Ivore
He heard a scream of some sort. It was faint, and he couldn’t make out what it was saying, though it was definitely feminine. Maybe it was the secretary. If someone had just freed her from his ice, she might be in hysterics. That would make sense.
Everyone else in the room reacted to it, however, growing slightly more nervous. One of the guards even shuffled slightly in place. Curious as to what was going on, he tested the air, forcing himself to inhale deep, ignoring the pain from the swelling in his nose. His chest rose with the inflating of his lungs, but it was what he caught in the air that caused his head to snap up.
Violet had been here, and recently.
“Don’t even think it,” Malkin warned, but it was too late.
“WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH MY MATE?!” he bellowed, throwing off the guards with an angry flex of his arms. They didn’t go as far as he’d like, their own reflexes nearly as good as his. Shifters, then. He’d suspected as much based on how tightly they’d clamped on to his arms.
“Do anything and she dies!” Malkin shouted as Ivore exploded into action.
Cold, icy fury pooled within him, and he drew on that, using it to wield his dragon powers to their fullest. Ivore pulled his arms in together, willing the ice to rise up across his body, pulling energy into him as the shifter guards readied themselves to attack. A moment before they charged he flung his hands out wide.
Icicles ripped from his skin, spreading out in all directions as he unleashed his power on the room. The guards got their arms up in time, but the force of the impact drove them all back several steps.
Malkin, due to his age, was too slow to react. A pair of foot-long icy darts struck him in the shoulder and leg, flipping him back over his desk and out of sight. Ivore didn’t have time to enjoy it as he was buried under a pile of shifters. They bore him to the ground, delivering kicks, elbows, and fists along the way.
Ivore’s hands hit the ground, and he let his power flow out across it. Once more the ground grew hard and slippery, the purest of ice. He pushed it out wide to the edges of the walls, coating every exposed inch. The shifters around him began to struggle for balance, at least one of them muttering something that sounded suspiciously like “not again.”
He got to his feet, the ice always providing him with even footing. It was his ally. He’d been using it since he was a little child, and now with over two centuries of experience, it came to him as naturally as breathing. The other shifters didn’t stand a chance.
Stomping down with his foot caused the ice to heave up and outward in a ripple, spilling those who had regained their footing to the floor. The ice was a living thing under his control, reaching up to grab at the shifters, securing their limbs to the ground, rendering them immobile. It was child’s play, really.
“Where is she?” he snarled, grabbing Malkin’s desk and hurling it across the room to explode against the wall, peppering several of the pinned shifters with splinters.
What he saw beneath it paused his rampage. Instead of cowering, Malkin was lying in a pool of his own blood, shivering weakly as he looked up at the ceiling. The two icicles were still embedded deep in his shoulder and leg. By the looks of it the one in his leg had nipped the artery. He was going to die in minutes, bleeding out on his office floor.
“Aw hell.” He cursed himself; he hadn’t been meaning to kill the old man. Not yet at least. He wanted him to atone for his sins before meeting his maker.
“I go to see my sons,” Malkin said, a strange smile twisting at his features. “At your hands. How appropriate.”
“You don’t get it, do you?” Ivore muttered, taking a knee. “We didn’t kill them. You fed them the drugs. You knew what they were, what they would do. You wanted more money, and in the end, it killed your kids.”
Malkin shook his head, back and forth as much as he could. “Didn’t. Not me. Drugs came…elsewhere.”
Ivore frowned. “No, they came from you, Malkin. You’re the one dealing them, putting them out there to infect every shifter you can.”
The old man coughed, spitting up blood. “Were given to me. T-test batch.” He was growing weaker by the second.
“Who gave them to you?”
Malkin’s eyes closed.
“No, dammit. Who gave you the drugs? Who sold them to you?!” Ivore shook him gently, but it was too late, he was gone. “Fuck.”
All along he and his brothers had assumed that Malkin was behind the drugs. The pills were laced with DNA from the Outsiders, the alien creatures he and his kind had been awakened to fight. While it seemed to work on transforming dragons into something different, it had killed Malkin’s sons, both of whom were wolf shifters, like most of his goons as well. The explosive revelation that someone else was dealing the drugs set everything they’d been working toward back to zero.
Ivore rose to his feet. There would be time for all that later, however. He needed to find Violet, and get her out of here. The scream had come from nearby, but not from back toward the hallway. That meant one thing: a fake wall.
He eyed the glass on his left. It certainly wasn’t there. That only left two sides. One of the shifters managed to break free of the ice as he passed, clawing at Ivore. The ice dragon formed, flung, and hit the shifter in the gut with an icicle all in one smooth move. The guard shrieked in pain, clawing at the icy dagger in his stomach. Ivore barely reacted.
Behind him there was shouting, and the floor trembled. Moments later a tremendous roar filled the air as something came through the door. Something big.
Ivore blinked. “Oh. They have a bear.”
The massive creature pawed at the ground, ripping huge gouges from the icy covering. Unlike the wolves, it wasn’t affected by ice. Behind it more guards piled into the room. All of them had metal grips attached to their boots. Apparently Malkin had done some planning.
