by Selena Kitt
“It’s the most valuable thing in the world.” The lich turned, his attention focused again on her. Whatever he’d been doing appeared to be done. “With that stone, I can unlock the only thing that can kill me. And once I have it under my control? Nothing can stop me.”
“You forgot to add ‘muahahaha’,” Jules grumbled, squinting into the darkness, trying to figure out where she was. Blue Creek had lots of woods—they could be anywhere.
Then she saw something beyond the circle of trees they were in—a headstone, one of the tall ones, almost as tall as she was. The graveyard. They were in the cemetery behind the funeral home. She racked her brain, trying to get her bearings. What part of the cemetery? Front or back?
“Hold!” The necromancer held both hands up in front of him, like he was stopping an oncoming car. “Wait for my command.”
“Your invisible dog?” Jules asked, still trying to figure out what part of the cemetery they were in. It was dark, but the moon was rising, giving her some help.
“My army.” The old man turned his head to grin at her with those crooked teeth. Then he laughed, pointing into the darkness.
Jules turned her head, trying to see. Just then, a cloud moved from in front of the face of the moon, and she saw what the necromancer had been doing. What he had been trying to raise.
The graveyard was full of bodies—ones that had been interred underground or in mausoleums—now standing at attention, awaiting his command. She could see down the embankment, knowing now they were in the old part of the cemetery, high on the hill. Where anyone could see the fire, she realized.
The risen nearest them weren’t really bodies at all—they were skeletons with no flesh left on their bones. One of them turned its head—its skull, really—and looked at her with the hollows of its eyes. As if it could see her.
Jules screamed, trying to tear herself from the rope lashing her to the tree by force of will.
“Beautiful sound. Keep it up!” The lich laughed when she screamed again, still trying to get herself undone. “Don’t worry, though. The undead can’t harm us. Not in this circle. They’re just to keep the shifters busy until I can raise the dragon.”
“And then what?” Jules asked hoarsely, still looking askance at the skeletons standing on top of their graves. There were hundreds of them, white bags of bones, shiny in the moonlight. Beyond that, there were bodies, flesh hanging from them, like some sort of zombie horde, just standing there waiting to be activated.
“Then I’ll kill them all.”
CHAPTER TEN—Kai/Jules
KAI
The wolves scented Jules all the way to the funeral home, but it was locked up tight. Kai broke a back window and went through, unlocking the door to let the wolf shifters in. They traced her downstairs into the mortuary where they found an open, empty drawer. They also found two badly decomposed bodies standing in a corner and Stuart Linden in another.
“Revenants,” Graham barked and Kai nodded, meeting the wulver’s golden eyes. Graham was in his half-form—half man, half wolf. The top half was wolf, but he could still speak to humans in this form. Wulvers were the only shifter Kai knew of who could do the half-shift thing.
So Jules hadn’t been going crazy after all. How had he missed the signs that the necromancer had returned? In hindsight, they were laid out for him like a damned trail of breadcrumbs. And because he’d missed them, Jules was now in danger.
“Let’s go.” Kai headed back up the stairs, hearing more wolves howling outside.
“More revenants,” Graham barked, head cocked like a dog listening to something only he could hear. “In the cemetery. He’s risen the dead.”
“Of course he has.” Kai squinted through the darkness at the cemetery in the distance. He could see things moving in the moonlight, almost like waves on the ocean. Beyond that, he spotted the light of a fire.
“Do you see that?” Kai nudged Graham. “The firelight—can you see it?”
Graham looked—the wolf shifters had night vision, something Kai was lacking—but shook his snout.
“She’s there.” Kai knew it. The whole thing was like deja-vu. There would be a circle and an altar. A fire and a knife. And Nia. Only this time, she was Jules—but her name didn’t matter. She was his mate and he had to save her.
He took off running.
The wolves were faster and reached the cemetery before he did, which was probably a good thing. The undead were everywhere. They had an army of shifters, but the necromancer had conjured an army of revenants. Kai had no weapons, but the wolf in front of him wearing a kilt did. He was chopping his way through dead limbs with his sword, knocking bodies out of the way left and right.
“Follow me,” Graham ordered, and Kai did, using the big wulver as a shield as they weaved their way through headstones. Behind him, he heard the howls and growls of the wolf shifters, fighting the good fight with the lich’s personal army horde.
The undead had gone from raw, fleshy skin bags to skeletons the further they moved into the cemetery.
“The yellow—that’s what he used to mark the oldest graves.” Graham pointed to the headstones. Those symbols Kai had thought looked familiar—he realized they’d been in the book the wulver had borrowed. “The red were the freshest. Blue in-between.”
Red. Those had been on Jules’s parents’ graves, he remembered. He wondered if the two bodies they’d seen down in the mortuary with Stuart had been her mother and father. The thought that the lich had dug up Jules’s family made him burn with anger.
“Up on the hill,” Kai pointed, remembering that Graham couldn’t see the fire. The circle would have a mystical boundary. The necromancer was only trying to draw him, not the rest of the shifters.
“Get back, ye jobby bawbag!” Graham swung his sword, scattering one of the moving skeletons to pieces.
