Chapter 32
Rayna
The Faegud were waiting for them when they reached the neutral zone between their territories. It was an ideal meeting place to rest and prepare before the almost two-hour flight to the Kandoran nest’s location, especially with Lake Texoma there for the dragons to obtain water.
Rayna and Galadon sat together, eating some dried meat. Most shifters kept a healthy distance from them, especially because the male beside her kept growling, but the two pendragons, along with Titan and Morgan had joined them. They accepted the fact that her mate was being territorial with their bond being new. As long as he didn’t act overprotective during the battle, she wouldn’t complain about the rest. All Rayna cared about was getting revenge on Astaroth for what he’d done to them.
“We’ll leave in about fifteen minutes,” Aidan said, rising from the ground. “Do what you need to now because I want to be in the air by then.”
They had gotten so used to him leading them into war that no one questioned the Taugud pendragon’s commands. Thanks to him uniting the clans and Bailey bringing the coalition and east coast dragon clans together, they’d won a war against an adversary with a much larger army. He clearly knew what he was doing since he’d planned most of their strategies.
She stood as well. “I’m going to find some trees to pee behind.”
“I’ll go with you,” Galadon said, wiping his hands on his pants.
They found a secluded enough spot in the woods so she could relieve herself one last time, and he did the same. Neither of them was bothered by it anymore, though she would have been a matter of weeks ago. Living in his tunnel home with a chamber pot as the nearest “toilet” had encouraged her to overcome her shyness. There was a separate place to go outside, but when she was recovering from injuries or got up during the night to pee, the pot was more convenient. It was located in a side tunnel near the entrance, so the smell wasn’t as much of an issue.
Rayna used her canteen water to rinse her hands afterward. As soon as she was done, Galadon pulled her into his arms. “I know you are perfectly capable of fighting this battle, but I’m asking you to stay close to me because otherwise, I will be distracted looking for you. Neither of us made it through the war without injuries. It is just as likely to happen today.”
“That’s fine because if I can’t see you, I’ll worry, too,” she said, giving him a genuine smile. Even when they didn’t get along, and he’d wanted nothing to do with her, they’d fought better when joined together.
He tucked back a stray strand of her hair that had snuck out of her French braid. It was so gentle that she still couldn’t believe how much his attitude toward her had changed. The love in his gaze now said he’d do anything for her. Rayna should have been nervous about the upcoming battle rather than wondering if she was living an impossible dream.
“It was an effort to stay away from you during the war, you know, especially after I found you dying that one time.” He pulled her close, and she pressed her cheek against his chest. “I can’t tell you how many times I had to stop myself from looking for you.”
His strong heartbeat pounding against his chest was the most reassuring thing she’d ever heard. “Then we’ll do our best to work together no matter what the Kandoran throw at us.”
“Agreed.”
They hurried back to the field, Galadon taking his turn shifting at one of the designated spots. There were three hundred and seventy-seven of them in total. Including Rayna and Conrad, ten slayers had shown up since there’d been time to spread the word to them. Seven human sorcerers volunteered between those who lived at the fortress and Javier, with some of his people. The rest included one hundred and fifty Taugud and two hundred and ten Faegud, the latter being the much larger dragon clan.
Their forces had been divided into four groups. Galadon led the largest group, which would attack from the east, with one hundred fighters total, including Rayna, Conrad, Titan, and Morgan. Aidan led another group that would fly around to attack from the west. Lorcan led a group to hit the Kandoran from the north, and the second in command for the Taugud, Falcon, had the final set of warriors that would come from the south.
Each had sorcerers and slayers among them to ensure they were as versatile as possible since they couldn’t be certain what defenses the enemy might have in place. It would be a shock if they didn’t have some magical booby traps.
As soon as Galadon finished shifting, he took Rayna into his arms and leaped skyward. Those assigned to him followed behind them. They would fly a little slower to allow the others to get into place before the battle began. It was a warm day without a cloud in the sky, but Rayna noted the wind blew harder than usual from the west. The dragons had to work extra hard flying into it. Galadon didn’t seem bothered, but he was the largest shifter with an impressive wingspan. They were quiet during their journey, focusing on the battle ahead.
Once they neared her old tower and the Wichita Mountains, she knew they had minutes left. Galadon communicated with the other leaders as they continued flying west at a slow pace, and the rest of the dragons stayed close behind him. They were minimizing their use of telepathy by not speaking on open channels, which was why Rayna wasn’t in the loop.
Two minutes until we reach their marked border, he said into her mind. The others are ready and waiting.
She assumed he passed the word to key group members, but slayers were rarely leaders. They preferred to stick with killing dragons or anything evil. On hunts where she could only find a few Kandoran humans, it still took the edge off and bought her another day or two until she could find a dragon.
