Zanaikeyros: Son of Dragons Read online

  ZANAIKEYROS

  Son of Dragons

  By Tessa Dawn

  Book One

  Pantheon of Dragons

  Table of Contents

  Credits and Acknowledgments

  Pantheon of Dragons

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Epilogue

  Books by Tessa Dawn

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  About the Author

  Credits and Acknowledgments

  Ghost Pines Publishing, LLC., Publishing

  Damonza, Cover Art

  Damonza, Layout

  Reba Hilbert, Editing

  Pantheon of Dragons

  Before time was a recognized paradigm, seven dragon lords created a parallel primordial world for their glory…and their future offspring. They harnessed seven preternatural powers from seven sacred stones and erected the Temple of Seven beyond the hidden passage of a mystical portal that would lead back and forth between Earth and the Dragons Domain. And finally, they set about creating a race of beings—the Dragyr—that would exist on blood and fire, and they gifted their progeny with unimaginable powers, unearthly beauty, and immortal life.

  For all of this, the dragon lords required only one thing: absolute and unwavering obedience to the Four Principal Laws…

  Thou shalt pledge thy eternal fealty to the sacred Dragons Pantheon.

  Thou shalt serve as a mercenary for the house of thy birth by seeking out and destroying all pagan enemies: whether demons, shadows, or humans.

  Thou shalt feed on the blood and heat of human prey in order to reanimate your fire.

  Thou shalt propagate the species by siring dragyri sons and providing The Pantheon with future warriors. In so doing, thou shalt capture, claim, and render unto thy lords whatsoever human female the gods have selected to become dragyra. And she shall be taken to the sacred Temple of Seven—on the tenth day, following discovery—to die as a mortal being, to be reborn as a dragon’s consort, and to forever serve the sacred pantheon.

  And so it came to pass that seven sacred lairs were erected in the archaic domain of the dragons in order to house the powerful race begotten of the ancient gods, each lair in honor of its ruling dragon lord:

  Lord Dragos, Keeper of the Diamond

  Lord Ethyron, Keeper of the Emerald

  Lord Saphyrius, Keeper of the Sapphire

  Lord Amarkyus, Keeper of the Amethyst

  Lord Onyhanzian, Keeper of the Onyx

  Lord Cytarius, Keeper of the Citrine

  & Lord Topenzi, Keeper of the Topaz

  While a dragyri may appear to be human, he is not.

  While a dragyra may appear to belong to her mate, she does not.

  While the Dragyr may be fierce, invincible, and strong, they are never truly free…

  Chapter One

  Deep inside the Sapphire Lair, concealed in the Dragons Domain, Zane Saphyrius leaned back against the plush leather cushions of the soft copper sofa, placed his feet up on the sturdy coffee table, and stared at his anxious housemate, waiting for Axe to speak. “Well, Axeviathon?”

  Axe snarled beneath his breath. “Don’t use my consecrated name.”

  Zane, whose given name was Zanaikeyros, snickered conspiratorially. “Understood. What did Valen have to say when he called?”

  Axe cocked an eyebrow. “He said Lord Ethyron finally lost his patience with Caleb.”

  Zane blew out an anxious breath. “And?”

  “And he had him brought to the temple last night…for punishment.”

  “Really,” Zane spat, his voice thick with disgust. His spine stiffened, and his feet hit the floor as he leaned forward in his seat. “What kind of punishment?”

  Axe just frowned and shook his head.

  “Axeviathon, what kind?”

  “Spiked lashes. Fifty, I think.”

  Zane brought a clenched fist to his mouth, released his fangs, and sank them deep into his fingers, imagining the wicked, jagged lash and how much skin Caleb must have lost before the male passed out. If he passed out. As Zane’s temper flared, he fought to rein it in before his fire sparked and he burned his hand. “What for?” he growled.

  Axe paced to a nearby window, stared out at the picturesque landscape—a cascading cliff-side waterfall, flowing out of a towering set of jagged rocks—and popped his neck to relieve some tension. “He got distracted on a mission.” He pressed his palm against the glass and then absently cleared some dust from the windowsill with his forefinger.

  “Pagans?” Zane asked, inquiring about the assignment.

  “Nah,” Axe replied. “Humans.”

  Zane shook his head in antipathy. “The Society?”

  “Yep.” Axe turned around to face his roommate. “The kid Caleb was supposed to protect, the one who got mixed up in a gang? He died before Caleb could dispatch his rival enemies.”

  “Damn,” Zane whispered, as the picture grew increasingly clear: Among the human population, there were several secret societies that still worshipped the primordial dragons of old. The fellowship typically consisted of ordinary humans living ordinary lives, many of them being inconspicuous members of the community who just happened to be involved with a cult. Some were harmless; some were not. And occasionally, one or more of these followers would pray to the dragon lords, petitioning them for favor, asking for anything from prosperity to protection—from justice to vengeance. On even rarer occasions, one of the dragon lords would feel benevolent enough to respond, and despite the fact that humans weren’t really their thing, the lords would get intimately involved.

