Chapter 36: Chapter 36

Erin screamed as the monster threw more fire their way before they could escape into the safety of the hallways. Her mind was in disarray as she thought about what was happening Jake and Feesh right now. They were on the other side of the castle which had already been destroyed before they could even get there.

Sebastian had managed to save some people but he hadn’t said anything about Feesh and Jake.

“Julian. I need to go check on my family”

“No”

“Jake and Feesh are in danger! I can’t let them be alone what if your father finds them?! He could hurt them!”

“No Erin! They’re both fine. Once a blood is spilled on this castles grounds, the morgue Officials would alert me. They are also supernatural beings. They haven’t reached me yet so that means your family is safe. I promise you Erin.”

Erin released her breath and closed her eyes tightly. Her people were safe. Thank God.

Another powerful bolt lighting and fire hit the building again followed by a loud roar. That was Julian’s father. Julian hurriedly slammed down a wooden bar over the door and yanked her up, then hauled her down the hallway to his bedroom. "I have to get to open air. It's too tight to Change in here."

But just as he turned the corner to his bedroom door, the sound of shattering glass turned deafening.

Another scream lodged in Erin's throat as she got a glimpse of Julian’s father’s long onyx-colored claws raking across the bedroom, destroying everything. A stream of fire and magma spewed through the room an instant after Julian and Seb had dragged her across the open doorway.

Work legs! She felt as if she were floating. As if her body wasn't under her control anymore.

They missed fire by inches as the monster followed them room to room, clinging to the outside of the house, destroying it in his quest to get to them. The white marble hallway was the last barrier between them and air, but the fire was too close behind them, following them, singeing Erin's skin. Where was her fucking Fearlessness?

No good. The hallway stretched on and on, and they weren't moving fast enough to escape the flames blasting around them.

"Julian!" she screamed just as the fire reached her back because, dammit, this was the tragedy. One week with him. One week of happiness. One week of feeling like she finally, finally belonged somewhere, and she was dying by dragon's fire with the two men who'd become her crew.

"Hold on!" Julian ordered as he scooped her and Seb by the waist.

Power pulsed against her, stealing her breath as Julian's battle cry turned into a bellowing roar. The space was too tight for him to Change, but that didn't stop the enormous blue dragon that burst from his skin. Tucking them tight to his stomach with oversize claws, he exploded from the mansion and drove his powerful wings against the air, lifting them as the house shattered behind them. Marcus's flames blasted around Julian's exposed back as he shielded her and Seb and dropped them low to the ground. The drop was still too high. She and Seb tumbled end over end and Erin screamed out in pain as she slammed into a tree, arm first.

Struggling to her feet, she ducked as Julian collided with Marcus against the side of the destroyed house, blasting glass like bullets across the clearing. Erin held up her arm to shield her face as pain slashed across her skin. Seb yanked her backward a moment too late and hugged her tight as dragon's fire filled the air. The roar of the battling dragons rattled her head and made her dizzy, and still, her power was buried too deep to reach.

Seb was yelling something she couldn't understand. Yelling. Yelling. I don't understand! She couldn't take her eyes off the warring dragons as they beat their wings against the air and lifted off the ground, clinging to each other's claws as they blew streams of flaming lava.

Searing pain rocketed up the nerve endings in her arm as Seb jerked a broken bone into place. "Fuck!" she screamed in shock. A power she didn't understand pulsed from her body and blew Seb twenty yards away. He landed on all fours and slid backward through the dirt before he came to a stop, eyes locked on hers.

"Oh, my God," she whispered, looking at her tingling palms. The lines on her hands were glowing orange, and now when she tried to close her fists, she wasn't in control of her body enough to do so

Let me in. The words whispered across her mind. Let me save him. Please let me save him now! This is chlorine! My spirit needs access to your body to be able to work please!

What the hell was happening to her?

A slash of pain built just behind her eyes in the same headache she'd been fighting off and on her entire life. This time it was different though. This time it didn't throb or fade away. It grew and grew, brighter and more agonizing until she was nothing at all.

Seb was on his knees in the dirt, bleeding from a hundred places where the glass had damaged him and staring at her with blazing blue, inhuman eyes as if he'd never seen her before. "Chlorine?"

Chills blasted up her body with the rightness of that name. I'm here.

"Change, Seb. I'll need you." She flicked her fingertips at Seb, and a massive, black boar with long, curved tusks and blazing, furious eyes burst from his body. He was as tall as her, much bigger than any wild boar. Coarse, long fur spiked up over his powerful back, raised with his fury, and as he lifted his attention to the sky, he dragged a massive hoof through the dirt, ready for battle. All this time, Seb had been hiding a monster inside of him, too.

She dragged her gaze back to the warring dragons above. She clenched her hands at her sides as waves of light pulsed from her body upward until it reached the clouds. Above her, the early morning sunshine disappeared as dark clouds drew around them, flashing jagged bolts of lightning time and time again. Ash from the dragon fire rained down over everything as Julian fought for his life. As he fought for hers. As he fought to keep the world safe from the reign of death and destruction Marcus would bring if there was no force able to oppose him anymore. He'd waited a very long time to build enough strength to carry out his vengeance on Julian. Was Erin's death a part of his plan to weaken Julian? Was she a distraction he'd carefully aimed at the last Blood runner vampire dragon? It was just like black-hearted Julian’s father to use love as a weapon.

The dragons were above the clouds now, nothing but flashes of orange above the gray.

Red fury filled her veins with purpose as she screamed and slammed her hands down onto the ground. The earth cracked under her touch, and a towering spray of steam shot up to open space in the clouds. There they were. The dragons who had caused her to wait for eons for this moment. One had driven her with hate, one with love, and today, as the last thing she ever did on this earth, she would right the wrongs done by Julian’s father’s evil.

Gritting her teeth, she thrust her palms upward, one at each dragon. Streams of power reached them, and she pulled them apart. With His father roaring his fury, she slammed her fist into the ground, and the black dragon tumbled to earth and smashed against the surface, cracking the ground beneath her feet with the impact. The earthquake that followed rattled her to her bones, but she held her focus and lowered Julian slowly.

Everything made sense as she forced Marcus to Change back into his hideous human form.

Save him. Someone’s voice brushed lightly across her mind.

I'll find you again, and when I do, I'll be stronger. I'll gift you mortality with the blood of an immortal vampire, and you'll be free. She'd uttered those words all those centuries ago, and today was the day of reckoning. Today, she would follow through for the last Blood runner vampire dragon.

I'll find you again. She'd found him through Erin and had fed off his love to be strong enough for this.

God, let her be strong enough. She needed enough strength to be able to stop the king of the dark realm from turning the earth to a completely dark and ugly place.

*****