Chapter 22
Everly watched Hawke’s features contort in pain. His hand reached for her, lifting only a few inches before it fell back to the ground.
“Hawke?” Mesmerized by the sight of Matthew, she hadn’t realized what he was about to do until fire shot from his mouth, straight at her and Hawke.
Jostled from her frozen state of shock by Hawke’s roar of pain, she threw herself forward, knocking him to the ground with a strength she didn’t know she possessed, and following him down to smother the flames.
She tried to remember what Hawke had said offhandedly that day about how much damage a vampire could take to his body before he wouldn’t heal anymore.
Remove his heart or his head, he’d said. So, would he heal from burns like this?
His eyes, dull and lifeless, searched her face. His mouth opened and closed, and then his dry lips formed the words, “I think I love you.”
Sitting up, she stared down at him. “What?” Tears blurred her vision.
Matthew dipped into her line of vision, hovered for a moment, and then landed heavily not twenty feet in front of her, making the ground shake beneath them.
She rose unsteadily to her feet, one foot on either side of Hawke’s prone body, and began to scream at her only flesh and blood, words tumbling over each other as they were torn from her throat.
She had no idea what she was saying, only that she hurt more than she had ever hurt before in her life.
And it was his fault. This brother she’d spent years of her life searching for.
She raged her pain at him until her throat burned, until the muscles in her body screamed with her.
She didn’t care if he wasn’t himself. Didn’t care if he couldn’t understand her.
All she cared about was that he had hurt this male.
This male that she also was beginning to love. This male who she’d felt an instant connection with. This male who had somehow crawled inside of her heart.
Searing pain shot hard and fast down her spine, bending her body at an impossible angle and cutting off her tirade mid-shout.
Her head swam as she felt her bones shifting beneath the muscle.
With an uncontrollable shudder, they cracked, then broke, tearing through her flesh and jerking her body around like a disjointed puppet.
Streaks of fire ripped through her as the skin covering her shoulder blades split and tore.
Turning her head to the side, she watched in horror as a skeletal wing stretched outward from her back.
Holy mother of God. She was shifting.
Everly screamed over and over as her body took over the transition, and when it was finished, she stood over a prone body, sucking in a lungful of cool, night air. Lowering her nose, she breathed in the male’s scent.
Instinct made her step carefully so as not to crush the motionless form below her as she kept a careful eye on the other dragon. There was a sense of kinship to it, but it was quickly overridden by the recognition of a threat and a driving need to protect the male beneath her.
Spreading her wings wide, she prepared to defend her injured mate.
Hawke drifted in and out of a foggy sense of awareness. Or perhaps he was chasing the oblivion of death, and this was his mind’s last hoorah.
But he couldn’t be dying. Because only being alive hurt this fucking much.
The screech of a dragon above him jostled his consciousness.
Everly. Where the fuck was Everly?
Fighting the darkness that threatened to consume him, he pried his dry eyes open with sheer force of will.
His back, from his neck to his thighs, screamed in agony.
When he tried to sit up, he found he was stuck to the grass gripped in his fists.
Gearing up to try again, he inhaled, and smelled the coppery scent of blood.
His blood, if he were to take a guess. His body, with its advanced healing, was reacting to the inflammation already happening by sending fluids to the burned area, which in turn were leaking all over the ground below him.
Another shriek sounded, this time directly above him.
He recognized her voice at once. Forcing his eyes open wider, he searched the sky above him for some sign of what was happening.
Only there was something wrong. Instead of a blanket of stars, he found himself staring at a pattern of milky white scales tinged with red on the edges.
The scales shifted, sliding in and out of each other, and the ground trembled beside him.
Letting his head fall to the side, he followed the pattern down to a large, clawed foot.
Same on the other side. Following the sea of colorful scales down the length of his body, he found they darkened as they neared the tail.
His mind, hazy in its efforts to protect him from his physical trauma, slowly grasped that this wasn’t the dragon Parasupe had captured.
This was Everly.
She had shifted and was now standing over him like a predator protecting its hard-won meal. It was a situation he rarely, if ever, had found himself in before, normally being the one at the top of the food chain.
He needed to move, before he was stomped on.
Or worse, covered in fire ants. One of the “perks” of living in Texas—even the ants tried to eat you.
Hawke clenched his jaw to keep from making any noise as he tightened his abs and tore his raw back from the grass, rolling over onto his stomach.
He didn’t know if shifting would affect her hearing loss or not, but he also had a good guess as to who she was protecting her meal from.
However, he underestimated what was left of his own strength and bumped into one of the talons. Instinctively, he froze.
Everly’s large head swooped down. She huffed out a breath and then tilted it to the side to stare at him with one silvery eye. Recognition shimmered within it, and she sniffed his hair, inhaling deeply. Then she stepped forward, a low growl rumbling down the length of her throat above him.
She wasn’t going to eat him. At least for now. She was protecting him. From her brother.
Fear shot through him. But not for himself this time.
This time it was for her. Whether she planned to roast and eat him when this was all over was a moot point right now.
This was her first shift, and she was going head to head with a dragon who couldn’t be in his right mind, who had just tried to flambé them both. Sister or not.
Another explosion took out more of the building behind them and sent flames shooting into the air, lighting the area as bright as midday.
Raindrops began to drip here and there from the sky, sizzling as they hit the fires.
