My feet hit solid ground, and I crumpled, my eyes flying open. I gripped the edge of a ledge. Searing steam parted for a moment, exposing bubbling lava, spurting and popping twenty feet below me—the distance from my balcony in Crescent City to the street below.
I scrambled back from the edge, knocking into something. It fell over, and I turned to see the instrument rolling toward the edge. No!
I dove for it, grabbing the neck as it tipped over the edge. The bow, threaded through the strings, tilted precariously. I hauled the whole thing into my lap and leaned against the volcano wall, heart thudding. That was close.
The volcano rumbled, stones loosening off the sides and careening down the side.
A cracking sound even louder than the sputtering and hissing of the lava below echoed through the chamber, and my seat shifted.
I stood, bracing myself against the wall. The ledge crumbled under me, and I plummeted with the rocks, sliding down the wall of the cavern, surfing on stone that splintered under me.
I hit the lava, my dragon essence delighting in the heat as the human part of me freaked the freak out.
The walls shook, the entire volcano vibrating. A pulse of energy rocketed under me, and a pocket of gas exploded through the lava, lifting me into the air, hurling me toward the lip of the volcano.
My legs kicked as if I could fly, but I couldn’t without using my power.
Gravity dragged me back to the bubbling pit of molten earth.
Holding the instrument above my head, I hit the lava again, knees bent. I ran across it. With each step, energy pulsed into my feet.
Energy came to me from the lava. I was the queen of this realm and could feed off everything in it.
I leapt at the wall, holding the instrument with one hand and grabbing at the rock with my free hand. My nails dug in, ripping off a chunk, and I tripped back, my butt hitting the lava with a splash.
Heat built in me—something primitive happening inside my body. Something destined. I am a dragon.
I opened my mouth and roared—fire spewing out of me. Holy crap.
The lava settled, the volcano easing, seeming to recognize me as a part of it.
Slater answered my roar with one of his own. He waited above. All I had to do was climb out of here.
I stood on the lava and craned my neck. Another pulse of energy built under me. This time I was ready when the explosive gas bubble threw me skyward.
Keeping the instrument up, I arrowed my body for the sky. Slater would catch me. He would.
I crested the edge of the volcano lip. Gravity dragged at me. My arms started cartwheeling—my body still not convinced it couldn’t just propel itself into the air.
Wind whipped through the instrument, eliciting a sound—a mournful, low hum.
Wings beat against the air, and Slater appeared out of the gloom and caught me.
I did it.
Tamed the dragon, crossed pixie valley, climbed the Mountain of No Return, and claimed the instrument.
Time to end the zombies…
Chapter Nineteen
Neither Emmanuel or Slater came to me in my dreams that day. But my father did. We sat by the fire in our old cabin. He in his chair and me on the floor. Father whittled a piece of wood, and the flames sputtered and wheezed, its heat steaming the windows and warming my side.
“You’ve done well,” my father said, looking up from his carving. His eyes met mine, and he smiled. His beard was thick and dark—he never had the chance to age. Nor would I…
“I miss you,” I said.
“You always have me.” He nodded to himself, returning his attention to the wood in his hands.
Emotion stung my eyes. “I’m sorry they killed you trying to get to me.” I swiped at an errant tear.
“Didn’t work.” He flashed a grin. “You’ll never be anyone’s but your own, Darling. I knew the day you were born that you were the strongest you’d ever been. You never needed me, but I’m glad I got to be with you as long as I did.”
“I still need you.”
A peel of wood fell to the floor. “You have a family now.” He met my gaze. “You have a sister, Megan. You are mated to the dragon—”
I hiccupped a laugh. “And engaged to Emmanuel.”
He shrugged. “You will bear neither children but bring them both great strength.”
“They won’t share me.”
He shook his head. “You get to decide your fate, my Darling.” Father held out the wooden toy. I focused on it. The earth, the continents raised and oceans rough, lay in his palm. “Take it,” he said, extending his arm. “It’s yours.”
