Then he could finally mobilize every blue dragon to hunt any demon dragons in the water to extinction.
Two of the Mami Wata swam up and tugged him toward the surface of the cave again. “Ky Puru. Azynsa, he’s taking her.”
Shit. There had been five demon dragons left. He’d missed one. Ky put on speed and made it to the cave in time to see the demon dragon dragging Azynsa, shiny new legs and all, into one of the tunnels.
“Let go of me, you ghetto mutha-fucker. I will cut you.” She kicked and scratched and spewed insults like a hardened criminal. None of which stopped the demon dragon from yanking her hair-first farther down the tunnel.
The heat hit Ky right where it counted, in the everywhere. The increased temperature zapped his strength instantly. He pushed water into the tunnel, doing his best to follow the demon dragon.
Each wave gave him only a second’s respite before it evaporated in the heat. He had to keep going. The demon dragons could not have that mermaid. This one was special. She wasn’t full Mami Wata. That language was purely human.
Ky scraped the sides of the rock wall, marking his path. The faster he could grab the girl and get back to the water, the better for both of them.
This heat was killing him, it had to be hell on Azynsa’s more fragile body.
“Look, cocksucker, if you’re going to kill me then do it. Eat my worthless heart out, because I’m burning to death.” Azynsa’s voice rang through the tunnel, leading Ky to her. Almost there.
A growl that could not have come from the demon dragon rumbled through the tunnel, shaking rocks of fire from the ceiling. “Your heart is what I’m after, whore. It won’t do me any good to let you die. But you’ll wish you had.”
Who in the hell was that?
Whoever he was roared, sending a wall of fire scorching into the tunnel. If Ky stayed he’d be toast. Literally.
If he left, the girl would have a fate worse than death. He couldn’t save her if he was dead too. He’d have to come back for her.
The last of his strength was flagging, and it took all he had to turn and run. He slipped into the water just as the flames burst out into the cave.
The faces of the Mami Wata fell when they saw him without their sister.
He’d failed them. For that he was beyond sorry.
“My brothers and I will rescue Azynsa or die trying.”
The nearest girl nodded her head and wrapped her arms around herself. “Azynsa has a powerful will. She gets it from her earth father. Those beasts may have her, but she will make them wish they didn’t.”
Together, he and the Mami Wata swam back to the open ocean, the water restoring them all. Ky thanked the sea for her help and her strength.
A group of Mami Wata gathered around the entrance of the underwater tunnel. They held each other, searching for comfort after the attack. Two stood guard over Ky’s iced demon.
“I will be with my kin within the day, and we can dispatch our finest to begin a rescue mission. But I’m unfamiliar with the land here. Where do we send our warriors?”
“The humans call it the island of Bioko.”
Right in the armpit of Central and West Africa.
“What’s the name of the volcano?” Ky knew oceans, lakes, and rivers. Match understood volcanoes. The demon dragons would hole up in the belly of the volcano and needed to be rooted out and destroyed.
“We’re in the tunnels below the San Carlos Caldera. This was our home.”
“I’ll put a call out to my Wyr to help you rebuild. Any blues nearby will be glad to help our sisters of the water.”
“Thank you, Ky Puru.”
Ky reinforced the ice around the demon dragon. He’d need evidence of the their new talent. It was still unbelievable to him. He’s fucking tow it to the AllWyr.
“Wait, one moment.” One of the Mami Wata swam up to the encased demon and gave it the finger, shaking her hand and wrinkling her nose. Two others joined her, one wrapping her elbow around her other arm as she flipped off the demon.
“That is a curse Azynsa taught us. She knows many, but that is the most powerful in the land of her father. I hope it brings that beast much pain.”
“I’m sure it will.” Ky would be doling out worse, making good on these women’s curses.
He pushed himself hard to get to Amsterdam, but the battle and the heat of the volcano had left him depleted. Ky continually reformed around the demon dragon, while he fought against the warm Guinea and Azores currents.
