The Adversary by Thea Harrison
Chapter Ten
Dragos asked Morgan, “Are you coming with us?”
The sorcerer smiled. “Absolutely. I’m with you to the end.”
Dragos handed the scepter back to him and shapeshifted into the dragon. Pia and Eva climbed onto his back and after tucking the scepter into his pack, Morgan kissed Sidonie and followed.
Springing into the air, Dragos wheeled to arrow along the coastline. He flew so fast and hard the wind whistled in Pia’s ears. Eva’s muscled body spooned hers from behind, providing warmth and stability.
“Look behind us,” Eva shouted in her ear.
Pushing her hair out of her eyes, she looked. The air was filled with winged Wyr who followed them. They could not match the dragon’s speed and rapidly fell behind. “What are they doing?”
“They’re going to war with their Lord,” Eva told her. “Their demesne was attacked, and their children are threatened. They were all just waiting for Dragos to act.”
To make the choice to go to war against one of the dragons was a very brave thing to do. If it came to them actively fighting, many of them would die. While she smiled at the sight of their loyalty, she hoped they would not arrive in time.
Eva carried the shackles on her back, and she was touching Pia. Did that mean they would affect Pia too? She tried reaching out to Dragos telepathically. Where are we going? Are you still able to contact the sentinels?
Most people’s telepathic range was no more than ten feet at best, but Dragos’s range was more like a couple hundred miles. And apparently she was far enough from the shackles, because Dragos replied, Yes. Graydon said he flew to a bluff and landed briefly at the top, then launched again and came this way. He stopped to retrieve his scepter.
Now he knows it’s missing.Pia narrowed her gaze as she tried to think like an evil megalomaniac. Senusret had to know his scepter hadn’t been stolen by a random thief. His impromptu hiding place was too remote for that. And he knows we have it. His level of desperation just went up.
He’s also not experienced with using Liam’s body. Graydon said he’s not flying as fast as Liam or I can normally. The sentinels are keeping him in their line of sight pretty easily.
She shivered, glad for Eva’s strong arm circling her waist. If they can see him, he can see them which also rachets his desperation higher.
Not necessarily. They’re cloaking their presence. He knows he’ll be pursued, but he doesn’t know they’re right on his heels.Feral satisfaction ran like a bright red river through his voice. He’s making for the closest crossover passageway. And he also doesn’t know that I’ve got guard stations on both sides of the two passageways.
Her stomach clenched. She was growing tired of that feeling. They don’t know that Liam is compromised. They’ll let him through, and then he could go anywhere.
That’s not going to happen. We’ll catch up with him before that. But just to be sure, I’ve asked Khalil to go ahead to both stations and warn them.He paused. Khalil just told me the children were at the station under Malan Wei’s protection. He’s helping to evacuate them now to another safe spot.
Her brief flash of alarm at his words quickly abated. This was what life with Dragos was like. While she was busy concentrating on the moment, he constantly ranged far and wide, talking with multiple people, often all at the same time, and playing strategic chess.
It was something he enjoyed, and he was superb at it. As far as she knew, the only people who ever gained his complete attention were her and the children, and only then when there wasn’t a crisis going on.
Or when they were making love. She was one hundred and ten percent certain she had all of his attention then.
Surely her chess master would know what to do next. Her telepathic voice filled with hope as she asked, What are we going to do when we catch up with him?
He was silent for far too long. Then he replied, I don’t know.
Hope withered like a fragile flower. Balling her hands into fists, she pressed them to the dragon’s bronze hide. That wasn’t what she wanted—needed—to hear.
After twenty-five miles or so of following the edge of the sea, Dragos veered away in a new direction. She recognized the route. It was the same one they had taken when they had flown to the settlement from the crossover passageway. A short time later, magic shimmered as Dragos threw a cloaking spell over them.
Morgan, who had been silent until that point, said from behind Eva, “We’re getting close.”
Pia’s breath shook. Yes, they were close. And Dragos didn’t know what they were going to do.
Her own words came back to haunt her. The only way Senusret was going to leave her son was if he was forced to.
They either had to find some way to kill Senusret, or he has to believe Liam is going to die.
No pressure at all.
The white dragoncame into Dragos’s line of sight. He was still a few miles away, but Dragos could see the steady, plodding nature of his flight, the measured rhythm of the rise and fall of those massive wings. None of it looked instinctive or natural.
How had Senusret accessed Liam’s Wyr side? Did it cost him to maintain control over it, as he maintained control over Liam’s consciousness?
