Serpent's Kiss: A Dragonfire Novel (28 page)

“But where’s Tisiphone?” Rox asked.

“She has taken the form of a woman named Viv Jason,” Chandra said. She wished she could have shown that to them. They were all shocked and she could feel Thorolf’s disbelief.

“Is this why you were trying to kill her?” Thorolf asked.

Chandra had to wish that he wasn’t quite so loyal. She turned to face him, her hands fisted at her sides. “Tisiphone is one of the Erinyes, given the right by Hades to avenge herself on the
Pyr
, as you just saw. The form she has taken in this realm is that of Viv Jason. They are one and the same.”

Thorolf swore. “I don’t believe it.”

Chandra gritted her teeth. “My pledge to destroy her could have been completed today, but I was…
interrupted
.” She fired another look at Thorolf, who now seemed embarrassed. “So, your kind remains in peril, thanks to Thorolf’s efforts to
help
.” Chandra softened her tone a bit. “Your loyalty is admirable but misguided.”

“Okay, you’re my mate. So, we’re a team.” His gaze hardened, his eyes becoming a steely blue that sent a thrill through her. “How do I fix this?”

“Guess.” Chandra saw him struggle against the idea of injuring the woman who had been his lover and knew he wouldn’t be able to do it.

Loyalty was a double-edged sword.

“She’s never done anything to me,” he protested and she turned her back on him. She’d never convince him, not without a visual display. She tried to conjure one again, but there was nothing.

“So how do you come into it?” the fair-haired
Pyr
asked her.

Chandra glanced toward him, then straightened. She might as well lay it all out for them. “I am Chandra, Freya, Selene, Artemis and Diana, the virgin goddess, the huntress, the daughter of the moon and the sister of the sun. I am the one who vowed to defend the
Pyr
against Tisiphone’s vengeance.”

“Not just any goddess,” Thorolf said with such approval that she found herself blushing. “A major kick-ass deity. I like it.”

To his credit, the blond
Pyr
didn’t seem to be surprised. “But why you?”

“My brother asked it of me and I pledged my word to him that I would see it done.”

“That still doesn’t tell us why you’d care about defending the
Pyr
?” the Apothecary said.

Chandra cast a glance over her shoulder at Thorolf and her heart leapt at the admiration in his eyes. “I am the patroness of thieves, outcasts, wild animals and the wilderness. I guess that puts the
Pyr
in my jurisdiction.”

Thorolf chuckled and that dimple, hmm.

“I accepted a challenge to eliminate a threat to the survival of the
Pyr
.” She gave Thorolf a hard look. “It was supposed to be simple.”

He gave her a look that should have melted every reservation she had. “Simple is boring,” he said in a low voice that made her body thrum. He dropped his voice to a whisper. “Kind of like chastity.” He winked and her heart skipped. “This is way better.” He beckoned and Chandra found herself moving back toward him, lifting her face for his kiss, savoring both the sparks of the firestorm and the majestic power of her mate. She stretched to her toes, ready for that kiss, then someone spoke behind her.

“Maybe it’s
Slayers
who are under your jurisdiction, not the
Pyr
.” The husky voice came from within the room but not from any of the occupants. They all looked around in confusion, and Chandra caught her breath at the telltale blue shimmer. “After all, the
Pyr
consider them outcasts and that would explain your relationship with Thorolf.”

A young Asian woman manifested right in front of Chandra, her long red nails painted exactly the same color as her fitted cheongsam dress. The woman smiled, the light in her eyes malicious, even as she snatched Chandra’s wrist. Her grip was as cold as ice and sent a strange paralysis through Chandra’s body. When she struggled, the woman’s smile broadened. “The problem here is the firestorm and its interference in my spell,” the woman hissed. “And the mate is always the weakest link.”

“Chen!” the
Pyr
shouted in unison and leapt toward the two women. Thorolf roared and shifted shape. His bellow of pain echoed in Chandra’s ears as the wind began to swirl around her.

