Chapter 25 Jackson
JACKSON
Diving from the sky, I rocketed toward the destruction, keeping my eyes trained on Joseph. With my wings pinned back and gravity doing the work, I had to be going at least a hundred miles an hour. Wind rippled around me and filled my open maw when I spread my jaws apart.
At the last second, I belched out a gust of flame and swerved, opening my wings and banking to the side before I hit the ground.
The jet of fire nearly blasted Joseph full force, but the bastard shifted again and jumped aside at the last second.
My fire spread left as I turned hard, catching one of his men.
The drake thrashed and screamed as the flames enveloped him. In a fit of panic, he rolled sideways, crashing through the doors of the garage. A moment later, the building caught fire, flames licking out the windows.
Swooping low, I continued banking, turning in a tight circle to attack Joseph again. Before I could, another drake leaped high and dug its claws into my belly. Screeching in pain, we both dropped from the sky, crashing hard in a tumble of limbs and tails.
I snapped and bit, clawing at my attacker.
The other dragon fought right back, digging his talons into me, dragging them down the soft scales of my stomach.
Blood oozed from the scrapes, but thankfully, my hide was too strong to be torn.
Otherwise he’d have gutted me. Tucking my wings away, I slashed at his face with my foreclaws.
My left middle talon dragged down his face and across his eye, bursting the orb as it did so.
He squealed in horror and pain, thrashing beneath me and pawing at his ruined eye.
I pulled air into my lungs and expelled a raging inferno across his face and neck, pinning him down with my own claws.
His shrieks of agony were engulfed by the hissing sound of fire.
By some strange magical protection, dragons could not be hurt by their own personal fire, but that from others was as deadly as it would be for a human or any other shifter.
I continued breathing fire onto him until all thrashing and twitching ceased, then rose up. There was nothing left of the drake but smoldering ashes in the faint outline of a four-legged dragon.
The first dragon I’d washed with fire came stumbling back out of the garage, tearing the door off its hinges. Thrashing back and forth and screeching in an almost pig-like squeal, he finally fell forward, lying motionless on the ground.
I turned my attention back to the house. My sister was in there, and Joseph now knew that I’d betrayed him. She was in danger, and I needed to get to her. Now. I shifted back to my human form and sprinted to the door, grasping the knob and slinging it open.
I’d assumed there might be someone waiting for me, and I’d been right.
Rather than rushing headlong inside, I dived in, rolling on the ground.
Where my head would have been if I’d simply walked in, a massive dragon tail crashed into the wall and door, shattering the solid wood and crushing the wall.
Before I could shift, the dragon was on me.
Two heavy-handed claws slashed down at me, but I managed to grab the joints above them.
Muscles in my forearms, shoulders, and chest clenched, popping as they were pushed to the limit.
My legs burned as I dug my boots into the ground.
The drake—red with green swirl markings—glared at me as I held him back.
My human form was nowhere near as powerful as my dragon form, but I was still head and shoulders above a normal human. Plus, I was pissed off.
The drake roared at me, spittle and acrid heat washing across my face, billowing my hair. I squeezed his wrists hard enough to make my knuckles turn white and roared right back at him.
“Fuck you!”
He reared back, and the instant before he shot forward to bite my head off, I released his arms and rolled, shifting as I did.
I slashed at his stomach, opening him from stem to stern.
He yelped in pain and fell to the side, grasping at his belly as blood spilled across the floor in rivers.
He was already dead; he just didn’t realize it.
Changing back, I glanced around the foyer.
The house was decadent in an almost funny way.
It was like a child who thought they knew what a rich person’s mansion would look like had designed it.
It was cartoonish in its extravagance. Thick, blood-red carpeting, hardwoods stained almost black, mahogany wainscoting on every wall.
Paintings of hunting, horse riding, and farming scenes hung on the walls.
The fixtures were all chrome-gold, including the wall outlets.
Along with that was the velvet furniture in various hues from violet to dark orange.
