Chapter 32
That?
That seriously pissed me the fuck off.
“What are you, some kind of pathetic domestic abuser?” I asked him.
“Are you suggesting I’m forcing you to be a monster?
No one can force you to be evil. You choose that yourself.
You gave Albert that artifact that aged him and made him smell like he wasn’t even a dragon.
You imprisoned people. You’re the one who’s done all of this. ”
He spun around, taking three steps back to bring himself in front of the next set of cages, then motioned to the people in them.
One was already either unconscious or asleep, and the other was hunched in the back of their cell, clutching a pillow and cowering, clearly terrified.
“Why don’t you ask them if they want your help?
If they want you to continue on, even if it causes their deaths. ”
The person holding a pillow, a woman, frowned at that, then turned to meet my eye. “Do it,” she said, her voice hoarse and dry. “Anything to stop him. All our lives.”
Tadhg bared his teeth at her, turned and rushed at the buttons on her panel. Twist interrupted him at the last minute, and he barely had a chance to tap the black button before she was on him.
This time, he grew fangs and claws, raking them down her side. All I could do was picture my tiny innocent two-pound kitten being injured, and I rushed forward, claws growing on my own hands.
But no, claws weren’t what was going to stop him.
I didn’t need those. I had a fucking spear, didn’t I?
And maybe we’d believed that the spear was more about a concept than an actual weapon, but that didn’t have to be the case. So I remembered that moment when the raven had given it to me, and the feel of it in my hands.
And there it was.
Like I’d been wielding a spear my whole life, I thrust it between Tadhg and Twist, without so much as scratching her.
Him, I was pretty sure I scratched. At the very least, his fancy suit would never be the same. He broke away from her as he fell on his ass, and she retreated a few more paces, limping and bleeding now.
“You stay the fuck away from my cat,” I told him. “You and yours have hurt her enough. Your fucking asshole son hit her with his car already.”
Tadhg gave me that manic crazed smile again, and motioned to the next cell back.
“Oh no. My asshole son has been right here for the last thirty years. Him and the pathetic weak one. The only one out there in the world has been the useful one.” He pressed up to his feet, giving a lunge toward Twist that actually made her fall back again, then motioned to both sides of the cells next to himself.
The third set of cells from the door.
Was this where he’d kept my father for most of my life?
But no.
Both cells were still occupied.
“I thought they would like to spend their last days together. Terribly kind of me, don’t you think?”
He was inching toward the panels that would allow him to murder the people in this third set of cells, when I truly got a look at those people. On the right, a ragged man with long light brown hair and watery blue eyes, looking as exhausted and frightened as the woman in the previous cell.
On the left, was Sexton.
I rushed him, and while he tried to get to the panels before me, I was younger, and faster, and frankly, hadn’t been jumped by both a vampire and a giant panther-creature already. I got there first and turned to face him.
Then, I spun the spear so it was facing him as well, and he backed away, his hands in the air.
He still had his claws out, and his mouth was now full of sharp pointy teeth rather than flat human ones.
Scales even rippled across his skin. Not the red-orange-gold shades that mine had been when I’d shifted, but pure coal black ones.
It reminded me of how Arthur had said he could see auras. I wondered if Tadhg’s aura would be as black as his soul and scales. If that color had something to do with his behavior.
No, that was my unconscious biases talking, since Twist was entirely black, and she was one of the purest souls I had ever met.
“You’re not getting anything out of this,” I told Tadhg.
He snorted, dismissive and not interested in actually talking to me.
“You’ll fail, and I’ll go back to work. Do you truly think you’re going to stop me?
I’ve been doing this for hundreds of years, and no one has even tried yet.
I will finish my machine. You’ve just set me back a bit, since I had to kill Shella, and I’ve lost your idiotic father. I’ll kill you, and I’ll get him back.”
Behind him, back at the entrance to the room, since we’d switched positions, Davin was moving. He’d gotten down on all fours, and he was rubbing the back of his head, but he was okay.
What was more, as I watched, he turned his head up to glare at Tadhg.
Oh yes. This was good.
This was very good.
I just needed my grandfather to not notice that Davin was coming for him.
“Good luck with that,” I said, injecting as much scorn into my voice as I could.
