Zanaikeyros: Son of Dragons Read online

  Yeah, because that was really going to happen.

  Still, this might be her only opportunity to get away.

  She nodded her head and forced a hospitable smile. “Absolutely. I can do that. If that’s what you think is best, for us to talk later, I think that sounds reasonable.” She held her breath and prayed.

  He chuckled, deep in his throat, the sound a cross between a snicker and a growl. “Mm, you are a lawyer, aren’t you? As clever as you are sweet. As determined as you are beautiful.” He cupped her cheeks in his hands, let out a long, drawn-out sigh, and bored his faint golden pupils into hers. “Look at me,” he commanded her again, only this time, his voice was as pure as the driven snow, as dark as the endless night, and as compelling as a hypnotic tone. “Tell me where you live.”

  She couldn’t believe her ears.

  Was he crazy?

  She had to stifle a nervous titter at the absurdity of the question; and then her eyes grew wide, her lips began to tremble, and she had to bite down on her tongue to keep from doing exactly what he’d asked—she was about to give him her address!

  Her real address.

  What the hell?

  She quickly thought of a viable alternative before her tongue could betray her, the address of her ex-lover and the assistant district attorney, Dan Summers. “My address is 591 Elkhurst Lane. It’s in Pine Hills.”

  He nodded. “You will wait for me, then? You will do as I bid?”

  Her head felt cloudy; her stomach turned over in small little waves; and she felt like she was falling into his eyes. She nodded. “Yes. I will. I promise.” Her mind was sorting a dozen thoughts per second—reminding her to call Dan and let him know she had given this predator his address; calculating just how quickly her ex could set up a sting; and wondering what it would feel like to know that this man had been apprehended…in the case that he showed up at Dan’s.

  She reined in her random, racing thoughts, lest she get too far ahead of herself. “I will,” she repeated, waiting…

  Hoping.

  Praying that he would just walk away.

  He stared at her for what felt like a millennium, and then he cocked his head to the side and frowned. “You are not easily enthralled,” he said. “That’s amazing.” He folded his hands together as if considering other options. “Very well, then I will find you, instead.”

  She nodded. “Of course.” Whatever. Just so long as he let her go, right now.

  He took her hand in his and raised it to his lips, like he was planning to kiss her knuckles in some old-world, seductive gesture, and then he rotated her arm, instead, exposed her wrist to his mouth, and bit her right in the center of her radial artery.

  She gasped at the pain.

  Hell’s bells, it felt like the man had fangs!

  As he took several deep, dragging pulls from her vein, Jordan staggered in place. Her arm grew unbearably cold; frost began to settle on her skin; and for the first time that night, she began to wonder if she would make it out of this alive. She choked out a muffled sob and grimaced.

  Who was he?

  What was he?

  And why was he doing this?

  He moaned, as if in great pleasure, and then he slowly withdrew his fangs, blew warm air over the wound, and watched as a thin, bluish flame healed the lesions.

  Jordan hiccupped, but she was well beyond speaking.

  When his eyes met hers once more, they were infused with light, and the sapphire irises were glowing amber. Rising to his full, intimidating height, he drew back his lips and snarled.

  The man actually snarled.

  “Know this, Jordan Anderson: If you contact your lover, Dan, I will rip out his throat with my teeth and spit out his spine at your feet. If you run, I will retrieve you. If you continue to lie to me, you will make this far more difficult than it has to be. Who am I? I am Zanaikeyros Saphyrius, but my brothers call me Zane. What am I? I am the son of a dragon, consecrated to the lair of Sapphire, born to the sacred pantheon; and you are my dragyra, my fated. Mine. And I am doing this because I must. And you must.”

  Sensing her rising terror, he took a judicious step back and sighed, his voice returning to its normal silken purr. “Jordan,” he cajoled, “I will not die in order to appease you, but know this: I will not harm you, either. I will never harm you. I am sorry this is all I can share right now, but all will be explained to you soon.”

