Unleash the Storm (34 page)

Magic and blades flashed from all sides, with black draconian wings everywhere. Piper dashed in, ducking the stray stroke of a pike and slicing at a reaper as she ran past. Another sprang into her path, flinging a red blast. Ignoring the pain of using magic, she shielded, bursting through the orange flare when her magic hit his, and tackled him with one shoulder, ramming him over. Seiya came in behind her and jabbed her blade into his gut. Zwi in full dragon form followed, snarling with her scales coated in blue and black fire.

The draconian girl sprinted past Piper and leaped high, jumping right over two reapers. She landed opposite Piper and they attacked the pair simultaneously. Piper spun in close, parrying a fast stroke. She lunged with her sword but the reaper teleported. The other was too slow and Seiya’s lightning-fast swords found his flesh.

Together, she and Seiya pressed deeper into the courtyard. The fighting grew fiercer as the reapers grouped tightly, preventing the draconians from getting past them to the building. Piper and Seiya came up against a wall of bristling pikes and could go no farther. The doors towered behind the line of reapers, mocking them.

Piper clutched the hilts of her swords. They had to get in there.

With a whirl of wings, Raum landed beside them. He had a heavy sword in one hand, dripping reaper blood. His black eyes swept over the two of them.

“Get ready,” he said.

Piper tensed. He whistled sharply.

All the dragons fighting in the clearing roared. Blue flames erupted over their bodies—Tenryu’s blue fire. Zwi using Tenryu’s power hadn’t surprised her, but the other dragonets too? After a shocked moment, she remembered Ash’s strange influence over the wild dragonets—then the dragons charged into the wall of reapers, flames engulfing their bodies, and she had no more time to think.

With Tenryu’s power flowing over them, the dragons tore through the reapers’ defenses. Raum launched forward, Piper and Seiya on his heels. He sprang over the battling dragons and daemons, wings snapping down. Seiya grabbed Piper and leaped too. They landed hard on the stairs and ran toward the doors. Other draconians flew over the battling reapers and turned on them from behind, pinning them between their blades and the flaming dragons.

Piper didn’t look back, trying not to hear the screams of dying dragons as the Hades daemons fought back. She and Seiya followed Raum up the front steps. He didn’t bother pushing the doors open. Instead, he lifted a hand and blasted them apart. Wood and metal flew inward, scattering across the polished marble floors inside.

The three of them ran through the debris, Zwi on their heels. Beyond the doors, a long hall opened, three stories tall with rows of beautifully carved pillars interspersed along the outer edges. Raum slowed his pace as they came into the hall, their footsteps echoing in the sudden silence.

At the far end, five wide steps led up to a dais backed by blood-red silk drapes. A single large but simple chair sat in total isolation against the gently rippling red. And in that chair, Samael sat. Other reapers surrounded him, but all she could see were those red eyes staring at her. Even with the distance of the room between them, she could feel the crushing weight of his gaze, the cutting pressure of his attention like a hundred blades laid across her skin.

He made a small gesture to his entourage. About half of them teleported, gone in an instant—carrying new orders to his troops? The others faced her, Seiya, and Raum. Six reapers, clad in black, each possessing not one but three gold bands on his right bicep.

Raum strode forward, closing half the distance. When he reached that invisible halfway line, the six bodyguards flowed into motion. They moved like snakes, gliding down the steps and forming a line in front of Samael, red eyes glowing faintly.

In a burst of blue and black flame, Raum’s dragonet, Nili, transformed into his full dragon form. Zala followed suit. Along with Zwi, the two dragons stood behind Seiya, Piper, and Raum, snarling softly.

“Raum and Seiya,” Samael said, his quiet voice filling the cavernous room with power and confidence. “After your great struggle to escape me, I am surprised you would willingly return to die.”

Seiya’s jaw flexed but she didn’t respond. The utter hatred burning in her black eyes was answer enough. Raum’s face was blank, emotionless. Samael’s gaze shifted to Piper. She straightened her spine, pushing back against that indefinable weight that saturated his stare.

“And Piper,” Samael said, “you have proved most elusive lately, but I observed your handiwork with the Sahar earlier.”