He should have ridden the Atlantic South up to the Gulf Stream and to make the journey easy, but it would have taken twice as long. The AllWyr was definitely coming to New Zealand next time.
Cage could fly them all there on his wind and sunshine in no time. If whatever the problem he’d called in the other Wyverns for was resolved by then.
Ky welcomed the cooler waters of the English Channel. In another few minutes, he dove through the canals of Amsterdam toward Cage’s home outside of the city.
When he arrived in the marsh around The Lindens he tried to contact his brother Dragon Wyvern.
“Cage, I have arrived, and I’ve got luggage.”
No reply. Strange.
“Jakob, Match, you here yet?”
Match’s cranky voice replied. “For hours. What the hell took you so long?”
“Meet me at the pond. I’ve brought a present.”
Ky dragged the dripping block of ice from the water then shifted into his human form to examine the demon dragon inside while he waited.
The damn thing was still alive in there. It should have turned to nothing more than a pool of black ink, frozen in the ice. Every other demon dragon he’d ever encased had disintegrated. Why hadn’t this one?
Gills, being able to swim, impervious to ice. Maybe they were evolving, or this wasn’t a demon dragon at all.
Either way, his greatest weapons in the war with evil were much less effective. If he couldn’t drown them in water and ice, he would be no better than a dragon youngling with a toy sword.
“You’ve been dicking around with demon dragons while Cage is dying?” Match and Jakob walked out past the fountain to the edge of the pond.
Match always did have a way with words. An I’m-an-asshole kind of way.
“This is no regular—” Wait. What? “Dying?”
Jakob grabbed Ky’s shoulder. “You’d better come inside.”
“What about this thing?” They needed to examine it, figure out where it came from or how it got these new abilities.
They’d had some success interrogating a demon dragon when one of Jakob’s lieutenants, Steele, had been fighting for his mate.
The two times Ky knew of that demon dragons with enhanced abilities had attacked were around the time Jakob had mated Ciara and Steele had mated Fleur.
Holy shit.
The attacks were connected to Dragon Warriors’ mates. This could be the first real insight they had into the gift of true mates for the greens and how the influx of demon dragon attacks was connected.
The kidnapped Mami Wata must be the mate of a green dragon.
Poor Azynsa.
A mermaid and a green dragon with power of earth, a match made in mud. Literally.
But, first they needed to interrogate the prisoner and find out what they could, so they could mount a rescue.
“The only good demon dragon,”— Match blew an intense burst of dragon fire at the beast-come-ice sculpture, incinerating both instantly, “— is a dead one.”
Fucking hell.
“Huh huh huh ha,” Cage chuckled in Ky’s head. “Fucking red dragons.”
Cage’s tone was light, but his voice was weak.
Ky glared at Match, then said to Jakob, “Take me to Cage.”
Jakob led the way into the manor’s imposing front hall with the Italian marble stairway. Gold dragons did love to flaunt their treasure right out in the open.
Cage might have a Victorian fireplace for the reds, a French garden for the greens, and a
n indoor-outdoor pool for the blues, but they all knew that perfectly temperature-controlled wine cellar was only the façade for the largest treasure hoard among them.
Ky wouldn’t trade his place in Kenepuru Sound for this kind of opulence. His vineyards supplied half of Cage’s wine cellar, and a cavern hidden in one of the hundreds of inlets in the sound was a better hiding place for treasure than a fancy pants house.
Jakob pushed open the doors to a bedroom suite with a glass domed ceiling and decorated in so much yellowy gold it practically glowed.
Holy First Dragon, one of the biggest, baddest, toughest warriors Ky had ever known looked like shit had eaten him for breakfast and spit him back out.
Cage, pale as a sparkling vampire, leaned against the wall next to a window overlooking the pond. “Damn it, Cage, get back in bed,” Match growled.
Cage flipped him off, and embraced Ky in a weak, clap on the back man hug.
