Max cursed under his breath as he saw Kessar in the blinding torchlight. An effing trap … and he’d walked right into it. He should have known the Tablet wouldn’t be so easy to find and grab.
How stupid am I?
Well, that didn’t bear thinking about right now. Worse, he’d known the demon wasn’t an idiot. That he’d only have one shot at this and that would be it.
And I blew it.
Good going, jackass.
Not only had he killed himself, he’d killed Sera, too. Yet he refused to be a part of her death. One way or another, he would get her out of this, at least.
Praying for a miracle, he swung around on Sera and gently pushed her into the shadows, hoping this worked, since he was the bigger target they were after. Then he ran, drawing the others away from her location. Okay, not the brightest plan ever, but luckily they were pretty stupid and ran after him with everything they had.
What he didn’t expect was for Sera to run after him, too. And when she turned into a dragon and picked him up to fly him above the demons chasing them, he couldn’t have been more stunned.
At first, he hadn’t even believed it was her. But as he looked over her beautiful red scales and the talons that held him, there was no doubt.
His dragonswan had saved him … as the dragon she hated.
Unfortunately, she couldn’t travel far in that form. The walls of the cavern narrowed so much that she had to set him down and return to being human or risk losing or breaking her wings.
“Impressive,” he said in an awed tone.
She flexed her arm as if assuring herself that she was “normal” again. “And what you did was wildly stupid. How have you managed to survive for so long?”
“No real idea.” He checked to make sure he still had the Tablet with him, then felt along the glassy walls, trying to pick a way through the domain toward an exit or at least some light. Not even his powers could detect anything. It was so frustrating to be this completely blind.
“Do you still have the Tablet?”
“Yeah. Not that it seems to be doing us any good. And if Kessar captures and bleeds me, it’ll be a lot worse. For everyone … especially me.”
Sera considered that. “He used the Tablet to awaken my tribe. Can you use it to do the same?”
Max hesitated. “How do you mean?”
“Can you reverse whatever he’s done to my tribe and free them again?”
He wasn’t sure he liked where her thoughts were going with this. “Yes, but I fail to see how that could be helpful.” Especially since the Amazons and Katagaria wanted him even more dead than the demons did.
“If you free them, we can drive back the demons, and I’m thinking Nala will know some way out of here.”
“Even if she does, I doubt she’ll help you and I know she won’t help me. I’m the dragon whose head she wants to mount on her wall.”
“I think I can persuade her.”
“I’m not sure I want to bet my life on this.”
“You have a better idea?”
“Fight our way out.”
She scoffed at what he considered an almost legitimate, if not sane, plan. “You think that’ll work?”
“Did I throw logic at you? No. Why do you want to be mean to me like that?”
She laughed at his teasing tone. “I’m serious, Maxis. I can get them to help us and fight them.”
“And if you’re wrong?”
“I’ll build you a nice funeral pyre.”
He let out a short laugh. “You are all kinds of not funny.”
“Do you have a better option?”
“Sadly, no. At least nothing that wouldn’t get me slapped for proposing it.” He let out a long sigh as he heard the demons closing in on them. They had to decide and move fast or they’d be captured again. “All right. We’ll try this your way with your tribe. But if I get eaten or speared to death … I will not be happy.”
She took a step, then paused. “Any idea where the demons might have taken my tribe?”
He groaned at her question. “None.”
Before she could speak, he pulled her behind him and began hammering the demons with fire again. It terrified her how close they’d come to them while she’d plotted an escape. Had he not been paying attention, the demons would have had them. As it was, they screamed from Max’s attack and fell back, into the darkness.
Max pressed her forward, deeper into the nether realm he wasn’t completely unfamiliar with, wishing he had another way out. Worse, the smell and sight of the damp cavern dredged up long-buried memories he didn’t want or need at this particular time.
In the back of his mind, he saw Dagon as the ancient god walked between their cages, trying to decide who to use next in his inhumane experiments. The young dark-haired prince who took after his father and not his Apollite mother trailed after him.
“I want to be a dragon! You have to make me one! You promised!”
Dagon had glared at the prince. “Stop whining, Linus. I’m doing the best I can. You saw what happened. The last Apollite I merged with a dragon exploded into gory pieces. You really want to risk that?”
Linus had expelled a frustrated breath and stomped his foot like a petulant child. “It’s not fair! I’m a prince. Second in line to the throne. I should have my choice of animals I want to merge with!”
