Chapter 24
Afterward, they collapsed on the bed, wrapped tightly around each other. Shivers of blue energy pulsed through them. Flynn felt the bonds of connection weaving around him—his crew, his territory, and Kira.
But this was more than connection. They were part of each other.
It was like a door had opened to something that had always been there, binding the broken parts of him together and making him whole. Making them whole, together.
He could feel Kira shaking. Slowly, he smoothed back her hair and drifted kisses down her face and neck, soothing her.
Her arms tightened around him, and then relaxed. She took a deep breath.
“Holy hell,” she murmured.
“Yeah.”
He felt the grin curl his mouth. She was so beautiful—her faced flushed and glowing, her eyes shimmering with emotion.
It was a moment before he realized something was wrong. There was something growing inside him, in his belly and in the back of his brain. A pressure, like a thunderstorm about to break, and it was roaring down on him like a freight train.
Roaring down on them both.
Blue flames burst out around them, engulfing them. Flynn felt Kira seize up, and then he was burning from the inside out. All of his synapses were on fire.
Help us! Please! Don’t let us die here!
He felt the vision take hold of her, trying to pull her away. He held her tighter. He’d pulled her back before. This time it wasn’t going to take her. They weren’t going to fucking fry her brain.
But he couldn’t pull her back. The only thing he could do was hold on—and go with her.
This time it wasn’t a picture, the way she’d described, and they weren’t inside someone’s body. This time they were there.
They were standing in a cavernous room, side by side. It was filled with scientific equipment—shit that made his blood run hot with rage. The same kind of equipment Grant’s fucking mad scientist, the Professor, had used on him and his crew.
The room was dim, with magical orbs illuminating certain spots, leaving others in shadow. In the center, the young woman sat slumped in the chair, bound to it with leather straps, tubes and wires and electrodes penetrating her skin.
In the back, just as Kira had described, was a black dragon in a cage—only his burning, furious eyes visible in the darkness.
Flynn could feel the creature’s rage, his insanity. Fuck. He’d felt that too many times, burning inside Xander. The need to kill—not just the person who’d tormented him, but everyone.
And unlike one fucked-up panther, a crazy fucked-up dragon could do a lot of damage if he ever got loose.
But he didn’t have time to think of that. There was someone else in the room.
He was of medium height, with silky blond hair down to his shoulders, and a face so handsome it was almost pretty. Like some kind of model or teen heartthrob. With a start, Flynn recognized him.
He also recognized the look he had in his eyes, and the soothing tone of voice. The voice of a batshit-crazy sadist, trying to tell you that your “sacrifice” was for the benefit of science—or the world—instead of just feeding their own insanity.
He was moving toward the woman in the chair, still talking. She raised her head, and Flynn could see the hatred burning in her eyes.
And behind that, the fear.
Flynn strode forward, ready to smash the machine that held the electrodes. He reached for it—and his hands went right it.
Fuck. They weren’t really here.
The woman raised her head, and for a moment Flynn couldn’t see straight. The blood rushed to his head in one enraged howl.
Her fucking mouth was sewn shut. Kira hadn’t told him that.
She couldn’t even scream. No wonder she was screaming so loud in her head Kira could hear her in another world.
At that moment, the pretty fucker with the blond hair officially became a dead man.
He was talking again, but Flynn couldn’t hear him over the screaming. They needed to hear him.
He turned to Kira, but she was just standing there, hands pressed to either side of her head. It had to be so much worse for her…
He turned and put his hand on her shoulder. Immediately the screams quieted—not gone, but muted to the background.
She took a deep breath. “Flynn?”
“I’m here.”
“You came with me.”
“Fucking A. Wherever ‘here’ is.”
“They’re screaming…” Her voice was faint.
“I hear them.” She nodded. He said, “Can you block it out? I need to hear what this fucker is saying.”
She concentrated, and the screaming dimmed.
The man was smiling now—that kindly, sympathetic smile that the worst sadists used. “Shh, shh,” he said to the woman, stroking her arm. Flynn wanted to cut his fucking hand off. “You’re just upsetting yourself, screaming like that. Even if anyone could hear you, there’s nothing they can do.” He stroked her again. “And it will all be over soon.”
Flynn heard Kira suck in her breath. He put a hand on her arm.
“You’re fulfilling your destiny,” the man crooned. “You’re fulfilling my destiny. Your blood is special…so special. Did you know that it’s toxic to the rest of your kind? At least, it is if you know what to do with it. And I do.”
