Chapter 23
Nome, Alaska, Wednesday, February 13, 2013, Morning
It took three days to mobilize enough vampires, Therians, and witches loyal to the Gaia Trianon to attack with any chance of success. The forces would be equally matched…if the good guys didn’t have Ash and Maerlin. With them, the fight would be one-sided. Neither could be everywhere at once, and Ash was terrified of the losses they might suffer. Everyone she loved except Maerlin could be killed. She had no guarantees.
Her parents and Dani insisted on accompanying them but promised to stay in the command tent with the other humans. Uuka and the rest of the Queen’s Guard had vowed to stay with them and provide protection. They were as safe as possible, and Ash had to focus on other matters. She led a group of ten through the streets of Nome, stopping to fight the enemies they found entrenched in each building. Jules had been spotted in the town two days ago, but no one had seen him since. The hyena was her team’s primary target. He couldn’t be allowed to escape again.
The only way Luca and Zia had agreed to lead their own teams was if Viktorija went with Ash. She’d ended up with Niletean, Viktorija, Euan, and six volunteers they’d hand-picked. Ash thought their protectiveness was ridiculous, seeing as she couldn’t die, but she didn’t make an issue of it. If taking them along made her loved ones feel better, it didn’t hurt her and helped them.
Ash’s team cleared their sector of the city one building at a time, finding enemies in every single one. Ash supposed that made sense. Most of the vampires Maksim would have been able to call would be night-bound, and they’d intentionally attacked during the day to catch their enemy at their weakest. She found no trace of Jules until they turned a corner and found him standing in a debris-strewn yard.
Jules didn’t look like any Therian she’d ever seen. He looked dazed, and the right side of his body was weighed down by a massive, misshapen arm. His skin had a gray pallor, and abnormal growths distorted the lines of his body. He spouted tufts of fur or patches of black and violet scales in several places. He looked half dead already to Ash. He watched them with a desperate look in his muddy red eyes and stumbled forward, mumbling something none of them could understand around his swollen tongue as black ichor oozed from his mouth and eyes.
After a long lifetime avoiding death, Jules wanted nothing more than to die. He’d long since lost the ability to speak, and his mind was too fragmented for telepathy, so he couldn’t even make his plea. Maybe if he attacked, they would end his misery. The horrible fate Maksim had cursed him with was worse than anything he could imagine, not having grown accustomed to suffering despite the vast amount of it he’d caused.
He took another lurching step forward, his distorted body beginning to glow with a strange violet light beneath his skin. Jules bit hard on his swollen tongue, severing it and freeing the space for the purple flames that burst from his mouth. The flames stuck to everything they touched, melting it into a formless goo. Ash reacted in a split second and threw up a golden shield, but two of the stragglers at the back of the group—a vampire and Therian she’d only just met—were caught in the blaze and suffered a horrific death. Viktorija chanced a look behind her and wanted to vomit. The charred remains of their compatriots littered the ground, and the smell choked the air with its awful truth. Viktorija turned to Ash, whose copper eyes were blazing brighter than she’d ever seen.
“It’s time for this asshole to die. I don’t want to lose one more fucking person today,” Ash growled.
Viktorija nodded and they took off toward Jules, running in synch. He was glowing with the sick violet light again and seemed to be preparing to spit another gout of flames. Jules opened his mouth to attack and Ash grabbed Viktorija and teleported them out of the path of destruction. Coming at him from a new angle, Ash threw her foot out in a spinning kick, catching Jules with a vicious high kick to the underside of his jaw.
His teeth snapped together, cutting off the flames. The unexpected hit forced him to swallow the fire, and his body began to glow from within as it swelled.
Viktorija didn’t have time to think about it. She wanted to run but didn’t even get turned entirely around before Jules exploded like a giant man-sized water balloon with a sickening wet sound. The dragoness was covered from head to toe in the Therian’s entrails.
She heard a gasp and turned around slowly to find Ash and the others covered in nothing more than the blood they’d worn when they started the fight as her golden shield protected them.
“You fucking bitch,” she accused, pointing from the disgusting mess she was drenched in to Ash’s clean body.
“I’m so sorry!” Ash cried. “I wasn’t trying to be funny. You were too close to him to include in the shield without blasting us.”
Viktorija threw up her hands, sending several wet chunks of something flinging in Ash’s direction, though they bounced off the shield and slid to the ground with a nasty-sounding plop. The absurdity of the situation struck her, and she laughed. “This is not what I meant when I said I’d be covered in jewels. Oh, it’s so gross. Can you do something to help me out here?”
Ash waved her hand, siphoning the mess away from her skin and clothes until Viktorija was as clean as she could hope to be in the middle of an extended battle. “You good?”
Viktorija nodded. “Thanks. That was disgusting.”