“What the fuck, bro?” Ky looked Cage up and down. His brother Wyvern was only two-hundred and a few years old. Barely a half century into his prime and not that much older than Ky or Jakob. So, why did he look at if he was pushing his wisdom years to the brink of six hundred?
“Demon got my soul.”
Ky glanced to where Cage’s golden soul shard should have been hanging on a cord around his neck. The sight of only a deep wound sent the bottom of Ky’s stomach dropping to the floor and bouncing back up into his throat.
“Bugger me.”
No dragon in the history of, well, dragons, had ever lost or had their soul shard stolen. They couldn’t be taken, only given. Ky grabbed his own blue shard.
It was every dragon’s most prized possession. A small piece of the First Dragon’s soul mixed with their own. It gave them the ability to shift from dragon to human.
Jakob no longer wore his shard around his neck. He’d gifted it to Ciara when he’d claimed her. Now, it was his mate’s to protect.
When he’d done that, Jakob’s powers had increased. Cage’s power, his essence, was fading right before Ky’s eyes.
Cage leaned hard on Ky, trying to stay upright, show he was still a Wyvern. They had to do everything they could to restore Cage’s shard.
Was this related to the attack on the Mami Wata? The demon dragon attacks were getting more daring with each new mate found by a Dragon Warrior.
Ky clasped Cage on the arm. “Tell me what happened. I don’t understand how it could have been taken.”
Cage finally sat on the bench next to the window. “A succubus, and she didn’t have to take it, I gave it to her.”
Match huffed, smoke curling out of his nostrils. “What he means is he lost his head over a pretty girl, and in the course of fucking around, lost his god damn soul.”
Cage shook his head. “She was more than pretty, dickhead.” Then he lowered his voice to speak to Ky only. “We gotta get this bastard laid. He gets grumpier by the day.”
“I know some mermaids that would be happy to put out his fire.” One of them who needed rescuing. “Match, you need to head down to the San Carlos Caldera. The Mami Wata are waiting for you.”
Match grumbled. “Hell, Wyverns are supposed to have control of themselves. Including their libidos. You’re all in your prime. Act like it.”
Match sounded a hell of a lot like grandma Kiki. Except grumpier.
“Speak for yourself. Ever since I mated Ciara my sex drive is way beyond when I hit puberty at a hundred. I’m a walking hard-on around her.” Jakob wore the grin of a satisfied man.
Hard on or not, if one of the green dragons had a new mate, one who was in a shitload of danger, they needed to get to rescuing her. “The demon dragons have kidnapped one of the Mami Wata who is half human. She’s a dragon’s mate, I’m sure of it.”
Match let out a string of swear words in his guttural Polish. Then he turned his alpha of alphas voice on. “Jakob and I will go to Africa. If she’s a green dragon's mate, we’ll find her and get her home. You’ll recover Cage’s soul shard. You’re the only one of us that can track it.”
Cage rolled his head back on his shoulders like it was going to fall off. “I need you to go get it back from her, brother.”
This was guts for garters. But, Ky would always do everything for a brother Wyvern. “No worries, cuz. Easy as.”
Face to Face with Temptation
Jada paced back and forth in the little room, biting her nails and glancing at the decorative clock hanging over the small desk in the corner.
Tomorrow morning would mark the longest she’d ever made it, one week without blood or sex.
It was also the day she was scheduled for her first busy morning shift serving coffee and donuts at the café below her apartment.
She had never been more terrified in her entire life. Not when the demon dragons had attacked her. Not when she was very little and her mother had died. Not even when Leon – King Leonard, Ruler of the Incubus - had shown up mourning her mother and taken her away to initiate her into the coven.
The woman, or rather, witch, who owned Nine Holes Donuts had mistaken Jada for her newly hired help. Jada wondered if the mysterious man and the woman in white had done that. Until someone else showed up, she would take the job and the apartment that went with it, and keep her mouth shut.
And her teeth to herself.
But the cravings were getting worse by the day.
Chocolate covered, Bavarian cream-filled bismarks helped. So far.