Taking advantage of the distraction, Everly advanced on her brother, leaving Hawke lying in the grass behind her.
He took a steadying breath, then he gathered his arms and legs beneath him and pushed himself up onto all fours.
The edges of his burned clothes tore at his inflamed skin and raw muscle.
He felt the pain that rippled down his spine, and yet it didn’t feel like pain at all, and he thanked the gods for destroyed nerve endings.
Though he knew it was gonna hurt like a bitch when they started to grow back.
He stayed as he was for a few seconds. When he thought he could handle it, he pushed himself to his feet. The rain and cool night air felt good on his heated skin. He wasn’t worried about infection, but he would need to feed if he was going to survive this. And soon.
Injured and weak, his first instinct was to get the hell out of there, but he couldn’t leave Everly. She was young and inexperienced in her new form. There was no way she was going to win this fight. He needed to help her.
Before he could figure out exactly how he was going to do that, she spread her wings wide and flew up through the smoky air.
With a glance at Hawke, Matthew followed her.
Like a phoenix rising with her dark, red scales and majestic form, she went right for her brother, talons at the ready.
They collided mid-air, the force of her charge sending them rolling over each other until they went crashing to the ground on the other side of the burning building.
A shriek of rage preceded a fountain of fire that rose straight up from the ground.
Everly appeared high in the air. Tucking her wings, she swooped low, circling around Hawke, one eye fixed on him, before she again charged her brother who had joined her in the sky. They collided again, only this time she caught him in her talons and hung on.
She flapped her wings, dragging him up into the sky, rising higher and higher until they disappeared from sight.
Hawke wiped rain from his face and made his way over to the shelter of the nearest building, only one story but it had a bit of a ledge around the roofline, enough to provide him some cover.
Pulling his cell phone from his pocket, he wasn’t surprised to see the screen cracked and the cover melted through to the battery.
With a curse, he threw it to the ground.
He needed Kohl. But he had no idea what would happen if there were three dragons all fighting for dominance. Or if he would know enough not to hurt Everly. As far as Hawke knew, Kohl had never been around another dragon before while shifted, so there was no way to know.
A flash of lightning had him lifting his eyes to the sky, where the two dragons, necks and wings tangled, came spiraling down toward the ground.
Hawke watched in horror as Everly crashed down hard, her brother atop her.
The back of her head bounced off the ground and rolled on her neck.
Her beautiful silver eyes blinked a few times, then slid closed.
She didn’t move as Matthew wriggled around, and his heart stilled in his chest. For a moment, he couldn’t move.
But then he saw her chest rise and fall with breath as Matthew freed his wing and rose off her.
Hawke looked around for a weapon. The burning building caught his eye, and although he really didn’t want to go anywhere near any kind of flame ever again in his life, he kept one eye on the dragons as he limped over, looking for a brick, a piece of broken furniture, anything he could use.
A large piece of what looked to be a desk or table that had been flung from the debris caught his eye, and he snapped off one of the legs.
Turning, he found himself pinned to the spot by Matthew’s hateful glare. Hawke froze, makeshift weapon at the ready, in case he charged.
Everly stirred, drawing her brother’s attention. Seeing him there, she quickly struggled to her feet, using the tips of her wings to help her, and the fight was on.
Only someone completely out of their mind would get in the middle of a battle between two beasts nearly the size of a two-story building, but Hawke couldn’t just stand there and allow Everly to take on the weight of what she was trying to do.
And there was no fucking way in hell he was gonna stand there and watch her get killed.
So he waited, biding his time until the right moment.
With a smooth twist of her body, she ducked her head and came back up and around, clamping down on her brother’s neck. She gave it a vicious shake, but he tore free, and they both took a few steps back, eyeing each other for the next attack.
Hawke dug down deep for the courage he would need for what he was about to do.
Hefting the table leg like a spear, shivering violently from the wind and rain blowing against his burns, he saw his chance and ran straight toward the dragons.
His muscles screamed. His vision went in and out.
But he kept going, teeth clenched, fangs bared in agony and determination.
The dragon dropped its gaze from Everly and raised its head when it noticed him coming, then stepped away from her, turning to face this new threat.
Hawke didn’t slow down, didn’t give himself time to think.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Everly finally notice the crazy vampire running toward them.
He knew he was taking a risk. He may have totally misread her earlier behavior.
She might roast him alive as he passed and get back to her dragon match without a second thought.
At least not until she reverted back to her human form.
With one last burst of energy, he pushed himself to go faster. Before either of them could react, he was beneath the male’s head as it took a great inhale, preparing to finish what it had started.
With a scream of rage, Hawke swung his homemade spear up mid-stride, using his body’s momentum to force the tip between the dragon’s scales and straight into its heart.
The dragon staggered backward, large head swinging from side to side as it tried to dislodge the piece of wood.
Hawke fell on his ass. Struggling to get his legs back under him, he tried to keep Everly in his line of vision.
His ankle twisted in a rut in the ground and he fell to his knees, catching himself on his hands.
Black spots clouded his vision. His breath rasped through his lungs. He needed fluids. He needed blood.
He heard the sound of bone crushing bone. He heard Everly cry out, her voice an odd combination of a human scream and a dragon’s screech, but he couldn’t lift his head to see what was happening. Couldn’t get his sorry ass off the ground to help her.
The wet ground rushed up at him, and everything went black.