Chapter 4 #3
It clicked. That’s what he had been referencing– not that I was never paying attention, but his suspicions that someone was opening a Hellmouth.
He had been silently investigating a Gateway to the Underworld that wasn’t supposed to be on Earth at all.
Someone, or something, had told him it no longer existed and therefore, could not be opened.
That’s what he had been… “What the fuck, Lou? Couldn’t you clue me in? Throw me a bone. Leave breadcrumbs for me to follow?”
“I was a little busy.”
“You were a little busy?”
“Yes! I. Was. A. Little. Busy.”
“And I was playing tiddlywinks?”
With a huff of steam and a growl that resonated within my chest, he fumed, “All you had to do was stop being mad at the world, tap into our shared psyche, and I don’t know, maybe help solve the problem, instead of feeling sorry for yourself.”
“Feeling sorry for myself?” I could feel my blood pressure rising and my heart about to pound out of my chest. I was quickly approaching what my Uncle Owen used to call fit to be tied, aka seriously pissed off.
Yes, we had bigger fish to fry– namely the fact that my Mate was trapped behind a wall of nasty Magic, and the Dragon King with whom I’d shared my soul for almost three hundred years was preaching to me about my bad attitude.
“Yes! For the love of the Heavens, do you ever listen? You have been feeling sorry for yourself since the day Fogarty Petersen and his band of merry men sent you Arrhythmia. You have moaned, and bitched, and whined.”
“Oh, hell, no, I have…”
“Oh, hell, yes, you have! And then some! A day has not gone by that you haven’t griped about the fact that we are here and there is nothing either of us could do about it. And the last month has been the worst!”
“It has…”
“Yes! It has! You have been utterly insufferable! You have been a self-centered, pain in the ass. Even your only friend, a Hellhound, I might add, thinks you’re a pain in the ass, and that’s saying something.”
I was speechless– a new condition that was happening way too often, I might add.
His words were a slap to the face, not because he’d infused them with Magic, nope, they were just his words, but because they were the truth– and that sucked.
I had a lot to make for where my Dragon King, and to be honest, pretty much everyone, starting with Hank, was concerned
“But you could have…”
“…told you?” The Dragon King charged. You think I should have simply blurted out that a Hellmouth that wasn’t supposed to be in Arrhythmia is, in fact, here? That our Mate is also here. That she is the one who walked right through the Wards?”
“She’s what?”
“That the insane mixture of your Magic and Fogarty Petersen’s– the Magic powering the same Wards that you and I were charged with protecting– is also running through her veins?
“She’s…? She’s…?”
“That our Mate, the woman made for us by the Universe, is the one who unknowingly unleashed Hell, because she didn’t know what you were here or that her father’s Magic was in the Wards.”
“WAIT!” I roared. “Wait, one Goddess be damned minute!” Not stopping for even a breath, I kept right on bellowing, “The woman made for me by the Universe, my Mate, is not only a fucking Necromancer, but also Fogarty T. Petersen’s daughter?”
“Yes.”
“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Is this where you agree that Fate is a fickle bitch who loves to mess with me, and this is her best gag yet?”
“No, I want to say that OUR Mate is a beautiful woman with a pure heart and soul. She is nothing like her father. As a matter of fact, she hates him.”
“Well, we sure as hell have that in common.”
“Shut up and listen. Bernadette Petersen sees her father for what he is, and she despises him with a passion that rivals yours. She is not, nor has she ever been, a party to his nefarious deeds. On the contrary, she has done everything in her power to fight against him. She is….”
“And part of that is coming to Arrhythmia and opening a Hellmouth because letting out the Denizens of Hell seemed like the right thing to do?”
“No, you, Eegit!’ Lou was pissed.
I had once again gone too far. He was already in love with the fiery redhead the Universe made for us, and he was sure I was going to fuck it up– which, well, would pretty much be par for the course.
Everyone, and I do me ev-ery-one, knew my thoughts on Necromancers, especially the one and only Fogarty T. Petersen.
“Would shut your damn mouth and listen for once in your life? Bernadette is in Arrhythmia, and she opened the Hellmouth to get proof that Fogarty killed her mother. She wants to take him down even more than you do!”
“Oh…”
“Yes, Guy, oh,” Lou spat. “She has lost even more at the hands of Fogarty T. Petersen than you.”
Well, that put everything in a whole new light. It had rocked my world in ways I didn’t know it could be rocked, and that was saying something, considering I was a three-hundred-and-sixteen-year-old Guardsman and shared my soul with a two-thousand-year-old Dragon King.
Dammit all to hell, I was scared. Yes, me, Guy Alexander MacAllen, was scared out of my damn mind.
My Mate, the woman made for me by the Universe, was a Necromancer.
The woman, if I was being completely honest with myself and Lou, I, too, already loved simply because she existed, was not only the type of Supernatural Being I thought I simply hated, but she was the daughter of the man I quite literally despised with every fiber of my being.
“Well, shit, either Fate truly does hate me, or she just loves watching me squirm.”
Lou didn’t answer. Instead, I didn’t even get a warning before he stopped Time and the image of the five redheaded women returned with a clap of Magic that I knew would leave a metaphysical mark on my very real brain.
Knowing those ladies were my Mate and her family made it all too real.
My fists clenched. My heart pounded. Something bad was about to happen, and there was nothing I could do but sit and watch.
No longer smiling, the five women were fighting for their lives against a horde of unseen adversaries who stayed just out of the frame of my mental vision.
The oldest woman faded away, silently evaporating in a wisp of Ether.
It was my Mate’s grandmother. She had passed, but was still very important to Bernadette.
