Chapter 31
“Welcome to my home,” Tadhg said, lifting his arms and spreading them wide, as though to hug me or present something he thought impressive.
He certainly didn’t want to hug me, but I imagined he did think his monstrous machine to be quite amazing.
Me? I still didn’t even know what its purpose was, other than maybe to drain dragons of their energy so that he could use it.
Were the cells all connected somehow, instead of just separate pieces that drained their inhabitants?
The whole idea of the cells alone felt ridiculous.
Was this whole awful thing just so he could avoid ever being tired?
The woman had said that the “great dragon” never slept.
It seemed like a ridiculous reason to kidnap and imprison people, but sometimes, I was too optimistic.
Sometimes, I forgot that there were people in the world who would kill strangers if they thought it would earn them a dollar or get them their triple red-eye any faster.
Lives of other people were meaningless to them; only what they wanted mattered.
And my grandfather was one of those people.
Well, one of my grandfathers was. The other one was currently cutting a swathe through the upstairs toy soldiers so that I could do this.
Because he believed I could do this.
Besides, Caspian was a better kind of grandfather than Tadhg.
He had chosen my mother, and she in turn had chosen him.
They weren’t related by an accident of blood and continued to associate because it was “the done thing.” They continued to choose and support each other, even when things were difficult, because they cared. Not because they thought they had to.
Tadhg was just some rich bastard who thought the whole universe was beneath him, including his own family.
So I turned and faced my shitty grandfather, hands on my hips, and scowled at him. “Your home leaves something to be desired. I’d say no offense, but I definitely intend offense. All the offense.”
One of the guards who’d been fighting Twist and Davin rushed past me to his side, and Tadhg smiled at the man, then wrapped his hand around the back of the guy’s neck. A second later, the camouflaged guy was dropping to the ground, looking like . . . like an empty husk.
Not like when my father or Sexton had been drained of energy.
Like he was dead and his body had withered away over decades in the sun.
Part of me was surprised he didn’t crack and scatter into a million pieces when he hit the hard floor.
There was a thud, though, and then nothing at all. He was not breathing.
And my grandfather just kept smiling at me.
I froze in the face of it.
Of the absolute inhumanity of him.
Yes, he wasn’t human, but that wasn’t the point.
The point was giving a damn about people other than yourself.
The point was that humans and vampires and dragons were all just different sides of the same dice.
We had far more in common than we had different from each other.
And he didn’t care about any of that. Anyone but himself.
Davin stepped in next to me, taking a deep breath and looking at Tadhg like he was something stuck on the bottom of his shoe.
That . . . that was important.
Yes.
I sucked in a breath, and only then realized I hadn’t been breathing. I’d just stood there and watched my grandfather murder his own lackey, like he was brushing lint off his nice suit.
“Don’t touch him,” I whispered to Davin, even though I was sure everyone in the room heard me. I didn’t care. I didn’t want Tadhg to have the opportunity to—
The evil bastard laughed, showing off two rows of bright white teeth that seemed somehow like more than that.
Like the rows of teeth in a shark’s mouth.
“Just like your pitiful father, aren’t you?
” he asked me. “Trying to protect lesser creatures. Humans and cats and”—he paused and looked me over—“half dragons.”
I scoffed at him. “That crap isn’t going to work on me. Half dragons aren’t a thing. My mother being who she is makes me more than you, not less, and I’d bet money that your mother was as human as mine. Well. More human, really.”
His eyes narrowed, and suddenly, the bared teeth were less creepy smile and more snarl. “You think being related to a dead thing makes you special?”
“I think being the child of a person who would burn the world for my safety makes me special. It made me understand my worth. The worth of every person. A lesson you’ve somehow missed in centuries, maybe even millennia of life.
” I took a step toward him, and Davin did too, trying to wedge his body between me and my grandfather.
Tadhg rolled his eyes, and his nose scrunched like he was at a fancy restaurant and he’d just found a fly in his soup. Maybe in a minute he’d clutch some pearls. “And apparently, it’s made you associate with other, near-dead things.”