She sneered at him but didn’t reply. Just like Seiya and Raum, she wouldn’t take the bait.

“I have been most curious about our last encounter. Your new form is quite lovely, I must say. Ryujin, is it not?”

Again, she refused to answer. The silence between her, Seiya, and Raum was as thick and heavy as the rain falling outside.

Samael rose to his feet, smiling in an almost benevolent way. “I understand. This is not the time for talking.”

He gestured toward his six bodyguards. With red flashes, they teleported.

Her heart skipped a beat. Before she could react, metal blades crashed together on either side of her. She whipped her head around to see Seiya and Raum surrounded, fending off three reapers each. Their dragons leaped to their aid.

Piper stood alone between them as the reapers drove her friends away. Zwi stood behind her, trembling and snarling as her head turned from Seiya to Raum and back. The dragon leaped away, charging in to join Seiya’s battle as the girl stumbled. Piper raised her swords, about to join in too, when Samael rose to his feet.

She froze as he walked down the steps, his eyes locked on hers, pinning her down like chains of arctic ice. He looked casual and elegant in his silver-trimmed military uniform, his short, silvery braid hanging over one shoulder. If not for that soul-shredding stare of his, he would have looked average and forgettable.

His foot touched the last step and he vanished in a flash of red.

Hands grabbed her arms from behind her. The air crackled violently and black closed over her vision. The breath vanished from her lungs as the room disappeared from her senses. A terrible pressure crushed her from every direction at once as he teleported her. Then the world reappeared with a pop.

Her back hit a chair as she was shoved down. Her wrists were slammed into the armrests, jarring her swords out of her grip. Samael’s face filled her vision as he pinned her in place. The unfamiliar room was lined with bookshelves and with a birdcage in the corner—no, wait. She knew this room. It was his office—the room where she’d first cowered under his merciless regard.

Before she could regain her bearings, he shoved her down in the chair behind the desk and his hand closed around her throat. His fingers squeezed, half cutting off her air.

Somewhere below them, magic boomed and a dragon roared. The floor shook.

“Do you hear them?” Samael said softly. “You can save them. You can save Ash and his pet dragon as well.”

Paralysis gripped her, her lungs refusing to expand with air. No. He was lying to manipulate her.

“Surrender, Piper,” he said, his red stare driving her down into the chair, pinning her as surely as his hands. “Surrender the Sahar and promise me your obedience and I will spare them all.”

She dug her ryujin claws into the arms of the chair until pain shot up her fingers.

“No, you won’t,” she choked out. Another blast from below. Was Seiya still fighting? Was Raum holding out against the elite bodyguards?

Samael dug his fingers deeper into her neck, recapturing her attention from the sounds below. Her heart hammered and she swallowed hard, her throat moving against his hand on her neck.

“It doesn’t matter what you offer me,” she whispered. “The Sahar is gone.”

He went still. “Gone?”

“Yes. Gone.” She bared her teeth in a grin. “I destroyed it along with your towers.”

Emotion sparked in his eyes, unidentifiable to her. “You did not,” he said flatly.

“I did. It dissolved into dust. It’s gone forever.”

He stared at her, weighing her words. Rage suddenly burned across his face and magic surged over her skin from his hand on her neck. She grabbed frantically for her magic and pulsed it through her body, burning away his spell as he cast it into her. It took him an instant to realize his spell wasn’t working—just long enough for her to wrench out of his grip and swipe her claws at his throat.

He jerked back. Her claws missed his neck and caught his face, scoring four lines from his jaw up one cheek. Blood spilled over his pale skin.

Fury darkened his eyes to black. The air crackled as he lifted his hands and slashed them down. Desperately, she called up a shield between them.

Power exploded into her at point-blank range. The blast hit her shield and hurled her backward. The wall disintegrated beneath the onslaught of magic and she was flung through the new opening, crashing to the floor amidst the debris. She rolled over and scrambled up, pulling a long dagger from the sheath on her thigh as she took in the new room in one glance—an elegant parlor with little clusters of stylish, old-world chairs and sofas, the long outer wall lined with windows and heavy, embroidered drapery.

