place for the others.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Nikhil

  “Can we move this many in so short a time?”

  Nikhil surveyed the throng of dragons and turul who were awaiting his next command. Belah’s question nagged at him. More than five thousand filled the throne room and the vast halls and chambers of the temple beyond. He could set eyes on maybe a fifth from his vantage atop the stone table-map that had once been this temple’s throne. Belah stood beside him, ever the queen of her domain.

  “It will take too long,” he finally said, “even with Aurum and Nicholas helping. We can only drift a few at a time. Starting from the Madagascar temple will shorten the time a bit, but drifting still isn’t instantaneous. The farther we have to travel, the more time it takes.”