Dragon Conjurer, page 13
“I would start singing that Christmas song every time I heard his name,” Nala giggled as she got up and patted Nick on the back. “Can’t win them all, man.”
“So, Ky, thanks,” I said as I pulled my shoes back on. “Ready to go back?”
My pet dragon nuzzled my right bicep and sat on his haunches while he waited.
“Okay, okay, let’s do it.” I stood up and looked down at Ky while I muttered “epistrophi” under my breath.
Ky disappeared in a flash and reappeared under my skin as the tattoo, and I rubbed my arm gently as though to soothe him for making the journey from the physical world to the dermal world.
“Alright, sluggers,” Nick said as he swung his rifle around and gripped it at the base, “let’s kick this pig.”
“Was that a fucking Down Periscope reference?” I snorted as I finished lacing my shoes and got up to join the others. “I haven’t heard one of those in forever.”
“Did you hear that at college?” Steffi asked and walked on my right side.
“Yeah, a classmate of mine would shout it right before our professor gave us a quiz or test,” I replied as I caught the fairy staring at Ky on my arm, but I ignored it. “He was a movie buff and the local sigma male.”
“What’s a sigma male?” Nala asked, and her chocolate-brown eyes found mine as she looked back at me. “I’ve heard of alpha, beta, and omega, but never sigma.”
“According to what he told us, a sigma male is an alpha who doesn’t want to be an alpha.” I shrugged and shook my head. “I don’t know if that’s accurate, but I didn’t have a reason to call him a liar.”
“Sounds like something a guy would make up to sound cool,” Nick snorted. “Come on, we can get there faster if we hustle.”
So, we picked up our pace and walked through the bleak valley with the rock formation in our sights. There was a path leading straight to it, and we were careful to walk just beside it.
Because if there was a path here, then maybe the tlahuelpuchi was here, too.
“But if there’s a path,” I muttered to myself, “the tlahuelpuchi didn’t come here after feeding. It came before.”
“What does that mean?” Steffi asked as she turned to face me. “Are we in more danger?”
“It’s possible, so just be ready.” I rolled my shoulders and rubbed Ky gently. “If you can hear me, bud, we need to be ready to fight like hell.”
The four of us, well, five if we counted my dragon, crept toward the cave with as much stealth as we could. It was hard with the sand crunching under our feet, but I hoped the legend held true and the tlahuelpuchi didn’t have super hearing.
“Fuck this,” Nick whispered as he walked up to a cactus and vanished right in front of my eyes.
“Not a bad idea,” Nala murmured and balled her tiny hands into fists. “We’ve got this.”
Steffi’s wings extended off her shoulders and back slowly, and the sunlight caught in the membranes of her wings and sent tiny rainbows across the ground in front of us.
Even though we were on our way to a fight, I couldn’t help but think about how beautiful the sight was.
Finally, we made it to the entrance of the cave, but just as we were about to rush in, we paused and saw other people already inside.
“What the fuck…” I breathed.
The interior of the cave lit up with green fire and blasts of black magic, and the flashes of light gave us a view of the four figures fighting a nest of tlahuelpuchi. All four of the figures had their backs turned to us, and it was hard to see if they were men or women, but then I noticed one of them had very little clothing on, and a bunch of colorful markings ran up and down her shapely arms and legs.
“That’s Lia!” Nala gasped and pointed at the woman with the markings. “The other Dragon Conjurer!”
The Russians were here?
Even though the rest of the team seemed upset to have the conjurer here, I couldn’t stop staring at her. She was just so badass with all her markings and cool moves.
“What’re we waiting for?” Nick shouted as he appeared next to us and cocked his gun. “We’ve got to finish our mission!”
Nick was right, so the four of us charged into battle with shouts and cries.
“Exokyzo!” I yelled, and Ky sprung from my arm with a roar and a blast of ice aimed at the nearest vampire witch. At the moment, it was hard not to be curious about why that word worked, but I didn’t have time to think about it at the moment.
I had monsters to kill.
