“Let go of her!” I hurled myself at the bars. My dragon throbbed in my chest. I tore at it, begging it to open up, but I couldn’t focus.
Missi looked rough, but she spat in the eye of the Chosen on her right and kicked the other one in the tail with a combat-booted foot. Her t-shirt was ripped along the shoulder, and her hair was matted on the side with some sort of dark grime that also coated her jeans. Her arms were covered in scrapes and newly-forming bruises.
The Chosen on the left launched a fist into her stomach. She cried out and sagged in their arms. I cried out too, bashing myself against the bars frantically and forgetting all about my dragon for the moment. I had to get out. I had to get to her. The Chosen grabbed her around the throat with the tip of his tail and straightened her up to present her to the cobra.
The other Chosen tossed Missi’s cellphone to the ground. Her rainbow-covered case shattered along with the precious electronics. “My Priest, this one was tracking the shadow dragon’s location,” he hissed.
The High Priest looked pissed. “You didn’t search the shadow dragon for her cellphone?” He whirled on the Chosen drawing the runes on the floor.
“I…Er…” One of them dropped his stick, looking ashamed.
The priest raised a hand and hissed. A shadow coiled up from the ground beneath the Chosen, much like my own shadow tentacles. It wrapped around the Chosen’s throat and squeezed.
“Tell me why I shouldn’t kill you right now,” the priest asked in a disturbingly conversational tone. The Chosen gurgled helplessly, but didn’t raise his hands to try to free himself. He just hung there limply. After a long moment of this, the priest waved a hand and the Chosen dropped to the ground, rubbing his throat and gasping for air. The High Priest raised his hand, this time toward me. I felt a sharp burning pain in my thigh as my cellphone fried itself in my pocket.
“Was she alone?” He returned his attention to the two holding Missi.
I looked at Missi in awe. “Missi… you didn’t come alone…what about the guys?”
She spotted me and looked horrified at the cage. She spat out a mouthful of blood. “Found the SUV empty in front of the pub. Fired up the Best Friends app and came looking for you.” Her voice was as rough as her exterior. A trickle of blood ran down her chin. They’d worked her over pretty hard. My dragon pulsed.
“You shouldn’t have come. Dammit, Missi.”
She snorted. Blood trickled out of her reddened nose. “Of course I had to, you dork. You’re my sister and I love you.”
“Touching,” the High Priest mocked. “We can test the ritual on her. Human’s close enough to dragon that it should work.”
The Chosen hurled Missi into the center of the ring of runes. She landed face-first on the stone and didn’t move for a moment. I screamed and grabbed at my dragon. The shadows started to thicken around the edge of the room. The Chosen paid it no notice.
The High Priest slithered over to an altar at the side of the room and picked up a kris dagger. The rippled blade glinted red in the torchlight. He raised it above his head and began to chant something in his grating, hissing voice. I couldn’t understand the words, but my dragon reacted by coiling tighter. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move. I sat there, gripping the bars with white knuckles as he slid closer to Missi’s prone form. He flipped her over with a shove of his glistening tail. Her eyes were open, flitting around the room like she was trapped inside her own body. The blade flashed downward, slashing fabric and flesh alike in a long, thin line down her front.
The shadows exploded. Chosen screamed as thick tentacles wrapped around their arms and throats. The blade flew from the priest’s hand as another tentacle slammed into his back. He lurched, then cursed in his strange serpent’s language. I squeezed with my hands, throttling the Chosen without mercy. I raised a tentacle to wrap around the priest, but he batted it aside as though it were a mere annoyance. I snarled and tried again, barely noticing as the Chosen went limp in my grasp. The High Priest ducked beneath the tentacle and grabbed the dagger again, setting it against Missi’s throat.
“Impressive. We were unaware that you’d found any of your gifts yet. Now set them down or I’ll slice your friend’s head off and hit you with it.” His voice was calm.
I roared in fury, then unclenched my hands. Chosen thudded to the ground, lifeless. The High Priest took them in impassively.
“You can kill. We underestimated you. Perhaps the shadow line isn’t as weak as we had feared it had become.”
My stomach flipped. I’d never actually killed anything on purpose before, aside from cockroaches and mosquitos. Definitely nothing sentient. I surveyed the room. Four Chosen corpses. I’d done that.
No time to think about that. The High Priest still had a blade to Missi’s throat. Panic welled in my chest, drowning out my dragon.
“I think we’ll keep this one for the time being. Insurance for your good behavior until the ritual is ready.” The High Priest stood up and slithered over to a gong, striking it with his tail. Two more Chosen entered the cavern, their eyes widening slightly as they took in the carnage of the room. “Clean this mess up and put this one in a cage.” He flicked Missi with his tail. “Get an acolyte to draw the runes anew. This ritual must be perfect.” He slithered toward the exit.
“Yes, my Priest.” The Chosen flattened themselves against the floor, then slithered over to drag Missi to an empty cage near mine.
I slumped against the floor of the cage, defeated and useless. Now, my family was going to die with me. And Chase… the SUV had been empty. Did they kill him? Drag him off to devour his essence too?
No, I decided. If they’d captured him, they would have tested the ritual on him instead of trying to do it to Missi. Which begged the question: Where was he, and how were the guys going to find us?
Missi groaned in her cage. I looked around the cavern. The two Chosen were dragging corpses out of the room.
“Are you okay?” I whispered.
“Mmph.” She raised her head slightly. “M’alive. Better than I thought I was gonna be for a second there. Thanks for the save.” She rubbed at her chest where the blade had cut her. Thankfully, it was superficial. It still looked painful, and I felt a sharp pang of guilt.
I snorted bitterly. “Hardly a save. We’re still trapped.”
“They should be here soon,” Missi whispered.
My eyes widened. “They know where we are?”
Missi gave me a grim smile. “I was feeding GPS coordinates to Galen until they caught me. It’s a labyrinth down here, though.” She showed me her fingertips. They were a familiar shade of blue. “I marked the walls with pool chalk, but they caught me a few twists and turns away from here. I dropped the chalk in the fight. I don’t think they noticed it to wipe it away.”
A flicker of hope lit the darkness. “Maybe there’s a chance.”
“How about you?” She rolled to face me. “How are you doing?”
I surveyed myself briefly. “My head is killing me and I feel like I’ve run a marathon from all the shadow play.”
“Shadow play.” Missi’s voice was full of awe. “You killed four snake dudes and punched a cobra in the skull a couple times. If that’s play, I wanna see you work.”
“If I could shift, maybe I could get us out of this.” I reached for my dragon. So far, the only thing that had gotten me close to shifting was sex, and that was the farthest thing from my mind. If the fear of losing Missi hadn’t been enough to force a shift… I shoved that from my mind and worked at my dragon with all of the fear, anger, and frustration I had to offer.
It had to work. It just had to.