But it got back up, somehow magically reassembled, except for a broken tibia. This, it picked up, the end cracked, sharp, and then it used its own bone to try to stab the big wulver.
More of the skeletons were crowding in and most of the shifters hadn’t made it back this far yet to fight them off.
“Go!” Graham urged, swinging his sword again at the skeleton. It was a repeat of the first—they seemed to be able to put themselves back together like puzzle pieces. “Hurry!”
Kai bolted up the hill, jumping headstones as he went.
When he neared the top, he heard Jules scream.
The sound of it stopped him for just a moment. She was scared. Alone.
“Kai!” She screamed his name. “Run! He’s trying to trap you! He’s got—”
Then there was silence.
Kai let out a dragon’s roar and ran toward the sound of her voice.
JULES
“Let her go.”
Jules looked up to see Kai enter the circle, her heart swelling in her chest. My God, she loved that man. He didn’t make a move toward her—didn’t even look at her. Instead, he faced the necromancer, who had been ready for the dragon shifter all along. She’d tried to warn him off but he hadn’t heard her—or he hadn’t listened.
“I’ll do what you want,” Kai told the lich. “Just let her go.”
“Kai, no,” Jules pleaded. “Don’t. Please, don’t do this.”
“You’ll do what I want anyway,” Nigel snapped. “You’re in my circle now.”
“Maybe. But these are my rules.”
Jules saw the side of Kai’s mouth twitch and he pulled something out from behind him, holding out a fixed-blade knife. The necromancer hissed like a cat caught in a dog kennel.
“Either you let her go,” Kai said. “Or I put this in my heart.”
“Kai!” Jules cried. “What are you doing?”
He’d told her he was immortal. What would stabbing himself in the chest do?
“I wondered if you still had it.” The lich scowled.
“You know if I use it on myself, you won’t ever be able to control my dragon.” Kai lifted the blade, pointin
g it at his chest, making Jules cry out in protest. “Now what’s it going to be? Are you going to let her go? Or do you want revenge on a woman so much, you’ll give up the chance to own the greatest beast you’ll ever have the chance to control.”
“Put down the knife and I’ll let her go,” Nigel said.
“Let her go and I’ll put down the knife.”
The necromancer stalked toward her and Jules shrank back against the tree. He pulled his own knife out of his cloak, keeping his eyes on Kai the whole time, as he cut through her bonds.
“Kai,” Jules cried, her voice hoarse from screaming for him. “Please…”
“I love you,” he told her, his face pained in the firelight. “Have a beautiful life, my mate.”
She sobbed, unable to really comprehend what was happening.
“No!” She protested when the old man grabbed her by the elbow, keeping her from collapsing now that she was free. All that time she’d struggled against the rope and now she wanted nothing more than to stay in this circle of firelight—with Kai. Even if that meant they both died in the end. She didn’t want to live without him.
“The circle is wide,” the necromancer whispered as he held her up to keep her from falling. Then he shoved her, hard, forcing her to flail her arms to keep from falling. And then she fell anyway, tumbling head over heels, skidding down until she hit her head against a tree. Her ears were ringing, but she heard Kai, could see him standing in the light of the fire, although she knew he couldn’t see her in the darkness.
“Run, Jules!” Kai called, tossing his blade toward the glowing heat. “Run!”
Then the necromancer was on him, like some ancient vampire, lifting his cloak to hide what he was doing as he enveloped Kai in its folds.
KAI
Kai’s heart hung suspended over the fire. He felt it burning in his chest, and it only burned for one woman.
His mate.
“Jules,” he called out suddenly, glancing left and right, looking for her, then remembering.
She was gone. Safe.
He relaxed on the stone slab, no longer struggling against the invisible bonds that held him fast.
The blade Ellie and Caleb had retrieved for him from Sebastian had done the trick. The dagger was charmed, the spell deadly. One plunge into the heart of an immortal and that would be the end. The lich himself had hexed it a millennium ago, extra insurance against the dragon he had faced—and ultimately vanquished.
But the necromancer had dropped the blade in his struggle with Nia so long ago. Kai had kept the knife—had considered using it more than once himself to end his own pain—but decided it was a coward’s way out. And he was a lot of things—but he wasn’t a coward.
Now, he was infinitely glad he hadn’t. He’d found Jules, and the time they’d spent together was worth suffering an eternity waiting for her. But the knife had certainly come in handy when he’d threatened the necromancer. Of course the old man couldn’t bear to think of losing out on a chance to control a dragon.
He’d had to let Jules go.
Jules. She was safe. That was all that mattered now.
The necromancer was chanting over the fire, turning a blade in its heat. He didn’t care what the old man was doing. Whatever it was, it would be over soon. All that mattered was that his mate was safe. She would live a long, happy life. With someone else. That hurt him more than any knife could—but it didn’t matter. His pain didn’t matter.
Kai closed his eyes and wished for it all to be over.
Then he heard singing.
It sounded close—too close to be his angel. But it was beautiful, nonetheless. Some spell, perhaps. More magic. It was the only thing he liked about living in this millennium. No more magic.