“Just bring the sword!” she shouted to the
Pyr
, then held fast to the
Slayer
who planned to destroy her. A new resolve filled her even as she had to close her eyes against the rushing wind and the nausea in her gut.

If Chen thought the mate was the weak link, he could think again.

* * *

“What sword?” Niall asked just as Chandra and Chen disappeared. Thorolf knew which sword, but he also knew it was gone.

Just like Chandra.

It was easy to decide which was more important.

It was, in fact, time to stop screwing everything up.

“Not my mate!” Thorolf bellowed and the sound make the walls shudder. He couldn’t wait for his fellow
Pyr
to change the permissions on their dragonsmoke. He had to follow Chandra!

He shifted back to dragon form in a brilliant shimmer of blue, then lunged through the dragonsmoke barrier. It burned his scales with ferocious power, stabbing into the skin at one spot on his chest, but he didn’t stop and he didn’t scream. He already felt flayed alive—a little more pain was no big deal. He endured it and emerged on the other side, his scales blackened and smoking.

Chandra might be infuriating. She might not tell him everything, and she might have chosen him initially because she wanted him to complete a task. She was persistent and determined to keep her word, and he admired that. The ghosts and the visions didn’t lie. Best of all, she was his destined mate, chosen for him by the Great Wyvern.

Chen wasn’t going to claim her as a sacrifice.

Thorolf seized Rafferty in one claw and held him aloft. He wished his friend wasn’t so tired but he knew that Rafferty would push himself to the max for the sake of the firestorm. “We have to follow her!”

“Where?”
Rafferty demanded in old-speak. He sparkled and became a salamander, coiling his tail around Thorolf’s claw.
“Where did he take her?”

Thorolf inhaled sharply and peered at the space where Chandra had been. He stretched out one talon and saw a single spark of the firestorm’s golden light.

“Follow it!”
Rafferty advised and Thorolf tried to pursue the elusive spark. He filled his mind with the firestorm’s heat and the passion of its promise. He recalled Chandra’s sweet kisses and the feel of her body against his own. He thought of the way the heat burned over his skin and through his veins, and the light brightened before his very eyes.

He believed he could succeed.

That was when he saw a trail of sparks, a line of fire, a path of light that had to lead directly to her. He leapt toward it, narrowing his eyes as the wind began to tear around them. He took flight and flew after the spark, beating his wings hard as he chased it through time and space.

“Focus,”
Rafferty whispered in old-speak, his words resonating in Thorolf’s mind.
“Keep her bright in your thoughts.”

Thorolf focused. Thorolf let his admiration for Chandra fill his mind. He thought of her various forms, the way she shifted shape beneath his kiss, the way she responded to his touch, the way she challenged him and surprised him. He thought of how valiant she was, how she’d nearly kicked his ass, how resolved and stubborn and beautiful she was. He thought of the way she blushed, and how she’d already learned to kiss him back. He thought about tutoring her in the delights of the flesh.

Rafferty murmured encouragement, words that Thorolf felt more than heard. He kept his focus tight upon Chandra. He saw the light shed sparks, like a sparkler lit on the Fourth of July, like a firecracker shooting into the air over a park, like a comet racing across the sky.

He raced after the spark as it grew into a flame, then smiled as it became a bonfire in the distance. He flew harder, straining himself to get to her side in time. He seemed to fly right into the blaze and be surrounded by it. He flew enveloped in a sphere of light that steadily became both brighter and lighter, its radiance such that his eyes were narrowed to slits against it.

When the light burned white hot, he knew they were close.

So, he wasn’t that surprised when they manifested high above a mountain range. There were snow on the peaks, a few clouds overhead, and the sunlight was piercingly bright. The mountains were sharp and rose steeply on every side.

And below him, on an angled face of sheared stone, Chandra was kickboxing with an opponent he knew had to be Chen.

Thorolf roared and turned, diving toward his mate with ferocious power.

