“Twenty-nine,” said her husband. The corner of his mouth curled in a small but wicked smile. Amunet stared at that smile for a moment, simply enjoying the beauty of it. It had been so long since she’d gazed upon her beloved.
But then the smile slipped. And Ahriman’s eyes flashed red. “They’re coming.”
Amunet blinked, turned away, looked around, and then closed her eyes. There in the darkness of her concentration, she felt them too. She was out of practice. She should have been able to sense the interlopers at their first directed portal, but again, she’d simply been asleep too long.
She felt them now, though. And when she focused, she could see them as well.
“Let them come,” she hissed. They’d ruined her mood.
All around them, screams rose to the fevered, hellish sounds of souls trapped in Tartarus. But she could no longer hear them. They’d become a slightly pleasant backdrop for what Amunet knew would amount to a battle.
“Perhaps we should make our exit,” said Ahriman.
“No.” Amunet bared her teeth. “What better place to face them than here, amidst the humans they fight so hard to protect? Let them destroy their precious pets as they attempt to stop us.”
“Thirty.” Ahriman’s voice was distracted now, but he most likely knew the good, round number would make his queen feel a little better as they prepared to face their enemies. Amunet touched his arm.
The Entity looked down.
“I love you,” she told him.
It was true. Her enemies had always scoffed at her ability to love. They’d long likened it to obsession or something as base as a simple need to not be alone, to share her passion with another. But what was love if not that? Though with a face like hers, she could have had anyone in the realm, in her deepest core, there was one man for her, and one man only. There’d been no one but him from the moment they’d met thousands of years ago.
Ahriman gently cupped her face as the flames licking around them climbed a wall behind him to ignite the ceiling. It was a breathtaking sight – this tall handsome man, infinitely wrapped in composure, framed by the blazes of passion.
“I love you too,” he told her softly. Then he leaned over, placed the gentlest kiss on her lips, and moved to her ear to whisper something else. “Thirty-three.”
She couldn’t help but laugh.
Her joy was short-lived. For that was when the Kings and Queens arrived.
“And me,” came an unexpected and chilling voice behind Amunet. She froze in place even as she felt her king slowly turn around beside her.
“Interesting,” said Ahriman. “I could have sworn Arach dispensed of you.”
“Oh, he did,” said the new but recognizable voice. “I grew back.”
Amunet turned. It felt like she was moving in a dream. Her legs were mired in a kind of fear that she wasn’t used to knowing. Why was that? How was this inky blackness wrapping around her happiness now, staining it with ruin?
Because, she thought hopelessly. Because it’s her.
After all these years.
The woman who called herself Lilith McLaren met Amunet’s dark eyes. They held gazes for a short eternity, so much shorter than the length of time they’d known one another.
Amunet’s lips parted, but no sound came out. She tried a second time. “You?” she asked softly.
Lilith said nothing. Beside her, Amunet felt Ahriman turn to look down at her. But she couldn’t take her eyes off the woman. She was beautiful, as she had been all those years ago. But she was smaller now… her hair was different. Her eyes, as ever, were oceans.
“You…” Amunet repeated, at last gaining enough strength to speak. “You were the Nomad witch that Ahriman had the Traitor kill before I was awakened.” Her voice was distant as she figured things out. She hadn’t known. She truly hadn’t known that it was this Nomad who’d opposed the Entity all this time, who’d grown into a powerful witch, who had raised Amun Re’s daughter into the werewolf she now was. How could she have known? She’d been asleep. And she’d only been awake for a short while.
When Ahriman had told her of the Nomad who opposed him, he’d simply described a woman. Old. Powerful. Nothing more. Amunet had assumed it was simply another Traveler, getting in the way as they were wont to do. Ahriman hadn’t known either. How would he? Amunet had never spoken of her all those years ago. He hadn’t been aware of the connection. She’d never told him.
But now, as she stared at the blonde Nomad and felt strange inside, she realized that she should have known. All the signs were there.