He could almost see Nia, feel her hand on his cheek, her thighs squeezing him as she rode him high into the sky. He had been a dragon then, and she a Fireborne. This one, Jules—she was his, too. He’d known it from the moment she’d opened her mouth to sing. He was her dragon, and she was his Fireborne. They were trapped in a world out of time, a place neither of them had been meant to live in, perhaps.
He wished he could have heard her sing to him one more time.
A Dragon’s Heart is never alone, never lonely, never truly lost from home,
A Dragon’s Heart may travel far, be bound, be strayed from Mate to roam.
Kai opened his eyes, seeing the necromancer at the fire. The old man was mouthing the words, but they weren’t coming from him. They were coming from the glowing stone over the fire, suspended on the chain he’d bought for Jules to wear.
The blade glowed in the lich’s hand as he turned and came toward Kai on the slab.
Kai closed his eyes and prepared himself to die.
JULES
The circle is wide.
Jules didn’t run. She couldn’t.
Kai was in danger and she had to help him.
She just had no idea how in the hell she was supposed to do that.
Glancing down the hill, she saw wolves fighting skeletons in the moonlight—a sight more dream than reality. In the circle of the fire, she saw the old man hang her necklace on the tripod over the flames. She couldn’t see Kai anymore. Was he still in the circle? Had the necromancer cast him out?
Then she heard him call her name.
Jules.
He needed her.
Jules crept slowly up the hill, careful to stay in the shadow of the trees, until she could see Kai stretched out on a slab. He wasn’t tied down that she could see, but he was immobile.
Dragons are particularly susceptible to magic.
So mystical bonds, then? How could she break those? She wasn’t magic. She wasn’t even a shifter, for God’s sake!
Someone was singing softly by the fire and Jules craned her neck to see who it was. It sounded like a woman’s voice. In fact, Jules thought it sounded an awful lot like her mother.
Afraid she might see the revenant of her mother beyond the flames, she dared to poke her head up and saw the old man heading toward Kai with a glowing hot knife. The fire was open, and above it hung her necklace. The ruby that wasn’t a ruby. The red stone she’d had hanging around her neck since her mother died.
Don’t ever lose it. Don’t take it off. You’ll give this to your daughter someday.
But she would never have a daughter, because there was no other man for her in the world but Kai.
The words of a song floated to her on the breeze, filling her heart with heat.
His Mistress will forever be his center, his hearth, his home, and he will return,
Always to his Mistress, following her Holy Song, that in him eternal burns.
It was an old song. It was the song. The one her mother had sung to her every night when she was little.
She saw the jewel above the fire burn brighter, like a beacon.
Jules opened her mouth and began to sing along.
“This Mistress sings the Holy Song to call her Mate from infernal bonds,
What Heart is lost will now be found, what heart was kept will be unbound.”
It was as if the stone was calling her. She walked into the circle of light with no thought at all to the necromancer and the knife he had poised over Kai’s heart. She knew it couldn’t harm him, as long as she continued to sing. Their voices rose into the night—hers and the singing stone’s. The lich didn’t seem to hear her or understand there were two of them raising their voices in song.
She reached into the fire to grasp the glowing red jewel, but it didn’t burn her.
Because she was Fireborne.
And the dragon shifter on the slab was her mate.
She slipped the burning hot necklace over her head and turned to see Kai shifting before her very eyes.
KAI
It was the most beautiful sound he’d ever heard in his life.
He turned his head to see her walking toward the flame, her face rapt, angelic. He felt the heat of the blade radiating, poised over his chest, as h
e saw her put on the necklace. It glowed red hot between her breasts as she turned to him, singing words his soul knew by heart.
“What is Mated cannot be broken, what is Holy cannot be profaned,
Mistress and Master, Loved and Beloved, what is One shall never be parted.”
And then he was becoming. The necromancer cried out in surprise as Kai began to shift. There was no warning—the lich wasn’t expecting it, not yet—not until the very last line of the song had been sung.
“You will heed me!” The lich screeched, holding up his hands in warning.
And for a moment, Kai felt his wings falter. He hadn’t been a dragon in a very long time. It felt both familiar and foreign to him all at once. Did the man still have power over him?
“No, he goddamned won’t!” Jules screamed before grabbing the knife Kai had thrown near the fire and plunging it into the man’s back.
The old man stumbled and then went to his knees, trying desperately to reach the handle of the knife buried in his back.
Kai lowered his snout all the way to the ground, spreading his wings wide in acquiescence.
Jules came toward him slowly, as if in a dream. She looked at him in wonder, stroking his cheek, petting the scales on the side of his neck.
“I’m your Fireborne,” she whispered, tears in her eyes. “I’m your mate, Kai. And you’re mine.”
He gave a small nod as she pressed her head to his. She softly sang the last line.
“Dragon and Rider shall be One Flame…”
Kai gave a roar as Jules swung a leg over and climbed on, clinging tightly.
They were dragon and rider once again, at last.
JULES
She remembered who she was.
The moment she began to sing, it came flooding in like a dam, breaking her heart wide open.