DragonsHeart.wps (17 page)

The man’s eyes boggled out of his head. “Dragons, you mean?”

“No … dragon shifters are all human. They only shape shift into a dragon

form.…” Leo cut into her explanation.

“They are not really all human.” Leo’s contradiction made her want to slap him.

“They are human.” Dylan looked over at Leo. The hard look he gave him quieted Leo. She didn’t have to be a telepath to realize that Dylan held command over Leo.

“Aurora, you have to get the humans out of sight. She’s coming,” Grania said, the hair prickling on the back of her neck.

“
She?
That thing was a bloody she? How the hell do you tell the difference?”

Leo’s eyes almost crossed.

She ignored Leo. “She’s brought company with her. Get them out of here, now!”

Just as Aurora disappeared with the group of humans, the ground shook again.

Dylan stood on her right side. Kayla moved to flank the other side.

“Dylan, I might do something surprising. Please, I hope you won’t be revolted.”

“How could anything you do make me want to revile you?”

She didn’t have time to reply. They all braced themselves for the sight unfolding before them. The dragon shifter in front of them flying at a breakneck pace was all dragon. She was green with a black mane. Her wings were huge—Grania recognized her.

As many dragon shifters as there were in existence, especially those on her

father’s side, why did she have to meet her right now, at this moment? Another dragon shifter flew beside her, except this dragon shifter hadn’t completed the shape shift from human form into dragon form. She wondered if Dylan had ever seen a dragon shifter in this half transformed shape before.

“What is that?” Dylan spoke in a hushed voice.

DRAGON’S HEART Marly Mathews 170

“It’s a dragon shifter in our half form.” She looked over at him. “Faeries have wings … why can’t we?”

He gave her an uncertain gaze. “I’ve never seen .…”

“How do you think we fly when we need to engage in combat with each other?

Not all of us prefer fighting in our dragon skin. I know I don’t like to—it’s far too easy to give into the animalistic side of us. Our passions are riled, and we sometimes lose our head.”

“The royalists never fight in their full dragon form. At least, not from my

minimal experience seeing them locked in combat with their own kind.” Leo nodded.

“It’s magnificent and slightly disconcerting at the same time, isn’t it?”

He looked at Kayla to agree with him. “I think it’s a beautiful sight to behold.

The good ones take my breath away ... the bad ones ... not so much.” She smiled grimly.

The dragon shifter in the dragon form opened her mouth. Fire spewed forth.

“Oh, damn, here we go again. Good times.” She heard Leo’s sarcastic quip, but instead of giving him any attention, she transformed so she, too, would have a pair of dragon wings. As the fire came toward her, she altered its temperature so it turned to a sheet of ice. She stopped, suddenly sensing more of the enemy coming toward them.

“There’s more coming! Get ready!” she shouted, hoping her message would be

heard. She was now airborne. “Well, well, Desdemona, fancy meeting you here.” She looked at the black haired dragon shifter in front of her. Desdemona was in the same form as Grania was in, except Grania's wings were white and Desdemona's wings were black.

“You should be groveling for your father’s forgiveness. You have broken his

heart,” Desdemona said snidely, smoke billowing out of her nostrils. Was she going to breath fire at her in her human form?

“Dragon shit. I haven’t broken his heart; he knew I would go down this path, as soon as he strayed from the righteous path.”

“Righteous? Some would say you are speaking blasphemy. Our kind is taking

back what originally belonged to us. You have already lost. It will only be a matter of time before all of the continents on Earth fall to our might.”

“I’m not listening to your twisted sense of propaganda anymore, Desdemona.”

“I guess I’ll have to regretfully tell your father that I was forced to slay you.

Then, I will kill your little lover boy down there. The rumors circulating that you had found your mate made your father smile, but when he found out that your mate was a lowly wizard, it made him nearly weep. You have indeed shattered his heart.”

