Wrath of the Dragon, page 12
The witch nodded, and then she turned and hurried off to the left-hand side of the lake. The glow of the cat’s eyes was the last thing to vanish as they hurried off into the trees, and I glanced down at the map in Cyra’s hands.
“Looks like we’re headed the other way,” I said. “Come on, let’s go before this place is crawling with those purple fuckers.”
We hurried off into the forest, and I took one last look at the glistening, navy blue lake. It really was a beautiful place to live, and I hoped the witch would be able to come back to it someday without living in fear.
“So,” Cyra said as she rolled up the map. “How does it feel to be a dragon? Or a man dragon… a part man, part dragon?”
“That’s a mouthful,” I laughed. “Honestly, it feels like nothing I’ve ever experienced. When I was in the sky in that body, everything just seemed to fall into place. It was like I was always meant to fly. But that sounds crazy…”
“I still can’t believe it.” The angel grinned. “You have angel fire! I know this world is all new to you, but I need you to understand how incredible that is. I’ve never seen something like this before, I only know it from legends.”
“And this angel fire came from you?” I asked. “What did you mean before about the ‘greatest potential’ of your powers?”
“Well, there is obviously only so much I can do,” Cyra replied. “I’m no goddess, Ryan, I’m only a Throne angel. My fire abilities are rare and powerful, but limited. Their potential is within me, though, as it is with all angels. We’re the embodiment of our gods’ might, and it’s said that when we bind with other celestials, we are opening that part of ourselves to them. They alone can bring out the very most of our abilities.”
“Holy shit,” I muttered as I tried to process the weight of that much responsibility. “But the witch thought I was a god. Why would she ever think that? All the gods have gone, and I’m just--”
“Because you are a dragon!” Cyra said as she threw her hands up. “Dragons are ancient creatures of the gods that vanished without a trace! The fact that you’re traveling with an angel adds to that, too.”
“You’ve got a point,” I allowed.
The woods around us became gradually darker as the treetops became more dense, and the glow of the purple orbs only faintly lit the way. I held my dagger as we walked, but the knowledge that I could turn into a fire-breathing beast was a much more reassuring feeling.
My head was still spinning as I relived the memory of flying over and over again, and I gave myself a hard pinch on the arm just in case this was all some insane dream.
“You said there’s all different angel types,” I said. “Does that mean if I… binded with another angel, then I wouldn’t have the dragon powers?”
“Hard to say.” Cyra shrugged. “Maybe you would still have gotten a dragon form, but the powers would be different? Like you would have something else in place of the fire-breathing. Why? Are you planning on binding with every angel you meet?”
“No!” I spluttered. “I mean, I was just curious!”
Cyra laughed, and I was relieved to hear that her tone was light and joking rather than jealous. I couldn’t even fathom the idea of meeting anyone I wanted to sleep with as much as Cyra, but it was good to know she wasn’t paranoid or jealous at the mention of it.
“I am going to protect you,” I said in a more sober tone. “That’s all I know for sure. You’re so important to me, Cyra, and I’m going to use my new powers to make sure you are always safe.”
“I’m glad you care for me that way.” Cyra smiled at me. “I suppose it was lucky I found you out in the desert lands. Who knows how quickly you would have died without me?”
“Oh, really?” I laughed. “Because I think I would have done pretty well on my own. Although, I wouldn’t have unlocked this power without you, I guess.”
“Let’s just say we’re both lucky,” Cyra said with a sly smile. “It’s been a while since I’ve felt anything like good luck around here.”
We could still hear the occasional demonic cry far behind us as we walked, but luckily it didn’t seem like they were tracking us. I wondered how big the king would be compared to his minions, and if his skin would burn as easily as theirs did.
Then I realized I would need to make sure I didn’t get carried away with my new powers. We were surrounded by dense trees and plant life, and if I made one wrong move, I could end up setting the whole forest ablaze. Which put my hackles up just thinking about it. I didn’t spend over three months training to help out with the wildfires in Arizona just to come set a whole other world on fire.
Not to mention how much attention I would draw to myself as a fire dragon lighting up the dark sky of the Night Lands. I wouldn’t be surprised if the king had already sent out an army to try and find me. Having a dragon set loose in this world would be threatening on its own, but that bastard would find out his demons were burned to a crisp soon enough. After the scene I’d made in the sky, it wouldn’t take him long to put two and two together, which meant our cards were kind of out on the table.
The Demon King would know what kind of power might be unleashed on him and his followers. He could prepare a counterattack if he suspected we were coming his way, but we still had no idea what we were up against.
I decided I would only use my dragon form when it was absolutely necessary. Maybe then we’d be able to keep some kind of element of surprise.
“I hope she’s okay,” Cyra said after several moments. “I can’t stand the thought of Nisha trapped by those horrible creatures.”
“She won’t be for much longer,” I said. “We have a map, and I have my new powers. There is nothing that can stop us.”
“Don’t let anyone hear that,” Cyra laughed. “The creatures of the forest might take it as a challenge.”
There was a nearby howl, and it didn’t sound like the demons, but it was certainly something big.
