The reason why became clear soon enough. Caerlovena walked onto the ledge in front of the cave, carrying a megaphone. She wore light armor and was armed with a gun holstered at her hip and a sword strapped between her broad shoulders. Her back was to the cave, and she faced out to the clearing. Two attendants flanked her, each one carrying a lamp.
Unable to stand the vulnerability of being on the ground with Caerlovena so near, Pia pushed to her feet. As she did, she noticed how Carling had changed. Instead of looking like the rather friendly nightmare she had almost gotten used to, the Vampyre gripped her arrow like a spear, her body taut as a bow.
Did she mean to throw the arrow at Caerlovena?
Stepping in front of Carling, Pia went face-to-face with her. “Don’t,” she whispered. “We need that arrow.”
The Vampyre breathed, “If I were at full strength, I could do it.”
“You’re not at full strength.” Pia stared her down. “And even if you could, maybe you could accept the consequences, but I couldn’t. The only person you would kill is Caerlovena, and there are a lot of other people out there. I need my baby to get out of this alive.”
The tension drained slowly from Carling’s emaciated body. “You’re right, of course.”
As Pia sagged with relief, Caerlovena lifted the megaphone and spoke. “People of Devil’s Gate, welcome to the lighting of the dragon’s pyre! Each one of you is important. You are all here for a purpose. By your presence tonight you are making a covenant—you agree with me that the dragon has to die. He has been a blight upon this earth for far too long. I’ve captured his pregnant mate, and now he has no other choice but to respond. Prepare yourselves, and make no mistake about it, we are going to war!”
As the Elven woman spoke, Pia and Carling edged over to the bars to look out over the clearing. Pia’s heart sank at the sight of just how many people had gathered in a huge circle around the dragon effigy.
There had to be thousands present—Elves, Vampyres and other Nightkind, trolls, ghouls, Demonkind, and humans.
She whispered, “I had no idea he was hated by so many people.”
Carling put a bracing hand at her back. “Don’t let this ridiculous piece of theater fool you. Caerlovena isn’t leading a community. She’s running a cult. The majority of these are Elves, and all of them are crazy. Dragos has his fair share of supporters too. Besides, these bars are messing with my magic sense, but I think she has some sort of charismatic magic.”
While they spoke, Caerlovena stalked back and forth along the length of the ledge, whipping her supporters into a frenzy. With every declaration she made, the crowd roared in approval.
Even Pia had to reluctantly admit she was a chilling, magnificent sight. Whether Caerlovena was casting actual magic or not, she definitely had some spell over the crowd. They loved her.
“And now—set him on fire!” Caerlovena shouted. “Watch him burn!”
Down below, several Elves ran forward carrying lit torches and touched them to the stacks of wood. They must have treated the woodpile with some sort of accelerant, because the fire caught quickly and grew in strength as it spread over the base. Hungry flames began to leap up the dragon effigy.
Good gods, someone in the crowd even had drums. A thrumming tribal rhythm filled the clearing, and the crowd below began to dance with wild abandon. Caerlovena laughed as she watched them. The whole thing was like something out of a 1970s James Bond movie.
As Pia watched the remarkable scene in equal parts fascination and horror, a vise gripped her around the middle. Clinging to the bars, she panted through the contraction. It was hard to imagine how things could get any worse.
Until, that was, a tall black-haired man in a dark suit walked into the clear space surrounding the burning effigy. He had green eyes and wore a more classically handsome version of Dragos’s features.
Death had come to join the gathering.
Pia started to shake. Nudging Carling, she whispered, “Look down below, in the clear space near the effigy. Do you see that man?”
The Vampyre ran her gaze over the clearing. “See who? That fire’s too big and too hot for anyone to get very close.”
Azrael looked up in the direction of the cave. Perhaps it was a trick of the growing firelight, but it seemed as though he looked directly at Pia.
She had been wrong. Things were about to get much worse.