He sincerely fucking hoped so. The more tired Senusret became, the quicker this confrontation would go.
Up ahead, at a bend in a river, the sentinels had gathered to wait for their arrival. Dragos said to his passengers, “Hang on.”
A few moments later, he sloped into a downward descent. Whenever he had passengers, he had to fly like he was driving a Honda minivan so he didn’t dislodge anyone, and right now he burned to shed that restriction.
Once he landed, Eva and Morgan slid to the ground, but Pia didn’t. Dragos waited a heartbeat longer, then he told her, You need to get down now, lover.
I don’t want to, she whispered.
He felt badly for her. You can’t go with me for this next bit. Just like I couldn’t go into the seraph’s realm with you.
Sometimes I hate it when you’re right, she hissed. She leaped off his back. “I need a gryphon!” Then, as all three gryphons stepped forward, she said, “Not Graydon or Rune. Bayne, you’re not mated. Will you take me up?”
“Of course.” Bayne crouched so that she could climb on.
“We’re still going with you, cupcake,” Graydon sounded annoyed.
“No, you’re not,” Dragos said. “None of you are. You’ve tracked him this far. You’ve done your jobs. The more of you who are involved at close quarters, the more opportunities he has to possess someone else. Stay back a good half mile.”
Since soul repositories were not something he had experience with, he glanced at Morgan for confirmation. Morgan nodded. “I think that should be safe.”
Pia looked grim and terrible. She was blood streaked, her clothes torn and grass stained, hair tangled and missing a sizeable chunk at the back. She was, now and always, the most beautiful thing Dragos had ever seen.
“Give me the shackles, Eva,” Pia said.
The other woman looked furious, but she handed the backpack over. Pia shrugged it securely onto her shoulders and belted it to her waist.
Morgan strode to Bayne and Pia. “You need me. Like Dragos, Senusret can’t possess me if I’m on guard against it. Not even while I hold his scepter.”
“Fine,” Dragos bit out. While he appreciated everything that Morgan had done so far, every decision led them into needing to trust Morgan further, and he didn’t like extending so much faith on a largely unknown entity, especially over something so important.
Morgan leaped onto Bayne’s back.
Dragos didn’t wait for further discussion. Freed from constraint, he shot upward and lunged through the air at his son. Every wing beat brought him closer.
The cloaking had worked for them so far, but at some point Senusret would hear the thunderous beat of Dragos’s wings.
Or would he?
Dragos doubled down on climbing in altitude while still working to overtake the other dragon, going higher and higher until he could look down at the sunshine glinting off Liam’s white hide. As he strained to gain the position he wanted, the weight of a body settled on his back, at the juncture where the base of his neck met his shoulders.
Awareness of who had joined him chilled his bones. I don’t want you here.
Get over it, said Azrael. We have flown together many times before, and you know we will again. Besides, you may need me.
My son is off limits to you, he growled. Do you hear me? You cannot have him.
You know that’s not how this works, Death replied.
Live or die. Kill or be killed. It was the only rule in the animal kingdom. Every herd, pack, lone predator, and species that developed venom and adaptive coloring knew the code.
As the Great Beast, Dragos knew it better than anybody, and most of the time he was just fine with it. Most of the time Azrael didn’t bother him in the slightest, and sometimes Dragos invited him to the battle.
But sometimes he hated Azrael with all his heart. Azrael was the one person he could not outrun or outfly, the one person he could not block from entering a room. If Dragos threw him off his back, Azrael would simply appear at the scene in some other way.
But dwelling on old resentments wasn’t going to free Liam. Setting his resentment aside, Dragos kept an eye on the white dragon below while he waited for the right moment. Counting the passage of time in his heartbeats. One, two….
The white dragon stretched out his wings to glide for a few moments, giving those powerful shoulder muscles a break before he resumed the hard work of flight.
…. There.
Folding back his own wings for maximum velocity and extending all four feet with talons outspread, Dragos plummeted. He dropped from the sky with the speed of a small airplane. Several tons of force slammed into Liam’s back. There was no room for error. Even as he struck the other dragon, he grasped hold of the juncture where Liam’s wings met his body and broke the bones with a resounding snap.
You’re not flying anywhere with my son’s stolen body ever again.
The white dragon screamed. The sound trumpeted through the sky. Dragos mantled, trying to brake their downward fall, but the other dragon struggled so violently, he flipped them end over end, and together, white dragon and bronze, they plunged to earth.