“Maybe we should just fly,” Cyra said. “It would be so much faster, and we wouldn’t have to deal with all the creatures of the woods.”
“It’s too risky,” I said. “My dragon form burns so brightly that it would be impossible to get anywhere near the demon headquarters unnoticed. Besides, if I fly up through the trees, then I’ll set the whole damn forest on fire.”
“You’re right,” Cyra sighed. “We should walk for now, but it was amazing to see you in that form. For a moment I almost thought you had become some kind of god. That’s the impact dragons have. Even on us angels.”
Another howl came from the darkness, and it sounded much closer than the first.
“Should… we be concerned about that?” I muttered.
“It might be nothing,” Cyra said warily. “There are thousands of different creatures in the woods. It might just be a fox having a fight or doing a mating call.”
“It could be,” I said. “But now that we know the animals of the forest are losing their minds, we need to always be ready for a fight.”
“Maybe we should have recruited some vampires,” Cyra said. “But if we just keep following the map, then we should get through the woods in no time.”
The red-haired angel yawned, and I tried to work out how long I had been awake in my new world. So much had happened, but it had probably been less than a day since I’d woken up in the desert. And in that time, I had met a beautiful angel, had sex with her, absorbed her fire powers, and shifted into a massive dragon.
Not to mention kicking dozens of demons flat on their asses and making a few strange friends along the way.
Not a bad first day in my new life.
“Do angels need sleep?” I asked. “We can stop whenever you need a break.”
“We do need to rest,” Cyra said. “But we don’t need as much sleep as mortals do. I’m okay just now. I don’t want to stop somewhere so exposed.”
As we walked, we occasionally checked the map to cement the route in our heads, but I also had a better understanding of the land’s layout after seeing it from up high. Some more silver bats flew past us eventually, and it had been a good while since we had heard any howls.
“I hope the witch reached safety,” Cyra said. “She turned out to be quite nice, I suppose. Those potions are good to have on us, too.”
“She just needed a reason to trust us,” I said. “Like anyone, really. She certainly wasn’t as hard to win over as someone else I know.”
Cyra rolled her eyes, and I reached out to grab her slim waist. I pulled her in close and kissed her as she slipped her arms over my shoulders. Then she gave a soft moan as I squeezed her ass, and I had to fight every urge in my body not to pull her down onto the ground for more mind-blowing sex.
“What was that for?” Cyra grinned as we started to walk again.
“I just like kissing you,” I said. “Is that okay with you?”
“I’ll allow it.” She smirked.
We walked for a few more minutes before I randomly started to feel uneasy. The hairs on the back of my neck were suddenly standing up, and I had an intense feeling that we were being watched. I couldn’t see anything around us, but the feeling was deep in the pit of my stomach.
“What’s wrong?” Cyra asked as I looked around.
“I think there’s something close by,” I muttered. “I can’t explain it, but I can just sense it. There’s someone watching us.”
The red-haired angel peered into the darkness around us, and I tried to strain my ears for any hint of sound.
“I can’t hear anything,” she whispered. “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure,” I muttered. “But maybe it’s just some deer or rabbits.”
Suddenly, something leapt out of the trees in front of us, and I jumped ahead of Cyra. I threw my arms back to shield the angel, and a smell of fish and rotten meat suddenly filled the air. Then several more shapes emerged from the darkness, and my stomach flipped as I stared at the creatures.
Ragged clothes hung off their huge bodies, and as they snarled and surrounded us, I saw that they were almost-human men, but they had various features of wolves. Some of them had human faces, and some had furry snouts. They all stood upright, but a few of the men had brown furry legs and dark tails. It was like if a wolf and human created life, it would turn out something like this, but the mix seemed oddly mismatched. Like the gods weren’t paying attention and got the details skewed on these guys.
The ones with wolf-like snouts had razor-sharp teeth crammed into their mouths, but every single one of the strange beasts had their eyes fixed on me.
“Ryan,” Cyra whispered behind me. “Don’t move a muscle. They’re werewolves.”
Chapter 8
“First vampires, and now werewolves?” I hissed as I held my dagger up, but none of the werewolves made a move. They drooled as they stared at us, and I tried to keep an eye on as many of them as I could at once.
“Are you the one who lit up the sky?” one of the wolf-men snarled.
He was the biggest of the group, and his whole torso was that of a wolf before he became a man at his legs, but the top half of his face was human, too. He had dark, messy hair, and halfway down his nose, his face became wolf-like. His dark fur was matted, and it was bizarre hearing a human voice coming out of a creature like that.
I decided that admitting to being the dragon might give us some leverage, considering how much it had turned the witch’s attitude around. It also couldn’t hurt to show some dominance with these creatures, in case they wanted to fucking maul us.
“That was me.” I nodded. “We’re just passing through.”
The werewolf’s eyes flickered to Cyra behind me, and he sniffed the air as if he could work out who we were from our scents. I figured he probably could, to some extent.
“What are you?” he asked, and the other wolf-men grunted in agreement.
“He’s a dragon,” Cyra said proudly, and I tried not to smirk at her bragging tone. “So you really don’t want to be getting into any trouble with him.”