  Jordan inched back until her legs scraped against the car. She opened her mouth to speak…or cry…but, once again, nothing came out. He was absolutely, certifiably insane, and she had no idea what this maniac was planning to do next. Finally, when she felt like she could at least croak out a sound, she tried to plead with him for mercy. “Zane…” Her voice was a mere whisper of her terror. “Please, just let me go. I’m not lying, playing any games, or trying to trick you, not anymore. I’m just…I’m begging you: Please, let me go.”

  “Oh, angel…” He bowed his head and his eyes flashed with something akin to deep regret in them. “I cannot do what you ask. Who can reverse what the gods have decreed?” He stepped forward and leaned in—pressed a chaste kiss on her forehead—and sighed. “Go home, Jordan. We will meet again soon.”

  And with that, he simply vanished from her sight.

  f

  Zane stood in the garage for a few moments longer—invisible—watching as Jordan climbed into her car, quickly engaged the locks, and rested her head against the steering wheel, trying desperately to breathe.

  So this was her.

  The woman the dragon lords had chosen for him upon his inception.

  The one who would share his life and one day bear his son.

  She was beautiful and smart—that was for sure—and he was still shocked by the fact that he couldn’t enthrall her, that he couldn’t compel her to do his will, with nothing but his voice. She had a very strong mind, to be certain.

  He sighed, thinking of the challenge before him.

  None of that mattered, really.

  In ten days, he would present Jordan Anderson to the seven dragon lords, and she would kneel in the sacred temple before The Pantheon, offering herself for consecration…to be reborn…

  To become Zane’s eternal mate.

  And it was his job to make sure that it happened.

  He hated the way the whole thing had played out, but there was little he could do to change it. Normally, he would have just taken her back to The Pantheon and dealt with the consequences there, taken some time to acclimate her to her new surroundings, but he still had a job to do for Lord Ethyron.

  And he had to get it done before midnight.

  Chapter Five

  Zane strolled brazenly into the backyard of the two remaining gang members.

  They were lounging on the front porch, listening to music, throwing up gang signs to the dark, pulsing beats, and passing a forty-ounce of what looked like Old English back and forth between their limited crew. The moment they saw him approach, the smaller of the two, a poorly dressed teenager with some sort of upside-down symbol shaved into the side of his head, pushed off his perch against the railing and sauntered to the top of the stairs.

  “Yo, fool! Wassup with that shit!” he barked, trying to make his voice sound hard. “How you gonna stroll into someone else’s yard like you own the place—you high or somethin’?” He reached across his waist with a bent wrist, allowing his hand to hover over the butt of a pistol, protruding from his pants. The gesture was clearly meant as a warning.

  “Nah,” his partner said, rising lazily from his deep sprawl in a rickety chair. “I think your boy just has a death wish.” The second banger was massive. He looked like some kind of gladiator with huge, steroid-enhanced biceps and two prominent gold teeth, right in the front of his grill.

  “For real,” the first guy groused. He took several paces forward and strolled languidly on purpose, his body swaying in an exaggerated side-to-side swagger. “Wassup then, bruh?”

  Zane rolled his eyes, but h
e held his tongue. He had no time for this inane banter. In a matter of moments, both of these idiots would be dead. He walked straight up to the first gangster, laughing as the miscreant drew his pistol and angled it sideways, in the most nonsensical way to point at a target, at least if you wanted to hit it.

  Before the banger could even register that Zane had moved, Zane slapped the gun out of his hand, sending it flying across the yard; placed both hands on the sides of his jaw; and snapped his neck like a twig, leaving him lying at his feet as he turned toward the other gangster.

  “Oh, shit!” the golden boy exclaimed, instantly swelling up with adrenaline. He drew an automatic weapon from the back of his waistband and held it forward, upright. This human wasn’t playing around. He intended to hit his target.

  As he got off ten successive rounds, Zane held up his hand to catch the bullets. When the spent shells were scattered along the ground, he growled and lunged at his opponent.

  “What the hell are you?” the gangster shouted, sounding curiously like a girl in his panic.