Dagon had passed an irritated glare at the younger man. “You’re lucky your father’s half sister is a goddess whose devoted husband is willing to do this shit for you. So instead of bothering me with your insipid complaining, you should be saying, ‘Thank you, Uncle Dagon, for doing everything you can to save my life and for not merging me with a hyena or a donkey.’”
“You wouldn’t dare!”
Dagon turned on him with an evil smirk. “I’m a god of black magick and possessed with a wicked sense of irony and hostility, you really want to push my patience, boy?”
Linus had wisely backed down and left Dagon to pull a lion from its cage toward the room where he performed his grotesque experiments.
Alone, the prince had drifted to Max and Illarion. His gaze tinged by insanity, he’d stared in at them. “You can understand me, can’t you? I know you can. I want to be a dragon, too. Like you. To have your power and strength. Imagine what we could do together … the power of a dragon and the bloodline of a divine prince. We could rule this earth and all the kingdoms and peoples. Then we’d show my father and brother who the real heir should have been.…”
As he wandered off, Illarion had glanced over to Max. Are you going to tell the god what his nephew thinks?
No. Let Dagon merge him with one of us. The best thing that can happen for this world is that Prince Linus explodes and dies. Preferably in a great deal of pain.
Maxis! You can’t do that. We’re supposed to protect human life.
He’s not human, Illy. He’s Apollite and he’s insane.
Even so, I think we need to tell Dagon.
And I think we should stay out of it. No good has ever come from drakomai meddling in the affairs of gods or man. They dragged us into this, and we need to extricate ourselves as quickly and cleanly as possible.
But true to his most irritating nature, Illarion hadn’t listened. He’d told Dagon of the prince’s illustrious plans. And to protect his nephew from them, Dagon had lied and told Linus and his father that he didn’t want to risk merging the prince with the dragons. Rather, Linus’s elder brother, Eumon, had been crossed with them, and Linus with the wolves.
An even more dangerous concoction and not the safer alternative Dagon had imagined. Since the merging heightened the essence of both species, it’d taken the ambition of the Apollite prince and crossed it with the extraordinary cunning and bloodthirsty ruthlessness that marked the wolves.
By trying to save his sons, Lycaon had damned them all.
Thus proving that even the gods and kings could be stupidly blind when it came to family and wanting to do their best for them. Feelings forever got in the way of common sense and blinded the most intelligent of beings.
And because of that, Max and Sera were about to be eaten by gallu.
Max groaned in frustration. His entire life had been screwed by the gods messing with things they should have left alone. And that included his mother and her fascination with his father. But for one horny afternoon, he wouldn’t have even been conceived.
Right now, Max would have been deeply grateful had his father kept it in his pants and not gone dallying with the bitch who spawned him. How much alcohol had his mother plied him with, anyway?
Irritated about it, Max gently grabbed Sera back from the way they were headed, and pulled her down an offshoot. He had no idea where this led. But it seemed a bit safer than the way they’d been going.
All the powers he had and not a one could help them out of this. What then was the use?
“It’ll be all right, Max.”
He hesitated at her encouraging tone. “I’m glad you still have your optimism. Mine slammed into a wall a while back. I think it now has a concussion.”
“I have faith in you.”
“Since when?”
“Always.” She placed her hand on his arm. “Do you know why I chose you that night in the drinking den?”
“I was the only sober male in the room?”
She laughed. “No. In that room full of warriors, you stood out as the most fierce. While they clumped together for protection and safety, you stood alone. Fearless. Defiant. It was the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen. You were everything I’d always wanted to be, but never had the courage for.”
Max paused as her words struck a tender place in his heart that left him feeling strangely vulnerable. No one had ever said anything so kind to him. Oddly enough, he’d never felt particularly heroic. Most days, he just felt lost and adrift. He barely got through them.
But he wanted to be a hero for her.
“Oh Seramia … you are far braver than I.”
“How do you figure?”
“Your biggest fear has always been the dragons who killed your family. Of them coming back to slaughter what you love. Instead of hiding and running, you taught yourself to fight them and confront them. Any time the call went out for battle, you were the first one saddled and ready. And when the Fates tied your life to the very thing you despised most, you accepted it and allowed me into your home, all the while you waited for my betrayal.”
“That wasn’t courage. What I did to you was so wrong. I blamed you for what other dragons did. Instead of judging you by your actions and heart, I judged you by theirs and by my own fear.”
“You were human. And there’s nothing wrong with that.”