  Lord Ethyron, Keeper of the Emerald Lair, had a larger ego than most, so he was fairly susceptible to praise…and to prayers.

  He tended to either lavishly reward or harshly punish the human interlopers from time to time. And, of course, that meant sending a mercenary to do his bidding, sending a member of the Dragyr to get down and dirty with the humans.

  In this case, he had sent his servant Calebrios—Caleb—to provide protection for a two-bit gangster: As far as Zane understood it, the youngest son of a middle-class family had gotten mixed up with drugs and joined a local gang, and one night, while he was high as a kite, he had sexually assaulted the girlfriend of a rival gang member. Needless to say, the rival gang had put a price on his head, and they were gunning for him, pretty hard. Having heard about it through the grapevine, the kid’s father had made an offering of incense and precious oils to Lord Ethyron, beseeching the dragon lord to intercede on his son’s behalf—to keep the boy alive. And for whatever reason, Lor
d Ethyron had been inclined to grant the favor. Although Zane didn’t know all the details, he imagined Lord Ethyron had instructed Caleb to either extinguish the family’s enemies or scrub their minds free of the incident—make the hit go away.

  And, apparently, Caleb had screwed up.

  He hadn’t acted swiftly or definitively enough since, according to Axe, the kid was dead.

  Zane rolled his eyes.

  It was absurd for Lord Ethyron to get involved in mortal affairs to begin with, especially at such a petty and distinctly human level, something Lord Cytarius or Lord Topenzi, the most noble of their kind, would never—ever—do. Each lord had his own preferences and values, and some were more honorable than others, but Lord Ethyron ruled the house of Emerald, Caleb’s house, and Caleb should have known better.

  He should have known his master’s temperament by now.

  He should have known the cost of disobedience.

  He should have handled the gangsters right away.

  Still, the very idea of having one’s flesh peeled from one’s bones—from the back, buttocks, and thighs—made Zane sick to his stomach.

  “How is he?” he finally asked, bringing his thoughts back to the subject at hand. “Caleb, that is?”

  Axe frowned and shook his head.

  “That bad?” Zane said.

  Axe leaned back against the window frame and crossed his arms over his chest. “Guess it could’ve been worse. Lord Ethyron could’ve had Caleb’s amulet removed.”

  “Shit,” Zane mumbled, understanding the implications. “You think?”

  The only way to kill an immortal dragyri was to remove the amulet that kept him tethered to The Pantheon, the sacred gemstone that infused him with life, the permanent talisman he received at his formal induction into his adulthood lair. And the only way to get it off his neck, since the cord wouldn’t break, was to first remove his head—a pretty severe punishment for a fairly insignificant crime…

  Then again, they were referring to Lord Ethyron, and there was only one dragon lord who was worse—

  Lord Dragos.

  Zane instinctively clutched the sapphire ornament that hung around his neck, raised it to his lips, and pressed a kiss of reverence against the sacred stone. For the first time in a while, he was genuinely grateful that he belonged to the Lair of Sapphire, that he was subject to Lord Saphyrius and not one of the other dragon gods. As the third deity of the sacred pantheon, within the venerable Temple of Seven, Zane’s ultimate master displayed characteristics of both light and shadow, but he wasn’t that bad. The dragon could be both generous and brutal, merciful and unforgiving, but he was generally fair, just so long as he was given his due; and he loved his immortal offspring as much as any father loved a son.

  Lord Dragos, on the other hand, the first deity of the sacred sect, the one who ruled the Diamond Lair, was by far the worst of the lot. Had Caleb belonged to him, he would have surpassed Lord Ethyron’s cruelty in the same situation—hell, he would have had Caleb placed in a cauldron and boiled until his skin blistered and strips began to float in the water. And even then, he might have considered removing his amulet…

  Once again, Zane shook his head to dismiss the morbid thoughts.

  That wasn’t his problem.

  That wasn’t his ruling lord.

  Thank the gods.

  “Not to sound insensitive,” he said, “but why did Valyntheros call you?” Like Caleb, Valen was also a member of the Emerald Lair, so it only made sense that Caleb’s punishment was Valen’s concern—but Axe was Zane’s pantheon brother, a fellow member of the Sapphire Lair, and he kept his relationships closer to home. It just seemed odd that Valen would have called Axe.

  Axe sauntered away from the windowsill, strolled to an antique rolltop desk in the corner of the room, and retrieved a piece of parchment from the upper right-hand drawer. Turning to face Zane, he said, “You do know that Levi and Caleb are thick as thieves, right?”

  “Yeah,” Zane said, waiting for a deeper explanation. Levi was a member of their lair as well, their sapphire brother for all intents and purposes, and every member of the house was connected by a bond as true as blood. While they didn’t say it often, the Dragyr revered each other. Since a male could only father one offspring—a son—they did not have blood siblings, which made their housemates even more significant. Despite occasional spats, they would go to the mat for a member of the lair—hell, they would die if they had to—for a brother.