This time, he wasn’t going to fail or fall short. Thorolf had finally found something worth fighting for, and something worth dying for. The heat of the firestorm burned hotter with every beat of his wings, filling him with joy and power, as well as the sense of being a hero with a plan. He found himself smiling in anticipation of thumping Chen for once and for all, and then his smile broadened as he imagined how he and Chandra would celebrate.

It would be the perfect time to satisfy the firestorm.

And he’d make sure she never regretted it.

Chapter Eleven

Chandra was caught in a now-familiar maelstrom, but this one was filled with burning coals of debris. Chen’s was a dirty wind, one that seemed to have swept up all the ashes and filth of the world. She felt sick, as she had when Rafferty had moved them through time and space, but the dirt in the air made it worse. She was surrounded by soot and covered by it, polluted by it and disgusted by it. Chen in his female form held so tightly to her wrist that those long nails dug into Chandra’s skin. The wind kept them apart, although Chandra wanted to pound her opponent to oblivion.

Suddenly the wind stopped and she was slammed so hard into rock that the breath was driven out of her. She saw stars, but felt Chen’s grip loosen on her wrist. Chandra rolled to her feet, ready to fight, only to be faced with a shimmer of pale blue light. When it faded, she faced a young and agile Asian man in a leather jacket and jeans. The line of his mouth was mean and she saw the knife shoved into his boot.

He wouldn’t fight fair.

But then, he was Chen.

It was a shame really. That tightly fitted cheongsam and the high heels would have hampered his female form’s ability to fight. Chandra had been looking forward to the advantage. She reminded herself that Chen had many forms, just as she did, and was determined not to be disconcerted by any sudden changes.

That trick should work only on amateurs.

They circled each other, watchful and ready for the first move. They were on a small plateau notched out of the side of a mountain. There was a snowy peak far overhead, as well as an endless blue sky, and the drops were sheer on every side. Whether they were in Myth or the remote mountains of Tibet didn’t matter: death was possible in either place. One misstep would send the loser plummeting into the abyss below.

The trick was that Chandra couldn’t shift shape into a dragon. If she tossed Chen over the side, he’d shift and survive. If he pushed her over the edge, she was a goner.

He smiled at her and she knew he’d guessed her thoughts. Maybe he could read them. Maybe he’d heard the skip of her heart or the accelerated pace of her breathing. Chandra was determined to school her reactions to hide her intent from him.

She was going to kick his butt, for Thorolf and the
Pyr
.

“Yes, you will die here,” he said, his voice so low and melodic that he might have been trying to convince her. There were flames dancing in his eyes, orange flames that couldn’t possibly be there. Chandra was tempted to look more closely at them. “After all these centuries, aren’t you weary?” he murmured and it seemed like a tempting prospect. “Don’t you long to surrender the battle and finally rest?”

Chandra abruptly remembered about the
Pyr
’s ability to beguile. If the
Pyr
could do it, and
Slayers
were
Pyr
turned bad, it made sense not only that
Slayers
could beguile but that they’d use it for their own purposes. Beguiling was a kind of hypnosis, an ability to direct the thoughts of humans. The
Pyr
used it to convince humans that they hadn’t really seen a dragon overhead, or a man shifting to a dragon. Beguiling worked best if the dragon shifter in question found a secret urge in the victim that could be exploited. Most humans didn’t want to believe dragons lived among them.

Chen, however, was trying to give Chandra a death wish, maybe to make this an easy triumph.

She
was
tired.

But she wasn’t done yet.

She sighed, as if his argument made sense, and let her shoulders relax. “It’s so hard,” she murmured. She looked over the top of his head instead of into his eyes, and hoped they were far enough apart that he would be fooled. “The same fights, the same issues; nothing ever changes.”

“But you grow more weary all the time. It seems so futile. It has to seem that mortals can never learn.”

“They repeat their errors over and over again,” she agreed, with another heartfelt sigh.