Page 107 of Saving the Last Heir
“Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck.” I clawed at the gearshift, but Christian shoved his door open and jumped out.
“Christian! No!” I screamed, helplessly reaching for him, even though he was already out.
Heedless of danger, he sprinted toward them, bellowing in rage. Mid-stride, he shifted, transforming into a humongous wyrm dragon. To me, the wyrms looked like a nightmare combination of dinosaur and snake. He reared back, rising up like a monstrous cobra and opened his mouth.
“What. The. Fuck?” I said, mouth falling open.
Rather than a cloud of flame, a crackling and glowing spray of ice shards erupted from his mouth. It left his mouth in a billowing cloud of frost that quickly became heavy spikes of ice. A single, five-foot-long icicle slammed into the chest of the brown drake. It threw its back, but before a sound could leave it, its entire body froze in a flash, becoming a statue of ice. Christian whipped his tail around, shattering his enemy into a thousand pieces.
The second drake’s jaws snapped forward, nearly biting into Christian’s flesh, but he twitched back, coiled, then struck at his enemy, his teeth sinking into the drake’s shoulder.
As I sat there, staring on in wide-mouthed horror, Christian shook the other drake back and forth. The violent thrashing turned the drake into a rag doll, its rear legs crashing into the ground and shattering.
Good God, alphas reallyweremuch stronger than an average shifter.
Christian slammed his enemy to the ground one last time. The drake lay in a motionless heap, eyes open and staring sightlessly. Dead. He’d taken out two of those guys in less than thirty seconds.
I grabbed the door handle to get out, but then screeches and roars shattered the night air. Looking up, I watched in horror as four more people emerged from the house, running straight toward Christian, shifting as they went. Four drakes? My god, how many assholes were in Joseph’s employ?
Christian roared at the approaching horde, releasing another magic burst of ice from his jaws. The lead drake opened his mouth and fired out a jet of fire, the two blasts meeting in midair. A strange crackle and hiss sound accompanied theconnecting elements, and a massive cloud of steam pulsed into the air, obscuring the drakes from Christian’s view.
Horrified, I watched as a black-striped drake emerged from the cloud of steam, and locked his jaws onto Christian’s snake-like body. Christian howled and turned to deal with the attacker, but a second drake latched the claws of all four feet as well as his razor-sharp teeth into him. Blood oozed out from between the drake’s lips.
Shutting the door, I shoved the car into drive and hit the gas. The tires spun for several seconds before gaining traction and shooting forward. As I sped forward, the two other drakes emerged from the dissipating cloud of steam, first racing toward Christian, but quickly pivoting when they saw me. For a short second, I was able to enjoy the shock in their slitted pupil eyes. An instant later, I rammed into them.
Normally, striking creatures with more mass than a full-grown rhinoceros would have turned the vehicle into a crushed aluminum can. I’d added reinforcements to the front and rear, and replaced the normal front bumper with a hidden, extra thick, steel bumper. From the outside, it looked like a normal car, but I’d basically turned it into a tank, unsure what I might need to put it through.
The car struck the drake that clung to Christian, and even through the reinforced frame, I felt thecrackof breaking bones. Screaming in agony, the drake released Christian and tumbled over the hood, shattering the right side of my windshield. The roof dented in as it rolled over the car. Keeping my foot on the gas, I aimed at one of the two new arrivals—a drake with orange scales and red stripes, reared up on its back legs, upper legs open wide, talons gleaming in the headlights. The thing belched out a stream of fire, and I had to jerk the steering wheel left and thenright to dodge it, causing the car to fishtail in the dirt. The back end swung wildly and hit him in the leg. He fell over, and the ground shuddered from the impact.
He scrambled back to his feet, moving with serpentine grace. A massive head appeared less than three feet from me, staring balefully through my driver-side window. I locked eyes with it, suddenly feeling like a mouse caught in the glare of a hungry cat. The sounds of battle beyond became muffled as the only things I could process were the giant serrated teeth and the dark red gullet beyond.
The drake exhaled through his nose, fogging my window for a moment. When it cleared, his mouth was open wide. Yawning death stared back at me, and deep at the back of the throat, a flickering orange glow shimmered, like the crackling embers of a campfire. I suddenly understood what was about to happen. I could picture waves of fire washing over the car, melting the glass, surging into the cab and enveloping me, turning me into a screaming inferno.
I managed to open my own mouth to scream in terror, but before I could make a sound, the face in my window vanished, replaced by Christian’s writhing and flexing snake-like body. A sob of relief burst from my chest as I watched him battle the beast that had been seconds from killing me. Glancing through the passenger side window, I spotted the two other drakes sprawled on the ground, unmoving.
Scrambling around the car, I tried to find something to defend myself with, but there wasn’t much to work with. In the bottom rear floorboard, I found my tool belt. The only thing big enough to count as a weapon was the chrome wrench Dad had given me when I’d taken over the shop. I yanked it free of the belt loop. I couldn’t think of a better use for it.
By the time I climbed free of the severely dented but still operating car, Christian had his body twisted around the drake and was squeezing tightly. Blood trickled from the drake’s nose, and its eyes looked like they were about to pop free of its skull. There was no way for it to take a breath and spout fire, and its neck wasn’t long enough to bite back at Christian. In the next instant, it hung its head, and went still. With a hiss of distaste, Christian uncoiled and shifted back to his human form. He placed his hands on his knees, panting for breath.
“Well,thatwas a lot,” he said.
“I know. You did great?—”
The drake on the ground lunged up from its faux death and snapped its teeth at me, the jaws clicking shut less than six inches from my leg. Any closer and he’d have taken my limb completely off.
Driven by surprise, fear, and anger, I brought the wrench down on its face, again and again, screaming as I did. The wrench clanked off its nose, teeth, and jaw. Christian shifted again, and just as the creature was about to snap at me once more, he cast down a wave of ice, freezing him before shattering him like he had the first.
Falling back on my ass, I sucked in breath after breath, horrified at how close I’d come to dying. I spotted a few small white chips on the ground and leaned in to get a closer look. Dragon teeth. Teeth I’d knocked out of the drake’s mouth with my wrench. I picked them up. They were still warm. The fleeting memory of something I’d read flashed through my mind. All that research I’d done when I’d first learned about shifters and dragons came flooding back, along with a discussion I’d had with Jacksonabout dragon teeth and claws. The information tickled the back of my mind. Something about?—
A roar unlikeanythingI’d ever heard in my life erupted from deep within the mansion, echoing out to us in the courtyard.
“That’s Jackson,” Christian cried.
Absently shoving the teeth into my pocket, I jumped to my feet, clutching the wrench.
“We need to go help him,” I said.
Christian put a hand on my shoulder, holding me back. “No way. You have no idea what’s going on in there. I can’t let you put yourself into danger like that.”
