Badass Dragons - Complete Set (10 page)

CHAPTER NINETEEN

With the voices and music louder,
Cheryl’s intake on the party was that for all the money and well keep of this
expensive mansion, Rafe’s guests sounded like a bunch of head-banging,
hard-drinking rednecks. Perhaps that was a shallow observation, especially
given Cheryl wasn’t even shown to the party on display, but it was the best
impression that she could gather from the noisy ruckus ever present in the
background.

Neither
Cassandra nor Reiko spoke to her during their passage to the second floor of
the manor, and Cheryl wasn’t sure if they assumed she was their captive. The way
Cheryl saw it of course couldn’t be more different. She was the one who could
talk to Synrith. She was the one who wanted Sophie out of there alive. In fact,
in Rafe’s presence, the vampires had next to no hold over her at all. She
didn’t know what they expected to get out of this exchange.

Upon entering
the office, it was clear that Rafe wasn’t at his desk. He was located to the
side on a couch, facing another couch on the other side of the room. With a
beer in one hand, he pointed with the other for the three of them to sit
opposite.

Apart from
the servant who had led them in here, Cheryl didn’t recall seeing anyone else
as of yet.

“First of
all, since the three of you are here, I’m dealing with the three of you,” Rafe
began. “I don’t see how else it works. What we’re going to do is negotiate a
deal between us, and figure out the terms. Once this deal is in place, it will
carry out to that effect. If there is any divergence on your behalf, I will
consider it an act of war, and the wolves will be friends with the vampires no
more. As you understand this will have enormous consequences for your brethren,
for many years to come, should to overplay your hand now. What I need is
honesty. I need to know exactly what is going to happen. And you’ll get that
from me too. Are we in agreement on this?”

Cassandra and
Reiko looked at each other.

“Yes,”
Cassandra said.

“I need to
hear it from all of you.”

There was a
moment of silence.

“Yes,” Reiko
said, and cleared his throat.

Rafe’s eyes
centered on Cheryl.

“Yes,” she
said.

“Okay. Before
I tell you what I want, you’re going to tell me what you want. Each of you.”

Cassandra
stood up. “Is it true you have Jet Strongarm captive?”

Rafe nodded.
“That is true.”

“Then I would
ask that you turn him over to us. Obviously with due safety precautions to
ensure he isn’t able to escape once in our possession.”

“Is that
all?” Rafe asked.

Cassandra
shrugged. “Yes.”

He looked at
Reiko. “And you?”

“I don’t want
anything,” Reiko said. “Just what Cassandra wants.”

Rafe looked
to Cheryl. He smiled. “And you?”

“My sister.
Sophie. You need to release her.”

“Hmm.”

Rafe leaned
back in his sofa. He sipped his beer.

“You want two
things,” he said. “I want two things.”

“Which are?”
Cassandra asked.

“I’ll take
the dagger for the girl. For the dragon, Jet, I will need the dragon Syn in
exchange.”

“Dead or
alive?”

“If you want
Jet alive, then I want Syn alive. If dead, then dead. Do we have a deal?”

“Yes,”
Cassandra said.

Rafe stood
up. He extended his hand to her and she shook it.

Reiko rose
from the sofa. Cheryl joined him.

“Do we have a
deal?” Rafe asked Reiko.

“Yes,” Reiko
said and shook his hand.

Rafe stood in
front of Cheryl.

“Do we have a
deal?”

Cheryl didn’t
know what to say. “Can I just see Sophie now? To make sure she’s okay?”

“And then
will we have a deal?”

Cheryl bit
her teeth hard. “Yes,” she whispered.

CHAPTER
TWENTY

“I want this done tonight,” Rafe
said. “No more messing around. If you fail on either part of the deal, there
will a war between vampires and wolves like no other. I swear to you. You must
come through for me on this.”

“Don’t worry,
we will,” Cassandra said earnestly. “And we’ll keep you up to date every step
of the way.”

Rafe nodded.
“I’ll send Sophie in so you can see she’s okay. But she’s not to leave here
until that half of the deal has been resolved. In the meantime, you guys have some
planning to do. Good luck.”