The woman once known as Katrielle stood before her, as dazzling as ever. There was a pang of pain inside Amunet that she barely recognized because she hadn’t felt it in a very long time. It was distinctly uncomfortable. She was almost certain it was sadness. Betrayal.
“Amunet,” said Katrielle.
“Hello sister,” said Amunet. “It’s good to see you again.”
Chapter Thirty-four
The Entity frowned in confusion, and stepped back. Amunet would not look at him. She didn’t meet his gaze, not like she usually did. Instead, she continued to stare down the Nomad he’d once known as the witch, Lalura Chantelle.
So the Entity looked over at her too. Sisters… he thought. He wasn’t sure what to make of it. Not sure at all. It wasn’t supposed to be possible, not amongst their kind.
“You know I can’t let you do this,” said Lalura.
Ahriman had noticed over the years that in movies and books, the “good guys” always seemed to say this. But when they did, they said it with vigor, teeth bared, sweat dripping down their faces. Normally they were injured, and the bases were loaded. They said it with conviction.
The blonde Nomad that Amunet had called sister said it with none of these. Instead she seemed decidedly weary. And perhaps a little torn.
And then Lalura Chantelle, in the skin of someone younger, lifted her arms at her sides. It was a fast movement, filled with impossible power. Light erupted from her eyes, her nose, and her mouth, and surrounded her in its brilliance. That light spread out from where she stood, a ripple effect of Nomadic magic that slammed into Ahriman and his queen, moving them in a way that none of the humans had been capable of doing.
He didn’t have time to grab Amunet before he was sent sailing. He felt the defiance of gravity like a stunning surprise. He was suddenly flying, and that was all there was to it. The theatre grew temporarily smaller beneath him, and hotter above him as he reached the ceiling, which had caught on fire minutes earlier.
Then there was an impact; he felt it in his chest and back, another surprise. There was no pain, not at first, just a hard jolt that knocked the wind from his too-solid lungs. He wasn’t accustomed to being so fleshy, so mired in a human body. But Amunet was with him, so he was human.
I might actually die this time, he thought whimsically as he slid down the back wall, his clothes catching on fire as he plummeted, if only the one attacking me wasn’t a Nomad. She was strong, but she was one of their kind. She couldn’t kill him any more than he could kill her. It was why he’d had Arach do it in the first place.
The evidence of the Nomad’s power was made even clearer when the door re-opened, defying Amunet’s magic, and the humans piled out in record time.
The mortals filled with fear and hate had finally managed escape. She was very strong.
He was almost disappointed she was one of his own kind. It would have been refreshing to die and come into a new form for a change. He might be born a vampire, as Arach had become. Or a werewolf. Perhaps even a dragon.
“I think you would make a nice poodle, Ahriman,” said the Nomad who used to be a witch. He looked up to find her standing over him, and he smiled. His body hurt. It never had before.
“I’m dead serious,” she said, cocking her blonde head to the side and widening her eyes. “They can be quite vicious.”
Behind her, the Entity saw a shadow move. Amunet.
But Amunet’s sister k
icked him in the head, her boot slamming into the side of his skull with tremendous, brain-bruising force. Then she swiped her arm to the side, and again, he was flying. This time, he went only a few feet before he was striking something else and rolling.
When he came to a stop the second time, he found himself searching through bloodied vision for Amunet.
He found her at the top of the theatre by the exit doors – locked in combat with her sister.
*****
Calidum’s wings beat the air with such force, the cars parked in the street below moved several feet sideways. Windshields shattered, and car alarms sounded. Calidum lifted into the air, a majestic beast of yester lore beyond compare and defiant of comprehension. The people below scattered, screamed, or simply fell to the ground, clutching their bodies because the air’s impact had thumped them good and strong.