“A dragon?” he snarled. “That is not possible. The gods took them away years ago.”
“Well, he is,” Cyra said. “The first dragon to grace the sky in centuries, so don’t try anything.”
The werewolves growled, and the leader guy held up a hairy paw to silence them.
“Do not threaten us,” he snarled. “We are not looking to harm anyone who is not looking to harm us. A whisper was carried to us by the vampires that you killed demons. Many demons.”
“That’s true,” I said. “We’ve left their corpses back at the lake, so we’re trying to put distance between us and them as quickly as possible.”
The werewolf didn’t say anything, but a couple of the others barked and snarled as they took a step closer.
“We will not hurt you,” the leader said. “Ease up, boys. They have slain the enemy. Any killer of demons is on our side. Especially if he is what he claims to be.”
“Thanks,” I said with a nod. “My name’s Ryan, and this is Cyra. It’s good to meet some of the creatures of the forest, I know it’s been a rough time lately.”
“I’m Darrick,” the leader growled, and the name seemed weirdly normal to me with his face stuck somewhere between wolf and man. “Things have been getting worse and worse lately. We’re turning against each other, and more and more demons have been patrolling these parts.”
“You’re werewolves,” Cyra said. “Isn’t turning against others the norm for you?”
The werewolves all bristled at the words, and their snarls made it clear she’d insulted them.
“You know nothing of our kind,” the leader said with a gurgling growl behind his words.
“Well, I’ve met werewolves before,” Cyra countered. “Why aren’t you fully men or wolves? Are you defective?”
“We are like this because of the gods!” Darrick spat. “When they took away the moon, it had just risen as full, and we were all stuck mid-transformation.”
“Shit,” I breathed. “So you stayed like this ever since then?”
“It’s painful as hell,” Darrick snarled. “Every moment is pure agony when we cannot be fully ourselves, in either form, but we have had to learn to live with it.”
“Damn,” I said. “The people of the Night Lands have really been through the shittiest times.”
The werewolves nodded and snarled, and I suddenly understood their grizzly demeanors a lot more. If I was constantly in a painful mid-transformation phase, I would probably be grouchy, too. Now that I looked more closely, all these guys stood in an awkward way, like they were bracing themselves against the agony of the half-states they were locked in.
“You don’t want to keep going this way,” Darrick said. “You should turn around before the route gets too dangerous.”
“We need to go this way,” Cyra said. “We’re traveling to save my friend, and the witch gave us a map.”
“The witch?” Darrick asked. “She’s not normally one to share her secrets and knowledge.”
“We helped her out,” I said. “So she returned the favor.”
Cyra unrolled the parchment and showed it to Darrick, and she pointed to the pink route that had been drawn out for us.
“This is where we’re heading,” she explained. “If we take any other way, then it would add days onto the journey. We can’t afford to waste any time. The demons are probably already being sent after us as we speak.”
“You need to change plans,” Darrick said as he scratched his paw against his wolf snout. “There is a whole colony of shadow serpents that have taken over this part of the forest.”
“Shit,” Cyra groaned. “Are you sure?”
“Seen them myself.” Darrick nodded. “There were at least three of them, probably more now, by the rate they breed at.”
“What’s a shadow serpent?” I asked, and Darrick scowled as he looked at me.
“How do you not know of the shadow serpents?” he asked. “They’re some of the most dangerous beasts in this whole land.”
“He’s used to staying in the city,” Cyra said, and that seemed to satisfy the wolf-man.
“They’re giant worms,” Darrick said. “But they can devour you in a second, and their fangs are laced with the most deadly poison you’ll ever find. They normally live deep, deep underground, but because the world is so dark now, they have started to come up to the surface. They’re spreading like a damn plague.”
“You do not want to mess with them,” another werewolf agreed. “Even if you have powers, there’s no chance the two of you could pass through safely.”
I looked at Cyra, and she bit her lip as the rest of the wolf-men snarled in agreement. I could see in her golden eyes that she was worrying about adding any time onto our journey, and I wondered if there was some way to get help with the serpents.
Then I glanced back at the beasts in front of us. The werewolves looked like they would be brutal fighters, judging by their sharp talons and teeth. It was clear that they weren’t happy with having the serpents here, either, and I knew there must be something we could do to recruit them.
“You look like you guys can fight,” I said. “How about we come to some kind of arrangement? Is there any way we could recruit your services in fighting through the serpents?”
The werewolves snarled and looked at each other, and Darrick raised his bushy eyebrows. At first, I expected them to flat-out refuse to put their pack in that kind of danger, but then the wolf-men all started muttering to each other and eyeing me and Cyra more closely.
It was clear there was something they all had in mind.
“There is something we want,” Darrick said. “Or rather, something we need. Desperately. We would ask this of you in return for our services.”
“Okay…” I crossed my arms, and Cyra let out a barely audible sigh behind me. “What’s your price?”
“First you should know there’s a reason we haven’t gone to get it ourselves,” Darrick replied. “It’s a dangerous route.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“A moonstone,” Darrick said, and there was an excited murmur around the men.