Rafe left the
room.

Cheryl looked
from Cassandra to Reiko.

“What do you
think?” Cassandra asked Reiko.

“I think
we’re fucked if we don’t come through on this,” Reiko muttered. “This is
serious shit now.”

“I need that
dragon’s blood,” Cassandra hissed. “I need to avenge Cado.”

“So much on
this relies on her,” Reiko said, indicating to Cheryl. “If she fucks up we’re
dead.”

Cassandra
looked at Cheryl a moment. “You won’t fuck up, will you my dear?”

Cheryl took a
step back. “I don’t know how this is going to work.”

Reiko put his
hand through his hair and walked to the other side of the room.

Cassandra
watched Cheryl carefully. “We’ll tell you what to do.”

There was a
faint knock on the wall.

Cheryl turned
and was greeted with an amazing sight that pulled at the strings of her heart.

“Sophie!” she
cried.

She ran to
her sister and embraced her, squeezing tight.

Sophie
struggled slightly, uncomfortable.

Cheryl felt a
familiar body brush past her ankles. “Oh!” she cried. “You’ve found Hoot!”

Cheryl
scooped him up.

“Hey,” Sophie
said. “Give him back to me. He’s mine.”

“What?”
Cheryl scolded. “He is not.”

“Yes, he is,”
Sophie insisted lashing out at her.

“ENOUGH!”
Reiko shouted.

Cheryl
dropped Hoot on the ground. Reiko moved towards them.

“Sorry,”
Sophie murmured.

“That’s
okay,” Cheryl said.

“No,” Sophie
continued, “sorry, Reiko and Cassandra.”

She walked
over to them and hugged them both.

Cheryl
watched in disbelief. “Are you at least happy to see me?”

Sophie
glanced over her shoulder. “Should I be?”

“I’m here to
save you,” Cheryl declared.

“Save me from
what?”

“Aren’t you
being held here against your will?”

Sophie
shrugged. “I like it here. Rafe’s a cool guy.”

Stressed out,
Cheryl flopped down onto the sofa Rafe had been sitting on.

This wasn’t
Sophie. Not the Sophie she knew. The Sophie she’d grown up with. These freaks
of nature still had her brainwashed.

“We were just
discussing how we’re going to get Synrith here, paralyzed and unconscious,”
Reiko said. “With his dagger. Does anyone have any ideas?”

Sophie sat
down on the sofa opposite Cheryl. Hoot moved up off the ground and landed in
her lap.

The sisters
stared at each other.

“You can’t
trust her,” Sophie said.

“What’s
that?” Cheryl piped up.

“I said, we
can’t trust you,” Sophie said. “She loves both the dragons. She’s on their side
not ours.”

Cassandra and
Reiko looked at each other.

“Well, that’s
fucking great,” Reiko cursed. “What the hell are we supposed to do if she can’t
even be trusted?”

“I’m
willing,” Cheryl insisted. “I want to sort this out. And maybe – just maybe –
there’s another way that doesn’t involve anyone getting hurt. We should explore
all possibilities.”

“You see what
I’m talking about?” Sophie said.

Cassandra
nodded. “She’s dangerous.”

“Well, I’m
all you’ve got,” Cheryl said breathlessly. “So you’ll just have to trust me and
that’s it.”

“No,”
Cassandra whispered.

“No,” Sophie
echoed her.

Reiko looked
at them, confused for a moment.

Then he
smiled.

A frightening
smile.

“No,” Reiko
said.

“No – what?”
Cheryl blurted out.

“There is a
way we can be sure,” Cassandra said. “A way she’ll be on our side forever.”

Reiko and her
were moving closer to Cheryl. Slowly.

“It’s the
only way,” Sophie droned.

Cheryl sat up
to defend herself. “Wait a second. What are you doing?”

Cassandra sat
to her left.

Reiko sat to
her right.

“Wait, wait,
wait,” Cheryl babbled, feeling faint. “You’re not saying –”

A tear fell
from her eye as she watched Sophie’s deadpan expression.

Both Reiko
and Cassandra bit into Cheryl’s wrists.