The flames reached the top of the effigy. It threw off so much heat Pia could feel it where she stood, and as true night set in, the red light illuminated the clearing and everything around it.
Her thigh started to itch maddeningly. Then the itch traveled up her right shoulder and arm. As she scratched herself, she could feel large patches of raised bumps on her skin. She had broken out in hives. Soon after that, nausea churned. Without the drug protocol to keep her body in check, it was beginning to rebel in style.
Abruptly, she hurried over to the bucket to throw up. Once she had cleared her stomach of all its contents, she felt marginally better. As she wiped her mouth with the back of one hand, she realized Carling had joined her and was holding back her hair.
The Vampyre said softly, “You’re not doing so well, are you, honey?”
“My body is rejecting the baby while I am also giving birth,” Pia told her in a flat, matter-of-fact voice. The specter of this scenario, or another one like it, had been hanging over her head for the entire pregnancy. “Now that it’s started, the only way out of this is by going through it.”
When she was finally able to straighten, Carling handed her the plastic jug of water. She took a few swallows, one to rinse out her mouth and spit and another to ease the rawness of her abused throat.
Capping the jug, she turned toward the cave opening just as a gigantic bronze meteor plummeted to earth. It landed on the burning effigy, which exploded into flaming missiles that shot out over the clearing.
Dragos had arrived.
Roaring, the dragon spun, shockingly fast for a creature of his size, and he spewed flames in a wide circle around him. Overhead a harpy screamed and swooped. She was joined by three magnificent gryphons, each one easily the size of an SUV. The crowd plunged and shrieked as burning pieces of wood rained down.
Pia stared, transfixed. The scene was so overwhelmingly cataclysmic, for a moment it transported her out of her misery.
“Stop! Stop!” Caerlovena bellowed into her megaphone. Pulling her gun, she aimed at Pia. “Dragon, if you don’t stop right now, I will shoot her!”
Time held still. Pia stopped breathing as she stared from the barrel of the gun to Dragos, then back again. Was he too far gone in his frenzy to hear Caerlovena?
Deliberately Carling stepped in front of her, but the Vampyre’s emaciated body could not stop a hail of bullets, especially if she took a fatal shot herself and collapsed into dust.
Fixing his immense gold gaze on Caerlovena, the dragon stopped.
A sound echoed over the clearing. It sounded bizarre under the circumstances. Caerlovena was laughing.
The Elven woman said to the dragon, “You’re here a little ahead of schedule, but that’s nothing we can’t work with. Send your people away—all of them except for the Vampyre’s mate. I want them far away, on the other side of my forest’s border.”
Dragos lifted his head to the other Wyr and growled, “Go.”
One by one the others lifted into the air and flew away. The harpy left shrieking in rage while Rune slammed to the ground beside Dragos. The gryphon looked as wild and feral as Pia felt as he stared up at the cliff at his mate.
With the two Wyr held immobile, the milling chaos around the clearing gradually stopped.
“That’s it, now we’re talking,” Caerlovena said. Triumph caused her voice to go shrill. “Now… Change back into your human forms.”
The air shimmered around them, and both dragon and gryphon disappeared, to be replaced by two men standing side by side. They were both dressed in a similar fashion, in jeans, T-shirt, and boots, with
swords strapped to their backs and guns holstered at their hips, but that was where the similarity ended.
Physically they looked very different. Rune stood over six feet tall and had the graceful build of a swordsman, handsome good looks, and golden hair, while Dragos was taller, rougher, and his hair was black like a raven’s wing. Clusters of burning firewood surrounded them. The only other figure for yards around was Azrael, who stood like an immobile statue looking out over the scene.
Rune didn’t appear to notice Death, but Pia noticed that Dragos did. He gave Azrael a long look before turning his attention back up to the cave. His hard face was expressionless, but his eyes burned hot gold. He might be cloaked in his human form, but he had still completely given himself over to the dragon.
“See how easily the Great Beast can be controlled!” Caerlovena screamed.