Others pulled out their cell phones, snapped photographs, or began filming. The sky overhead roared and bellowed, and lightning cascaded to the earth below in a curtain of bizarrely hued electricity the likes of which no one in Tokyo had ever seen. Ribbons of deep purple, indigo blue, and ultraviolet black slammed into the planet, lit up planted trees in medians, and melted the tires of the already abused parked cars.
The wind began to roar, slicing through the alleys and down the streets like a living, breathing being, breaking or bending things as it went. Now everyone ran. Phones were dropped or pocketed without care, the fleeing stumbled in their harried attempt at escape, and the screams reached a fevered pitch – one that finally got through to Calidum’s fury-laced mind.
Korridum... They need… help.
Ban’s voice was softer than before, harder to hear. It was fading, as if he were leaving once more. But it was strong enough. When combined with the desperation rising from below, it hammered through Calidum’s anger and knocked a little sense into him.
The people in the apartment and the people on the street below – and even in the nearby buildings – were dying. They were dying because of the dragons.
Calidum spun in the air and dove before he could change his mind. He sent out arms of power, coils of dark, stormy strength into the buildings, down the street, and through the alleys. He allowed his magic to coil around every living being and cushion it. And as he spread his wings mere feet from the ground and lifted out of his dive, he sent those people flying.
Half a mile, they traveled, through walls, through windows, through stone and brick. But even as his magic carried them away, it cushioned them from damage. It protected them from the shards and rocks, the bruises, breaks, and cuts. It took an immense amount of strength for Cal to do this, and each of his three hearts ached with the action. One ached with the knowledge that he had that much less power left to fight Arach. Another ached with the loss of the magic. And the third just ached… because it was Eva who was on the line now.
Cal turned in the now-empty street, rain-soaked and shining, and angled for the nearby parking lot, where there was ample room for him to spread his wings. There, he lifted once more with a second strong beat of those wings against the air. He rose like a missile, his reflection rippling in the windows of the sky scrapers on either side of him as he climbed. Overhead, the magical storm played out, whipping tree branches – and entire trees – past him in hurricane-force winds. Glass shards were as much a part of the atmosphere now as the rain that escaped the sinister cloudburst overhead, but they bounced off the armor of his impenetrable scales, and soon he was hovering above what remained of the apartment building’s penthouse suite.
His form blended with the storm overhead; they were the same shade, he and the tempest. They always had been. Evangeline did not notice him up there. He was a part of the gale, a fractured night unto himself, and she was focused on her enemy. An enemy Calidum had fully planned to help her defeat.
But he needn’t have hurried, it seemed.
Down below, on the marble remnants of a once upscale and lavish suite, a young woman with eyes the lustrous and gleaming color of a moon-lit night stood tall and strong, her lithe form covered from neck to boot in the shimmering black scale of her draconic armor. Her pitch-black hair whipped around her like dark magic, and indigo-violet lightning lit up the room like a Faraday cage. The vision was stark and spectacular, causing all three of Calidum’s hearts to stagger around their beats in painful acquiescence.
Twenty feet away from Evangeline, daughter of the Great Black, lay Arach the Traitor, the Nomad, the vampire. He was curled on his side, and even from Calidum’s distance, it was plain to see that some devastating draconic blow had nearly cleaved the Nomad in half. Blood pooled around him thick and vast, a veritable pond of rich, dark red. Calidum’s dragon eyes saw bone peeking through the mess that remained of the left side of Arach’s torso. From the way he was unable to move his legs, Calidum reasoned that it was his spine, severed and useless.
But the man’s eyes burned amazingly with the fires of hell, and so much negative energy was emanating from his fallen form, Cal experienced a momentary flash of deep, hard uncertainty. It was the kind of fear one felt when they realized their opponent was still capable of killing them – and now had no reason not to. Arach was a Nomad. Evangeline was half Nomad. Nothing she could do to him would kill him. He would heal, given enough time. And when he did, he would come after her again.
The Dragon King folded in his wings and fell. When he touched down on the marble, he’d once more become a man, but a man still swathed in shadow, still wrapped in the deep dark gray of a stormy night.
