by Laken Cane
His beast.
He threw his head back, roared the sky, then shot half a mile of scarlet flames into the sky. And that lit up the night.
I saw him.
“Not possible,” I said. “Not possible.”
But he moved to the right, almost sluggishly, and the fence gave beneath his body. He gave another roar, and rifters and vampires alike began creeping toward him, looking on with as much shock as I was.
“What the fuck,” Angus said, sliding from the darkness, naked and bloody, “is that?”
“Angus,” I cried. “Get me out of here!”
He plucked me off the ground, his stare still on Rhys, and held me against his chest. “What the fuck is that?” he asked again.
“That’s Rhys,” I murmured. “Rhys is a…he’s a—”
“A dragon,” Angus said. “Rhys is a goddamn dragon.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Forewarnings
I wished the sun would come. Not only because it would chase the rifters into hiding, but because it would allow me to see the dragon.
I saw the shape of him, the hugeness, the fire, and then, I saw the wings. They unfurled and he screamed with the effort, or maybe the joy. Probably both. It was like a very, very difficult birth and though it was stunning and breathtaking to see, it was painful to watch.
He began to flap his enormous wings. There was no way he was getting off the ground. He was too big. Too heavy. And the wings were thin.
Angus muttered something, spun around with me in his arms, and got us the hell out of there.
The dragon flapped his wings, slowly, as though testing them, and almost before Angus set me down—a safer distance away—and we turned once more to watch, the dragon was in the air.
And he was fast. He shot out a long line of flames and the entire city grew silent as it watched. I rubbed at the goosebumps on my skin, then folded my arms over my stiffening nipples. I shivered, and Angus pulled me against his warmth, though it wasn’t cold that caused me to tremble.
“Have you ever seen a dragon?” I asked Angus, my voice a whisper.
“No. I didn’t think they existed.”
“They almost didn’t,” I murmured. I was finally getting my equilibrium back, and I rushed back to the spot where Rhys and I had lain so I could grab up my clothes and begin dressing.
The dragon had disappeared—there wasn’t a sign of him in the vast night sky. From the distance came the muted sound of a primordial dragon screech, and once again, my body reacted.
He was mine.
Oh, my God.
The dragon was mine.
And I was his.
The sounds of battling supernaturals once more screamed to life, and the stench of pain and death hung heavy in the air. With the scents and sounds—and without the distraction of Rhys—came my bloodlust, and I welcomed it with open arms.
“You have to go back to the way station,” Angus told me, keeping me slightly behind his big, protective body as we slipped through the shadows. “You can’t fight without your sword.”
The groups of fighting vampires and rifters seemed more scattered. Even in the short time I’d been occupied with Rhys, many of the fighters had died—on both sides. Vampires could kill rifters, true, but so could rifters kill vampires.
Two of them, locked together like a couple of raging, rabid dogs, hurtled toward us, snarling, biting, clawing, and Angus had time to shove me out of the way before they rammed him.
He shifted almost immediately. Whatever damage they’d done to him, he would heal. Still, I was a distraction for him, and I was going to get us both killed if I didn’t get away from him.
He’d been trying to move me away from the most concentrated areas of the battle, but the fighters were everywhere. And despite the interference of the vampires, the rifters were still hungry. They wanted to kill their enemy, but they wanted hot human blood just as much.
And they continued to sniff out the hiding humans.
Angus roared and impaled a rifter with his silver horn. It didn’t matter that the rifters weren’t sensitive to silver. They were sensitive as hell to the werebull’s silver horn.
Then a vampire screamed and I yanked my stare toward the sound just in time to see a small group of rifters tear the vampire apart and toss his remains into the streets.
Two wolves jumped them and managed to drop three of them before the rifters got the upper hand. They roared their victory and then, they spied me.
One lone, unprotected human, smelling of sex and magic. Even if they couldn’t smell my blood, they could smell something. Something different.
“Uh oh,” I whispered. Then I yelled, “Angus!”
He tossed his head and sent an impaled rifter hurtling through the air as though the big creature were a rag doll. And then he put his body between me and the advancing rifters.
Humans screamed, and I heard a woman begging for her life—for about five seconds. Then her voice was cut off abruptly and she was silenced forever.
And she wasn’t the only one.
The sun wouldn’t arrive for hours, and though the vampires might slowly defeat the rifters, lives—both human and supernatural—were being lost. The vampires cut down on those deaths, sure they did. But they couldn’t stop them. Not as long as rifters roamed the city.
Then the rifters charged Angus, and I could only back away, my hands to my mouth, terrified they would hurt him.
But he was Angus, and he would kill them.
God, I needed my sword.
More rifters arrived, entangled with vampires, fighting, killing, dying.
Suddenly, we were in the thick of the battle, and I saw the master.
“Amias,” I screamed. “Amias!”
He flew down the street and plunged into the new group of rifters without hesitation. Maybe because he was near me, or maybe because he was simply too distracted to keep up his walls, I felt his emotion. I felt his mad rage as he tore the enemy apart, his speed and strength unrivaled, even by a rifter.