Lady, if you think he’s controlled you are delusional, Pia thought as she stared down at Dragos. This is the calm before the cyclone hits. Right now he’s just biding his time.
But there was something about Caerlovena that Pia was finally beginning to understand. The Elven woman really didn’t care about the consequences of her actions. She wasn’t like some cartoonish 1970s James Bond villain, swollen with her own importance and invincibility. She probably already knew she wasn’t going to survive this encounter. Too many people knew what she had done.
The only thing she cared about was killing Dragos, and that reckless disregard of self carried its own kind of danger. It left her capable of doing anything.
As Caerlovena roared into her megaphone and whipped her followers back into a frenzy, another contraction hit. Pia hunched over, panting until it passed. When she straightened again, the expressionlessness had vanished from Dragos’s features.
Staring at her fiercely, he mouthed, “Do your job. Stay alive.”
Swiping at her damp face with the back of one hand, she nodded and mouthed back, “Do your job. Get us out of here.”
He gave her a slight nod in reply.
It was a miserably meager exchange. She wanted to lean back against his chest like she had when she had given birth to Liam. She wanted his arms around her, his voice in her ear as he coached her through each contraction. Hell, she wanted Dr. Medina and a private room at the nearest hospital.
None of that was going to happen.
“Good thing I already know you’re a firecracker,” she whispered to the baby as she rubbed her belly soothingly. “Looks like it’s you and me, kiddo.”
“And me.”
That interjection had not come from Carling. The Vampyre was still standing taut at the bars, watching Rune.
Slowly Pia turned, eyes wide and staring. Azrael stood beside her.
As she backed away, she said hoarsely, “You get away from me. Neither one of us is dying.”
He followed. When she came back against the cave wall, he leaned one broad shoulder against the wall beside her. “People always take it so personally when I arrive. They act like I’m out to get them,” Azrael remarked. “I applaud your will to live. It may see you through this.”
“Do something useful. Get me some hot water and towels.”
“My role is not to interfere with the living,” he told her. “But I can ease your death if it comes to that.”
“Are you physically here?” She panted. As rage flared, she slapped him.
His head rocked back, and his gaze flared in surprise.
Her hand hurt. She shook it out. She’d had too many choices taken away from her. Slapping someone felt good, and she wanted to do it again.
“Don’t stand here in the physical world and tell me you can’t physically do something,” she hissed. “That’s bullshit. Oh, woo-woo, you might be Death, but big fucking deal. Death is as common as dirt. Dragos lives in the physical world. He takes action—he’s immersed in it. You’re just using your elevated social status to keep a barrier between you and everybody else!”
“Dragos does what is in his nature, as do we all,” Azrael bit out. His previous detachment had disappeared. Now he looked furious.
“Well, your nature sucks, asshole,” she snarled. “If you’re going to be useless, get out of my way. I’ve got a baby to deliver.”
Releasing an angry breath, he turned to her and reached for her swollen stomach. As she shrank back, he said impatiently, “Do you really think I have to touch you for your baby to die—or that I want to kill him? Like I said, everybody thinks I’m out to get them. You said you wanted help, so hold still! I’m not going to hurt you.”
Shaking, breathing hard, she managed not to totally lose it as she watched him touch her stomach. His hand was warm, not icy cold as she had feared.
Numbness spread outward from his touch. More than a little freaked out, she pinched herself. She felt it. It was not so much numbness, then, as a lack of pain. When the next contraction came, she felt it as a tightening of her muscles.
“Okay,” she said grudgingly. “That’s not nothing, I guess, so thank you. Although if you really wanted to be helpful, you’d get me some fucking towels and hot water. After all, I’m pretty sure they won’t do anything drastic like unnaturally prolong my life.”
“You would be surprised,” he said, arching one eyebrow. “One small change can create large differences over time. In case you haven’t heard of it before, it’s called the butterfly effect.”