I reached for it, but before my fingers wrapped around the small globe, I woke. Sunlight drew a line between the closed curtains, cutting across the bedroom and falling over my face. I blinked, then rolled away from the brightness, staring into the dim room. The instrument sat where I’d left it, resting in an arm chair, its long neck leaning against the back and its round belly filling the seat. The emerald glinted.
Back at the Warlock Society, I’d come upstairs to clean and rest before the ceremony to break the spell. The soot from the volcano had swirled down the drain in a gray cloud.
I closed my eyes, Slater’s face filling my mind’s eye—his teasing smile as he carried me back to my friends, the kiss he’d given me when we said our goodbyes… not goodbye, just a leave taking. We’d be together again.
My body yearned for him now, the strength inside me powerful and hungry for more. I could not feed off this world.
I miss him and Emmanuel.
Such a mess.
Climbing out of the bed, I went to the instrument and ran my fingers over the strings; they gave off a soft twang.
Picking it up, I took its place on the chair and set the instrument between my bare thighs. It hummed with excitement. The instrument had spent centuries in that volcano and yearned to make music again.
I laid the bow against the strings and closed my eyes, letting the music in. It passed through me. I was a vessel for its creation rather than the creator. This was always how music was best—when I wasn’t involved, when the ego disappeared and the spirit took over.
A knock on the door broke my concentration, and the bow stilled in my hand. I draped my chi over myself, creating a high-necked, short-sleeved dress of greenish-blue scales. The short skirt flowed over my thighs and let the instrument remain pressed against my bare flesh.
“Come in,” I called, pushing my hair out of my face and creating clips to hold it in place. How awesome is this new skill?
Megan came in, leaving the door open behind her. “It is time,” she said.
I glanced at the window—the sun was gone and night had fallen while I played. A subtle smile tugged at my lips. It felt good to make music.
I stood, the skirt falling to midthigh. My bare feet padded across the floor as I approached Megan.
“You don’t think you want shoes for this?” she asked.
I glanced down at myself. She has a point. Weaving my chi, I created boots that stopped just above my knee, so the instrument would still be in contact with my skin, but most of me was covered now.
Megan raised a brow at me. “Ready?”
I took a deep breath. “As I’ll ever be.”
The ritual room smelled of men, fabric, and incense. Candles crisscrossed the inter-dimensional portal in the shape of a pentagram. At its center, a black cauldron hung suspended over a fire by two tall metal poles. Smoke, contained in a bubble of magic, gathered at the ceiling, pooling in a translucent, swirling cloud.
Our footsteps echoed in the large room—it felt empty with just Tyronios by the cauldron. He turned to a low table next to him, running his fingers over the pages of a grimoire.
Issa moved around me and approached him. Tyronios looked up. The warlock seemed older, the last few weeks having aged him more than the first wave of the zombie apocalypse.
I gripped the instrument in one hand and the bow in the other. It vibrated,
begging to be played again. It had so much music in it. Megan to my left and Dimitri to my right, crossed the room with me.
Dimitri placed the chair he carried next to the cauldron.
Issa stood by Tyronios, looking down at the low table. He picked up the vial of my sister’s blood and handed it Tyronios.
I rested the instrument between my thighs and took a deep breath, then nodded. Tyronios began to chant, uncorking the small vile.
The vampires backed out of the circle of power, leaving us to do this work.
The inter-dimensional portal shifted. Tyronios’s eyes popped open. He wasn’t doing it.
His chanting stopped as his gaze focused behind me. Great.
I turned in my seat. Ophelia stood behind me, breathing heavy, her face scratched and leather jacket torn. What happened to her?
Standing, I laid the instrument on the chair. Ophelia took a step toward me, and her bloodshot eyes met mine. Her power surged erratically.
On a pulse of light, she found the energy to run at me. I stood my ground. Ophelia reached for the instrument. I froze her in place, her fingers inches from the neck.