One time during the winter, she made it two weeks only killing the two-legged variety of enemies. It was a shock, but she’d once been told by Aidan’s uncle—who was in charge of the castle library—that an ancient text he found mentioned slayers had proven adaptable over the millennia. Their ultimate mission was to protect innocent humans from whatever creatures intended to harm them.
They passed over the low, rugged mountains toward the somewhat flatter terrain of the Great Plains State Park, with a large lake sparkling in the sunlight. She spotted the massive Kandoran camp set up next to it. Even those infected with evil needed water. To her shock, there were several hundred green dragons and at least a hundred humans, more than her last count weeks ago. She could only assume some of the extras came from the underground tunnels where she couldn’t see them, or maybe they recruited more.
Galadon steadily dropped altitude until they were almost skimming the treetops. At the head of the enemy’s army, she spotted Astaroth standing with several robed sorcerers. All of them had their arms uplifted, and their mouths moved in unison, though she couldn’t make out what they said with the wind howling in her ears.
Galadon headed straight for their former torturer with murderous intent. Rayna began to have a sick feeling in her stomach. Their enemy was letting them get too close, and there had to be a reason. As they reached fifty feet away, she caught a faint shimmer in the air above them.
“It’s a trap!” Rayna yelled, willing him to dodge whatever was coming down on top of them.
Too late.
Right when they were no more than fifteen feet from Astaroth, the shimmer fell over their group. They crashed into an incandescent barrier, with her cheek smacking it sharply. Her head spun with Galadon gripping her tightly as they plummeted together a dozen feet to the ground. He managed to land on his feet, bending his knees sharply, but the air left her lungs from his hard grip on her chest. She sucked in deep breaths as soon as he let her go and stumbled a couple of steps away.
All around them, other shifters slammed into the same shimmering wall and fell to the ground. One of the Taugud red dragons spiraled from above them, shrieking, and Galadon yanked Rayna back before the female crushed her. Only the back half of their group managed to stop in time. Thankfully, those holding Conrad and Morgan were at the rear.
All the while, Astaroth smiled broadly, pleased with himself. She studied the magic barrier and noted it was similar to the dome they used for training before the war. The main difference being this one trapped them inside rather than preventing anyone from seeing within it. Galadon lit up in flames, shifting since he couldn’t get more than twenty feet off the ground for the time being anyway. He might as well be ready to fight in human form with a sword.
As their forces regrouped, the sorcerer strolled forward until he stood a few feet from the barrier. “You didn’t think you’d reach me that easily, did you?”
“It was worth a try,” Rayna bit out.
He looked her up and down. “You’re faring far better than when I last saw you. In fact, I’d go so far as to say mating with that beast agrees with you.”
Galadon strode forward, now in human form, and blocked her from the sorcerer’s view. “Don’t talk to her, coward. You only pretend to be brave because you think we can’t reach you.”
She noted Morgan standing thirty feet away at another point in the shield, with his hands up as he studied the magic and murmured something under his breath. He was a sorcerer who’d mastered those sorts of spells. Like a pro, he could erect various types in minutes, and once assisted in constructing a massive barrier against the Kandoran that stretched from the middle of Kansas, through all of Oklahoma, and down to central Texas—hundreds of miles.
Of course, that one took a couple of months to prepare, but he’d been key to their success in raising it. He’d also brought down the shield that kept their rescuers from freeing them a couple of weeks ago. If anyone could dismantle this one, it would be Morgan.
While Galadon argued with Astaroth, distracting him, Rayna searched for Conrad. She found him through a sea of red dragons, staring at something in the distance behind her. There was horror in his gaze.
“What is it?” she asked.
“There.” He pointed toward the Kandoran camp, and she followed his gaze.
The other three parts of their forces had converged on the enemy, but with a quarter cut off, the rest were outnumbered. Not by a huge amount like in the big war, but as the fighting began, it was clear they were at a disadvantage without Galadon’s group. They’d assumed only two hundred dragons were in the camp and hadn’t anticipated the current numbers.
A strange scent burned her nostrils, and she turned to search for the source. “Do you smell that?”
“Yeah, I do,” Conrad said, wrinkling his nose. “It’s like rotten eggs.”
Just beyond him, Rayna spotted a black metal box with faint yellow smoke pouring out of it. She gestured in that direction. “There. What is it?”
His eyes widened in dread. “Nothin’ good, considering the last time the damn Kandoran used weird fog like that, it infected any of our human forces who didn’t wear masks.”
“Morgan is the only one in here who’d be susceptible to that stuff,” she said, shaking her head. “It wouldn’t be worth the trouble.”
Conrad worked his jaw. “That other fog had a gray tinge to it. I got a feelin’ this shit targets somethin’ else—either slayers or shifters.”
