Chapter 12
Avelunne slowed as the corridor widened into the ring-shaped clearing that surrounded the central hub. She could feel Tanner’s presence as he caught up with her.
Tippizoars was already at the lab’s entrance and slapping the door controls with one mid-hand.
They carried the unconscious Sazanel like a sack of grain.
The wide, bluish metal doors opened, but Tanner was faster.
He threw a multifaceted charm that flared bright magic on impact as it shattered against the metal.
A shimmering, translucent barrier sprang up, sealing the entry.
“Give us the child.” Tanner held his sword at the ready, but to her relief, stayed at her side.
Tippizoars spun around, their carapace spattered with blood and gore. “Your attack will fail! You cannot even handle time!” Both heads shrieked with inarticulate rage. “The demesne will recycle you! Surasa will destroy all of you and your portals! My legacy will live on!”
Legacy? Avelunne realized with sudden, sick certainty what Tippizoars meant. Repeated rants she’d endured, the surprise upcoming visit from the long-absent Surasa, the special shifter children…
“You have become defective.” Avelunne added as much sneering contempt to her tone as she could. “Surasa wouldn’t bother with a routine delivery unless she was coming to replace you.”
“No! We are fully functional!” Tippizoars’ left head shouted as they backed against the shimmering barrier. Saliva dripped from the insectoid mandibles. “We have served for thousands of years. We are the apex!”
“You cannot stop her,” Avelunne pressed, gambling everything on Tippizoars’ fear of Surasa and erasure. “She will destroy the child to teach you a lesson. Then she’ll recycle you.”
“Give us the child, and we’ll leave.” Tanner’s voice had a subliminal bass harmonic.
Tippizoars’ right head snapped sharp teeth at the left head. The right head snapped back, then the mid-arms hurled Sazanel’s body straight at them.
Avelunne dropped the stolen control box and lunged for the girl. The impact almost toppled her, but she held on.
“I am Surasa’s greatest creation! I will live forever!” A bright, blinding flash and a wave of energy buffeted her as Tanner’s barrier charm failed. Tippizoars slammed a claw onto something inside the door.
The air suddenly tasted of copper. Her sense of lightning told her something was coming from above. A blinding white arc of energy, thick as a tree trunk, lashed out toward them.
Avelunne curled around the child, bracing against a surge of electricity and hoping she could deflect it. Pain drowned her as she smelled burning hair.
Suddenly, Tanner gripped her shoulder, and their telepathic link snapped into place.
His focused, iron will anchored her. Your lightning, my thunder. Like we practiced.
She opened herself up to the power — the arc, his, and theirs. Together, they channeled the lethal surge, the moonwing’s conductivity merging with the thunderbird’s capacity to rumble the sky.
The invisible armor charm on her ankle overloaded and burned out in a scald of heat. Avelunne endured the pain and clutched the girl tighter to keep her behind the killing field.
Tanner took her energy and transmuted it into a sonic wave directed at Tippizoars. The blast hit squarely in their thorax. The lightning power froze them into place, blackening the carapace and exploding the embedded protection charms. The sonic power vibrated the body, the doorway, and the walls.
Tippizoars exploded in a loathsome shower of black ichor and chitin. A charred scorpion tail spun out of the mist, the barb embedding itself in the floor inches from Avelunne’s foot.
The floor around the remaining husk of Tippizoars’ body looked like a forest fire aftermath. The walls hissed and bubbled where blood splatter landed.
Avelunne closed her eyes and listened through the ringing in her ears and past her own frantic heartbeat and Tanner’s stronger one. Relief washed over her when she detected the faint but steady rhythm from the child in her arms.
“Sazanel lives.” Telepathy with him felt clearer than before.
“As do we.” His presence was steady and warm inside her mind. “Let’s keep it that way.”
Erratic magic energy was coming in waves from the tunnels and creating winds in the burned clearing. Probably not a good omen. “I’ll carry Sazanel. You need your sword free.”
He frowned toward the scorched and smoking ceiling where exposed metal poked out. “I don’t like the sound of that. Can you run?”
“Yes. If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s running.” She lifted Sazanel’s slender form up over her shoulder and held onto the child’s legs.
When Tanner took his hand off her shoulder, she was astonished to realize their telepathic connection was still there, though not as clear.
Avelunne adjusted her grip on Sazanel’s legs and ran. The floor felt spongy, sucking at her bare feet with every step, while magical gusts felt like sandpaper on her skin. The air smelled diseased, clogging her throat with each breath.
The corridor seemed a lot longer than before.
But she’d been fueled by anger and vengeance on the way in.
Now all she had was fear for herself, for the girl, and for Tanner.
She had never been a killer, but a pervading scent of overcooked lizard gave her soul-deep satisfaction.
She would treasure the memory of Tippizoars’ destruction.
If she survived this, she would paint it in vibrant, violent colors that never existed in the demesne.
She would tell the other captives exactly how their tormentors died.
“Tippizoars needed killing.” Tanner’s telepathic words told her she must have been broadcasting.
“Yes, they did.” She leapt over a pulsating lump in the floor.
The wide corridor intersection where Tanner had held the line against the horde was even more ghastly than when they’d left it.
The demesne’s flesh was trying to absorb the corpses of the keepers and necros, but the magic was failing.
Limbs, heads, and bodies were only partially swallowed, creating a horrific tableau.
Two surviving necros skittered out of the shadows.
Instead of attacking, they turned and fled into another darkened corridor.
From behind them, she heard gruesome noises that sounded like wet bones snapping and tortured metal rending. The floor shuddered violently beneath their feet.