Evangeline did not look up at him; she did not see him, though he stood only a short distance from the fallen foe. Instead, she approached her enemy. Her draconic boots resonated on the marble floor, despite the fury of the weather. Arach gritted his fanged teeth and gazed steadily, waiting. When she was less than a foot away from them both, Arach finally spoke up.
“You… can’t kill… me… bitch.”
With each word he spat, blood poured from his mouth to join the mess on the floor.
Evangeline stared down at him, her radiantly beautiful face expressionless. Only her eyes burned bright.
“No,” said Calidum, stepping from the shadows. Arach turned his head and looked up at him. “But I can.”
He bent and grasped Arach by the head, meeting his gaze. “Still wish I was here?” he whispered. Then he twisted violently. There was a terrible sound – a terribly final sound – of bone snapping and sinew and muscle tearing, and Arach’s form went limp.
Calidum slowly stood and dropped the Traitor’s severed head on the battle-stained floor.
Chapter Thirty-five
Calidum looked up from the blood that pooled so heavily between them. It was too red. His fangs pricked at his bottom lip. They throbbed in his gums, and his vision was locked in predatory contrasts of white, black, and crimson.
When his gaze fell on the woman across from him, it zeroed in, noticing and absorbing every tiny detail.
She was staring at Arach’s head. Then her gaze slipped to the blood.
Her heart was beating rapidly, but strangely, as if it were weak. He caught her scent and focused. She was still injured, and low on blood. It pumped softly through her veins with little pressure. Her dragon scales covered her entire body, giving the world the outward appearance of scale mail armor, well fitted and beautiful. She looked like a warrior princess, ripe from battle, glorious in the skin of her kills.
But in reality, she was bleeding somewhere underneath. And even as he moved in, somehow knowing exactly when it took hold of her, Evangeline began to fall. He caught her easily, lifting the lightness of her precious form into his arms to hold her tight against his chest. Her eyes slipped shut, and in a flash her armor was gone. All remaining remnants of her transformation-driven strength vanished, leaving her stripped bare and gravely wounded.
Cal took in the injuries, the stab wounds, the bruising, the snow-white color of her skin, and he knew they were mortal wounds. If anyone other than Arach ha
d harmed her the way he had, Eva would be dead. She’d spent herself entirely on her battle with the Nomad. She’d lost. And then he’d tortured and drained her of her blood.
If that hadn’t been enough, she’d shifted at long last into her true dragon form. The act had given her temporary and life-altering strength – but it had taken it from her as well.
The toll was upon her now like a death knell, and as Calidum blurred them both out of the wreckage and into a transportation portal, he lowered his lips to her ear.
“I know what you need,” he said. “You’re safe now, Eva. I’m going to take care of you.”
He moved them across the world, never once taking his magic off her. It raced around them, a protective shield, a healing stream, a directional shove through the tunnels of space and time. It sank gently beneath Eva’s abused flesh to the broken body underneath, and there it healed her from the inside out, mending bone, sinew, organ tissue, and muscle to make her whole again.
The two tell-tale bites Arach had made upon her throat – those, Calidum left alone. He had other plans for them.
Less than a full minute had passed when the Dragon King stepped through the portal’s exit to carry his queen into his home. It was one of many homes he owned. He was thousands of years old… over time, homes were something to be collected like everything else.
Eva stirred against him, her long, lithe frame curling into his warmth. He found his bed, and with arms that flexed with their need to hold her longer, he tenderly laid her at its center. Then he stood.
The charcoal gray sheets were satin and would be gentle against her skin. It was why he’d chosen this place over the others. But looking down at her now, her naked body vulnerable against the darkness of those sheets, her head slowly turning as his magic continued to flow through her veins… he knew it was not the only reason he’d brought her here. His intentions were anything but noble.
This has to be done, he assured himself. Until it is, they will keep coming for her. Arach was dead, that was temporary. The Nomad would be reborn. He won’t stop until Eva is his queen.