Page 76 of Gemini Hunted
God.
He’s getting savaged in turn. My mate’s shaggy flanks and haunches are streaked with gore and bloody gashes. His chestnut fur is soaked and dripping with blood.
Even as I stare in horror, the biggest of those hyenas—like the pack alpha—lunges in and clamps its jaws around my mate’s throat.
Lucius!
My dragon queen roars with fear and outrage.
Her bellow fills my head till my skull rings like a bell. My shift, which I’ve been barely holding off by my fingernails this whole time, thunders over me in a flash of blinding white.
My spine lengthens. My tail sprouts. My muzzle emerges, my legs thicken, my forearms elongate, my wings unfurl.
The snap of my opening wings unfolds in a mighty downstroke that vaults my body high into the air. All around me, stone pillars snap like matchsticks.
The exact thing I was desperate to avoid.
With a handful of those supporting pillars knocked off kilter, the high ceiling trembles and fissures. A few scattered chunks of debris tumble down and ricochet off my soaring body.
Fuck. Me. Sideways.
The roof is coming down.
I roar in my lightning voice with enough decibels to make any hyena’s ears bleed. Then I lengthen my neck, snap mywings tight to minimize more structural damage, and arrow toward Lucius through a hammering hail of falling concrete.
Behind me, I’m desperately hoping Vasili’s close enough to the tunnel to swoop inside with Neo.
If we’re lucky (for once), both those guys will be safe in there with Mal and Jae, shielded from the skull-crushing danger of falling concrete.
But I can’t join them. Not yet. Whatever else goes wrong in this fucked-up day, I’ve gotta save Lucius.
Before the whole roof comes down.
Chapter Sixteen
Vasili
I’m gleefully sinking one of my knives hilt-deep in the beating heart of another loathsome hyena—one of several I’ve caught and butchered trying to sneak past me into the tunnel—when Zara’s dragon brings the roof down.
Glaring straight into the hateful snarl of my father’s minion (and devoutly wishing it were my actual father), I twist my knife with vicious spite. A chuff of hot breath, stinking of blood and carrion, spills from the creature’s lungs directly into my face in the most disgusting way.
“Do you mind terribly?” I inquire coldly, over the rend and tear of splitting rock. “That’s repulsive. Next time, try a breath mint,do.”
Apparently my little verbal jab is thecoup de grace. The wicked glow of life in the scavenger’s eyes goes dark.
Truly, it’s about time.
“Oh,crap.” Neo’s voice, shrill with alarm, spills from the tunnel behind me. “V! Watch out!”
A long shadow falls across my eyes. Fueled by blind instinct, I wrench my knife from the shifter’s carcass and leap aside. In fact, I leap barely in time to avoid being crushed to a bloody smear—like my four-legged prey—under a falling pillar.
The stone column hammers into the floor behind me with a deafeningboom!that makes my ears ring.
The tingling rush of my Mogadon magic triggers my levitation. Seeking safety in the air, I let the violet soles of my favorite combat boots lift from the ground.
Just before a falling rock strikes my brow a glancing blow.
My focus splinters into rubble. My witchcraft sputters out. An eyeblink later, my stunned body collides with the floor. Knees throbbing, palms stinging, I stare blankly at the chunk of concrete lying before me that nearly split my skull.