There was no one else awaiting me. One lone guard was all that had been left at the door.
“Anitoli!” I roared.
Movement at the top of the stairs drew my attention, but instead of the mob boss, it was three of his men.
From the smell, two were drakes, and one was a human—much to my surprise.
Shyanne was one of the incredibly rare humans who knew shifters existed, but I supposed it was hard to find enough douchebags in one species to do all the awful shit he did.
He’d had to venture out to other options.
The human, obviously behind the eightball when it came to strength and skill, whipped around a machine gun that hung from a strap at his shoulder. I dived aside as a line of bullet holes appeared in the ground where my feet had been a second before.
Along with the burnt smell of gunpowder, the acrid and bitter tang of silver filled my nostrils, and a new fear shot through me.
A bullet would have hurt like hell, but as long as I wasn’t shot in the head or heart, I’d be able to heal.
With silver? Even a shot in the calf or hand could be fatal—silver was one of the few materials that prevented us from using our enhanced healing, and also poisoned us.
Before I’d even finished rolling aside, the two shifters transformed—one jet-black, similar to my own color, but without the white belly, the other a deep ochre brown. They leaped from the top of the stairs, claws extended and mouths yawning open.
In an instant I was in my dragon form and caught the black one, digging my talons into his chest, while flailing at the other with my wing, knocking him off.
The black drake lunged, his front teeth catching the soft flesh of my lower neck.
Jerking back, I howled in pain as a small hunk of my hide tore away, blood spraying across the black drake’s face.
It was a minor injury, and I was more pissed off than hurt.
I tackled him, kicking at him with the claws of my back legs while tearing at his face with my forepaws.
Digging bloody furrows into his face, I did my best to try and sink my rear claws deep into the soft flesh of his stomach. Before I could do more than create a few shallow slices, he breathed out a jet of flame at my face.
Releasing him, I tucked my wings in and rolled back at the last second, slamming into a wall. Dust burst up as the drywall exploded around me, and the two-by-fours inside the wall snapped. The buzz-zap sound of a bullet whizzing by my skull crackled through the air.
One thing at a time.
I breathed out a gale of flame toward the man, engulfing him in an orange inferno. He never even had time to scream—my fire was too hot for him to have ever felt anything. Instead, he fell backward, the fire devouring him and the carpet beneath him.
The two drakes raged in anger and descended upon me with renewed fervor.
The brown drake lurched at me from the right, and the black came at me from the left, both tearing and biting at me.
In the tight confines, each thrash and kick destroyed another part of the mansion.
Wallpaper tore, furniture splintered, and glass shattered.
Kicking out with my back legs, I caught the black drake in the chest, sending him flying backward onto the broken newel post of the banister, the hard oak stabbing him in the thigh. He squealed as he twisted and jerked at his leg to free himself.
I continued fighting off the brown drake, slicing at his throat with my left claw, missing by less than a foot. He hissed out another short burst of flame that almost singed my cheek, but instead caught a set of curtains on fire.
He’d backed me into a spot so tight I couldn’t actually fight in my dragon form—I was bigger than he was, and he could maneuver better than me.
Taking a chance, I shifted back to my human body, tucked, and rolled between his legs, praying that I’d timed it right.
If he’d stomped down on me at that point, he’d have turned me into a smear on the floor.
Thankfully, my choice had shocked him as much as it had me.
The thudding sounds of his feet pursuing me echoed through my skull as I sprinted back to the screaming and clawing black drake.
I shifted and slashed down with my back talons, opening his throat while he still screeched about his pinned leg.
More blood stained the floor as he gave a last thrash of agony before going still.
An instant later, my own scream of pain erupted from my maw as searing heat washed across my back.
By instinct alone, I flattened myself, tucking my wings in and becoming as small as my huge frame would allow.
Glancing over my shoulder, I found the brown drake breathing a fan of flame out toward me.
As big as this goddamn house was, it wasn’t made for beings our size.
I had less than a second to make a decision before he turned his living blowtorch fully upon my body.