“Kill me,” she begged inside my head.
Her life force flickered—near the end. It would be easy to pluck it from her physical form.
She couldn’t give up, Couldn’t stop trying to end me—to continue on the quest her mother laid on her. It was a curse, not a quest, making Ophelia the puppet of an irrational spirit.
My heart swelled with compassion for her. She strained against my chi, but her strength waned—there was no fight left in her.
Should I end her?
I closed my chi around the energy at her center. Ophelia’s eyes closed, and a relieved smile crossed her lips. “Goodbye,” I said, gently bringing her light out of her body.
She crumpled like a puppet without strings. I eased her body’s descent, laying her gently on the floor. I kept her light contained, hovering in front of me.
“What did you do?” Tyronios asked, his voice a breathy whisper as he stared at her slumped form.
“I’m freeing her,” I said, releasing the light. It spread thin, like gauzy white clouds the wind tugs apart, and then faded into nothingness… into everything.
I turned back to Tyronios. “Ready?”
He shifted his gaze from my sister’s empty body, a relaxed expression on her lifeless face, to me. I raised both brows and reached out my arm, offering blood to break the spell.
Tyronios nodded, drawing a knife from the folds of his robe. I glanced down into the cauldron. A liquid, black as night and dotted with the sparkle of starlight, swirled.
Tyronios began to chant again, the sound raising the hairs on my arms. Magic tingled over my skin, and the potion swirled faster.
He dripped in my sister’s blood, the vital ruby fluid swirling into the depths of the potion. The vial empty, he placed it back on the low table, turning his attention to my arm.
The blade touched my skin, Tyronios pressed, and I hissed at the chilling sensation of being cut open. Warmth followed as blood spilled into the potion. The wound heated, and my skin stitched itself back together. Tyronios passed me a cloth to wipe the thin trail of blood that remained.
I sat back in the chair, placing the instrument between my legs again. The bow quivered with anticipation. I laid it against the strings.
My eyes slid closed as I drew the bow across the strings, releasing a mournful vibration. Tyronios’s chanting shifted, following my lead as he read from the grimoire.
My body went languid, the tempo slow, almost churning, as if the music helped stir the brew.
Energy shifted as Tyronios pulled power from the inter-dimensional portal. More than just powerful, this curse was also subtle. Undoing it took precision, passion, and faith. Then again, didn’t everything worth doing?
I eased the music forward, allowing the notes to flow through me. I am everything and nothing—pure sound, pure vibration. The song rose into a crescendo. I swayed around the instrument, my body a conduit for the sound.
Behind my closed lids, I watched the yellowish-green phosphorous lights of the zombies. All of them. Billions of lights. As many embers as stars.
My breath caught as I fell into that darkness sparkling with light—the same as the night sky, the same as the curse breaking amalgamation spinning in the cauldron.
Silence enveloped me, and yet my body still moved, the vibrations of the music a physical force now, not a sound. A spell.
An ache in my chest: pain and sorrow. Fear and hunger.
I had to free them. Their misery tore at me, shattering my concentration. Agony engulfed me, but my body continued to move, the music played on, the vibrations cracking the hold that kept those lights glowing.
Like my sister, they craved to change shape—were ready for their next form. The spell imprisoned them.
A sharp sting bit my cheek, bringing me back to my body, and I opened my eyes. One of the instruments strings had snapped. Tyronios stared at me, sweat beading his forehead, the potion billowing green clouds of smoke that pooled at the ceiling.
I kept playing, my hair spiraling free from the clips I’d used to pin it back. Blood seeped down my cheek. Another string snapped, the sound a part of the song.
Flames burst from the cauldron, and Tyronios stumbled back. The inter-dimensional portal spun and twisted with the music, the room wobbling between nothingness and everything and just plain old reality.
Tyronios held the grimoire to his chest, his voice still chanting.
The release, the final moment, when all the zombies lights blended together into that same wispy material that floated above my sister’s body, was silent.