The force of their impact drove outward like a bomb, leveling trees and stamping a deep crater into the ground. The breath drove out of Dragos’s body and one of his hind legs snapped. Straining to move at his top speed, to drag the air back into his aching chest, he twisted in a gigantic roll and came to his feet.
He couldn’t put weight on his broken leg. It felt like it was on fire. Pain was pain; it wasn’t death. Ignoring it, he brought his focus onto the other dragon and readied for battle.
Lying in a twisted, awkward position, the white dragon convulsed. Liam. With a leap, Dragos straddled the other dragon’s body. “Come on, son!” he roared. He searched the white dragon’s blue eyes for any sign of Liam.
Recognition flashed across Liam’s face. He half-growled, half-gasped, “Do whatever you have to. Just get him out of me!”
Then that brief glimpse of Liam vanished, and the white dragon began to laugh breathlessly. “Really, Dragos, what are you going to do now?” Senusret asked. “He’s the ultimate hostage… and you can’t pry my arm away from his neck. I’m killing him from inside—you know I can—if you want your son to live you have to let me go….”
Rage and terror paired flawlessly together, like the world’s most poisonous wine.
“I already told you once,” Dragos snarled. “I don’t negotiate with terrorists.”
Snaking his head down, he closed his jaws around the white dragon’s throat and squeezed. Liam’s hot blood filled his mouth. The white dragon fought, raking Dragon’s underbelly with those long, razorlike talons. Bright, hot pain filled Dragos’s mind.
He clenched down harder. Leave him, you bastard.
Pia, Morgan, and Bayne raced into view.
“He’s going to disembowel him.” Bayne dove to wriggle between the two straining dragons. Somehow, mostly, he got those raking talons to stop digging into Dragos’s belly.
Get ready, Dragos said to Pia.
Get ready to heal him.
She still wore the backpack with the null spell shackles. She couldn’t have possibly heard him, but she crouched near their heads.
“I’m here.” Pia sounded clear and steady. “Liam, if you can hear me, Mom is here. Everything is going to be okay. We’re going to get you safe.”
If I kill my own son, she’ll never forgive me, he said to Azrael. She might want to, but she never will. I’ll never forgive myself.
Azrael knelt by Liam’s head. He laid a hand on the hard jowl. “They are fighting inside. You can’t let up.”
The hot sun beat down. Gradually, the white dragon’s struggles grew weaker.
Morgan pulled out the scepter and held it in front of the white dragon’s eyes. “Senusret, you have another choice. You don’t have to die with Liam.”
“Get out of him, you monster!” Pia screamed.
The raw pain in her voice. Closing his eyes at how unendurable it all was, Dragos squeezed his jaws tighter.
“Dragos may not negotiate with terrorists, but I do,” Morgan said, his voice filled with alluring, seductive Power. “If you leave him, we can get you a body. Perhaps a coma victim will do, or maybe a baby who doesn’t have a personality formed yet. You won’t have to struggle all the time just to stay alive. Think of the possibilities, Senusret. Life is right here waiting for you.”
“And so is Death,” Azrael said. “This is your only choice. There will never be another.”
The white dragon stopped moving.
No.
Something subtle and invisible flowed out of Liam’s body.
Azrael straightened from his crouch. “I’ve got him now.”
Rearing back his head, Dragos roared, “WHO DO YOU HAVE?”
Pia collapsed on Liam and sliced her hand open with a pocketknife. She must have cut deep, because her blood flowed freely and fell into the gaping wounds at Liam’s neck. “Come on, baby,” she sobbed. “Stay here with us. Liam, I beg you. Don’t leave me.”
“They’re both gone,” said Azrael. “No—wait.”
Dragos wanted to claw at the world. “Wait for WHAT?”
Death smiled. “I have never seen so many seraphim before. They have Liam, and they’re bringing him back.”
As they stared, the wounds at Liam’s neck began to heal. Nausea hit. Dragos managed to shapeshift into his human form and roll off the white dragon before vomiting violently. He retched, spat, and retched again, fighting to get the taste of Liam’s blood out of his mouth.
His useless leg and the long, raked wounds along his abdomen were a fiery agony. His throat burned with stomach acid, and he couldn’t see anything for the tears that sprang from his eyes and streamed down his face.
Kill or be killed. Live or die. This was life at its ugliest, and he would take it.
He would take every painful, stinking, puking, bloody moment of it.
Because his son would live.