As we sprinted into the cave, one of the witch-vampires caught sight of us and turned in our direction. The tlahuelpuchi was just as hideous as all the paintings and artist renderings made it out to be. Human hands and feet were replaced with bird-like talons, and dark, stringy hair was falling into its face. Its clothes were little more than rags clinging to a gaunt frame, and its eyes were no longer human.
There was nothing left of the person it once was.
“Ky!” I called out and pointed at the witch now racing toward me. “Little help here, buddy!”
My dragon let out another roar and blasted the tlahuelpuchi in the face with a sharp icicle, and the monster wailed and fell to the ground with the ice spike embedded in the center of its face.
Like a flash of lightning, Nick appeared and disappeared through the foliage inside the cave, and every now and then, his war cries were drowned out by the steady “budda-budda” noise of his gun firing. Muzzle flashes helped brighten the cavern and made the fight feel like a crazy club rave, but that only kept things interesting.
Not far off, Steffi shot out a blast of golden light and smacked a witch square in the chest. I recognized the fairy girl because her shemagh had fallen off and her rose-colored hair had come free of her braids, and in the flashing light, I could see the determined clench of her jaw and the narrowness of her golden eyes.
“Even in a battle, she’s beautiful,” I whispered as Ky darted over my head and took out another tlahuelpuchi.
I watched my dragon friend as he attacked the monsters overhead, but the tlahuelpuchi seemed to be like annoying flies to him. When he swung his tail around to bat his pursuers out of the air, the vampire witches flapped their ugly vulture wings and avoided the attack. The cave walls were also too tight for fancy maneuvers, so I had to think of a way to keep Ky in the fight.
“Bud, go for their wings!” I ordered as I pointed at the three tlahuelpuchi following him. “Frost breath!”
Ky let out an echoing roar and spun around so he was flying with his back toward the ground. Then he craned his scaly neck toward his chest and opened his toothy maw to shoot out a cloud of white ice toward the tlahuelpuchi.
The frost crystalized and clung to the monsters’ wings, and the tlahuelpuchi screeched as they fell through the air. Before they hit the ground, though, they transformed into their more human form, and then they stumbled to their feet and retreated into the cave.
I could only assume they were trying to regroup before they attacked again.
“Cowards,” I muttered to myself as the noises around me bounced off the walls and rang in my ears. It was way too loud in here.
I needed to figure out the best strategies for beating these monsters. We were way too deep inside the cave to set off any sort of chain reaction, but we couldn’t let these monsters get away.
“How does everyone fight?” I asked myself as my faithful dragon buddy flew overhead and kept the rest of the vampire witches at bay. “I’ve seen the team fight. Now, how do we make it better?”
Above my head, Steffi zipped between stalactites and blasted the army of tlahuelpuchi down below. The glow from her attacks illuminated her determined face, and her translucent wings buzzed as she raced through the air like the coolest aerialist ever.
On the ground, Nala threw golf ball-sized rocks at the monsters, and she set her feet firmly in the ground. The earth under her seemed to swallow her ankles, and she stayed rooted in her place. When a monster came at her, the dark beauty ducked under its claws and drove a rocky fist into its stomach, which knocked it clean out of the air.
Then an idea struck me.
“Steffi!” I yelled over the chaos surrounding us. “Lead the tlahuelpuchi to Nala! Work together to draw them out into the open!”
“Got it!” the fairy cried out as she swung her thin leg around and kicked one of the vampire witches in the head. “Nala, are you ready?”
“As I’ll ever be!” the smallest member of our team shouted back. “Bring it on!”
It didn’t take long for the cave to be filled with chaotic fighting, and I spun on my heels in order to process everything going on all at once. The horde of vampire witches alternated between their human forms and animal figures, and some of them even flew around without their clawed feet underneath them. Magical attacks from Steffi and one of the Russian girls whizzed through the air and impacted with the monsters, and Nala was putting more and more of them into the dirt, but the tlahuelpuchi got right back up and kept fighting.
