Baleful Betrayal (20 page)

I took off my shoes and handed them to Elyssa. "Keep an eye on these."

She dropped them on the deck. "You distract, I'll kill, okay?"

"Hey, don't lose my shoes!" I couldn't wear them for what came next.

"We'll get you new ones if the dragon eats them, okay?" Elyssa drew her sai swords. "What's the plan?"

Drawing upon my demonic nature, I unleashed a little taste of hell and manifested. Black claws pushed out my toenails and fingernails, muscles coiled around my legs and arms, swelling me to twice my height and size. Horns spiked through my forehead momentarily blinding me with pain. I slammed the cage door on the demon to keep myself from fully spawning. The more demon I let out, the stronger I'd become, but I'd lose all control and rampage, doing more harm than good.

Using my claws to dig into the wood and keep my balance, I raced across the deck toward the dragon. The creature lunged at Cora, but her vines kept her just out of reach. The dragon abruptly changed course and fired a stream of red liquid from its throat at the vine. The acrid smell of molten lava stung my nose.

Cora cried out as the hot liquid burned her vine to ash. She thudded to the deck. The dragon raked razor claws at her face.

I streaked across the open deck and threw myself against the monster's foot. The impact knocked the attack off course and twisted the dragon's leg awkwardly. It roared and lost its footing, but the impact also knocked me into a flat spin across the deck. I dug my claws into the deck and screeched to a stop.

"Come get me, you, uh, big stupid dragon!" I shouted, my voice deep and guttural from the demonic shift.

The dragon twisted its sinuous body and rose to all fours, webbed wings spreading wide. Golden eyes glared at me, and a forked tongue snaked between gleaming razor teeth. Curving horns rose behind the dragon's eyes, much like the ones on its dead sibling lying on the deck a few yards away.

Without the crew, the ship drifted to the side. A wing caught in the dark vortex, hurling the ship sideways, spinning out of control. We plunged through the wall of darkness, riding up and down violent wave after wave of air. I dug in my claws, and even the dragon held on for dear life. Another hard gust jettisoned us out of the vortex and into a foggy wonderland.

The dragon growled and looked at me with foul intent. I saw Elyssa using the dead dragon as cover to sneak up behind the new threat. She didn't have a chance without my help.

The dragon bellowed and streaked toward me. I roared and charged.

What in the hell am I doing?

This was like a mouse playing chicken with a steamroller.

Sulfur stung my nose as the beast opened its mouth. I dodged left and a stream of lava narrowly missed my face. Using my football skills, I juked right and drove my shoulder into the monster's neck. It was like crashing into a wall made of diamonds. The dragon scales had no give in them whatsoever. I bounced backward and landed hard on my ass. The lava breather arched its long neck and reared back. Quick as lightning, it struck.

I rolled out of the way an instant before razor teeth snapped into me. "You really don't want to eat me!" I shouted, and rolled the opposite way to avoid disemboweling by dragon claws. "I didn't take a bath today!"

The dragon didn't seem to care how I bad I smelled or tasted and chomped down. I twisted away, hot dragon breath scorching my backside. The dragon planted its feet to either side, pinning me between them. I wriggled, but even my demon strength couldn't overcome the power of those legs. Crocodilian jaws lashed toward me.

A beam of brilliance smacked the dragon's snout. The energy refracted from the scales, but it was enough to blind the monster and make it rear back in confusion. Now free, I rolled out of the way and scrambled to my feet. Lanaeia continued channeling a beam of white energy until I dove out of striking distance. Flava and the legionnaires joined her attacks, lancing ultraviolet rays at the dragon.

They quickly realized the dragon scales repelled the damage.

I'd faced monsters like this before—summoned demons or shape-shifting Flarks with natural magic immunity—but that magical protection hadn't protected them from the effects of magic on the environment. I'd used fireballs to spill molten rock on a Flark, but I couldn't set this ship on fire to indirectly attack the dragon.

The only other option was brute force. In my semi-manifested state, I was much stronger than normal, and I'd successfully battled monsters much larger than me. But this dragon was something else, sinuous, flexible, and incredible strong. The dragon scales posed a major problem. Elyssa peered out from her hiding spot behind the blue dragon and pointed at the angry monster bearing down on us. She needed a distraction and I had to give her one without getting eaten.

