Chapter Fourteen

 

 

The creature in front of me was beautiful. That was all I could think of for a moment, staring in awe at the royal purple color of the scales that covered the hugely muscled body. The ones over the breastbone were so large and shiny that they showed me back my own bedraggled form, and were topped by a surprisingly elegant head with massive, curled black horns framed by huge, leathery black wings.

I recognized what it was, of course; Dory’s friend Claire could turn into something like this, only her dragon form was considerably smaller and more delicate. This one would have made six of her and was easily the most imposing creature I had ever seen. The giant had been big, but even while attempting to kill Marlowe, it had not been nearly so menacing.

This was danger given form, and its savage beauty was that of a force of nature: a surging sea, a churning tornado, a wildfire burning out of control.

I was utterly entranced.

Right up until the creature threw out a careless claw and knocked Ray, who had been standing at my side and frozen in shock, almost the length of the arena. I didn’t see where he landed; there was too much junk in the way. But I heard his scream in my head, one that was abruptly cut off.

And then all I saw was red.

I heard someone scream “No!” Felt fingers brush my arm, grasping for me with lightning speed. Smelled someone’s fear on the air, but it wasn’t mine.

I eluded the grasping fingers, grabbed a metal pipe with a jagged end, and struck. Not the scales, which I instinctively knew I had no chance with, but rather the softest target available: the wings. Or to be more precise, one wing, which was shortly thereafter a torn and tattered sail.

The creature screamed and reared back, spilling ruby colored blood onto the hot, sunlit air. It did not seem to have expected the attack, although why I did not know. It would receive more of the same soon, and if Ray was dead . . .

Then I would have killed two new enemies in a single day.

But that would have to wait, as the next thing I knew, I was flying after my Second.

The blow was stunning, and so liquid fast that I had not seen it coming, although I should have expected it, too. It seemed that this creature and I were constantly underestimating each other.

It would not happen on my end again.

I landed hard, or as hard as one can in sand, before rolling back to my feet and shaking off the blow. My ribs felt caved in on one side, where the creature’s clawed hand had caught me, but it was a bruise not a break. My bones were hard to shatter, and although the creature had tried, it had failed.

I dragged in a rough breath, then two. And had the air crushed out of me again when someone grabbed me from behind. It hurt, but it was Ray, so I allowed it.

“Are you alright?” I asked him.

“Me? Me? I’m not the one dueling a goddamned dragon!”

Neither was I, I almost said, only to realize that that wasn’t exactly true.

There were a number of the creatures, I saw now, which would explain the multitude of shadows that had rippled over the ground. But most of them were standing back, were staring at the great purple one, were doing nothing that I could see. He, on the other hand, was coming at me down the length of the arena.

And he was coming fast.

I did not know how to fight him, and my weapon no longer worked except as a staff, and I seriously doubted that it was going to be enough. But Ray had an idea. I did not know what it was and there was no time to ask, but he was putting something inside my hand, was raising it to my lips, was saying “trust me.”

I did trust him.

And I had learned the hard way to listen to him.

I swallowed whatever it was, and then creature was on me.

It tried to roast me with its breath, which was hot enough to scorch multiple lines in the sand, blackening the gold underfoot and creating a crazy pattern as it followed my leaps and bounds. I stayed ahead of the blasts, if only just, but that would not be the case for long. If I faltered, I was dead, for we were well matched in speed and there would be no time to recover from even a single mistake.

So, I did not make one. And I did not stay in front of it, where it could burn me. I caught hold of its tattered wing instead, part of which was trailing after it through the sand, and vaulted onto its back. It did not seem to like that; it screamed again, perhaps because I had torn the wing even more in the process.

I did not mind the scream, but the bucking-far-worse-than-a-bronco that I suddenly found myself riding was a different story.

Ray was running alongside us, yelling something, but I wasn’t sure what; I couldn’t hear him over the pounding of my heart. And that was despite the fact that the arena was suddenly, eerily quiet, even though the stands remained full of fey. The stadium was large and would not empty quickly, but most people no longer appeared to be trying to get away.

They were just standing there, staring at us with blank expressions that I couldn’t read and did not have time to worry about, as the creature I was fighting was clever. When it could not overwhelm me one way, it tried another. And changed form, shifting from dragonkind to its alter ego in an eyeblink, and causing me to suddenly find myself rolling around on the sand once more, wrestling an eight-foot-tall fey with the strength of ten men.

That would have been a problem, except for one thing.

I am dhampir.