But rifters were killing his vampires.
All through the night, vampires died. Vampires he’d just gotten back. Healthy vampires.
He ripped the rifters’ heads from their shoulders and flung them into bloody piles, and it was one of the most horrific scenes I’d ever witnessed.
Not just because of the way he killed them, but because I saw his heart as he fought. I felt his pain. No, it wasn’t pain—it was bigger than pain. It was as though he were being forced to watch his children die.
Rifters kept killing vampires, and it hurt him. As his vampires were slaughtered, he felt every single death. He drowned in despair—the despair of the afterlife. It overflowed, splashed out of him, and roared over me.
We were connected, and through that connection, I felt his unspeakable, unimaginable agony.
And I needed it to stop.
I rushed toward him, unconcerned with the rifters, not worried about them attacking me. The master was there, and he was fierce. No one would touch me.
“Master,” I screamed.
The only thing on my mind was his agony.
It was unbearable.
He looked up, his eyes widening as I raced toward him, and he wasn’t sure whether to run or to stand still for whatever I was bringing to him.
In the end, he dropped the dead rifter he’d just pulled from a vampire, opened his bloody arms, and let me come.
I barreled into him, then wrapped myself around him. I wound my arms around his neck, my legs around his waist, and I held him as desperately as he held me.
“What are you doing?” He pulled back to search my eyes.
“I’m chasing away the despair.” I held him tighter.
“Yes,” he murmured. “Indeed you are.”
And his stare lost some of its desolation.
Maybe he’d just needed someone to understand. Someone to care.
In that moment of softness, a silver blade hurtled from the shadows, straight at the m
aster vampire.
“Silverlight,” I yelled. “To me!”
I hadn’t called her, but she’d come anyway. I opened my hand and she flew into my grip, and my soul eased even as my heart stuttered with fear and dread.
I leaped away from Amias, complete, finally, with Silverlight back where she belonged. I turned to run her through an attacking rifter, then whirled and took another’s head off.
My body woke up, my instincts kicked in, and bloodlust, terrible and wonderful at the same time, roared over me.
This was what I was born to do.
Despite all that, foremost in my mind was something that wanted to cripple me with terror.
Shane was nearby.
And he was defenseless.
Or he was dead.
Chapter Thirty-Three
My Sacrifice
I cut through rifter after rifter, searching for Shane. Amias stayed close to me—maybe he knew I’d need him.
My werebull had glanced at Silverlight, then at Amias, and then went back to running his powerful horns through the rifters.
I caught a glimpse of Jade Noel, once, and Alejandro.
Like a whirling ninja, fast, slick, and lethal, Alejandro fought, doing two things no human should have been able to do. Putting down rifters, and staying alive.
Minutes into the fight I was covered with blood—some of it mine—but I barely felt the wounds. I screamed Shane’s name whenever I could.
He never answered.
But then…
Minutes later—or hours, I couldn’t be sure—I found him.
I found my hunter. My heart.
He lay in a dark heap against the brick wall of a real estate building, and Clayton, feverishly wielding his black-hearted sword, stood in front of him, doing his best to protect his fallen friend.
And he was being overwhelmed.
When Clayton saw me, the look in his eyes went from despair to relief and back to despair. The rifters were trying to get to the fallen hunter’s blood, and Clayton wasn’t going to let them touch him. But as soon as I looked at Shane, I knew.
“No,” I shrieked, and then the bloody, battered half-giant was beside me.
He dropped to a knee and lifted his fist. “Go on,” he said. “I’ll keep them from you for as long as I can.”
Clayton got out of his way, running with me to my motionless hunter. I slid Silverlight away and fell to my knees. “Shane,” I cried. “Oh, God, please no. Shane.”
But Shane was gone.
I hadn’t even gotten to say goodbye.
I’d known it was coming, hadn’t I? I’d known. I’d felt his looming death the way I felt my heartbeat.
I held his head to my breast, unable to accept that he was dead even as I stared down at his bloodless face, his half-closed, empty eyes, his broken body.
They’d killed him. Not even Silverlight had been able to stop them.
She hadn’t belonged to him, and she hadn’t been able to save him.
Angus dropped down beside me and Clayton, his face pale, eyes filled with grief. He said nothing.
I heard Leo’s power crack the pavement, and I heard rifters scream, but it was all distant and dim and did not really matter.
My hunter was gone, and my heart went with him.
Then, Himself fell from nowhere, or the sky, or wherever he’d been, his landing so violently abrupt that I heard his bones shatter.
He groaned, that ancient man, then gestured, surrounding our little group with a shimmering, hazy circle that felt like electricity dancing across my skin.
“I can no longer isolate the city,” he said. “When the sun comes, so will the humans. They will move the surviving humans out, and then they will destroy Red Valley while the rifters sleep, hoping to contain the monsters. They will not succeed.”
I said nothing, but I couldn’t take my stare from his face. I held Shane a little tighter and listened. There were no other choices.
