Page 62 of Rurik
She peered around the edge of the cabinets. Luis was nowhere to be seen, but shouts in Portuguese could be heard from other rooms. Seconds later, deafening crashes shook the building so hard the floor tilted beneath her feet before settling back. Her stomach lurched, and she tried not to throw up. For a moment she felt like she was on the world’s largest Jenga stack, and someone had just removed a key supportbrick.
Howls and screams echoed all around her, interrupted by bursts of gunfire. She used the wall for support as she crept to the nearest door and chanced a look out a window. In the sky, dragons were clawing at each other, teeth snapping, jaws closing around scaled flesh. It was unlike anything she’d ever seen in her life. A medieval battle ofmonsters.
The bark of gunfire made her dive to the ground as shouts echoed from above. She waited, counting the seconds of silence before she dared to move again. The rooms were empty as she slid past each door, but she was afraid she’d run into Luis or Drakor at any moment. They would be looking forher.
She soon found the corner office she’d been in earlier. The two remaining vials of serum lay forgotten on the floor. She had to make sure Drakor didn’t manage to escape with them. Charlotte rushed toward the vials and grabbed them, only to be yanked back by herhair.
“There you are!” Drakor snarled. “I’m afraid I don’t like Luis’s chances out there. But with you, I won’t need him. Come.” She tried to resist, but it was no use. Already his hands were taking on a clawlike shape. He pulled her toward the window, and she imagined herself being carried off to God-knows-where.
“Back away from my mate,” Rurik bellowed as he appeared in the doorway. He was bleeding and bruised, but at that moment he was the most beautiful thing she’d everseen.
“Rurik!” She cried out his name, and he met her gaze with a smile of hope before he focused back on the threat beforehim.
“You can’t harm me,” Drakor said, claw at her throat. “She dies, you die.” Drakor and Rurik danced in a slow circle around eachother.
“Charlotte, it’s okay,” Rurik said. “Your brothers are here on the roof, and we will get you tosafety.”
“I think not.” Drakor’s nostrils flared a moment. “Your scent…” He closed his eyes briefly, inhaling again. “It’s…human.Onlyhuman.Interesting.”
Rurik didn’t acknowledge the awful truth, but Charlotte knew what Drakor would puzzle out. If Rurik was mortal, he could be easily killed, and he’d still have Charlotte for herdrug.
Panic shot through her like a bolt of lightning, and everything around her seemed to slow down. Drakor began to turn, his face alight with malice as he finally realized that he had the upperhand.
Have to stop him…buthow?
She didn’t stop to think her plan through. There was only one way to even the odds. Vial in hand, she rammed her palm into Drakor’s mouth, mid-taunt. The glass shattered over his teeth and cut into her hand, which she held over his mouth, keeping as much of the serum inside as she could. Drakor struggled, gripping her hand and pulling it away. He gagged and spat, a mixture of blood, spit, and serum spilling on theground.
He howled, backhanding his claw at her chest, even as it began to revert to human form. She screamed, staggering over the edge of the building. She grabbed Drakor’s hand, desperate to pull herself backup.
Instead, he fell over the ledge withher.
Wind whipped across them in a roar of sound. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t catch her breath as she went weightless in the air. Drakor’s gaze went wide with terror, seeing the ground rising to meet them, yet unable to do anything aboutit.
But Charlotte wasn’t afraid. Not really. She wasn’t resigned to death, it was just that she knew. She knew somehow what she would see as she looked back up into the sky. She knew it before it evenhappened.
A great black dragon appeared, falling from the building and diving after them, its golden eyes locked onto hers. As it reached her, its giant claws cradled her seconds before they reached the pavement, pulling her back toward the sky…but it wasn’tenough.
Rurik covered her with his wings and twisted his body so he was beneath her before they crashed into the street, and everything wentdark.
19
Like a fruit suffused with its own mystery and sweetness, she was filled with her vast death, which was so new she could not understand that it had happened. —Rainer Maria Rilke
Rurik had fought a thousand battles,but nothing compared to the one inside him the moment he saw Charlotte pull Drakor over the edge of that building. Every nightmare he’d ever had as a boy of having a mate and losing her came true in that instant. The terror, pure and violent, froze him in place, but not for long. His dragon, buried deep beneath the serum, suddenlystirred.
“No!” His roar shook the already unstable building around them. He didn’t have time to think. He rushed toward the ledge, just as Damien and his team stormed the room. It only took a moment for the hunter to recognize hisintentions.
“Rurik,no!”
Rurik leaped from the window, his rage and love blurring together in a swell of emotions that drowned out everything else. His dragon exploded out of him as he hurtled down toward his mate. He tucked his wings flat against his back and shot straight for her. His claws caught hold of Charlotte’s tiny form, but he was falling too fast; there was no way he would pull up in time. At the last moment, he turned his body so he was beneath her, his wings covering her, and blackness swallowedhim.
* * *
Damien rushedto the building’s ledge, looking down at the massive black dragon hurtling down toward the earth, toward Charlotte. It had to be Rurik; there was no other explanation. There was a deafening boom, and dust billowed up in a wide circle far below, blocking Damien’s view. When the dust cleared, he saw a distant shape on the pavement: Rurik, lying still. Neither of them could have survived thatfall.
Grief threatened to drown him, but he buried it fast. The battle wasn’t overyet.
Two dragons tumbled from the roof onto the landing he and his team were on—a gray one and a white one, one of the Silva dragons and the one called Piper. The Silva had a grip on Piper’s silvery-whiteneck.
