Chapter Forty
Roman
What the hell just happened?
Did Oakley seriously just tell me they loved me, then take off running?
That little shit.
They were too far away, and I didn’t want to scream I love you too across the parking lot, so I shook my head with a reluctant smile—seriously, they were such a shit, a shit that I truly, wholly loved—and I ran after them even as my heart thudded with happiness in my chest.
Brinik had that menacing look on his face again, but the second Oakley’s body began to grow and golden scales appeared on their skin, that grin faded into fear.
He should be scared.
Because Oakley wasn’t about to let that bastard get away.
And neither was I.
With a grin on my face, I called on my dragon, and he answered in an instant.
My clothes ripped as scales rushed over my skin, my muscles growing, bones shifting, eyesight sharpening, teeth growing and aching to bite, until I was all dragon. I let out a loud roar and jumped the—now—short distance to the blood witches.
Their magic couldn’t harm me in this form, so I ignored the many spells the group threw at me. I snapped my jaws in their direction and was pleased by the screams.
That’s right, little peons, fear the all-mighty dragon!
“Wow, full of yourself much?” Oak’s voice said in my head, making me shake out of my… mighty dragon… thing.
I roared again, and both of the dragons with Brinik started to shift.
I was a very old dragon, so I was a lot bigger than either of them.
Bigger and stronger. I turned quickly, whipping my tail right at them.
One of them was smart enough to duck out of the way, but the other took the full brunt of my assault.
My tail smacked him in his side, sending him flying off his feet.
He was mid-shift, so his wings couldn’t stop him from sailing through the air and landing hard on the pavement.
His head bounced on the concrete, and I could see blood spurting from here.
He was down for the moment, but he’d heal quickly.
Before I could worry too much about it, a silver shield appeared over the top of the dragon. Good. Tan had the guy covered.
I turned, ready to attack the last dragon, but to my surprise, Hiro and Basil were already taking the guy down.
Which meant I could concentrate on the blood witches. Hell yeah.
When I let out another mighty roar, three of the blood witches ran. So I chased them.
Oakley was… finishing off Brinik, and I knew the others were no match for them. They could take down all these assholes by themself if they really wanted to.
So I concentrated on the running blood witches, landing right in front of them and accidentally smashing a car. Whoops, I’d have to pay for that later—sorry, little green car!
The blood witches attacked me, cutting themselves and using that blood to power their spells. They flung spell after spell at me, but everything bounced off my scales. So I took a step toward them.
One of the witches tried to back up and fell on his ass, crab crawling away from me. Another stood his ground, flinging red magic at me over and over again, not doing the least bit of damage. It really only tickled. And the third tried to run again.
Stretching my neck out, I leaned over the other two and snatched the running blood witch up with my teeth.
I thought about crunching down, but I didn’t really want the taste of…
witch in my mouth. So I flung him in the air, like a cat playing with a favorite toy, caught his shirt between my teeth, and set him down in front of the others.
The scent of urine reached my nose, and I jerked back in disgust without taking my eyes off these three. The one I’d thrown had peed his pants. Ew.
I let smoke escape from my nostrils, a silent threat—yes, I can set you on fire in the blink of an eye, wanna test me? I stared them down, and luckily for them, they held still.
A moment later, Garrick appeared behind the blood witches, still in his bipedal form, and said, “Drop your weapons and allow me to cuff you. If you don’t, I’ll let the dragon eat you.”
One of the blood witches whimpered, and Garrick shot me a smirk as all three complied, dropping their knives and holding their hands up.
Gar put handcuffs on them that would help block their magic.
I wasn’t sure anything could block it one hundred percent, but I was confident enough in the magic that I wasn’t worried about Garrick as he led the three away.
Tan had managed to capture two of the assholes, Garrick had apparently killed three with his sword, and Bas and Hiro had a few bodies around them and two more in handcuffs.
I didn’t see any other blood witches anywhere.
This area was clear.
At least for now.
I turned toward Oakley and blinked, then let out my laughing churring noise.
They had their tongue sticking out of their mouth while they sat on their haunches and tried to brush something off of it with their giant paws.
