Page 120 of Saving the Last Heir
Shyanne shrugged, the wrench hanging limp in her hand. “I figured if a human weapon wasn’t enough then maybe?—”
Joseph gave a gasping, wheezing roar and twisted on the ground, rolling onto his back, ruined mouth open, left eye still a crimson orb. Sitting forward, he pointed an accusing finger at Shyanne, then shifted.
28
SHYANNE
Stumbling backward, I fell on my ass, the wrench banging against my shin, but that pain was distant and muted by the horror in front of me.
He should be dead.
I’d read the myths and stories. Jackson himself had said that shifters were incredibly strong and usually only another shifter could kill them using their claws or teeth. I’d buried those two teeth deep in his fucking skull. Why wasn’t he dead?
Jackson rushed to my side, putting a protective arm around me.
“Are you all right?” he asked, but I couldn’t take my eyes off of Joseph.
Rather than rising up to attack, he’d transformed and fallen over immediately, claws thrashing at the ground, head snapping back and forth, and his jaws opening and closing so manically it made a steadyclack-clack-clacksound. Along with that, he made strange gasping wheezes as if he was suffocating.
“What’s wrong with him?” I said, brow furrowed in horror.
“Those weren’t his teeth. They’re lodged inside him now. Usually when we bite or claw, they don’t stay in the body that long,” Jackson explained, tugging me toward the door, away from Joseph.
His words, along with Joseph’s behavior, gave me an idea about what was going on. The teeth must not haveactuallygone into the brain, at least not far enough to kill. Now they were sealed within his skull. A magical foreign object lodged within the body of a magical creature. Whatever I was seeing was the shifter version of an allergic reaction or rapid sepsis.
“What do we do?” I asked.
Joseph rolled onto his stomach, eyes bulging wildly and clawing at the ground. One massive paw reached out, slashing at the air. Jackson shoved me away and leaped in the opposite direction.
Barely managing to keep hold of my wrench, breath burst from my lungs as I rolled away. Scrambling to my hands and knees, I looked up and watched Jackson shift again, attempting to fight off Joseph, but the other man was in such a frenzy that he couldn’t seem to anticipate anything. His claws, feet, teeth, and tail flailed around like mad. His claws dug furrows in the stone of the floors and walls as he went through a seizure of violence and rage.
They fought and battled right by the door, still blocking my exit. I ran to the back of the room, where treasures lined the walls and floor. A blast of heat washed across my back as a gout of fire burst forth from one of them. When I finally turned, I saw Jackson on his back, talons pushing Joseph’s head up while the other dragon blasted fire toward the stone ceiling rather than into Jackson’s face.
I was by no means an expert in dragon expressions, but the look on Joseph’s face was one of madness. His eyes bulged out, and strange red veins crept along his face from where I’d hit the teeth into his head. Joseph wasn’t going to survive, that much was obvious, but it wouldn’t matter if he ended up killing us both in his death throes. I needed to help, but all I had was this damn wrench. I needed arealweapon.
Casting my gaze around the room, I inspected the items. One of these had to do something. That weird bird nest thing had been some sort of magical grenade or whatever. Something here had to help.
I scoured the things, trying to judge them both by what they appeared to be, and with any of the dozens of weird things I read. God only knew what was fantasy and fiction. What was legend, and what might be a real item I could use?
A chunk of stone flew over my head, whizzing past only three feet above me, and exploded into fragments against the far wall. Jackson screeched as Joseph snapped and bit at his wing, trying to rip it free of Jackson’s body. Joseph looked like a mad dog now and actually threw his mouth open to belt out a weird dragon bark or cough. That action allowed Jackson to pull away and regroup.
Memories of websites, book quotes, and old fantasy novels coalesced in my mind along with what I’d gleaned from Jackson. Whatever tool or weapon I found would need to be able to hurt Joseph through his scales. There was one thing every single story had in common, and it was that the belly and the soft spots around the scales near the back and around each limb were least protected. But how thefuckcould I hurt him?
“Think, Shyanne.Think,” I hissed to myself as another blast of fire roared across the ceiling.
I leaned out behind a cabinet and watched in horror as Joseph kept slashing with his claws, moving like a madman. The left eye—the one that had been pure red—had burst, leaving an empty socket. From that hole, a tiny wisp of smoke drifted out, as if the inside of his skull was actually on fire. Even when Jackson slashed at him or bit a chunk of flesh from his shoulder, he didn’t seem to notice. That was dangerous. One of the ways a person could win a fight was by doling out enough pain so their adversary began to slow or give in. If that person didn’t feel pain or didn’t care about it, they became ten times as dangerous.
Again, that strange blue orb caught my eye. The object emanated a weird and eerie glow that both confused and intrigued me, but I couldn’t think of how something like that could be used to hurt Joseph. Even then, I found myself crawling toward it, inexplicably drawn toward it.
A small, engraved plaque sat below the orb, attached to the marble plinth. Leaning close, I squinted to read it, but had to jump out of the way when both Jackson and Joseph came tumbling through in a whirlwind of tearing teeth and claws.
Rolling to a stop by a large trunk, I watched the two dragons fight. They moved against each other in a way that made it hard to see who was doing what. I’d watched a couple of alley cats fight behind the garage a few years before, and that’s what this looked like, just more deadly. Joseph’s massive head was swollen, and the empty socket now dripped some viscous white liquid. The more he reacted to the dragon teeth embedded in his head, the more psychotic he became.
To my horror, he clamped his teeth around Jackson’s throat. I nearly screamed, terrified that I was about to watch him tear away a vital piece of Jackson, leaving nothing but a slumped and bleeding body. Thankfully, before he could lock his jaws in place, Jackson kicked out with his rear legs and talons, slicing a gaping, bloody wound. Joseph opened his jaws to scream, and Jackson skittered away, righting himself and rejoining the fight. Both men were absolutely covered in open weeping wounds.
I got to my feet and sent furtive glances toward the fighting dragons as I approached the orb. I needed to figure out what thehellit was before continuing to find a weapon. I scanned the orb plaque.
Moonstone Reliquary DO NOT TOUCH