“My father isn’t the weeping sort of dragon shifter. As for his heart, I highly doubt he even knows how to unfreeze that anymore. He keeps all of those tears bottled up inside … that’s probably why he’s got such terrible anger management issues.”

They both had their swords drawn. “Did they tell you that your dear auntie and uncle are no more?” Desdemona laughed with glee. “Your father had a difficult time bringing himself to kill your aunt, but your uncle, he killed with a relish I’ve never seen him possess before.”

“Stop it. You don’t have much time left to gloat. I’ll be shortening your rather long lifeline soon. Get ready to meet the fires of hell!”

“You don’t have it in your heart to kill me.”

“You can tell that to the other assassins I killed when they came for Dylan. You DRAGON’S HEART Marly Mathews 170

are on the wrong side, Desdemona, and now, the evils of your past are coming to bite you right on the ass!”

“You are the greatest failure to ever grace our kind. You will have half-breeds as children, your father is enraged that his bloodline will be muddied by that filth.”

Anger surged through her. She couldn’t listen to her any longer ... her patience was straining. Soon, it would buckle beneath the effort.

“You can’t fight me. We were once the best of friends,” Desdemona stated in a matter of fact tone.

“I’ve found that many of my so-called best of friends aren’t very friendly toward me anymore. You can’t go all dovish on me. The lines have been drawn between us.

We can’t go back, sentimentality is dead when it concerns us.”

“Is it? I was there when you mother died ....”

“Stop it. Just stop trying to play on my sympathies. We aren’t friends anymore.

No friend of mine would even contemplate hurting the man I love, even if he is a wizard.

You should know that.” She looked behind Desdemona at the dozen or so dragon shifters quickly closing the distance between them.

While she was distracted, Desdemona lunged toward her. She made a fireball

explode in front of her, momentarily rendering her blind. She lost her concentration, and started plummeting to the ground.

DRAGON’S HEART Marly Mathews 170

Dylan looked up. They’d just defeated the wild dragon and were now preparing to meet what from his estimation seemed to be a dozen more. Even with battle magic on their side, taking out a fully formed dragon shifter with evil intentions had been a grueling task.

“They just seem to multiply out of thin bloody air!” Leo shuddered.

“Well, that just means we’ll have to work twice as hard to bring them down,”

Dylan shouted over the roars of dragons.

“We have to get back to Tewkesbury. Your mother wanted us to stop them in

their tracks there. She didn’t want them getting a foothold in any other city.”

“Any idea where the second and third wave will be coming in?” Dylan asked, all the while shooting off energy balls at the incoming dragon shifters.

“We think North America. We can’t be sure though. Our offices in North

America are gearing up for a battle like we have on our hands here. Once they take England, they’ll take Europe, if they station themselves in North America and get a foothold there, the rest of the world will be easy to conquer. It will all be downhill from there on in. The world will be irrevocably changed for the worse.” Kayla nodded. “We must stop them here, we don’t have a choice.” A burst of light exploded in the sky. He looked up at the same time that Kayla and Leo gazed up at the sky.

“No! I knew she was too distracted. Bloody hell!” He moved to intervene with his magic when Kayla reached for his arm.

“Leave her be. If she doesn’t pull a rabbit out of her hat by the time she gets too close to going splat then you can ride to her rescue then. But she’s supposed to be protecting you. Let her prove that she’s worthy of that position. We have to cut her some slack. She’s fighting against her own. What would you do if you suddenly had to face off against Leo and me? We all went to school together, and though you and Leo almost always rubbed each other the wrong way, we do share that scholarly bond. Leo might have words with you at times, but I know he’d be hard pressed to kill you.”

“Don’t bet on it,” Leo joked. “You can bloody well be a right and proper prick.

You’ve mellowed out a bit though in the short time since you’ve known that lovely lady.”

“A few minutes ago, you were ready to attack said lovely lady.” Dylan snorted.

“Not now. But if you don’t help her soon, she’s going to be a flipping pancake on the sidewalk!”

“No. Give her time. Sometimes you men just don’t give us ladies enough time.