He ran his hand down her cheek. Kira growled.
“You, my pretty, are going to put an end to your kind. And then, the only dragons in the world will be the ones who belong to me. The ones who do my bidding.”
He adjusted the valve, and Flynn saw her face contort in pain. “Shh, shh,” the man said again. “You should be proud. You’re going to make me the most powerful man in all the worlds.”
He paused.
“And then they’ll burn, and I’ll remake them.”
He moved from the woman to a table where a thick black liquid was heating over a Bunsen burner. The vapors transferred through tubing to a collection beaker, where they condensed back to liquid while some kind of chemical dripped into them from another source. The mixture was a noxious green.
He opened a spigot on the collection tube and dripped a few drops into a small vial. He walked over to the dragon’s cage. The creature tried to move away, but the cage was too small; it was pressed against the bars.
Flynn saw that there was a raw place on the dragon’s flank, where its scales had been ripped away. The skin underneath was swollen and purple, as if it were infected.
The man slowly injected the poison into the dragon, watching as if something delicious were happening.
The dragon roared.
Or, it tried. But it was muzzled, and it could only make a muffled keening sound. Its whole body seized, and its mental screams shot through Flynn’s and Kira’s brains, almost bursting their eardrums.
The noise died down, and Flynn looked up to see the sorcerer staring right at them. “It’s too late,” he said. “There’s nothing you can do.”
He gestured at them with both hands, and black fire surged toward them.
Flynn threw his arms around Kira, invoking his territory magic to protect them. There was a strange sucking feeling, like being pulled by a giant vacuum. And then they were back in Flynn’s bed, still clinging together, panting, the sorcerer’s laughter ringing in their ears.
“Fucking hell,” Flynn said. Kira’s eyes were dark and shadowed. At least there was no blood, and she wasn’t seizing. But she was shaking.
He was pretty sure that was fury. He was shaking with it himself.
“I recognized them.” Her voice was trembling, which seemed to infuriate her more.
“Ragnor?” he said.
She stared at him. “Who?”
“Ragnor,” he said. “The sorcerer who put this goddamn binding on us. That was him.”
She shook her head. “No. I mean, I didn’t remember him. I recognized her, this time. Not her face, or her voice. Her…essence.” She turned to look at him. “It was Mayah. My little sister.”
The moment she said it, he knew she was right. There had been a faint feeling of familiarity when he looked at the woman—she was a younger, softer version of Kira. And the dragon…she was right about that too. The shape of the head, the placement of the horns—if that wasn’t an Al-Maddeiri dragon in that cage, he’d eat his fucking combat vest.
Which almost certainly made him Emon, Kira’s younger brother.
All the children of Al-Maddeiri were alive. And Kira had been luckier than she ever knew.
It could be her in that room, screaming, not knowing anyone could hear.
Begging for help that never came.
Flynn wanted to turn cat, to let his lion rage and rip that motherfucker Ragnor into a thousand pieces and leave him for the jackals.
“He’s going to kill them,” she said. “And that liquid he was making in the test tube—that’s poison. He’s going to use it to kill all the rest of the dragons.”
“He’s going to try,” Flynn said. “That’s a long way from a perfect plan.”
“It wouldn’t be that hard,” Kira said. “Dragons are almost invulnerable to normal dangers. I mean, you can blast one out of the sky with a big enough missile, or they can kill each other in battle, but that’s about it. But a poison made from dragon blood…”
“He hasn’t managed to kill your—the black dragon,” Flynn pointed out.
“He probably hasn’t been trying. He’s been refining his formula, using small doses to test the toxicity. When he thinks he has it right…”
“Then he’ll kill them.”
She nodded. “After that, all he has to do is take it to the Dragonlands and introduce it into the water supply. They don’t guard things like that—why should they? And if it’s made of dragon blood…”
“It will pass through any magical wards they have up.”
She nodded.
“Shit,” Flynn said. He was no fan of dragons, but he was sure as hell opposed to some insane asshole wiping out a whole species just to get his fucking rocks off.
Nobody deserved that.
“We’ll find them,” he said. “We’ve got everyone looking. We’ll find them, and we’ll take that fucker down. If we have to scour all the fucking worlds for them, we will. I swear it.”
Kira shook her head. “We don’t have to,” she said. “I know where they are.”