Chapter 17 Tobias
The sun neared the top of the sky. It was the perfect time for vampires to die.
I was grateful for the weight on my back. It forced my lungs and wings to work twice as hard—effectively pushing the fire and adrenaline throughout my body. I was even more grateful that Peters was no longer my partner.
I barely felt the hands of Private Gibson—or anything else, thank fuck. I just hoped Gibson could keep his bear inside long enough for me to get him to the tower. Ursas could be unpredictable, even the trained ones, and I would hate to lose a wing before the actual fight.
I glanced at Char beside me. Specialist Tekashi gripped the edges of the blue scales at her neck with white knuckles. Her rainbow-colored hair was a sight to behold in the radiant sunlight, and the look of determination in her eyes was encouraging. Our entire plan depended on her explosives hitting their marks.
The black looming spires grew in size as we drew closer. I willed my scales to go invisible as we approached, and Char and Private Hennessey positioned themselves above and behind me to remain as hidden as possible, adjusting slightly as we flew closer. They were directly above me when we arrived in position, above one of the roofs where the vamps had laid tinted glass.
Private Gibson and Peters were up first. Gibson leaped from my back and onto the glass, shifting mid-air and growing three times his already hulking size seconds before crashing onto the reinforced glass. Of course, the glass wasn’t built to withstand a full-grown, monster-sized bear attack from the sky, and it shattered instantly.
Peters hopped down behind him, shifting into his naga form. His job was to ascertain Arya’s location within the citadel through whatever means necessary. Apparently he was a very skilled hypnotist, even without his venom—I was beginning to understand more and more why everyone maintained their distance.
I didn’t stick around to watch what happened because our next target was an obscure shadowed area lower down for Specialist Tekashi. Char, Hennessey, and I were to create chaotic distractions—as if a giant ursa wasn’t distraction enough. We would then help plant more of Specialist Tekashi’s devices.
I didn’t quite comprehend the science behind the explosives—Tekashi spoke way too quickly for me to understand her—but they were made to change the material on the outer walls from their solid state to either a liquid or gas state without burning. In other words, melting and evaporating the very walls that protected the vampires from the sun.
Tekashi leaped lithely from Char’s back onto her target area, and I immediately shifted my invisible scales to match Char’s perfectly and split from her. I went to the right, she went to the left. The two of us had one device each, and we had to plant them where we could make it count.
I found a place in the center of one of the larger towers that looked like it might do the most damage. I used my hind claws to grip the wall but slipped. It was made of some sort of smooth stone, like obsidian. Not some high-tech metal as I’d assumed.
Could obsidian melt?
I pumped my wings to steady myself. I’d have to plant the device while hovering. It was only a small setback, and I figured it didn’t need to be bullseyed in any one spot. I just made sure to stick it firmly before triggering the timer and backing the hell away from it.
From a few yards away, I waited as beeps counted down ten seconds, and then the device exploded with a loud boom. The once-solid rock began to rapidly steam and bubble, looking very much like black molasses as it melted away.
I took a second to look around, spotting Char and Hennessey spitting fire as they circled the fortress. I was only meant to set off the explosive, then join them, altering the color of my scales to offer the illusion of more dragons attacking. But this was my opportunity, and I was so close. My invisibility inside would be much more useful than my color-changing outside. And I absolutely didn’t trust Peters to find Arya.
Orders be damned.
Once the cavity was large enough, I hurled myself through the now-open wall and into the room. My brilliant blue form filled almost the entire area.
A large vampire huddled in the corner of the room. His face and arms were a scorched, angry red. But he was alive. Disappointment gnawed at me. I’d hoped the sun’s effect on a vampire would be instantaneous.
As I slowly shifted, I watched the clearly weakened and suddenly non-threatening immortal creature. I half-expected it to lunge at me, but it seemed thoroughly cowed by the growing hole in the wall, shrinking further and further into its small pocket of shadows.
I stalked from the room as the entire east-facing wall completely melted, leaving no corner in shadow. Satisfied that the vampire was certainly a goner now, I didn’t even bother to look back to make sure.