We aren’t always the screaming damsel in distress, you know.” Kayla pulled on his arm, holding him back. He was inclined to push her away, when Grania’s velocity started to slow. Her white dragon wings started to pull her up. She looked down at him, gave him a soft smile, and saluted him with her free arm. The other arm lifted the beautiful sword that she held. She looked like an avenging angel, with her flaming red hair and glorious white wings.

DRAGON’S HEART Marly Mathews 170

He couldn’t continue to watch her. More dragons headed their way. Half of them were partially shape shifted like Grania, while the other half were actually fully shaped shifted into dragons.

“We have to end this quickly. I want to get back to Tewkesbury before more of our kind die.”

“Leo, I’m certain that all is going well,” Kayla said, trying to soothe the raging emotions inside of Leo. He looked like he was going to bust but then, Dylan probably looked the same way himself.

“I’m not so certain. You saw what happened when our side first gained sight of the power that Draco wielded. They were terrified,” Leo muttered, wincing.

“Most of our kind aren’t seasoned warriors. The seasoned ones are in London

waiting for what we couldn’t stop!” Kayla’s voice raised an octave. She was close to shouting at Leo to get her point across.

“And you think that’s completely fair? They put us on the front lines since they deemed us expendable,” Leo argued.

“I can’t see my mother ordering that,” Dylan disagreed.

“I .…” Kayla grew silent. Her face contorted in pain.

Leo looked stricken. “Damn it! Kayla, fight it. Get the dragon shifter piece of crap out of your head. Don’t let him or her fuck with your mind!”

Kayla moaned. She fell to her knees, dropping her wand. Leo sank to the

ground, and pulled her toward him. “She didn’t do so great when it came to guarding our minds at the academy. I should have been expecting this .…”

“I remember.” Dylan swallowed, watching helplessly at the expression of pain on Kayla’s face. The mind attacks were one of the worse ways the dragon shifters attacked their enemy.

Dylan kept an eye out as the approaching dragon shifters zoomed toward them.

“Take care of her. Help her get the enemy out of her head. I’ll take care of what’s coming toward us.”

“There are at least a dozen of them.” Leo looked uncertain though he clasped

Kayla firmly in his arms. He didn’t seem at all ready to leave her at the mercy of whoever was trying to terrorize her mind.

“I know.” He clenched his jaw. Would he have to use the spell? He railed

against the thought. But if it meant saving the four of them, he would resort to pulling out all of the stops, he could only pray that Grania was at a safe distance.

* * * *

“You have redeemed my belief in you, Grania. You are just as much a killer as I am. It’s in your blood.” She smiled gleefully, just before the life force drained out of her eyes.

She’d gotten Desdemona right in the heart. They’d fought for what seemed to be an hour, but which were probably only a few minutes. Desdemona fell. She didn’t even watch her descent.

A knot formed in her gut. She hated having to kill during the heat of battle.

Hated it with a passion like no other.

DRAGON’S HEART Marly Mathews 170

More of the enemy descended upon them. Fire grazed the midday sky. Rain

started to fall from the heavens. She focused her energy so she could manipulate the weather. Having control over the water element would work in her favor. She looked down. A stream of fire from one of the dragon shifters shot toward Dylan’s location.

‘
Move, Dylan!
’ She activated the burgeoning telepathic bond between them.

He looked up, locking his gaze with hers. The next thing she knew, she’d had the wind knocked out of her from behind. Someone was closing in that had full mastery over the air element.

“Hello, Lady Grania.”

She turned. She didn’t know this dragon shifter, but he knew her. “I don’t

usually exchange niceties with the people I’m about to kill.”

“I can see that you are just as charming as your father.”

She snorted. “I don’t really care for that remark, my loving enemy.”

“You really don’t know who I am, do you?”

She shook her head.

“Good to know, I’m not your enemy.”

She shook her head. “Tell that to my aunt and uncle. Your side slaughtered