Utterly silent.
As if all sound, all movement, everything paused for that moment. The earth stopped spinning, life stopped growing, the collective breath was held.
And then it released and dissipated. Not in a boom or a bang, just the gentle inevitability of the next exhale.
It was over. The energy freed. Where would it manifest next?
Tyronios met my gaze, his eyes wide and draped in exhaustion. He stumbled and then fell to his knees before sitting back onto his butt and staring blankly into space.
The instrument lay still between my thighs, the quivering from earlier released along with the zombies’ light.
Flames sputtered in the cauldron, the green smoke spreading thin across the ceiling, fading away. The fire died down; the potion, its fuel, almost gone.
I took in a deep breath and let it out.
A blinding white light blasted, and I shot through time and space, entering the void, and rocketing into another world. I landed on hard ground, my shoulder and hip taking the brunt of the impact.
“What have you done?” a voice screamed at me, battering me with wind so that I couldn’t open my eyes. Spreading my aura, I found only frightened animals, scrubby trees, and high rock walls.
I seemed to be in a canyon, but there was no water.
“How could you choose them over me!” The wind died down, sorrow infusing the voice, shifting the anger to something much more potent—pain and grief.
I blinked my eyes open. I lay in a deep box canyon. Yellow gold rock walls rose up on either side of me, framing a night sky glowing with the light of the galaxy. The beauty of it stole my breath.
“You’re the one making me choose,” I answered quietly.
“And you take the side of humans? Of those vile creatures that abuse me at every turn.” The wind spat dust into my eyes, bringing tears to them.
“I take the side of life.” Sand gritted in my teeth.
Laughter echoed in the canyon. “You dare to tell me about life? You are nothing.”
“I am me.” That sounded better in my head. I climbed to my feet, speaking into the sky, the wind swirling around me, lifting dried leaves and dirt into the air. “You’re telling me you can’t handle some humans?”
The wind settled, as if in thought. Leaves danced f
ree in gravity’s pull, and dust shimmered in the starlight. “What do you mean?” the wind asked, the voice low, curious.
“No one knew why zombies were… zombies. I mean, they didn’t understand you were trying to tell them to stop hurting you. Can’t you see that? You didn’t give them any warning. Just destroyed them.”
“They don’t listen.” The voice sounded almost sad.
“You need to speak to them differently; zombies aren’t the answer. In my world, the humans didn’t know they were hurting you. If they had, maybe they would have changed.”
Wind toyed with my hair, lifting it up. I shivered. “Communicate,” it whispered in my ear. “What an interesting idea. Yes, I think I’ll try that.” Somehow she made it sound ominous.
The wind disappeared. The starlight shone down on the canyon. Cliff walls with scrappy trees clinging to them boxed me in. I turned, my feet loud in the suddenly quiet space.
A bird warbled. Something skittered in the rocks to my left.
Life found a way. It always did.
A single clap sounded behind me. Followed by another. “Congratulations.”
I turned. A large man with a navel-length gray beard clapped again. He wore a robe made of a fine white material that seemed to float around him, as if gravity didn’t affect it. Reminds me of the void where I first met Mother Earth…
“Thanks,” I said, my voice tentative. A big guy in a crazy outfit clapping… this could go a lot of different ways.
I flexed my fingers at my side and watched him. His eyes sparkled with a light I recognized—like moonlight caught in frozen dew. A smile creased his face. “We finally meet, officially,” he said.
This is official? “I’m Darling.”
He nodded. “I’m All Mighty.”
Oh. “Emmanuel’s dad.” He nodded. I cleared my throat. “You created humans… and vampires.” He nodded again. “And me.” Another nod.
Lightning struck the ground near him, and I blinked against the glare. Emmanuel stood to his father’s right. “Don’t,” was all he said.
My fingers skimmed the scales of my skirt. “She wears another’s chi,” All Mighty said. “She does not belong to you.”
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