One of them stepped around the huge grizzly. He had a large tank on his back and leveled a long tube in Ivore’s direction. A gout of flame leapt from the nozzle, billowing outward as it reached for him.
“Oh shit!” He reached for the floor and poured power into the ice, forming a wall between him and the flame. Fire met ice and the wall exploded under the sudden change. Ivore hurtled backward, plunging through the wall into a hidden corridor beyond.
So it was the back wall. I knew it.
He got to his feet, taking a spare second to build a stronger, thicker wall of ice in front of the hole before he took off, using his nose to follow her scent. Violet was here, and he was going to rescue her. Nothing would stand in the way of that.
“VIOLET!” he bellowed as the trail grew stronger.
Rounding a corner, he skidded to a halt. Wood paneling on his left, windows outside to some sort of courtyard he’d not noticed before on his right. Not much in the way of options.
A terrified-looking guard stood in the middle of the hallway, one thick arm wrapped around his mate’s neck, the other gripping the side of her head. “Stop right there or I’ll break her neck.”
Ivore knew he could do it. The man was a shifter. It wouldn’t be a challenge.
“Violet, darling, it’s going to be okay,” he said, raising his hands.
Behind him the bear came charging through the wall. Ivore had to think fast.
Violet’s eyes were dark with fear, more brown than gold, a sight that drove his dragon wild with fury. He was going to get her out of this and make sure that nothing ever caused his mate to look at him with eyes like that ever again. A line had been crossed, and Ivore was done playing nice.
“Get on your knees!” the guard shouted, the bear drawing nearer.
“Now you know I can’t do that,” he said, lowering his hands but keeping them out wide. “And you know if you do hurt her that you’re going to die within a second, right? You are aware of that? So why don’t you just let her go, and the two of us will leave, and you can live. I’ll even punch you in the face so you can tell your friends I knocked you out, and you won’t be in trouble.”
The guard hesitated. He wanted to accept the offer. So why wasn’t he? Ivore’s eyes shifted left as a second guard walked out of an open door he hadn’t even noticed, so focused was he on Violet.
“That won’t be happening.”
The bear finally rounded the corner. Ivore snarled. “Violet, darling, close your eyes, okay? I’m sorry about this.”
Violet closed her eyes. The guard holding her opened his wider. “What are you sorry about?”
Ivore reached out, feeling the water in the air, the moisture. Although he was better with ice and snow, it was all essentially the same thing. In the end, water became ice. All it needed to do was freeze. And that’s just what Ivore did. He froze the air. Specifically all the air in the guards’ lungs and around their faces.
Both of them reached for their mouths in surprise as they could no longer breathe, skin turning blue swiftly. Ivore reached for Violet, grabbing her before she could fall.
“Question for you?” he asked as the bear came charging down the hallway at them.
“Now?” She looked over his shoulder at the bear. “What is it?”
“How are you with heights?”
“Heights? Wh—AHHH!” Her question turned into a scream as he hurled them out a window.
But they didn’t fall to their deaths as she might have thought. Instead, they began to slide, slowly at first, but accelerating quickly as their angle sharpened.
“What the hell is going on?” Violet screamed.
Ivore had to shout to be heard over the rushing of wind as they descended the stories swiftly to the ground. “Ice dragon, remember? Ice slide, baby. One of the first tricks I ever learned.” He laughed. “I never thought I’d ever actually use this in a serious situation though.”
He guided the track of ice into some gentle, sloping curves, slowing their descent as they banked around them, until eventually he could hop out onto the ground. The slide was strong, but even the bear wasn’t that dumb. He quickly shifted back into his human form before jumping after them.
“Violet, go hide in that corner and close your eyes, will you?” he said, pointing to one corner of the courtyard.
They were in the middle of the building, surrounded on all four sides by structure. Ivore knew it was time to end this. He closed his eyes, freed his animal, and in the blink of an eye his human form was gone. A huge beast bigger than a city bus took its place, slowly shaking gigantic membranous wings of snowy white.
The bear coming down the ice slide took one look at what he was up against and immediately began clawing at the ramp, trying to stop himself.
Ivore snatched him up in his jaws, flicked his head, and sent the mangled body hurtling back up into the broken window from which it had come.
Then he breathed a cone of pure ice in the same direction. Windows exploded and shrieks of pain and agony filled the four-sided courtyard. Ivore didn’t stop there. He filled the top levels of the building completely. The ice made a shrieking-like noise as he spewed it everywhere, adding to the power of the moment. Ivore didn’t care who saw him. He was making a statement to anyone and everyone involved with Malkin.
Leave him and his mate alone. Or else.
Finally satisfied that he’d made his point he stopped, shifting back into his human form as great icicles hung from the upper levels of the building, structural supports groaning under the added weight of tons of frigid ice. Particles of snow and chips of ice filled the interior, swirling around slowly in the mild breeze that always seems to occupy such closed-off places. Somewhere in the distance a siren sounded.
“Okay, time to go,” he pronounced, picking Violet up and carrying her from the building.
Behind him the ice slide groaned and then crashed to the ground, shattering into a million tiny pieces.