Chapter Twenty-One
Torran
“Torran? Torran, what is it?”
He ignored Lilly, his attention elsewhere.
Rising up, he peered into the darkness. The shadows played havoc with his normal vision so he flicked his eyes over to infrared. Immediately the bright red of a human body revealed itself.
“Oh shit,” the person said, taking off for the edge of the field and the road.
Torran couldn’t see what lay beyond the tree line, but he had an idea.
“Come back here,” he rumbled, taking off across the ground.
“Shit shit shit.”
He growled, recognizing the voice, and the scent now that he was trailing them.
Behind him Lilly shouted out for him to come back, but he couldn’t. Not if he thought that that the interloper had video of him.
“Stop!” he shouted at Lilly’s ex as Damien ran pell-mell for the tree line. “Don’t make me hurt you.”
The biker didn’t even bother looking back; he just ran on and on, arms churning wildly as the huge dragon came after him, the ground shaking slightly with each step of his monstrous paws. Dragons were not the most graceful creatures on the ground, nor were they the speediest. The gap was closing, but he wouldn’t reach him until the other side of the trees.
Damien shouted something and the sound of motorcycles revving up reached his ears. There were more of them out there. The gang. Things were about to get ugly.
He charged through the trees at a mad dash. Pine branches went everywhere as he tore down the slope like a mad demon from hell, trying to stop the group before they got away, but his desire to end things early betrayed him. The group had Damien’s cycle up and running when he reached it, and they sped away, leaving Torran behind.
“Well that sucks,” he muttered, his longer hind legs bunching behind him.
Wings spread wide, he leapt into the air, swiftly winging after the six vehicles, closing on them with ease. Shouts went up as he was spotted, and they began to put on speed. Torran might be slow on the ground, but in the air he was death on wings, and he easily caught up to them as they reached a corner.
Stooping low, he tried to scatter them, aiming for Damien. He didn’t want to hurt them; he only wanted the phones.
“Just give me your phones, and you can go free,” he roared as they started trying to shoot him.
The bullets pinged off his scales and one of the bikers cried out in pain as he was hit by a ricochet. Talk about bad luck.
“Stop that!” he shouted, gaining some height to better pace them. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
They ignored him, and he went after Damien again, his jaws snapping, trying to grab his clothing. Or an arm. Either would be okay. But the biker was surprisingly agile and leaned over to the side, balancing himself precariously as he avoided getting caught.
He retreated to the air once more, only to notice that two of the bikers had dropped back and were now pointing their phones at him instead of guns. Torran weighed his options and sighed. At any point now they would reach a crossroad that led somewhere, and he would be unable to keep them together.
“Please don’t make me do this!” he pleaded. “I don’t want to. Just stop and give me your phones.”
But they ignored him, racing along, the intersection he’d dreaded coming closer. Torran waited and asked again, but there was no response. A terrible weight came over him as he sped ahead to the intersection.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, though he wasn’t talking to the bikers.
His maw opened and billowing clouds of green gas came forth, filling the intersection seconds before the bikers entered it. He felt tears running down his scaly face as he continued to thicken the gas, melting everything inside the rough circle he’d created.
Six humans and their bikes entered the cloud. Nothing came out.
Torran settled to the ground nearby and dismissed the cloud. He walked over to the intersection, inspecting it. The last thing he wanted was to miss one of the phones, making everything he’d just done pointless. As suspected however, there was nothing remaining. Not even the asphalt had survived his attack, melted away into slag.
That done, he walked back down the side road into the ditch and promptly threw up.
He did not want to do this. At all. Fighting other dragons was one thing, or the Outsiders if and when it came to that. Torran would fight the evil beings and he would kill as many as was necessary to protect his mate, her friends, and the rest of humanity. But this? This hadn’t been a fight. It had been a slaughter, and he was not okay with that.
Especially now that he had to go back to Lilly and tell her that he’d just killed the man who had sired her child. Whether she had wanted him to be involved in her life or not, Torran had just removed any hope of the child ever knowing its father. He would never forgive himself for that.
Just like he now suspected Lilly would never forgive him.