The dragonkind seemed surprised to find that I matched him in speed and resiliency. And even more to discover that I hit as hard as he did. It was an even fight, something that was refreshing, as Dory had faced impossible odds more than once.

I was used to waking up surrounded by hostile mages, their hands already wreathed in spell fire. Or an army of torch wielding humans with stakes at the ready. Or a master vampire ages older than we were, who was furious and looking for blood.

Ours.

I had survived them all, even if I had not always won the fight, and had gotten both Dory and me out of there in one piece. Through the years, long odds had become normal, and I no longer feared them. The same did not seem to be true for my opponent, however.

He had an equal chance to best me, but I formed the impression that he was used to easy victories and did not know what to do with either pain or fear. So, I made him feel more of both, hoping that he might flee the field. Instead, he fled back into his stronger form, which was not much of a surprise, as I had expected it.

I had not expected what happened next.

His blood, now liberally smeared on my hand, sank into my skin with a golden flash. And I began to feel strange. Very strange.

“Yeah!” Ray yelled, from somewhere behind me. “Yeah! Kick his ass, Dorina!”

I did not know why he was yelling so loudly, as if he possessed the world’s largest bullhorn, but it was distracting. As were the other, suddenly magnified sounds all around me. Suddenly, I could hear everything.

That included the wind blowing across the sand in a thousand tiny shushing noises; the creak-creak-creak of a metal windmill—somebody’s junked lawn ornament—slowly turning half an arena away; the nervous shuffling of the previous, almost silent crowd; the caw of a bird far overhead.

And then it accelerated, with sounds rushing at me like speeding bullets from all sides: the liquid from someone’s spilled wineskin glugging away over the sand; the yip, yip, yip of a small dog, confused about what, exactly, was going on; the banners around the top of the arena snapping; the sudden shocked, indrawn breath of hundreds of people, almost in unison; and a screech from one of the dragonkind that sounded like human screaming.

I looked down at my arm, and all consciousness of my surroundings ceased. Something was happening to me; something strange and potentially very bad. And new—in five hundred years, I had never encountered anything like it.

Fear of the unknown caused a red haze to descend over my vision again and for me to grab the creature who had spelled me.

“What is this?” I heard myself snarl in a voice not my own. “What have you done?”

But he either didn’t understand or did not deign to reply, because he started struggling in my grasp, and screeching something in a language I did not know, and trying to back away with his eyes blown wide and alien in his face. He had started to change, but seemed to be doing it very slowly. Or perhaps the time-distortion was mine.

Either way, I saw when scales cascaded down his arms; when his color shaded from peach to lavender to iridescent purple; when his body blew up and then apart, reforming itself into a different and much larger shape; when his shoulder blades erupted with massive black wings, now healed from the damage I had inflicted; and when the no longer human face turned on me with a maw of huge teeth, bared and snarling.

And were met by my own, along with a burst of fire out of my no-longer-recognizable mouth, as my own now huge body came off of the sands in a lunge and tore at his throat before the flames had ended.

I felt scales crushing under the weight of my new maw, felt fangs sinking deep, felt blood filling my mouth and then vaporizing immediately under the heat generated by both our fires. He was trying to incinerate me, with flames rushing all over my body. And sloughing off as easily and harmlessly as raindrops, blackening the sand around us but leaving me untouched.

Because I had scales now, too, rivers of them stretching over a form easily as large as his. Indeed, it seemed to be his, or a copy of it, with hugely powerful black claws on the ends of my arms, thrashing black wings in the air above me, and everywhere I looked, deep, dark, iridescent scales, all in the rich purple I had so admired.

And had just stolen, I realized, as I finally understood what Ray had done.

Because this had happened to me once before, or to be more accurate, it had happened to Dory. The flower known as Dragon’s Claw allowed someone to absorb certain aspects of another creature for a short time. Normally, the changes were minor, as had been the case with the children eating the candy in the marketplace. Or with Ray, suddenly becoming far more hirsute than before.

But he had had a reason for thinking that he might get more than that; that he might take on our guard’s complete form, giving him an equal chance in a fight against him. Because he’d seen it happen before. He’d seen it happen to Dory.

She and I seemed to have an affinity for the plant far greater than what was normal. Enough that she’d once taken on the form of an Irin, better known as a fallen angel on Earth, long enough to defeat a powerful demon lord. And enough that I had now mirrored the form of my opponent, giving me a brief chance against him.

One I had better use, because I did not think that this would last for long.

And when it failed . . ..

I did not think it would be a good idea to be here when it failed.