The hallway was a different story. Except for the sunlight streaming from the open door, it still had the protective darkness, albeit illuminated from artificial lighting. So I’d need to be careful. I silently cursed myself for not picking a wall with a grand hall or conference type room full of vampires, but how could I know the wall I chose was just individual vampire quarters?
Fortunately, the screams in the adjacent rooms on this floor, as well as those above and below, told me that the structure was deteriorating at an accelerated rate.
I pressed against the bud in my ear. “Peters, do you have a location for Arya?”
“Notttt yetttttt,” he hissed with his snakelike rasp.
Dammit. I knew he was useless.
I paused for a moment, concentrating on going invisible without my scales. It was markedly more difficult. All the times before, I’d been in a relative state of calm, either in my room or in the sim room. I was anything but calm now, my heart racing with exhilaration and apprehension, the screams and shrieks of burning vampires piercing my eardrums.
But I closed my eyes and thought of Arya, thought of all the times I’d held her, kissed her, made her smile, all while regulating my breathing. Finally centered, I opened my eyes and looked down at my hands as I flexed them in front of me. But I only saw the floor beneath me.
Excellent.
I walked down several floors without detection, hoping to overhear or find some clue about where they were holding Arya. But the entire tower was in utter chaos, and the hallways soon became crowded with vampires at various stages of burned to death , staggering and slumped against the shadowed walls—both the dead and the dying. I decided to make my way back up. Maybe one of those towers held Arya?
“What was that?” a petite vamp girl hissed as I passed, her tone filled with venom and her hair a mess of pink curls. She looked mostly unscathed.
I swore under my breath. In my desperate need to hurry and the ever-thickening crowd, I’d jabbed her shoulder with my elbow by accident. I backed against the wall as if it would help, but my panic and growing discouragement made me feel suddenly exposed.
And then I was.
Five pairs of narrowed eyes shot to my location. The other four were clearly weakened or dying, but the girl was barely hurt. In desperation, I tried to tap into my invisibility again, but I couldn’t reach it. My concentration had been shattered. And now I was in a hallway full of vampires.
I did the only thing I could think of—I explosion-shifted, breaking walls and furniture, and crushing a few bodies underfoot. The girl let out a shrill shriek when I clamped my teeth into her forearm, but she returned in kind with a kick to my front claw with enough force that I heard the bones cracking before they bent at a ninety-degree angle.
I released the girl’s arm, letting out my own pained roar, and fled—as best as I could—down the hallway, up the stairs, and away from her. But swift footsteps unimpeded by a too-big-for-the-hallway size gave her the upper hand, and she soon caught up to me.
I shifted back, clutching my broken arm with my good one, and staggered toward the next door I could find, cotton-candy girl-doll on my heels. If she caught up to me, dragon or not, I’d be finished. So I put all my weight into my good shoulder, crashing through the door and into the safety of the blood-red plush carpet and streaming sunlight.
It wasn’t planned, but the timing was perfect. She thought she had the upper hand and was on my heels seconds before I busted the door open, seconds before she sank her teeth into my neck as she pounced forward. But the leaping forward and my collapsing to the floor gave the sunlight a straight shot. A full-frontal attack.
I shoved her off my back and onto the sunlit floor. She screamed and clawed at her eyes as she burned, but she managed to scramble behind a piece of furniture, an armoire of sorts that was partly shadowed. Then she slumped to the floor.
I stood, my chest heaving as I watched her. There was an open wall behind me. I could escape into the sky right now and away from the murderous vampires. But I still didn’t have Arya, nor did I have any idea where they were keeping her.
The vamp’s breaths were labored, but she was still alive—which meant she could still talk.
“Where’s the siren girl?” I asked, my voice low and slightly trembling.
She spat in my direction right as a voice crackled in my ear.
“Where. Are. You. Private Dracul? ” It was Char. Apparently she noticed my absence.