She also hadn’t been face to face with temptation. Whatever kind of witch Ninsy was, she was only part human. The other unknown part of her smelled strange. Like a beautiful, but poisonous hemlock flower.
All Jada knew was Ninsy wasn’t edible. She was super nice, so it was a relief that Jada didn’t want to suck her blood. It made her training and the slow early afternoon shifts she’d started with a hell of a lot easier to handle.
Ninsy had asked Jada to join her for tea every afternoon around one, after the not so busy lunch rush. They had tea and scones together, and then Jada practiced on the cash register, and served the very small trickle of customers under Ninsy’s watchful eye.
One customer, or a cute little family in for an afternoon treat, she could resist.
The hot delivery guy was another story. A juicy, sexy, do me in the back of the walk-in cooler while I suck you dry story.
Ack. There she went daydreaming again. Bad succubus. Bad, bad, succubus.
This whole going cold turkey blood and abstinence thing sucked. Not in the fun way.
She had to keep her mind off humans and all their scrumptious arteries and veins and arteries...and veins.
Jada flipped through the recipe cards Ninsy had given her to study and grabbed a blueberry sour cream donut hole, popping it into her mouth. The burst of fruit and sugar exploded in her mouth. These baked goods, combined with anything to distract her brain from the incessant neediness, were the only way she’d made it through the last few days.
If she could work in the back, making the donuts instead of serving them, she’d have a better chance at not eating anyone, or not getting arrested for having sex in public. But Ninsy was protective about the food preparation.
She ate another donut hole. A few leaves of fresh basil in the mix would give these tasty guys a hint of herbal goodness. Not that she wanted to tell Ninsy how to run her business. At least she had a business. A legitimate one.
No other paranormal being Jada had come across wanted to work for a living. Well, she was going to. Didn’t matter that she was forced to at this point. There was a sense of relief in knowing that if she put in the time and effort, she could make a life for herself like Ninsy had.
At least she hoped she could.
Jada studied the recipe cards and menu offerings, even though she was on a first name basis with every sugary carby breakfast item Nine Holes offered, until she was too exhausted to think about anything other than going to bed.
Leon hated the day, as all demons did, and used the night to h
is advantage. He thought the whole emo wanna-be vampire counter-culture was hilarious, and a it was great place to find willing-ish victims. She and the rest of the coven kept whatever hours he did even though she and Portia and the other demi-demons could go into the sunlight just fine thanks to the human part of themselves.
She never had though. Before this week, she’d never seen the sun so many times in her life. She might be half creature of the night, but no one had ever told her how beautiful a sunrise was.
However, having to adjust her schedule and get up at noon, had felt like gross o’clock. Tomorrow she had to be at work at six in the morning. That used to be her normal bedtime.
Her head bobbed and the crash of trash cans in the alley behind the building jerked her from drifting into sleep. Time for bed.
She had just enough time to get in a good nap before she had to be downstairs to start the coffee pots. All she’d need then was some caffeine and adrenaline to get her through the morning.
Boy, was she wrong.
The next morning was hell on earth.
“Hey, lady. You gonna get us those crullers, or what?”
Yeah, just as soon as she finished shoving frosting up her nose, because gah, the guy at the counter smelled delicious. In a I-vant-to-suck-your-blood way.
“Be right there.”
This was the third time she’d refilled their order because every time she got a whiff of eau de sexy golfer boy she force-fed herself half their order to keep from doing something worse.
She’d already gained five pounds this week. What was five more?
The second she turned around with the bag of donuts, minus one, the scent of cinnamon, nutmeg, and O positive hit her in the teeth. “Miss, do you have pumpkin spice creamer?”
Jada bet the woman would taste exactly like pumpkin pie. “Not for a few more months. It’s only Spring. Sorry.”
She bit the inside of her lip to keep her mouth shut and her fangs hidden.
She handed the order over and the next man in line practically assaulted her and her senses. “You’re not out of chocolate raised glazed, are you? That’s my lucky donut. I have to have at least two or my handicap will go through the roof.”