Smoke and Mirrors

LOCH

Our seven-dragon army swooped down on the warehouse where Maddie was being held.

Storm confirmed our suspicion that this was the same place where they’d found the slain dragon…

Prepared for the worst, we gathered for a moment at the door in our human forms.

I sent my rallying cry to my fellow soldiers.

“Now is the time we avenge our own!” I shouted

And then we misted through the door. A moment later, through the familiar black mist, I could make out the dismal scene.

Nautica, the leader of the dragon slayers, sat on the floor.

He wore a white tunic, stained with red. His hair was slicked back and his whole body was smudged with blood…almost as if he had bathed in it.

He had a fucked up, saintly smile on his face.

~And where the fuck is Maddie?~

I could sense her presence, but I couldn’t see her. And then I looked up, near the rafters, and saw her there, bound with thick rope, her mouth sealed with tape.

She was swinging from a meat hook, upside down.

The thin metal walls vibrated with a low growl I would know anywhere.

I turned to see my brother Hael’s deep-green dragon towering over me. His eyes were red and wild with rage…

He puffed smoke from his nose, ready for battle.

I nodded to him, affirming his hunger for vengeance.

Oh, we were going to wipe that smile off Nautica’s face! I wasn’t just going to kill him… I was going to gut him, skin him, and hang him from hooks like he did that rogue.

“Welcome to my butcher shop. May I interest you in a drumstick? Some spareribs?” Nautica asked nonchalantly. “As you can see, Maddie has already made herself at home.”

My hands were clenched into fists.

“Very funny, Nautica,” I spat. “But you won’t be laughing for long. Prepare to die the brutal death you deserve.”

But Nautica cackled in response. “See you in hell!”

His words floated up to me as I shifted into my dragon form along with the other dragons at my side.

I flexed the powerful muscles in my legs and wings, and inhaled a deep breath of the rancid air.

Finally, I opened my mouth. Channeling the hellfire torturing my soul, I blasted Nautica with my flame.

As the otherworldly heat poured from me, my mind wandered.

I thought of Adara, wounded in the casino. Maddie, suspended from the meat hook.

I torched Nautica for ~them~. So that they would never be hurt or threatened again.

When I opened my reptile eyes, the warehouse was gone.

In its place, I saw only the vibrant colors of dragons’ flame.

My glittering black mixed with Silver’s metallic blaze…with Dane’s and Aneurin’s deep greens and blues…and swirling amidst it all was Storm’s deep thundercloud gray.

The combination of our force produced an iridescent rainbow. It was brighter than I could have imagined…

It blazed with our power. In that moment I knew that we, dragonkind, were even stronger together than the sum of our parts.

Confident that the job had been done, I stopped my fiery onslaught. As the flames faded, I expected to find Nautica charred black and melted to pink goo.

But as the smoke cleared, I could make out his figure, still sitting in the same position…still chuckling under his breath.

I turned to Storm, who stepped forward for a closer look. He was as surprised as I was.

Nautica stood up and raised his arms to the sky. At that moment, his soldiers—the fellow dragon slayers—emerged from the shadows.

Each one held a long sword…soaked in dragonsbane.

HAEL

Somehow, Nautica had made it through the firestorm alive.

~But he won’t stay that way for long.~

I roared as I charged forward, swiping across Nautica’s chest with one sharp talon…

But instead of feeling the resistance of flesh, sinew, and bone, I felt as if I had glanced off polished glass.

~What the fuck?~

Nautica glared at me, and the dragon slayers began to charge.

Hael

Nautica is untouchable!

Loch

That fucker is immune.

Silver

It seems he can’t be physically harmed…

Storm

Dragon blood…

Storm

Nautica must have bathed in the blood of the dragon he slayed. As a result, he is indestructible.

Dane

Just our fucking luck.

Aneurin

What do we do now?

The glittering blades of the bane-soaked swords were drawing nearer with each passing second.

My mind was racing, thinking of Maddie in the rafters…

Just then I had an idea.

Hael

If we can’t use fire, maybe we can use smoke…

From the huge flames we had just produced, the well of smoke inside me was near its threshold. All I needed to do was exhale…

Quickly, the air before me blurred with toxic smog.

The slayers’ coughs filled the air.

~Yes!~

My vision blurred with the smog. Dragonsmoke was dangerous to humans. We had to be careful that it was enough for the dragon slayers…

But not too much for Maddie. I turned to Loch, and I could just make him out through the haze. He nodded and leapt into the air. He was going to wrap his wings around Maddie to protect her.

I hoped that Nautica was among the humans getting smoked out.

When I heard his voice struggle to call out to us, I knew my intuition had been right.

Nautica’s skin might have been impenetrable, but his lungs weren’t.

“Maybe you have the upper hand now…,” he wheezed, “But you’re still trapped. Requiem City is your cage. And you will never escape…”

STORM

The slayers retreated in the haze, and as much as it plagued me to see them escape, I felt a sense of peace.

Maddie was safe. The conniving bastard Nautica was not indestructible.

But most importantly, all of us had worked together.

Seven dragons fought together. Protecting one another from our common enemy.

We were not of the same horde, and in fact, we had little else in common.

Our differences outweighed our similarities.

Yet we had worked together, and we had been successful.

And ~that~ gave me hope.

If dragons could come together to support each other, maybe there was hope for our kind after all.

MADDIE

Even though Loch was surrounding me with his wings, I couldn’t stop coughing from the dragonsmoke.

Of course, it didn’t help that I was breathing upside down.

Hael stood on the nose of Loch’s dragon and used a sharp knife to cut through the thick ropes that bound me.

“Thank you!” I sighed as I finally slipped from my trap and into my mate’s arms.

Hael held me close as Loch lowered us to the ground and then misted into his human form. He wrapped his arms around me too, and I let out a long sigh of relief.

“Literally smoking out Nautica was some quick thinking,” I complimented.

“You told us to expect the unexpected,” Hael said as he nuzzled my hair. “So we did.”

In that moment, I forgot all about the casino and my fight with my mates. I even forgot about the heist.

I was touched by the fact that they had actually listened to me…

Even though Nautica was gone, at least I was still here.

But I knew we couldn’t celebrate. We had to be on our toes.

In that twisted display, Nautica had shown he was even more powerful than we’d thought.

And he wasn’t going anywhere without a fight.

ZAYDA

I sat on the floor of Xythor’s room as Thor wailed in my arms.

My eyelids fluttered from exhaustion, but I couldn’t sleep yet.

Thor had been crying for nearly twenty-four hours. I’d tried to give him everything. Food, sleep, love…but nothing worked.

The only thing I could think of was that my child was in pain.

It was clear his condition was uncomfortable. His scales gave him a painful rash. He’d burned his own foot with a fiery burp.

I could only imagine the war that was raging inside his tiny body…

A war between dragon and man.

And Xythor…he hadn’t looked at me in days. Sure, he ~looked~ at me. But he didn’t see me. He didn’t see anything anymore. His eyes were the eyes of the dead.

In that most desperate place, with Freesia’s notebook on the ground beside me, I knew I could not delay my fate any longer.

I was the second coming of Freesia.

But did that mean I should repeat her curse?

Should I—~could~ I kill my demonic child to save Xythor?

~Or do I alter her curse, adapting it…in the slim hopes that with a different sacrifice, I could possibly save the child?~