Chapter 26: Everett

Chapter 26: Everett

There were many times I saw my life flash before my eyes that night, but no moment frightened me as much as when I saw that dragon descend on Aislin.

I couldn’t protect her while fighting the first dragon that lunged at me. Forced to defend myself, I clutched my gun tight with one hand and stabbed at the dragon with the other, taking every opportunity to cause pain. I shoved my fingers in its eyes. I slammed my fist against its head, and when my hand got caught in its mouth, I dug my fingers into its gums and pulled its teeth until its mouth bled. The dragon thrashed above me, but it never seemed to be able to get a good hold of me—I wasn’t going to be an easy victim to the beast. If anybody was going to kill me, it would have to be David himself.

We wrestled for a couple minutes. In my periphery, I had seen Aislin run off to the shed and I’d heard the crack of wood as she burst through the door. But then I couldn’t see what was happening—it was all behind me, and I had been knocked onto my back again, trying desperately to aim at the dragon. I couldn’t afford to fire blindly given I only had a few bullets left. The dragon’s long, whip-like tail wrapped around my ankle and prevented me from getting back up, but it made a critical error in looming above me once I was on the ground. I reached up with my free hand and seized its windpipe. With all the strength in my body, I squeezed and ripped, tearing loose its scales, and finally opening its throat. By the time the dragon realized what I had done, it yanked its head back, but it was too late. I had gouged a hole in its throat and whistling air kept it from filling its lungs. Blood gushed from the wound and sprayed across my face. I felt only rage. The dragon backpedaled, struggling to breathe, and was no longer my concern.

Aislin hit the ground and my heart leaped into my mouth. “Ais!” I called. Within seconds, the dragon attacking her rained down with glistening claws and bared teeth. It enveloped her immediately, rearing its head back in preparation to raze her face. I pointed the gun and fired.

The dragon’s head jerked sideways, black flesh and red blood sprayed out of its temple. Stumbling, the beast then toppled over with eyes rolled back.

Aislin laid in shock in the grass. I flew to her side, pushing the dragon’s arm off of her. She was doused in blood, most of it hers. Both of her arms were ripped and slick with crimson. The sight devastated me. I clutched her shoulders and sat her up. “Ais, are you okay?”

She blinked at me. “I—I think so. But Ev, it hurts…” Aislin could barely even raise her arms.

“I’m sorry.” Even if it was her own decision to join the fight, I still felt like it was my fault. I should have done more to protect her… Maybe I should have told her to stay back in the car. Or I should have pointed the gun at the dragon that attacked her when I had the chance, instead of trying to fight off my own enemy. Either way, the immense guilt caused by her pain locked me up. My packmate was struggling with wounds of his own. I looked between them both, holding Aislin close to my chest before getting to my feet. “Stay here and out of the way,” I told my packmate, then helped Aislin stand up. “I want you to stay with him.”

“No,” she stammered. “I need to see what’s going on in there.”

My eyes turned to the house. Fire crackling from the living room had begun to scale the front of the house, and I could barely see plumes of smoke coiling over the roof. “Okay but keep behind me.” There had already been so many close calls tonight, I expected things to get worse from here once we entered the house.

The screened back door led into the Mundys’ kitchen. Inside, smoke clogged the ceiling and turned the air hazy and grey. The living room was inaccessible with fire, but through the window I saw the flashing blue and red lights of the police out front and hoped that my hiding packmates would have the sense to escape the scene. Between the living room and kitchen, joined by a carpeted hallway, there were stairs to the second floor. On the landing between the first set of stairs and the second, somebody was propped up against the wall.

“Dad!” Aislin cried, collapsing beside him.

The man leaned against the wall, his eyes half-open and blood trickling out of his mouth. A gory wound was excavated out of his abdomen, staining his shirt dark. His freckles and red hair could have belonged to Aislin herself. Of all the emotions I grappled with, empathy for Aislin was the strongest then, her cries of anguish embodying her suffering at the sight of her slain father. I wanted to stay and comfort her, but from the voices on the second floor, I knew the fight was still far from over. My hand went to Aislin’s shoulder, coaxing her to come with me, but she stayed bent over her father’s figure, crying. I’d have to come back for her.

Relinquishing a kiss to the top of her head, I continued up the stairs. Three rooms were lined up along the hallway. The door to the master bedroom hung open, the scents of everyone inside clustered there. I burst into the doorway at the climax of the encounter.

The window was shattered and beside it, David held Muriel in front of him, a knife to her throat. Lothair was in the middle of transforming from human to dragon, while Colt, armed with a handgun, had cornered a bloodied Gavin and Billie against the wall. They all looked at me.

“Get Muriel!” Gavin shouted.

Colt fired the gun at them. Gavin and Billie flinched and Gavin clutched her close while the bullet lodged into the wall between their heads.

I pushed into the room and went for David. The maddened Alpha was disheveled with blood, his peppered beard scraggly and blue eyes wild, white dress shirt unbuttoned three down and sleeves torn. He pushed Muriel behind himself and thrust the knife at me. “Not so fast, March!” snarled David. “Any closer and I’ll cut the unicorn open!”

“She’s useless to you if she dies in her human form,” I said.

“I never said I’d kill her.”

But fresh blood was poisonous to unicorns. I could already see bloody handprints tainting Muriel’s arm and pale clothes. Heavy fatigue circled her eyes, her body struggling to persist through all the violence. In my periphery, I saw Lothair’s transformation nearly complete, and knew I was rapidly running out of time.