“There has to be at least sixteen of these monsters--” I started to say before a screech cut me off, and I hit the dirt right before the talons of a tlahuelpuchi tore through the air where my head had just been. Then I jumped back to my feet, leapt into the air, and grabbed it by the foot. “Oh, you think you’re tough? Now what?”
Then the vulture started to peck at my fingers, and I had no choice but to let go of its ankles.
“Okay, new plan,” I muttered and snatched the vulture’s neck in my hands. I kept the creature as far away from my body as I could while I tried to wrestle it to the ground. Then I set my feet and yanked with all my strength, and the shape-shifted tlahuelpuchi fell to the ground in a mass of feathers and talons.
“Not so tough now, are you?” I panted and pressed my boot into the vulture’s throat. I didn’t give it any time to shift form or fly away before I put all my weight against it and snapped its neck.
After I finished off my one vampire witch, the blonde Conjurer with all the markings on her arms suddenly appeared next to me and cocked her head.
“Who are you?” she asked, and her voice was thick with a Russian accent.
Her golden hair was done up in a tight bun, and it pulled her locks away from her sharp facial features like her piercing blue eyes and angled nose. Her little chin tilted down to her C-cup chest, and I caught myself staring at the markings there. She was wearing a short uniform with no sleeves, no pants, and an open chest, which gave me plenty of room to see the dragons on her skin.
She had dragon tattoos, but more than just one. Her breasts cradled a black Chinese dragon as it swirled around her skin toward her neck, a blood-red dragon snaked around her right arm from her shoulder to her wrist, and a green one did the same to her left arm. Her bare legs were also emblazoned with dragon tattoos, with a yellow one on her left leg and a blue one on her right.
“You are Conjurer,” she said as she stomped her left leg to make her bare thigh jiggle deliciously. “Like me.”
“Y-Yeah,” I stuttered and ducked under Ky as he chased a vampire around the cave. “This was our job. What’re you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be in Russia or something?”
“Academy sent us.” Then she spoke something I couldn’t decipher, and the black dragon seemed to crawl off her chest and turn into a Gyarados-sized monster. The dragon then turned and shot what seemed to be a black hole at an oncoming vampire witch, and the creature disappeared with a scream.
“Holy shit,” I breathed and watched as the girl with all the dragon tattoos turned and dove back into battle. “That was…”
“Dylan!” Nala cried out as the earth rumbled beneath our feet. “We need to get out of here! We’re outnumbered!”
I whipped my head around the cave and realized she was right. There might have been eight cadets fighting, but the tlahuelpuchi almost outnumbered us two to one. The witches were powerful, too, especially since they’d been feeding recently. They were shooting around in their transformed selves like bats out of hell, and we couldn’t keep up with them.
Fuck. We really needed to get out of here.
“We stay and fight!” another Russian-accented voice shouted from somewhere to my left, and I turned to see another blonde woman shooting vines out of her arms. The appendages collided with the oncoming horde and stopped them in their tracks, but I didn’t think it would buy us enough time. “We are not cowards!”
“Nala, can you break pieces off the ceiling and crush the tlahuelpuchi?” I yelled as I summoned Ky back into my arm. “Use your power, all of it! Bring down the house!”
“We have to evacuate!” the dark-haired beauty screamed as she held her hands toward the ceiling. “Get everyone out of here!”
I knew my team would follow my lead, but when I turned back around to speak with the Russian chick wielding the vines, she wasn’t there. I whipped my head back and forth trying to find her, but my immediate surroundings were filled with rocky debris and shadows. Even the tlahuelpuchi were suddenly absent from my field of vision, though I could still hear their screeches reverberating throughout the dark cavern around me.
Where the fuck did they go?
“Steffi! Find the Russians!” I darted deeper into the cave without seeing if my teammates were behind me. “Come on, Nick! You, too! Nala, hold off for just a moment.”
The three of us raced further into the cold and damp cavern, and we ran toward the sound of fighting. The Russians were in here deep now, and I knew convincing them to leave was going to be a challenge, but I couldn’t let them be killed, even if they were our rivals.