Other than her nostrils burning a bit, she didn’t feel anything else. Many others around them were sneezing and wiping their noses. Their eyes were watering, too.
Titan walked up with an alarmed expression on his face and his nose wrinkling from the fog’s effects. “Some of the shifters are getting agitated. Whatever is in the yellow smoke is influencing us, and it’s taking all my willpower to fight it.”
“Well, shit.” Conrad drew his sword. “That answers that question.”
Rayna placed a hand on Titan’s arm and concentrated. Within his blood, she could feel the evil taint working its way through him. She pushed her magic inside and eradicated it in seconds, but slivers of it slid back into him before she even pulled away. He was breathing it right back in, and she couldn’t make him immune.
“That’s a little better,” Titan said, shoulders relaxing a fraction.
She shook her head. “It won’t last, but stay close, and I’ll keep doing what I can.” Her gaze turned to Conrad. “Get the shifters as far from that box as possible while I tell Galadon.”
“You got it, girl,” he said, then turned to start shouting at the others. That was a task he excelled at, so she was sure he’d get their attention.
Rayna kept her grip on Titan, continuing to eliminate the infection in him as they hurried toward her mate. Galadon’s back was rigid where he stood arguing with Astaroth. She caught him describing how he would disembowel the Kandoran once they were free.
She touched his arm with her free hand, relieved to find he had no infection. Because he had sorcerer blood, that might have given him some protection, but he’d also mentioned that he had the ability to push the taint out with his own magic. Either way, Rayna was relieved he was safe from exposure.
“He’s infecting the shifters with some kind of smoke,” she informed Galadon.
He nodded. “I heard your discussion.”
Of course, just because he appeared to be focused on the enemy didn’t mean he hadn’t tracked her the whole time. It warmed her to realize that, but she couldn’t focus on it now.
“Isn’t it lovely?” Astaroth asked, preening. “I worked so very hard finding a way to infect only dragons and shifters. We managed to acquire a few during the war so I could experiment on them while your little alliance was too busy to notice they’d disappeared. Of course, it took months to get the formula right, and I lost all but one before I succeeded. Such is the way with science and magic, you know.”
“You fucking bastard,” Rayna swore.
When they’d spent days conducting memorial services for the fallen, she’d heard some bodies were never recovered despite exhaustive searches. They’d assumed the missing had been obliterated by the green fire some Kandoran could blow. It burned anything. Titan’s best friend, Eliam, had died from the potent flames when they blew at his head.
The Kandoran sorcerer gave her a malicious grin. “Now, the fruit of my labor will finally come to pass. I knew I’d face you again, and I prepared for it. You will be trapped in there while all your beastly allies slowly turn against you. I’ll get to watch as you debate whether to defend yourself and kill them or get torn to pieces by dragon claws. The last time I set you up failed, but it won’t this time.”
Rayna, Galadon, and Titan turned to witness in horror that fights had already broken out between shifters. In the few seconds she spent scanning their group, she estimated a third had already fully turned to the Kandoran side. Shit, shit, shit!
“Come,” Galadon said, pulling her away while she kept her grip on Titan.
Astaroth’s laugh followed them. “Good luck!”
That sorcerer would pay once she escaped this trap.
Rayna continued to pulse power into Titan every twenty seconds to keep the infection in him at bay and would keep doing it as long as she could. Over half the shifters still hadn’t turned after ten minutes, so it was clear some could resist much longer than others. That would give Titan time once she had to stop helping him because if anyone could resist dark evil, it would be him. He was honorable and strong.
Last year, when Aidan discovered the previous Taugud pendragon and many from his shifter inner circle were tainted, he’d had people study some of the bodies afterward to figure out how it had happened. Rayna learned the details once she joined their side.
Based on their slow behavior changes, they deduced that it must have taken months of being slowly tainted, if not years. They all had greed as a primary motivating factor, making them more susceptible. Somehow, Astaroth had found a way to massively speed up the process and, most likely, the same types would turn more swiftly.
They stopped at Morgan’s side. He crouched in front of the barrier, sweat beading his brows as he chanted in a low voice. Two Taugud shifters in beast form were fending off anyone who came too close.
He paused his chanting and glanced up at them. “Yes?”
“How long will it take you?” Galadon asked.
The sorcerer pushed his glasses up his nose with his free hand. “This one is a little more complicated than the last, but I’d estimate ten to fifteen minutes if I’m not interrupted again.”
“We need to do something about that smoke box,” Rayna said, gesturing to where Conrad stood guard over it with his sword upraised.
A red dragon snapped at him, and he slammed the flat of his sword onto the beast’s head so hard she could hear the clang from a hundred feet away. His target slumped to the ground. More and more of their forces were developing red-rimmed eyes and turning on those who lacked them.