"Keep attacking," I told the others. "We have to let Elyssa get into position."

"But it's impervious to magic!" Lanaeia said.

"Trust me, just keep it busy!" I unleashed a bolt of destruction and hit the dragon in the snout, which really seemed to piss it off.

"Rawr!" it roared, and slithered toward us, lava spraying.

I channeled a shield right in front of the molten rock, redirecting it back at the dragon. Scorching liquid splashed in the reptile's face, splashing off the scales like rainwater against a waxed car.

"It's like hitting diamond fiber!" I complained. I tried a different tact. Elyssa used to kick my ass regularly when we sparred, but once she taught me some basic mechanics, I'd improved by leaps and bounds. One of the first things she'd shown me was that it doesn't matter how big something is if you can knock it off its feet.

The dragon ran low to the ground like a lizard, but if I could trip it up, that might give Elyssa the split second she needed. Direct magical attacks hadn't worked, and I sure as hell couldn't ram the thing, but what if I tried something that wasn't a direct attack?

I didn't have time to reason through the alternatives. This was going to be a quick and nasty field test. If it failed, I'd be within nom-nom range of those deadly chompers. Elyssa leapt from cover and raced behind the dragon, preparing to leap onto its back. I had no time to lose.

Watching laser-wielding pirates fighting an army of ninjas had always been a dream of mine. My experience as a newly minted sky pirate versus a dragon was terrifying, but I wasn't about to give the scourge of the seven seas a bad name by losing, especially in front of my girlfriend.

Summoning my demonic rage to bolster my courage, I charged the oncoming dragon and prayed my little trick worked. "Beware the dread pirate Roberts!" I shouted at the top of my lungs.

The dragon licked its lips in anticipation of a demon burger—hold the mayo—and opened its mouth to gobble me whole. At the last minute, I veered right and slid through the pool of dragon blood. As I passed the dragon's left leg, I looped a web of Murk around it and jerked hard. The aether rope jerked taut. The dragon kept moving forward, but its leg didn't. Thrown off balance, it smacked face-first into the deck.

Elyssa leapt for the neck. I scrambled to my feet and shot aether tethers to the dragon's horns and yanked hard. Still stunned, the creature didn't resist. Its neck looped backward, head upside down. Elyssa flipped in mid-air and buried both swords in the dragon's eye on the landing.

The dragon bellowed and shook free of my tethers. The swords clattered to the ground as Elyssa vaulted free.

"The swords aren't long enough!" Cora shouted.

The dragon wasn't dead, but it was done. It raced across the bloody deck and leapt over the side, angry roars fading into the distance. Someone else shouted over the din of the vortex as Illaena and the deck crew reassembled. A rock face appeared through the gloom directly ahead. Sailors jerked on levers and the ship tilted hard left.

Vines coiled around everyone, keeping them from sliding over the side, but the ship wasn't turning fast enough.

"Brace for impact!" Illaena shouted.

Another sailor blew the horn.

Wood crunched. The ship shuddered violently as the starboard side grazed the cliff. I grabbed Elyssa with one hand and held onto the vine with the other. The aetherial wings on the right flickered off. The ship hung suspended in the air for a brief pause and then the bottom fell out.

My stomach journeyed to the top of my throat but it didn't stop a scream from escaping first. Wind roared past my ears. The ship groaned and tilted right. I saw Cora, teeth clenched in concentration, directing a vine to carry Illaena and other sailors to the right side of the ship.

The sky vanished in a cloud of whirling aether as we dropped into another vortex. The ship spun and twisted, rolling upside down to face the boiling ocean far below. Elyssa's grip on my arm tightened painfully. She struggled closer and kissed me.

"I will always love you!" she shouted.

"I love you!" I yelled back. "But we're not going to die. We're going to jump!"

"You can't fly in the vortex!"

I channeled my wings and spread them. "Maybe not, but I'm going to try."

The ship rolled again. The vines holding down the dead blue dragon snapped and the corpse slid across the blood and smacked into us. My head rammed the deck and stars flashed in my eyes. When I blinked them open, I saw the dragon corpse crash through railing and vanish over the side.