  Axe blew a loose strand of dirty blond hair out of his eyes and met Zane’s stare with a blazing sapphire gaze to match his own. “Those fifty lashes were supposed to be a hundred.”

  Zane grimaced, but he didn’t speak right away. Shit, a hundred lashes would flay all the skin off a dragyri’s bones. And the worst part was that Lord Ethyron would not allow Caleb to regenerate the damage quickly. In fact, he’d probably have some willing human servant mete out the punishment, just to add insult to injury. “Yeah, so he went light on him—what gives?”

  Axe smiled, but the expression was absent of mirth. “Lord Saphyrius knows that Levi and Caleb are close,” he explained, “and he wanted to spare Levi the anguish of watching his friend suffer as he slowly healed. So he offered up one of his own to appease Lord Ethyron’s ego, to mitigate the damage.”

  Zane closed his eyes. So, Lord Saphyrius had tried to appease Lord Ethyron for Levi’s sake… He blinked them back open. “In exchange for the last fifty lashes?” he asked, understanding just how the deal had gone down.

  “Exactly,” Axe said.

  “So, you’re going to finish off the gangsters for Lord Ethyron—give the family vengeance to make up for the failed protection?”

  Axe shook his head. He paced to the sofa and dropped the parchment in Zane’s lap. “Nope, my brother. You are.”

  Zane sank back into the cushions and lifted the paper, quickly perusing three cursive names: the identities of the rival gangsters, those who had killed the petitioner’s son. “What were the exact orders?” he asked.

  “Execute them,” Axe said.

  “All three?” Zane asked.

  “All three,” Axe confirmed.

  “And their souls?”

  “Rotten to the core,” Axe said.

  Zane nodded, understanding.

  Whether it was a code between gods or just common sense, even the Dragons Pantheon knew better than to take the life of an innocent soul, one that belonged to another race, to another set of deities: Humans had their religions; dragons had theirs; and never the two should meet. And while feeding on prey was one thing—even lions fed on zebras; after all, nature was nature—getting involved in the immortal journey of another species’ souls was, well, considered off limits. The dragons were both allowed and expected to dispatch the wicked—demons, shades, and morally depraved humans, a trait which the Dragyr could discern—but they left the pure of heart alone when they could.

  “And my deadline?” Zane asked.

  “Friday at midnight,” Axe replied.

  “So tomorrow…” Zane sat back and chuckled. Lord Ethyron didn’t play around. Apparently, he wanted these bastards dead, like yesterday, and Lord Saphyrius had made the call…for Levi.

  He gave the paper a second, cursory glance and committed the address to memory: It was the name of a local hangout in Denver, the Two Forks Mall, a place where gang members often gathered after dark to see what kind of mischief they could get into. Zane could easily slip through the portal at twilight, stake out an advantage before the sun went down, and mete out the required executions before the clock struck midnight. He folded the paper and slipped it into his pocket. “Very well,” he grunted, putting his feet back up on the coffee table.

  The way he saw it, the night would go off without a hitch.

  Three human gangsters—that was child’s play.

  However, it had been a really long day already. Bottom line: If he was going to execute the criminals in the next twenty-four hours, he needed to catch a little shu
t-eye.

  Chapter Two

  “District attorney’s office; this is Jordan.” Jordan Anderson twirled her mechanical pencil between her thumb and forefinger and tapped the eraser impatiently against the desk. It was Friday night, only five more minutes until quitting time, and she really didn’t want to take another call.

  “Is this Jordan Anderson?”

  She rolled her eyes. Being that the call had been put through on her private line, and she had just given the caller her first name, who else could it be? “Yes, it is. How may I help you?”

  The voice on the other end of the phone dropped to an eerie, demented purr. “Do you know what happens to witches in Salem, Jordan?”

  Jordan held the phone away from her ear and stared blankly at the receiver. She cleared her throat and pressed it back to her lobe. “Uh, no, I don’t. And since this happens to be Denver—and the twenty-first century—I can’t say that I’m really interested.” She was just about to hang up, perhaps deliver a few choice words to her secretary for putting the call through, when something made her pause: All day long she’d had the oddest, sinking feeling in her stomach, like something major in her life was about to change, like the axis she had always stood upon was about to shift beneath her feet, and she had no idea where the feeling was coming from. Perhaps this call was somehow related; the vibe was oddly the same.

  When the caller began to chuckle in a crass, deranged chortle, she shivered. “Well, you’re about to find out,” he said.

  “Who is this?” Jordan demanded.

  He whistled the introductory tune to The Twilight Zone in the receiver. “It’s your death calling.”

  Now this grabbed Jordan’s full attention. She leaned forward; pulled the base of the phone closer, toward her keyboard; and hit a small red button to begin recording the call. “I see. And does my death have a name?”

  “Yeah,” he sneered. “Former inmate number 28765. The innocent guy you put in prison.”

  Jordan swallowed convulsively, even as she scribbled the number down on a Post-it. She wasn’t sure if it would help at all, considering the fact that he might be lying, and every guilty perp she had ever put away believed he or she was innocent. She would need a better clue. “And what did I put you in prison for?”