“I think the hub is collapsing.” Tanner’s calm voice in her head was her lifeline in the chaos.
The wide intersection area in front of them began to tear apart. The flesh-like material lost its elasticity, cracking like a too-wet bowl in a kiln. Black ichor bubbled up from the tears in the floor and oozed from the wounds in the walls.
“Stay out of the black gore,” she warned Tanner. “It’ll eat your skin.”
Avelunne leaped from the corridor entrance to a stable patch of gray, dodging the widening pools of caustic fluid.
Tanner did likewise. The child was an awkward weight on her shoulder, but Avelunne refused to slow down.
Dragons didn’t like to lose their hoard.
They jumped from patch to patch to get to the exit corridor.
Grateful for the more stable corridor floor, she turned to glance at Tanner.
The world tilted. A violent tremor knocked them sideways, and suddenly, up was sideways.
Gravity twisted with a nauseating lurch.
The wall became the floor. Avelunne slammed onto the new surface, breathless, shielding Sazanel’s head with her hand.
Tanner landed in a crouch beside her, his sword scraping against the softer surface.
He rose, hauling Sazanel up with one hand, then helped Avelunne stand. She took the child again, switching shoulders.
“Let’s move.” He tramped forward, and she followed.
The air pressure felt thinner, less oppressive. The heavy blanket of the demesne’s suppression magic was fraying.
“The stay-human force-change rules are failing.” Avelunne was glad there was still enough magic to help their telepathy. “I think I could shift if I had to.”
“You’re right,” Tanner replied. “But we have to stay smaller than the corridors, or we’ll get stuck. I can access my thunderbird magic without calling him. Can you do that?”
“Yes.” For twelve years, she had buried her dragon magic deep, knowing that revealing her access to it would only have earned her a quicker death.
His question reminded her that she didn’t have to hide anymore.
She let her dragon’s endurance give strength to her human muscles.
Her legs found new speed. The exit was ahead.
She could feel the difference in the quality of the air.
She tightened her hold on the child and ran toward the promise of freedom.
Her lungs burned like she’d inhaled glass.
Twelve years of deprivation had left a debt her body couldn’t pay right then, despite the seven days of good food and care she’d had in Kotoyeesinay.
She stumbled into the cavernous space where Zephyr’s portal should have been, her vision blurring at the edges.
High above them, the vaulted fleshy ceiling tore open.
Four massive, swirling vortices appeared, glowing with aggressive fairy magic.
Avelunne flinched, terror clawing her heart. “Surasa.” The dark elf had come to reclaim her property.
“No. It’s the cavalry.” Tanner’s mental voice cut through her panic, sharp and sure. “Look.”
She blinked, expecting soldiers on horseback once the portals solidified.
Instead, she saw a black and gold chariot fly by itself out of the largest of them.
A bald, furious figure wielded a spear of glowing alfar.
“That’s Rorabek.” Amusement flickered briefly through his thoughts. “He’s leading the full-scale invasion.”
The demesne’s floors and walls convulsed as its automagic defenses fought back against the invaders.
Magic exploded in blinding, painful bursts that hammered against Avelunne’s skull.
Ahead, the portal Zephyr had created was flickering.
Frost crept rapidly inward from its edges, radiating a shocking, unnatural cold.
The portal shuddered. The ice melted into steam for a long moment, then grew back thicker than before. Their freedom was sealing shut.
“I can power the portal.” Avelunne shoved the words past her dry throat.
She stopped and slid Sazanel from her aching shoulder and handed her to Tanner, who took her and easily propped her over his shoulder while keeping his sword arm free.
Avelunne pointed to the portal. “The moment it’s clear, take her and go through. ”
Tanner’s mesmerizing, gold-flecked eyes locked onto hers. “What about you?”
“Right behind you.” She slammed up a mental wall, shielding her roiling emotions from him.
If this was the end, she wouldn’t die with a lie of omission on her conscience.
“You should know that I am deeply attracted to you. I never cared about the moonwing curse to never know a true mate until I met you.”
Gathering her magic, she put her hands on the frozen edge of the portal and unleashed everything she had.
Blue-white energy surged from her hands.
The ice shattered in a violent explosion of sleet.
Tanner shouted something, his face twisted in urgency, but the roaring wind snatched his words away.
He stepped through the swirling vortex and vanished.
Avelunne dropped to her knees. She felt stretched beyond her limit. Her body felt like every muscle was torn. She hated pain. But she’d lived through pain before, and by all the moon gods in the universe, she refused to die in the demon-spawn demesne and let it recycle her.
She crawled toward the portal. Frost was already creeping back, jagged teeth of ice trying to span the opening. She forced herself to stand. She stumbled forward and fell through the light and the bitter, biting cold.
She landed hard on a snowy field and bounced, landing on her back.
The impact knocked the wind out of her. She lay there, staring up at a gray sky with no portal in sight.
The cold chilled her naked skin and seeped into her joints, but it was ordinary mountain cold brought by ordinary winter wind.
Maybe she could shift and wait until the spring thaw to get up.
She had almost told him she loved him. That would have been a mistake.
Tanner deserved a true mate, not a cursed dragon.
A sound cut through the winter breeze. The heavy, multitone hiss of a basilisk somewhere beyond her feet.
It was answered by the ear-splitting screech of a hellfrog, somewhere beyond her head.
To her left, Tanner rumbled with a thunderous oath. “Demon-fucking maggoty hell!”
Rolling over was hard, and she struggled to push herself up to her hands and knees. If she lived through another day, she vowed to remember the curse for the next time two unnatural, unstoppable monsters wanted to kill her.