Elyssa held a vine with one hand, and wrapped her other arm around my waist. The vines holding me down had snapped and Cora was too preoccupied holding Illaena over the starboard side to help me. The blow to my head had disrupted my wings too. I tried to stand, but the ship lurched and shuddered. We only had seconds before we hit water. I grabbed Elyssa, determined to leap off the craft and channel my wings in midair.

A gust of wind blew sparkling dust across the deck. Small gems pelted my face and grit filled my teeth and eyes. We drifted toward the wall of wind at the edge of the vortex. The gems inside would grind us to dust. I couldn't jump off that side of the ship. Somehow, we had to make it to the other side.

The ship rattled and jerked so hard, my chin slammed into the deck and Elyssa lost her footing. The deck leveled out and my stomach dropped like a lead weight. The vortex roared around us, but we had stopped falling. Cora's vines pulled Illaena and several others back onto the deck and I saw the aetherial wings flapping on the starboard side once again.

The sailors cheered, immediately setting to work on the levers. The ship began to rise, wood creaking and groaning as it fought the wind shear. The prow grazed the edge of the vortex and Cora cried out, as if it was her own flesh in the aether storm. When the vessel backed away, the dragon nose was little more than a nub, ground away by the gem dust.

Another group of sailors deployed glowing nets into the roaring winds even as the ship fought the downward pull of the gargantuan tornado engulfing us. The nets hauled piles of gems, sparkling reds, glowing blues, sullen greens, and some that measured six feet across. With one loud groan, the ship seemed to jerk free of gravity and raced upward.

Moments later we hovered over the ocean of whirlwinds and boiling water. Just off the starboard bow hovered the rocky skylet that had nearly killed us. The floating island was small and barren of inhabitants, but with one predominant feature in its center: an Alabaster Arch.

Cora slumped against the railing, eyes dark with fatigue. "Welcome to Kdosh."

Chapter 19

We were finally here.

Illaena landed the ship on the northern side of the skylet and dropped the ramp. Sailors immediately began repairs. The two large gems on the starboard side of the ship used to channel the giant wings had been hastily replaced during our freefall. The collision with the skylet had damaged the originals and contributed to our near-death experience.

The skylet only took a couple of minutes to traverse and I soon reached the Alabaster Arch. "If there's no crystoid, jamming the aether, why isn't the Alabaster Arch working?"

Elyssa shrugged.

The tall stone arch, obsidian laced with alabaster with a wide silver circle around it, sat silent. I held a hand over the Chalon in the control socket. It popped out and hovered just beneath my hand, but willing a portal to open yielded no results. I knelt and willed the silver circle embedded in the ground to close. Aether flooded inside, running static fingers through my hair.

I tried to open a portal, but though the air flickered and the presence of an opening tickled me senses, nothing happened. "Magic definitely isn't the problem. It's something else."

Elyssa's eyes flashed. "I think I know what's blocking it."

I reached a similar conclusion. "A portal-blocking statue."

"That's what it has to be," she said.

"Wonderful." I smacked the back of my hand into the other palm. "Serena must have kept some from Thunder Rock."

"Problem is, I don't see one lying around." Elyssa got down on her hands and knees and looked under a bush. "It's going to take forever to search this entire skylet."

Cora arrived with a crew of sailors to start repairs on the pedestal and gave us a curious look. "Why are you crawling on the ground?"

"The arch isn't working." I stood and brushed dirt off my hands. "There are these small statues that block portals from working and we think one is hidden here somewhere."

"Perhaps I can help." Cora knelt and placed a hand on the ground. The red grass writhed toward her. Even the shrubs and trees seemed to lean her way.

"Creepy," I murmured.

Elyssa was entranced. "Amazing."

"Ah," Cora said a moment later. She stood and walked thirty yards from the arch and flipped a flat stone out of the way. Worms and bugs scattered in the sudden light. Plant roots pulled the soil aside, opening a hole a few feet deep. At the bottom lay a small stone statue shaped like an angel, wings folded, head bowed. A slender root snared the statue and dropped it in Cora's outstretched hand.

"You'd be a real hit on a gardening show," I said.

Cora grimaced. "Television bores me, as do most modern amenities in the mortal world." The roots filled in the hole as she stood and turned to us. "I much prefer the outdoors."