Disregarding David’s warning, I lunged for his arm to try to get the knife out of his hands. He growled and kicked my shin, then swung the knife at me, cleaving across my shoulder. I grabbed his shirt and slung my arm around his neck, wrestling with him. As we fought, he threw my back against the bedroom vanity, rattling the mirror. The knife blade pointed at my throat. He grit his teeth and pushed it closer, hungering to slit my airway and end my life.

“You should have died with the rest of your pathetic pack,” David snarled.

“I’m not going to let you get away with this,” I countered. Furious fire roared within me. This man had orchestrated the slaughter of my pack and now he thought he could take everything else from me. “The Mythguard will see you dead.”

“I don’t give a shit what the Mythguard thinks they can do. Once I have that unicorn horn, nobody will be able to stop me,” spat David.

“You’re a monster.”

“All shifters eventually are, in some way or another!”

At this, David laughed. He sharply wrenched the knife down. The blade caught the base of my neck, searing pain lighting up across my collar bone. Clenching my teeth, I cupped the fresh wound with one hand and grabbed his wrist with the other. We struggled again until he pressed my spine against the broken window, shards of jagged glass biting into my back. David forced me backward until I had to use my hands to brace myself on either side of the window, trying to stop him from pushing me out. He reeled the knife back, prepared to drive it into my chest.

A lamp cracked over his head. David grunted, staggering sideways before turning his wrathful gaze onto Muriel. The unicorn held the lamp with its battered lampshade in warning, breathing heavily.

A hellish shriek cut through the room. With Lothair’s transformation complete, the dragon rose from the other side of the bed, nearly occupying the entire room with his massive size. His lips peeled back over his teeth in a vicious snarl, eyes a piercing, predatory yellow locked on me. The dragon threw itself toward me and I lunged out of the way, just barely avoiding him. Its body slammed into the wall where the broken window sat, forming cracks in the plaster, tearing down the silky curtain as it whirled around on me. With its gnashing teeth, it tried to bite me, while its long tail ensnared Muriel’s leg and jerked her away. David grabbed Muriel’s arm and clutched one of the spines sticking out from Lothair’s back. I scrambled away from the dragon’s mouth over the bed while Gavin and Billie tried to reclaim Muriel. Lothair used his hind feet to kick the wall in until it crumbled, and snapping its teeth wildly at everyone closing in around him, fended everyone off before twisting around and breaking through the wall and out into the yard. Sitting on the dragon’s back, David gripped Muriel and held her close as they made their escape.

“No!” Gavin roared, hovering by the massive hole punched out of the wall.

There was nothing we could do but watch the dragon slink away into the night, half running and half flying, David and Muriel on his back.

With me in one corner of the room, and Gavin and Billie near the battered wall, we all turned our eyes to Colt who’d been left behind. He stood by the door, pointing the gun between the three of us. His jaw clenched tight.

“Don’t,” warned Gavin.

“Colt, please don’t shoot,” said Billie.

His eyes crinkled in anger. “I should just kill all three of you.”

“You wouldn’t be able to fire more than once before one of us knocked your teeth out,” I said, panting heavily.

He aimed at all of us, but something kept him from firing. I thought out of all of us, I was the most deserving of his anger since I’d taken Aislin. Then again, Gavin had killed his sister. If he tried to kill either of us, the other one would surely make him pay for it. Maybe that was why Colt ultimately backed away, retreating from the room and out of the hallway. I followed him, watching from the top of the stairs as he stumbled over Aislin and Oslo. For just a moment, he paused and caught Aislin’s teary eyes, and I swelled with fury. “Colt!”

The Hexen glanced up at me and fired. I flinched, narrowly avoiding a bullet in the brain while Aislin yelped. Colt fled down the stairs and disappeared into the thick smoke.

My wolf inside me raged. I wanted to run after him, catch him and punish him for what he’d taken part in, but seeing Aislin there on the landing convinced me otherwise. She needed me. I crashed down the stairs and pulled her to her feet. “We have to get out of here.”

“I can’t leave my dad,” she said weakly.

“Here.” I slid my arm under his and around his shoulder. Aislin helped me lift him.

“Gretel’s in the living room,” said Gavin. “We have to get her out too.”

With a sidelong glance at the living room, my stomach dropped with dread. Fire was eating away the room and creeping into the hallway. The thick smoke made it hard to breathe and see anything, but from outside, intense bursts of water were already starting to douse the inferno. Aislin and I dragged Oslo through the kitchen and out of the back door. A moment later, Gavin and Billie followed with Gretel in their arms.

Once we laid Oslo in the grass, Aislin went to her mother’s side. Terrible burns scorched the side of her face and body that had been exposed to the fire. She was unconscious, but it looked like she was still alive. “Mom! I’m so sorry, I should have been here,” Aislin cried.

I wondered what the difference would have been, had Aislin been with Grandbay instead of me. It shook me to think that she might have been among the casualties tallied tonight.

There was nobody left in the Mundy house. Police surrounded the home and firefighters flooded the blaze. Those of my packmates and the Mythguard who were still alive had already fled, along with the dragons and Dalesbloom wolves. Even Gavin and Billie had gone, per my suggestion to avoid any police questioning. But I stayed with Aislin and her parents. She needed as much support from me as she could get, and I wanted to provide it.

After everything that happened tonight, I didn’t know what would come next. I didn’t know how Grandbay and Eastpeak would recover, or if we even could. Both of our packs had been torn asunder by the attack. Even the town and its human inhabitants had faced David’s wrath. Worst of all… we had lost Muriel.

Now, the Lycan ritual was inevitable.