“You mean Hadrian’s little trophy from the fishbowl?” the vamp girl asked, seemingly not bothered by the burns on every inch of her skin, which were beginning to look like a red version of the melted tower walls.
I averted my eyes, resisting the urge to gag. And fuck, the smell!
“Where is your master keeping her?” I asked, breathing only through my mouth to avoid the god-awful stench. “One of the towers? Is there a dungeon?”
“Private?” Char hissed in my ear. “Private?” Her voice cracked on the second one. She was concerned for my safety.
Covertly, I reached up to respond, clicking the mic on and off in a Morse code response to tell her that I was all right, as well as my location.
“Why would I tell you?” the melted girl asked.
“Because you’re probably going to die soon?” I said, feeling a little triumphant. “Because my sergeant will be here soon, and we plan to finish you off anyway before continuing our destruction?”
Since I had been studiously keeping my gaze away from the ruined face of the cotton candy girl, I nearly missed her eyes darting over my shoulder before a stifled sob sounded behind me.
I whipped around and, huddled on the far side of the large bed, saw the unmistakable streak of blue in a curtain of black hair.
“Arya?” I whispered, my heart suddenly stamping out an irregular beat.
And when her eyes sparked with recognition as they met mine, victory and gratitude sung in my chest. I found her. I actually found my mate, and she was in one beautiful piece.
“T-Tobias?” she whispered, as if in shock.
In the next instant, Char flew in through the open wall and landed beside me, shifting to human form.
“C’mon,” she said. “Tekashi, Gibson, Hennessey and Peters are out.”
“Wait, why the hell is Peters out?” I growled.
“He was forced to flee,” she explained with urgency and exasperation. “Let’s find this girl and go.”
“I already found her.” I motioned with my eyes that Arya was only a few feet away.
Triumph spread a smile across Char’s lips. “Then let’s go!”
But when I took one hurried step toward my mate still crouched and hidden, the forgotten vampire let out a hideous laugh that seemed to echo along the entire length of the tower.
Instinct told me to shift and get out before she could call for help. But my scales wouldn’t emerge. My bones wouldn’t respond. Something that was normally effortless and second-nature for me was suddenly impossible.
I couldn’t shift.
I tried again, focusing on my skin, urging it to turn into invisible scales, willing my shoulder blades to shoot out with my wings. But nothing. I remained pitifully human.
The look on Char’s face told me that she couldn’t shift either.
Melted-cotton-candy-girl’s laughter died down a bit, but she still chuckled to herself as a figure gave her a wide berth and entered the room.
My jaw fell open as I saw Shea slowly stepping forward, muttering some sort of spell under her breath. Her arms reached out as she chanted.
“Shea?” I whispered.
“Shea!” Arya shouted louder, finally getting to her feet.
Shea gave a sad smile to both of us but didn’t stop her chanting.
“What are you doing?” I asked, hearing the note of betrayal in my voice.
Char remained silent at my side, but she reached out for my hand. I wanted to jerk away so Arya wouldn’t see, but I couldn’t deny my friend that tiny bit of comfort. Char guessed before I did exactly what was happening.
“Instruct them to come this way,” Hadrian’s voice called from the shadows of the hallway.
Refusing the urge to grab Arya and jump out the gap in the wall was a Herculean task. But I knew such a move would be suicide. Without my dragon wings, we’d plummet who knew how many feet, and the landing would surely kill us both. And I couldn’t abandon Char.
It was over. We’d been caught. And Shea was helping.
Why was she helping?
Shea motioned with her fingers for us to follow, but Char and I remained where we stood—me out of stubbornness, but I suspected Char was frozen because of fear. Her fingers trembled in mine.
“Instruct them to come this way, now , or the blonde one doesn’t get to live.”
That kickstarted my feet, and the two of us scrambled toward the doorway leaving the safety of the sunlight, and Arya, behind.
With one last glance at the now-dead vampire slumped behind the armoire, I could see some sort of panic button clutched between her ruined fingers.
And a wicked smile etched onto her face.