I thought I did pretty well, copying Sexton and my mother.
Speaking of whom . . . “My mother is going to keep him locked up in her house from now till the end of his life. He’s never getting out without a dozen bodyguards again.
And you might be overconfident about what dragons can do, but a dozen vampires?
Or even a dozen humans? They’ll fuck your shit up.
Mother actually hires trained people, unlike you.
And then? My mother will burn your life down.
People keep telling me she fucked Rome up, so why not? ”
He turned his nose up. “Just those pathetic fellows involved in her sad little war. They were right anyway. What man leaves a kingdom to daughters? That can’t be allowed to stand. They were right to take it away and kill the lot.”
I still had no idea what the fuck he was talking about, but I raised an eyebrow at him. “Spoken like a jackass who’s never really known a woman in his life. Which is even more sad considering how old you are.”
He wasn’t too interested in me explaining how women were actually fucking badass, but it didn’t matter.
He would never have my mother, who truly would burn the world for the people she loved.
He would never have a Blair, with all her gaudy glitter-pink accessories and killer instinct when it came to the people and city she loved.
He would never have an Amelia, who brewed the best tea in the world and could also destroy awful artifacts.
He would never even have a Mei, sitting quietly in her gilded penthouse apartment, calling him a dumpling and explaining how death is a betrayal.
“That reminds me,” I said, suddenly chipper as I thought of Amelia and the ring, carefully not watching Davin stand and creep toward him from behind. “I gave your shitty artifact to a friend of mine, and she destroyed it. So no more invading people’s minds for you and your minions.”
His eyes narrowed and I could hear the tips of his teeth grind together.
It was an odd noise, high and screechy, unlike the deep sound of the usual human molars and their huge flat surfaces grinding.
“That’s well enough,” he said, even though he was clearly not happy about it.
“It was a dangerous thing. As you said, look what it did to your uncle when he got addicted to its power.”
Ah. Well, that explained that.
Suddenly, Tadhg froze, his eyes narrowing, and he turned his head, and started to follow with his whole body.
I couldn’t . . . he’d already hurt Davin and Twist, and I couldn’t let it happen anymore. No more. I lunged forward, spear held tight in both hands.
He didn’t even turn toward me, so focused was he on the fact that Davin had been sneaking up on him, and the spear point sliced through his chest like a hot knife through butter.
Straight in, with just a shove to get past his breastbone, through the center of him and right out the back. Every second of it felt . . . it felt.
The slight resistance of his body. The squish of things cutting and breaking and tearing, then the slide of blood from the edges of the wound.
Tadhg turned back toward me, astonishment on his face.
He hadn’t actually expected me to stab him.
Fair enough.
I’d practically let him murder the beings I cared about most in the world because I didn’t want to fight, but . . . I wasn’t going to actually do that. They were mine, Davin and Twist, and it was better for me to feel like a monster about one death than to lose them forever.
Never one for the underkill, Davin shoved up behind Tadhg and . . . sunk his huge vamp canines into my grandfather’s neck. Not in that sexy up against the wall vampire bite way, but in a terrifying animalistic “I’m going to rip your throat out” way.
Still sexy, though.
What?
My boyfriend was sexy.
And he did indeed yank his teeth back out through the skin a moment later, pulling out a chunk of flesh with him, and then spitting it against the glass wall of the cell closest to himself, looking utterly disgusted. Also, covered with blood.
Then he stepped away from Tadhg to avoid catching him, or probably, to avoid getting any more blood on himself.
My grandfather started to collapse to the floor, so I let go of the spear a moment before remembering that letting go of it meant it would disappear.
A fountainous gush of blood followed the sudden lack of a spear haft through his chest, almost like one of those hyper-violent movies I’d never liked to watch.
I’d always thought them unrealistic, but it turned out that a still-pumping dragon heart could make blood do super gross things.
It didn’t last long, though. Because it was only a few seconds before my grandfather’s eyes went glassy and empty, while the look of stunned disbelief stayed on his face after all consciousness was gone.
Twist limped up to my side, and leaned some of her weight on my leg, panting heavily.
That was it.
I—we—had done it.
Tadhg was dead.