  “Your mama,” Zane growled, and then he hurled a bolt of fire from the tips of his fingers, instantly melting the gun along with the gladiator’s hand, and he grasped at his throat with fully elongated fangs. Just as he was about to sink his teeth deep into the gangster’s flesh, something landed on his back, and son of a dragon, the impact felt like he had been hit by an oncoming train.

  Zane released his prey and grunted in surprise. He arched his back, dropped into a squat, and spun around in an attempt to dislodge this new assailant. The dark, murky attacker dropped at his feet, his reptilian features gleaming in the moonlight as he landed between Zane and the injured human. Zane stepped away and sniffed the air. The strong scent of sulfur permeated everything, and the night grew ten shades darker. As if that weren’t enough, there were two more silhouettes rapidly advancing toward the porch: two hulking creatures slinking in the grass, eager to join their comrade.

  Zane grew deathly quiet as he analyzed the threat and enumerated his enemies.

  One human, still alive, and three pagans in total: the demon on the porch, a demon in the grass, and a shade, slithering off to the right, in the yard…

  Zane immediately locked on to the Sapphire Lair’s private bandwidth and sent a telepathic call to two of his brothers, the two he knew were hanging out this night. Levi! Axe! It’s Zane. I’ve got some trouble with a couple of pagans, not sure if there’s more around. Find me.

  Pagans were not easy prey to take down, and while Zane figured he could handle two or three, he wasn’t about to take any chances. His fate was now tied to the pretty attorney’s, the human he had cornered at the mall…

  Jordon.

  And now that they had made contact, the ten-day clock was ticking. If the female wasn’t at the temple before her time ran out, she would die that final night in her sleep, and Zane’s amulet would be removed. Jordan was no longer free to remain mortal—one way or another, she belonged to The Pantheon.

  Sensing the demon behind him rising, and knowing that his lair-brothers would first have to come through the portal before they could transport into the yard, Zane decided to deal with the pagans first—they were a far greater threat than the gangster, and he could simply maim the latter with one swift action and deal with the human later. He hurdled the pagan on the porch; threw a wicked-hard elbow into the jaw of the banger, and shattered his two gold teeth. That ought to slow his roll, he thought as he spun around deftly, reached for the demon’s crotch, and dislodged the family jewels, leaving the creature a eunuch. The injury wouldn’t kill him, but it would sure as hell keep him at bay for the next couple minutes.

  Buy Zanaikeyros some time.

  The second demon, approaching from the yard, was now coming up the stairs. He stopped on the landing, about five feet away, and snarled, “Ah, I thought I smelled the stench of a dragon’s son. Look what we have here.” He turned to regard the shadow behind him, and wasn’t that just a hell of a combination? A demon and a shadow, hanging out together—what the heck was going on? The demon shrugged an indifferent shoulder. “Greetings, Zanaikeyros Saphyrius. I see your puppet master has let you out of his sight.” He snickered. “How is Lord Saphyrius?”

  Zane rocked forward onto the pads of his feet, dropping into a nimble squat as he sidestepped away from the demon on the porch, who was still cupping his groin and moaning, and gathered a lethal amount of fire in the palms of his hands. “Demon,” he barked, acknowledging the second fiend’s presence. “What the hell are you doing in gangland?”

  The pagan cocked his head to the side. “A little of this. A little of that.” His lip twitched in anticipation, even as the tendrils of his inky-black hair began to slither and coil about his head like a band of mating snakes. His rotten breath assailed Zane from across the modest distance, making the dragyri’s stomach roil, and then the demon simply disintegrated, his body collapsing like a pillar made of salt, and all the tiny particles transformed into dark, black-hearted beetles, instantly sprouting wings.

  “Shit,” Zane grumbled beneath his breath. Those tiny bugs were deadly. They carried enough venom to stop the heart with a single bite, and their little feet contained miniscule, parasitic pincers that latched onto the skin and would not let go. Not to mention, they dripped some sort of acidic goo as they crawled, and on rare occasions, they could transmit messages to the pagan underworld. Now he had about half a million to contend with. Speed and agility was the name of the game.