I renewed my efforts, ignoring the flames, the claws that raked harmlessly off of my scales, and the creature’s desperate thrashing. I had him by the neck, my powerful jaws clamped tight on the smaller, more flexible, and more vulnerable scales there. And I discovered that there was one thing that could hurt a dragon: another dragon.

But he knew that, too, and tried everything to get a grip on me. Including grasping me hard by all four limbs and dragging me off the ground, his massive wings shredding the air as they fought to carry both of us skyward. I heard Ray curse as he was tossed head over heels by the gale-force winds, saw the sands underneath us recede as the creature took to the heavens; felt my huge tail whip about uselessly beneath me, like my legs, which were suddenly scrabbling for purchase on absolutely nothing.

But I did not let go. I did not know this body and could not afford to lose the advantage that surprise had given me. I had one chance to defeat him, one brief moment in which to snatch victory from defeat and death. And I was taking it.

So, I ignored his flailing, his fire, his claws. I wrapped my useless tail around him instead, squeezing the great body as hard as I could and making sure that I could not fall away. It was like an extra arm, one far larger than the other ones I had, increasing my grip considerably.

And allowing me to savage him.

I tore at the great neck, mauled it, shredded it. Felt the scales come away in my mouth, enough to threaten to choke me, but still I held on. I used fire to blast them, activating it with a thought, and blowing them out of my throat like ash. And sank my teeth ever deeper, into meat unprotected by any armor, into flesh that gave and gave and gave under my assault, into blood that gushed and spurted and filled my mouth with something far more delicious than scales.

And then we were falling again, with no warning from my suddenly weakly moving companion except for the ground rushing up to meet us. We hit with a terrible crash, thudding my bones and almost making me lose my grip. But if that had been the plan, it failed.

My jaws felt like they were locked in place; I wasn’t sure I could have let go had I wanted to. And I did not want to. I wanted to rend, to tear, to bite through the great throat entirely and watch the head bounce away onto the sand. I wanted blood, more and more of it, drinking it down now as if I could never get enough. I wanted everything.

I had heard of the blood lust of vampires all my life but had never felt it. I was feeling it now, only this went far beyond that. It was a blood frenzy, such as the old legends spoke of; when masters became crazed in battle from the carnage being wrought and the blood being absorbed by them and their families. Until it was all they could see, feel, smell, or want.

Until it became their whole world, and they would continue until the battle ended or they were dead. Nothing else could stop them. And nothing was stopping me.

I felt my opponent fall from my lips, whether in one piece or two I didn’t know and no longer cared. For he was dead and there was other prey to be had. Half a dozen of them had come with him, and were now looking at each other, and screeching in their strange voices as a blood covered savage with a dripping maw charged at them from across the arena. And called out a mind-numbing cry as she did so, the master power I possessed.

The one that froze my prey in place for a long moment while I brutalized them.

And brutalize I did.

One got away, one who had already taken off before I reached them, one who spiraled into the sky in a limping sort of flight, as if the call had almost caught him, too.

But he was too far away; he shrugged it off and fled, becoming a distant speck in a moment.

But the rest were mine.

“Dorina! Dorina!” I heard someone calling my name, and felt my father’s familiar power flowing across my mind. On Earth, it might have been enough to rein me in; even here it might have, as he had always been stronger. But it seemed that my mind had changed, too, and he was unfamiliar with its new makeup.

So, I threw off his hold and feasted.

Blood spurted, scales flew, claws raked me again and again as paralysis broke—too late. I felt the meat of my body torn, felt bones hard as iron shatter and buckle, felt pain—but I was used to pain. I wasn’t used to this, this exhilaration that came from literally consuming my enemies, or the power that their blood lent me, which healed my wounds almost as soon as they were created, and fed the blood lust that had been sleeping for five hundred years and slept no more.

And then it was suddenly over.

I paused, looking around and heaving, my body blood covered one minute and pristine the next, as all of the fey blood was absorbed in an instant.

But there was no more. None living anyway. The dragonkind were torn asunder, with pieces of their flesh gone as well as their blood drained. They lay steaming on the blackened ground, the fires they had used against me still burning in places, and their bodies twitching but not with life.

And I suddenly found myself exhausted, falling back onto human knees that burned as they hit the smoking ground. I cried out softly, not understanding, and then they were there: Mircea, gathering me up in his arms; Ray, yelling something I couldn’t understand; Marlowe, staring at me as if he had never seen me before; and fey, hundreds, perhaps thousands of fey, screaming one thing, over and over into the midday air: “Dorina, Dorina, Dorina!”

Then darkness overtook me and I knew no more.