Seraphina swallowed against the tears choking her. She still didn’t know how he could accept her for who and what she was. Maybe that was the dragon heart inside him. It enabled him to see the world so differently at times. Clearer. More concisely.
She envied him that ability. To her, everyone and everything was viewed through a veil of hazy suspicion. And he was right. Trust had never come easily to her. There had been too many women in her tribe who’d tried to pull her down and lie about her to Nala so that they could replace her as champion. Even Nala, lying about Max to hurt them both.
Sera had never known who to trust, except herself.
Until now.
In all her life, he was the only one she could have faith in. Her dragon had never sought to betray her.
“So how do we get out of this, Max?”
Max paused as a radical idea hit him. Really radical. The kind that would either save them or damn the entire world. Too bad he didn’t know which and wouldn’t be able to tell until he pulled the switch.
Then it would be too late.
But then that was life. Sometimes you had to take that leap and pray.
Skidding to a stop, he pulled Sera against him. Just in case the worst happened. If he had to die, he wanted it to be with her in his arms. He just hoped she didn’t pay for one of his stupid mistakes.
“Max?”
He didn’t respond, rather he used his powers to access the Tablet and speak an ancient language he hadn’t used since the day he’d slain his mother for her last betrayal.
Seraphina could barely breathe as Maxis formed a tight wall of protective muscle around her. She knew he was doing this to keep her safe, but at the moment she just wanted to draw an unencumbered breath. His heartbeat pounded beneath her cheek as a strange light began to illuminate around them.
She had no idea what he was doing until white smoke began billowing out of the floor and walls. Iridescent and translucent, it was beautiful, and swayed as if it were dancing. The gallu drew up short as if mesmerized by the rhythmic movements. The mist began to spiral and form larger shapes.
Pausing, Namtar cursed at the demons. Then he urged them to disperse. “Run! It’s the liliti!”
But it was too late. The liliti descended on them with a hungry vengeance, like piranha who hadn’t eaten in decades.
When they came toward Max, he let out a burst of fire that drove them back. Moving in the opposite direction, he pulled Sera after him.
“That was horrifying!”
“I know. Let’s hope they have no way out of here. But it was all I could think of. After what you said about waking your sisters, I remembered that my mother would be here in Ikalla, sleeping, too. As her son, I have the ability to summon them.”
“That is even more terrifying.”
“And one of the very few benefits that come with being my mother’s son, and having been suckled by her sisters.”
She scowled at his words. “But I thought you told me you weren’t suckled.”
He gave her a bitter smile. “It’s not the same way human mothers nurse their young. Believe me, it’s much more harsh and uncomfortable.”
That was all he needed to say. She definitely didn’t want more information than that, given what she knew of him and his people. “I’m sorry, Maxis.”
“For what?”
“Everything that’s been done to you. And for the fact that you look so tired right now. I wish I could find a safe place for you to sleep for a little while.”
He kissed her cheek. “It’s all good.”
Still, she felt guilty over it. She’d brought them to his door and led them straight to him. Instead of feeding him to the demons, she should have protected him with the same resolve and integrity he would have shown.
Never again will I be so selfish.
But then motherhood had taught her that. How to put someone else and their needs before hers. To value another being more than herself. Strange how Max, the animal, had been born with that sense of how he was part of a larger whole and his life wasn’t as important as the continuation of others. Or maybe it was his being male. She wasn’t sure. All she knew was that it’d taken the birth of her children before she’d understood it.
How she wished she could have loved him back in their past the way she could now.
It’s not too late.
At least she hoped that was true.
Yet as they made their way through the dark nether world, she wondered.
All of a sudden, Max froze in front of her so quickly that she slammed into his back. He remained completely ramrod stiff and still.
She opened her mouth to ask him what was wrong when she saw.
There in front of her was Nala and the rest of her Amazon tribe. Only they weren’t stone, or in the process of returning to stone.
They appeared completely normal. As if nothing had happened or that demons weren’t out to kill or eat them.
Confused, Seraphina stepped around her mate and approached Nala, who wore a peculiar welcoming smile on her face. “Basilinna?”
Nala let out a relieved breath. “There you are! We thought we’d have to send out a patrol to find you.”
That weird feeling of trepidation worsened. Something definitely wasn’t right. “We came to free you, Max and I.”
She laughed again as if Sera was insane. “That was never the bargain, child. The bargain was that Kessar would overthrow the Greek gods from Olympus and surrender it to me, and in turn, I would give him your mate. He just fulfilled his part. Now I’m going to fulfill mine.”