She rolled her eyes. “I guess I’ll have to understand if the possibility of creating change is too much for you to handle. No doubt you can’t sully your reputation by acting like someone who gives a shit.”
Azrael regarded her, his mouth tight. “You’re quite something when you get going, you know that?”
“Oh please,” she said. “Tell it to someone who cares.”
As before at the Midnight Lounge, neither Carling nor Caerlovena and her two attendants appeared to notice Azrael’s presence in the cave. Their focus was on the clearing below.
“Just like the Lord of the Wyr and his sentinel games, we are going to have our own tournament,” Caerlovena said with a savage smile. “Line up, patriots, and ready yourselves for battle. Only, unlike the dragon’s grandstanding, we’re not going to fight one-on-one. No, we’re going to fight Dragos and his pet gryphon all together.” She pointed at the two men. “And you will remain in your human forms. You’ll refrain from casting magic during the battle, or I’ll have my men empty their guns into this cave until there’s nothing left alive. Is that clear?”
“Crystal,” Dragos snapped. He and Rune pulled their swords and turned so that they stood back-to-back while the crowd gathered in a tight circle around them.
Nonstop dread had become Pia’s new normal. She said to Azrael, “If Dragos is like you, he can’t die, can he?”
“Everyone can die,” Azrael replied. “Even those of us you call the Primal Powers can die. If Dragos dies, another Great Beast will simply rise to take his place.”
Another beast—like Liam?
No. Just no.
“That’s not what I wanted to hear,” she muttered.
But Azrael was no longer there. He had pulled his favorite disappearing trick and had left the cave.
She tightened her hand into a fist. Good thing her slapping hand was still throbbing, otherwise she might believe she had hallucinated the whole thing.
But once that thought had occurred, she couldn’t shake it.
The only thing she really knew for sure was that she had hit something with her slapping hand. Then the what-ifs started to cascade.
What if she had been hallucinating all along? What if she had slapped the cave wall?
What if her growing numbness wasn’t a gift from Death?
What if it was a warning sign instead?
Chapter Eight
Caerlovena’s army rushed toward Dragos and Rune.
“Here we go,” Rune muttered. “Got any bright ideas?”
“You mean aside from slaughtering everyone?” Dragos retorted. He would be quite fine w
ith that plan, except if and when their enemies thinned down too significantly, he knew Caerlovena would start shooting into the cave anyway, just to ensure nobody survived. “I’m working on it.”
Death walked along the open area between the attackers and the two men, hands in his pockets. Azrael looked contemplative, lips pursed in thought, until Dragos lost sight of him as the first wave of attackers hit.
Then he got on with the business of killing.
Rune spun, dashed, and leaped his way through the crowd. Fighters fell wherever he passed. The gryphon was perfection in motion, fast and graceful as a dancer yet powerful enough to hammer down with his massive strength when the situation warranted it.
Catching glimpses of the other male in full warrior mode reminded Dragos of why he had picked Rune to be his First sentinel all those many years ago.
Okay fine, he said telepathically to Rune. Maybe Carling isn’t so bad after all.
Giving him a filthy look, Rune just barely managed to avoid getting his skull caved in by a troll wielding a war hammer. You pick NOW as your time to get talkative? Man, I have all the sympathetic feelings for Pia.
Taking a running leap, Dragos landed on the troll’s back and stabbed his sword into the crevice between the troll’s rocklike skull and neck. Trumpeting a noise that sounded like a wounded elk, the troll staggered. It was already dead, but it would take a few moments to fall.
He didn’t wait around but jumped off and grabbed the troll’s war hammer. After hefting it in approval, he whirled and flung it hard at another troll some fifteen paces away. It smashed into the second troll’s face, and when that one fell, it took out another five warriors who were standing too close to it.
Maximum damage. He liked that. He needed to do more of it.
If he could only cut loose with all his abilities, he would show that Elven bitch some maximum damage. There would be nothing left in this clearing except some blackened bones. That was what had happened to her war party, millennia ago.