Galadon grabbed one of the infected shifters in human form who came their way and tossed him into another, both going down. “The slayer needs to bring it here, so we can try disrupting the box’s smoke while protecting Morgan.”
Rayna pointed at the cluster of growling red dragons between them and Conrad. “He’ll never get through them.”
“Can you stun them with your lightning?” he asked.
She counted at least two dozen who’d need to be downed. “Only one at a time on my own, and it will only last a few minutes.”
“Perhaps I can help.” His brows drew together as magic filled the space around him, but nothing happened. “The dome has closed us off from the elements that I need to create a storm.”
Dammit. She only now noticed that there was no wind inside, though the trees beyond the barrier swayed from a breeze. Astaroth had succeeded in blunting one of their most effective weapons.
“Okay, I’ll do the best I can with small strikes,” she said and stretched out her hand.
Rayna zapped several of the turned shifters nearest to them in succession, but it grew harder with each one. The static in the air wasn’t enough. Like Galadon, she had to pull elements from her surroundings, but they were limited within the small confines of the dome. By the time she hit the fifth one, there wasn’t anything left to draw upon except…oh, shit, the shifters themselves. All living beings had a small charge in their bodies that kept their hearts beating.
She cast Galadon a horrified look. “I’m out of elements now, too, except pulling the charge from their bodies. If I do that, I’ll be killing the ones I take from to stun the others.”
He clenched his jaw as conflicting emotions warred within his mind. She could feel it through their bond. He had to weigh the pros and cons, with no easy answer. At this point, they still had seven minutes left until Morgan finished taking down the dome. Two-thirds of the shifters had turned, and they were converging on them and Conrad. They had seconds to act.
“Can you restart their hearts afterward?” he asked.
Rayna had only used the trick a few times when she began learning to use her powers years ago. The first time, she’d killed her target by taking all the charge. The second time, she didn’t extract enough because another dragon distracted her midway through the process. That beast eventually recovered while she fought for her life, and she’d had to kill both with lightning strikes.
“No.” She shook her head. “But if I concentrate hard enough, I can leave just enough spark that they can recover on their own.”
Rayna lost her grip on Titan as he and Galadon swatted the nearest dragons away, sending them careening into the others. They were out of time. Too many were coming, and they couldn’t continue using non-lethal methods to keep them away.
“Do it,” he commanded.
She took a deep breath, knowing this was going to be difficult since she hadn’t done it in a long time and never with such high stakes. “Okay.”
Rayna outstretched her arms toward the infected dragons. She concentrated on the front row of twenty shifters and found their sparks of life. Carefully, she pulled three-quarters from them the way one might draw medicine from a vial, using a syringe. It was painstaking, considering they weren’t exactly standing still for her, and some she had to target as they attacked Galadon and Titan. Finally, they collapsed, some mid-fight.
Holding the small electrical balls in her palms, she reshaped the charges and sent thin zings of lightning toward the center line of dragons behind the fallen first rank. A little over half crashed to the ground since her strikes weren’t as powerful as when she could draw energy from the air. Still, it removed a dozen more of them from the battlefield and took some pressure off the uninfected trying to defend themselves.
She drew in ragged breaths because that had been extremely difficult to do, and her head already ached from the effort. Galadon came behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist. “Let me help.”
Rayna had no idea what he meant, but when she started targeting the next batch of shifters, she felt his power join hers. The tendrils of her magic spread twice as far so they could grab more, and it didn’t hurt as much to extract the right amount.
He stayed with her every step of the way as they bundled those charges and sent them rushing back out to hit the next round of infected dragons. There was now an additional forty or so taken out of the fight. Relief spilled through her. She’d been so scared she’d end up killing some of them, but Galadon’s centuries of experience with magic had allowed him to study her methods and boost her abilities rapidly.
“Thank you,” she said.
He squeezed her once before stepping away. “Of course.”
Conrad didn’t waste a moment before running between all the downed dragons. The ones they had left alone would turn any minute, and Rayna would have to get back to work on them. He dropped the box next to Galadon.
“I tried bangin’ on the damn thing with my sword, but it keeps leaking that fog no matter what I do,” he said, breathless.
Galadon kneeled to study the device as she prepared to target the next batch of shifters whose eyes had just turned red. A few at a time would be much easier than the large masses of the previous rounds. As Galadon went to work on his new project, she stayed focused on hers.
“Fuck, man,” Conrad swore. From the corner of her eye, she could tell he was looking beyond the dome to the battle raging outside. “We gotta hurry. They’re getting decimated out there and ain’t gonna last much longer without us.”
Astaroth laughed loudly in the distance. They were getting closer to freedom, but would it be in time? And what if Morgan lowered the shield only to allow the fog to infect the rest of their forces? There were so many variables that she had no idea if they’d make it out of this alive.