Chapter Thirty-One
A dark silhouette came through the smoke a few minutes later, too far away for me to see it clearly.
I was hugging the bare tree next to me as if it were the only thing holding me upright.
If this were a horror movie, I’d look like a stereotypical victim, especially since I was only wearing a bra from the waist up.
I’d thrown my makeshift shirt-filter to the ground.
All the better for the approaching dragon to see every detail of my terrified expression.
“Help,” I whimpered. “Setreg? Remy? Is that you?”
As soon as I said it, I held my breath. Either my helpless-girl act would work, or I was about to get lit up by a lightning bolt, and Remy hadn’t said I could survive one of those.
A low laugh rumbled out, soft like faraway thunder. “No, little one. I’m neither.”
The dragon came into view, flames from the burning trees haloing it in splashes of orange and red.
I wasn’t pretending when every part of me froze. I’d only seen Zenobia’s dragon aura through the Beast’s eyes, where it manifested in scarlet wings. Now I was seeing a dragon through my eyes, and it was stunningly terrifying.
In one instant, a naked man with ash-blond hair walked toward me. He had an athletic but normal build, and patches of soot marred his tawny skin.
In the next, I was staring at wicked-looking horns stabbing back from a huge, reptilian face.
More spikes lined its long neck and back, going all the way to a tail that was whiplike at the end.
Sunlight glinted off thick scales in an iridescent effect that gave them a golden glow against their dark-gray undertone.
The dragon came toward me in a menacing crouch, using the bony protuberances in its bent wings like a pair of forelimbs.
Otherwise, it was bipedal, and even crouched, it was nearly ten feet tall.
Despite most of its wings being tucked close to its sides, the dragon was still wide enough to knock down trees as it passed them.
Then the blond-haired man was back, smiling at me—
—while the dragon’s massive, triangular-shaped jaws opened, revealing sharp teeth—
—and the man said, “Don’t run. It’s useless”—
—as steam blasted out from the dragon’s mouth.
I shook my head. That didn’t stop the man and the dragon overtaking each other with dizzying speed, as if two channels were uncontrollably flipping back and forth on a TV screen.
But the dragon wasn’t a supernatural mirage like the auras I saw. Its bulk had knocked over trees that hadn’t been close to the man. It was somehow both man and dragon at the same time … and I’d let it get way too close while I stared at it.
“D-don’t hurt me.”
I hadn’t needed to fake my stutter. Even if I didn’t know they could spit lightning, seeing a huge dragon blinking in and out over the normal-looking man would’ve shaken me to my core.
I wasn’t the only one. The Beast was now writhing inside me like a trapped snake. Without Remy’s power, it would have ripped out the second it caught sight of the dragon.
“Death doesn’t hurt, my dear,” the man/dragon replied.
“Wait!” I said when he opened his mouth as if about to spit lightning. “I know things about Remy! Important things!”
A laugh rolled over me, holding all the mockery of a contemptuous man along with the indescribable rumble of a deadly beast. I shivered while my own Beast tested all my new power to hold it back.
Was it trying to get out in order to protect its host?
Or, worse, did it want out so it could then jump into the fearsome duality in front of us?
The man swept out his hand. Instantly, the bare trees to his right snapped as a long, grayish-gold wing felled them.
“Dazzle me with your insight, then.”
I started to cry in a loud, long wail. “Promise you won’t kill me first. Promise!”
The man rolled his eyes. Yes, the dragon did that, too. “If you don’t stop screeching, I’ll kill you right now—”
A net whipped around him, covering the man entirely and tangling around the dragon’s head. He whirled.
Setreg fired that thick rifle again, coming out from his hiding place of a hastily dug hole.
The dragon’s right wing got tangled in the second net.
Another crack from the rifle, and the dragon’s left wing was tangled, too, while the man was so thickly covered I could no longer see his furious expression.
Those nets might have only been spelled for a Beast, but any net suddenly wrapping around you was still an obstruction.
Setreg dove away the instant before lightning blew up the spot he’d just stood in.
He had a second to roll to avoid the next strike when the man overtook the dragon, but only a second.
The dragon spat a new lightning bolt at Setreg as soon as it flickered back into view.
Burning branches pelted Setreg, but that bolt missed.