“Anytime,” Ash said. “Okay, people, one of the big bads down, one demon spawn from hell to go.”
“I’ve just gotten a report from the other teams. The majority of the resistance forces have been taken out,” Niletean said. “Attacking during the day was a genius move.”
Ash smiled grimly. “What our morally challenged foe lacks in strategic abilities, he makes up for in batshit crazy zealotry. Cover me for a few minutes? I’m going to slip into his head and ring the dinner bell. This needs to end, and we all know I’m the thing that will draw him out of hiding.”
They formed a protective circle around Ash, who stretched her mind out, searching for Maksim. She found his unique energy to the north, and when she entered his mind, she found him destroying a set of monitors displaying camera feeds.
Aw, poor Maksim. Your plans never seem to work out, do they?
He spun, expecting to see her standing behind him.
Try again, buddy. I’m in your head. You can’t escape me. You did all this to get me out in the open, Maksim, and I’m here now. Why don’t you come out and play so we can settle this once and for all?
I’ll kill you! He roared in rage.
Ash snorted impatiently. Sitting here waiting for you, bud.
Before Maksim pushed her out of his head, Ash got an image of the command tent. The connection worked both ways. When she opened her eyes, she smiled. “I have to go, guys. He’s heading for the command tent, and I need to be there to stop him.” Ash didn’t wait for the discussion about why it was a bad idea to go into the battle alone.
Maksim stomped from the cabin and burst into his dragon shape, then launched into the air and flew south to meet his fate. She’d humiliated him time and time again. He wanted to rip her limb from limb, savoring the taste of her blood as he destroyed everything she cared about. He hurtled across the miles separating him from his enemy and arrived in minutes to find Ash standing between him and the vulnerable humans he’d kill to hurt her.
He bellowed with rage and sent black flames at her. Ash conjured her golden shield as a dome around the tent, and it repelled the fire. He spun and sent his razor-sharp projectile spines at her like missiles, but they hit the shield and fell to the ground. He couldn’t touch her, let alone the humans she protected.
What are you?he roared into her mind.
Your death,Ash calmly answered.
Maksim reared for another attack, not expecting Ash to go on the offensive. She lashed out with a whip made from a tendril of golden light, wrapped it around the base of one wing, and yanked hard. The dragon screamed as she severed the wing, and he crashed to the ground.
How?His frustration was evident in every syllable. You’re so small and not even a dragon. How can you stand against me?
You’d respect me if I were a dragon?
Ash left the golden shield in place, glittering in the sunlight, and the slim blonde woman stomped onto the battlefield. Before she’d taken ten steps, she was an enormous gold dragon that weighed seventy tons.
It doesn’t matter what shape I wear. I’ll kick your ass. You’re going to die today, Maksim. Nadya’s evil will die with you.
How dare you speak her name!
He lunged for her, unable to fly with only one wing but still deadly on the ground. Ash wasn’t used to the dragon’s body and, unlike the Therians, had no animal instincts to guide her. Maksim raked his wicked claws down her side, digging into her scales and slicing into the tender flesh beneath. She wrenched away, but not before he caught her tail in his jaws and bit, eliciting a bellow of agony.
Clenching her jaws against the pain, Ash used the strength of his hold and her mass to fling Maksim away. She needed distance for what she wanted to do. She could bring magic into existence with her imagination, and she had a brilliant idea for how to end this.
Maksim was thrown off balance and rolled down a hill after Ash threw him. When he rose to climb back toward the battle, the golden dragon raised her wings and gathered energy. Her body glowed and shifted colors like light flowing through a prism. She let the power build, and when Maksim was fifty yards downhill, she released it. A thousand streams of light shot from her wings and coalesced into a thick white beam that struck Maksim dead center in the chest.
He froze, unable to move, and the pain registered. The prismatic beam cut through the dragon’s scales, flesh, and bones to expose the shriveled black heart that beat in his chest. Ash exhaled golden flames, burning that heart to dust.
Maksim collapsed, dead, but Ash spotted black mist and ichor streaming away from the dragon’s body with an intent she could only call sentient. Her instincts told her the dark magic that had powered Maksim’s abilities was seeking a new host, and her humans were the closest targets.
Not today, Ash thought. She launched high into the air and lined up over the valley where they’d fought. Then she dove, spinning to send out a wave of pearlescent mist that covered the ground for miles. When she stopped spinning and surveyed her work. The land sparkled, and the darkness was gone, for now.
Ash landed to ensure that the dark magic would find no shadows to seep into and watched as it dissipated. Then she relaxed. The battle was finally over.
I know this is horrible timing, but can I just say that was the sexiest thing I have ever seen?Luca sent through their mating bond. Your dragon is beautiful, Ash.
Ash sent love, amusement, and a mental image of the SpongeBob imagination meme.
Gods, I love you, woman. Let’s go home.