“The dragon can kill them,” Himself continued, his voice low, fast, and underlined with fear. “But they must be separated from the humans, the vampires, the supernaturals. You will draw them to Byrd Island, Trinity. I will drop the mask from your blood and the rifters will swarm the island to get to you. The elders will help me surround the island to keep the rifters inside until they have been destroyed. The dragon will burn them all. Do you understand?”
I nodded. “My sacrifice,” I whispered.
“You will die. And you will save the world.”
“No,” Angus said, standing. “She will not.” He reached down and ripped me away from Shane and into his arms. His grip was punishingly hard. I didn’t care. I understood. “She is not the sacrifice. Find another way.”
But the King of Everything shook his head. “There is no other way, Angus Stark. We are not winning this battle. You will let her go. You knew from the beginning she would sacrifice herself.”
“I didn’t know I would love her,” Angus whispered.
“You must let her go.”
“I won’t.” Angus stared down at me as he held me, tears standing in his eyes because he knew he would. He would let me go. “I can’t.”
“It is her purpose,” Himself said gently. “And there is no time. My strength is dwindling and there are still things I must do. I am sorry.”
Everything that had happened since Amias had bitten me years ago had been either orchestrated or known by the King of Everything. Maybe from the moment of my birth. He’d seen my beginning, then. And he’d seen my end.
I heard the dragon’s scream, and my grief-stricken mind rebelled even as my body shuddered at the primal sound.
Clayton was numb, dark, closed off. But when I looked at him, I saw his heart. And it was shattered.
“I love you,” I told him.
He gave a raw, agonized moan, and I put my stare back on my werebull. “I love you,” I told him.
“Trin,” Angus cried. “No.”
But not even his powerful arms could keep me from Himself.
“Stay alive,” I murmured. “Fight. I will never leave you. Not really.”
And then I was flung through the air, rising with a broken but powerful old man, and once, I felt something attach to my leg and try to pull me back to earth.
But Himself would not let me go. He bore me through the sky and dropped me atop the dragon.
Oh, the dragon.
I slid my palms over cold scales—blood red, coal black, and emerald green scales that glittered like jewels beneath the moon. The ones I touched became softer, warmer, and curled around my hands, independent of the others.
The feel of him vibrated through my body, sailed through my blood, slid into my brain. He was magical, that beast.
And I was not afraid.
Himself sat behind me, his arms around me, holding me steady as the dragon cut through the dark sky, his wings slapping the air like giant sails, and I did not feel Rhys in him at all.
Shane would be like a deprived kid in a candy store—he was going to want to ride that dragon.
Baby hunter…
“Oh,” I whispered. Then, “He’s gone, Rhys. Shane’s gone.” My voice was loud but broken, as I begged Rhys to hear, to understand, to not leave me alone in the vast sea of my grief. My loss.
My sobs were snatched from my mouth by the cruel, cold wind, and I cried for us all.
I mourned my sweet hunter.
I mourned the girl I’d been, and I grieved for my men.
For a while, they would know only pain, and I could do nothing to ease it.
I would be the cause of it.
Himself kissed my temple. “Find peace, warrior. When you walk it, may your path be kind.”
Then I was falling from the dragon, borne down by a strong, swirling wind. Still, when I hit the ground of Byrd Island, the landing was hard enough to knock the breath from my lungs.
I felt it when Himself lifted the mask from my blood. It was like he ripped a sticky bandage from a large wound. And I
was once again vulnerable, naked, raw.
Alone.
High, high above, the dragon circled, his shrieking voice loud and bizarre and spectacular. It did not belong in that world. Not really.
I grieved for Rhys, because he was not the same. Maybe the dragon had devoured him. Maybe Rhys would never return as the man he’d been.
I rejoiced for him, as well, but my joy was tempered by my sorrow.
“Silverlight,” I whispered, and she hummed gently inside me.
So I was not alone. I had my sword. I had my men in my heart.
Good men, all. Heroes, warriors.
I smiled at the thought of them.
I climbed to my feet, slowly, and looked around the ruined place. I remembered the escape. I remembered watching my werebull kill another supernat. I remembered blood.
Seemed like a million years ago.
It also seemed like I’d just been born. I hadn’t done half the things I wanted to do. I hadn’t spent nearly enough time with my loves.
I bent forward and rested my hands on my knees as pain punched me in the gut. “Shane,” I called, as though he’d appear and tell me he hadn’t died.
But he had.
He’d died without me there. He’d died alone.
I straightened, then dug one of my blades from its sheath and without hesitation, sliced open my arm. “Come on, you bastards. Come get me.”
Even when the first rifters began to swarm the island, I lifted my gaze to the slowly circling dragon, clutched my sword, and smiled.
I thought I heard Angus’s agonized roar in the distance. Impossible, really. It’d take him a lot longer than a freaky fast rifter or a mystical flying dragon to get to the cursed Byrd Island.
And then I dropped the knife and called Silverlight to my hand when the rifters, black blurs of terror, raced over the broken ground toward me. “Shane,” I called again.
I wasn’t sure why. Maybe I just needed to say his name.
Death was coming for me.
I’d go. I had no choice.
But I sure as hell wasn’t going to give myself to them. They’d have to work to kill me.