The next woman’s image became translucent, but she still fought.
Moving with the grace and expertise of a true Warrior, my Mate’s mother put herself between the enemy and the other three women, but it wasn’t enough.
Instantly, darkness descended. A spotlight appeared.
The three women, Bernadette, her sister, and her aunt, stood dead center while the transparent image of my Mate’s mother tried with all her might to get to them.
She had been removed from the picture. She was very close to death, but would fight with everything she had left to keep those she held dear safe.
In a flash, the scene changed. My Mate was front and center– and she was mad. No, she was furious. She was looking for her momma, searching, refusing to accept the bullshit stories being spewed by her worthless father.
“That’s my girl. Take no shit. Take no prisoners.”
Throwing her head back, her eyes met mine. The final missing piece of my soul clicked into place. She really was mine, and I was hers, and there was nothing I wanted more than to be by her side.
I suddenly didn’t matter a hill of beans what she was or who she was related to– it only mattered that she was mine.
“He killed her.” Her voice slashed through my mind. “He killed my mother.”
“NO!” I frantically shook my head. “She’s not dead, Sweetheart. We can…”
An unholy roar tore through the web of reality. Bernadette couldn’t hear anything I was saying. It would all have to wait. Not one damned thing was as important as saving my Mate.
"Get ready. We need to be on two legs," Lou snapped.
That was all the warning I got before King Anluan took a nosedive toward the fiery redhead who was putting out enough Magic to light Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro on New Year’s Eve.
Back feet slamming into the hot sand, we were about two hundred feet from Bernadette as Lou flooded every cell of my being with intense and unrelenting Magic.
From several stories high to eleven-and-a-half feet of scale-covered brawn in an instant, I was once again in awe at the sudden transformation the Old Man could perform.
No matter how long I lived or how many times I Shifted, I would always and forever be amazed at the Power of the Universe and the Ancient Dragon King with whom I shared my soul.
The impact of the helmet of the Grand Master of the Knights of Culloden appearing upon the head of Lou’s Warrior Dragon was nothing short of mind-blowing.
Then, a row of thick, stunted battle horns lined the apex of his skull, pushed through the iron rings of the mail coif protecting his skull, split off at the top of his spine, and ran down both his arms.
With the tips curled back into his spine, the Dragon King’s smaller, compact wings became deadly buzzsaw blades.
The long, hooked talons formed toxic teeth lining the edge, ready to spin and twirl as they cut down the enemy.
Claws jutting from his hands and feet were barbed like the end of a fishhook, expressly designed to tear and shred the flesh of our foes.
Opening and closing his snubbed snout, flashing his fangs, I chuckled deviously as Lou let the mythical vapors of Dragonkin flow from his snout.
Then the Dragon King filled the air with uncontained plumes of smoke and ash– a miniature depiction of the monstrous rage boiling within us, and I forced every ounce of my hereditary Mysticism towards the Dragon with whom I shared my soul.
One step forward, and Lou ordered, “Take control, Lad. This is your battle to win. Let’s get your Mate.”
Once again in control, I reveled in the raw power, the utter strength, and the unstoppable feeling of near-omnipotence racing through my body and soul. Taking off at full speed, I sped over the sand, my thoughts consumed with getting to Bernadette before she was lost to the Hellmouth.
She was in my sights. I was almost there. Pouring on the speed, I stretched out my huge, scaled-covered paws and opened my mouth to call to her…
And that was when the ground fell out from under my feet.
Plunging toward the darkness, I opened the floodgates of my Magic and called on Lou to Shift back into our Winged Warrior, but it never came to that.
With my next breath, the ground rushed back up to meet the soles of my feet and damn near knocked me on my ass, as a blast of heat that would’ve melted the flesh from my bones had I not been wearing the scales of my Dragon King, burped from the Hellmouth that was quickly opening all the way.
Blowing away as much of the acrid mist as possible, I searched for Bernadette. My heart raced. Where was she? How could she have survived? Had I lost her before I’d gotten the chance to hold her in my arms?
Before I found her, the Hellmouth gave another monstrous blech and spat out more Demons, Ghouls, Ghosts, and Evil Beings than I had the time or inclination to classify. I had to get to Bernadette. I had to…
“Where is my mother? Tell me what you did to my mother?!”
It was her. No, I’d never heard her voice before, but just as sure as God with a capital G made little green apples, I knew the voice I heard belonged to my Mate, and she wasn’t taking any shit from…
Before I could finish my thought or ask Lou who Bernadette was yelling at, brilliant lavender Magical fireworks exploded overhead.
One right after another, too many to count, the crackle, pop, and hiss accompanied sharp, high-pitched whizzes and deep, chest-thumping bangs.
Light so bright it outshone the dense, blood-red hue of the mushroom cloud, the pyrotechnics coalesced into one huge mass and let out a thunderous BOOM.
High-pitched whizzing cut through the cacophonous chaos of Hell’s Denizens as they celebrated their escape, stopping them in their tracks. All heads snapped back, gawking at the light show, a split second before thousands of glittering streams of Enchanted light fell to the ground.
Sizzling and popping as the tips of those Magical bars snapped into place, the Demons and Ghouls stopped motionless. The scent of three-day-old fish was everywhere. They were confused.
“We’re trapped!” A furious howl announced.
“Damn straight you’re trapped! You’re not messing with a newbie here, Heathen!” Came the sassy retort full of sweet Texas drawl and enough Magic to slip right past Lou’s scales and slide down my spine in all the best ways.
Bernadette was perfect.
"Hear that, Old Man? That’s my Mate, my woman!”
“Yes. She’s perfect. Now, go get her before one of these assholes decides to revolt.”