The man’s curse ended in a dragon’s snarl as it heaved in, about to spit another lightning bolt.
I jumped onto its back. The man/dragon had turned away from me as soon as he saw Setreg. Why keep staring at the cringing girl when a big man with a bigger gun kept firing nets at you?
Feed! I ordered the Beast, shoving those claws deep.
The dragon’s roar turned into a man’s howl.
I almost fell off at the abrupt deflation of dragon back into man.
Before I could, I was flung up riding the dragon again.
Shockingly, it hadn’t slowed at all since the Beast began feeding.
If anything, it only seemed more pissed off.
With another roar, it flung itself backward toward the ground.
I tried to jump off before its huge bulk squashed me, but my claws were so deep they wouldn’t pull free.
I twisted to the side at the last instant—
The man landed right next to me. My abrupt twist plus the size difference had yanked the Beast’s claws free. His brown eyes filled with rage before the dragon overtook him again, opening its huge mouth while a flash lit inside its throat.
I flung myself to the side faster than I should have been able to move.
Lightning still cracked right next to me.
My skull felt like it exploded while every limb spasmed at the residual voltage.
I tried to shove my claws back into the man, but blinding flashes had replaced my vision, and my arms and legs only twitched and flopped.
Oh God, I’d die in the woods after all! Then my murderer would get the power of a Beast and a dragon—
Something hard grabbed my arm, shoving it forward. I felt wet, gloppy suction and instinctively tried to pull away, but that bruising grip wouldn’t let me. Through the painful spasms and incessant ringing in my head, I heard the same three words.
“Feed, Raine! Feed!”
Feed, I weakly ordered the Beast.
Power trickled through me, slow and irregular at first, like a faucet with a clog.
Then, a steady stream had those blinding flashes clearing from my eyes until I could see again.
A huge, grayish-gold underbelly stretched out in front of me before instantly becoming the much smaller abdomen of a man.
My hand was rammed into him up to my forearm, and his red blood turned green as the dragon’s body reappeared over his.
I tried to jerk back. The hand wrapped around my arm only tightened. That’s when I realized a large man was holding my arm inside the man/dragon, keeping my claws from dislodging due to the widely disparaging differences in size as the man kept switching from human to dragon and back again.
“Keep feeding, Raine,” Remy said, shocking me. He was alive! And awake! I’d thought it was Setreg behind me.
“He’s already unconscious,” I argued.
Remy tightened his grip. “That’s not enough. The dragon half of him will heal too fast. You have to finish this.”
Vomit rose along with another rush of power as the Beast gorged on the man/dragon’s life force.
I wanted to yank those claws free, but Remy was right.
The man might be unconscious, but bursts of white still shot from the dragon’s throat in electric streams whenever it overtook the man.
Remy had us angled away from them, and they were nowhere near the fearsome lightning bolts they’d been, but if the dragon could still do that with its violence gone and much of its life force consumed, it would definitely kill us if I let it go.
God, dragons were like nothing I’d ever seen. If Remy hadn’t woken up and forced my clawed hand back into it, I would be dead by now, with Setreg and Remy dead next to me.
I squeezed my eyes shut while more power rushed through me, bringing healing that outpaced even Remy’s borrowed abilities.
The ringing in my head stopped, as did the full-body pain I hadn’t let myself dwell on.
Soon I was squirming because my body couldn’t hold still from all the energy overflowing it.
The hot, wet heaviness around my arm suddenly vanished, replaced by something cold and powdery. I opened my eyes, seeing ashes on my arm and the ground where the man/dragon’s body had been. A growl pushed its way past my throat. Not mine—the Beast’s, celebrating its kill.
I shoved it down with all the revulsion I felt. The Beast had killed many people through me in the past, but this time, I had done it. I was on my feet without even realizing that I’d leapt away from Remy. Then I looked away before I met his eyes.
Senseless of me, I know. Remy had told me to kill him. So why did I feel like I’d see the same horror reflected in his gaze that I now felt toward myself?
A groan yanked my attention to the right. Setreg was sprawled on the ground about twenty feet away. Long, jagged lacerations soaked his left side with scarlet and he had burn marks on his right arm and shoulder.
I ran to him and started to stanch his bleeding. Were those bite marks from the dragon? He’d need dozens of stitches to close those up … wait. I had a much faster way to help him.