PART THREE

CHAPTER ONE

Pain. Not just in her wrists, but all
over her body.

At first it
was just the shock that hit her. Cassandra on her left, Reiko on her right –
Cheryl’s eyes were focused solely her stone-faced sister Sophie directly
opposite. The vampires either side of her – they were about to kill her. They
were going to take her life. It wasn’t fair at all. Cheryl hadn’t gone against
them or refused to do what they asked. It was only the threat that she might go
against them. A threat, that Sophie had planted in their heads. Why? Why on
earth, why?

Didn’t Sophie
realize, that she was only here to rescue her in the first place?

Why the
betrayal?

Sophie’s eyes
had no answers. It wasn’t as though she was deliberately acting cold for
Cheryl. She wasn’t getting hers back after being wronged some time ago. Sophie
was completely removed from the room and what was happening. If she didn’t
blink on occasion, there might not have been any indication that she was alive
at all…

Cheryl’s
consciousness would soon fade. But not before the most excruciating of agonies
could be felt by her. Cassandra and Reiko – their fangs sliced into Cheryl’s
skin like a couple of chainsaws with vacuums attached. It wasn’t clean. Whilst
Cheryl’s blood was taken by a whirlpool into the pair’s throats, it spilled
down her hands and onto the carpet around her. Beyond the shock of Sophie’s
betrayal, there came the hot, nauseating presence of a migraine that seemed to
radiate from her head to her wrists, and then throughout the rest of her body.

After a few
moments when the feeding didn’t cease, the knife to bone reality of what was
occurring hit her nervous system a hundred fold. Her mouth opened as she began
to slump over herself, but the pain was so great it prevented her from its own
scream.

Right before
the room went to black, and she hit the carpet in a bleeding, spangled mess,
Cheryl felt the presence of an electrical train inside of her. The train was
the pain that had been building from her head, and it had just grown and grown
and grown in size. She felt it, coming from the pit of her belly, as though it
was reaching for the end of a tunnel. When it finally reached the end, it moved
up through her chest, neck and skull, to seemingly shoot out of her…

Leaving
nothing but darkness and oblivion.

CHAPTER TWO

Rafe heard the sound of the struggle
upstairs even though he was on the other side of the house and surrounded by
his pack in the midst of a party. While many of the other wolves might have
heard it too had they been listening, it was only Rafe who did, as he was
already in tune with what was going on inside the room.

Not that the
vampires worried him. Oh no. Not these vampires. It was true that there were
different types of vampire of a more enlightened state – true some had become
masters of his or her brethren by the sheer scope of their otherworldly powers…
But not these vampires. They were parasites.

“Sir? Sir…?”

Rafe had
allowed the noise upstairs distract him from his present surroundings. He
turned to find his hunchback dungeon keeper, Droge, calling to him from the
other side of the room.

Rafe’s wolves
had taken the opportunity to make fun of Droge, pulling his cape over his head,
kicking him up the backside and emptying their beer glasses onto him. Since
Droge’s presence in this part of the house was most unwelcome, especially among
guests, Rafe would have likely taken part in the charade, had it just been…

Another
ordinary night in the dungeon…

“Stop that,”
Rafe barked at his comrades.

Even though
they appeared to have heard him, the fooling around continued, followed by
incessant laughing, and the blind stumbling around of Droge.

“Sir…?
Please, help me, sir…”

“ENOUGH!”
Rafe shouted and smashed his glass against the wall.

The music
immediately ceased, and his wolves froze in their positions.

Rafe stormed
over to them and pulled the cape off Droge’s head. “What is it?”

“You have to
come to the dungeon at once, sir,” Droge said, trembling.

“Why? What
has –?”

“It’s the
dragon,” Droge spluttered.

Rafe put his
arm around Droge’s shoulder and then signaled to the band to continue their
playing.

They left the
noisy room together and walked a few paces down the hall.

“What about
the dragon?” Rafe demanded, removing his arm from the hunchback. “Surely you
haven’t allowed –”

“I haven’t
allowed anything,” Droge mumbled.

Rafe grabbed
his servant by the collar and pulled him up to his face. “What’s happened?”

“He’s gone,”
Droge said.