  Priming his reflexes for a preternatural tennis match, where the balls would fly back and forth faster than the eye could see, Zane swiftly transformed his skin into scales, to toughen his outer shell; he converted his pupils to electric lasers; and he began to listen for the high-pitched shrill that would function as an internal radar, identifying the trajectory of the rabid bugs. His hands moved in graceful circles, rotating lithely to the left and the right with incredible dexterity as he prepared to block, swat, or incinerate everything that came his way.

  And of course, the eunuch was finally rising behind him.

  With no time to spare on the wounded demon, Zane sent an imperious command into the mind of the toothless gangster, the one with the melted hand—the one who was still in shock and whimpering like a baby: Kill the demon on the porch, the one behind me. Punch him. Gouge out his eyes. Go for his throat. Do not stop, and do not waver. Do not let go. You can’t feel pain. You don’t care if you live or die. You only know that you must kill the demon…now.

  Zane knew the pagan would make quick work of the human, but again, it might buy Zane a little time.

  As the ghoulish beetles attacked with force, Zane countered each strike with a defensive maneuver. Between the beams shooting from his eyes and the fire pulsing from his hands, the front porch lit up like a cosmic light show, transforming the night into an interstellar dance of red and yellow rays, punctuated with macabre sparks, sizzles, and pops. As a horde of beetles all rushed at once, moving like a slithering pile of oil along the ground, Zane drew back his lips, opened his mouth, and scorched the earth before him with a blistering hot red flame. The beetles squealed as they died, the demon inside of them groaning.

  And then the remaining shadow, the one in the yard, leaped over the staircase and lunged at the dragyri. The shadow’s skeletal hands extended like branches as he sought to affix them around Zane’s throat.

  Zane had no choice.

  He had to forget the beetles.

  He turned his attention away from the bugs, reached up to block the pagan, and swore beneath his breath as a score of vermin attached to his arm. A high-pitched whir sliced through the air from somewhere behind the shadow, and the pagan’s head fell from his neck, dropping to the deck like a heavy stone. A pair of giant hands, belonging to Axeviathon Saphyrius, wrenched the shadow backward by the shoulders and tugged the corpse away from Zane, even as the brutal, blond warrior smiled. He had beheaded the shadow with a lance, and now, he was making exceptionally quick work of i
ncinerating his translucent body before the pagan could rise again.

  Levi bounded on the porch with a thud. He grasped the head of the human gangster in one hand, the head of the eunuch-demon in the other, and slammed both skulls together with so much force that the craniums exploded as one, and then he spun around to come to his brother’s aid. “Did they bite you?” he growled in a husky tone, glaring at Zane’s tormented arm.

  “No,” Zane bit out, peeling the bugs from his flesh; then, “yeah, shit, just now,” he added, as he felt a pair of mandibles sink into his skin, just above his inner elbow, where a beetle had managed to crawl between his scales.

  Levi snatched Zane by the collar of his shirt, drew him upright from his squat, and slammed him against the house, along the back side of the porch, in a desperate attempt to gain quick, easy access to his fully exposed torso. All the while, Axe continued to incinerate the remaining bugs.

  “Damn, Levi,” Zane snarled, more out of instinct than displeasure.

  “Be still,” Levi barked. He released his fangs, bit Zane just above the elbow, in the exact same spot as the bug, and began to pump counteractive venom into the wound, hoping to neutralize the demonic substance before it could reach Zane’s heart.

  Zane sucked in a sharp breath of air. The dragyri’s venom stung like a dozen scorpions biting into his flesh at once—it was far more painful than the demonic poison injected by the bug. He continued to peel off the remaining beetles, those still crawling on his arm, crushing them in his palm before they could bite, while simultaneously regulating his breath in an effort to slow down his heart.

  He was trying to give Levi a hand.

  Retracting his fangs, Levi spit out a gob of toxic venom and rose languidly to his feet, all the while watching Zane like a hawk.

  Zane followed suit. He straightened his spine, brushed off his pants, and shook out his hands, checking the front of his body, just to be sure. Nodding at Levi, he sighed in relief. “Thanks, brother. I think we got ’em all.”

  “No problem,” Levi said, backing away to survey the yard.