Davin, unimpressed, snarled at him, and for the first time ever, I could see those iconic, expected vampire canines in his mouth. It was kinda sexy.
Maybe I just needed to accept that every single thing Davin did was sexy.
But I didn’t have time to be distracted by that.
I had to gather my crumbling brain into a lump that resembled functionality and figure out how to handle my grandfather without shifting. Fire wasn’t going to do it, since dragons were immune to fire. Besides that, there was . . . had Caspian managed to ward Davin like he’d said he would?
Shit, I didn’t know.
So of course, that was when my grandfather opened his mouth and belched a gout of flames.
Both of us jerked away, because you try ignoring a lifetime of instinct that fire was bad and to be avoided.
I looked to Davin, who looked . . . annoyed. Thank fuck. He glared up at Tadhg. “You burned my favorite jacket, you absolute arsehole.”
He lunged forward, balling up his fist and planting it in Tadhg’s belly. The dragon hunched a bit, clearly affected by the force of the blow—understandable, since I’d seen Davin lay vampires out with a single punch.
But then, Tadhg drew himself back up and stepped forward, using both hands to shove Davin back, and my boyfriend went fucking flying.
I spun to see as he crashed into the stone wall next to the door where we’d entered the room, then slumped to the floor. Still breathing, I assured myself. Tadhg hadn’t touched his skin or drained him. He’d just . . . fuck, he was strong.
Twist joined us then, dropping a gun from her mouth, apparently a trophy she’d brought back from one of the fake soldiers she’d hunted down. “There are dozens of dragons in these cages, Father. Rows of them.”
Tadhg grinned at her. “You mean my lovely machine?” he asked. No, not quite asked. Wheezed, while holding his gut.
Apparently Davin had hurt him more than had been immediately apparent.
He backed up two paces, and I thought maybe he was thinking about running away. That was good. If he ran away, I could go check on Davin. That was more important than—
He reached the end of the first cells, a stone divider between them, and reached up to brush his fingers across a panel there.
Two buttons.
One red, one black.
He grinned at me, as he slammed his hand down on the red button.
Then he turned to the woman in the cage.
The one who’d set off the alarm. “Betraying my grandson to me, Shella, really. Unforgivable. Even if I’m going to kill him myself, you had no right.
Every member of the line of Tadhg is more important than any of you pathetic wishful lizards. ”
Inside the cell, the woman screamed and . . . fuck. Fuck me. It was the same as the human he’d drained of life with his bare hands a moment earlier, but somehow even worse. She trembled and collapsed and then, after a moment, literally fell into dust.
When Twist threw herself at him a second later, I almost screamed, terrified for my kitten. A thought proven valid when he hit her so hard I heard ribs snapping, even though she’d latched onto his wrist and sunk her teeth in deep.
When he hit her again, she let go with a yowl and snapped her teeth at him again. But she did fall back next to me. Twist was injured. My Twist.
Tadhg looked at the panel across from him—the one that would allow him to do the same thing to the man we’d been talking to, and I realized . . . he was considering it.
He wasn’t clutching his belly anymore. Stealing the woman’s entire life force had healed the damage Davin had done, and then Twist had done more, so he was contemplating another murder.
Twist seemed to realize this as well, as she stepped forward, a low growl in her throat, and her back legs bunched, ready to lunge at him. They leapt at the same time, and she knocked him slightly off course, so he only managed to hit the lower, black button.
I half hoped it was a release mechanism, but I wasn’t naive enough to expect that. No, the man in the cage collapsed just like Sexton had when drained.
One button for murder and one for plain old draining energy.
Without missing a beat, Tadhg fell to the ground, caught himself, and turned to breathe fire at Twist.
She gave a yelp and fell back toward the other end of the hall, limping, one paw held close to her chest.
Tadhg turned back to me, his grin gone wild and near-manic. “I can do this all day. Your beast wasn’t wrong, each cell but two has a dragon in it. Each one, I can drain for healing. For strength. How many other dragons have to die for me to stop you, boy?”