Samael stood on the other side of the demolished office wall, half obscured by dust. Then he vanished. She did an about-face, dagger whipping through the air. He appeared behind her, already casting. He blasted her weapon out of her hand and another flick of his fingers shot a red blade of magic for her chest.

The debris littering the floor saved her life. As she jerked back, she tripped over a chunk of wood and fell backward. His red blade missed her chest and seared across the top of her shoulder, burning right through her ryujin clothing. Only the scales on her shoulder saved her arm.

She landed painfully on her back. Rolling over, she leaped to her feet, hands extended to her sides and fingers curled—claws ready to strike. Exhaling fast, she launched herself at him.

He vanished. As she spun, magic blasted into her back, knocking her onto her knees. She jumped up and twisted, but he’d vanished again. A flash of red in her peripheral vision. A second blast hit her in the side, hurling her off her feet and into a cluster of furniture. She flipped painfully over the back of a sofa and onto a coffee table that collapsed under her. She staggered back up.

He stood by the shattered wall, one hand in his pocket. He bounced a crackling orb of magic in his other hand, tossing it up and down like a tennis ball. Desperate, she yanked out another dagger and flung it at him. He cast a shield and the weapon ricocheted off, clattering to the floor.

A muffled female scream from the level below caused Piper to involuntarily look down even though all she could see was the floor.

“Keep your attention on your own fight,” Samael whispered in her ear, suddenly behind her.

She gasped and flung her elbow back but caught only air. Red light filled her vision as he appeared right in front of her, two fingers pressed against her chest.

His spell hit her so hard she didn’t even remember falling. The next thing she was aware of was lying on her back, unable to breathe as fiery pain raced along every nerve. Her heart hammered desperately as she fought to make her lungs expand.

Samael appeared above her, standing beside her as he smiled down at her struggles. He crouched, observing her as she clutched at her chest. She couldn’t breathe. Why couldn’t she breathe? Her eyes popped, mouth open in a frantic, futile attempt to suck in air.

“You are a child, Piper,” he murmured. “You are an infant to me. Your attempts to fight me are nothing more than a toddler’s tantrum.”

Black closed over her vision. A child? She’d been a child when the Gaians had first attacked her Consulate and she’d gone on the run with Ash and Lyre. But she’d come so far since then—seen so much, learned so much, rewritten her soul in the process. She might not be the strongest or the fastest or the smartest fighter, but she was
not
a child.

Fury cleared some of the panic from her head. A spell was preventing her from breathing. It wasn’t a sleep spell, but the magic was inside her. She called on her own magic, mixing blue and purple in an agonizing concoction that she pulsed through her veins.

She sucked in a desperate lungful of air.

His eyes narrowed.

She flung her hands up, pulling the magic out of her body and hurling it into his face. With a wave of his hand, he effortlessly cast it aside. His hand grabbed her jaw and magic sparked once again against her skin—another spell to disable or kill her. He was determined to prove his magic could defeat hers.

A deafening roar erupted overhead, the sound vibrating through the building and their bodies. Blue light lit every window, turning the walls azure. Ash and Tenryu. Samael’s head snapped up, and for an instant, she thought she saw a flicker of fear in his red-tinted eyes.

In his moment of distraction, she snatched for his throat with her claws. He grabbed her wrist. She twisted her arm, grabbing his wrist in turn, and jerked him down toward her as she jammed her other fist into his gut.

He vanished, reappearing six feet away with magic already flashing. She sprang up and dove aside as his spear of power hit the floor where she’d been, piercing the floorboards like they were made of paper. Rolling back to her feet, she ran for the nearest window and jumped, crashing through the glass. She plummeted two stories, bending her knees to take the impact as she landed on hard cobblestones. Falling forward into a roll as pain shot through her ankles, she regained her feet, finding herself in another smaller courtyard at the back of the building.

Tenryu swooped past overhead, wings blotting out the sky. Blue fire glowed from between his scales and trailed off his wings and tail. The flames landed on an invisible barrier like burning oil, flickering briefly before going out—the ward over the building, preventing Tenryu from attacking.

But apparently that didn’t matter, because he wasn’t attacking. He flew right past them, wings beating the air as he shot away from the main hall. As she gaped upward in confusion, red flashed in her peripheral vision.