“Lia!” I shouted as a jet of red-hot fire burst into life and lit the whole cave up. With the added light, I could see the four blonde beauties locked in battle with the tlahuelpuchi. Lia led the charge, and her pale and muscular arms raised over her head as her dragons and teammates attacked the vampire witches.
Overhead, the cave rumbled, and a small stalactite hit the ground next to me.
Shit, we didn't have much time.
“What are you doing?” Lia accused as her head spun around to look at me and my team. “We have this!”
“We need to get out of here!” I yelled and pointed back the way we came. “Our teammate is about to bring the whole fucking cave down, and you four are about to be caught up in it if you don’t come with us!”
“Why should we trust you?” Vine Girl cried out while the vampire witches slashed through the plant-like appendages.
“Ky, freeze ‘em!” I swung my arm wide and motioned for my dragon to attack the oncoming horde. “It doesn’t have to last long! Just long enough for us to get the hell out of here!”
My scaly companion roared in response and zipped over everyone’s heads to blast the monsters with a stream of ice. The blue and white stuff froze the tlahuelpuchi to the ground, and the screeching and shrieking stopped cold as their grotesque forms were encased in clear, glassy blocks.
“Okay, now, let’s go!” I ordered as Ky made a one-eighty and flew back toward the cave’s entrance. “We don’t have much time!”
“Why we listen to you?” Lia asked as she and her team turned around to face me.
Under normal circumstances, I might have been intimidated by the Eastern European supermodels staring me down, but I was more concerned about our survival.
“Because--” I started to say.
“Because you’ll be turned into Russian pancakes if you don’t,” Nick growled as he swiveled his head over his shoulder. “I’m not waiting around any longer! We have to go!”
“Fine!” Lia shouted, and the seven of us tucked tail and ran out of the cave as the rumbling got deeper.
I grabbed Steffi by the hand and dragged her through the cave, and then I glanced back to make sure everyone was following us. Even though they’d been reluctant to listen to us before, the Russians seemed to be a little scared of the falling rocks and shaking ground.
“We got them!” I shouted as we came back to the entrance where Nala was now kneeling. “We’re out! Bring it down!”
As the words left my mouth, furious screeches echoed from deeper inside the cave, and I knew the tlahuelpuchi had escaped their icy prisons and were now racing back toward us.
“Now, Nala!” I bellowed.
Nala screamed and smashed her tiny fists into the ground as the rumbling beneath our feet grew stronger. Then she dug her hands into the sand and yelled at the top of her lungs, but the sound of her cries was consumed by the crumbling stones overhead.
“Steffi, Nick!” I shouted and grabbed Nala under her arms. “We need to back up!”
My teammates and I carried Nala further away from the crumbling cave, and the shaking ground rattled us while we retreated. The rocks thundered as they collapsed, and the echoes through the cavern grew to a deafening volume. The vibrations were so strong I could barely keep my feet under me as we huddled together. I could feel them in my teeth and around my brain. We held onto our smallest teammate, and I closed my eyes as Steffi and I pressed our foreheads together.
If we made it through this, I was going to ask one of these girls out, so help me God.
Four sets of footsteps retreated behind us as massive thuds interrupted the rumbling, and I opened my eyes in time to see parts of the cave ceiling fall down and crush the oncoming tlahuelpuchi horde.
Massive boulders cascaded down like loose marbles and blocked the entrance, and a mixture of sand and dust kicked up as each of the rocks impacted with the ground. The dust rushed in our direction and overwhelmed us in a moment, but I was too pumped about how fucking cool Nala’s power was to even notice.
“You did it, Nala!” I cheered and helped her to her feet. The others also grabbed her under her arms, and then we took off toward the entrance, where the Russian team was standing.
We made it out of there just in time for the cave to crumble down, and the four of us turned around to look at Nala’s handiwork.
All that was left of the cave was a pile of broken, shifting rocks and pluming sand, and it didn’t look like anything else had made it out alive.