Never in all my years had I seen a dragon do that, and it was hilarious. And cute. Scales, were they cute.
They looked at me with this pathetic expression, and in my head, I heard, “Brinik tasted disgusting.” I heard a whine. “Get it off! Blech. Blood witch is so fucking gross. Ewwwwww.”
I laughed again, shaking my head at them before turning my attention to Tan. He’d handed his prisoners off to Gar and had clothes in his hand.
“You can shift back. I have clothes for you. We need to get back inside. They’re still fighting in there.”
Really? I couldn’t believe it. It felt like we’d taken a long time to get through the tunnel and take these guys out.
As if hearing me, Tan nodded. “Apparently, everyone in that building came down to join in the fight so a bunch of people attacked from behind.”
Shit.
I shifted back quickly, took the clothes from him with a thanks, and dressed.
When I looked at my viramore, they were already shifted back and putting on clothes that Hiro handed them. I growled under my breath because another man was way too close to my viramore while they were naked, but Tan gave my shoulder a shove to distract me. It helped, but only a little.
Fortunately, Oak dressed quickly, and even though I wasn’t happy about it, I was relieved when Hiro handed Oakley a sports drink to help them get the blood witch flavor out of their mouth.
I grumbled under my breath about it as quietly as I could, but from the eye roll and wink Oak shot me, they clearly heard me.
Oakley and I both retrieved our dragonscale weapons from our ripped-up clothes, and I could tell Oak was sad that their ankle holster for their knife was broken.
Neither of our shoes had survived the shift, which was unfortunate but pretty typical.
Oak strapped their shield around their left arm and held the knife in that hand to free up their other for their sword.
I followed their lead, setting myself up the same way.
Oak muttered, “I can’t believe how many blood witches are here.”
“Me either.”
Over my comms, Thayer’s voice yelled, “We need help in here! They have those fucking shield-breaking spells and keep going after the cages. More blood witches came out of a back room, and they have hostages.”
Everyone on my team heard the call, and Oak, Bas, Hiro, and I took off without missing a beat. Tan and Garrick knew they had to stay behind to watch over the prisoners, but neither was happy about it from the look on their faces.
I was the last through the door, which irked me, but it was fine. Bas and Hiro would probably be faster than Oak and me since we didn’t have shoes on.
We made it all the way through the tunnel and out of the closet in record time, but I almost ran into Oak because they stopped so suddenly. I grabbed their hips to balance myself—they didn’t even seem to notice—and stepped to the side, releasing them as I surveyed the basement.
There were bodies everywhere, some frozen, some clearly no longer alive, some under shields, some handcuffed. There were just so many, everywhere.
Ailin, Seb, Thayer, Toby, and other team members were standing in front of the cages that were still full of people.
There were shields around the cages now, but they were a mix of colors—green, blue, silver, black, yellow—so it was clear that they weren’t the original shields Seb and Ailin had put up.
To our right, there was a group of people, the servants, all huddled together with Jed, Beshiro, Phaeron, and the rest of the vampires standing in front of them, guarding them.
They didn’t have any shields over them, probably because the cultist had managed to separate our witches from the servants, and once they used a shield-breaking spell, the servants were exposed. Fuck.
For the last several months, people had been using magical artifacts to break wards and shields. Jed and Beshiro had been on the case, and I knew they’d found several warehouses full of the damn things, but they obviously hadn’t stopped the culprit yet if these cultists had them.
Where they were coming from was a mystery for another day. There were other worries to think about.
A group of cultists were standing near the stairs with several children—hostages—many of them bleeding. The cultists held children captive with knives to their throats. Some asshole even held a crying toddler.
Every time I thought these people couldn’t get worse…
One of the cultists stepped forward, dragging a teenager with him. Oakley made a strangled noise, and I winced when I looked harder at the teen. It was Isidore. Holy shit, it was Isidore.
The blood witch had clearly cut her arms up already since she had blood smeared over her and dripping from her fingertips. And now, he held a knife to her neck, dragging her with him, using her as a shield, although he also had a red hazy shield over both of them.
The witch said, “Let us leave this place unharmed, and we’ll leave the children outside.”